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When Elias vowed, or promised, or just casually pointed out that he was not going to let Yun die, not even if it meant taking a blade right through his abdomen, that little shit of a raven-haired man must’ve taken it as a challenge.
Elias doesn’t know if he’s doing it on purpose, or if he’s doing it to get attention. Either way, it’s been three days since Yun last ate. Three fucking days. That’s 72 hours on an empty stomach.
Now, there’s a plate of steamed shrimp sitting in front of them both, cooked by the kind granny who owned this diner on Anwei’s borders. She insisted on it being free, after recognizing who Yun is, because oh, you’re such a handsome young man! Is there any chance you’re interested in my granddaughter?
The short-haired waitress, whom Elias assumed was granny’s granddaughter, sizzled bright red, widened her big brown eyes, and hissed something along the lines of not being interested in “handsome young men” before straight-up retreating as fast as she could inside the kitchen to prepare their meals.
Still, Elias made sure to slip payment under a copy of the menu on the counter.
In other words, he paid for the meal, and Yun was being a little bit of a bitch for not wanting any of it.
“Eat.” Elias urged for the 6th time in a row, pushing the plate towards Yun’s side of a rather small table. “We can’t continue on with empty stomachs.”
“You can go ahead,” Yun replied, eyes still glued on the book he held. Laws have been occupying Yun’s mind for a while now, and he’s making sure to memorize and study every single one he deemed necessary for the rebellion. This means he probably didn’t sleep last night. This means Elias is going to have to force him to bed tonight. He’s going to lose his sanity at this point.
“I’m not hungry.” Yun continued, flipping the pages of the book. “But we don’t share the same digestive system. I suppose you’re starving, El.”
“Unless you’re not completely human, I’m assuming you must be starving as well,” Elias answered, raising a skeptical brow at the other man. “Yun, you can’t lead an entire army if you die of starvation.”
“You lead it, then.”
“Yun.”
“I told you, I’m not hungry.”
“ Yun. ”
“I said I’m not–”
A slow, deep growl sounded across the diner. Yun glanced down at his stomach with the utmost look of betrayal. Elias pursed his lips to suppress a victorious grin.
“He’s starving.” Elias points out with the most serious expression he could muster. “Feed him.”
Yun rolled his eyes and set his book down with a groan. He unwillingly took the chopsticks, peeled off the shell of a single shrimp, and popped it in his mouth. Elias took the time to watch him chew, and when Yun swallowed and picked up another one, he sighed in relief the same way he would after victory is secured.
“Traitor.” Yun muttered, glaring down at his stomach. “What if I just split my body in half so I won’t have to eat?”
“That’s not how it works.” Elias countered, shaking off the sudden horrifying image of a half-bodied Yun crawling on the floor. “And stop acting like you dislike the dish. It’s exquisitely delectable, must I say.”
“ Exquisitely delectable ,” Yun echoed in a mock copy of how Elias spoke. “How do you even know that? You’re not eating.”
Elias blinked. “I did.”
Yun stared at him in scrutiny, squinted eyes disbelieving what Elias said. His brain took the gear, spun in observation, a hypothesis, gathered information, and landed on a conclusion all in a span of five seconds. Yun dropped his gaze, sighed, and leaned on the back of his chair.
“Please don’t tell me you have no idea how to peel shells off of shrimps.”
“ What? I do!” Elias defended, ears flushing in a shade of flowering cherry blossoms. “ I know how to do that, of course, it’s just that—”
“S’alright, you don’t have to explain yourself.” Yun assured, distinctly remembering the callouses on Elias’ hands he discovered yesterday. It was a sight to see when Yun was talking about war strategies, only to be met with light snoring and to discover the lilac boy asleep on his desk with his palms up. Yun remembers the itch he felt at the urge to wrap Elias’ fingers with bandages but decided to just leave some for him when he woke up.
And that bastard didn’t even bother to wear it.
Idiot, he is.
“It’s okay, I forgive you for lacking the necessary skill of peeling shrimps.” Yun exasperatedly sighed, teasing Elias with a lighthearted frown as he peeled shrimp for him. “A lot of people are imperfect, you included. Me, though? Oh, I don’t know. I must be a fallen god or something.” He then dramatically placed the peeled shrimp on top of Elias’ plate with unwavering grace as he fought back the urge to burst into fits of laughter. “Accept this unpeeled shrimp, then, you mortal being. Take it as a blessing, and go! Go spread the word about me, and your gifts of payment shall be plenty.”
“God, I hate you.” Elias uttered, biting back a grin by gratefully taking the blessing of peeled shrimp in front of him. “The next time an enemy ambushes us, I’m going to leave you out in the open and let them slice your head off to use it as decoration.”
“Would you, though?” Yun snickered through a full mouth, bringing the back of his hand to cover it. It’s improper, and it’s disgusting, yet somehow, somehow, through the reflection of lights in the rare joy in his eyes, Elias finds that he doesn’t even mind. “What happened to your theatric act of promising to live so long as I’m alive?”
And there it was—recognition, or something remotely similar to it. Suddenly, Elias Everstied feels like he’s fifteen again.
Oh , his mind says, and oh, his heart echoes.
This is the part where Mia, if she was here, would glance up at him and scrutinize his train of thoughts, since somewhere along the days of sparring in their mother’s garden, the cruel misunderstandings they had, the bliss of a reunion, the inside jokes, and the stars they tried to name after all of Elias’ dead pet birds, they gained the ability to read each other perfectly.
“You’re looking at him.” She would say, ever so slowly, as her eyes start to widen up to the size of saucers. “You’re looking at him the way mom used to look at dad.”
Oh.
Oh my god.
“Excuse me,” Elias mutters, standing up with all the polite elegance a man could show after being revealed the truth behind the universe. “I just—uh.” Oh my god, Everstied, since when do you stutter? “Nature’s call, err—to the toilet I go.”
Yun looks up at him, brow raised in baffled amusement, like he’s about to ask why a grown-up like him would seek permission to take a shit. He nods, though, both out of confusion and reluctance.
If there was a world record for the fastest speed someone could have on their trip to the restrooms, Elias probably would’ve won it by now. He inhaled, shut the door behind him, and exhaled.
What the fuck.
It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make any sense at all, actually.
The world orbits on its axis, there are seven continents on the planet, the country of Anwei is on the brink of a civil war, a rebellion is about to rise—and here he is, sharing the restrooms with a spider crawling up the water spout, fuming with, what , anger? Embarrassment? Of what? Of an envisage of having feelings for Yun Cheng? The Yun Cheng?
Elias is smart. Booksmart and streetsmart. He knows, heavens, he knows what it means to have his stomach churn pleasantly. He knows what caused the heat to rise up the tip of his ears. He knows what it means to suddenly not care if bits of food are sprouting out of someone’s mouth just because you like seeing them laugh.
He knows what it means to dedicate something as big and as meaningful as your life to protect another.
Elias slapped both of his cheeks with cold water from the sink, stared at his reflection in the mirror, and sighed.
“Oh no, you’re fucked.” Mia would say, and he wouldn’t even mind her language with all the emotions and thoughts flooding his mind. “This is a death sentence on your part.”
“I know.” Elias groaned, cringing a bit at everything and everyone right now.
What does a knight having a crush on his general sound like? Embarrassing.
It’s also unfamiliar. Mom and Dad loved each other, it was obvious in how being present in the same room was enough to fuel them for the rest of the years they spent together, but that was about it. Elias doesn’t know how the genre of their romance even started.
Leave it up to their mother’s ways to become so open yet so secretive, but depressingly enough—with everything he craved he could’ve done before she left—Elias wished he asked her the difference between mere attraction and falling in love.
Years later, on the climax of a decaying battlefield—with blood in his hands and a choked-out sob so devastating that even the heavens broke down to tears—unfortunately and belatedly, everything clicks.
He's a knight, with lilac hair gently pushed away from his face by the general who sought stars; he who flew close to the sun, and he who now bleeds on the ground.
He did fall in love. It squeezes his heart and painfully restricts him to breathe. The general attempts to cradle his hands, like they’re so precious, like they’re fragile, like they aren’t calloused from self-destructive tendencies and stained with the blood of their dead enemies. The general’s own hands should be strong, they always have been, but time works funny and now it decides that his hands are growing weak. The general's sinking, drowning, and the knight is paddling, trying to pull him from the tide, wondering if the ocean was born from the salt in his eyes.
There’s no turning back, not for this one.
Cruelly enough, Elias is doomed to fall in love, on the dawn of a new day, a new life, without the only constant thing that centered every fiber of his being and kept him going. It’s going to be a bittersweet event, one with the desire to protect, and the realization he can’t keep his promise, not after this.
Everything and all at once, he’s only going to realize it only when everything’s too late. He'd leave the sweetest kiss, and only the hyacinths which would be alive tomorrow are there to witness.
But that’s an event that would inevitably come years in the distant future, and Elias doesn’t know any of it yet. So he goes back to their table and he eats the shrimp Yun peels from him, and Yun makes a joke about how Elias smells, and Elias defends himself, and they fall back to their usual banter, they laugh, and they’re content to have each other, and for now—for now —they’re happy sitting across a table in a diner across Anwei’s borders.
In all the time they have left, there’s no other place they both would rather be.