About the confusion of time

For Tang Bo, it starts out of the blue. Just some day when he's not yet fifty and the dao-hyung has just begun to accept the fact that their one-sided friendship exists, sixteen years into their acquaintance, the same dao-hyung, gorgeous and bright and strong, presses him against a wall in a city whose name he's forgotten exactly at that blissful moment, and drinks in his lips with an expertise that Tang Bo would never have expected from a dao. (Which makes part of him jealous; a little later, when his head stops spinning and his body stops shaking from the feeling of warm, reliable hands climbing under his clothes.) "I missed it", hyung exhales against his lips, and it doesn't make the slightest bit of sense; something Tang Bo would have informed him of if his mind wasn't trying to recover its functions, stricken by catastrophic shock. Just... why? "Why not?" answers his hyung-nim, because apparently he's asked it out loud; and his hyung smiles at him with a smile like he's never seen before: cheeky, bold and loving. In a word, captivating. All for him. Tang Bo forgot how to breathe. "Unfortunately", his hyung continues, touching his lips, his cheeks, leaving more and more kisses, "I don't have much time", getting to the skin of his ribs, unzipping his black robes, and Tang Bo feels like a flushed girl who's about to lose her innocence (as if he has something to lose, really), "don't let him be so rough with you, okay?" his hyung says, and Tang Bo has no idea who he's talking about. His hyung pulls back, all perfect, the same as before except for the slightly reddened lips, when like Tang Bo it takes a few minutes to just make himself look godly. His hyung smiles at him, it's sweet, it's adorable, it's sad. His hyung steps away from him toward the exit of this vacant nook between stone houses, and says: "Just pretend like it never happened, okay?" and his hyung dares him to ask that, laughing an equally adorable laugh, going somewhere further away while Tang Bo gasps. Gods. What the hell was that?!   (Oddly enough, his hyung looked so genuinely uncomprehending of his hints, his almost direct questions, after an hour that Tang Bo doubted his own sanity.)

***

This time he was fifty-five, and he was pretty sure that the sun had baked his head mercilessly then, causing him to have super real hallucinations; very hot and very pleasant mirages that had underwritten his nighttime fantasies for years to come, and that was something he obviously wouldn't be able to tell hyung, even though the latter had grown noticeably warmer toward him compared to nearly a decade ago. But then: "Shall we fight?" asks his hyung out of nowhere on their way through the forest, from one point to another, on their way to Huashan, to be honest; his hyung has that ineffable smile again, it's full of something knowing and something lighthearted; if Tang Bo wasn't already in love, he might have fallen in love just because of that smile. And who is Tang Bo to refuse to fight. He loses, of course, though this time it seems as if the gap between him and hyung has widened many times over; or perhaps Tang Bo is too often distracted by the laughter that the wind manages to catch and bring to him: gentle and enjoying; nothing to do with how inaccessible hyung usually seems out of pride or harm. Tang Bo finds himself on the ground, his hyung standing above him, towering, the sun illuminating his head like a halo, the sky clear and bright, Tang Bo once again thinking he is seeing mirages. "I won", hyung-nim informs him when he can't even reply something coherent because his hyung, with that satisfied and adorable smile sits on top of him. "What do you think a winner can do to a loser?" his hyung leans toward him, his dark hair falling down from his right shoulder, touching Tang Bo's cheek as he's mesmerized by the soft pink eyes; were they always so soft, so warm? "I-I don't know," Tang Bo tries not to gasp as the desert settles in his throat; he finds the barb he usually feels at other people, "but what does dao-hyung want to do?" And gods, he hates his stupid tongue. His hyung leans lower, capturing his mouth as skillfully and easily as when he thought he'd forgotten it; Tang Bo freaking loves that tongue so much more than his own. "I have a little more time this time", his mirage hyung says strange things again as he pulls away from his lips to his neck, to his ear, breathing the same hot air that forges furnaces, "would you want me to spend it all on you?" he laughs, having already clearly decided the question for himself, because Tang Bo only has to come to his senses as his robes are once again unfastened, which was much easier to do than with the previous ones. "Would you like me to take you here, in broad daylight, somewhere on the forest floor?" asks his hyung in the most shameless tone that could exist, and Tang Bo thinks that his mind has clearly surpassed itself. Tang Bo, of course, doesn't dismiss it.   (His muscles are sore a day later because he didn't spend any qi on healing; they're in town, sleepy and fed; his hyung is completely... unfazed. It's as if nothing ever happened. Tang Bo finds this odd, especially when it makes stay bruised even three more days later, all the way to the door with plum petals).

***

Tang Bo is beginning to suspect that he has some kind of aberration of the soul or mind that might be causing him to see things that aren't there. He's seventy, and only now does he think that their relationship with hyung has warmed enough for him to see that look and hear that laugh more often than not. But not the smile he tries to burn into his mind. He's sixty-nine when he sees the same tenderness and affection when his hyung snuggles up to him, in his family home, no less, at the beginning of the evening, barely concealed by the fact that no outsiders are allowed to enter his private pavilion. "I miss you so much", his hyung says, hugging him tighter, as if they weren't the ones who spent the last five days in his house while he babysat his brothers' grandchildren. Tang Bo can only hug him back. "Hyung, what are you talk—" And he's trapped again by those damn skillful lips; maybe they have that effect on him because it happens so rarely? It's hard; so hard to break away from him; one of the hardest things he's ever done, but, miracles, he manages. "What's going on, hyung?" he asks, because he knows the later hyung won't tell him anything because he doesn't know, and Tang Bo feels like some kind of fraud, if not the worst freak in the world (he thinks his hyung is periodically possessed; it's one of his theories; it's unrealistic, it's logical). "Does it matter?" his hyung doesn't answer, touching his forehead with his own; his eyes are pink, he knows those eyes already much better than his own; Tang Bo can't find ever inside but hyung. And that should be important; it seems to him to be one of the mysteries of the universe itself; but he is only a man in love. "Not now", he dismisses his own fears and reaches for another's lips himself, capturing the beginnings of another's unique smile.   (Even later, just two years later, his hyung, just his hyung, does it again. It's inept and awkward, but still adorable).