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He was not meant for this life.
That is an understatement.
A vagabond prince makes no sense at all. Someone born in sheets of silk and the deepest cold of most ancient mountains was not one expected to bear the hardships of spring sunshine and uneven field paths. Unsuited for the raw exhaustion which can set into bones after days of traversing the nonsensical map written inside another man’s whimsical skull.
Linguang Jun is fed up with this adventure nearly the moment they begin. Acquiring mounts which don’t last long, attracting the hardships of the demon-spun roads and hungry gnarled maws which snap at their every step. Beasts of burden sacrificed for their safety and Tianlang Jun’s most unappealing shrug of disinterest as their attackers lay slain, “I guess we walk from here”.
He seems to enjoy when difficulties make their way into their travels. Broken bridges and resentful witches tripping themselves to become the latest thorn in Linguang Jun’s already aching side. His leg still weakened from his ousting of the court (which he refuses to call it by any other name - although his traveling companion has taken to calling it “ The time he was kicked off a cliff by his nephew” with a laugh).
Tianlang Jun offers to carry him, a sly shine to his eyes, and Linguang Jun snarls and rages against such disrespectful offers.
Linguang Jun puts off sleeping in the wilderness as long as he possibly can, but Tianlang Jun, one who claims to enjoy the energy of the living worlds, tends to slink off towards darker forest paths. A curious observation Linguang Jun makes at the start.
He never invites himself to dwell too long among others, never throws a fit if the lands they pass through have settled into sleep for the night. He seems happy to sit high in great trees and observe - to watch life happen before him rather than join. Eyes darting back and forth in observation like a boy engrossed in a magnificent story. Even if it’s just watching a village exist in the shadow of a forest, or plain demons living day to day. Like he’s aware how other he is, how removed from this casual world he will always be.
Linguang Jun finds it all unappealing, boring even. His years were rich with noise and life. He’s sat in the audience of some of the grandest theaters of the demonic realm, so why would observing a boy teaching his sibling how to fish be anything spectacular enough to keep his attention? Let alone one such as Tianlang Jun who would happily waste hours observing such a domestic scene, with a loose, genuine grin on his face.
A being so powerful yet he enjoys sleeping outside. Happy in his tree or nest of leaves or dirt like a tail-wagging dog. He’s abysmal at starting fires, collecting food or maintaining himself. Chuckles oddly to himself when not trying to drag Linguang Jun into the latest inane conversations to fill the space between them. Like he craves silence, and yet it makes him awkward all the same. It’s entirely irritating, pointless, exhausting most days…
And it is all Linguang Jun has.
The only thing that’s truly his anymore, isn’t that right? Ownership over nothing but the mind numbing chatter of a god dwelling as a pauper. He truly can’t wrap his mind over Tianlang Jun’s happiness, it’s all so messy and foreign. It rubs against Linguang Jun like a rough stone leaving his temper red and scratched and glaring at his traveling companion with tired eyes while the other makes simple jokes and fancies himself an entertainer.
They sleep in as kind of conditions as Tianlang Jun can find to appease his companion. Dense canopy of trees here, moss soft caves there. Linguang Jun is often too hot, hair sticking to his skin, and feeling Tianlang Jun’s gaze on him as he fails to settle once the sun lowers beneath the horizon.
“You’re wearing too many layers, you’d be more comfortable if you took them off.” A self-satisfied grin which could be felt in the dark is always followed by a surprised cry, even though Linguang Jun has often shocked the ground with ice as punishment many times before. Tianlang Jun should expect it by now, but he never dodges. Never tries to stop Linguang Jun from his petty revenges. Linguang Jun hates that it’s something to almost make him smile, that silly little yelp in the dark meant to amuse him and nothing more.
He always sleeps afterwards with a mind buzzing in thought on if anyone in his life ever did such a simple thing just to make him laugh before?
---
“I can’t go on.” He complains as the sun brushes down on thin clouds, a cruel taunt of the heat biting through the sheer layer of his shirt, dipping his legs into the cool spring Tianlang Jun found or else suffer Linguang Jun’s promise of shoving an icicle up his--
“You say that everyday.” Tianlang Jun is bare, swimming pleasantly in the waters. His skin glowing beneath the sun and thick, dark hair a shadowy mass around his body cutting through the pool. “Is it your leg that hurts or your pride?”
“Both.” Linguang Jun replies, his innermost layer the only protection he has against expectant eyes. Indeed they have slept together, been physical many times in their travels. But he won’t lower himself to a commoner’s depravity just because he’s allowed the other to touch him the night before!
He’s seated at the spring shore, smooth stone beneath his body. It’s level enough to comfortably perch and hold his legs in the water. Once pale-smooth skin the canvas for his nephew’s cruel art. A hideous starburst of rough tissue which shatters its way up his limb like crackling glass beneath a heavy pressure. He tries not to look for too long, disgusted by his own shape.
The water around his skin cools, tiny crystals of ice gathering just at the surface, battling the sun above for their life. Should he fully submerge into this pool it would become a cool, slushy mixture that would ease his heated thoughts. But Tianlang Jun would complain of the chill and he didn’t have the patience for such a thing that day. Glancing across at the other who hums and pretends not to watch him, always watching however. Observing. Reading.
Linguang Jun questions daily what sort of a book he is to the man? Is he enjoying his reading, is he bored yet?
“My clothes are worn rough because you won’t travel anywhere worthwhile to purchase new ones,” He complains because complaining makes him feel better. “I’m bruised from the cave you made me sleep in last night and my hair-” With a flourish he unleashes his hair from the sunken braid. Trying to smooth life into sad white locks. They catch the sun with a faded shine, an unpolished gem left to spoil in mistreatment. Linguang Jun’s entire chest deflates watching the ends of his long hair touch the water’s edge, like white scaled serpents pooling down his legs desperate for a drink of water.
His hair always made him different, in a pleasant way. Of all his father’s children, the ones who scattered to obscurity when their eldest brother was crowned - and those who didn’t escape their inevitable slaughter, he was the only to be born with white hair. Like snow, his mother used to say. The purest element of their clan. The color of their life’s blood crowning him special and pleasing to look upon. His fraternal great-grandfather had white hair and Linguang Jun enjoyed the separation of himself from his elder brother. A way to stand out in the sea of dark locks and gleaming blue eyes.
His mother would comb his hair, hum the songs she saved just for him when he was permitted to see her in the concubines’ palace. She’d kiss each braid she wove across his scalp for good luck. Pinning glittering things into his hair and smiling with the same red eyes as he - proud of her son.
Linguang Jun slumps.
He’s old and tired and almost has forgotten what she looked like when she smiled.
He took a bride who didn’t smile much, but she too liked his hair. Abysmal in her skill to prepare it however. He would laugh behind knuckles as she tried one morning and threw the comb aside with irritation. The precious object snapping in two and her cursing at the inanimate thing like it were an enemy, and she: full of rage! Until she looked startled by her own actions, even a little embarrassed. (The same awkward temper passed on to her son…)
The comb was made from the horn of a beast he himself hunted down.Taken to the most talented craftsmen in his kingdom to have it etched with the shape of dancing dragons, blue glass set to build a winter sky, silver poured to fill the spaces between. Ivory teeth carved and smoothed like the pure white color of his hair. A most expensive and dear gift to his bride.
Linguang Jun prepared his wife’s hair instead from that day on. It was a ritual between them. Something understood, private just for them. He didn’t care that she didn’t have the patience to return the favor, it was nice to have the moment for one another. To do something for her to show his love for her.. .
Somewhere in his home that is likely now gutted of its luxuries by a vengeful nephew is half a broken comb in a lacquer and gold box, its partner buried long ago. He squirms to think of what has happened to it now that he is no longer its keeper.
His head hurts, the sun is biting his eyes now viciously. He may shed a tear from the sting.
“It’s not so bad.” Tianlang Jun’s voice pulls him from memories best left at the bottom of a broken cliff. Looking up, blinking against a glare, and finding the other pulling himself from the spring to stand bare and dripping at his side. Hair drenched and tangled down broad shoulders, the sun blocked behind his body. He cuts the worst of the glare from Linguang Jun’s gaze like a shield. “Though I have knowledge of specific acts which could make the body reinvigorated, if you would like to try.”
“I thought you were heaven’s demon, not its pig.” Linguang Jun replies with little fire, his hand slapping the damp skin of a thick arm in reach, rolling his eyes and looking back to the water rippling across the spring from Tianlang Jun’s exit.
“My deepest apologies to your highness,” His companion chuckles, the confidence in his tone aggravating as always. But then, a pause. A silence that was unexpected as Tianlang Jun seemed to enjoy prying out all of Linguang Jun’s tantrums. The sound of rummaging in the few bags they carry and Linguang Jun dares to look to his side where Tianlang Jun has pulled his trousers on at least, but is searching for something among his things.
“Looking for your class?”
“Oh don’t be silly, I abandoned that long ago.” Tianlang Jun chuckles in reply. “Aha!”
For all his digging, the object he retrieves was in the interior pocket of his discarded robe, hardly easy to lose. Linguang Jun blinks at the odd shape and even tilts his head for a better perspective, and when he takes in its form and function he finds himself even more confused.
“It’s a comb.” Tianlang Jun says, slowly, like speaking to a child.
“I know what it is.”
“Your dazed expression implied otherwise.”
It is indeed a comb, humble pale wood. The teeth are smooth and the body light when Tianlang Jun pushes it into his hands. The color is much darker than his palms and the wood is soft, swirling with a natural pattern. Linguang Jun examines it, curious and confused, thumb brushing over the arched body that was incomplete. The artwork is yet to be fully freed from the wood by a knife’s clever edge.
“It’s not done yet, but you can use it now.” Tianlang Jun yawns, shrugging on his outer robe, chest bare and glistening with the spring water still clinging to warm skin. He’s lucky he’s attractive to look upon, Linguang Jun thinks, torn between the comb and the man. “For your hair.”
“My hair...”
“Haven’t you been complaining every morning? Of tangles and sticks and whatever else. I’ll be honest, I stop listening after a while. Just don’t break it before I’ve completed it, such would be a waste of my artistic vision..”
“You’re carving me a comb?”
“And? You can’t be upset if it's not made of jade and gold - you no longer have those pretty things in reach, your highness. Out here there is only what we can scavenge to do the job.”
Tianlang Jun might look bored with the conversation, his gaze moving back and forth from the world behind Linguang Jun…but there’s a vulnerability there in the way he keeps looking back at the comb in Linguang Jun’s hands. Nearly protective and ready to snatch it away should a threat befall the little item.
It’s an ugly comb really. Simple, unfinished. Linguang Jun isn’t certain if it’s supposed to be a worm - maybe a skinny bird - on the arch, but it’s nothing compared to the lovely things he’s once had. He waits for disappointment, maybe even insult, to rise up in his chest, but that never happens. He’s simply looking at the comb and the odd expression dancing in Tianlang Jun’s face trying to decipher his own strange feelings on the matter.
He doesn’t understand why his face feels suddenly hot.
“If you’re so worried about my breaking it, you wield it.” He says for once in his life without thinking. Merely follows a pull somewhere in his gut and holds the comb back out, already turning a shoulder to give Tianlang Jun reach towards his hair.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s your fault my hair is a tragedy, so fix it. You can manage that can’t you?” He turns his back entirely now to Tianlang Jun, pulling legs free from the water so the dripping length of them are stretched out on the uncomfortably warm stone shore. He watches the water slip off and pool at his heels, watches frost begin to gather and for the first time in his life he shivers at the cold. Or so he tells himself rather than acknowledge it is the way strong hands move to his jaw from behind. Swift fingers catching the edge of his cheek in a breeze of a touch before moving to the weight of his hair.
“Once a prince,”
“Always.” He finishes the statement and closes his eyes because the sun is too bright, not because Tianlang Jun sits too close. Not that the heaven-bred moves to settle behind him, body encasing him with legs bent at either side: closing him in like a fortress. Heat licking up his back but Linguang Jun keeps his composure because that’s all he has, though he’s let such a thing slip out of his bloody grasp now and then.
Of course of all those living Tianlang Jun was probably the only one who would prefer to see Linguang Jun as the mess he feels inside, rather than the prince he was raised to be. Whether out of care or amusement, it’s best not to ask…
“Even your hair is cold.” Tianlang Jun comments, comb in hand, tactile strokes of the humble tool beginning their perilous journey to make sense of the mess of Linguang Jun’s precious locks.
“You know that already.”
“I hardly get a chance to touch it.”
“You don’t touch , you grab and yank!”
Tianlang Jun snorts out a chuckle, petting hair from Linguang Jun’s temple and combing through the extensive length. His deft hands making quick work of the braids Linguang Jun blindly allows the other to weave into his hair. A talent he didn’t expect but can’t bring himself to doubt now. He supposed there was a woman Tianlang Jun loved once, perhaps just like him he learned to adore her in a similar fashion.
“I lack pretty things to adore your crown.” Tianlang Jun half mutters to himself, circling even plaits at the curve of Linguang Jun’s skull, his fingertips leaving their trail in his scalp like he was a creature being soothed. “Will you forgive me this time?”
This demon has been inside him and yet this moment Linguang Jun feels is more intimate than his broken heart can handle.
The back of Linguang Jun’s neck is grasped then, a hold non threatening but absolute. The shape of Tianlang Jun’s hand collaring his neck and holding him upright for just the briefest of moments while the other hand pulls a cloth tie from unseen places and begins to snake between the shape of the hair Linguang Jun could not see.
“This time, only. I expect better next time.” He barely gets the words out, his body falling back while a strange weight of sleep fell through his bones. ( At peace , he thinks is what any other might call it but that feels like a dirty phrase to him.) He’s leaning into Tianlang Jun’s left leg and feels the amused chuckle vibrate where bodies brush and his hair is locked in strangely talented hands. Gathered and turned, twisted and stroked high on his scalp until he feels the curtain of a ponytail tickle against his back and shoulders.
“There are forests to the west that grow glass flowers, red as blood, I think I could fashion you a pair of pretty earrings from their petals. The same forest has monstrous birds with grand colorful wings - should I fashion such a grandiose mantle for your weary shoulders?” Ponytail secured high on his head, he’s led backwards to Tianlang Jun’s chest, face naturally falling into a scowl that only seems to delight the gaze of the one who meets it. “I also know a river to the southern edges, a beautiful strange world hidden in plain side, that bears eels with ivory spines that jut out in twisted, gnarled patterns. You should see them, you’d find kinship in their natural brutality.”
Linguang Jun raises an eyebrow and a droplet of water falls from the shadow of dark hair and becomes a snowflake once it hits his own. “And what, dear scavenger, would you make me out of those?”
Tianlang Jun threads the tail of Linguang Jun’s hair over his own shoulder like a cape, making it easier to anchor the one in his arms to remain there. Easier for him to worm his dastardly arms around Linguang Jun’s, to trace an innocuous shape at the bare collar chilly with spring water. A heavy reminder that Linguang Jun has not been held, simply to be held, in many years. He feels weak, disgusted, and also swoons for the attention against his better judgment as such a handsome and annoying face stares down at him.
“A pretty necklace, or a very strange knife. Your pick.” Tianlang Jun grins and Linguang Jun hates that the heat which steams its way across his skin doesn’t feel so terrible.
He thinks: he very much wants to see these silly things his companion speaks of…
“And how many dirt floors will I have to sleep on to reach such raw treasures?”
Tianlang Jun’s face contorts to one of pleasant whimsy, and a childish smirk. Something that suits him perfectly.
“Well, your highness is always welcome to sleep on me instead.”