Capturing My Demon King Costar

MY COSTAR IS A FATHER

It feels like an entire lifetime has passed between the first time Xin Hulei tasted his tears and now.

Yao Shen can scarcely believe he's still the same person.

Perhaps in all the ways that count he isn't, not anymore.

He rubs his eyes with the back of his wrist, drying them off.

"Don't do that," Yao Shen says, swallowing around the knot in his throat. "I can't handle it."

Xin Hulei steps closer to him. Yao Shen retreats a few paces until the back of his knees hit the bed frame.

"Do what?"

Overly conscious of the sound of his own heartbeat, Yao Shen lowers his eyes. "You know how I feel about you..."

"Do I?" Xin Hulei asks, the furrow between his eyebrows growing deeper. "Two lifetimes of entanglement, and I have no idea how you feel about me."

Xin Hulei draws nearer, eventually Yao Shen has nowhere else to retreat to. He loses his balance and falls down on the bed in an inelegant sprawl.

Xin Hulei's nostril's flare.

"I don't think even you know." He looks down at Yao Shen, his dark eyes glinting in the gloom of the room. "Have you seen your memories?"

Yao Shen shakes his head. "Not yet."

"What's stopping you?" Xin Hulei asks, his voice low and rumbling.

"I'm scared."

"Of what you'll learn?"

He nods again. "There's a reason people are supposed to forget their past lives."

One corner of Xin Hulei's lip hooks up. "That's a privilege demons don't get, we're cursed to remember forever."

"You don't," Yao Shen says, lifting his eyes and meeting Xin Hulei's. "You don't remember me."

Xin Hulei's eyebrows knit together. He lifts one knee up on the bed, leaning over Yao Shen. "I remember some of you."

"But not everything," Yao Shen insists. "Don't you want to know why?"

"Maybe it's for the best."

Yao Shen shakes his head. He remembers what Fan Wujiu saw, about him helping carry Xin Hulei out. That doesn't make sense, he wouldn't do that if Xin Hulei had just tried to kill him.

"I don't think so," Yao Shen says. "You assume it was a result of what happened that day, but what if someone did it to you, deliberately?"

No reply comes, but Xin Hulei's presence on the bed disappears. He gets up and runs a hand through his messy hair.

"You're like a bad habit I can't shake."

Yao Shen's stomach seizes with warmth. Something comes over him and he grabs two handfuls of Xin Hulei's tshirt, pulling him down on top of him on the bed.

Xin Hulei supports himself with his forearm above Yao Shen's head, preventing all his weight from crushing Yao Shen.

"You're a smoker." Yao Shen's hands drift from Xin Hulei's chest up into his neck, looping around it. "I'm not the only bad habit you have."

An amused glint in Xin Hulei's eyes catches the light coming in from the twinkling lights outside. "I'm trying to quit."

Yao Shen lets out a whimper and pulls Xin Hulei harder on top of him. "I won't let you. You're stuck with me."

The amusement disappears from Xin Hulei's eyes, replaced by a melancholy smile. "That's not for you to decide."

Yao Shen tightens his arms around Xin Hulei's neck, keeping him in place. "I just think there's more to all of this than you know. Didn't you hear the two Impermanences? There's a power struggle in Youdu, and it has been going on for a long time. Things are coming to a head now because of the ghost kings negligence, but they have been bad for a long time."