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i.
Shen drinks himself into a stupor sometimes, on the days when meditation isn’t enough, and when everything starts to become just a little too much.
It doesn’t happen often—just every once in a while—but it’s enough that Akali starts to take notice, and Kennen begins leaving hangover medicine in the back corner of his quarters. Shen loves them both, he really does, but no matter what they do, the weight of everything continues to close in, and Shen just can’t seem to stop it.
Memories curl at the corner of his vision each time he closes his eyes—Jhin’s smile, thin and taunting, always heavy in his mind—and Shen drinks to forget as much as he drinks to remember: to remember his father, to remember his childhood, to remember the person he’d thought he was.
He drinks, and drinks, and drinks, and yet—Jhin’s smile is vicious, forever seared into the back of Shen’s brain, and when Shen feels his heart rate pick up, he drinks even more—dark liquor to drown out the pain.
He doesn’t know what sort of drink he’s got now, but it tastes good enough to pull all thoughts of Jhin from his head, and to put memories of his father in there instead. A man stares at him from across the bar, his gaze heavy and even, yet Shen pays him no mind until the man slides into a seat closer to him—and suddenly, he finds thoughts of Jhin inhabiting his head once more.
“Brandy,” the man murmurs. “Not quite what I would have guessed, for you.”
And Shen feels his body stiffen, feels his hands grip tighter around his glass, and Jhin lets out a breath, moves into a seat even closer.
“It’s been a while,” Jhin continues, fingers tapping maddeningly against the bar. “Why so tense?”
Shen glances to the side, sees that same smile grinning back at him, and quickly looks away. “Is it me?” Jhin laughs, his voice pitching low. “Is my presence so distasteful?”
Yes, Shen wants to snap, but the reply just won’t come, and he brings his drink to his lips instead—feels the burn of the alcohol as it makes its way down his throat.
It helps keep his hands from shaking.
“Cat got your tongue?” Jhin asks him, still laughing in that oddly distant way, and Shen glances over at him again, sees that smile spread wider, and wants—more desperately than anything—to reach over and smother it. Destroy it; desecrate, defile.
And Shen looks away.
“Don’t be like that,” Jhin says, in his voice fake in its offense. “You’re no fun when you’re ignoring me.”
And Shen brings his brandy to his lips; drinks again. He sees Jhin lean forward out of the corner of his eye, and Shen’s heart beats heavy in his chest as the man continues to speak.
“I know you’ve fantasized about killing me,” Jhin states, the words small and sweet despite the venom they contain. “Haven’t you?”
And something in Shen cracks.
“Of course I have,” he snaps, before he can stop himself, and Jhin’s laugh turns dark and pleased. It’s terrible. Lovely. And just how Shen remembers it.
“Of course you have,” Jhin agrees, and when Shen turns to snap at him again—anger gripping tightly at his heart—Jhin smiles, leans in.
It’s barely a kiss, Shen later thinks. Nothing more than a brush of Jhin’s lips against the corner of Shen’s mouth, then his cheek, then his ear. And yet, Shen’s world still stutters to a stop.
“Good,” Jhin tells him, then leans back again, pushes his empty glass the barkeep’s way. “Fantasize about me more.”
He’s grinning as he leaves—sharp, satisfied and vindictive—and Shen’s blood burns.
ii.
Shen finds him again months later at a different establishment, after he’s already ordered his beer and has slipped into a table in the back.
By the time that he sees Jhin on the other side of the room—face flushed and far too many empty glasses in front of him—Jhin has noticed him, too, and Shen knows that it’s far too late to leave. Jhin’s face flickers between a series of emotions before settling on one that Shen can’t quite seem to name, and Jhin slides carefully into the seat in front of him, face flushed with alcohol.
“Following me, are you?” he asks, and doesn’t wait for a reply before leaning back in the seat with a laugh. “I suppose it’s a pity then, that I haven’t done anything too... untoward recently.”
Shen stares at him—memories resurfacing of blood and grime and kisses on the corner of his lips. “Haven’t you?” Shen replies, and Jhin’s grin widens into a smile that hints at something vicious.
“Do you know something I don’t?” Jhin asks, visibly delighted, and Shen narrows his eyes.
“No,” he replies, simply. “But I would consider kissing me untoward.”
He says it with the same inflection Jhin had, and Jhin makes a noise, something strange passing over his face.
“More untoward than murdering a man?” he asks, then waves his hand to cut Shen off. “Never mind, don’t answer that. I’m more interested in the fact that you considered that a kiss.” His face is still flushed, and Shen frowns at him. “You’d really call what I did a kiss?”
Shen doesn’t reply (because he did and he does), and Jhin’s eyes sharpen for a second, the flush of alcohol deepening on the high of his cheeks.
“Seems like you haven’t gotten many in your life, if so,” Jhin smirks, and Shen again declines to reply (because that one’s true, as well). Instead, Shen watches as Jhin leans over the table—pushing Shen’s half-empty glass to the side—and moves in to fully kiss him.
Shen’s eyes go wide, and Jhin’s lips are sweet.
It’s a very different kiss than the one before, and Jhin bites bruises into Shen’s bottom lip that startles Shen into finally pulling back—one hand coming up to wipe at the blood that drips from it—and Jhin licks his lips, eyes hazy as he gazes back at Shen.
“That’s a kiss,” Jhin tells him, and Shen stares at him a second longer, before downing his beer and standing up to leave.
Jhin grins at him as he does so, and as Shen exits the bar—not ten minutes after he’d originally arrived—he can feel Jhin’s eyes burning dark into the back of his neck.
Shen breathes out, and refuses to look back.
iii.
“You hate me,” Jhin says, the next time they find themselves in a bar together again, “don’t you?”
And Shen doesn’t know how to answer that, because of course he does—and yet, there are other emotions there too, and Shen can’t help but hate himself for it. Jhin, however—bastard that he is—seems to know what Shen’s thinking even without Shen giving voice to the thoughts, and Jhin sits in the seat next to him with a small, tight smile.
“Is it confusing,” he asks, voice low and teasing, “wanting to kill me and kiss me at the same time?”
He asks it with such certainty, as though he knows his words to be true, and Shen grits his teeth, wanting for all the world to knock the smile off the other man’s face. Desecrate; defile.
He takes a sip of his drink instead, though that only seems to make Jhin happier.
“I know you’re attracted to me,” Jhin tells him, the words even and conversational. “And I think it’s pretty ironic, but it’s not as though I blame you,”—he makes a show of grinning up at Shen, of turning his head just so—“because who could resist this?”
Shen hates him.
“But I also know,” Jhin replies, stealing Shen’s drink and downing it far too quickly, “that it’s nothing more than a surface-level thing. You’ll never love someone like me—no matter how pretty I am—because you know that deep down, I’m a bad person.”
His words are still light and teasing, but there’s an edge to them now, and the flush on Jhin’s cheeks feels suddenly more dangerous than sweet.
“I’m not good like you, I’m not even good like Zed,” Jhin continues, his voice hard. “I never have been, and I never will be. And you know that, right?”
Shen takes back his empty glass, his hands slow and careful, and can’t seem to find a reply.
I’m a bad person, Jhin says, as if Shen doesn’t know that. You’ll never love someone like me.
“I hate you too,” Jhin tells him then, venom in his voice. “I hate you, and your ideals, and how easily you’re able to follow them—”
And when Jhin surges forward, hands like a vice around Shen’s face, Shen doesn’t stop him. Jhin’s kiss this time is furious and borderline tragic, and there’s something terrifying in the way that Jhin’s eyes darken as soon as Shen pulls away.
Shen stares back at him, licks his lips despite the lack of blood, and feels the ache in his chest pull harder than it ever has before.
“I hate you,” Jhin says again, standing up and putting space between the two of them.
And Shen breathes out a slow sigh. Says, “You’re right,” just before Jhin leaves;
“I could never love someone like you.”
The words feel hollow, but Shen doesn’t care. Jhin, as he is, does not deserve his love; does not deserve his forgiveness. And yet—I’m a bad person, he had said, his eyes dark.
And Shen wonders if one day, Jhin will give him reason to be able to.
iv.
It’s years before Shen sees Jhin again after that, and stories of the Golden Demon shift from legitimate warnings to tentative, oft exaggerated folk tales. People talk of the Golden Demon as a vicious spirit that has finally been put to rest, and though Shen knows that’s not the case—for who would be the one to put Jhin to rest, other than Shen himself?—the Kinkou still hear little of Jhin for quite some time.
They’re long years, which Shen spends rebuilding the Kinkou and continuing to drown his memories in drink, and there are times when Shen wonders if there isn’t some truth to the rumors. That perhaps, Jhin really has been put to rest.
The thought makes Shen’s chest ache in a way it so often used to, and Shen throws himself into his work, if for no other reason than to stifle the sting of that feeling.
And then, one quiet spring day, Shen receives a letter.
Meet me for a drink? it reads, and there’s only one man whose handwriting is as sharp and elegant and recognizable as that, and the next day finds Shen sitting face to face with an older, solemn-looking Jhin.
“I didn’t think you’d show up,” Jhin tells him, quietly, “but I’m glad you did.”
“Where have you been?” Shen asks, and Jhin laughs, shakes his head.
“Piltover for a bit,” he replies, “then more north, and then back here.”
Shen frowns. “And how many bodies did you leave behind, this time?” he bites out, unable to keep the question from bubbling off his tongue, and Jhin looks up sharply, makes an effort not to flinch.
“Fewer,” he spits, and it isn’t what Shen wanted to hear, but it’s more than he expected.
They order food in addition to their drink, and there’s something different about Jhin now: a strange, underlying sensitivity that Shen hadn’t expected to see. Something has changed in Jhin’s years of absence—fewer bodies, Shen thinks—and it’s curious, this new, quiet Jhin, who doesn’t know what he is and isn’t supposed to say.
Shen takes a deep breath. “What is it you want, Khada Jhin?” he asks.
And Jhin stares back at him, eyes hard. “I think,” he says, slowly, and he clicks his tongue, snaps his mouth shut. Takes a deep breath, too. “That I would like to stay with the Kinkou Order for the foreseeable future.”
“As a prisoner?” Shen asks, slowly.
“As a... ward,” Jhin replies, carefully, instead. “Please.”
And Shen stares at him, sees the difficulty it took to say please that sits in Jhin’s grimace, and he grips his glass in his hands.
Jhin is an actor, a performer. Shen knows this to be true more than anyone else. Yet Jhin’s words feel genuine, and after years of Jhin’s absence—after a carefully whispered “fewer”—Shen finds himself willing to take the chance.
“Okay,” he replies, “okay.” And when Jhin kisses him as he leaves, it’s simple and strangely chaste. A long kiss to his cheek, pressed against one and then the other, and it’s a kiss that feels more like an apology than anything else Jhin has said. Shen had expected the action but not the approach, and the softness of it all feels reminiscent of that first kiss, many years ago, brushed close to Shen’s ear.
It’s all so confusing—his feelings, Jhin’s feelings, Jhin—and the kiss leaves Shen staring holes into Jhin’s back as he leaves.
Jhin stops at the door. And Shen catches his smile.
v.
Jhin settles in with the Kinkou Order about as well as Shen expected, which is to say: not very well at all.
The junior disciples avoid him like the plague, and the senior members do the opposite: rarely, if ever, letting him out of their sight. Jhin takes it all in stride, speaking softly and earnestly and talking through his vices with the healers that reside within the Kinkou residence, but Shen can feel the tension that simmers beneath Jhin’s skin, can see the smoothing of Jhin’s expression whenever he bites back something he doesn’t think he should say.
Still, in spite of his current attempts at reformation, redemption, rebirth, Shen finds the man the same as ever—still mean and snarky and flirty with everybody and nobody at once—and Shen finds himself strangely glad for that fact. It makes everything feel more real: Jhin’s willingness to seek help, his claims at honest intentions.
Shen says at much over drinks later that month, when Jhin insists he accompany Shen to the bar, and Jhin stares at him when he does: his face open and curious.
“You’re glad I'm still mean to people?” Jhin asks, and Shen breathes out a laugh, then shakes his head.
“No—it’s just,” Shen replies, pausing. “I’m glad your personality hasn’t completely changed.”
He continues when Jhin doesn’t say anything, does nothing more than stare. “It’s how I know you’re not just acting,” Shen says, “and that this”—he gestures around them with his hands—“is something that you chose.”
Jhin’s face does something strange again. “I can see why you might be worried I was acting,” he replies finally, his voice easy, and his lips turn slightly up. “But I suppose you should know—I’m not doing this because I think it’s right.”
“You’re not?” Shen frowns, and Jhin laughs, small and quiet.
“Of course not,” Jhin says, “I’m doing this because you do.”
Shen blinks, and Jhin smiles back at him, the skin around his eyes crinkling lightly. “Oh,” he replies, “I see,” and Jhin’s smile widens.
“Do you think that makes my decision lesser?” Jhin asks him, curious, and Shen thinks for a moment, then shakes his head.
“Doing something for another person can be just as meaningful as doing something for yourself,” he replies, carefully, “as long as the intent of that something is pure.”
And Jhin’s grin widens even more. “Do you think my intentions are pure?” he asks, and Shen makes a face. “They’re not,” he continues quietly, not even giving Shen a chance to reply. “The only reason I’m going this is because I know you want me to. I’m doing this for you, not for me. Do you understand that?”
“For me?” Shen asks, and Jhin nods back.
“Because you’d never love me the way I was, before,” Jhin replies. “And I’m hoping that you might one day, now.”
Shen’s mouth feels dry, because it's different to hear something admitted as opposed to implied, and he watches as Jhin leans forward and puts his hands around Shen’s face. Jhin pulls him forward carefully, and he kisses Shen slowly, tentatively.
For you, Shen thinks, and closes his eyes into the kiss—feels Jhin’s soft fingertips pressing light against his face. Not for me.
And by the time that Jhin pulls back, his fingers lingering against Shen’s jaw, Shen decides that trying—if not for himself, but for Shen—might yet be enough.
i++
Jhin’s smile is small and apologetic, and Shen reaches out with careful hands to pull the other man back. Jhin’s eyes light up—that small sort of wonder—as Shen pulls him over, and smiles into Shen’s lips as he slowly leans back in.
This time, Shen kisses him back.
It’s slow and unhurried, and Shen cups at Jhin’s jaw with his free hand, the other pressing bruises into Jhin’s wrist. Jhin makes a small, satisfied sound as Shen pulls him forward even more—the table between them clearing of everything it’d originally had—but Shen can’t bring himself to care.
And when Jhin eventually pulls away, his eyes bright and his smile wide, Shen smiles back.
“If you’re serious about this,” Shen tells him, slowly, “then I’m willing to give you a chance.”
And Jhin’s smile widens more, his eyes crinkle at their sides. “In that case,” Jhin replies, leaning in again to press more wide-mouthed kisses into Shen’s jaw, “I promise to do my best.”
“That’s all I’ll ever ask,” Shen says, his voice quiet, and turns his head to catch Jhin’s lips again.
- -
I know it’s not much, Jhin says, later, after he’s lost count of the number of times that Shen has pressed feather-light kisses into his hands, his lips, his skin. But I meant it, when I told you I’m willing to try.
I know, Shen replies, smiling. I know.