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Binghe makes breakfast as he always does, the kitchen empty and the kiss of dawn red barely a hint across the sky. Outside the very first stirrings of demons and servants are a low-grade shuffle of air and spiritual energy. The barrier over the palace buzzes with his energy, alive and humming. Binghe knows every inch of that barrier, has felt every being that’s crossed it, has had the pleasure of turning it deadly to sneaking traitors.
He hums as he plates the dishes and turns toward the royal wing. Beyond the windows, he passes the gardens and bamboo forest (the demons tasked with tending to it always leave in a daze – their muzzles scrunched from the sugary sweet and fresh air).
It is morning, but it is warm in the southern lands even at the start of what could be considered the winter of the Demonic realm, and the congee is still casting a steady stream of steam despite this. It smells good, if Binghe says so himself. Ning Yingying had taste-tested the new recipe two days ago with all the reverence of priest at a temple. Her enthusiasm was comforting, yet nervous still fluttered in Binghe’s stomach – the opinion that really matters, well…
Shizun had failed to mention it, as he often does on matters concerning himself, but Shang Qinqhua had confirmed that Shizun’s birth celebration was approaching. There wasn’t much Binghe wouldn’t do for his Shizun, and so much more that he would do even if it upset his Shizun if only it would keep him close.
This, this is nothing. Cooking breakfast, seeing the tiny eye crinkle of pleasure at each bite, he would find a way to do this even if his hands were cut from his body.
Their rooms are cloying still with the scent of incense and Shizun, the bed the hub of the smell. Binghe breathes it in, lets it settle the nerves, and instead wakes that burning that exists for only one person.
Binghe reaches for the pale hand sticking from the mound of pillows his Shizun prefers. As it often is, the fingers are cold. Binghe had complained about those same fingers pressing against his back at night to the musical laughter of his husband. (Shen Qingqu had shrugged while getting dressed, his hair a black silken waterfall over his shoulder, his eyes the shade of fresh bamboo shoots. Binghe had barely heard him speak. “I don’t suppose you know about circulation?” At Binghe’s frown, Shizun hmmed and said, “It’s not an illness, stop pouting.” Shizun never did finish getting dressed that day.)
“Husband,” He calls, tasting the word on his tongue, honey and the tartest tanghulu, a word that he clutches to his chest and stores whenever Shen Qingqu says it. He squeezes the fingers, expecting them to swat at him, or if Shizun is feeling truly generous, curl around his own soft with sleep. Neither happens.
Binghe pouts (knowing that despite Shen Qingqu’s protests, Binghe’s pouts are nearly as effective as his tears) and tries again, but the fingers stay rigid and cold in his hold. “This one made breakfast,” if anything is bound to rouse the other man, it’s the lure of Binghe’s cooking.
A moment passes, and Binghe’s pout melts into a frown, “Shizun?”
He’s vaguely aware of how quiet the outside world has fallen. The chattering of demons and the song of Yellow Fire Poison Birds a void now filled with the thud of Binghe’s heart.
The pillows seem a daunting task suddenly, their momentous weight and feathered edges like stone and soil. Binghe’s hand is shaking as he reaches for the nearest one; it too is cold and feels exceptionally heavy.
With his head pounding and breathing suddenly paused, Binghe wonders if he is dreaming. He had mastered dreams very long ago, had wrapped them around him, a cloak to both hide and seek in. He remembers, slow like swimming through a pool of blood, constructing Shizun’s bamboo house over and over and over again. How the Shizun in his dreams is always a bit too empty, a bit too happy to please Binghe.
(Shen Qingqu smiles over the low table, his eyes empty, his hands just the tiniest bit not-elegant enough, even as he says “Binghe,” it is hollow and Binghe can’t breathe through the fire in his lungs, the smell of blood, the knowledge that XinMo is singing just outside his dream to kill-kill-kill so much he needs to wants to has to.)
As the top of Shizun’s head comes into view beneath the pillows, an acidic twist in his stomach has him shaking all over.
Is that a dream too? He wonders as Shizun’s blank, open-eyed face comes into view. Was it all a dream? “Shizun?” He says, quiet and wet, but the face beneath his hands is still as stone, as death. The keen that leaves him is wretched from his throat, and he convulses over the body. Some force bigger than him, stronger than life and death, claws at him.
He grabs at the edges of the world and pulls.
Binghe rolls over and opens his eyes to the liquid light of morning, a cold hand against his wet cheek, and a warm whisper of “Binghe?”
He gasps and crumples forward into the exposed chest before him, its contours familiar and marked red by his lips only hours prior. Its rise and fall under his forehead is both the most wonderful and devastating thing and Binghe does not try to withhold his tears. The hands from before curl into his hair and over the back of his neck, gentle and yet firm; they are heaven against his too-hot skin, cooling the boil of his blood as he cries.
“What is it?” Shizun asks, his voice sleep rough but firm with his concern. “Husband, speak to me.”
Shaking his head, Binghe wraps his hands in the loose fabric of Shen Qingqu’s night robes to keep him from moving away.
“Please,” Shizun stresses, and Binghe gasps in a breath smelling of old papyrus and the dried sweat of the night before.
“You,” he says, struggling to raise his head, afraid that this would all be some awful continuation of his dream once he opens his eyes. He doesn’t want this to be a dream; he wants it to be real – and if, if this is the dream, he never wants to wake again.
“Me?” Shen Qinqu says his confusion is evident in his tone. “What? Binghe, I don’t understand, please- please look at me.”
Unwilling to deny his Shizun even this, Binghe raises his head and forces his eyes to the face above him. Eyes green as bamboo are furrowed, mouth bitten red, and cheeks flushed a delicate pink in worry. Shizun stares back at him. Whole and real and breathing.
Binghe launches himself across the space and captures his mouth – it’s clumsy and painful, and Binghe is still leaking tears – but it's everything. Shizun cringes yet doesn’t pull away, using his mouth to gentle the kiss. He hums softly, continuing to pet Binghe’s hair as he calms.
Minutes, hours, pass before Binghe can bring himself to pull away. He rests his forehead against his husband’s and breathes, staring into tilted emerald eyes and drinking in the smell of his hair oils.
“All right?” Shizun asks quietly, his thumb wiping at a tear track on Binghe’s cheek.
“Better,” Binghe replies, leaning into the touch and basking at the slightest crinkling of Shizun’s eyes. His eyelashes are long, Binghe notes as he always does when given the chance to stare, and this close, the green is a dancing tree canopy and the flutter of bird wings. There’s a hint of sleep sand at the inner corners of his eyes, and seeing it makes Binghe melt. “I love you,”
Shizun blinks, looks away, and clears his throat, “And I you.” This is enough for him to flush and for Binghe’s heart to swell dangerously. Shizun clears his throat, returning his gaze. “Now, will you tell me?”
Cringing, but unwilling to create space between them, Binghe curls closer against his husband’s chest. “A dream,”
“A dream?” Now sounding truly alarmed, Shizun nudges Binghe, trying to see his face again. “Binghe, what dream? Was it a demon?”
He shakes his head, “No, no, calm. It was…it, this one was back there. Shizun, your hands were so cold.” His breath hitches at this, and Binghe forces himself to breathe, to take in his husband’s scent.
Shizun’s hand is still in its place on Binghe’s neck, warm now with the flow of blood. “I see. This husband apologises, but he is here now.”
The sheets rustle around them, barely louder than the thud of Binghe’s heart. There’s a shift and a slight pressure on Binghe’s forehead, lips dry and warm, and Binghe squeezes his eyes tightly. “Do you feel this?” He asks, lips ghosting over Binghe’s temple, “My breath, my heartbeat, the warmth of my blood beneath your cheek, it is real. Feel me, Binghe, feel how alive I am. Here, now, with you.”
He says, “I feel you.” He does not say “I held your dead body in my arms”. He does not say “I wished to die every day, just to be with you”. He wants to rage at the world for the injustice of those years, feels it well up within him, a torrential flood of demonic qi pulsating in his demon mark.
Mobei Jun once said, when there was a lifeless body lying in Binghe’s bed, that Binghe was a child who had broken his first toy, that what he was feeling was obsession, not love. Binghe thought that was rich coming from an icicle who didn’t know the feeling of Shizun brushing his hair or the lava heat of preparing Shizun a bath, and hearing his sigh when he steps in. Binghe, obviously, threw Mobei Jun through a wall or two. He knows now, though, now that he has Shen Qingqu and gets to taste his sighs with his own lips, that he doesn’t care. Call it obsession, call it devotion or infatuation, for him naming it is nothing to experiencing it.
There were days when Binghe thought that maybe he was the one who was dead, that he had never left the Abyss, and this was the hell he’d been granted in death. If so, he thought, no other torture could compare.
As he slaughtered his own mind and as he fought through those seeking to take what little he had left of Shizun, he thought that children’s toys were objects of obsession for a reason. If he were a child, then Shen Qingqu was the blanket he tucked over his head when scared in the dark. If he were a child, then his SHizun was the gift his parents had given him when he scraped his knee. As long as Shizun existed, Binghe would find comfort, a home, a place to cry.
But Shizun was dead. A corpse kept the Demon emperor awake at night, listening to his pleas but never responding.
He had held the cold and stiff body of the man he loved, knowing he was dead because of Binghe, feeling the whisper to join Shizun in the afterlife swim through his veins. (Xin Mo delighted in it “why keep them alive”, because Shizun would want me to. “I can help,” no, no Shizun died to stop you.)
There was no food or drink to fill the gaping hole.
Here, now, with Shen Qingqu beneath him, cradled around him, and with the memory of the opposite still fresh in mind, Binghe does not know how he lived through not knowing Shizun’s lips, his most intimate sounds, the dimple in his spine.
Binghe breathes him in, forming his own body around that of his love, drinking the sounds of his reassurances and drowning in his gentle touch.
“I cannot lose Shizun,” Binghe says into the clavicle beneath his lips, “This Lord will not survive.”
“I am not going anywhere,” the words are fierce, and Shen Qingu’s fingers are firm against Binghe’s skin. “Did I not bow with you? Did this one not pledge his life to you?”
Binghe huffs, “This one’s master-”
“He is not as fragile as Binghe seems to think him.” A hand swats at his shoulder, too soft for any true effect. “Is this master not an immortal cultivator? The leader of a Peak? Has this one not defeated enough monsters to appease his husband?”
“Shizun,” Binghe complains, lifting his head to stare mulishly at his husband. “Shizun is strong, but-”
“-but Binghe will protect him from anything that may get past him.” Shen Qingqu’s gaze softens, and he cards elegant fingers through Binghe’s unbrushed hair. “I may have been lax with my own care in the past, but now I am yours. This master is not presumptuous enough to handle the Emperor’s spouse with such insufficiency and treason.” A smile graces the very corners of his lips, “My love, why would I ever allow you to weep over this master again? Did I not say enough how I adore you?”
Shuddering, Binghe leans into the hand on his head, eyes closed against those very tears. “This disciple apologizes for doubting Shizun,”
“Good,” he falls silent for a moment, fingers idle against messy hair. “But know that this master will not tolerate such disrespect again. Binghe will have to work hard to show that he understands.”
“Yes,” The demon emperor breathes and opens his eyes to survey his husband, “May this husband start by making Shizun breakfast?”
“En,”
Neither of them moves, their eyes glued, in the silence of pre-morning, their hearts are loud in their ears. Shen Qingqu releases a shuddery breath and is the first to avert his eyes, “If-if this husband may request, My Lord, stay a while more.”
Binghe flushes, more noticeable than that of Shizun, “If this one will be permitted to kiss you.”
Shizun splutters, head whipping around, but any embarrassed protests Shizun may have made are swallowed by Binghe’s lips. This kiss, this is soft, and Shen Qingqu immediately melts under Binghe’s lips, his frustrated grumbling slowly tapering off.