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Shen Yuan learns quickly.
The man who’d first pulled him into this world — all broad bare chest and fangs exposed in a grin — knows that it is a novel. He hadn’t even minded the body pillow that Shen Yuan doesn’t own but somehow brought with him. The likeness had been close enough, the real thing softer around the jaw and more defined in his curls, so the realisation hadn’t taken him long. A few stammering moments at most as the portal snapped closed behind him and the new world settled beneath his feet.
The others in the palace do not.
Shen Yuan hasn’t changed in this sloughing skin of one universe to another; he’s still frail, weak, pale from the lack of sunlight and his self-imposed isolation. All it takes is a few strikes to the soft curve of his belly, pinches to barely covered stretch of his thighs that take minutes to blacken and days to vanish completely, all carefully hidden beneath his clothing from the servant Luo Binghe had commanded to serve Shen Yuan. He’s a tall man with thick scars visible around his upper arms where his robe sleeves failed to hide, and he seems to take personal offence to this treatment of Shen Yuan.
The servant’s face is mostly covered by a thin gauzy mask, a similar veil drawn over his head, but from what Shen Yuan can make out, his hair is cropped short, just beginning to feather past his ears. His expression is partially a mystery, his face carefully blank as his hands tug at Shen Yuan’s clothes, moving the ties so they rest beneath fresh aches, supporting old pains instead of aggregating them, but there’s an old anger in his dark eyes as he watches Shen Yuan.
Shen Yuan doesn’t tell him that his existence is fictional.
He’s learnt better by now.
“It’s fine,” he tells his servant one day, Liú from the pieces Shen Yuan has managed to find, a mutter here, a barked command there. “I’ll just stay in my room today.”
Liú rests his fingertips against the edge of Shen Yuan’s neck, moves down the slope to where it meets his shoulder. His other hand still wields the brush — the handle bearing the distinctive pattern of the Greater Mountain Tortoise, and the bristles the colouring of Wider Lava Fields Horse — and Liú brings it in front of his face, further hiding the shadow slant of his mouth. They’re positioned carefully, the dresser nudged carefully to an angle by Liú over a matter of days and completed by Shen Yuan in a few minutes when he’d noticed. Shen Yuan tips his head back, his crown resting against Liú’s torso, trying to catch Liú’s gaze outside of the pale reflection in the mirror.
Liú taps Shen Yuan’s nose with his free hand, steering his head back upright with the same gesture. He draws the brush through Shen Yuan’s hair once more, longer now and able to be bound up with a small army of delicate hair ornaments.
Shen Yuan doesn’t try to argue further, chewing his debates to a fine paste beneath his teeth. He’d tried in those desperate early days when everything had been similar but just wrong, no air conditioning or phone at his hip to buzz, everyone human until they smiled a bit too wide to reveal shark teeth; roaming the palace until his feet bled and his silent shadow scooped him up and carried him back. He thinks Liú might’ve hated him a bit at the beginning. He hopes he doesn’t now.
There’s a knock on the doors.
Liú doesn’t freeze, but his expression shatters all the same as he backs away from Shen Yuan as if the air around him scalds. His eyes are wide, caught in a rictus Shen Yuan can only guess at the origin of. Liú looks human enough, but his features could be animalistic beneath the veil, another tribe dominated by the casual arm of the Emperor because one of the women caught his attention for the night, the evening, the hour.
It had been one of Shen Yuan’s primary complaints when he’d read the original novel, this hopping between wives only to relegate them into the depths of his harem, never to emerge again. He’d never thought of the wider impact to the clans left behind, of what that could mean for the survivors.
“Shizun?” Luo Binghe calls through the wood and Shen Yuan starts, pressing his fingers against his mouth to hold back a yelp.
He’d been Shen Yuan’s favourite since the first chapter, hell, the first sentence, but not like this, never like this!
Liú’s gaze catches his in the reflection, his eyes widening a fraction. Shen Yuan stands and makes his way to the door. He’s not dressed to receive visitors, barely out of his sleeping robes into a set more appropriate for the day; thin embroidered fabric of his outer robe floating with every step, his hair loose around his ears and falling over one shoulder, and he isn’t fit to receive royalty.
He opens the doors to the Emperor regardless.
Luo Binghe beams when he sees Shen Yuan, the mark on his forehead glowing faintly to further add to his radiance. He’s dressed for court, a heavy robe belted around the narrow line of his waist, accented by the sword that hangs there. His hair is messily gathered into a high ponytail, his curls snarled against the ornament securing them in place. There’s blood on his claws, a smear over his cheek, blacker than black.
“Shizun is keeping well? This Emperor could not bear not seeing him this very moment.” Luo Binghe doesn’t wait to be invited any further, stepping into the space Shen Yuan shrinks back from. Luo Binghe’s gaze drifts over his shoulder, catching on the sharp lines of Liú, and his grin only widens.
The reflexive denial that he’s not Luo Binghe’s ‘Shizun’ wilts to ash on Shen Yuan’s tongue. “Binghe didn’t have to travel all the way down here,” he tries instead, one hand still pressed to the door as the other twists in the fabric of his robes. “This humble servant would go to him.”
“No.” Luo Binghe catches Shen Yuan’s chin between his fingers, his thumb pressing against the soft line of his throat. Something breaks behind him, a delicate deliberate crash, and Luo Binghe laughs. “No, my little Shizun. I like you here.”
He turns them both, steps to the side and draws Shen Yuan with him until they’re both looking back into the room.
Liú stands tall, the scars on his arms pale against the dark flush burning over his shoulders. He still holds the brush, smashed against the corner of the dresser into a jagged point clutched in one steady fist.
Shen Yuan doesn’t think Liú hates him anymore. No-one who hates someone could ever look at them like that.
“My Shizun,” Luo Binghe murmurs, as soft and kind as Shen Yuan had imagined him being. “Yes, I like you being here.”