Chapter Text
“Your Highness, please be mindful of your posture.”
Shu’s voice comes in a clean and calm whisper above his head, pale hands delicate yet strong, sure in their movements as the sorcerer gets behind Luca to correct the angle of his arms.
Luca says nothing, just hoists his back up a little straighter when the sorcerer’s body warmth encapsulates his. Shu’s touch is merely a graze against the backside of his palms, but there’s an electrifying sensation he leaves there, and for once this evening, that has nothing to do with the move he’s learning.
He is in his training garments, sitting cross-legged on a meditation cushion. The sun is high above them, disappearing behind a cloud, and Luca’s in his most favourite spot in the entire palace — one, Shu’s private training grounds in his zen garden, which means they are without disturbances, and two, in Shu’s arms.
He even has the audacity to droop a bit more, pressing his weight against Shu’s chest, shit-eating grin on his face as he employs a crafty move to hold his instructor’s hand in his.
“I don’t think anyone will be focused enough to notice that in battle, sensei.” He throws the honorifics in for good measure, knows that he’ll earn but an eyeroll in return, and that’s exactly he’s rewarded with now. His mentor clicks his tongue and pinches the skin of his forearms.
“I would,” replies Shu, voice ridden of the formality moments prior. “It is not good practice to be in an improper stance in a duel, my prince. One ought to prepare oneself for anything on the battlefield.”
“Then, riddle me this, mentor — are you prepared for —” Luca’s grin widens because he’s a bastard and Shu is his favourite person to pick on, so he sneers, twists himself around to pull the archmage’s torso in, “— this?”
He knows Shu’s more than capable to fend him off if that’s what he desires, agile enough as the archmage of Cydonia to snap Luca’s arm in half and get a safe distance away if he chooses to.
So it can only mean one thing when Luca successfully tackles his mentor into being perched on his lap, the prince hugging him by the waist like a prideful possession.
“Your Highness’s mischief seems to only amplify with age, it seems,” Luca can hear Shu work to hide the amusement in his tone, a smile barely off his face as he makes himself comfortable on his lap immediately, contrary to what he tries to allude.
The prince knows that his mentor means that as an insult, his eloquent way of saying ‘you still act like a child despite being old enough to rule the kingdom’, and to that, Luca has no clever rebuttal, and instead settles on redirecting his energy into making a home in the junction of the sorcerer’s neck.
He remembers, the memory crystal clear like it was just yesterday, him being the height of Shu’s waist, having to either look up or have the sorcerer kneel down just to meet his eyes. Those radiant violet pupils are still as poignant and authoritative as they were, like when Luca was first sent to be under Shu’s care at the prime age of seven.
But since then, Luca likes to think he’s been successful at carving a secret corner of himself inside Shu’s usually reserved expression; a smile that’s only for him, a softness tucked between those beautiful gem-like irises that glimmer stunningly in the light.
It’s also not his fault that his mentor happens to be an excruciatingly breathtaking, timeless beauty.
He knows it’s silly to have a crush on your instructor growing up — he is a prince, after all, heir to the throne of Cydonia, who is expected to betrothe and produce other heirs to the throne — but at the peak of adolescence, Luca can not think of any person to be more beautiful than Shu Yamino, grand sorcerer and archmage of the Cydonian royal family.
He knows, is more than well aware of how unattainable his futile, unrequited puppy love can be — for crying out loud, Shu is probably older than his great, great, great-grandfather, he’s an immortal sorcerer after all — and Luca does long for a day where he finally grows out of his irrational crush.
Just because he has slender and feminine features, beautiful eyes and long, silky hair that he always wears in a high ponytail; it does not give Luca the means to hopelessly yearn for him for over two and a half decades.
And yet, against all things ethical and noble, Luca still fails miserably.
He’s extremely devastated, he would tell you with the most aggravated look on his face, to report that his hopeless pursuit for romantic reciprocation has all but ceased. If anything, Luca feels even more miserable now, with Shu on his lap in that purple-patterned yukata of his, smiling meaningfully down at him, black nails scratching the back of Luca’s neck with intention he’s unwilling to reveal.
“My mischief is a privilege specially reserved for you, my sorcerer.”
Shu’s smile fades, and his gaze blanks.
Moments like this never last for long, always fluttering away between curled lashes, Shu’s heart within an arm’s reach for Luca no matter how hard he tries.
“Your Highness ought to take his training more seriously, lest His Majesty discovers and reprimands me for my leniency.”
The sorcerer is out of his lap and back to his feet as quickly as he’s fallen into him, and there’s a tight-drawn clench in his jaw that looks like it’s about to be permanently fixed there.
Luca can physically feel himself shrinking in size, but says nothing, and starts correcting his posture on his own.
It’s been almost twenty years of being under Shu’s mentorship — and being hopelessly in love with him; and the prince would tell you, with a pained smile and tension in his brows, that it’s always been this futile.
But if there’s anything Luca isn’t, it’s being a quitter.
He remembers starkly, the epiphany still strong in his mind, when he hit puberty for the first time and decided on a whim to make Shu his wife.
“When I inherit the throne and rule Cydonia,” he’s said one time, so casually like he was asking his mentor about afternoon tea preferences. “I desire you to be by my side.”
At first, Shu seemed to make no further implications into the young prince’s words, seeing it as a reinforcement of his position by the King’s side, as his archmage — so he sipped his green tea like a normal person, eyes peering at Luca curiously then.
But Luca finishes, “Your wisdom would make you a great queen,” and Shu spits out the tea so hard he drenched the table in front of him, and chokes.
Luca has this bizarre expression on his face like he doesn’t understand what in his words made the sorcerer react this way, and Shu can’t even find the breath to lecture him, struggling to regain composure.
“Good heavens, Your Highness — it is scandalous for you to jest such blasphemy with a straight face! Imagine what bypassers would make of your words had they been around to eavesdrop, and falsely interpret!”
“What is there to falsely interpret? I say them in earnest,” replies the young prince, folding his arms like a sullen child from the other side of Shu’s tea table.
Luca has been barely twenty, and everything about him was in full swing; rapid growth and incessant changes in every possible aspect — but this is something Shu hasn’t expected, even in the centuries of his old, boring life.
“If I am to be so bold as to inquire, Your Highness,” Shu starts after he’s found his voice again, shamefully wiping away the splatters of green tea with a cloth he’s produced from his sleeves. “You mean to tell me that you desire my hand in m-marriage when you rule?”
And Luca, to all of Shu’s demise and everything else that makes up the bane of existence, shrugs nonchalantly. “I don’t see a more eligible contender.”
Shu can feel the oncoming headache. He must find a way to backpedal in a manner that appeals to Luca’s rationale. “My prince,” he interjects with a sigh, “I am a man. I can not produce an heir — that alone is ample to disqualify me —”
“I have seen you alter your physique at will with your sorcery. I don’t think that’s a problem.”
Okay, he’s got him there — technically, Shu isn’t really human, which means he exists in a form that transcends humane bounds, and that includes physicality, lifespan, and strength.
He remembers a decade, way back when, as he was fleeing from continents to the next and had to lead a period of his life as a damsel, to avoid a trial by fire. He doesn’t menstruate, nor does he lactate — well, he wouldn’t know, as he’s never tried to bear a child — wait, why is he seriously entertaining Luca’s outrageous inquiry?
“Your Highness, I politely decline.” He makes sure his tone is as final as he wants them to be, wants to make it absolute to Luca so he doesn’t get any more funny ideas.
Instead, smiling with all the demise of Shu’s tired heart, Luca just sneers like he’s accepted the feat of a great challenge. “Then I just have to try harder.”
That was the last of their jarring conversation, and Shu genuinely thought he won’t hear of Luca’s bewildering epiphany again.
He was proven very wrong very soonly after.
The young prince, curse him and his ancestors, heaven forbids — matures into a picture perfect image of nobility and royalty. Not only is he well-versed in all forms of combat: Shu has made a point to train him well with swordsmanship, archery and even martial arts — he’s also got the personality to match.
The prince is a sweetheart, in all senses of the word. He is bright, intelligent and charming; optimistic, charismatic, and has the visuals to boot. None can dispute the prince’s handsomeness. Not only is he proud and diligent, he is also humble and charitable. Shu feels a sense of pride swelling in him throughout the years he’s watched Luca grow up, thinking ambitiously to himself that he deserves that fragment of credit for practically raising the boy as well.
Cydonia would be blessed to have Luca as king one day, Shu thinks, one quiet night as he watches Luca hack a wooden training dummy to oblivion with his spear.
And any noblewoman would be blessed to be his Queen and bear his heir.
Shu doesn’t notice the smile on his face falter until Luca stops and points it out for him. “Why the long face, archmage?”
“Forgive me for my reverie, Your Highness.” He pushes himself away from leaning against the pillar he’s stood by in his observation, and walks closer to the prince.
“Pray tell what is on your mind at this dreary hour, my sorcerer?”
My sorcerer, Shu thinks and fights his inner demons at the way Luca would so casually address him in such a way whenever they’re alone.
It shouldn’t bring about a wave of conflicting emotions inside his age-old, hollowed heart; except it does, and Shu can’t remember the last time he had to deal with feeling anything at all.
At a loss, Shu decides to be honest. “I was merely picturing the future of Cydonia when you reign as king, my prince. What a blessed future this country would hold with you as its ruler.”
Luca’s eyes darken, and his response is immediate.
“And were you pictured by my side, then, in your reverie?”
Shu just stares at him, holds his eyes wordlessly, because he truly doesn’t know what to do with himself at his question. He can only hope the heat that flares beneath his skin isn’t evident in colour on his face now. “Whatever do you mean, Your Highness?”
The prince flicks his hair away from his face, jabs his spear into the cobbled sand of Shu’s garden, and looks at him dead-on. There’s so much determination in those lavender eyes that Shu briefly considers bursting into magical flames and escaping his post as a fiery wisp.
“Have you forgotten about my proposal, or is this an act of feigning pretence, archmage?”
“Your — proposal,” Shu echoes, feeling centuries of hard-earned wisdom and eloquence evaporating into thin air the longer he humours this exchange. “Your Highness, surely you don’t—”
In an instance, Luca is next to him, pinning him against the pillar Shu was just leaned against, one strong hand caging him in with a firm purchase to the side of his head. The sorcerer hasn’t realised just how much taller Luca has gotten until he has to look up to meet his eyes.
“Surely I do,” the prince is towering over him, all too close and all too warm, but Shu doesn’t know why he doesn’t break away. He knows he could, they both know that; and the immortal can only reprimand himself internally at his lack of resistance. “And surely you don’t take me for a farce this time around again, no?”
Luca leans in, pays no mind to the fresh sweat clinging to his skin, and is audacious enough to rest his other arm way too close to the sorcerer’s hips; wanting to settle there yet not quite. It awkwardly lingers in the air for an extended moment, and Shu watches it like a hawk, wishing for — he’s not quite sure what he’s wishing for — and isn’t sure either if he’s relieved or disappointed when Luca presses it against the pillar instead.
But Shu looks up, and Luca’s forehead is warm against his. He looks at him with eyes that are so certain yet so wavering, that it pains Shu just to witness it. Whatever Luca wanted to say, it takes him a few moments to rip it out of him.
“My coronation is in one winter’s time.”
And that’s when Shu realises he means it — he truly means to ask him to wed; him, an immortal wielder of magic with unfathomable prowess, a male, and Shu can already imagine a million scenarios in his mind where he will be scorned and burnt to death in a witch trial in front of the entire country.
“My prince, what will your people think?” Shu tries to reason; he really is trying his best, more so to his own heart than to Luca’s. He fails to understand why the prince’s antics are producing an effect on him now; he has lived several hundreds of a human’s lifetime, and thus is more than aware of the pain mortality brings to his kin.
Several centuries ago, Shu made the mistake of falling in love with a mortal, once.
He had to pay for that mistake at the cost of cradling his lover in his arms, crying his heart out to the heavens on a stormy night as the light of his life bled to death in a pool of his own blood.
Since then, Shu has vowed to never make the same mistake. His heart, a useless little organ Shu has long discarded and learned to live without, has no right to make demands of him right now; beating wildly against his ribs, like Luca is a meal of a lifetime and he’s long famished.
“It burdens me less what they choose to perpetuate, than what you choose to make of me.” Luca’s words are concise and simple, and yet Shu has to wreck his brain to fully register the meaning behind them.
He’s done this for hundreds of years. He’s been a counsellor, consort, and strategist to the rulers of this empire for generations; he is not about to put it all at risk now just because Luca decides to be lovesick. “Your Highness, those are unfit words for a king, you must put your duty to the people first before—”
The royal’s reply is immediate and unrelenting, a hand flying up to caress his face like it hurts to touch Shu, but it hurts more not to.
“Before what, before my own happiness? Before you?”
And Shu’s mouth goes dry.
“I understand fully what is to be made of me as a ruler of this country, sorcerer. My duty as king to the people is not a matter you have to remind me of twice,” his voice is hard as steel, immovable and authoritative, and this is the first Shu has heard of Luca speaking with his royal power in front of him. Usually, the boy would be all mischief and cheeky grins.
“Forgive me for speaking out of line, Your Highness,” utters Shu, his voice a soft and meek little sound, turning his head away from Luca’s touch.
A battle to the death in the midst of war is much less suffocating than a battle of the hearts with Luca’s and his own, a man whom Shu had grown too fond of.
The next time the prince speaks, it’s a whisper, and it’s almost criminal how much it tugs at Shu’s heart. “I am aware of my duty and wishes as a king. But my wishes as a man; is it not to seek love?”
The sorcerer remains quiet. He is no longer able to meet the prince’s inquisitive eyes, instead settles for looking down at his own hands, eyelashes fluttering: burdened, uncertain.
It’s not a stretch to say that Luca’s happiness would also be Shu’s happiness; but he isn’t exactly sure if these two things are mutually exclusive.
“Is it so wrong that I seek you, Shu?”
For a brief moment where Shu seems to forget himself, his eyes dart up; and he isn’t exactly sure if he can ever plant a spark behind those desperate lavender eyes, and have it last.
The sorcerer sucks in a breath. Luca has never once called him by his name; he is forbidden to, as the privilege to be addressed in first name by the royals are reserved for families and loved ones only.
So Shu doesn’t know what to make of it now, Luca standing like this, face gloomy and voice a plea, a picture of resignation that breaks him, knowing full well that Shu put him here. Saying his name like he wishes to engrave it into gold, molten into a ring, and slide it around his finger. It’s all too cruel.
An ugly thing possesses him, for Shu finds himself reaching up to place his palm over Luca’s, stroking its backside, leaning into his touch. He doesn’t say anything, and if he picks up on the way the prince’s breath stutters, he makes no comment of it.
“I’m not asking for much, all I’m asking is for you to love me.”
It hits him like a guillotine, and Shu has to close his eyes to stave away the tears threatening to form in them. He can’t let Luca see him like this — not now, not ever.
Luca is a mortal. He is royalty, he is noble, he is all things glorious and beautiful — all things Shu has learned to admire and cherish.
Brilliant, bright, mischievous, wise. All things he’s learned to love.
But loving him comes with too much of a burden. Shu thinks about what it would mean for Luca, a king with a scornful partner by his side, chastised by the people he’s sworn a lifelong oath to protect. He thinks about what scholars would pen of them into the book of Cydonian history; a selfish king who crowned a witch as his queen — because that’s what mortals see him as; a witch of black magic and crooked sorcery.
Loving Luca has to come with all the things Shu has once dreaded, once upon a time, a loss so immeasurable in grief that it hurt more to be alive, than it was to be granted the luxury of death. Even now, Shu thinks he’s living just to repent for his tomfoolery; what does he think of himself, to once imagine that a creature such as he could experience the privilege of love?
And that’s what he tells himself now, as Luca’s voice gets smaller, lips ghosting on top of his, mournful — that it’s because Shu loves him, that he needs to let him go.
“See, that’s already asking for too much.”
Luca deserves to live a happy, mortal life as king; a prosperous future with the empire, a doting and capable queen by his side, and an heir equally beautiful and charitable as he is, to continue his legacy.
Not a Shu Yamino that has to watch him die and live on with a harrowing sorrow in the caves of his black heart. Not him.
Something snaps inside Luca’s composure, and the barrier in his face melts away to reveal a look of forlorn melancholy — so powerful that it makes Shu’s eyes widen.
“Prove it to me, Shu,” he grits the words through his teeth now, and tethering hands at last find purchase to the side of Shu’s lithe waist, squeezing his hip bones with enough force to bruise. “Prove that I am wrong, and our feelings are naught.”
Our, he said. Not his, not Shu’s, ours. He wonders if it’s sheer bluff Luca’s spewing, or if Shu was the last person between them to learn of his own sentiment.
“How?” The sorcerer croaks, and he looks at Luca like he’s flaring up at the edges with flames about to be extinguished, his predicament written all over the lines of his face.
“Kiss me,” rasps the prince, his voice dropping octaves too low to not make Shu shudder, “Kiss me, and keep your heart still — and I will let you go.”
There’s a palm pressed to his chest, right above where his heart lies, and Shu knows he’s fighting a losing battle from how much it already accelerates.
“Your Highne—Luca,” Shu squeezes his eyes shut, exhales once, opens them again, and chooses this moment to commit a verbal crime of royal decree punishable by death, and calls the prince by his name. “You shouldn’t — we shouldn’t. This is unbecoming.”
“Look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t want the same things I do, and I will let you be free.”
Luca’s hand is still there, cusping the space above his heart, steady and calm like a constant force, and Shu cracks open like a broken shell beneath him.
“Luca, it is not about what I want,” he starts, and is quick to press an index finger against the prince’s lips when he sees them part in protest, “What I want, I can never have. There are two luxuries us immortals can not afford — death, and love.”
Luca just stares at him, gaze unreadable, but Shu sees something shattering just behind the windows of his soul, so he continues.
“My prince — my sun. I will love you, conditional and unchanging, like an inevitable force; and I will still love you, even as the world continues to turn, and time begins to take you away from me. On your deathbed, old and weary and having a life once lived, I will still love you; there by your bedside, unchanging, like the day you first came to me in your father’s hand.
“Now, pray tell, Your Highness; what is to seek in a love like that, if not a curse? How do you think I would move on with my life, devoid of everything I yearn for, when you are no longer here — and I don’t have the privilege to love you, even in death?”
He has never wanted to cry so much as he does now. He doesn’t even know he’s already crying until he feels wetness being swiped from his cheeks with Luca’s hand, brushing them away like short-lived worries.
“To you, I will just be a short part of your life,” he speaks, and Shu can see him careful with his words so as to not overstep, “But to me, you will be my entire life.”
The archmage has a hand pressed against the prince’s chest now, mutually caressing the space above his heart; he doesn’t know if he’s pleased or grieved to find it beating a wild thrum to match his.
There is nothing more he can say, Shu thinks, his palm travelling up to grip purchase against the front of the prince’s embroidered collar. There is nothing more to do, he reflects, Luca’s request repeating in his mind like a mantra.
Shu allows himself the indulgence of making his second mistake when he tiptoes and seizes the distance between their lips.
He can’t remember the last time a kiss hurt this much. As soon as their lips meet, all resistance melts away in the tension of their muscles; arms grappling for contact in every which way, Luca’s on his waist, pulling him close, Shu’s in his hair, tugging him down eagerly.
Perhaps Luca has waited his entire life for this moment, and perhaps Shu has lived long enough to forget the sensation, because they both know they’ve miserably failed to honour their words the moment Luca presses a gnaw to his lower lip, prying them apart.
All the words die in his mouth, and the prince makes him swallow it all back down when his tongue is in his throat, the muscle hot and slick and dominating, Shu’s jaw going completely lax under Luca’s manoeuvre. There’s an embarrassing sound that escapes him, a whine caught between desperation and dejection, Shu running his fingers through Luca’s hair repeatedly, as if to commit the way it feels into memory.
And all too soon, just as quickly as it started, the sorcerer presses a firm hand at the base of Luca’s neck, and pulls them apart.
“My sun, we mustn’t do this,” his voice is pained, the struggle tangible and in his face, and he can’t bear to look at Luca now; now when his lips are red and swollen, and there’s a sheen of Shu’s saliva dripping in the corner of them.
“My world, I beg of you,” it catches him by surprise when Luca tries to pull him closer again, hips to hips and chest to chest, voice eager, pleading, the pain in his words strong enough to rival his. “Be my bride. Even cursed, with you I want nothing more.”
Shu thinks it would hurt more to have Luca slaughtered in front of him right now than to tell him once again of his wishes he can’t attain. He thinks about what it would be like, having to suffer through decades of loneliness and grief once more, and thinks it’s better if he never existed at all.
What is grief, if not love persevering? And in that sense, wouldn’t it be better if he hadn’t experienced that love at all?
“My sun, I cannot. Your happiness doesn’t lie within the likes of me.”
Shu says, and pulls away completely. Luca doesn’t stop him this time.
“Is this goodbye?” Yells the prince, making futile attempts to chase after the sorcerer’s receding figure.
Shu only stops for him once. He doesn’t turn back, and something inside Luca tells him he’s never going to stop for him again.
“Soon, you shall learn to find traces of me in the things you will come to love more than I. And I will still love you, albeit from a distance, tucked away like a secret, so you’d be safe from me.”
Like thin air, as fleeting as his promises, Shu dematerialises into nothingness. Only a flicker of a bright purple flame is left, winking at him before it floats away, carried by the midnight breeze into the blackness of the glittery sky.
Luca’s heart shatters in his chest, and he finds himself on his knees, the fabric of his training garments covered in cobbled sand. He looks up into the sky, tries to imagine Shu’s face looking down at him somewhere between the stars, and tells himself the sorcerer’s words are true.
If he can’t have him by his side, it would still do to have Shu watching over him, Luca would tell you with a sombre expression.
Maybe, one fateful day, Shu will change his mind. Maybe one day, when Luca is king and wedded to bear an heir, Shu will reappear by his side near the throne, manifesting just as conveniently as he left, assuming his post as the royal archmage.
Maybe he would even return in a disguise, perhaps posing as a woman — if Luca is delirious and hopeful enough, perhaps a noblewoman in which the strings of fate can be played to entwine them in a marriage, one way or another, Shu answering to his proposal in his own coy fashion. Perhaps they would bear children together; half-immortal, magical heirs, and Cynodia would prosper to new heights of unrivalled power.
Or maybe, Shu would come back one day, long gone from Luca’s life to let him live his fill, reduced to a bedridden king on his last breaths, muttering his wills into anguished ears of his family, and Shu would come to his side — a hand on his, warm and steady like the touch that still lingers on his chest now, comforting and reassuring, together in his last moments.
Or maybe Luca would meet him in the afterlife, where planes of mortal and immortal existence cease to signify; when his soul roams free, wanders for a new purpose in reincarnation. Maybe then, Shu would appear before him: dressed in that favourite purple robe of his, hair in Luca’s favourite ponytail, a smile on his face as he cusps the essence of his tattered soul and nurtures him into a new life — and maybe then, they will finally stay together.
The next morning as he visits the archmage training grounds, all traces of Shu are gone, billowed into the wind of a dry, merciless autumn breeze.