Jin’s bedroom sat above his workshop, but a little more in line with the original house. It was a drafty thing, window screens full of patchy holes filled with kite paper and wanted posters. A few panes of rippling glass remained, but most of them had fallen out and the Hua family lived a meager life; Ruizhi spent her money on necessities and glass windows were hardly money well spent.

The rest of the boy’s room was sparse: a simple bed that Li now occupied with a silk comforter draped over his bandaged frame, a low stool holding a tray and a bowl of medicinal broth, a spray of candles in votives along the wall, one single oil lamp on a high shelf, overlooking the scene. Jin himself rested his cheek on his arm resting along the edge of the bed. Jin had promised himself he would watch over the noble until sunrise, but late in the night he’d let his blinks grow long until his eyes remained shut. He slept at Li’s side, hand almost daring to touch that fine silk likely worth more than the entire house they presently occupied.

Li woke when the morning hours were uncounted, when time was at its stillest point, when the night was little more than a curtain of blue flecked with the dust-motes of unknown worlds twinkling uselessly in cosmic suspension. His eyes opened to see the sway of the few votives that had yet to fade, flames licking the air in the occasional breeze breaching past paper windows and pulpy clots in flimsy screening.

Silent, he looked around the room. Li was spread out on his side, bare shoulder exposed to the air, bare skin of the rest of his body covered in that silky luxury from his own house, his own bed. He didn’t know how it got there and wasn’t sure exactly how he made it up to his current location but Li was content to just be for the time being. His body still ached from the earlier expenditure, his mind was a little fuzzy in its slow return to consciousness and the realm of the living.

Pulling his gaze away from the lulling dance of the last few candles, the eldest of the Ren’s sons quietly watched the face of the man that’d put him up. How handsome was he? In all his kindness, in all his artistry. In his confidence like clarity, so sure of himself and charming in that fortitude. He watched Jin sleep with a subtle fondness and wondered what happened to Fei—if he made it home on his own okay and what he told their father when he got there.

Li exhaled a long, soundless sigh, nearly comfortable in the warm glow of this humble solitude, this brief tarriance in a type of lifestyle so far from his own. He didn’t want to wake his sleeping caretaker and yet when he shifted to accommodate a newer position, his skin rioted against him anew. Li sucked back in a stinging breath and rolled back into his same position.

Jin was apparently a light sleeper—that or his slumber was quite freshly laid. Either way, he bolted nearly out of his skin at the sound, waking with a start as though Li’s quiet hiss was a shriek right into his ear. “Li, fuck—Li, are yo—”

Eyes wide, Jin was quick to observe his stirring companion and calmed himself, cooled his frantic outburst to a more suave rendition mid-sentence.

“—u’re awake, hey—” Rubbing at his eyes, Jin grabbed the bowl of medicine and leaned over the bedside on attentive elbows. “It’s still warm. Drink this. It’ll help with the pain.”

The wealthy boy lifted his head with an obvious effort to look at the contents of the bowl, then placed it back down on Jin’s pillow. “What is it? Is Fei okay?”

“He’s fine, I sent him home after you passed out. He sent over the prescription, your blanket, a change of clothes, a couple books…” Even as he spoke, Jin was moving. He sat on the edge of the bed and gently scooped Li up in his free arm, propping the wounded boy up against his chest so it’d be easier for him to drink. “I did a lot of work while you were out—it’s corydalis root to help with the pain. You don’t have to drink it, but you’re gonna feel this eventually and you’re not gonna like me. Don’t you want to keep liking me?”

Jin once more lifted the bowl, this time to Li’s lips, cheek resting tired against the courtier’s dark hair.

Li took the bowl from Jin’s hands, touch sliding over the artist’s to supplant his own, tempting self-sufficiency even in his temporary frailty. He drank the simple concoction with no fuss, swallowing efficiently even as the bitter warmth of the broth hit the back of his throat. The bowl was empty in no time.

“I don’t think I’ll stop liking you over this,” Li announced, dabbing at his lips with a thumb, other hand resting the empty vessel in his silk-draped lap. “I agreed to it, you told me it was going to be painful; I knew what I was getting into. You should sleep, however. I didn’t mean to wake you up. You don’t need to watch over me like I’m a liability or a spoiled rich person who can’t take care of themselves—I want you to keep liking me too.” And yet, even as he said the words, Li rested himself back on the inlayer.

“I’ve slept enough,” Jin declared, content to let Li rest against him. He leaned back onto his hands and looked up at the patchy ceiling, looked at the stars through time worn holes in the roof. It was awful when it rained, but on clear nights Jin would have it no other way. “I’m not watching over you because you’re rich. If I was doing that wouldn’t I have just let your attendants stay and attend to you? Let them transform my room into something that looked more like your house?” Jin shook his head. “I kicked them out after they brought your stuff. They had more things—I told them to take it all away. A-po shrieked at me for an hour, ha.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make it sound like I was accusing you. I meant more that I just don’t want you to think I’m helpless. It’s kind of you to put me up, of your grandmother to let me stay. I would like to give her a gift to show my appreciation when I return.” Li situated his legs long before him, bent at the knee. “How long ago did you stop working? I suppose it’s probably good that I passed out, so you could do all that without having to hear all my bawling.”

“You’re not going anywhere for a little bit so you might as well settle in.” Jin yawned despite his earlier claims and laid back abruptly, repositioning the pillow behind his head. “Get through now. None of this when I return shit.” He paused. “It’s been a while since I stopped working. When night fell. We only have firelight here—no magic sea pearls or electric artifacts.”

In truth, Jin had only stopped working two or three hours prior to Li’s waking. With the regal boy out cold, the artist worked tirelessly to complete two days of grueling, painful extraction in the span of one, squinting close to the boy’s bloody skin warmly lit by a swarm of candles in the cloying dark.

“We can start laying new lines tomorrow,” the artist added, offhand. “You need to recover your strength, Ren Li. Go back to sleep.”

“Aah,” Li grinned and sat his empty bowl aside, “Someone sounds like he hasn’t slept enough after all.”

The wealthy boy began to carefully move, arms slow to maneuver, legs shifting between his current envelope of paucity and opulence. He readjusted himself next to the artist, dug a new resting spot out from his side, still craving the benevolence of touch between the throbbing cries of his root-lulled injuries. Li claimed a space for himself on the shared pillow, close enough to follow the contours of the other man’s profile.

“This is better, right? You go back to sleep, Hua Jin.”

“A-po will think you’re a hussy if she catches us sleeping in the same bed,” Jin remarked, unmoving as Li made himself comfortable. “She’ll demand a dowry within the week, I guarantee it.”

“Ah fuck, my pristine reputation finally ruined.” Li pulled the blanket over their heads. “There. Could be anything under here now.”

“I think you look more guilty.” Jin turned to his side, barely able to see Li’s face under cover of embroidered silk. “This blanket’s too expensive. It doesn’t belong here.”

“Well—” Li began like he had another solution to the engineered predicament but he quickly settled into a smile, large and silly, a world apart from the regularity of his studious expression. He softly laughed. “I tried my best.”

“More than ever, I think you’re trying to steal from me now,” Jin replied, cool despite his sleeplessness, poised under pressure of his theoretical beheading should this all go awry. He tilted Li’s chin toward him with a delicate touch. Even in near pitch dark, Jin could see that grin break the mask of Li’s highborn stoicism; it seemed Li found freedom without the burden of eyes watching his every move. “Maybe I was wrong; thieves don’t have to look like thieves to steal, do they?”

“Maybe,” Li considered, buoyancy sinking in the suffocation of an airy sigh. “Just—look. Don’t you know anything? If you don’t want to be stolen from, then stop leaving your shit out for the taking.” The noble tilted his chin the rest of the way, lips parting the shadows between them to find lips, kiss vernal when it sought for itself, bold when it breached the tranquility of night with the zeal of wanting.

Jin’s reaction was hardly the response of a man being stolen from; no, he became an accomplice after dark, two-faced trickster all cunning, too smart for his own good. He was an open mouthed liar’s riposte with his hands sinking deep into Ren Li’s hair, kiss the continuation of his backtalk. Their play argument simply obfuscated their descent from mere acquaintances to friend-friends.

This was inevitable, wasn’t it? He’d pay in the morning, wouldn’t he?

Gods, he’d be willing to pay.

Jin pulled his body flush to Li, poorhouse clothes utilitarian and rough against the nobleman’s exposure.

Li’s hands slid over territory he’d yet to explore for himself, the feel of Jin’s waist below boneform of his ribs. He would get to know him now by touch—the curve of his side as it sloped around to his back, the bend of his spine and the jutting of his shoulders, the volume of the artist in the patrician’s ensnaring arms. He would take his story by measure of communicative warmth, read it so willingly in the sordid tangling of their legs.

The wealthy boy may have been out of place beneath that pock-marked ceiling so exposed to the elements, tucked away in that humble room devoid of his usual splendor, but Li felt right at home against that man’s body—slack-jawed and ready to turn that argument into a fight.

“Careful—” Jin tried to warn between the syncopated breathbeats of their clash.

“Your arm—” he sighed.

“—your leg—” he groaned.

“—your back—”

With his tattooed arms around Li’s waist, Jin rolled himself onto his back. He was happy to take the other boy along with him as their movements skewed their questionably adequate cover, exposing the both of them to the room’s waning candle light filtered through the mosquito net canopy overhanging the bed.

“Is this okay?” Jin’s question came with a new keepaway game: keeping his kisses just out of range of that gentleman robber looking to take all he had on offer.

“Yeah,” Li replied in his approaching breathlessness, situating himself atop the inlayer. For the moment, he was content to rest his cheek to clavicle, idle hand playing with the front closure of Jin’s clothes. “You were wrong by the way. I mean, you were kind of right, but also wrong.”

“About?” Jin tilted his head to try and catch a look at his accuser, hand joining Li’s upon his chest.

“I never had any intention of going for the millipede for myself.” The Ren boy’s voice was soft as he unraveled his tale. “My brother was having boy troubles and I was trying to cheer him up by showing him that there are so many other people out there than this one guy he’s hyper-focused on. I mentioned that I thought you were handsome and he insisted we come see you. I kinda expected you to turn me down without an appointment. The millipede story was just a ploy to help us not stand there like gawking idiots.”

“The gods punish liars, Ren Li,” Jin replied with a laugh. He kissed the other man’s forehead, then his cheek—kissed him till he couldn’t go any lower without Li facilitating the path of his want. “So it’s good you’re coming clean. I wouldn’t wanna see you get punished.”

“I’m pretty sure timestamps still count for something,” Li also laughed, short and exhaled on a huff of a breath. He was more concerned with receiving those kisses, eyes narrowed and haughty like he was owed them. “Feels good to be without burden though.”

“Were you lying when you said you weren’t trying to kiss me?” The artist on his back was incorrigible, even when he was distracted, dealing out those affections he apparently already owed.

“No, I was trying to get you to back up outta that standoff we were in. It just really threw me off when you whipped that out.” Li grinned again, off-kilter across the line of his lips.

“And now?” Jin grasped Li’s hand against the closure he’d been toying with, unclasping the button with the combinate friction of cooperative fingerprints. “What are you after now, Ren Li?”

“I’m good with this,” he replied, dipping the tips of his fingers into the dark pocket created in breached fabric, caressing hidden skin in a surreptitious slide. “Whatever this is. How do you feel about this, Hua Jin? Is it okay with you?”

“I’m pretty good with this,” he offered in return. Each button unclasped was a polite gesture to that boy rendered nude save for his bandages. Jin’s actions were hardly untoward—merely an extension of hospitality to make Li more comfortable in these humble, foreign surroundings.

Yeah, Jin thought when he tangled his fingers in Li’s hair again, loosing a few strands from the haphazardly tied leather cord at the regal boy’s nape. He pulled him close to reinforce his acceptance of their predicament with his sigh, his teeth, his this yes this all implied in the candor of his touch.

Whatever this is, whatever

this is trying to be

it’s fine by me

Li fit so well against him, draped across the languid denuding of that boy’s body with an affectation of good and yes and all sorts of other affirmations meant to conspire against the massive gap in their social statuses. Together, they were a two-tone conspiracy met in the middle by their need to seek the comforts of one another. Li may have lived in the lap of luxury but here as he was, caught drinking the soft breaths of that boy he looked at with stars in his eyes, that wellborn thing was happy—materials were trite, surroundings were irrelevant. He was ignorant the cost of flesh because the flesh he sought to stroke with every bit of freedom gained from a succession of buttons was priceless, supply given worth by his demand alone.

Jin was a shifting dune under Li’s moonflower touch, rising into his kiss to pull his shirt off, tossing it away so he could focus his attention on their skin to skin contact. He marveled at their jigsaw fit. He never suspected expensive jade and pauper’s granite could sit so flush, and yet with his hands at Li’s waist traipsing careless to hold him by the hips, he found very little different about this rich boy in the candlelit dark. He found nothing in Li’s affection to remind him he was less than: only evidence that Li was a treasure he’d do well to protect with great pride, to hold onto with undying vigor.

“Don’t be vague,” Jin hummed strident between Li’s every demand for attention. “How far do you want me to go?”

“I want this,” Li sighed, “I want all of it with you. I don’t want you to stop, I want more, everything, but I don’t know if I can right now. Physically.” He laid his head back down on Jin’s chest, comforted by his bareness now. “I want it to be perfect, right? My first time… with you. I want to be able to revel in your affection without my body trying to doublecross me for pushing myself too much. I want a ‘when I come again’ even though you said we’re not doing that shit.”

Li smiled, touch falling idle. “I guess what I’m saying is that I want to be with you when I’m at my best, so we can feel each other in full. Will you allow me to get this close to you again?”

“I said you could come every night, take up my days,” Jin slurred through his tricky grin, proper intention decaying under lewd entendre. “I meant it—even if we’re not working on your tracers, you can come.”

“You said I could BUY your whole day for twenty-five tael.” Li glanced up, sharp beneath the humor in his throat.

“You still can,” Jin laughed. “But only when I work on you, only if you’re getting work done. I don’t want your money if you’re here for me. I don’t want your money if you’re here for this. This isn’t for sale.” Despite relaxing under Li’s weight, Jin’s grip upon his hips remained, his infatuation so flawless and evident in his every touch. “You get that, right?”

“Yeah, I get it, Jin,” Li said without any pretense, pulling the blanket up around them to obscure his chest and shoulders from their slowly fading vigil of flames and the distant morning that yawned beyond.

“Now stop keeping me up.” Despite his teasing demand, Jin continued to seek the other man’s mouth, tired but not exhausted, yearning but content. “I have a lot to get done tomorrow if you want to revel in my affections.“

“Uh-huh. I’m doing no such thing,” Li retorted onto his lips, pressing his last words in. “So go to sleep.”

“Then get offa me,” Jin requested sharply despite holding the courtier fast, keeping him close and refusing to let go. For all his jabs, the artist was so willing, so fucking willing, to give Li whatever he wanted: sun, moon, stars, breath, lungs, life. “How am I supposed to sleep when you’re begging me for attention still?”

“Sorry, can’t.” Li nestled in again, wrapped his arms tightly around the artist’s slender frame, held him fast and sure and unwilling to cede even a centimeter even if it would help him get to sleep faster or rest better. “I’m stuck, aaah, yep, it’s only getting worse. Can’t move at all. Completely incapacitated, ah, drats. Damn my luck.”

“You are cruel, Ren Li.” Jin raked his fingers through Li’s hair before he traced gently over the bandages patching the curve of a precious spine, listless touch settling in the small of his back. He yawned. “So cruel… can’t even spare… this poor beggar a single… drop… of mercy…”

“Nope,” the nobleman spoke softly into the skin he had full intentions of making his resting place for the remainder of their night together. “Not when he suffers so sweetly under my torment. Seek your kindness elsewhere.”

Exhausted and resigned to his fate, Hua Jin closed his eyes. He didn’t know what the next day would bring but knew this moment saw him content—

even if the world collapsed tomorrow, Jin would be content.