Chapter Text
Shen Qingqiu came awake slowly. He kept his eyes closed, languidly, and allowed himself to luxuriate, for a moment of two, in the softness of the mattress beneath him, the warmth of the blankets, the texture of the furs against his skin.
There was an hand resting lightly on his hip. It was a man’s hand, broad and calloused, scorchingly hot through the thin fabric of his inner robes.
He had been certain, the night before - or what he’d presumed was night; he’d had no way to tell the passing of the hours for a long, long time - as he’d let himself drift, that he would never awake again. The little beast had been careful, not allowing blood loss to claim him, or infection to set in, but there was only so long a weakened, mutilated man could survive, left to stew in the filth and the cold, and he’d been burning with fever these past few days. And the little beast, who had seemed to have long since grown bored with him, had not been by to cure him.
Shen Qingqiu had allowed himself to hope that he’d finally be released. It had been stupid to do so. He had known for a long time there was no hope in this world for the likes of him. Here he was. He wasn’t dead. Instead, he was awake. He could feel sunlight on his face. He had all his limbs, and the bed was soft, and there was no pain save, perhaps, the deep, pleasant burn of muscles well-exercised. And there was a hand touching him.
An awfully, terrifyingly familiar hand.
Heart hammering, he tried to move away. The hand shifted, looping around his stomach and tugging him, with casual possessiveness, against a broad chest. The movement jostled Shen Qingqiu, and he almost moaned when it made him aware of a well-known ache deep in his body.
Well.
It had been a while since he had been subjected to that particular indignity; the little beast had certainly never stooped so low before, though that was probably more out of disgust for Shen Qingqiu than because he recognized the act itself as distasteful. He had heard whispers, even secluded in the dungeons as he’d been, of how the most reluctant of Luo Binghe’s wives had been convinced.
Why start now?
He shook away the thought like one would an annoying insect. It didn’t matter; knowing the reason wouldn’t undo it. Assess the damage, first. See if there was some edge he could gain, second.
Gingerly, careful to bring no part of his lower body in contact with the man behind him, he tried moving his legs. The pain, he was surprised to find, was much milder than it might’ve been, almost as if whoever had- had been tender; it was, in fact, barely pain at all. Rather, it was the sort of deep, almost-pleasant ache that someone (someone else) might consider a reminder of a night well-spent.
“Shizun,” rumbled a voice, rough and drowsy with sleep, as a sloppy kiss was pressed against Shen Qingqiu’s nape. “It’s early yet. Let us sleep a little longer. This disciple is tired.”
He couldn’t help stiffening at the words, and at the mocking way the little beast ran his fingers on Shen Qingqiu’s abdomen, slowly circling his belly-button.
Focus, he chided himself. He was well enough that he could stand; he was even well enough that he could fight, if need be, though he certainly couldn’t fight Luo Binghe.
The little beast, damn him, was far too perceptive to have overlooked his slip-up. He crowded in closer, pressing a small rain of kisses on Shen Qingqiu’s shoulders through the fabric of his robes. “Shizun,” he murmured, his voice a parody of concern, “is something the matter? Did this disciple hurt you, last night? I’m sorry if I did, I tried so hard to be careful…”
He could run. But was there something to run to? This wasn’t his real body; his real body was chained up in a dungeon and this had to be some kind of illusion. And if it wasn’t, if Luo Binghe had found a way to give him a new body so that he could enjoy breaking him anew, what was the point of running? There was no one left in the world who would harbor him.
No. There would be no rescue for him, no respite. He might as well ruin the little beast’s fun, goad him into abandoning this new, subtle from of torture and take what satisfaction he could from that. With this thought, he opened his eyes, and immediately had to suppress a gasp.
This was his home.
No. This had been his home, until Luo Binghe had come and burnt it to the ground. It was less tidy than he remembered it being, knick-knacks cluttering almost every available surface, and there were some details that didn’t quite fit, like the black robes slung carelessly over the changing screen, the unfamiliar sword hung on the wall, the handful of accessories he never would’ve picked for himself scattered over the vanity.
Beyond that, however, it was a flawless replica; the carvings in the furniture, the quality of the dappled sunlight, the scent of the wind, all these were precisely the same as he remembered them. If he strained himself, he almost fancied he could hear the far-away shouts of his disciples training along the slope of Qing Jing Peak.
“Little beast,” Shen Qingqiu said, careful to keep his voice level. His gaze was fixed, almost unseeing, on the the bamboo leaves swaying outside his window. “I grow tired of this charade.”
The arm around him tightened, almost convulsively, though not, Shen Qingqiu noted with some surprise, to the point of pain. “Shizun,” came the odiously meek voice again. It sounded thick with tears. Shen Qingqiu waited, tense, for some sort of follow-up, some further taunting, but was instead subjected to a long interval of sobbing.
“Is Shizun so displeased with this disciple?” Luo Binghe choked out, eventually, the words barely intelligible through his tears. “Shizun, pray forgive this disciple, but he doesn’t known what he has done to draw Shizun’s ire.”
“Don’t know?” Shen Qingqiu repeated, barely holding on to the edges of his self control. He ripped himself out of Luo Binghe’s arms, who - surprisingly - let him. “How could you not know? Do you really expect your cheap tricks to fool me?”
“Shizun?”
Did the little beast know how to say anything else?
“I remember you being more eloquent than this,” Shen Qingqiu said, turning so that he was finally facing his tormentor. Luo Binghe’s cheeks were red and splotchy; his thick, dark eyelashes stuck together in clumps. He had clenched his jaw, as though trying to hold in his sobs, but his lips still trembled, and his tears still fell, soundless, over his face.
“If… if Shizun doesn’t want to speak to me,” Luo Binghe eventually said, each word slow and carefully enunciated, as though it took a great deal of effort for him to speak, “perhaps this disciple could call someone who might help? Like Shang-shishu?”
Shen Qingqiu blinked. Shang Qinghua? The man was long dead, and, even when he’d been alive, his relationship to Shen Qingqiu had been remarkably neutral.
“Or- or perhaps Yue-shibo?”
Oh. So this was what the little beast had been getting at. Surprisingly complicated, if it was just to revisit an old hurt, but Luo Binghe had always enjoyed taunting Shen Qingqiu over his inability to save the one person he’d cared for.
“Terribly unimaginative of you,” Shen Qingqiu said, striving to keep his tone perfectly level and failing. His voice caught, just a little, stumbling over the words. He dug his fingernails into his own palm, hidden beneath the bed’s covers. Steady. Steady.. “Am I to forget what you did to him? Are you hoping I’ll be devastated, when you remind me of his death?”
“Death?” the little beast repeated, in a small voice. He was quite a good actor; Shen Qingqiu was almost impressed. With trembling hands, Luo Binghe raised his arm to his face, and used his sleeve to wipe his cheeks dry. With this gesture, he finally dropped and meek and subservient act, squaring his shoulders and drawing himself up as much as he could while still half-lying on the bed. A new determination shone form his eyes, though he still showed none of his malice in his gaze. “Shizun,” he said, “forgive your disciple for this.”
Ah! Begging for forgiveness? That was certainly new. Shen Qingqiu fully intended to tell the little beast what he though of that, but he found that his limbs had suddenly grown terribly heavy. Something moved, deep in his blood, slow and unfathomable.
The last, jumbled thought Shen Qingqiu had, as darkness overtook him, was that this did not hurt.
***
The air in the bamboo house was heavy.
Shang Qinghua stood with his back to the wall, squeezed between Liu Qingge’s shoulder and a dresser, and tried not to breathe too loudly. Luo Binghe was near the bed, eyes red and demon mark pulsating sickly on his brow, looming over Mu Qingfang as the healer pored over Shen Qingqiu’s unconscious form.
“He isn’t undergoing qi deviation,” Mu Qinfang said eventually, drawing back. “Which is fortunate, because using demonic influence to subdue a righteous cultivator undergoing qi deviation would have been exceedingly dangerous.”
Luo Binghe winced. “I acted hastily,” he said, “and failed to think things through properly.”
Mu Qingfang waved the remark away. He was still staring at Shen Qingqiu’s face, expression pinched.
“Does Mu-shishu have a diagnosis?” Luo Binghe prodded.
“There isn’t anything wrong with him,” said Mu Qingfang. “Not physically.”
Luo Binghe’s lips thinned, eyes darkening with displeasure. “That’s not possible. He was acting like a completely different person!”
“We already had Wei-shidi check Shen-shidi for possession,” intervened Yue Qingyuan, not as courteously as he should have in the face of the protagonist’s ire, at least in Shang Qinghua’s modest opinion. “And if Mu-shidi says he’s fine physically, then he’s fine. Perhaps Luo Binghe might allow him to wake, so that we might assess the situation.”
Luo Binghe’s nostrils flared. Shang Qinghua braced himself for an explosion of some kind, and wondered how well Liu Qingge would serve as a human shield, if it came down to that.
Luo Binghe slowly breathed out. The tense atmosphere relaxed a little. He bent over Shen Qingqiu, gently stroking a few dark strands away from his face and then cupping his cheek. “Shizun,” he called, in a sweet, low voice, as Shen Qingqiu’s eyes blinked open.
Shen Qingqiu pushed himself up on his elbows. Something flickered in his eyes, there and gone too quickly for Shang Qinghua to identify what it was, before his expression smoothed out, into something as calm and imperscrutable as the surface of a lake.
He looked at the gathering of Peak Lords in his chambers, gaze assessing. Then, Shen Qingqiu laughed; a smooth, musical sound. “This is a surprisingly elaborate set-up,” he said. “Aren’t you tired of it? I know you’re bored now that you’re all out of limbs to rip off, but surely this is too much effort for this old master of yours.”
Shang Qinghua startled so badly that he jostled Liu Qingge, something he normally would have been far too afraid to risk doing. Liu Qingge, for his part, actually allowed himself to be shoved into the wall by Shang Qinghua, because he was too busy gaping at Shen Qingqiu to keep a half-decent stance.
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
It couldn’t be.
He had to have heard wrong. Or he was jumping to conclusion. There had to be another explanation for this. A better one. Maybe this was just a very elaborate dream, and Shang Qinghua could wake up in the morning and laugh about it with Cucumber bro, who was definitely still himself.
Liu Qingge was the first of the Peak Lords to get over the surprise and pull himself together. “Mu-shidi,” he said, sounding exceedingly reluctant, “are you sure he’s not having a qi deviation?”
Shang Qinghua never would have expected to witness the mild-mannered Mu Qingfang glare so witheringly at the war god of Bai Zhen Peak that Liu Qingge took a step back and lowered his head in a chastened manner; he would’ve been very impressed with the display, had he not been so busy trying to contain his impending melt-down.
Alright.
Alright. He needed a plan. A way to determine whether or not the man in Shen Qingqiu’s body actually was the original goods, and then he needed to make sure Cucumber bro was still hanging around in there. Because Cucumber bro was his friend, and Shang Qinghua wasn’t going to let anything bad happen to him.
And also because, if something bad happened to him, Luo Binghe, in his grief, was probably going to burn the world down to its foundations, and Shang Qinghua liked the world. It might have been the product of far too many sleepless nights jacked up on caffeine, but he had put real effort in it, and he didn’t want to see it go to waste.
Plus, he lived there.
He listened with half an ear as the others discussed how to proceed. They mostly said obvious things, anyway, like how this needed to be kept under wraps, or how Mu Qingfang would be consulting the medical texts in his library to see if this strange behavior could be the result of some rare condition he wasn’t aware of.
Hurry up, already, your author is on a schedule!
Finally, the Peak Lords all left the bamboo house. Shang Qinghua walked a good chunk of the way to An Ding Peak, trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. It was good that his martial brothers always ignored him, because it made it easier to make it look like he was returning to his peak quickly rather than going with them to chat some more about the situation. As soon as he was reasonably sure no one would notice, he doubled back.
Shen Qingqiu was still lying in his bed in the bamboo house, though he was eying the desk - and, presumably, the neat stacks of papers on it - speculatively when Shang Qinghua walked in. Luo Binghe was nowhere to be seen, but that didn’t mean anything.
“Shang-shidi,” Shen Qingqiu drawled, an affected tilt to his brows. “Did you forget something?”
Trying to ignore the sight of the familiar face twisted by the unfamiliar expression, Shang Qinghua took a deep, fortifying breath and braced himself for pain.
Well, here goes nothing. “Xiao Jiu?”
Shen Qingqiu had him pinned to the wall before he could blink, nails digging into the soft flesh of Shang Qinghua’s throat. “Where have you heard that name?” he hissed. His eyes were very bright, and very cold.
Shang Qinghua swallowed, as well as he could with the hand gripping his neck. He banged a fist against the wall behind him, trying to make the blow as loud as possible, because he wasn’t actually suicidal enough to attempt to strike Shen Qingqiu.
Sure enough, Luo Binghe came running. “Shizun!” he cried, and then, very gently, forced Shen Qingqiu’s hand away from Shang Qinghua’s throat.
From his vantage point, he could see how Shen Qingqiu’s expression shuttered, and how he stiffened as Luo Binhge wrapped an arm around his shoulders to steer him back towards the bed. Shang Qinghua’s heart clenched.
“Um,” he said. “Perhaps it would be best to knock Shen-shixiong out again, for the time being.”
Luo Binghe nodded, looking wretched. Shen Qingqiu struggled a little, when he was pushed down onto the bed, but in the end he went easily enough. He stared up at Luo Binghe in defiance, though, jaw clenched and eyes shining with hatred, until they fluttered closed with sleep.
“Why did Shang-shishu return?” Luo Binghe asked. He was still looking at Shen Qingqiu’s face, fingers trembling a little where they rested against his cheekbone.
Shang Qinghua sighed, and with as much resolve as he could muster, said, “We need to talk.”