Author’s Note: WAIT. If you haven’t read the rest of the draft yet, you can find it here.

The flower house where Juhua resides by day is a much different place.

Until now, Laurel has only come here under cover of night, in the dark which hides all men’s sins.

None of Suzhou’s streets are ever empty, but by day, the entertainment district has a lonelier feeling. The inside of the Lotus Pavilion likewise feels dimmer as Laurel walks through its door.

“Help you with something?” a woman asks as Laurel steps inside. “You’re a little early, but if gongzi will come back a little later—”

“I’m here to see Juhua, if he’s available.”

“He isn’t right now.”

“That’s fine. I can wait.”

The woman sizes Laurel up, looking him over. That’s fine—let her look.

She’s tall and thin and very elegant. Her hair is pulled back in a way that emphasizes her long and slender neck and the elongated corners of her eyes, and a yellow scarf made of a thin and delicate material flutters behind her as she walks.

After a pause, the tall and elegant woman says, “Come with me, and I will serve gongzi tea.”

Laurel follows the woman, as requested.

She leads Laurel into one of the entertaining rooms on the lower floor, one he hasn’t been to yet. Every other time Laurel has been here, he’s always quickly been led into Juhua’s room upstairs. He looks around with quiet interest, settling himself on one of the cushions with elegant grace as the lady sits across from him.

Her hands are deft and delicate as they grind the tea leaves to a fine powder with practiced movements of a decorative pestle. The sweet and distinctive scent of tea leaves rises into the air.

The flower house by day has a different air to it entirely. It feels more like any other courtyard during the day instead of a place of sin.

As her hands move deftly, Zizi looks him over. He looks like the kind of fine young lord who would feel shamed in the kind of place like this, but Laurel is a one who grew up in the middens and the muck. He won’t be shamed by this or by anything else.

Laurel sits, hiding his discomfort, as the water finally heats and Zizi boils the tea. She pours and sets one cup in front of Laurel and one in front of herself.

“You’re Ju’er’s little friend.”

She’s remarkably frank with him. She might be just ten years shy of Li Qiuyue’s age, but Laurel shows her the respect that he would show his shifu.

He thinks he knows who she is, and Juhua values her, after all.

“I am,” Laurel says with a slight incline of his head.

“Hmm.”

“Is your name Zizi?” Laurel inquires.

“Mn. He’s told you about me?”

“Yes.”

Laurel reaches for the tea with the tips of his white fingertips.

“Don’t drink that,” Zizi says suddenly, pulling Laurel’s teacup out of his reach.

She leaves and returns with something better.

* * *

It isn’t a comfortable turn that Laurel spends with the courtesan Zizi, but He Yanling’s company is far worse. They sip tea, and as if by some unknown signal—as though she’s heard a bell that Laurel can’t hear, Zizi sets her cup aside after some time has passed.

“Come with me,” she says.

Laurel is shown down a now-familiar hall that nevertheless looks different in the bright light of day, and he shows himself to Juhua’s room where he knocks.

“Laurel,” Juhua says when he sees him, tugging at the collar of his robe.

It does little. In the instant before his smooth, creamy skin is tucked away, Laurel sees a livid love bite. He swallows and looks away.

“I wasn’t expecting you to come.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you all of a sudden,” Laurel says.

“No, no. It’s always a pleasure to see you. Is something the matter?”

Faced by Juhua in the clear light of day—a Juhua who looks tired but still attentive, sensitive to his needs, Laurel is suddenly and starkly reminded that Juhua is older than he is.

What a funny thing to think about.

Only now Laurel feels foolish for coming here for such a thing. Still, Juhua is looking at him with those lovely eyes, and it’s all Laurel can do to admit, “…I need to dress for one of the governor’s parties.”

Juhua’s face does a few things in quick succession, one of those things being settling into an expression of quick alarm.

“You’re… going to a party of his?”

Laurel raises a long and elegant brow. “Why, should I not?”

Juhua tries to figure how to put it delicately. Despite what they’ve done with each other out of love, Laurel is still an innocent, and stories are told all throughout Suzhou of the governor’s lechery.

“Of course you may go where you wish, but… I don’t think you’ll find one of his parties to your liking.”

Laurel sits on one of the chairs, trying not to look at the bed—still rumpled. “It’s not that I want to go for pleasure, only that I have to go for the sake of my work. I’m spying for Her Highness.”

Juhua’s eyebrows furrow even further. “Should you be telling me this?”

Laurel rolls his neck, letting his head loll to the side so he can look at Juhua, pinning him to the spot with his dark and glossy eyes. “Who should I tell if not you? My secret’s safe with you, isn’t it?”

“Of course, but…”

Juhua is concerned that Laurel is so trusting, and for a little while, Laurel pretends not to see it.

Finally, Laurel softens. He’s a little bratty under it all, still. To want to play with Juhua’s feelings like this.

“It’s fine, really. I trust you, but even if I didn’t, this is no big secret. Wu Xiaoli knows this already. Even if you were to spill it, I’d suffer no loss.”

“Mn.” Juhua finally nods. “So you came to me to dress you up…”

“Is that not fine?”

Laurel actually does feel some anxiety about this.

“If it’s not, I can manage on my own.”

Juhua smiles. “Actually, it would be my honor.”

When Juhua turns to dressing Laurel up, it’s as if his whole demeanor changes. He becomes a jeweler appraising a fine jewel, and Laurel gives him plenty of raw material to work with. He examines Laurel’s straight and fine limbs with a critical eye, taking in the nipped and narrow expanse of his waist.

“Wait here,” Juhua tells Laurel before disappearing from the room.

When he’s gone, the room falls silent, and Laurel is left with his own thoughts. He doesn’t mean to spy, but his nature is his nature and he ends up looking around Juhua’s room—and it really is Juhua’s room this time. Instead of one of the cozy and spacious receiving rooms usually reserved for entertaining rich young masters, this room is smaller and more personally lived-in.

He’s guiltily looking at a pressed flower sitting on a small shelf beside the bed when Juhua comes back, arms laden with robes in scintillating, shocking colors.

Laurel straightens, turning to him with a shocked expression on his face. His mouth is gaping open before he truly realizes it.

“I only need one…”

Juhua laughs at the expression on Laurel’s face.

“I know, but we’ll need to find the one that suits you best. Unless you have any objections?”

Laurel shakes his head and spreads his arms, like a man heading to execution, it’s so cute. “Dress me as you see fit.”

There passes a bit of time where Juhua holds pieces of silk up next to Laurel’s face while wearing a serious expression. He’s seriously analyzing which color best emphasizes Laurel’s features.

“The lilac one,” comes a light and feminine voice from the doorway that makes Laurel flinch.

He’d been paying such attention to Juhua that he hadn’t noticed her come in.

The courtesan Zizi is leaning against the door, her arms crossed as she takes in the scene before her. Whatever she thinks of what she sees, her face gives nothing away.

Whatever natural wariness and trepidation Laurel has toward the formidable woman, Juhua obviously doesn’t share it.

“Mm, you think?” Juhua asks perfectly happily, returning to the lilac robe and holding it up against Laurel’s face again. The light and frosty color makes Laurel look even paler, somehow. It calls out the faint spidery blue tracing his eyelids and makes him look quite a bit Other. It’s a lovely effect.

“Yes, I think you’re right.”

Zizi stays, sitting on the small couch with Juhua while Laurel disappears behind a privacy screen to quickly and efficiently change his clothes.

Or at least, that’s the intention. The robe Juhua had brought him is made from a filmy kind of material, sheerer and slipperier than any kind of silk he’s used to, with more complicated fastenings, and Laurel’s unpracticed hands hesitate on the closures.

He’s standing there for a while behind the screen, brow furrowed as he stares at them like a complex equation before he hears Juhua’s voice floating to him from above the privacy screen.

“Gege? Shall I come help you?”

The soft chattering sound of Juhua and Zizi speaking to each other, in voices too low for Laurel to pick out the words, stops then.

“Please,” Laurel says, feeling his heart itch at being called gege by Juhua.

Laurel feels a palpable sense of relief when Juhua comes to help him. His cheeks are still flaming from hearing Juhua call out to him, gege. And Juhua’s hands on him seem to make his skin burn everywhere they roam.

It’s not that his touch is untoward. He tugs the blue-green robe, the color of the sea, up over Laurel’s frame, and his nimble fingers get to work on the ties at once. But every sweep of his hands over Laurel’s flesh brings a shudder, and by the time Laurel is dressed, he’s also aching.

The poke of his excitement disturbs the elegant lines of the robe, and Laurel feels his thin face stretching thinner still.

He has to bite his lip to keep from crying out when Juhua’s hand travels lower, parting the sheaves of his robe to brush, feather-light against Laurel’s hot and straining manhood.

“I can help you with this, too?” Juhua breathes, low and sticky near Laurel’s ear, words spoken quietly just for him. “If gege can be quiet.”

Even in Juhua’s low and soothing voice, it’s still so seductive.

Laurel lets out a small whimper. He’s still only 17, after all, a youth with youthful passions, and inexperienced. And then his whole body flashes hot as Juhua, elegant and pretty as a battered rose, sinks to his knees and opens his mouth.

Laurel manages to keep quiet, but by the time Juhua looks up at him with those tilted, grey eyes fogged over with lust, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, Laurel has a ring of teeth marks indented on the soft inner skin of his wrist.

Because of Juhua’s, ah, method, nothing had spilled on the beautiful robe at all.

“There,” Juhua says quietly, clearing his throat. “You’re all set.”

Walking out behind the screen is mortifying in the immediate after. All awareness of Laurel’s surroundings had fled for those few riveting moments when Juhua had been on his knees before him, but immediately after, the full reality of his situation had come crushing back.

The little magistrate is stuffed full of embarrassment by the time he emerges from behind the screen to find the elegant prostitute jie, Zizi, still waiting on the couch.

She doesn’t tease, but that’s somehow worse.

“Well, jiejie? Does he pass muster?”

Zizi looks at Laurel with impassive eyes, and Laurel just stops himself from squirming beneath her gaze.

“He’ll do.”