CW: Explicit language, mentions of drug addiction, violence, mentions of abuse.

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The end of spring is marked by stubborn precipitation that bloats Hanjuyang with an enduring damp. The morning drizzle soaks the Rat and the little lord as they dutifully wind through the Slums, delivering supplies for the Marquis. They’d had to abandon the workhorse due to the poor conditions of the roads which have been turned from hard packed dirt to a river of sludge.

Mud fills their shoes, ill-gotten and worn for Rin, and ill-purposed and awkward for Jun. The worst of the chill is kept at bay by the lingering spring warmth, but not even the hoods of their cloaks can entirely protect them. Regardless of their discomfort, they push through to complete their rounds.

Both men are wordless as they leave Masa’s store. The butcher had been begrudging, still sore about his wounds, but also grateful for the supplies. Hands had been greedy. Words had been short. The overall exchange was terse, not one person in the mood to socialise.

Rin glances at Jun from the corner of his eye as he trudges alongside.

The little lord stares resolutely ahead, pulling the cart along smoothly despite the muddied road. Pulses along his jaw are as clear as his simmering anger. There’s a darkness in his expression that’s not dissimilar to the one he wears before his father.

Rin resents having to be the one to speak first, but it doesn’t seem like the moody lord would want to break the silence anytime soon. And this tension is killing him.

“...Your dick is out.”

Jun automatically looks down. When he catches himself, two pink splotches bloom in his cheeks and he shoots a confused glare at the raven.

Rin snickers and flicks rainwater into the lord’s face. “Are you done brooding? I’m bored as hell doing this shit in silence.”

“What would you like me to say?” Jun’s voice is slightly hoarse, as if he’d not spoken for days.

“You can start with why you’re acting like such an ass.”

“That is not my intention. If anything, I have been trying to be more understanding of your situation–”

“My situation?”

“Entering in a committed relationship for the first time would confuse the best of men. And I should not wish to force it upon you if you were uncomfortable with it.”

“I hate it when you do that.”

“Excuse me?”

Rin scowls and punches the lord in the arm, albeit weakly. “You can be a condescending prick sometimes, you know that?”

Jun rubs his arm, brows furrowed as he reflects upon his words. “...I am sorry, Rinnie. I do not mean to condescend to you. I am…attempting to understand where we are with each other. What the boundaries are. We are promised to wed one another and that comes with certain expectations, certain assumptions, on my part. However, this may be rather one sided. Perhaps, you could enlighten me on your expectations instead?”

“My expectations are pretty fucking clear, little lord. We’re committed, we do the marriage thing, we live to a ripe old age, and die a nice boring death - if we’re lucky. What’s got me confused is where your expectations deviate from mine. And why.”

Jun’s cheeks darken slightly and the darkness in his eyes lightens by a degree. Frustration colours his tone. “If you are truly committed to me, Rinnie, you would not give yourself to others.”

The raven pauses mid-step and stares at Jun with a blank expression. “I haven’t given myself to anyone.”

“The Marquis–”

“It was just a kiss!”

“Multiple kisses.”

“I didn’t fuck him.”

“You do not have to.”

“Even if I were fucking him, it doesn’t mean I’ve given myself to him.”

“That is precisely what it means to give yourself to him.”

“So what? You expect me not to fuck another guy for the rest of my life?”

“Or woman. Or anyone.”

“That’s insane.”

“That is commitment.”

“Not my commitment.”

The two glare at each other, breathing heavily, and the cart stopped in the middle of the road.

Rin swipes a hand over his face, clearing his vision of rain. “Sex is sex. It’s meaningless. Except when I’m with you.”

Jun raises his chin, eyes growing hooded as he narrows his gaze at his love. He scrutinises Rin’s visage and his words both, unable to fathom either. “I do not understand your meaning. How could such intimacy be meaningless?”

“Do you think it meant anything when I was a Rose?” Rin challenges, sharply. “All those people I slept with. Do you think I gave myself to them? If I did, do you think I’d still be standing here, as whole as I am now?”

Jun flits his eyes over the raven’s form, as if he could see his missing pieces. “...I am unsure. I have…never been in your position before.”

“No. ‘Course not.” Rin sighs and continues walking, churning the mud with his angry stride. Jun and the cart follows soon after. “Flesh is flesh and mine has always been worth as much as the coin it earns, or the gratification I bear. But with you, it’s everything. You make it everything.” He side-glances the silent lord. Takes in his sudden reticence. “Flesh is flesh, Jun. A kiss is a kiss. It’s always been easy. An instinct.”

“I disagree,” Jun huffs, jerking on the cart as the wheels hit a rut. Smoother path gives him space to glance at the raven, meet that singular eye straight on. “You may believe it all to be meaningless, but a stray kiss, however meaningless, has oft changed the course of history. And that is no exaggeration. Fidelity is vital. Without it, there cannot be trust. There cannot be commitment. You saw what happened with my mother and father. You saw how she died. How the Lost Prince was driven mad.”

“Are you blaming your mother for what happened?” Rin scoffs, yanking hard on the front of his hood.

“In part, yes. If she had been trustworthy, then she would have refrained from adultery or been honest with my father. Either way, her death could have been prevented. Of course, my father also had a hand in her demise–”

“You do know that he’s the one who sent her in the carriage, right? He knew it was going to be targeted.”

Jun turns his gaze to the front, his expression suddenly unreadable. There’s long, tense silence. Then, “If you continue to be with the Marquis, I cannot place my trust in your commitment to me. While you may be able to discern a meaningless kiss from a one that is meaningful, I do not possess such a skill.”

“You can learn,” Rin says, curtly. “It’s not that hard. Kiss that woman over there and tell me if it means anything to you.” He jabs a finger at one of the streetwalkers standing in front of a ramshackle no-name tavern. Unaffiliated sex workers, independent from Kahin’s influence.

Jun grimaces and shakes his head, his gloominess returning tenfold.

“Stubborn bastard. You know I’m right. You know that if you kiss her, fuck her, hell, confess your love to her, you know that none of it means shit. Because it’s not her you’ve given yourself to. It’s me.” Rin bounds close and pinches the lord’s cheek, hard. “So you can ease up on the jealous lover act.”

Jun rubs his aching cheek, grimace deepening, but his heart, as always, wavers. “...If what you say is the truth, then could you ever find it in yourself to refrain from intimacy with others? Could you ever be intimate with only me?” He hates how weak his voice sounds, but he pushes through resolutely. The answer he seeks is far more important than his pride.

The raven doesn’t stray far from Jun’s side. He stays close. Close enough for their elbows to bump. He watches the moody man from the corner of his eye, inspecting his every movement, every expression, every shift and flare of his goldens. A faint smile dances across his lips. “...I’m willing to try anything at least once. As long as you promise to stop sulking all the time.”

“I am not sulking.”

“Are so.”

“It has been difficult. To control my mood.”

Rin raises his brows, surprised by the abrupt turn in conversation. “That’s normal, isn’t it? You're always pouting about one thing or another.”

“I do not think so, no. Since the battle, perhaps even before then, I could feel it creeping back in.” Jun appears washed out in the grey of precipitation. His golden eyes, usually so bright and lively, are shadowed by things unknown to Rin.

The raven’s heart squeezes with an ache he only feels for his little lord. “What’s creeping back in?”

“The weight. The darkness. The anger. My nights are not peaceful. And I think the worst things of the best people. Including you. So I must be selfish, just this once.” Jun keeps the cart hoisted in one hand as he frees up the other. He takes Rin’s hand and entwines their fingers together. They are both cold and damp, but very quickly does an unnatural heat bloom between them.

Rin clings on, suddenly needy. He raises himself on his toes and pecks Jun’s jaw. His lips come away wet. “I’ll try,” he murmurs, voice barely audible over the sounds of the rain and the city. “For you.”

Jun glances down at the smaller man. There’s a flicker of a smile.

“I will try as well. There is so much about you that is unknowable. Thus I often fill in the blanks with what is knowable to me. Evidently, that is rarely ever the case.”

“You know what they say about making assumptions.”

“It is human nature to make assumptions. We would never survive as a social species otherwise.” Jun sighs and grips the cart with both hands, picking up their lagging pace. “However, it is important to refrain from making harmful assumptions. This, I am still learning.”

“What other assumptions do you have about me?” Rin asks, grinning. He matches the lord’s energised pace, stretching his legs out as far as they can go. Regardless, he still has to take two steps for the lord’s one. Frustrating.

“I assume you are still trapped by your past.”

Rin purses his lips. “That’s an assumption you can dump.”

“I spoke to the Marquis and he confirmed that he had harmed you. From the way he kept avoiding my questions, I can also assume that it was a significant harm.”

“Another one for the dump,” Rin says, stiffly. “Got any fun assumptions? So far, none of them are fun or anywhere near the truth.”

“I assume you believe in him as much as I do.”

Rin furrows his brow, uncertainty filling his chest like sour bile. “I can admit that you were right about him. That he’s changed. Properly changed.”

“I assume us being here has something to do with the work my father gave you.”

The distant rumbling of thunder fills the silence between them. In response, the drizzle turns into a deluge. The definitions of the city turns smudged like bleeding watercolour, dribbling off the paper.

Rin huffs amusedly and pulls his hair over his right shoulder. He twists and yanks at the sodden strands. “I told you. I’m just to be his eyes and ears in the Slums. The Marquis ain’t got nothing to do with–”

“Why have you been denouncing my House in the local establishments? Does this have something to do with my father as well?” Jun doesn’t need to look at Rin to know his expression. It's nothing good.

“I mean, your father’s a dick, isn’t he? Is it so bad to have a drunken rant now and then? It’s cathartic for me.”

“If you were truly allied with my father, you would not deliberately sabotage his name. Not without reason.” Jun drops the cart handles and grabs Rin by the arm, tugging him close. They stand face to face, mere inches apart, lost to their surroundings in the brume of the storm.

Goldens pierce like pale arrows in the grey. Rin shivers, but he tells himself it’s because of the chill. He wonders if it’s his own heartbeat he’s hearing pounding away in his head, or if they’d stopped right outside a carpenter’s studio. He wonders, for the nth time, whether he’s doing the right thing.

“I’m committed to you, Jun,” he says, quietly. His tone, his gaze, imploring. He places his free hand upon the lord’s chest. “Which means that you need to trust me. As I trust you.”

“I do trust you.” Jun picks up the hand upon his chest and brings it to his lips. He kisses those slender, calloused fingertips, each and every one. He feels the slight tremour in them. The shivering form of his love. “I trust you. But I do not trust my father.”

Rin feels his nerves tingle from fingertip to scalp with every gentle peck. “Don’t worry. I don’t trust him either. If he fucks me over, I got a backup plan.”

“What about–”

“Explore the most convenient route first. And if that doesn’t work, then we just take something more scenic.” Rin raises his face and gives Jun a chaste peck on the lips. “I have this under control.”

The little lord presses his lips tightly together, keeping his protest locked behind. While he knows what he should do, his heart remains unsettled. “Then I shall place my faith in you.”

When they approach Ga Ram’s vegetable stall, the scene that greets them is ugly and alarming.

Four Silverswords swarm over the stall, violently dismantling the wood and upending the crates of produce. Ga Ram herself is sitting in muck, drenched to the bone and shaking, her glazed eyes staring blindly at the ground. Her face is touched with a deranged sort of hunger - a look that Rin knows all too well.

Jun releases the cart and instinctively reaches for his side, snatching air instead of his sword. He rears forward with his bare fists raised, but he’s grabbed and held back by Rin.

He casts a questioning glance at the raven. The latter shakes his head.

“We didn’t do nothin’! Go away or I’ll beat you to a pulp!” Kang Dae struggles in a Silversword’s grasp, soft fists bouncing off his restrainer’s torso. Snot and tears are lost to the rain as he screams in pure, unadulterated rage. A rage that’s far too big for a body that small.

A crate goes crashing into the miry road. Plump tomatoes roll and scatter, one coming to a stop at Rin’s feet. He picks it up and tosses it into the air a few times as he considers something. And then, with a cutting smirk, he pelts it at the kid’s opponent, striking him in the face. There’s a spluttering cry beneath the red explosion.

“Are you lost, pet?” Rin sashays over to the kid and yanks him free, thrusting him towards Jun. He keeps his eye on the Silverswords, particularly the largest one who also seems to bear the worst of tempers.

The guard scowls and wipes tomato bits from his face, beady eyes turned moreso in his ire. “Keep out of this, boy. This is not your business to concern yourself over.”

“Anything that’s happening in the Slums is my concern,” Rin retorts, coming to stand a mere foot away from the hulking man. He holds his arms akimbo as he considers his opponents. “You don’t belong here. This ain’t Silversword territory, so fuck off.”

“I’m warning you, boy. If you don’t back away, I’ll arrest you along with this junkie and her spawn.”

“Why the sudden interest? You never cared about us before.”

Casting a quick glance around, Rin realises that there are more Silverswords in the distance, hassling the drunks and addicts, as well as the more sober of Slummers. A few wagons await on the side of the road, already occupied with several arrested and even more guards. Whatever is happening, it’s district wide.

The burly man draws himself up and leers at Rin, hand gripping the sword at his side. “There’s been multiple reports of this woman being a rebel sympathiser. We’re just pulling her in for questioning.”

“Cut the bullshit and tell me what you’re really doing here.”

The guard backhands the petulant youth.

Rin rears back and only the tips of the blue gauntlet graze his face. Regardless of his escape, the motion had been violent and quick, and even a graze is enough to leave a hurt.

He pants and rubs his new ache, eye narrowing in a lethal glare. “I know for a fact that she’s got nothing to do with rebels. Neither does the kid. If you’re gonna arrest them based on some half-assed report, then you better arrest every single Slummer.”

“That we may do,” the Silversword grins wolfishly, bloodthirst dripping from his words. “This world isn’t big enough to accommodate trash like you. It’s about time we did something to clean this place up.”

“I should like to know more about these reports.” Jun’s baritone rumbles through the clamour of precipitation and urbanity, his boots sloshing as he steps in beside Rin. He subtly places his hand against the small of Rin’s back.

Goldens are steely, set hard within his stern visage. “I do hope you are aware that it is illegal to arrest one without just cause, in which there must be presentable evidence.”

“Illegal?” The Silversword grabs Jun by his collar and gives him a violent shake. “It’s not illegal if the order comes from the Governor himself. And whatever the Governor says is the Mother’s word - so who are you to challenge the Mother?”

Jun’s stomach lurches unpleasantly at the mention of his father.

“Bijan,” Rin interjects sharply, tugging on the back of Jun’s cloak. The little lord blinks as he’s reminded of his cover. “Bijan, stand down. We have nothing if it’s coming from the Governor.” Not to mention the fact that every Silversword in the immediate vicinity (count twenty) are looking their way.

“That’s right. Listen to your ugly friend there, Bijan.” The Silversword bares his teeth in an ugly grin and he shoves Jun. Rin catches him before he topples over. “Fucking Westerners. Think you have the run of the place just because your kind is infesting the East? Keep your head down and your mouth shut, and I might just let you see another day.”

The lord straightens up and works his jaw, the battle between his good sense and his mounting rage roiling in the pit of his stomach. Eventually, he pushes out a harsh breath and forces his taut form to relax.

When he glances at Rin, he can see the gears working in his head. There is a shared understanding of what must be done.

“Very well,” Jun says, coldly. He clenches his fists as Kang Dae starts up an angry wail, the child’s ire now directed at the lord who ostensibly abandons him.

They watch as Ga Ram is hoisted and dragged away by the Silverswords. The small pitiful form of her son scrambling after her in desperation, slipping and tripping in the mud several times in his haste.

This day, hundreds of Slummers are arrested, forcibly dragged away from their homes and their families. None go willingly. They understand the Governor’s corruption, and thus are aware that the next time they are seen, will be on the end of a swinging noose.