Chapter Text
For as long as Jaemin can remember, there has been war.
The Eastern and Western Kingdoms had been one Empire, once. A long time ago, before there was any war at all. Or so his father tells him. It’s the type of battle that was started by men who have long since died and carried out for no other reason than lacking an incentive to stop. According to their textbooks, and the word of every Western Kingdom official out there, the war was started by the Eastern Kingdom for greed—resources, land, riches—and continued by the Western Kingdom for righteous vengeance. And so on, and so forth.
Jaemin is pretty sure the Eastern Kingdom would say something different.
“There were peace talks once though, weren’t there?” Jaemin asks his father. That information isn’t in any textbook. But he’s heard enough whispers over the years to understand it’s the things that are written down that tend to hold the least amount of truth.
The scratch of metal on whetstone is deafening to his own ears. But the king has always insisted on sharpening his own sword, and it’s something Jaemin’s watched him do countless times since childhood. These are the only moments where it’s just them. It turns out being an attentive father and being a competent ruler are mutually exclusive, and Jaemin is not under the delusion that he is more important than an entire kingdom. If he ever was, it was years ago.
Run the sword at a thirty-degree angle. Smooth, uniform strokes. Apply consistent pressure. If you do it right, it takes just under an hour. It’s always better to do it right the first time. Good things take time.
“Once,” his father says vaguely, and nothing more.
The fighting is constant but the intensity of it ebbs and flows. Some years, loss of life is minimal. Swords clash just as much for show as they do with winning intent. Soldiers go home to their families for proper burials. Other years, they bury the dead beneath their feet before making their way back to the camps.
How lucky, the people say, when the royal family passes through town. How lucky that we have a king who fights with and for us rather than hiding up in his castle. How lucky that he would send his own sons into battle for us.
(Jaemin is fifteen years old when he realizes his father will never look at him and truly see him.
Look at this, he tries to say, every time Donghyuck’s father teaches him something new. What he means is look at me.
Not now, his father says, every time. Maybe later, he says, but later never comes.
Sorry, Jaehyun says with his eyes, every time. His pity makes Jaemin’s blood boil hot beneath his skin. Why should he be sorry Jaemin can’t manage to capture their father’s attention? Why should he be sorry Jaemin isn’t good enough, or that he was born too late to be anything other than a backup plan?
There is a painting in the grand hall that has stayed covered, black linen draped over canvas, since Jaemin was old enough to walk. No one’s ever told him why it’s covered or that he shouldn’t touch it, but no one offers any information about it either, and despite Jaemin’s curiosity, he doesn’t ask. He and Jeno are messing around one day when Jaemin trips and his hands close around nothing before they close around fabric, and the linen falls to the ground.
Jaemin doesn’t remember their mother clearly. If he closes his eyes he can imagine what she might’ve looked like. But as far as actual memories go, all he has is the ghost of her touch and the lilt of her voice, and sometimes he thinks those might’ve been imagined, too.
He looks up at this family portrait and realizes—his father looks at him and sees the ghost of his wife. He looks at Jaehyun and sees a future.
Jaehyun has an easy charm and a dimpled smile and perfect manners that endear him to everyone he meets. Jaehyun gets personal lessons from their father while Jaemin is shipped off to take his with Donghyuck. Jaehyun has all sorts of expectations on his shoulders. And one day, Jaehyun will inherit a kingdom.
All Jaemin has is a pretty face and royal blood and a crippling inferiority complex.)
In the desert, conditions are unforgiving. Most days Jaemin doesn’t know where he stops and the sand begins. This is the first year the fighting has been severe enough to warrant the Royal family’s presence on the front lines, and Jaemin can’t exactly say he likes it. The morning sun is just as harsh in its absence as in its presence, and Jaemin oscillates between sweating buckets and shivering so hard his teeth chatter. They’re technically in Eastern Kingdom territory, though no formal borders have ever been drawn, and it means they have to stay on their guard. There are rotating twenty-four hour shifts—someone is always on the lookout—it’s the sort of hypervigilance that leaves you exhausted and paranoid. Constantly looking over your shoulder. Waking up in the middle of the night, sweat-soaked and terrified. As the crown prince and heir apparent, Jaehyun is exempt from guard duty.
Jaemin isn’t. But he doesn’t mind that so much. If sword maintenance is the only time he gets with his father, guard duty is the only time he gets to be alone. The desert after sundown is brutally cold, but on clear nights where no cloud cover washes the sky, it’s easy to look up at the stars and get swallowed by the endless darkness of space. If he squints, it looks like space is all there is. Stars above and below him, no horizon, suspended in glass. It’s soothing, in a way. Sometimes, during the day, he stares up at the open sky and wishes instead for the silent cover of night.
“You always look like you’re searching for an exit strategy when you do that,” Jaehyun tells him. “It’s not a good look for a prince.”
They’re too busy looking at you to care about what the second-in-line does, Jaemin wants to reply. Sometimes, the absence of expectations feels just as heavy a burden as its opposite. He says nothing, and continues to stare.
It’s on a mundane day like any other that it comes to an end. The only thing markedly different about it is that the sky is overcast for once, and with the clouds comes a strange sense of foreboding. A messenger rides in on horseback and with wide, terrified eyes he says—they found us. They’re coming. It’s a surprise attack.
The fighting is brutal. One by one, people are cut down—on each side—until their numbers have dwindled to just half their original amount and Jaemin’s hands are aching where they’re wrapped around the hilt of his sword. He wipes his cheek and it comes away wet and he doesn’t have time to process if it’s blood or sweat or something improbable like tears or something else improbable like desert rain.
In the distance, loud cries tear out through the crowd as a flag is raised. At the same time, a single figure falls in a bloodied heap. The flag that’s raised is theirs—teal and gold—Jaemin would recognize it at the end of the world. The figure that falls is his father—this, too, Jaemin would recognize at the end of the world.
How lucky that we have a king who fights for us.
Jaemin falls to his knees and the sand sinks beneath him. Behind him, there’s raucous shouting—the king is injured someone call for a medic your majesty are you—
Why would you call a medic for a man who’s nearly been cut in half, Jaemin wonders, and the aftermath comes upon him like a heatwave; grime on his neck and nausea rising in his chest.
He doesn’t feel very lucky at all.
So they lose their king, but they win the war. Some would call it equivalent exchange.
Jaemin thinks about his father’s body and the way it had looked slumped over, run through with his own spear, painted red, and isn’t sure these things are equivalent, after all.
“What now?” he asks Jaehyun, in the throne room. For as long as Jaemin can remember, there has been war. Neither of them has ever had the luxury to think about what might come next.
Jaehyun hadn’t cried at the procession. But then again, neither did Jaemin. They stood next to each other, without exchanging any words. He’d watched as people mourned, and grieved, and cried, and wondered if there was something so fundamentally wrong with him that he couldn’t shed tears for the last living parent he had. He was a good king, a good person. But not a good father. So instead, he watched two of his father’s most decorated generals lower the casket into the ground with a detachedness he wasn’t sure he actually felt.
Now, Jaehyun sits on a throne that used to belong to their father and wears a crown that used to belong to him too (it should be mine, the covetous voice in Jaemin’s head whispers), and says, quietly, “I don’t know.”
Their father’s advisor speaks up from the back. “The Eastern Kingdom’s Emperor is known to be quite reckless,” Gongmyung says. “Even with a treaty, there’s no telling if he’ll hold up his side of the bargain.”
“So if a treaty isn’t enough, what do we need?” Jaehyun asks. The last thing they want is another war. With the king gone—dead, Jaemin reminds himself—order can’t be allowed to disintegrate. They can give the people no reason to doubt their rule.
“Collateral,” Gongmyung says. “The fastest way to dispel any lingering hostility—on either side—is with a marriage.”
“Ridiculous,” Jaemin scoffs.
Jaehyun doesn’t seem to feel the same way. But then again, he and Jaemin rarely see eye-to-eye on things, though it’s not clear to Jaemin whether that’s by design or just a product of their total incompatibility. “You have a point,” he tells Gongmyung, after a brief pause. “But to who?”
“I happen to know the Eastern Kingdom’s royal family has an excellent candidate,” he says.
Jaemin looks at the castle’s vaulted ceiling and wishes, again, that he were alone and looking at the night sky instead.
The candidate in question is Huang Renjun. He was born twenty-two moons ago, just like Jaemin. And like Jaemin, he is too young to be king. Better candidates to fill their throne, all born before he was, and so why not let him be useful elsewhere.
The austerity of arranging a marriage immediately following a war is not lost on Jaemin. It’s practical, but cold in its utility. The problem is that people don’t easily forget their misgivings, not when they’ve been at war for so long. Tensions are still high as they’ve ever been—higher, even—and existing hostility only begets more hostility. It’s questionable whether their union would be accepted by the public, let alone supported.
Which is why, Gongmyung says. They’re going to sell the public a love story instead.
Renjun will come to the Western Kingdom under the guise of diplomacy. A prince forging new paths for his country in newfound times of peace. He and Jaehyun will meet, and it will be love at first sight for both of them. Their courting period will be long, drawn-out, so that citizens of both the Western and Eastern Kingdoms will have time to adjust to the idea of it. They’ll announce the engagement next autumn, in just one year.
“It sounds like something out of a fairy tale,” Jaemin sneers.
Gongmyung’s grin is wide and unwavering. “It does,” he says. “Which is why they will all desperately want to believe it.”
Jaehyun, on his throne, says nothing.
It’s a win-win situation, in theory. Jaehyun will need a spouse to officially ascend the throne, as both custom and legislation dictates. Renjun will need a way to ascertain that his people are safe from the repercussions of a war they did not start. So Jaehyun gathers all the advisors in one room—Gongmyung, Chenle, Taeyong, Kun—and together they write the proposal in gilded gold-crusted ink on thick parchment and they send it off, even if it’s a formality.
A response comes within the week. The Eastern Kingdom agrees, of course, because they have to. And so it’s settled.
Jaehyun has started insisting they take dinner as a family. Jaemin’s inclined to believe it’s an attempt to improve his image above all else. Moments of silence far outnumber moments of conversation between them, and somehow the silence still manages to be less awkward than their spoken words.
“Why are we negotiating a treaty when we’re the ones who won the war?” Jaemin asks, more to himself than to anyone else. “Couldn’t we simply force them to agree to whatever terms we find most favorable? To the victor belong the spoils.” Their father used to say that often.
Jaehyun sighs at him, and the pity in his gaze somehow feels worse than if it were condescension instead. “There are so many things you don’t understand yet,” he says simply. From here, the scrape of his knife against porcelain sounds like folded steel against smooth whetstone.
“You don’t need to treat me like a child,” Jaemin says reproachfully.
Jaehyun’s gaze turns withering. “I do. Because you keep acting like one.”
“Then I won’t subject you to my presence for a second longer.” Jaemin stands up from his chair and its legs screech as they slide against the marble floor. “Thanks for dinner.”
Jaemin is not quite sure how to interpret the expression Jaehyun makes as he leaves. He falls asleep with his head buried in a book titled Defense and Diplomacy and pretends it doesn’t matter.
The treaty is to be negotiated and signed at a city atop the border between both kingdoms—neutral territory. A gesture of good faith, even if it’s a somewhat meaningless one. Even if it’s an inconvenient one, Jaemin thinks, sitting in the carriage with his brother and not attempting to fill the silence. Their journey is long, arduous. Hours upon hours of travel and no rest for the wicked. He stares outside as flat plains turn to rolling hills turn to soaring mountains until he’s absolutely sick of staring at anything at all. The sky remains overcast for the duration of their traveling, the same way it’d been on the day of his father’s death.
Somehow, as they walk through the fortress hallways, Jaemin gets the strange feeling that this seems more like a funeral procession than the actual funeral did.
The process of drafting a treaty is as long and rigorous as it is excruciating. Back-and-forth discussions that lead nowhere, thinly-veiled threats in the form of platitudes, moments of terse silence as tension rises. Jaehyun sits at the head of the table dressed in his regalia, looking very much like the king he is not. To his left sits Gongmyung. To his right sits Doyoung, court diplomat and Gongmyung’s younger brother. As Jaemin’s advisor, Chenle had been offered a place at the table too, but he elected to stay behind instead.
“No offense,” he’d said to Jaemin, poring over some book in a foreign language Jaemin did not know. “But I can think of plenty of better things to do with my time than sit around and listen to old men argue about arbitrary matters while everyone pretends we don’t know it’s Gongmyung making the decisions, not your brother.”
He had a point, so Jaemin didn’t press it. If it’d been an option for Jaemin to skip out too, he would’ve done so gladly. It’s not as though he gets a say in any of their discussions.
Jaemin himself sits off to the side of the room with Mark, who elbows him helpfully every time he nods off or starts to space out too obviously. “Jaemin,” he whispers loudly. A few heads turn to look at them, and Jaemin sighs—subtlety has never been Mark’s area of expertise. He’s a great knight, but neither delicacy nor discernment are skills taught in their training.
“Say that a little louder, why don’t you,” Jaemin whispers, offering his winning smile to the few soldiers who have looked their way until their heads turn back again.
“Sorry, sorry,” Mark says, sheepish, his voice marginally quieter. “I just—Don’t you think it’s a bit odd that there’s so few of them?”
Jaemin’s gaze sweeps over the room. The entourage that the Eastern Kingdom has brought is smaller than theirs; a mere ten to their thirty. Limited to the Emperor, his heir apparent, and a handful of guards who mill around in the back. One more person, too, but the guards are blocking Jaemin’s view of whoever they are. Probably some random official, Jaemin reasons. It’s probably not important.
“Maybe it’s odder that there are so many of us,” Jaemin tells him. Despite growing up as royalty, his circle has tended to skew small. Where Jaehyun has always been the charismatic, well-loved prince, Jaemin has always been seen by their people as more of a loner type. The black sheep. It used to bother him, once upon a time, because there was something that seemed unfair about calling a boy a loner when he had never been alone by choice to begin with.
“Huh,” Mark replies thoughtfully. “Never thought about it that way. Guess that’s why you’re the prince, and I’m not.”
The truth is that Jaemin is a prince in name only, at this point. But this is a complex truth, and Mark is simple and uncomplicated, and Jaemin likes him that way, so he just replies, “I guess so.”
In the end it takes nearly seven days and seven nights to draft a treaty with terms that both sides deem fair. The most important sentence of all doesn’t get written at all. Instead, they settle it only by verbal agreement.
Give us your son, and we will promise you peace. It’s a fair trade. More than fair, Jaemin thinks, considering all they get in return.
Jaemin signs his name with a flourish underneath Jaehyun’s less-showy signature. On the other side of the mahogany table, the Eastern Kingdom Emperor does the same, with some reticence. Then the princess. Then—
The guards part just long enough for Jaemin to catch a glimpse at the person they must have been hiding all along. He’s dressed in white silks, with drapey sleeves and a low-cut collar. His jaw is soft and his nose is rounded and as he dips his head down his hair—the same color as starlight, Jaemin realizes with something like awe—falls into his eyes. He’s sweet-faced and young, barely older than Jaemin is. He signs each character carefully, each stroke with purpose.
Huang-Ren-Jun.
Prince Huang Renjun looks up and locks eyes with him—not Jaehyun, at the head of the table. He looks at Jaemin, off to the side, and Jaemin looks back at him. Jaemin’s chest feels full, heavy, and it suddenly feels difficult to swallow. They hold eye contact for what feels like minutes but is probably only seconds. There’s nothing remarkable about his eyes other than the look of them.
For as long as Jaemin can remember, there has been war, and so it’s expected, then, that he would recognize the look in a man’s eyes when he believes he’s walking to his own death. The signing of the treaty means the war has ended for them. but maybe for Renjun it is just beginning.
Jaemin thinks this is the type of mundane moment that he’ll remember as extraordinary, one day.
Signing the treaty changes almost nothing for Jaemin. It’s been months since that last battle—there are skirmishes near the borders here and there, but those are mostly quarrels among citizens—and life becomes mundane, routine. Outside, the leaves have just started to turn color. Summer bleeds into autumn and Jaemin starts lighting a fire in the hearth of his room some nights. He studies with Donghyuck. He trains with Mark, if he feels like it. He watches Jeno tend to the gardens on days with good weather. He discusses politics with Chenle, usually over a bottle or two of wine.
The only difference is that he sees even less of Jaehyun than he did before. It’s not a hardship for Jaemin, or anything, just purely observational.
Jaehyun sits behind the heavy oak desk in their father’s study, chin perched in his hands. Scrolls of parchment are laid out in front of him. Jaemin recognizes the seal on most of them as belonging to the Northern territories. “You’ll be traveling to the Eastern Kingdom to retrieve Renjun and bring him here. I have everything arranged for you to depart within the next few days.”
“You’ve lost your mind,” Jaemin says, eyes narrowed. “Why would I go all the way to the Eastern Kingdom capital to retrieve your fiancé? Send someone else to do it, or go yourself.”
“He’s not my fiancé yet, you know that. And keep your voice down.” Jaehyun drops his voice to a whisper. There are only a select few who know about the arrangement they agreed to behind closed doors, separate from the treaty. Among them—the kingdom advisors, Jaemin, Doyoung, Mark. “Please don’t be difficult about this. You understand I have more urgent matters to attend to.”
It is in Jaemin’s nature to be difficult. “He’s expecting you, not me. You are the one who said that peace is dependent upon your engagement and subsequent marriage to him. If you believe that, then what could possibly be more urgent, or more important than this?”
“This may come as a surprise to you, but a king has many responsibilities. I would happily go myself, if I could.”
“And that explains why he’s unable to make his way here himself?”
“The Emperor tells me Renjun grew up quite sheltered. He has a delicate constitution. Fragile. Even the most experienced travelers wouldn’t be able to make this journey alone.”
Jaemin grits his teeth, his jaw clenched tight. “So send someone else to get him. I have better things to do.” The last sentence is a lie, and they both know it.
“Jaemin,” Jaehyun says, voice gruff. “It’s important for a man to know his place. You’re my brother. I don’t want to tell you this is an order. But—”
“But it’s an order. Right.” Jaemin scoffs, and the words feel like venom leaving his mouth, but better for it to fester there than to burn through his throat. He bends at the waist in a mockery of a bow. “As you wish. Your majesty.”
This time, their travel party is significantly smaller. Just Jaemin, Mark, and Chenle. Doyoung would normally accompany them on a trip like this one, but he was apparently needed elsewhere.
“It’s interesting,” Chenle says. “I’m aware that your father was a very hands-on ruler. But I can’t remember him being away as much as Jaehyun is, even when the war was at its peak. And I certainly don’t remember him whisking the court diplomat off with him whenever he traveled, either.”
The roads are bumpy. Jaemin starts his sentence twice and gets jostled three times before he can finish it. He’ll need to have a word with Jaehyun about improving the infrastructure out here once he gets back. “I suppose,” he says carefully. “That when you’re not used to it, peace can sometimes be more complicated to navigate than war.”
Chenle grins at him, catlike. “Impressive. That was almost a prince-like response. Now say it like you don’t hate your brother.”
“You always ask too much of me,” Jaemin jokes, just to hear Chenle’s high-pitched cackle.
Truthfully, Jaemin doesn’t hate him. Not really. Or at least not in the way Chenle thinks. When Jaehyun becomes king, it’ll open up countless more opportunities for the Western Kingdom. Treaties, cultural exchange, commerce—all these things, and more. He’s laying the foundation for them now. Jaemin knows he will be a good ruler. Just like their father was.
But he’ll never be a good brother.
“You are not the king,” Renjun says when they arrive. What an astute observation, Jaemin wants to say, but bites it back. “I was told the king would be coming to pick me up.” The Emperor’s castle is a stark, blinding white; as pale as the robes Renjun wears. Almost sterile. Jaemin feels like he has to squint against the backdrop of it as it looms over their heads, menacing. The pristine marble of it feels too clean cut. It’s a lot different from the colorful palace they’re about to whisk Renjun away to.
“The king is dead,” Jaemin replies simply. “And my brother is away on business. Some urgent diplomacy matters. Terribly sorry to disappoint.”
Renjun inclines his head politely, looks up at him through silken lashes. “I wasn’t aware it was the prince’s job to see to diplomatic resolutions firsthand.”
That one actually is an astute observation. Usually, those who would seek an audience with a member of the royal family would have to travel to their palace themselves. Jaemin’s father started the tradition of going to the people himself instead, and it stuck.
“It’s normally not. But our crown prince—your future husband—is a traveling one. It’s what makes him popular. Just like the king before him.”
A shadow falls over Renjun’s gaze at the word husband. “And what is it that you do?”
Oh, me? Mostly, I just exist in his shadow. Jaemin bites the inside of his cheek. “For now,” he says. “I’m going to get you back to our kingdom in one piece.”
The line of Renjun’s shoulders, narrow as they are, stiffens. “Your kingdom,” he whispers.
“Sorry?”
“Your kingdom,” Renjun repeats, and Jaemin can’t tear his eyes away from the stubborn set of his mouth and the defiant glitter in his eyes. “Not mine. Not yet.”
It must be easy for people to look at Renjun and write him off as frail. Easy for them to look at the lithe bend of his waist, at the thin circumference of his wrists and his ankles and at the delicate frame of his body, so much smaller than Jaemin’s, and think he must be weak. The last time Jaemin had seen him, he might’ve thought the same.
Sheltered, Jaehyun had called this man. Delicate. Fragile.
All Jaemin sees is the iron grip of Renjun’s fist digging into his own skin and the way he stands firm, feet planted hips-width apart. It makes him want to laugh. What part of this man is delicate?
“Not yet,” he agrees. “But eventually.” One way or another.
For a prince, Renjun’s belongings are surprisingly sparse. A few trunks, a couple of chests. Mark heaves the last one into the back of the carriage and tugs on the leather strapping to make sure they’re secure.
“That’s all?” he asks Renjun, eyes wide. “Really?”
Jaemin watches as Renjun looks back up to the blindingly white castle he once called home. The thing about Renjun’s eyes, as he’s recently come to learn, is that they are devastatingly expressive. Right now, they look misty, faraway.
“I don’t have anything else,” Renjun says, and Jaemin wonders if it might be a mistake to read too deeply into his words.
They travel for as long as they’re able to before stopping for rest and supplies in a village just an hour away from the sea. If the townspeople recognize either Renjun or Jaemin as royalty, they don’t say so, but they treat them with kindness all the same. Mark’s boyish charm and Chenle’s quick wit capture the affections of a middle-aged innkeeper, and she invites them in for a meal.
“I’ve never seen the ocean,” Renjun says quietly, when Jaemin tells him approximately where they are. It’s the first piece of information he’s offered up about himself willingly. He’s staring longingly out the window, at the horizon where a long stretch of sky kisses the ground. Like if he just tried hard enough he could will the forested hills to collapse in on themselves and give way to water.
Geography was always Jaemin’s worst subject. He hated it if only because it was Donghyuck’s best. “The Eastern Kingdom capital,” he says slowly. “Isn’t it just thirty minutes from the ocean?”
Renjun stretches his arms above his head, and Jaemin catches a glimpse of smooth, unblemished skin. Just for a moment, he lets himself imagine what it might be like to mark him up for himself; to watch red and purple bloom across the sharp jut of Renjun’s hip and down the side of his neck. Renjun is unconquered land and Jaemin is someone who has had the desire to possess practically bred into him.
Would his skin be as smooth to the touch as it looks? Would he bend under Jaemin’s hands, go soft and pliant underneath him? Or would he pretend to fight back? Scratch and hiss as they grapple for control and force Jaemin to fuck the submission into him before he caved, as if he didn’t want it the entire time? He can almost imagine it—the way Renjun’s cheeks might flush and go ruddy as he cried, how sweet his voice would sound on a beg, the feel of his thighs wrapped around Jaemin’s waist, his floral fragrance soured by the scent of sweat and sex and perfumed oils.
“Yes. But I felt like a prisoner there, sometimes.”
The act of being sheltered is not a self-imposed one. Jaemin understands this feeling well. “A prisoner?”
In the soft glow of candlelight, Renjun’s irises are a honeyed brown and ringed with gold. They catch the light with every moment Renjun makes, and Jaemin swears he sees constellations in them. Jaemin can’t tear his eyes away, and it leaves him reeling, wondering how it’s possible to have eyes like that.
“A gilded cage,” Renjun sighs, his skin glowing and warmed from the one cup of mulled wine he’d accepted from the innkeeper. “Is still a cage.”
There’s a night market in town—lush and vibrant and full of colorful stalls as far as the eye can see. They should really get back on the road soon, but they would’ve had to stop to rest at night anyways, so one dalliance here or there doesn’t make a difference. Better to do it here than set up camp elsewhere. Gongmyung is overseeing affairs while Jaehyun and Jaemin are out, and the kingdom will not collapse if the less-favored prince comes back a day or two later than expected. So Jaemin and Chenle go half for half on some kind of fried dough dish that burns the roof of their mouths. In the distance, shadowed closely by Mark, Renjun trades a fifty-cent coin for a ripened peach.
Chenle always sees things for what they are. He’s astute in that way. It’s what makes him a good advisor even despite his young age. Even despite Kun’s insistence that he’s still in training, he’s not fit to consult on political matters quite yet.
“You want him,” Chenle says, and it is not a question.
“I do,” Jaemin admits. It’d be useless to lie to Chenle. He’d given a name—want—to this feeling under the soft glow of firelight back in the inn.
“You feel something for him? You’ve fallen in love with him?”
“No,” Jaemin says. He’s not so delusional as to believe love at first sight exists. “I just want him.”
Chenle glances up at him, and Jaemin can hear the admonishment in his head clear as day. You always want the things you can’t have. It’s very likely you only convince yourself you want them because they are unattainable and you are nothing if not a secret masochist.
“You know,” he says slowly. “Sleeping with your brother’s betrothed won’t make you a king.”
Renjun and Jaehyun aren’t engaged yet, technically. Still, Jaemin’s under no delusions about what it means—to want Renjun when he’s supposed to be promised to his brother. And to intend to act on it, as he does. It’s morally ambiguous, at best. At worst, it’s near treasonous. Jaehyun has said it himself. The peace they’ve established is tenuous and it largely depends on the successful union between himself and Renjun. But Jaemin is not interested in power of the political kind.
His entire life, Jaehyun has had everything that Jaemin wanted most. Their father’s attention. Memories of their mother, before she passed. And now, the crown.
Renjun, though, is something Jaemin can take away from him before he even knows it’s gone.
Next to Mark, Renjun sinks his teeth into the peach. The juice drips messily down his chin and from his fingers down to his wrist. Slowly, deliberately, he turns his head to lock eyes with Jaemin as he sucks the mess off his fingertips. There is no use turning away when you’ve already been caught and so Jaemin watches and he wants.
He looks like everything Jaemin knows he can’t have, and Jaemin wants him all the more for it.
“Maybe not,” he replies, still staring directly at Renjun. He hardly recognizes the sound of his own voice. “But it will make Jaehyun less of one.”
The rest of their journey is uneventful, which is both a blessing and a curse. The days pass slowly, like molasses flowing down the edge of a spoon. Jaemin has nothing to do except look at Renjun and has nothing to distract from wanting Renjun except trying to mask it as well as he can. The upside of it all is that it gives Jaemin plenty of time to study the minute differences in Renjun’s expressions, the line of his collarbone, the exposed slope of his shoulder when he shifts a certain way. The way he looks in sleep—soft, vulnerable—even if Jaemin knows he’s anything but.
So maybe it wouldn’t be noticeable to anyone else when they near the castle outskirts and Renjun stiffens, almost imperceptibly, but it’s noticeable to Jaemin. “Is everything okay?” he asks, knowing it’s not.
Renjun’s gaze flickers up, and there it is—fear and hesitation in his eyes—clear as day. Jaemin thinks it might be unfortunate for the Western Kingdom that Jaehyun’s future husband can be so easily read. But it’s refreshing, too, that his features seem to hide nothing. Jaemin never says what he means. Renjun doesn’t say what he means, either, but his eyes do it for him.
Jaemin has spent his life surrounded by dishonest men. It turned him into one, too. Maybe there’s something to be said for the concept of opposites attract.
“There are a lot of people out there,” Renjun says haltingly.
It’s not everyday the townspeople see a royal carriage pass through, much less two of them. Much less with one of them carrying an Eastern Kingdom prince. Jaemin’s unsurprised to find that they’ve crowded the streets to see if they can catch a glimpse of him. “They’re eager to see their future king,” Jaemin says.
“They don’t know that yet.” Renjun’s smile is strained. “And I’m not such a remarkable person by myself.”
Renjun turns his palm supine. Jaemin is not sure if it’s an invitation, but he reaches across and covers it anyway. Just casual enough to pass as a friendly gesture. Intimate enough to plant a seed of possibility in Renjun’s mind. “I disagree,” he says. “And it looks like they do too.”
“It must seem cowardly, doesn’t it?” Renjun asks, suddenly. “To be terrified of a wedding, when I’ve survived a war. Even if I’m just collateral.”
It’s not cowardly. Renjun has essentially given himself up to a foreign kingdom, to free his people from a war they didn’t start and couldn’t win. The fact that he’s so acutely aware of his positioning means Renjun’s more intelligent than Jaehyun and his advisors may have initially given him credit for.
“It’s natural to fear the unfamiliar,” Jaemin replies. “In many ways, war is simpler than diplomacy. Fighting is straightforward. Other people are not. So I don’t think it’s cowardly to be scared. Not at all.”
They stare at each other for what feels like an excruciatingly long time before Renjun speaks up again. “Thank you,” he says. He doesn’t ask Jaemin to pull his hand away, and so they stay like that. Not quite holding hands, not quite not holding hands, all the way up until they reach the palace gates.
He’s planted the seed, and Renjun’s watered it for him. All that’s left to do is wait while it grows.
Good things take time, his father’s voice says. For once, Jaemin agrees.
