FABLED.

 @starbiter​   // Anh : ❝  do you like me?  i know you love me.  i know you care about me but.  do you like who i am?  ❞ to Dinh

       𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐂𝐀𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓  him off guard. The bodyguard, as stoic as he was unperturbed, waivered from his position behind his lord. His dark eyes fixed upon his shoulder, looking for any sign of tightness or even a tremble to convey as to where this question came from.

For his own part, his heart hardens at the question. Too far locked away are his innermost feelings, and being willed to speak on them brings a tightness to his jaw as his mouth shifts into a small line.  ❝       Like you enough.     ❞   Dinh’s reply doesn’t even satisfy himself to hear, but his eyes don’t leave his back. Hoping maybe that he would turn around and force more out of him.

His features remained impassive and inscrutable as his attention is affixed to the parchment before him, the fingers that have curled themselves so artfully around his brush hardly tremble. He writes a few characters in perfect script, the careful occupation of which is the most perfect foil to the terrific roiling in his stomach Dinh’s answer.  It was a response inevitable to a question that ought to have been held in silence. And yet, it begged to be asked. For every act of service that Dinh performed for his sake, how much of his heart was invested in their goodwill? Anh was aware that he was a job. An appointment. An assignment. To be fought with. Fucked with. But only perhaps loved.

And yet he feels he has misspoken. His jaw tightens, the small line of his mouth twisting as his black eyes bore into the bowed features of the other through his mirror.

❝   Is my lord's expectation perhaps ...      ❞ He begins in a deep but soft voice, too intimate for even maids to hear or creeping lovers, ❝   not in line with the collective expectations ?     ❞

He takes a tentative step forward behind him, fists unfurling to gently caress one of Anh's pale and cascading locks of hair between two crooked fingers.

𝐀 𝐂𝐎𝐋𝐃, 𝐈𝐅 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐀𝐋𝐌𝐎𝐒𝐓-𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒 gaze settled upon the youth’s face as Li Yun was settled behind a flamboyant little bird, who wore a face too sour for one as cute as her. Li Yun, however, had the look of a goblin as he was picking out the chestnut burs from her hair, looking all too gleeful to open every other one up and finding chestnuts inside.

Imbeciles, the youth thought. But maybe his gaze had a tinge of tenderness. He chewed on the piece of hay in his mouth, the only only movement of his person actually his jaw. He didn’t notice when another hooligan approached behind him to make the scene even more ridiculous, his shoulders jumping and making the birds on the nearby trees ( which were laughing in their own language at their little sister too ) flutter away when the still statue of Cheng Qian came to life, looking back as he felt the eyes of that Sect Leader advancing on him.

❝    … Where have you been ?     ❞

@starbiter has been summoned !

His eyes narrow without hesitation, suspicious and irritated already at such a greeting. It was almost accusatory, and hardly welcoming at all, and Yan Zhengming’s feelings were already irrevocably hurt, and he was more than ready to respond in the most acerbic way the machinations of his mind would allow him to. 

“Is it any of your business where I’ve been?” he retorted archly, flicking his sleeves as he daintily took a seat beside Cheng Qian. In spite of his irritation, it was not even a question in his mind that he wanted to be as close to him as possible. 

Tilting his head, he pulled out the piece of wheat in his mouth and silently mouthed what ?