“AH—” Li cried out as soon as the scalpel bit into the flesh of his back, into the meat so close to the nervecenter of his spine.

“F-FUCK—” It was worse when the inlayer dug in, when the extraction process replaced the incising. The dire importance of stillness kept in the way he held his body, head buried into the flat piling of his arms. His mouth made up for all the squirming the eldest Ren wanted to do; all that running and fleeing and sobbing over the chilled beading of fresh blood greeting the studio’s air—cool like sweat, slick like torment.

Li was not a weak man, he’d been dinged up in past skirmishes and took his blows with a dignified chin angled up, but he was also very much some conglomeration of human, an assemblage of meat and bones he could feel screaming pinpoint sharp within him.

With the first thread dug out, Jin washed one hand and placed it, cool and wet, on the back of Li’s neck—as though this small comfort could ever be enough to make up for all the hurt the artist was tasked with enacting on the beautiful noble’s flesh. “If you stay still for one more up your back, I’ll let you lay in my lap while I work on your shoulders,” the humble boy offered, running that clean hand through Li’s hair, tenderly clearing sweat matted tendrils from his temple. “You’re doing good, I promise. You’re doing great.”

“Just keep going.” Li was encouraging despite all his difficulty, self-sold into the idea that the end goal was worth all the anguish, that even the distant-seeming reward of a lap-bound reprieve was worth the violet pangs of this pain. “Fuck, it’s okay, just don’t stop.”

Parting after one more gentle, inquisitive touch, the artist resumed his work despite the agony quaking through his subject’s frame. Wasn’t this the same as flaying his skin from his body? The tracers were healed in, a part of him—relaying artifacts was torture. He wondered if Li would forgive him; if Li would ever look upon him with curious affection in his eyes ever again.

He wondered if Li would scream himself raw—if the painful grind of his tattered throat would make the flensing more or less bearable.

After another long thread of copper was removed from its winding route from hip to spine and all the way up between Li’s shoulder blades, Jin washed both his hands of blood, setting his scalpel aside so he could fulfill his promise: he changed position so he could offer his lap to the bleeding subject of his brutal work. “I’ll give you a minute, okay? Tell me what you need.”

Li sighed a shaky breath, let it roll over the fabric that made his new pillow, the legs upon which he rested. His brown eyes were pink with a necessary grief.

“Would you just tie my hair up? It doesn’t have to be nice or anything, just as long as it’s out of the way. I keep almost eating it.” He should have thought ahead but he hadn’t and that was his own fault. The man was otherwise quiet for the moment it took refill his lungs in the firepit of nerves left smoldering along the angry red of his open back. The air was heavy with iron touched by the fading scent of distant flowerfields, war brought to their bucolic landscape on the screaming arrival of a wealthy invader.

Li curled his fingers around one of Jin’s thighs.

With great care, slow hands gathered Li’s long hair. Jin took the opportunity to give the moment dual intention: the utilitarian purpose of getting the other man’s hair out of his face paired with a softer moment in the lull of anguish. His damp fingers combed against Li’s scalp before he grabbed a thin leather cord, meant to function as a tourniquet from his just-in-case pile, and tied his regal client’s hair off in a folded chignon, loose at his nape.

In Jin’s short time in business, he’d never exercised such care with a client—but then, how often did he extract artifacts? The extra effort was obviously to help this rich boy pull through this suffering; he offered his lap because he was sensitive to the other man’s suffering,

not because of their nose to nose debate,

not because of the kiss he’d planted to quell Li’s nerves.

“Is that better?” Jin leaned over a little to catch Li’s wavering gaze, small grin dimpling one of his cheeks. “What else do you need?”

“Much better, thank you.” The noble’s voice was much better at conveying appreciation than his expression. A modest smile creased one of his cheeks in a pale attempt at serving the artist something other than the drab exhaustion that haunted his visage. Li didn’t want the boy to think he was upset with him. For whatever reason, which he refused to take the time to dissect right there in that very moment, he didn’t want Jin to think bad on himself, or that the morning would bring a cavalcade of guards and jailors to lock him up for mutilating a member of the upper class. It was okay; he was okay. He tilted his chin to find that dotted grin in his hazy sight, then returned to rest.

“That’s it,” Li said. “I’m good.”

“You can hold as tight as you need to,” Jin informed Li as he reached across his shoulders to retrieve the scalpel. “I promise I don’t mind.”

With one arm cradling that highborn head, crossed under Li’s cheek with his fingers lingering near that pain tight throat, Jin began the next incision, close to the artifact he’d soon reset.

Li sharply turned his head into the artist’s arm, nails digging tight into his grip on the man’s thigh. His cry was muffled this time, blocked by the body that held him with care as that black blade bit licked another open wound in his flesh of many. Li was awake and fighting against himself in a tense standoff, muscles fraught with woe until the rush of his riot was suddenly, unexpectedly————s t i l l.

It was enough. He was quiet, but

it was better this way, wasn’t it?

The form of Ren Li relaxed on that lap that supported him, quiet and dark, eyes closed, vision flirting with the the darkness of his void.

Jin sighed. Li’s state wasn’t ideal. How was Jin going to explain what was going on if anyone came looking for him? How was he going to keep his head if someone came and accused him of mutilating a highborn boy so close to the royal family? What if they accused him of trying to steal his relics?

Jin would be a dead man for sure.

Finishing the thread he worked on, the artist washed Li’s back clean before gently sliding out from under his dead weight, folding lithe arms to support that troubled, unconscious head.

Soon after, Jin emerged next to his grandmother’s florist counter, bloodstained and dour faced. Alarmed, Fei stared, Ruizhi’s arrangement still on his head. He didn’t dare disturb her creation by jumping up, but he couldn’t help expressing his grave concern.

“What did you do to my brother—” the youngest Ren demanded.

“He’ll be okay, he passed out,” Jin replied. His words were confident, strong. He was good at faking like he’d done this before. Perhaps Fei would believe him—his grandmother, however, likely knew better. “He’s going to stay here tonight. You need to go home now. Send an attendant to a pharmacy to bring him corydalis and willow bark to get him through the rest of his procedure.” Taking a slip of paper and a brush from the counter, the artist wrote the prescription and held it out to Fei. “I promise: he’ll be fine.”

Ruizhi deftly removed the mostly finished headdress from the younger Ren’s head, placing it on the counter carefully. She gave an encouraging pat to his shoulder as she then urged him to stand and take the sheet and be on his way.

“Jin is the best inlayer in town.” Ruizhi would always cover for her grandson, even if he had murdered a man today. Her confidence was full—as full as those globular peonies sitting idle in the glamour of gold thread. “You do not need to worry, he is in good hands.”

Obediently Fei rose, studying the old woman for any signs of deception and, finding none, he bowed his head. He took the paper and read it over before he lifted his chin.

“Can I see him before I go?” the boy asked.

“It’s better if you don’t,” Jin answered, courteous but full of warnings. “You’ll want to stay if you see him. The work he asked me to do is messy. I’m sorry, Young Master Ren Fei.”

“I will send a change of clothes and some of his things from home. Please take good care of him,” Fei seemed concerned as he turned to the door, so skittish without his brother by his side. “Please send word in the morning. Thank you for your hospitality, lao-Hua.”

“If anything changes, I’ll send word right away,” Jin promised as he gently pushed the young courtier toward the door. The artist watched the boy pick his way down the street, head down—perhaps to scrutinize the prescription as he walked. Or perhaps his mind lingered on the conversation he shared with the Hua matriarch. Either way, Jin closed the door after him and turned back toward the shop’s interior.

The grandmother was immediately behind her boy as soon as the latch clicked.

“HUA JIN, YOU BETTER LOCK THAT DOOR SO NO ONE CAN COME IN HERE AND SAVE YOU FROM THE BEATING YOU ARE GOING TO GET FOR KILLING A NOBLE.” Ruizhi was armed, already furiously flapping an arm whose fist clutched an old catalogue of seeds. The weapon was rolled tight to provide the most painful type of swatting, pages bolstered by a tight composure expertly wielded by an elderly woman’s hand.

“HE’S—” Thwap! “—NOT—” Thwap! “—DEAD A-PO!”

Fed up at the unjust punishment, Jin snatched his grandmother’s weapon away, standing tall with his chest rising and falling in huffy, haughty distress. When he recovered some composure, he pointed the paper tube back at the old woman—but more as a replacement for an accusatory finger than a weapon of Jin destruction.

“He’s just passed out, a-po! You have to stop hitting me before you talk to me about what’s happening!”

He’d talked to her about this multiple times in the past—overreacting, acting before taking the time to figure out what was truly going on—but Ruizhi was old and set in her ways. This was likely a point that her grandson would never convince her of.

“You better get back up there and make sure he DOESN’T DIE then,” she snapped back. “I cannot spend tomorrow getting rid of a body Jin’er, I do not have the energy to pack up this house and move it out of Fanxing for you.”

“When it comes, boil the corydalis in vinegar for two hours—” As Jin passed the old woman, he wagged the catalogue at her like a warning. “Nothing else in the pot, a-po, P R O M I S E ME.”

“Alright, alright,” Ruizhi replied swiping an empty hand in the boy’s direction as she returned to her work to pass the time while she waited for the delivery. “Nothing else in the pot. Fine, fine.”

With one last scan of his grandmother’s face, the artist dropped her roll-up on the counter and headed briskly back to take care of Li.