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Chapter Text

The first thing Liu Qingge became aware of, was the pain.

Deep, sharp, radiating from his lower abdomen. The pain was excruciating, yet grounding. His mouth was uncomfortably metallic, saliva hot in the back of his throat, blood thick on his tongue. Beyond the pain, the nausea was so so fierce he wanted to scream. His meridians felt like ice water, cold and sharp, yet somehow soothing. They were buzzing with unfamiliar qi. He sucked in a stuttering breath, eyes squeezed tight, scrunched in concentration as the fog began to slowly leave his head, clear yet throbbing.

He felt hot breath against his throat. Someone trembled against him. Words spoken yet not understood, muffled as if his head was underwater. Sharp nails dug into his shoulders. The scent of jasmine tea and bamboo as his head tipped dizzily forward and met silk.

There was a sound, a whimper. He absently ran his hand on fabric, sticky, wet. He tried to force himself to think, remember.

He had been meditating in the Ling Xi caves, trying to get through the bottleneck, trying to heal the heart demon that had been plaguing him for over a decade, then there was fire coursing through his meridians. Darkness. Rage. Green. The clash of a sword. Someone speaking. Shouting, crying, adrenaline, panic, blood. Then, pain. A scream of his name. The fogginess of his usually perfect memory told him he'd likely qi deviated.

He wanted to laugh, bitter with a new understanding. If this was what a qi deviation felt like, it was little wonder that Shen Qingqiu was such a cold heartless demon all the time, with his nearly monthly deviations. It was a cruel relentless lingering kind of agony.

Liu Qingge forced his eyelids to part. His vision swam, blackening along the edges, before settling on the dark silk his forehead rested on.

No. Not silk. Hair.

Shen Qingqiu!

His hands tightened. One was resting on the handle of his sword. He remembered now.

He remembered a brief moment of clarity. Finding himself awake in the center of the storm with his hands around Shen Qingqiu's slender pale throat, sharp nails digging into his forearms and pushing against his chest as the other man tried to force him to let go, tried to settle his qi as it ragged and burned. He remembered the horror. He remembered realizing that if he didn't die he would kill his martial brother. He remembered staggering away to grab his sword. He remembered Shen Qingqiu's wide dark green eyes, a shout of his name, green silk sleeves, then... 

Nothing.

He opened his eyes again. Shen Qingqiu was trembling against him.

He was so close. Why was he so close?

His body was thin, his skin felt sweaty but too cold, his breath was staggering and wet, hot on the curve of Liu Qingge's throat. Those sharp nailed fingers were digging into his shoulders, feeding a shivering stream of icy yin rich qi through his scorched meridians. He was in his lap, his legs parted around Liu Qingg's kneeling legs. It felt intimate, forbidden. He wanted to draw him in closer, but there was something wet and wrong and metallic that made him frightened, unable to pull him in. Liu Qingge's hand was on one of his slim hips, fingers digging into the sticky fabric, his forehead rested on top of his head. His hair was a mess, left loose with no ornaments, and...

Liu Qingge's other hand was around the handle of his sword.

The sword he'd stabbed through himself. The sword he'd stabbed straight through his martial brother into himself. He let go of it like it was on fire. The white and blue of his robes, the greens of his shixiong's robes, were soaked in so much red - his blood, Shen Qingqiu's blood.

Shen Qingqiu was speaking, his voice was frail as porcelain. It was uncharacteristically soothing, soft and delicate, somehow wrong. He didn't need comforted. If anyone needed comfort it was Shen Qingqiu Shen Qingqiu, who he had stabbed in the back.

He couldn't parse the words being said. He couldn't think beyond the sight of his sword in Shen Qingqiu's back, Shen Qingqiu's blood turning his green robes red from the upper back all the way down to the tacky puddle around them. There was so much blood. His blood. Shen Qingqiu's blood. His sword in Shen Qingqiu's back. His sword in his stomach. His sword pinning them together, stuck in a mockery of intimacy.

"-Brute?" the word cut through the fog and his shattered breathing. It almost felt affectionate, as it never had before, yet he didn't think Shen Qingqiu had said it any different than he'd ever said it before.

"Mn."

He couldn't seem to get any words to come out, his whole focus was relentlessly preoccupied by the body pinned to his, like a butterfly in a display case, the horrifying sight of Cheng Lun's handle sticking out of Shen Qingqiu's back. The red red red of his robes, dark and wet. He couldn't imagine the force it would have taken, to stab straight through his martial brother into himself so deeply that there was no space between the handle and his skin, barely any space between them.

His other hand hadn't moved from Shen Qingqiu's hip, he began to shakily stroke up and down his side as he reached for the sword.

Shen Qingqiu gave a sharp cut off scream when he tried to pull the blade free, his nails bit sharply through the fabric, and his teeth hooked into Liu Qingge's shoulder in a punishing bite that had him hissing and letting go of Cheng Lun's handle. It would definitely bruise, it would have broken skin if the layers of his robes hadn't been there to soften it.

"Don't." Shen Qingqiu stroked his shoulder as if trying to clumsily apologize. "It's the only thing keeping us alive."

Liu Qingge whined, distressed. He reached up to tip Shen Qingqiu's head up to see him better in the dim light of the bioluminescent miss that grew on the walls of the Lingxi Caves.

Shen Qingqiu was a man sharp as a blade - green phoenix eyes, long dark lashes, knife-like cheekbones, face carved from mutton fat jade. As pale as silk with icy dark green eyes like the needles of the pine trees growing on Bai Zhan. His dark brown hair spilled like water down his back and shoulders.

Heavens, he was beautiful. Always had been.

For a moment his vision blurred, seeing his loose hair and the red staining his robes and feeling him in his lap, and Liu Qingge was beset with a vision of his shixiong in wedding robes. The image disappeared just as fast as it came, but it plagued him.

How long had he been pining after his mysterious cold martial brother? Even as Shen Qingqiu proved to be a wicked dishonest man, he couldn't get him out of his head. Out of his blood. And now...

Now he realized Shen Qingqiu had saved his life. It was his qi keeping his meridians from burning out, it was his body that prevented the sword from killing him instantly. Shen Qingqiu had thrown himself between Liu Qingge and his sword.

What kind of loyalty must one have to use their own body to protect someone they hated? He blinked slowly, remembering every hissed threat to kill him, every cruel word hidden under the veil of civility, every dishonorable trick. Years spent thinking Shen Qingqiu must think him inferior, only to realize....

He didn't understand this man. He probably never had. He probably never would.

Shen Qingqiu's eyes glistened with tears. There was blood on his cheek.

"Don't cry Shen Qingqiu." He brushed his thumb over his wet cheek.

"I'm not crying." Shen Qingqiu hissed, unconvincingly. "Worry about yourself, we need to call for -"

He didn't even realize what he'd done until his mouth was already pressing a shuddering kiss to Shen Qingqiu's lips, forcing him to stop talking, mouths slick with blood and trembling with pain. Shen Qingqiu made a startled noise, he shivered in his hold with equal parts confusion and pain, but he didn't pull away. Perhaps the sword prevented him, perhaps it was the flickering finality that was making his heart beat so fast.

It was not life changing, it was not was everything he'd ever wanted, but it was real. Even with the blood, even knowing this would probably be the only time he could get away with this, knowing he'd die or have to claim delirium, it was ...

Shen Qingqiu was stiff in his lap, unmoving, his mouth slack and unresponsive. He whined in his throat. Yet, when Liu Qingge went to pull away he'd gripped his shoulders in protest. He hesitantly began to kiss slower, languid and gentle. Shen Qingqiu followed like he was being guided.

For a man known for visiting brothels, naturally good at everything he did, he didn't seem confident in this. Perhaps it was too intimate. He could fuck the girls at his brothel, but he couldn't kiss them. Any other time, this revelation would have made him a little mad, he thought, but ...

But now it set his blood boiling. The idea, however unlikely, that Shen Qingqiu still had a first to give. A first to take. Liu Qingge forgot for a moment that they were skewered together. He surged forward to kiss him harder, pulled him closer into his lap.

White hot pain burned through him as the sword shifted. Shen Qingqiu let out a sound of agony, tense, his fingers splayed out then tensed, then clamped back down and dug bruises into his arms. Liu Qingge pulled away, but he could still feel Shen Qingqiu's breath mingling with his own.

He kissed his cheek in apology, panting from pain and elation alike. The sword inside them and their inevitable death meant nothing when he knew now what Shen Qingqiu tasted like. They way he shuddered and hesitantly kissed back. The way his legs had twitched around him.

"Why did you do that?" Shen Qingqiu shivered like a leaf in his arms.

Liu Qingge had never been good with words. He would try to be honest, not hide himself, so nothing could be misunderstood.

"If we survive," Liu Qingge panted against his trembling lips, "I want to court you. I want to know you."

Shen Qingqiu looked startled. And, hopeful, but also terrified. Like, he didn't want to let himself believe Liu Qingge was saying such things, because if he let himself hope, then he'd only be disappointed when Liu Qingge realized he was not in his right mind.

He couldn't stand it. Now that the words he'd been holding back so long were out he couldn't stop them. They flooded out, if only so Shen Qingqiu would know this was not a temporary delirium. It was real.

"Shen Qingqiu," he whispered against his cheek, "I want to crawl into the space between your ribs and heart and never leave. Want to marry you and kiss you and make love to you."

He curled his fingers possessively into the long silken dark strands of hair. "I'm so jealous of your brothel girls, Shen-shixiong. I want to scream every time you go down the mountain because I am not enough for you. Why am I never what you want?"

"Brute, you aren't in your right mind." Shen Qingqiu flexed his legs, as if he wanted to run, but he couldn't. He couldn't escape.

"Want to be under your skin like you are under mine." He panted. "I want you so badly it makes me mad. I want to fight you. You never tell me no, it's the only way I can get you close. I'll fight you until I die, but I want you in red robes. I want to meet your family, want to know everything about you. I want to keep you."

He pulled him tighter against him, heedless of the sword, heedless of the pain he caused them both, just so their chests could be pinned tight together. His cursed fucking useless traitor of a sword. He hated to see it drawing blood that should never wet that blade. Wanted to throw his spiritual sword into the forge.

He was getting aggregated, his words coming sharp and desperate. Shen Qingqiu whimpered as his fingers tugged his silk hair. "I want to be allowed to know you and have you and never want you to go. Qingqiu, I want you to want me as much as I want you. I want you to be mine. I'd be good for you. Why am I not enough?"

"Liu Qingge!" Shen Qingqiu hissed, wronged as Liu Qingge bit him in frustration, his voice shouting his name was frantic and worried.

"Why can't you love me?!" The words echoed around the caves like a curse, mocking, cold and empty.

"Brute," Shen Qingqiu's voice was sharp, cold, always so cold. "This master... I -"

Whatever he'd meant to say, the rejection that was sure to follow, was cut off as Liu Qingge surged forward to kiss him again. His hand dropped to Cheng Lun's handle. He pulled before Shen Qingqiu could remind him why he shouldn't. Shen Qingqiu screamed, but he'd rather die here with Shen Qingqiu's taste in his mouth, without ever hearing the rejection, knowing Shen Qingqiu knew finally the words trapped in his heart.

Everything was dark again.

Chapter Text

When Liu Qingge opened his eyes, he was no longer in the caves. He was in a room with a high white ceiling and wood walls. There was an open window. The light breeze was rustling the branches of the flowering tree, scenting the air with a soft sweet fragrance. The white blankets and sheets were soft, soft like the single white robe he wore. Everything was too white, too bright, to clean.

It wasn't the first time he'd woken in Qian Cao. It wouldn't be the last.

He tried to sit up, but there was so much pain.

There was a feeling not dissimilar to sand in his eyes, the burning of the brightness making his head pound and swim. It felt like the very blood in his veins was too loud. The noise of people outside was too loud. Too bright too loud too much!

There was a somehow freezing yet scorched feeling in his meridians. Like fire and ice. Instead of cancelling each other out, finding a balance of yin and yang, it was fighting and his spiritual veins were burning and frostbitten all at once.

His stomach felt curdled and acidic. It wasn't just the pain of the wound, tightly bound, tugging against the bandages, itching and throbbing. He wanted to throw up. His mouth was hot, dry but watering. His throat was tight and aching like he'd had it ripped open.

His chest hurt. It was tight and searing. He couldn't breathe. Every breath felt like poison. His heart felt like it was being crushed in a tight fist. His lungs felt like they'd been torn from him and put in wrong.

His sword arm was in agony, a deep horrible pain around the shoulder, so overwhelming that he couldn't move it. The pain radiated down his tendons and muscles, making his back feel stiff and sharp, the skin felt stretched too tight. The white hot burning pain was stronger around the middle of his back.

His other hand was cramped and aching, bone deep, as if he'd broken every finger over and over and didn't let them heal. The sharp pain traveled up his bones, making it hurt even more when he so much as twitched.

His legs and hips felt the same as his hand. An aching deep in the very bones, like they'd been twisted, like they'd been shattered and healed wrong. Like his legs had been pulled from the sockets like he was nothing but one of the articulated dolls he'd seen in use during Shen Qingqiu's art lessons when they'd been disciples.

It was worse than the time he'd been poisoned by Twilight Heart Dandelions and didn't realize until he'd been paralyzed and had to duel cultivate to heal it. He only made that mistake once, it had been ... Unpleasant. Liu Qingge was very careful not to get poisoned by anything that couldn't be solved with a good fight instead of another body, another person's hands pinning... no, he wasn't going to think about that. Somehow, this was inexplicably worse.

It was worse than being bitten by an Emerald Acid Wolf and having his blood feel like fire. Worse than the poison spreading through his body and meridians until he'd awoken in Qian Cao as a disciple to hear it had been two weeks and he didn't know what had happened. He hadn't felt safe. They could have done anything to him.

There was a reason he didn't like being in Qian Cao. Mu Qingfang was trustworthy, but everyone else ...

This was worse than anything he'd ever felt.

The bandages itched and tugged against the wound left behind by his -

Liu Qingge lurched upwards in bed despite the pain as he remembered.

The excruciating pain as his meridians burned out of control, boiling in his spiritual veins like acid and lava. He remembered raging, stalking like a beast through the caves, drawn by that scent, jasmine and bamboo. He remembered coming across Shen Qingqiu in another part of the caves, and seeing him sitting cross legged, peaceful, meditating with his sword upon his lap.

He remembered wanting but not knowing what he wanted. Staring as Shen Qingqiu's eyelids twitched as he became aware. He remembered clawing against the stone as he stepped forward. He remembered the sound of his sword scraping against the stone, watching as those dark green eyes opened, and then the fear that filled them as Shen Qingqiu threw himself out of the way of a blow he had no control of.

He remembered being distracted by the way his long sleeves billowed like green silk butterfly wings as he fought only to defend himself, never aiming to harm even as Liu Qingge did his best to kill him. He remembered Shen Qingqiu shouting at him, trying to snap him out of it. Couldn't remember what he'd said. He could remember the tone though, the fear, the way he shivered as he'd been backed into a wall.

He remembered the moment Shen Qingqiu disarmed him, his sword clattering to the ground. He remembered Shen Qingqiu dropping his own sword instantly. He remembered the rush of cold yin rich qi through his meridians.

He remembered pushing Shen Qingqiu down to the ground and trying to choke him, screaming in his own head as he couldn't get ahold of his body, his martial brother struggling to tell him he was going to be okay as he was still pushing his qi into Liu Qingge.

He remembered a tsunami. He remembered the way their qi mingled then went out of control. The way it kept slipping as his fingers clenched, as Shen Qingqiu gasped for breath and struggled under him. He remembered pressing his whole body down between his legs, wanting without knowing what he wanted, his fingers slipping and hooking into the collar of his robes. 

He remembered the sudden dizzying clarity, when his qi deviation finally stopped. He was so horrified by everything that he'd thrown himself off of Shen Qingqiu and lunged for his sword, not even recognizing that the danger had passed. If he'd stopped, if he'd taken a moment to breathe and feel through the panic and shame, he would have realized he'd stopped deviating, that Shen Qingqiu had saved him. But, in his horror, he did not see it.

He remembered the gleam of his sword and the sound of his name. He remembered Shen Qingqiu flinging himself forward, the resistance and pain of the sword sliding through both of them. He remembered blacking out from the pain, coming back confused and disoriented with Shen Qingqiu struggling to keep them alive with his qi running through them both.

He remembered how close they had been, close enough that had it not been for the sword, Liu Qingge could have made love to his shixiong right like that. He remembered Shen Qingqiu's words - poisonous to hide the concern and terror inside them.

No, you aren't allowed to die. Arrogant brute, why are you so stupid? Why would you do this? Don't you know, if you die, they'll blame me? I haven't spent so much effort saving your life for you to throw it away like a child throwing a tantrum. Hey, no, stay with me! Stay! Hey, Liu Qingge you ...

Can you hear me, Brute?

He remembered the blood slick kisses, the way Shen Qingqiu trembled against him as he half-deliriously confessed how much he wanted him. He couldn't believe he'd done that, said such things. He'd been holding those secrets in his heart since they were disciples.

He remembered his hand around the sword.

He didn't remember what happened next, but he could guess. He passed out from the pain and blood loss most likely, and Shen Qingqiu probably saved them by activating an emergency talisman. Or maybe they died, and the emergency alerts in the caves went off. 

How long has he been out? What happened to Shen Qingqiu? He did not dare let himself contemplate the worst outcome, he would kill himself if his qi deviation led to Shen Qingqiu's death. He forced himself to move, to try to stand.

"Shibo!" He was pushed back onto the bed by an unfamiliar girl in Qian Cao brown robes. "You shouldn't get up!"

"Where-" his voice cut off, hoarse and grating, he coughed violently as he tried to force himself to speak through the acid and panic, "Shen-"

"Shhhh," the disciple pressed a cup to his lips, cold and bitter and he whined as he forced it down. His stomach protested, but he refused to let it come back up.

"Take me -" he coughed again, "Shen- bring-"

The girl gave him a pitying look and pulled away, but he grabbed her sleeve.

"Take me-" he grasped her robe tight, "-to him!"

His voice cracked as he screamed.

"Liu-Shixiong!" He looked up to see My Qingfang in the doorway, and the healer crossed the room to pry his disciple's sleeve out of his grasp. "You shouldn't move."

He glared as he was shoved back into the bed, somehow too weak to fight against him. "Shen-" he rasped grabbing Mu Qingfang by the front of his robes, "take - me - to - him - now!"

Mu Qingfang shoved him down and forced his hands to let go. The disciple and Mu Qingfang disappeared from his view for a moment, speaking quietly - he couldn't understand what they were saying. He forced himself to speak, demanding in broken raspy calls of Shen Qingqiu's name as he struggled into a seated position with dizzying impossibility.

The taste of blood and jasmine in his mouth.

There was so much blood. His blood, Shen Qingqiu's blood. The sickening sight of his sword in Shen Qingqiu's back.

Their blood, his sword, the agony of their qi as it flowed and tried not to deviate again, but their control was slipping.

The sound of Shen Qingqiu's scream as he yanked the sword out. His sword didn't belong inside him. His sword should never be the cause of so much of his blood.

There was so much blood. Liu Qingge's blood, Shen Qingqiu's blood.

The sticky warm puddle forming beneath them, soaking their robes red like wedding robes, his sword in Shen Qingqiu's back. The taste of blood and jasmine in his mouth. The intimacy of Shen Qingqiu perched in his lap, connected, unable to leave, his soft hesitant lips.

The taste of blood and jasmine.

I'll kill you, Brute. Words hissed when they were just children, dirt and blood in his teeth, dark green eyes glaring from the boy in the dirt.

Brute, Shen Qingqiu's voice always hiding the affection he felt behind bladed walls of ice, This master... I -

Finally, Mu Qingfang was back by his side with a frown, just in time to catch him as his legs collapsed under him when he stood.

"Shen-" Liu Qingge demanded, eyes wild, blood and jasmine on his tongue "-now!"

Mu Qingfang let out a deep sigh. "Okay, lean on me."

Chapter Text

They began to walk, Liu Qingge hardly managed to take each step. The walk felt endless, the corridor stretched out like it was hundreds of Li instead of only a few doors down. Liu Qingge was heavily supported by Mu Qingfang, the healer struggling to keep him upright as he fought against the pull of unconsciousness. He kept his eyes fixed forward as they stepped down the neverending hall to reach the room three doors to the left of his. He didn't stop until he collapsed into a chair by Shen Qingqiu's side.

Nothing mattered. His entire existence condensed to his shixiong. Everything faded around them.

Shen Qingqiu was unconscious, his long dark hair spilled over one shoulder, loose and dulled. He wouldn't like that. Liu Qingge had never seen him wear it down, not until the caves. For a moment, he couldn't breathe, not until Shen Qingqiu's chest rose. His breathing was sharp even in sleep. Too fast. He blinked rapidly and took a shuddering inhale. He couldn't let afford to panic again, Mu Qingfang would surely use his needles. Liu Qingge stared intensely at the thick streak of white in his hair. It hadn't been there when he saw him last.

Someone spoke, voice high and familiar but he didn't hear what they said. His trembling fingers were suddenly holding the long silken strands of white in his hand. He couldn't remember reaching out. He couldn't smell the familiar scent of Shen Qingqiu's jasmine hair oil, couldn't smell the way the bamboo of his peak clung to him like a natural part of his scent. It felt wrong. 

Shen Qingqiu was pale, not the jade of his usual complexion, sickly, yet his cheeks were flushed. His lips were chapped, his eyes were sunken and surrounded by dark circles, there was sweat in his hair and on his skin. There was a cut stitched closed under his left eye. There was blood and tears on his cheeks, pain and panic in his eyes.

Like Liu Qingge, he was in only one thick white robe. He was deeply viscerally aware that until now he'd never seen Shen Qingqiu in less than seven layers. Qing Jing teal always layered with perfect attention to color coordination, gauzy ephemeral in an ever so enticing way, skin from neck to feet completely covered. Who undressed him? Who dared - Without the armour of his layers, he looks so small. Fragile.

His chest was bound in thick bandages. His right arm was - gone. The bandages covered a stump over his shoulder. He didn't understand. Had he done that? He didn't remember cutting his arm off. Why didn't he remember?

"Gege?" He flitted his gaze away from Shen Qingqiu's pained, feverish, tense face. He was more than a little surprised to find Mingyan sitting beside him. He hadn't seen her.

"Gege, can you understand me?" Liu Mingyan asked, above the veil her eyes were squinted and her brows were furrowed, the way they did when she was worried.

He stared at her, unblinking. His sister wore jasmine hair oil too, he realized. A similar scent, but not the exact one.

Shen Qingqiu's preferred scent was ephemeral and delicate. It danced tantalizingly with the lingering scents of the bamboo growing on his peak, the oil he used to polish his sword, the high quality ink he preferred, the sweet aroma of the delicate teas he drank, and the soft spice of the ginger candies he kept in his sleeves.

The jasmine his sister wore was a bolder scent, cut through with citrus and honey. It was strong and thick, the only scent on her. A strong feminine perfume meant to draw attention.

It would have to do.

Liu Qingge forced himself to speak, keeping his voice slow and quiet to not aggregate his throat like his earlier frantic yelling had. "Hair oil?"

"The scent?" He shook his head. Liu Mingyan tilted her head, the way a confused animal would. "You want my hair oil?"

"En."

Liu Qingge was pleased when she hesitantly reached into her sleeve and passed him a small vial. He had not considered before that she might not have some on her, he was grateful she carried it. Liu Qingge poured the smallest amount possible in his hands, so it wouldn't be overbearing, and gave it back to her.

He slowly began to gather Shen Qingqiu's long hair, forcing his hands and fingers to move despite the pain. Shen Qingqiu never wore his hair down, he never wore so little. He massaged the oil through his strangely dull hair, and arranged it into a loose clumsy braid over one of his bony glass shoulders. Pleased, Liu Qingge pulled and smoothed the blankets over Shen Qingqiu's shallowly moving chest.

It was as his fingers brushed against the bandaged wound on Shen Qingqiu's shoulder, and his own shoulder flared with burning pain, that Liu Qingge froze. His eyes darted wildly. The pain in his shoulder, the empty space where Shen Qingqiu's arm should be. The stinging on his cheek, the stitched wound beneath his eye. The pain in his back and chest, the wound left by his sword.

"He's in so much pain." He murmured, heartbroken.

"Shidi?" He looked up to see Yue Qingyuan standing on the other side of the bed. His face was dark, cold. He'd never seen it like that. The man was always upsettingly placid. Unreadable.

"I can feel it." Liu Qingge pressed his aching fingers into the the meat of his shoulder.

Mu Qingfang was suddenly holding his wrist, a thin thread of qi soothing his meridians. The pain lessened, and Shen Qingqiu's harsh expression softened minutely. Mu Qingfang let go of his wrist and took Shen Qingqiu's. He felt the qi in his veins as if Mu Qingfang was still holding his wrist.

"Oh." He gasped.

"What's wrong?" The sect leader asked, frantic, his fingers clenched into the white covers beside Shen Qingqiu, in the empty space where Shen Qingqiu's arm should be.

"They're qi locked." Mu Qingfang answered, his voice that careful sort of tone he took when he was discovering something that was medically exciting, but he knew he needed to be delicate on behalf of the patient.

Without being asked to explain, Mu Qingfang started talking while he gathered several herbs onto the counter, "I've only ever heard about it. In her first month as head disciple, Shizun and Gao-Shizu treated two married rogue cultivators from the borderlands. From my understanding, the wife tried to treat a life-threatening qi deviation, but didn't know what she was doing. Their qi ended up tangled, something to do with their qi being extremely compatible. They couldn't be too far away from each other, they were sharing thoughts, feelings - physical and emotional-, and memories through dreams. I believe, Shizu prescribed several healing teas and sessions of duel cultivation -" Liu Qingge's mouth went dry and his face turned red "-to balance them back and untangle their qi from one another, but I would have to check her journals to be certain."

Done with this explanation, and completely unaware of how affected Liu Qingge was by the idea of duel cultivating with Shen Qingqiu - Shen Qingqiu, who he didn't let reject or accept his courtship before he tried to kill them both, Shen Qingqiu who was highly experienced but kissed soft and shy like a bullied virgin, Shen Qingqiu whose lips tasted like jasmine flower tea and their combined blood in the cold moss-lit cave Liu Qingge had chased him into during his deviation - Mu Qingfang finished preparing two small cups of medicinal tea and pressed one into Liu Qingge's shaking fingers.

"Take this Liu-shixiong." Mu Qingfang was already slowly pouring the same concoction into Shen Qingqiu's mouth, massaging his throat to make it go down.

Liu Qingge took a sip, then immediately had to shove his hand over his mouth to prevent himself from spitting it out or throwing up. He gave the man a betrayed look.

"It's for the pain and the fever." The healer frowned at him.

Liu Qingge glanced under his eyelashes at Shen Qingqiu. His steely eyes lingered on the white twisting through the unfortunate braid he'd arranged his martial brother's hair into. For Shen Qingqiu's hair to be streaked white like this, he would have had to have had a qi deviation so severe it killed him. It did not matter that he was breathing now, that he'd been brought back. Liu Qingge had killed him.

He lifted the cup to force the bitter brew down. For Shen Qingqiu.

Chapter Text

"Yu-ge," Liu Mingyan took the cup gently from him, rubbing soothing circles on his back, "you have to breathe."

Liu Qingge forced himself to breathe in. Only as the air filled his lungs did he realize how starved for breath he had been. He hadn't realized he'd stopped. He focused on taking steady breaths, in and out slow and deep, like meditating.

Far sooner than he would have expected, the medicinal tea Mu Qingfang gave him, began to affect him, stealing the pain with dizzying speed. It settled over him like a warm fog, the pain dulling to nothing but an annoyance in the background. His head felt stuffed full of cotton, his mouth felt horribly dry. He giggled dizzily as he tried to stand and his legs went boneless beneath him. Yue Qingyuan was suddenly there, a strong arm around his waist, keeping him supported. When he twisted his head to ask Mu Qingfang if this was normal, rainbow lights trailed along the edges of his vision.

Liu Qingge smiled, dazed. He was flying, spinning round and round like dancing. Everything was so shiny. His eyes settled on the dark ribbon in Yue Qingyuan's hair. Teal so dark it was almost black. Liu Qingge caught it between his fingers, he tugged, his hair spilled out like water as the silk slid out of his fingers onto the floor. He blinked lazily. The sect leader gave him a strange look, but whatever it meant was lost. Always so unreadable.

"Zhangman Shixiong is so strong," he slurred, his tongue heavy, and patted the arm around his waist. He tilted his head up to look at his tanned face and broad shoulders, the ink hair spilling down his back. "He could lift me up onto his shoulder with one arm."

There was a strangled laugh from the sect leader. Curious, he squirmed around so he could lick his neck. He didn't know why he needed to. He got a mouthful of hair , his teeth scraped over the tendons in his neck. The laugh stuttered out into a strange sound. Yue Qingyuan was red, his dark amber-black eyes wide. He went to let him go and Liu Qingge made a noise like he was dying, felt like it was the end of the world. That strong arm went right back around his waist. He tipped his head back drowsily with a pleased languid growl. He stared at Shen Qingqiu upsidedown, contemplative, then glanced wondrously at the sect leader's big hands on his own waist.

"Zhangman Shixiong could wrap one hand around Shen Shixiong's whole waist." He murmured, stars in his eyes. His blood felt hot. His body felt light and loose, like his bones had been turned to noodles.

"How fascinating!" Mu Qingfang was suddenly standing right in front of him, both of him. He didn't know Mu Qingfang had a twin. "Perhaps, we should have split a single dose between them."

He blinked and Mu Qingfang was gone. His sister faded into his vision like ink spilling across canvas, edges blurring, rainbow glimmering off her silhouette. "Gege."

"A-yan," he hummed happily, heart warmed by the sight of her. He remembered the night she'd helped him understand his strange confusing feelings for Shen Qingqiu. She'd be excited that he'd finally managed to kiss him. "He tastes like jasmine."

She laughed bright and warm like the sun, "Zhangman Shibo does?"

Liu Qingge laughed at her. The sect leader didn't taste like jasmine. He tasted like salt and fire. He smelled like ash and ozone, so alike the oppressive spiritual energy in the caves, like pine and ink, like over brewed tea and leather, like old books and sesame and the same sword oil Shen Qingqiu used. She was so silly.

He opened his mouth to tell her, but then he felt it, on the edges of consciousness, butterfly wings of confusion floating, fluttering as Shen Qingqiu woke.

Shen Qingqiu's eyelashes fluttered. He made soft whine in the back of his throat. His eyes slowly squinted open. Liu Qingge breathed out with relief, he might have whispered his name. Yue Qingyuan's arm tightened around his waist. Shen Qingqiu sat up, struggling, swaying and then their eyes met.

Liu Qingge wasn't aware of breaking out of Yue Qingyuan's grasp. He wasn't aware of stumbling forward and grabbing Shen Qingqiu by his waist with both hands. He wasn't aware of anything except Shen Qingqiu. He pulled Shen Qingqiu in for a desperate kiss, forgetting about everyone else.

It was so much better than the last time. For one thing, Shen Qingqiu kissed back a lot faster this time, a soft swaying edge of confusion and contentment lingering among the clouds in his head, sleepy and swaying like a boat adrift at sea. For another there was no blood in their mouths, just that stale just awake taste and the lingering bitterness of the medicinal tea, that sweet jasmine as Shen Qingqiu's tongue slid shyly against his, his single remaining hand coming up to tug Liu Qingge's loose hair gently. Most importantly, there wasn't a sword preventing him from pulling Shen Qingqiu into his grasp. Most importantly, he was alive, awake, finally, finally, finally...

It wasn't a dream.

Someone tapped his shoulder, cleared their throat loudly. Liu Qingge clenched his hands around Shen Qingqiu's small waist, his fingers touched, forefingers brushing and he nearly lost control. Shen Qingqiu gasped into his mouth, the heat between them sparking, felt in a feedback loop of drowsy need and want and elation. Liu Qingge pulled away with deep reluctance when his lungs protested. Not far, not letting go, still hovering over him, breath mingling hot on his face.

Shen Qingqiu looked dazed, his lips were wet, pinker than they had been. His eyes darted across Liu Qingge's face in wonder. Heat coiled, simmered low. Liu Qingge nuzzled against him like a big sleepy cat, legs shaking, his fingers slipping across the soft cotton of the robe by his waist.

"Qingqiu." Liu Qingge whispered, resting their foreheads together, his skin was so hot. "You scared us."

Shen Qingqiu looked over his shoulder, then his eyes widened and he let out a horrified noise, embarrassment flooding through them, before pulling out of his grasp and yanking the blanket up over his face in absence of a fan. His forehead and ears were bright red, his pine dark eyes were fixed on Yue Qingyuan behind him. The heat spiked violently.

"Brute!" He hissed accusingly, like it was his fault that there were other people in the room, and Liu Qingge couldn't help but giggle because he could feel how affectionate that one word was, even if his tone was sharp and aggrieved.

They both swayed the blanket slipped out of Shen Qingqiu's hand. Yue Qingyuan caught him again. Shen Qingqiu curled his legs up to rest his head against them, but his eyes lingered, heated, on the arm wrapped around Liu Qingge's waist, envy, want, burning burning burning.

"What did you give me?" Shen Qingqiu slowly blinked dark unfocused eyes.

Mu Qingfang said something nonsensical. They both stared at him. He stared back. Liu Qingge blinked, Shen Qingqiu frowned. He sighed, deeply unimpressed. "Medicine." Mu Qingfang quipped, but he smiled, indulgently.

Liu Qingge nodded seriously. At least there was no pain. He could fight a flying tiger and win. He could punch the moon.

"Don't like it." She Qingqiu whined accusingly, "My head is too -" he made a vague gesture, which Liu Qingge realized meant fuzzy and slipping and unbalanced. There was an edge, sharp as a blade, danger. He understood, he didn't like it when he couldn't think either, it was ...

"Not safe." Liu Qingge agreed solemnly.

Mu Qingfang frowned. His twin was suddenly no longer near him. Where'd he go? Liu Qingge hadn't remembered to ask what his name was. "You aren't in danger, Shixiongs."

Shen Qingqiu squinted. He leaned, then yelped as he toppled over, the arm that should have caught him no longer there. There was a spinning vertigo, the dread of the floor, a warm strong arm. Liu Qingge's eyes widened. He hadn't felt Yue Qingyuan move, drag him forward to catch him. He still had his arm around Liu Qingge, his other arm was around Shen Qingqiu's chest, his knee was balanced in the edge of the bed.

"Qi-ge." Shen Qingqiu breathed, eyes wide and suspiciously wet.

The feelings coursing through them were complicated - sadness, betrayal, happiness, wonder, and confusion. There was a flash of memory - Yue Qingyuan's face, younger, a promise Liu Qingge couldn't hear the words, pain, terror, and fire. He shook his head, Shen Qingqiu 's nails were clawing into the sect leader's chest, his head on one broad shoulder.

"You caught me." Shen Qingqiu shook.

"I was too late last time," Yue Qingyuan whispered into his hair, "I won't be late again, Xiao Jiu."

There was something important about that, but neither of them could understand what. Another flash of scrambled memory - fire burning, pain between their legs, bruises on their hips, hands pinning them down, they are fourteen, they are twelve, a man's voice "you are so fucking pretty -" two names, overlapping in poison and fright.

There were tears stinging Liu Qingge's eyes, they dripped down Shen Qingqiu's cheeks. Their eyes meet, mirrors of understanding. The memories and the pain of them floated away under the steam-bath fogginess of the medicinal tea, but it left a lingering discomfort and knowing.

Shen Qingqiu leaned back, Yue Qingyuan's arm slipped but Shen Qingqiu's fingers were tight in his robes so he couldn't move away. Shen Qingqiu shifted awkwardly to get his legs off the bed. He stood, legs giving out. The sect leader grunted as he caught him and held both of them up, wide eyed.

Liu Qingge eyed his shoulders. He could pick them both up one armed and put them on his shoulders. He heard a choked noise, his sister's bell like laugh rang and echoed loudly. He flushed, embarrassed, as he realized he'd said that out loud. Shen Qingqiu bit Yue Qingyuan on the shoulder. He sent Mu Qingfang a pleading look and Liu Qingge shifted so he could nuzzle Shen Qingqiu again.

"I need to check your meridians." Mu Qingfang announced, but who he was speaking to was unclear.

Liu Qingge looked at Mu Qingfang, wary, unsettled. Shen Qingqiu hissed like a sopping wet cornered street cat, his teeth still clenched around the black fabric of Yue Qingyuan's robes. Shen Qingqiu wrapped his arm possessively around the sect leader's waist, his empty shoulder twitched, and Liu Qingge moved to solve the issue. Liu Qingge wrapped his arm around Zhangman Shixiong's shoulders, their hands met at the center of his broad back, fingers laced. His other went around Shen Qingqiu's waist above Yue Qingyuan's arm. The sect leader was trapped in the cage of them. He glared at Mu Qingfang.

Mu Qingfang blinked once, twice, then smiled wide like a fox. "You can sit in Zhangman Shixiong's lap while I check." 

The sect leader made that weird strangled whimper whine again. He looked to the sky and swallowed heavily, the apple of his throat bobbed. Shen Qingqiu smiled. Liu Qingge had never seen him smile. He was absolutely divine, breathtakingly glorious, when he smiled. Liu Qingge squeezed his hand.

"Acceptable." Shen Qingqiu declared in a menacing purr.

Mu Qingfang walked over, dragging the chair from the other side of the bed. He pushed the sect leader down into it. Liu Qingge and Shen Qingqiu stumbled, and then, without knowing how they'd gotten there, they were seated. One on each knee. He was staring at Shen Qingqiu with bewildered eyes. His sister crawled onto the bed where Shen Qingqiu had been only moments earlier, with her brush and papers, writing furiously, intensely staring. He should be worried, he didn't know why.

Mu Qingfang hummed and circled around the sect leader to press his fingers along their wrists, their hands still clasped. The sect leader was red, along his neck, his ears, his face. Shen Qingqiu licked his cheek, his eyes were trained on Liu Qingge. Daring. Liu Qingge grinned, he copied him. His tongue slid wet across the salt and fire of Yue Qingyuan's skin. The sect leader gripped bruising tight on his hip, on their hips, he trembled and groaned. He sounded wrecked, bullied, pitiful. Liu Qingge laughed darkly against his cheek. Shen Qingqiu shifted so his legs bumped Liu Qingge's.

"I'll bury you both under Bai Zhan Peak." Shen Qingqiu threatened, but his eyes were half lidded, and Liu Qingge's head was spinning with possessiveness and hunger.

"Whatever you want." He tugged his arm back and dug his nails into the sect leader's chest, hooking into the front of his robes to expose the skin hidden. "Whatever you need."

The second Mu Qingfang let go of their wrists, Liu Qingge was lunging. Their teeth clacked. Zhangman Shixiong made a choked noise. Shen Qingqiu dug his nails into the sect leader's shoulder, his breath was hot on Liu Qingge's lips.

"I'll give you everything." Liu Qingge gasped, a threat.

Shen Qingqiu growled, low and dark. "Promise?"

Liu Qingge grabbed Yue Qingyuan by the jaw and twisted to make him face Shen Qingqiu. They moaned in unison when Shen Qingqiu pressed their lips together. Liu Qingge sunk his teeth into the man's exposed neck. Yue Qingyuan tensed and sobbed into Shen Qingqiu's mouth.

There was a startled noise in the doorway. Liu Qingge turned to look, meeting the baffled eyes of an oddly familiar child, with an absolute mess of curled hair in the robes of a Qing Jing disciple.

"Little beast." Shen Qingqiu greeted. His voice dripped with malice, but Liu Qingge's head swam with a complicated mess of fondness, dread, exasperation, jealousy, confusion.

Instinctively, he realized the boy was a terrible student, a trouble maker, a wolf in sheep's clothing. He understood he was the type who skipped all his classes and didn't try to better himself. The type to wait for rescue without defending himself. The type instinctively good at everything but who refused to use his talent. A boy like this wouldn't have lasted two days on Bai Zhan.

He realized, he recognized the boy.

"Is that our child?" He asked.

Chapter Text

Luo Binghe paced restlessly in the serene garden of Qian Cao. He wanted to scream, wanted to cry, wanted to punch something. It had been four days.

Four days since the demons attacked, shattered the rainbow bridges like glass. They had come in a swarm, mocking, laughing as they wrecked havoc upon the peak. He had been frightened, weak, lost in the crowd of terrified disciples.

Days later, the memories were somehow both sharp, clear, agonizing, yet dulled, foggy, unclear.

There had been a raid.

Not the demons yet, but disciples of Bai Zhan.

It was a game they had taken to playing for the past few weeks, twice a week at random, where they invaded and came for some prize or another - usually the goal was to steal one of Shizun's fans from his bamboo house - and the Qing Jing disciples tried to defend the bamboo house and keep them from escaping with their prize.

It was ....

Annoying.

Luo Binghe knew it was because they were bored and restless with Liu-Shishu in seclusion, raids were common when Liu-Shisu was on a long hunt, and with him in seclusion for six months the Bai Zhan Peak disciples were getting stir crazy. He knew, because he too was bored, with Shizun in seclusion.

He had been exhausted from his chores, he didn't feel like playing, so Luo Binghe hid in the woodshed. When the demon attack started, screams echoing, he honestly didn't realize it wasn't just the disciples fighting.

Luo Binghe remembered the smoke acrid on his tongue and burning in his lungs. He remembered the screams. He remembered the fire blazing through the shed like a serpent of malcontent. He remembered, thinking he was going to die.

Ming Fan had grabbed him from the woodshed.

Da-shixiong, who'd never given him a kind glance or word, who was more likely to shove his face into the dirt than give him a helping hand. Da-shixiong, who'd force so much work on him that Luo Binghe sometimes wanted to give up, who got jealous any time Luo Binghe talked to Ning Yingying. Da-shixiong, who'd run into the burning shed and hauled him out of there. Da-shixiong, who'd burned his hands badly on the hot metal of the latch getting to him.

He couldn't remember what the boy said, the words he spat as he'd dragged Luo Binghe out with a firm grip on his arm to the crowd of terrified disciples.

They were trapped, there was no help coming. The demon saintess in the front, dressed in red ribbons and tickling bells, had eyes the same color as the flames. Her laugh was high and bright. Her laugh was dark and malicious. She proposed three duels. With no masters to guide, the children threw themselves into debate, trying to determine the best to fight. Luo Binghe had opened his mouth, intending to volunteer despite his dread...

Then, Shizun came.

He stumbled out of the shadows with wild eyes, blood drenched, pale as a ghost, dragging Liu-Shishu out into the clearing like a rabid beast dragging his kill. He remembered Liu Mingyan's scream.

Shizun had spoken to her, voice frantic, and the saintess had interrupted with cold mocking words. Luo Binghe couldn't quite remember the words. Not Shizun's shuddering rambling as Liu Mingyan sobbed with her elder brother limp in her arms. Not the mocking words of the demon saintess.

He remembered the leaves though.

He remembered how the wind began to blow, the bamboo creaking ominously around them, the leaves rustling on the ground and trees. The spiritual energy was oppressive, rolling ominously as Shizun told them to leave. His voice had been steady, but his eyes...

Shizun's eyes glowed with crackling energy. They gleamed like bright green beacons of fire.

The saintess refused and....

Luo Binghe wasn't exactly sure what happened, just that all of a sudden there were leaves spinning in a storm around them.

They rose up around all of the disciples. Some of them tried to get through, Luo Binghe as well, but the second their hands touched the wall of leaves roaring around them, their fingers were sliced open by the qi sharpened leaves. The disciples were trapped behind a barrier of wind and sharp leaves, they could not hear over the howling of the wind, not each other, not what was happening beyond. It was a ring of protection.

And then, after some time, too short, too long, the leaves fell with a whoosh. The wind collapsed, the leaves fell. Shizun was standing, surrounded by mangled demon corpses, blood everywhere. The demon saintess was laughing, the big demon with the spiked hammer was roaring. Shizun long sleeves were ripped open, his arm was bleeding heavily, black lines beginning to spread up the pale exposed skin.

"You fight well. I'd think you were a demon too if I couldn't taste the rot in your blood," The demon cried, mocking, "But it's over for you. This poison is without a cure."

Then, Shizun smiled. It wasn't kind. It was mad. He stabbed his sword through his arm without a single hesitation, before the black lines could reach farther up to his spiritual veins.

Someone screamed, it might have been himself, it might have been all of them. The demons fell silent. Somehow completely unbothered, Shizun raised his sword up to point it at the demons. Ning Yingying has cried and clenched Luo Binghe's sleeve.

Shizun started laughing. It was a dark, low, menacing sound. He was a god, bathed in blood, bathed in sunlight, glorious and dangerous and haunting. For a single delirious moment, Luo Binghe thought the sunlight seemed to glimmer gold on the blood dripping down his side.

"Get off my peak." He didn't yell, didn't raise his voice. He was firm, unbending. A creature of madness and blood and death.

The demons, wisely, fled. Shizun swayed in place momentarily, then collapsed. Luo Binghe didn't remember moving, but he was there to catch Shizun, the man's body lighter than he'd have expected as they collapsed into the dirt. Luo Binghe realized the red on his robes had not only been Liu-Shishu's blood, nor the demon's blood. Shizun was injured. Badly. There was a gushing hole in his back, angled low, as if a sword had been stabbed right through him.

He remembered feeling guilty because he'd thought Shizun killed Liu-Shisu, but now he suspected they'd been attacked in seclusion.

Shizun tried to sit up, Luo Binghe had held firm, cradling the man in his arms. He was too weak to pull out of his grasp. "Help!" He remembered yelling at the disciples who surrounded them, "He's dying!"

"Little beast." Shizun murmured, low, almost fond. His sharp nails broke skin as they dragged across his face. "This master is sorry."

But, if he had meant to say anything after that, he could not. Shizun fainted. Luo Binghe hadn't known what to think. Could not think of anything Shizun should apologize for.

Hot tea dripping down his hair when Shen Qingqiu threw it in his face. The cold of the woodshed. The endless chores and bullying and harsh punishments over small infractions.

Everything after that was blurry. Fragmented. He didn't remember when help finally arrived. He didn't remember crying, clinging to Shizun's body, snarling when anyone got close, until Mu-Shishu arrived and knocked him unconscious with his needles.

He woke up in Qian Cao. He didn't leave when he got better.

None of them did. Every single one of the disciples of Bai Zhan and Qing Jing who had been brought to be healed on Qian Cao, had invaded Qian Cao. They staked their post, claimed the grounds for themselves, defended the little corner of the gardens from anyone who tried to chase them away. They refused to leave until their Shizuns woke up and they were allowed to see them.

Four days had passed. Luo Binghe didn't think he could wait much longer before going insane. His thoughts were too scattered, to complicated to understand.

Shizun, Luo Binghe had never known if he hated him or not but...

He didn't like seeing the man so broken.

He didn't like seeing him bleed.

A hundred dark dreams shattered the second he'd held that broken body in his arms.

Shizun could hate Luo Binghe, but he....

"A-Luo!" A high voice snapped him out of his restless memories. He froze as Ning Yingying threw herself into his arms, crying, laughing. Ming Fan was standing there, looking strangely frantic and relieved. "He's awake!"

"What?" Luo Binghe asked, not letting himself hope, because why would they be going to him if that was the case?

Ming Fan said, excitedly. "Shizun's awake!"

Then, inexplicably, against everything Luo Binghe had come to expect, Ming Fan and Ning Yingying were grabbing his wrists and pulling him down the garden path Including him. Taking him with them. He couldn't help but tear up a little.

"This master is sorry." Nails sharp on his cheek.

He didn't hate Shizun.

Not anymore.

Chapter Text

The unfortunate downside of forcibly taking over another peak, was that when Shizun woke, no one on Qian Cao would let them back to see him.

It didn't matter how much they cried, how big their eyes got with pleading, how pathetic they made themselves. (It was Ning Yingying's idea.) It didn't matter that they promised to behave and finally return to Qing Jing where they belonged. They wouldn't let them back.

Luo Binghe wasn't accustomed to giving up.

Life on Qing Jing was rough. It was not as bad as the streets, but neither was it pleasant. If he was going to be the type to give up, he would have long since left the peak.

Luo Binghe grabbed Ning Yingying and Ming Fan and dragged them away. He got them to create a distraction while he made a break for it, so he could at least tell them how Shizun looked if nothing else. He didn't mind the punishment that would follow, he was used to it.

He hid, waited until Ning Yingying dramatically despondently threw herself to the ground and started sobbing that she wanted to see shizun, waited for the attention to be drawn to them, waited for Ming Fan to curtly signal, then he was racing away. Down the hall, down the corridors. He already knew the room, they'd let him see Shizun, very briefly, before the camp-out started, when he was on the verge of qi deviation due to thinking Shizun was dead.

He had looked like a corpse.

He made it, skidding into the doorway and immediately yelped, turning red with his blood turning to fire in his veins, and his eyes going wide with disbelief.

Shizun was....

Shizun was....

Shizun was sitting in Zhangman Shibo's lap!

He wasn't the only one.

Dressed in scandalously revealing cotton robes of white, Shizun's bare legs were tangled around Liu-Shisu's legs. Liu-Shisu was pulling Zhangman-shibo's robes open at the top, he had his hand on his chin to keep him in place while Shizun was kissing the sect leader. Liu-Shisu had his teeth in his neck. Zhangman-shibo looked like he was seconds from catching fire and melting into the chair.

Luo Binghe was burning in the doorway as several people turned to stare at him.

Liu-Shimei, with a streak of ink on her veil and hands smudged black from how fast she had been writing. She smiled knowingly, seeing the deviance right down in his soul. Mu-Shishu, who had been somehow unphased by the shameless debauchery going on behind him as he was preparing some sort of ointment. He barely glanced at him before looking away again and getting back to work. Shizun and Liu-Shisu, didn't scramble away at being caught like he had expected. They just stared at him for a moment, unblinking predators hungry for his blood.

The only one not looking at him was the sect leader, who looked like he was exactly as flustered as Luo Binghe was, and who had elected to stare at the ceiling like he was begging the heavens for relief. Good, he should be ashamed, Shizun never seemed happy when he was close. Shizun hated him. Why was Shizun in his lap?!

Shizun tilted his head in a boneless sort of slump, it made his neck crack. His eyes were dark, there was a streak of white in his sloppily braided hair. He swayed like a snake.

"Little beast." He growled, rough and low like he wanted to peel his skin off.

Luo Binghe froze, terrified that he'd managed to make shizun angry with unintentionally interrupting. Terrified there was no saving him now. But before he could try to kowtow for his own survival, Liu-Shisu squinted at him and ...

"Is that our child?" He asked.

Eh?

"I think I'd remember bearing you a child, silly brute." Shizun answered, with dismissive a click of his tongue, his voice was weirdly slow and slurred. "It was unpleasant the first time, I doubt it would have been less painful for a second child."

Eh?

For a moment Liu-Shisu and Shizun just stared at each other, unblinking. Then, after the silence had lasted for enough time it became painfully awkward, Liu-Shisu's eyes widened, his eyebrows raised, and he made a very odd wheezing noise. Then, he looked shamelessly at the space where the robes were covering Shizun's upper legs, as if he could see right through the fabric to see, ah, if Shizun was capable of actually birthing a child or if he was, inexplicably, unexpectedly, actually joking.

Eh?!

"Oh~" Luo Binghe flushed even redder at the low drawn out tone Liu-Shisu took for that one syllable. It was halfway to a growl.

"Perhaps shizi would be willing to come back later?" Mu-Shishu hummed.

Luo Binghe jumped, having been so bewildered by whatever he was witnessing that he hadn't even noticed him approaching. He nodded, still steaming from the ears and turned away rapidly, intent on running as fast as he could back to the gardens before Shizun found his senses.

"No, little beast don't go," Shizun whined, long and drawn out, and slid off the sect leader's lap onto the floor. He seemed completely confused how he got there. "If the brute's sister gets to stay, why can't our child?"

Liu-Shimei giggled from the corner of the bed as Liu-Shisu flopped forward across Zhangman Shibo's thighs like a very large housecat. "He has to stay. Qingqiu stole him from me in the -" he waved his hand lazily, trying to think of the word.

Luo Binghe was almost certain that Liu-Shisu meant the disciple selection. It was a common point brought up by Ming Fan and the others; that he didn't belong, that he'd fit in better with the Bai Zhan brutes, no brains, only brawn, that Shizun should have let Liu-Shisu have him.

"Divorce." Shizun said nonsensically.

"The divorce." Liu-Shisu nodded seriously.

Then he rolled off the sect leader's lap onto the floor with a grunt, and laid there with his face squashed into the floor for a moment, before wriggling over so he had his head in Shizun's lap.

"They are very heavily medicated." Zhangman Shibo spoke up for the first time, explaining finally the completely baffling situation Luo Binghe was witnessing.

Zhangman Shibo stood up from the chair, Liu-shimei got off the bed hastily while he rubbed his hand down his face. Then, he scooped down to pick Shizun up off the floor like he weighed absolutely nothing and slid him onto the bed. When Shizun whined pitifully and made grabby hands towards Liu-Shisu, he sighed and picked him up too, setting him on the bed just as gently, just as effortlessly. They tangled up around each other like writhing snakes, careful of each other's wounds, until the found a comfortable way and settled in.

Shizun, looked peaceful, happy. Luo Binghe was almost....

Liu-Shisu's hand slid up Shizun's leg, pushing the fabric on his Qian Cao patient up, exposing way more of his pale skin than Luo Binghe was prepared to see. His mouth watered, and Luo Binghe turned red and twisted to turn away immediately with a hot face.

Oh.

Oh no.

That was not allowed.

It didn't matter how beautiful Shizun was, he would scent the impurity in Luo Binghe like a rabid wolf and throw him down the thousand steps up the mountain. Legend on Qing Jing said that every person to try to request to court Shizun had been thrown off the rainbow bridge for the audacity. Luo Binghe didn't want to be thrown off the mountain. It didn't matter that Liu-Shisu didn't appear in danger, shizun had thrown him off the mountain before.

Someone cleared their throat. Luo Binghe dared to turn back, and someone had luckily thrown a blanket over them, Liu-Shisu's hand was over the covers, running lazily up Shizun's chest. Shizun blinked slow and patted the miniscule space between them.

"Beast." Shizun called.

His face was stern, like it got when he was late to class because of chores and Shizun caught him slacking, yet, his voice was soft, forbidden, inviting. But, it wasn't an invitation. It was a demand. Luo Binghe was terrified of moving to claim that space he was being called to. Terrified of refusing. He couldn't move. He was paralyzed by indecision.

"Xiao Jiu, perhaps we should let your disciple go?" Zhangman Shibo prompted, and Luo Binghe almost wanted to snarl. Shizun hated that name.

"No." Liu-Shisu patted the space nesting between them. "Qingqiu wants the beast. The beast will come."

Luo Binghe wished the floor would give out beneath him. He'd take a demonic rift over making the wrong decision and making Shizun upset with him when the medication wore off. But, Shizun looked devastated, like Luo Binghe was rejecting him, and Liu-Shishu's eyes were starting to narrow with displeasure the longer he stood still.

"Beast," Liu-Shisu growled, nuzzling Shizun's hair, voice gruff. He probably didn't even know Luo Binghe's name. "Come here now, or I'll have Mingyan drag you over here by your hair."

"Da-ge!" Liu-Shimei hissed, he hadn't seen her come to stand beside him.

He didn't notice stepping forward, he only noticed when Mu-Shishu had taken his shoulder. "Shizi," Mu-Shishu smiled softly, but there was an edge of pity in his eyes, "it's up to you."

What did he know? Shizun wasn't easy to like, he wasn't easy to please. He was cold and unapproachable and so beautiful it made Binghe ache in his bones. He was a hard man. He was ...

Shizun was a man like a bladed fan. Dignity and grace hiding a poisoned sharp edge. 

"Can this disciple stay?" He asked, eyes glued longingly to the tiny nest between Shizun and Liu-Shisu. "Shizun, can Binghe stay?"

Chapter Text

Shizun nodded sleepily, his eyes dark, narrowed as he wriggled slightly away from Liu-Shisu without untangling their legs. He patted the tiny space between them over the blankets insistently.

"Little beast." He called mournfully. "Come here."

"Child." Liu-Shisu growled. He propped himself up on one elbow, his eyes were wild, beastial. "Ours."

Someone said something he couldn't hear over the rush of blood in his ears. Luo Binghe stepped closer, hesitantly, he didn't stop until he was at the edge of the bed. Shizun grasped his robes in his one hand, tugging at Luo Binghe's sleeve until he carefully climbed into the bed. He tried very carefully not to touch Shizun too much as he crawled over him into the nest.

Liu-Shisu huffed at his hesitancy and yanked Luo Binghe into the too tight space provided. Shizun hissed and Liu-Shisu grunted in pain as Luo Binghe fell, his elbow catching hard on Liu-shishu's ribs, his head smacking down against the empty space where Shizun's arm used to be.

He couldn't breathe. Luo Binghe tried to sit up, tried to apologize, but Shizun just hooked his arm over his chest and buried his face in Luo Binghe's frizzy fluffy hair. Liu-Shisu adjusted himself slightly before also wrapping an arm over Luo Binghe.

For a moment he was five, curled in the arms of the only mother he knew. A aching familiar comfort he hadn't experienced in a decade. Then, before he could get comfortable and truly settle into the cage of arms around him, Shizun made a soft gut-wrenching sound and started shaking. It took him a second to realize.

Shizun was crying.

Luo Binghe sprang up instantly, tearing out of their arms, horrified by his stupidity, horrified by his own selfishness. "Shizun, I'm sorry!"

Liu-Shisu lunged and grabbed the front of his robes to haul him back down into Shizun's grasp. He wound his arm around Luo Binghe  bruisingly tight, his fingers clawed into his ribcage as he curled around Luo Binghe like he would disappear if he loosened his hold.

"It's okay." Liu-Shisu's voice was soft, but his grip was firm. Luo Binghe wasn't sure who he was talking to, but he curled his arms around Luo Binghe in an equally crushing grip. He couldn't escape even if he wanted to. 

Zhangman Shibo came around the bed, his face wasn't readable, but Luo Binghe was convinced that he was seconds from disaster. That if Shizun didn't stop crying he'd be buried in the bamboo forest. He tried not to breathe, tried to be small and unnoticeable. The sect leader stared for a moment, then turned away without blinking.

"Shizun," he whispered, an awkward attempt to comfort the man, but he didn't know what he was supposed to say, what would provide the man what he needed, "Shizun."

Shizun whined like a small child. "Don't leave."

He shifted under the blanket so that his leg hooked over Luo Binghe's hip. Luo Binghe froze, blood hot, and tried very hard to not focus on this development, because there wasn't anything sexual about the way Shizun was coiling every inch of his fever-hot body around him. Even if it was very hard to convince his body of that as he traitorously twitched.

Luo Binghe stared up at the ceiling, too clean, too white, and begged the heavens for strength. "I wont."

"Don't leave." Shizun's grasp only tightened. He clung to him like he was trying to crawl into his skin. 

Luo Binghe hesitantly twisted as best as he could, not an easy thing to do when both Shizun and Liu-shishu were holding him in a punishing grasp, and awkwardly put oneof his arms around the man, around both men. "It's okay Shizun."

"We have the little beast now," Liu-Shisu comforted, trembling and teary-eyed, almost like he was feeling the delirious pain Shizun was lost to, "No one is going to take him away."

"Don't leave." Shizun sniffled, nuzzling against Luo Binghe's cheek. Luo Binghe was trying very hard not to notice how warm the skin of Shizun's thigh was on his hip, or how Liu-Shisu's breath felt on his neck.

Without warning, Shizun twisted and bit Luo Binghe hard on the shoulder. Luo Binghe stiffened and whimpered as he forced down the scream he wanted to let out. His body was suddenly very unwilling, the heat wilting dramatically from the pain. Mu-Shishu was at the side of the bed instantly, hovering with worried eyes and needles in his fingers. Luo Binghe shook his head, clinging harder to Shizun and Shishu, even as this made the man bite even harder.

Shizun wasn't in his right mind. He could deal with a little pain. This wasn't as bad as the whip. This wasn't as bad as being strung up in the woodshed.

"I won't leave." He promised. Distantly, he was aware of Liu-shimei speaking, protesting, being led out of the room by Zhangmen Shibo.

Shizun said something, but it was muffled by his teeth buried in Luo Binghe. He had to guess what was being said, and hope he got the right words to comfort his drugged delirious Shizun.

"Binghe will stay." The teeth loosened only a miniscule amount.

Luo Binghe relaxed slightly. Unfortunately, Liu-Shisu chose that moment to sink his teeth into Binghe's other shoulder, and his bite was a lot more aggressive than Shizun's was.

"Ow!" Binghe winced.

"Shizi!" Mu Qingfang was watching Shizun and Liu-Shisu with horrified worried eyes, Binghe had to move fast to catch him before the needles forced Shizun and Shishu into sleep.

"Don't." He tried to force his tears back.

"You're bleeding." Mu-Shishu seemed extremely distressed by this.

"Don't." Luo Binghe repeated, he awkwardly looped his arm over Liu-Shisu to pet his hair, regretting his decision to crawl into the bed, but willing to deal with the punishment his own selfishness earned him. "I'm okay."

In stark comparison to the worry and hovering of Mu-Shishu, Zhangmen Shibo was completely unphased by everything. He gently pulled the fretting doctor away, leaving Luo Binghe to his fate with an unreadable face and an acknowledging tilt of his head.

He was this sort of man.

Luo Binghe had once been strung up in the woodshed and left there for several days while Shizun had a qi-deviation and the sect leader had left him there, bleeding and cold and pained with little more than a pitying glance. He'd came in only a few times, to give him water, but he didn't release him, didn't feed him, didn't comfort him.

Luo Binghe was pretty sure if Shizun killed him, Zhangmen Shibo would do nothing more than smile and pat Shizun on the head, before he covered it up with a smile on his face and the steady belief that his favorite person was in the right. That Luo Binghe had something intrinsically wrong with him that made it okay to do whatever Shizun decided was best.

Shizun was the type who could hate someone for existing and consider their breathing an offense punishable by death. The sect leader was, in Luo Binghe's opinion, the type who would weakly argue in your defense, but if Shizun didn't agree, he'd be the type to kill you for Shizun. As if it couldn't be helped that your very existence caused Shizun inconvenience.

Arguably, of the two, Luo Binghe was a lot more wary of the sect leader. At least with Shizun, the pain was expected, familiar. The sect leader, in comparison, was a mystery. He hid his feelings behind a placid smile the same way Shizun hid behind his fan. He was a weapon Shizun wielded with little more than a flick of his fan, a steady presence no matter how cruelly Shizun treated him and everyone around himself.

He could be kind, but in the end that kindness had no meaning or use. The sect leader was a such a man as this.

Still, it was a upsetting to be disregarded so easily. Left to Shizun's claws and dark unsettling eyes. Left to the strong cage of arms and teeth. Left to the darkness that boiled in Shizun's very being like demonic miasma dripping maliciously, tar in the lungs and heart choking him and everyone he touched.

Yet, eventually the painful grip of teeth and arms loosened. Eventually Liu-Shisu pulled his teeth away with a comforting stroke of his hair. He mumbled an apology and began to pet Shizun's hair until he stopped trembling and unclenched his jaw, until the arm around him stopped digging sharp nails into whatever he could grab, until his arm loosened and Shizun stopped sniffling.

"Little beast." Shizun slurred, with unfocused eyes darting almost unseeing across Luo Binghe's face. "Sorry."

Luo Binghe shivered, and clung to him like he had clung when he thought Shizun died in his arms. "Shizun didn't do anything wrong."

There was a hungry darkness in Luo Binghe. It called for him to sink his own teeth into Shizun, to draw blood with fangs he didn't have, to crawl into the womb his teacher may or may not possess so shizun couldn't escape him. Shizun knew the darkness in Luo Binghe, it was why he was so hard on him. He knew the hunger and depravity in his blood, hidden behind the shield of his innocence. And now.. 

Now, Luo Binghe knew Shizun was just as blackened. Just as hungry and full of dripping shadows. Because, Shizun clung to Luo Binghe with the same desperation Luo Binghe felt. Because, Shizun's hunger had contaminated the War God of Bai Zhan so thoroughly that the man was intoxicated by it.

"Don't leave, little beast." Shizun growled, "I'll break you if you leave. You're mine, Qingge said you're mine, so you can't leave. I can't lose another child."

Luo Binghe's eyes widened at this revelation, this tiny fragment of his shizun and his true self. He tucked his face into Shizun's neck. His mouth watered with the sudden need to bite back, so visceral that only the knowledge that Shizun was too drugged to be anything but honest, that he'd inescapably angry when the medicine wore off if he remembered anything, held his teeth behind his lips.

"Binghe won't leave," he promised, "Even if Shizun hurts me, even if Shizun breaks me."

"Don't." Zhangman Shibo's voice was haunted by old ghosts of the past, "Don't make promises you can't keep."

He made that mistake then, made a promise he could not keep. No wonder shizun regarded him with such malice. Luo Binghe spoke louder in defiance. "Binghe won't leave. Not even if Shizun wants me gone."

"We're never leaving. Qingqiu has to stay too." Liu-Shisu said feverishly, bending over Luo Binghe so he could kiss Shizun wet, open mouthed, hungry, as if he had completely forgotten Luo Binghe existed. He hid his face shyly in Shizun's chest when they both whined needily in unison. He needed to get out from between the two before things got heated, before he got affected and let himself be convinced he could have that which was strictly violently forbidden.

Abruptly, Shizun and Shishu were both instantly collapsing against Luo Binghe with loose sleep-heavy limbs. He blinked in confusion, then frowned darkly as Zhangmen Shibo carefully untangled Luo Binghe from the warm cradle of Shizun and Liu-shishu with guilty eyes. Mu-Shishu was tucking needles into his sleeves, his eyes were haunted and frantic as they scanned him for injuries. 

"Apologies Shizi, I will help free you. You did good." He praised.

Luo Binghe hated that they thought he needed free. He shook his head. "No, Binghe promised." He said, trying to get comfortable again.

"They won't remember this in the morning. They won't remember your promise." Mu Qingfang tried.

Luo Binghe wrapped his arm around Shizun, clinging with teeth bared. He dug his nails into Liu-Shisu's robes.

"Binghe made a promise." He hissed, threatening, "This Binghe will stay."

Mu Qingfang sighed, but he didn't press anymore. Shizun would be mad when he woke up, when the medicine wore off and he went back to hating Luo Binghe. But, he would stay.

He wasn't in the habit of breaking promises.

He barely felt the needles, but he glared, betrayed, when his vision began to blur. He slipped into oblivion while Zhangmen Shibo carefully picked him up, reaching blindly for his Shizun, for Shishu, with a mournful whine.

No.

No!

He promised!

He . . .

Chapter Text

Whoever said it was better to be loved than feared, must have really lived a spoiled life.

Shen Qingqiu woke with a bitter taste in his mouth, his body in agony, and fled before Mu Qingfang could force any more of that horrid mind numbing tea into him.

He couldn't believe how it affected him. High off the relief of seeing the brute still lived, and affected by the warped reality and aphrodisiac qualities of the herbal blend, he'd made a complete mockery of himself. The memories were hazy, as they often were after his worst qi-deviations, and the thought of staying in the room any longer, of giving Mu Qingfang the opportunity to enslave his mind with his alleged qi-calming teas, was a nightmare he refused to allow. He needed his mind sharp. If the price was the deep throbbing pain that came with keeping his wits about him, Shen Qingqiu would gladly chose not to be pain free and empty headed. Pain was a familiar friend.

Shen Qingqiu desperately wished for a fan to hide his flaming face as his mind recalled all too much of the hazy drugged state.

He could remember the way the ever bright light of the Qian Cao healing pavilion lit up Liu Qingge's steely eyes, turning them silver like moonlight. He remembered the way his lips tasted of medicinal tea and something wonderfully sweet, igniting a hunger in his blood that was impossible to fill. He remembered the deep aching ravenous way the brute kissed him.

Liu Qingge had been surprisingly gentle despite the very insistent way he licked into his mouth, like he treasured Shen Qingqiu and never wished to stop kissing him. It made a heat curl low and simmering inside him. He remembered the uncomfortably vivid feeling of his heated gaze and the low rough sound of his voice. He remembered the way Liu Qingge's strong lithe body felt safe and terrifyingly perfect against him.

It was as if the brute no longer set off his anxieties regarding men, due to that feather-soft brush of Liu Qingge's awareness, thoughts, and feelings dripping through his own head like warm honey, 

Shen Qingqiu could remember the warmth of Qi-ge's hand on his hip, the ash and salt of his skin on his tongue, as he sat astride his warm thick thigh in front of his martial sibling and the brute's young sister, his legs tangling with the brute's. He couldn't believe Liu Qingge felt the desire in him and grabbed the sect leader in such a shameless way.

He could still hear the way Qi-ge moaned when Shen Qingqiu finally gave him the kiss he'd wanted since they were just boys, the way Liu Qingge's own desire spiked up like a raging fire at the sight of him licking into the sect leader's mouth in the exact way Liu Qingge had done to him - voracious, bold, with no hint of shame or hesitancy.

He remembered the small body, warm and soft, possessively caged between him and Liu Qingge. He remembered the soft curls against his skin, the longing in wine dark eyes, the taste of his disciple's blood warm in his mouth, the whisper of a promise - pain bright and resolute.

The little beast.

Shen Qingqiu didn't understand what he had been doing in his healing rooms, why his fevered delirious mind latched onto the boy with such visceral consuming need. The brute's offhanded question had spread like rot through his bones and blood, until he could barely see the boy.

Shen Qingqiu saw Xiao Jiu in the little beast. He saw Qiu Jianluo. He saw the child he'd birthed all those years ago.

This wasn't an effect of the tea. It happened with devastating regularity.

It was in the similarities of their pasts - both street rats, both left to drown at birth in the Luo River - and in the completely contrary ways they turned out.

Xiao Jiu was beaten into dirt and never stayed down. He was sharp and cruel to everyone, even Qi-ge who was his entire world. His fingers stayed bruised and bloodied, but the other street kids knew not to mess with them. He was feral, rabid, all bite and bark and no softness or kindness left in him. The kind of dog found in the back alley feasting on the children too slow and sickly to escape their hungry jaws.

Luo Binghe let himself be pushed around like he meant nothing, like he had no worth, no bite. But his eyes told a different story than his pitiful display. He held his anger in his black amber eyes, the kind that festered deep in the blood and heart, the type that one day would bring devastation. The type of stray one brought home, only to bite the hands that provided food and warmth to it.

Xiao Jiu had never known any kindness beside the clumsy softness of his pitiful useless older brother, soulmate, friend Qi-ge and the brothel flowers who occasionally let them stay in the back if it was particularly cold and they could help them prepare for their night.

Luo Binghe was taken in, treated as a true son, left to the streets after her death with the warmth of her memories to give him strength to survive.

Xiao Jiu fell into the cruel hands of a demonic cultivator, after already suffering beyond imagination, crippling his cultivation long before he ever made it to the mountain. He fought for every scrap of his power, bled for it. He joined too late, and no one believed he could come so far, but he rose higher than all of them. He rose like a phoenix from the ashes of his past, but the smoke still clung to him like a second skin, the scars of his past making him weak.

Luo Binghe was guided to the mountain by a kindly rogue cultivator. He was the proper age to cultivate, he had immense talent that Shen Qingqiu could only have dreamed of having, but he refused to actually use and honestly his talents. He hadn't even passed the three trials.

His shizun had ten trials to pass to be considered a disciple instead of an interloper on the peak. He completed every trial within two moon cycles, a record far surpassing every other person in his cohort.

Luo Binghe also held a record - nearly five years on the peak, and only one trial passed. It wasn't pitiful, it was a mockery.

Of the trials Shen Qingqiu had completed himself, he only kept the three he considered the least cruel.

The first trial was the tea ceremony, the traditional welcome to the peak. In this trial, the disciple served tea to their shizun and had it dumped over their head or splashed in their face until they got it right. At least, unlike his shizun, Shen Qingqiu cooled it before tossing, so it was just a little uncomfortably hot instead of boiling like his Shizun had dumped it over him.

This was the first, and only, test Luo Binghe had passed. He only needed one cup dumped on him. Yingying, though by far his favorite disciple, had needed twenty seven cups dumped on her head before brewing a barely passable cup of tea, and she had bawled like a toddler being beaten bloody with each one. Luo Binghe had glared beneath his lashes as the tea dripped off his curls, but the second cup of tea he presented was flawless. This had given Shen Qingqiu an unrealistic expectation of his aptitude, he'd been quite proud.

Unfortunately, Luo Binghe didn't pass the second trial, and had yet to be given the third because of this.

The second trial, was the false cultivation manual. This test, was designed to remind the disciples that they must verify their sources and ensure they had proper quality resources, in addition to encouraging new disciples to branch out and make friends with their future peers.

Admittedly, the day Shen Qingqiu gave the beast the manuel, he'd been in a bit of distress.

Stupid Yue Qingyuan had once again made a mess of his reputation - instead of giving Shen Qingqiu the benefit of the doubt when a rumor cropped up that he was being inappropriate with his female disciples and sect mates, he swept it under the rug. Not only did this all but cement it as truth in the eyes of everyone off his peak, it also got him completely banned from Xian Shu Peak, despite men already being banned without permission, and soured his already rocky relationship with Qi Qingqi to an irreparable level. The sect leader may as well have shouted that he was absolutely certain the rumors were true, and he was absolutely not going to do anything about it. 

In addition to that horrible beginning of his day, he returned only to hear Ning Yingying refer to Luo Binghe as A-Luo for the first time. This had been bad for multiple reasons, the first of which was there was meant to be no blatant fondness or familiarity between inner disciples and those undertaking the three trials. The sweet nickname proved Yingying had no regard for the peak rules, and had decided to show favoritism to the boy.

In addition, though the intonation was off, the characters not the same, Qiu Haitang had referred to her brother by the same name. There had been something about the pitch of Ning Yingying's voice, the way her pink ribbons floated in the wind, the way she said that name... It had broken something in Shen Qingqiu. One moment he was on edge, trying to keep himself from having a qi-deviation; the next he blacked out and came back to awareness with that beast sitting far too close.

It was his curls - Qiu Jianluo also had curls, though of course his were much better maintained. They had similarly hungry dark eyes. He didn't see the boy. He saw only the monster. Shen Qingqiu had slapped the boy hard, instinctively.

He didn't apologize after, even as his hand stung and the boy's tongue slid kittenish over the split lip his backhanded hit had left below the bruised cheek. He didn't trust himself not to cry if he tried. He'd dismissively tossed the manual at the boy and darkly hoped the boy would kill himself with it. He felt guilty for the uncharitable thoughts only hours later, but by that point he couldn't take it back. It wasn't like the boy knew he'd wished for his failure anyways.

Truthfully, had the boy even attempted to cultivate, attempted to compare manuals, Shen Qingqiu would have retrieved the manual long ago. He didn't actually want the boy to detonate. But, Luo Binghe didn't even practice enough to cause any sort of damage to his meridians. Instead of cultivating, instead of trying to make friends, the boy had made himself into a doormat. He took on chores that weren't his, he faced bullying by giving them the other cheek to strike as well, he let himself be chased into the very woodshed he often found himself punished in.

If Luo Binghe were a physical cultivator, Shen Qingqiu would have long since given the boy to Liu Qingge, or sent him to An Ding, or given the boy's skill with tea, perhaps Zui Xian to learn to hone his culinary skills as well learning alcohol, potions, and elixirs. Alas, the boy had a spiritual base, one which he persisted in letting rot within him, throwing away all his opportunities again and again and for what? Acting so spineless had gotten him nowhere with his peers, clinging to Ning Yingying had only made it worse on the boy.

The third trial was a test of skill. Shen Qingqiu would sit down with the disciple in question and test their basic knowledge of the arts. He would test their calligraphy and poetry. He would receive a sample of their artistic skill. He would test their skill at weiqi and mathematics. He would have them choose an instrument and play it. He would test their skill with a bow, test their field knowledge in hunting, scouting , and trapping. Finally, they would receive a horse to learn equestrian arts and charioteering.

(It was widely known that Qing Jing was the scholarly peak, making a common misconception that they only taught the four arts, rather than the six gentlemanly arts.)

After three months, he would retest them to see where they needed improvement and where they excelled, and divide the disciple into the class group that benefited their learning style and provided them the proper levels in the arts to ensure their education was fair, difficult enough to make them engage and improve without driving them to quit, and gave support in the spaces they found most difficulty. 

Luo Binghe wasn't ever in classes due in part to his insistence on doing every chore on the peak, and in part because he refused to even attempt to cultivate so Shen Qingqiu could at least say the boy wanted to be there and make an exception. He stayed with the outer disciples and wasted every opportunity Xiao Jiu would have killed for.

It was entirely irksome. The boy was more interested in hiding behind Yingying's skirts, getting into mischief, and letting himself be bullied and cast out, than actually picking up the manual, or trying to go to class. It was like he wanted to be isolated. Shen Qingqiu wasn't going to hold his hand every step of the way just so the boy would grow dependent on him and latch on like a burr, never truly gaining his own self confidence or any social skills.

It wasn't like the woodshed he was sleeping in was that bad, to be fair. Shen Qingqiu had slept there as a disciple, due to his fear of men and inability to allow himself to be vulnerable due to his experience with the Qius and Wu Yanzi. He turned out ... Well, he wasn't a good example for comparison.

His own shizun had whipped him far bloodier for much smaller infractions, and he was the only decent man Shen Qingqiu ever met. He strove to emulate Shen Meigang in many ways, the same way he emulated the brothel girls, creating a perfect balance of those he admired to hide the rot of his core behind the silk facade he so carefully crafted. He wore his cold unapproachable cruel demeanor and wore his delicate almost-feminine robes and fans like armour, similar to how Shen Meigang was unyielding and blunt to hide his fondness. Liu Qingge, was a lot like his shizun in this way. 

Anyways, it was this that made Luo Binghe's presence in his healing rooms such a strange thing. Shen Qingqiu had not thought the little beast saw him with any sort of fondness. It was not like he had attempted to build any sort of connection, when he didn't understand why the boy stayed on his peak given his lack of interest in actually learning cultivation, and while he wasn't trying to create a lack of filial piety, he had noticed the boy was irreverent and definitely holding a grudge against his cold regard.

He wondered if nearly dying in the boy's arms had scared him so much? If collapsing into the boy's grasp had made him forget that Shen Qingqiu wasn't worth getting close to?

He was not happy to know they'd let him cling to the little beast like he would break apart at the seams, mortified he'd sunk his teeth into the boy like he used to do to Qi-ge when he was a child half the beast's age. It was inappropriate. It was humiliating. Given his poor reputation, false or not, it could bring scrutiny and rumors of improper behavior again. The last thing he needed was to be accused of grooming the little bastard.

But, in that moment, when his mind was floating with the elation of Liu Qingge's survival and confession, when Liu Qingge claimed the boy as their child ... All he saw was the child he'd lost.

The child Qiu Jianluo forced upon him, forced him to carry into life, and then cruelly drowned not even moments after birth because he couldn't have a bastard running around. Shen Qingqiu hadn't been allowed to hold the child, to name it, or even know the gender of the child. He was fifteen, the same age as the little beast, and when the fire burned the Qiu Manor in the wake of his child's death, he swore he'd never bear another to anyone.

If the child had survived, it would have been older, nearly twenty three in fact, but all he could see was the way that Luo Binghe had Qiu Jianluo's dark curls, how his skin was the same jade as his own, how his eyes held the same shape and their lips curved the same as Xiao Jiu's, the dark amber of his eyes - Qi-ge's eyes, the boy had eyes just like Qi-ge - was turned the black of Qiu Jianluo's to his addled mind. All he could see was his baby.

It consumed him, and in turn it consumed Liu Qingge, until they were both sinking claws and fangs into the boy like the demon Shen Qingqiu was at his core. He didn't have the blood of one, but he knew what they all said behind his back. There was a very good reason Shen Qingqiu was called the Demon of Qing Jing.

Shen Qingqiu would make a far better demon than the horrible man he was.

Truthfully, he understood why Yue Qingyuan left him behind, he'd have left him behind too. His Qi-ge was kind, if the kindest person he knew hadn't tried ....

It wasn't like he was stupid enough to think Qi-ge would succeed. They were children. He told Qi-ge his legs were broken because he needed him to leave, to go far away and save himself, because he didn't have the words to explain what Qiu Jianluo was doing to him but he was hurting, he needed Qi-ge to hurry ...

It was a child's promise. Qi-ge wasn't stupid. He couldn't possibly think Shen Qingqiu expected him to rescue him, that he was upset at him because he didn't come. Shen Qingqiu just thought he was worth asking someone for help. What could Qi-ge have done, he was a child too. Barely younger than the beast was now when he made that promise.

Shen Qingqiu just hated that Qi-ge hadn't tried. Hadn't sent someone for him. Hadn't shown up to try to bargain with Qiu Jianluo, even if it would have hurt Shen Qingqiu all the more back then, even if he would never have let Xiao Jiu free.

And Qi-ge, for all he refused to call him that out loud, was the nicest man he knew. Kinder than Shizun, more honorable than Liu Qingge, far better than gutter trash like him ...

If the nicest person in the world didn't think he was worth saving, what hope was there that the brute would stay once he could see the ugliest and most vulnerable parts of himself? What hope was there that the little beast would forgive him and want to stay, to be the child of he and the brute? 

He wasn't cut out for being held in the hearts of another. But, the brute was seducing him with sweet words, and the little beast was promising he'd stay no matter how Shen Qingqiu hurt him and ...

He needed to run. He couldn't let them get close enough to see him, to know him, to taste the rot in his blood and heart and find him wanting. He wouldn't be judged only for them to be disappointed when they didn't find softness inside him. He was ice, unyielding, cold, bitter. If there was sweetness to be uncovered, it was buried impossibly deep, and there was no way he could ever be that emotional or vulnerable with anyone else.

No, it was far better to be feared than loved. 

Chapter Text

Once upon a time there were ten slaves.

Er (2) was sold to a rich old merchant and found dead in the river several days later, with bruises on her wrists and thighs.

Si (4) and Ba (8) died in the first winter, their bodies left in the snow for the hungry street dogs.

Wu (5) ran away. No one ever heard what happened to her. He liked to believe she found somewhere safe.

Qi (7) escaped to become a grand cultivator, reaching heights so untouchable the shade of his past was burned away.

Shi (10) ...

He never knew what happened to Shi after he told Qiu Jianluo that Jiu killed his horse. Stupid Qi-ge shouldn't have tried to save him, then Jiu wouldn't have needed to save him, and Jiu wouldn't have been ...

Jiu (9) was sold to a monster.

And, as for Yi (1), San (3), and Liu (6)?

They were sold to the Warm Red Pavilion.

---

It was only as started sleep heavy eyes met Shen Qingqiu's that he realized - he'd ran from the mountain early in the darkness, long before the sun even awoke, long after the brothel closed, in a single thin robe, barefooted, with his hair in an absolute disaster of a braid over one shoulder. He was a mess. He didn't know how he'd gotten here, in his panic he hadn't even ridden his sword. Xiu ya was likely still ....

Still.....

......?

He didn't know where his sword was. That wasn't good.

Yi dragged him in through the back door of the brothel, eyes darting about behind him as if she expected to see him chased by rabid beasts. He didn't hear what she said, his eyes watched her lips move without focus, still attempting to numb the panic rising in him like a tidal wave.

He blinked.

He was in a familiar room, surrounded by beautiful girls with worried expressions. Too many people. They were speaking but he stared blankly at them, unable to understand. Their voices drowned him in an ephemeral sea.

He blinked.

He was in another room, smaller, personal. He was completely numb and unresponsive as his sisters danced around him like iridescent fairy birds flittering about from flower to flower. He allowed them to move him like a doll as careful hands stripped him of the cotton robe and changed his bandages.

He blinked.

He didn't come out of the fog as he was led into a warm steamy bath and helped to wash the blood and infection and dirt off him. The heat seeped into his cold veins like sunlight, making him drowsy and dizzy.

He blinked.

His sisters had led him out of the bath, layering several gauzy ephemeral robes over him, each one in the deep purples and reds he favored when he was not in his teal and green peak lords robes. They fixed his hair with careful hands.

He blinked.

Slowly, Shen Qingqiu began to come back to life.

As the sterile scent and cloying perfume of earlier was covered by his favored jasmine. As the wounds were tended by soft hands that didn't stray. As the robe was replaced by impenetrable layers of sheer silks. As his hair was gathered into intricate braids.

Little by little, in the familiar care of his sisters, he began to feel less like a walking ghost and more like a human. The dark fog that surrounded him eventually melted to awareness, little by little, until he could breathe easier. Until his mind was no longer blank and numb and the howling in his brain settled enough that his awareness returned.

Sunlight tricked soft and warm through the open window, the breeze letting in the scents of the street stalls and flowers, the city waking up beyond the safe cocoon of the Warm Red Pavilion.

His sisters surrounded him in a protective circle.

Yi Lenghua was sitting by his side, playing a soft soothing song on the erhu. There was a cup of warm ginger tea steeped in brown sugar in his trembling fingers, the warmth seeping deep into his cold skin.

San Chouhe was reading poetry aloud in a soft voice, her hand running soothingly up and down his back. She absently played with a jade hairpin in one hand, the delicate peach blossoms a juxtaposition of the sharp knife-like point.

Liu Jingyan was carefully painting his toenails with a deep rich cinnabar paint like blood. His fingernails were the same color, filed in long talon-like points, like blades upon his frail fingers.

Shen Qingqiu force his teeth to unclench. His voice, when he spoke, came out hoarse and small. "Jejies."

His three sister-slaves immediately snapped to attention, music and voices quieting. "A-jiu." Yi Lenghua spoke softly, "are you feeling better?"

He nodded, feeling a little embarrassed and guilty.

When he got like this, when the episodes of consuming numbness overtook him and he couldn't process the world around him, the other brothel flowers would fret and flitter about in the Pavilion waiting while his sisters brought him back from the crippling darkness. They worried for him.

"I'm sorry."

Liu Jingyan laughed, a quiet bell-like sound. "Jiu-mei, you don't have to apologize. It's okay."

There was silence for a moment, then San Chouhe spoke, hesitantly, "Jiu...."

He followed her gaze to where the long layers of wide sleeves covered the emptiness. "I ..." He frowned.

His sisters shuffled serenely around him. "What do you remember?"

Shen Qingqiu glanced away from them with a frown, his eyes drawn to the yellow-winged butterflies dancing among the pink flowers in the window. He considered, then ...

"I was in seclusion, as you recall." He stated, his fingers clenching around delicate porcelain, "I was meditating when I heard a sound ..."

Shen Qingqiu spoke quietly, revealing the events that had led him to them, when he should have been in seclusion much longer. 

He told them of the moon-pool, the quiet serene lake within the crystal caves, of the old sword scratches and long dried blood. He told them of the strange scratching sound, of metal on stone, and opening his eyes to find Liu Qingge's sword coming down on him.

He told them of fleeing down the winding maze system of the caves while his brute gave chase like a wild feral thing, too lost to his qi deviation to recognize him. Of being cornered, in a cave with periwinkle moss glimmering and trying to snap Liu Qingge out of his madness.

He told them of the way the brute pinned him, hands on his neck, body hot against his. Of the panic and desire, of wondering if he could force the panic down to try to duel cultivate with the man, because it was the only thing he could think of that might snap him out of it, only for his qi to finally calm Liu Qingge's in devastatingly perfect harmony.

He spoke of the way Liu Qingge's eyes were horror struck and resolute as he reached for his sword, and how he hadn't thought before throwing himself into his arms, of the pain of the sword piercing them, of the way he had to fight to control their qi in perfect harmony so neither died 

He spoke of Liu Qingge's confession, of the kiss and the possessiveness in his words and the heat in his veins as the man said such words. Of the silent crush they'd known he'd held for years, the crush that became hopeless when Liu Qingge claimed he'd tried to kill him all those years ago.

He spoke of dragging his stupid Shidi out of the caves only to stumble into an invasion.

He spoke of the battle - the blood loss haze and anger and adrenaline, the way it felt uncomfortably close to the haze of qi-deviation, the haze he'd been in when he'd slaughtered the Qiu household.

He told them of how the brute's yang qi mingled in his meridians, how it soothed spikes, shored up the thinner areas, and gave him strength beyond him as he battled demons invading. How he didn't think about anything aside from the cultivation that he had fought and bled for when he stabbed the sword through his arm and severed it. He couldn't remember if he held the brute's sword in battle, or his own. It was beyond him at that point.

He spoke of waking in the healing pavilion and the drugged haze - of his possessiveness and wanton shamelessness, of the way he wanted that brute of his so badly it was making him dizzy, of the elation when his lips met Qi-ge's, of the disciple he'd tried to smother and who he'd bitten like a wild dog.

And .... When he was finally finished speaking, he wrapped his arm around his chest to lightly brush the bandaged wound on his back and ...

"Oh," he started shaking, thinking about the scars on his back....

His back that someone would have seen to heal.

His back, that held the still clear brand even all these years later, the flesh permanently silver-red against his jade-pale hip.

"Oh," he whimpered, trying not to sink back into the fog even as his breathing grew ragged and his sister's voices started warping and fading...

They knew.

Chapter Text

Mu Qingfang was having a rough week.

It had started with an unexpected attack. It had started with demons invading, with arriving at a peak filled with terrified injured disciples and screaming. It had started with a boy clinging inconsolably to his shizun, with a sister clinging inconsolably to her brother.

Their wounds were strange. Aligned... As if ...

The jagged sword wound pierced Shen Qingqiu through the back, angled down.

The jagged sword wound pierced Liu Qingge through the stomach, angled down.

Their wounds were strange. Aligned. As if, the sword that had pierced through Liu Qingge had been the same one that went through Shen Qingqiu. As if, Shen Qingqiu had, inexplicably, thrown himself in the path of the sword to protect Liu Qingge.

No one knew what happened. They would not until the woke up.

Mu Qingfang was only one man, he could not tend to both of his shixiongs. Shen Qingqiu was in worse shape, the sword wound had run him straight through, his arm was severed, his qi was an erratic storm of yin-yang.

While Nie Zhongwei, his head disciple - a part of his cohort, older than Mu Qingfang himself, steady hands and strong willed - tended Liu Qingge; Mu Qingfang tended Shen Qingqiu.

Shen Qingqiu....

Shen Qingqiu was less a man, than a fortress.

His gaze was like the sun. His sharp narrowed dark eyes looked like endless pools of darkness, but shone with vivid iridescent green when the light hit them just right. He stared over the edge of his fan with the air of someone judging you down to the very darkest parts of your soul. It left you feeling parched, blinded, burning with heat, wilting from it.

His face was all sharp angles and displeasure, blank and cold, his petal pink lips permanently carved into the jade of his skin in a deeply unimpressed scowl. Cold like marble.

He wore armour of silk, no less than seven layers, each one chosen with care. Everything matched. The silver of his peak lord crown, the long trailing ribbons, the elaborate hairstyles, the cloth covering every inch of skin beyond his hands and the fan always hiding his face behind bamboo and silk.

He was inconsolably beautiful, but so very cold. Cold like the mountains.

He was untouchable. Unyielding. Unbending.

He was...

.... bleeding out in Mu Qingfang's hands.

It was his hands - steady, not showing his inner turmoil - that slid layer after layer of that impenetrable azure blood soaked fabric from a man who, up until that moment, had seemed completely unbreakable.

He was....

Bleeding...

His blood was warm.

Mu Qingfang wanted to laugh. Wanted to cry. There was warmth in him after all. Sometimes he'd thought it would be acid, like that of a demon, just as everyone whispered behind his back.

The illustrious, dignified, graceful Xiu Ya Sword. The cold, unimpeachable, cruel Demon of Qing Jing Peak.

He was human after all.

He was so ...

... Small.

So fragile.

So ...

... Mortal.

It seemed silly, how a man could have qi-deviations as often as Shen Qingqiu, some minor, some devastating, and somehow.... Somehow he didn't feel mortal. He never had.

Not like this.

Not like sichens spent sewing flesh back together, holding his very life in Mu Qingfang's hands. Not like seeing how, if his heart hadn't been offset, the sword would have sliced through it. Not like several dutiful crying disciples offering their blood to replenish what was lost. Not like his heart stopping, and stopping, and stopping, until Mu Qingfang wasn't sure he'd get it beating again. Not like the snow spreading through his hair. Not like having five of the remaining ten peak lords in the room to pour qi in a constant stream, taking shifts, the others with Liu Qingge who was also in mortal peril.... But not like this. Not like this.

Only when Shen Qingqiu was stable again did he feel he could breath. Only when Shen Qingqiu was stable did he allow his hands to shake. Mu Qingfang made certain to comfort the disciples and the other peak lords, just as shaken by this as himself...

Only then did he allow himself to break.

There, hidden in the darkest most hidden corner of the storage closet, did he let himself feel. Feel the helplessness, feel the shock setting in, feel the devastation his cold pricky martial brother had left.

He sobbed, muffled behind his hands, hidden like a child in the dark. And only then, hidden in the darkness, did he contemplate the scars, the brand. There was only two ways a man received a brand like that - slavery or prisoner of war. And that scar, it was far too old for the later. He would have been a child when the hot metal seared that cursed character into his skin.

Jiu, the number nine.

Shen Jiu. Jiu, for black jade... Jiu for... nine?

He hid until one of his disciples found him, much later, and painstakingly drew him out of the darkness with kindness that felt worse than any hatred would have.

And, when it felt like nothing would ever be okay again, he drank the tea.

A blend of opium and herbs and flowers of his own creation.

He kept drinking it as he went through his work, as he comforted patients, and time slipped by in a lucid dreamlike state.

Days later, Liu Qingge woke up and screamed inconsolably until Mu Qingfang half-dragged him into the room with Shen Qingqiu. Days later, he watched the War God of Bai Zhan, another man who seemed completely unbreakable, sit despondently and carefully tend to Shen Qingqiu's hair with loving shaken hands.

Later, he gave the same mind numbing brew to Liu Qingge and Shen Qingqiu, because no matter how much he pretended to be perfectly calm and steady with all eyes on him, excited over a new medical phenomenon that he could only dream of witnessing, he was breaking like a porcelain teacup under the haze.

He drank the tea, not a full dose, not even half, just enough to make himself feel as unaffected as he was pretending to be.

He watched as Liu Qingge became loose and boneless, flirty and drowsy and relaxed. He watched the way Yue Qingyuan became flustered as the Bai Zhan Peak Lord rubbed against him like a cat in heat. He was too relaxed, because he was feeling the effects of the tea in him, and the tea in Shen Qingqiu. Amplifying what should have been a light mellow high with manageable heat and lessened pain, to an extreme. As if he'd been given several cups instead of what should have been a very low dosage.

It was fascinating.

He watched as Liu Qingge kissed Shen Qingqiu, no care of the shocked faces around him - gentle, sweet, and devouring.

The tea didn't create attraction, it was a relatively minor aphrodisiac all things considered. Since the great majority of plants in the woulrld had some form of aphrodisiac, most medicinal brews had some effect. Mu Qingfang, completely uninterested in all forms of romantic and sexual attraction, was largely unaffected by the aphrodisiac.

But even so, even with the amplification of the medicinal effects, it wouldn't make him kiss Shen Qingqiu.

Not like that.

It wasn't infatuation, it wasn't a new kind of love, it was intrinsic. A core part of Liu Qingge. For however long, hidden behind brutal fights and scorn, Liu Qingge had been holding this flame in him.

Shen Qingqiu didn't protest, languid and gentle as he never was, he kissed back. Shyly. Sweetly. Warmly.

He was still in shock when his shixiongs, cold Shen Qingqiu and blunt Liu Qingge, latched themselves to the sect leader in such a way that was not gentle, not soft, but deeply possessively hungry.

In any case, the sect leader certainly wasn't complaining despite the desperation and struggle on his face. He was the only one affected by the shamelessness, and Mu Qingfang didn't have any qualms using the sect leader in whatever way made him capable of checking Shen Qingqiu and Liu Qingge's qi for stability.

Then, the boy came.

That thin waif-like disciple with the bruises and the unkempt curls, the one who Mu Qingfang had to pry off Shen Qingqiu after the attack, was there, despite the fact no one should be allowed. Awkward, shivering with fear and want, and just as desperate for his shizun's affection as a child seeking their parent.

He was curious. He let the boy in.

The boy let Shen Qingqiu cling to him, call him his child, sink teeth and nails through the fabric of his disciples uniform so fiercely he bled. His face was an open book of complicated attraction and desperation for any scrap of kindness he could grasp. The teen clung to Shen Qingqiu and Liu Qingge with a single-minded ferocity. The same ferocity and dark intent that led Shen Qingqiu to be called a demon.

They made for an unsettling extremely demonically adjacent family.

He used the needles.

He shouldn't have taken advantage of Shen Qingqiu and Liu Qingge and Binghe, the boy they called little beast. It was only seeing the boy in pain that snapped him out of his haze.

His own curiosity sometimes made him forgetful of the necessary boundaries to enforce. He forgot why he couldn't drink the tea. He couldn't control that need to watch everything burn and crash around him for nothing more than the pleasure of his curious mind.

He tucked Binghe in another bedroom, wounds tended, and he went home.

He spent hours forcing himself to throw up the tea, until his mind was clear and his body stopped shaking. His head pounded by the time he had to force himself to get ready for work.

When he came to start his shift, feeling the strain of the past few days, head pounding and fingers shaking from the withdrawal, Shen Qingqiu was gone and Liu Qingge was completely eerily blank.

Chapter Text

Shen Qingqiu had vanished sometime in the hours of Chou and Yin. His sword, Xiuya, was still in the room, rested against the wall where Mu Qingfang had put it after it was retrieved from the bloodied battlefield. This meant he could not have gone far. The village at the foot of the mountains was the most likely place if he hadn't wandered aimlessly into the mountains or fallen off the still broken rainbow bridge trying to escape to his peak.

Liu Qingge was unfortunately indisposed. It was eerie to see the man staring blankly at the wall, shaking, unresponsive, breathing harshly in the healing pavilion with Mu Qingfang hovering anxiously over him.

In the end, with the lot of them pacing frantically through Qian Cao, throwing out ideas of places Shen Qingqiu could have wandered off to - Cheng Qinghui was the one who suggested that Shen Qingqiu may, perhaps, have fled somewhere with friends. She didn't explicitly say he'd run to The Warm Red Pavilion, but it was implied heavily in the way her tone curled empathetically like gauzy smoke as she said friends.

Qi Qingqi felt like a fool. Of course. The man had habits, and one of the less savory ones was his tendency to visit the brothel after qi-deviations.

Qi Qingqi was never quite sure what to think about Shen Qingqiu.

The rumors of his lecherous nature made her wary, yet he had never managed to set off that innate sixth sense when in the presence of a dangerous predatory man.

But, he was different with women and girls, in some strange sort of way. He spoke to her, and the other female peak lords, with a sort of semi-softness, he was unusually indulgent with his female disciples. The truth was, you couldn't really call it softness - his tone wasn't really any less sharp, his words weren't any kinder, but ...

It was in the way his eyes weren't as coldly dismissive, the barely there up tilt of his chin to show interest when they spoke, the way his fingers started lazily circling the rim of the glass when they shared gossip he was pretending to be above hearing before the peak meetings, the way he would pour tea at the peak meeting if seated beside a woman but never for another man.

(Except, once.

He had poured tea for Shang Qinghua only once.

Out of the set Shang Qinghua presented at the meeting to replace the finely crafted set the An Ding Peak Lord accidentally smashed irreparably while visiting, two days before the first meeting after the Mei generation had ascended.

The merciless ire in Shen Qingqiu's eyes, and the placid smile and warning eyes of the sect leader, made the other peak lords immediately wary of speaking up and getting themselves poisoned so publicly without the sect leader so much as protesting.

Shang Qinghua had the face of a man knowing he was being punished by the gods as he'd reluctantly drank the entire, luckily small, pot. Shen Qingqiu kept refilling his cup periodically with deadly eyes through the entire meeting.

The tea had been spiked with an emetic, luckily he didn't die, he just hated life for a few days. Poor bastard.

The tea set Shang Qinghua broke, had been Shen Meigang's parting gift to Shen Qingqiu. Last she knew, it still sat, carefully pieced back together with gold along the cracks in the deep purple porcelain, on a shelf in the bamboo house. The only sign of sentimentality the man had ever shown.)

He wasn't a soft or kind man, but he was less cruel to women.

She used to think it was sexism, like he somehow thought she was too weak to handle his poisonous nature. She used to think it was an indiscriminate attraction to any and all women.

Truly, Qi Qingqi wanted to believe there was nothing untoward but ... The rumors of his lechery came from something. It wasn't without tentative proof.

It was the way he let the youngest girl on his peak cling to his skirts without much more than an irritated flick of his fan, the rumors that he let her sleep in his bed during the earliest part of her disciple-ship, the way his fingers occasionally curled around the edge of her ribbon as he walked past her.

(It was the way she'd seen the man rub his hand over a girl from Bai Zhan's shoulders once - perhaps comforting, perhaps cajoling, no way to know with them too far away for the discussion to be heard - only for that same disciple to show up a few days later in Qian Cao, trembling and dead eyed, asking for abortive medication.

That same day a boy from Qiong Ding was found with his eyes and tongue ripped out and his genitals mutilated.

Rumor had it, this was the Bai Zhan girl's boyfriend. Rumor had it, Shen Qingqiu didn't share nicely.

The sect leader hadn't seemed surprised or phased by the death of his disciple. He'd just smiled that infuriating way and said it was unfortunate, before sweeping it away like it was a trivial matter, and not a serious potential accusation of Shen Qingqiu murdering his disciple in cold blood.

The girl from Bai Zhan was known to raid Qing Jing often, constantly finding herself "punished" in the form of attending classes of all things. She didn't act like someone afraid of Shen Qingqiu. She acted like she admired him.)

It was in the way he visited the brothel once or twice a week, a voracious appetite for pleasure, always returning the next morning with slightly less tense shoulders, and slightly less sour temper.

It was in the way that temper of his built between the visits, the way his displeasure became extremely visible and overbearing when he got banned for a week or two, before Zhangmen Yue, always, inevitably, caved to his displeasure, and graciously reinstated his right to pay whatever flower he was so enamoured by to pretend his vile personality and cock were not an inconvenience to her.

Sometimes she wondered what kind of soft pretty thing Shen Qingqiu liked to sink his claws into. Sometimes she wondered what it would be like, if his brothel visits made him a lover all the more selfish, or all the more skilled.

She had a strong preference for women, wouldn't have said she could be attracted to a man, but sometimes, he caught her attention a little too easily.

(It was the way Shen Qingqiu dressed and acted - like a highly favored imperial concubine, untouchable, unspeakably gorgeous, completely aware of the devastation he was wrecking on her.)

When Shen Qingqiu got particularly cross at the sect leader - his eyes got that manic glint, his shoulders tensed into an unyielding line of ice, his fan sharply hit the meat of his palm to punctuate his poisonous tone hidden under that veneer of civility and his mocking floral words - she couldn't help but wonder what it would be like if he turned his anger on her and took what comfort her body could provide him.

It made her sick. All these complications. All these confusing signals and the fact that none of her fairies could give definitive proof Shen Qingqiu wasn't abusive with his girls, but they could not find proof he was either.

For the safety of her girls, she would bar the man regardless of his possible innocence.

(But, sometimes, she thought of a girl on Bai Zhan Peak, carrying a bladed metal fan and sneering when she'd tried to subtly ask if Shen Qingqiu had been indecent.

Sometimes, the rumors felt flimsy, like she would only need one thing to collapse her belief in his lechery, one sign that any of the rumors were definitively false, and she'd feel like a monster for barring and snubbing a man she had, once, actually thought of as a dear, if caustic, friend.)

Shen Qingqiu didn't need the loving embrace of a decent woman to soften all his sharp edges. He wouldn't immediately become a well adjusted kinder person if she coaxed him into coming to her instead of going to his flowers for his stress relief. And, it wasn't worth entertaining, because he was a mean as shit bitch who may or may not be preying on his students, and if it wasn't good then she'd be humiliated that she let him have her in such a way.

Qi Qingqi shook the thoughts from her head as she and Cheng Qinghui approached the door of the Warm Red Pavilion.

Shang Qinghua had suggested that, perhaps, Shen Qingqiu would welcome them easier - the whole thing that had sent her spiraling into her complex thoughts about her martial brother - so, it was just the two of them - her and Cheng Qinghui, two of the four female peak lords.

(The Lady of Sen Bao, the ninth peak, the peak of beasts and animal husbandry, was quite frankly, Shen Qingqiu's complete opposite.

She was a ridiculously tall woman. Cheng Qinghui had skin that was darkly sun-bronzed and bare muscular arms with thick ropes of scars painted on her skin. Her eyes were sharp and honey-golden. She wore her ink black hair in a severe braid down her back, most often wound up into a bun when busy, and the way she dressed was masculine in the same way Shen Qingqiu's style veered towards femininity - not a single bit of fabric was free and flowing, due to the dangers if caught by the creatures she tended.

Her voice was low, husky, and raspy. She was kind, quick on her feet, and her cheeks dimpled when she smiled - which was a common occurrence. She was always up for mischief, a woman who would sit indecently sprawled across your desk, absolutely without shame. Her thick face, cheerful nature, and tendency towards a cup of hot tea and even hotter gossip, made her a popular woman on the mountains.)

Qi Qingqi ran her fingers over the peonies and cherry blossoms carved into the wood in elegant strokes, then politely knocked on the door. A moment passed, then the door was opened partially by a young girl, far too young to be a worker. A flower in training most likely.

(Though it was always possible Shen Qingqiu's tastes ran... young, and this was such a place to cater to such deviance. Unlikely though, this place was far too clean, far too high-class. Say what she would about the man, at least his taste in pleasure houses was apparently impeccable.)

She bowed politely and swiftly, Qi Qingqi doubted the girl had even actually looked at them, and said - "Esteemed guests, this one regrets to inform you that The Warm Red Pavilion is not opening it's doors today, the Madam's family is in residence. If you could please come back on your own convenience another day, we would be delighted to service your desires."

Cheng Qinghui snorted behind her. It was a bit amusing - this girl in soft pink clothes, who looked no older than eleven, still in her milk days, telling them to fuck off and get lost, in the most polite flowery way possible.

The child startled, then her brown eyes grew wide as she looked at them. What a strange sight they must make - Qi Qingqi in her elegant robes of rosy pink and pale lavenders, and the delicate femininity she used to make people underestimate her. Cheng Qinghui in her masculine attire and gold-rimmed glasses, the low cut of her top exposing her cleavage in a way that would probably fit in quite well here - two women on the steps of a pleasure house 

"Ah," she bowed again, "apologizes Esteemed Mistresses, if I may inquire, what brings you to our humble establishment?"

Qi Qingqi wanted to pinch her cheeks. "Shen Qingqiu." Cheng Qinghui bluntly responded.

The girl suddenly puffed out her cheeks and stomped her feet, acting very much her age. "No," she hissed, "You aren't taking Shen-ayi!"

Eh? Ayi?! Oh she would absolutely be teasing him about that later.

"Can we come in?" Qi Qingqi asked, politely unaffected outside, while her mind kept repeating Shen-Ayi in a loop of delight. Her lips twitched as she tried not to outright grin.

"My sincere apologies, Esteemed Mistresses, but the Warm Red Pavilion is closed."

The girl did that thing Shen Qingqiu did when he was in an argument with Liu Qingge - a graceful curve of the spine, chest pressed up, the languid flutter of the little pink fan she'd ripped agitatedly from her waist band, the effect ruined by the indignant pout and puffed up cheeks - which...

Huh ...

Qi Qingqi realized that this would have been quite an effective strategy to entice and distract a man if Shen Qingqiu wasn't allergic to showing skin, and he had the assets to draw attention to. It was quite amusing to realize it - Shen Qingqiu spent so much time in the brothel, that he copied the posture and argumentative seduction of a courtesan.

This girl was far too young, this strategy was as ineffective on her as it was on Shen Qingqiu.

(Actually...

Now that she thought about it, Liu Qingge did get so very easily distracted in arguments with Shen Qingqiu, sometimes far too easily. He would just sputter incomprehensibly and then demanded that Shen Qingqiu fight him, instead of making compelling arguments she knew he was capable of making.

Ah, Shen Qingqiu had layers, and not just the ones he insisted on wearing.)

"What will it take to leave here with Shen Qingqiu?" Cheng Qinghui asked, patience was not her strong suit.

The girl deflated like all the air went out of her, and her smile was strained. "You'll have to speak with Madam Yi."

Then she pushed the doors open and bowed, her voice dripping with sarcasm and malice as she stepped back ...

"Welcome, Esteemed Mistresses, to the Warm Red Pavilion."

Chapter Text

The moment Qi Qingqi stepped foot through the doors of the Warm Red Pavilion, she suddenly felt she understood Shen Qingqiu a lot better.

It was beautiful.

The tall wooden gate led into a small courtyard, two miniature orange trees grew in pots by the door, birds flitting through white blossoms. Within the open space, other containers held pink orchids - their stalks heavy with the weight of the fragrant blossoms; red peonies in delicate arrangements; a tall peach tree in the center court in full bloom. 

The sound of several instruments at play, erhu and guzheng and pipa with high sweet notes, floated through the air, the song calming and settling something deep in her soul. The three story terrace house beyond the open garden space held many small rooms, dark gauzy red curtains hanging over the entrances, the walls a richly dark wood. Strung across the space, hung on poles through the yard, Red lanterns not yet lit, with ribbons dancing from the strings in the gentle breeze.

All around, beautiful breathtaking women practicing some form of intellectualism or art. Some reading, some painting, some playing weiqi, some playing instruments - playing off eachother from several parts of the open space. Girls sat at low tables around the courtyard, rested across couches with silk pillows, tea in hand and conversation bright until it silenced as they walked by.

A woman with a stern face guided a group of twelve girls - approximately ten to seventeen, all dressed in simple pink robes similar to their guide's - in a floating elegant dance. The youngest followed with the clumsy grace of youth, the elder students moved like butterflies through the wind, following their instructors artful seduction.

As the child led them through the garden, following the song, Qi Qingqi found her eyes wandering over the women. She was enamoured.

The women were not dressed for entertainment, yet not dressed down completely either. The quality and ephemerality of the silk was akin to that of a harem, the illusion of rich young beauties readied for bed, yet staged, draped in ways that led the eyes upon the slip of bare shoulders, drew attention to swan-like necks, their hair pinned and styled effortlessly, enticingly.

Everywhere, signs of extraordinarily beautiful women practicing the four arts, a lucid sexual fantasy designed to weaken even the most strict and self-controlled of scholars. It was an intellectuals wet dream - beautiful girls, learned conversation, selling art and grace and their bodies.

Qi Qingqi sent a thankful glance to the heavens, extolling the grace and kindness of the heavenly emperor for the blessing, as they passed another room - Two woman sprawled elegantly across silk pillows, the rich deep red silk of their dresses draped artfully to show bare slender legs, hair perfectly arranged in a way to emulate the sign of bedroom activities, another sat before an easel, painting them with careful strokes.

Cheng Qinghui smacked her on the back of her head. "Focus, you useless golden orchid."

(Right, Shen Qingqiu. They were there for Shen Qingqiu. She'd be back though. She would never judge his brothel habits again. This was truly paradise.)

The girl led them to a room in the second level of the house, the width of three rooms, a heavy door painted red, the windows covered with more gauzy red fabric. She knocked softly, then slipped through the door, holding up a hand to tell them to wait.

From within, she barely got a glance of the room, before the door closed. They waited, Cheng Qinghui smacked her on the back of the head again when her attention went to stray to the beautiful succubi below. Moments later the girl came out and let them through with a bow, little pink fan twitching agitatedly behind her back.

Qi Qingqi froze as the door slid shut behind them.

Oh...

Oh, she was in so much trouble.

Cheng Qinghui, next to her, was at least equally transfixed, her mouth parted, eyes wide and the slight pink coral flush spread across the apples of her cheeks.

(It was an open secret among the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect peak lords, not a single one was unaffected by Shen Qingqiu's beauty.

Not Liu Qingge, bull-headed and blunt and only interested in a good fight or dangerous hunt, who sought Shen Qingqiu for duels frequently, complaining when he used underhanded tricks, but admiring all the same the edge of unpredictability and the quiet graceful spiteful strength of the Qing Jing Peak Lord.

Not Mu Qingfang, more interested in poisons and experimental surgery than romance and sex. Not Wei Qingwei, an indiscriminate flirt regardless of gender. Not herself, only interested in women.

Not the sect leader, his attraction would almost be pathetic, given Shen Qingqiu's scorn, if it didn't make Yue Qingyuan so very dangerous. Not with how his attraction had been steady as long as they knew him - when he'd stand by the taciturn, not yet as dignified, Shen Jiu and talk a mile a minute, only receiving one-word answers and disinterested hums. When he was willing to overlook anything and keep it quiet, so there was no way of knowing which rumors were true, and which were misunderstandings.

Not Cheng Qinghui, more comfortable with animals than human, yet shameless and bold and never without a smile for her sect mates. Not Bai Qinglan, with his cultivation dependant on staying pure in body and mind. Not Shang Qinghua, who found Shen Qingqiu beyond terrifying.

Not one of the eleven other peak lords were spared the curse of Shen Qingqiu's seduction, and not one of them had a chance.

Except, apparently, if Mu Qingfang was to be believed - Liu Qingge had managed, somehow in their joint seclusion and the bloody end that nearly killed both, to get that walking glacier of a man to thaw towards him.

She was NOT jealous - if only because, if it was true, she'd be coming into a lot of money from the betting pool.)

Shen Qingqiu, her beautiful and cold martial brother, had let them dress him in the same gauzy feminine robes as the other courtesans. His feet were bared, nails red.

Only two layers - she could see the slim shape of his body through the translucent mulberry silk. His jade skin glowed against the dark rich red-purple of robes, draped loosely in a way that hid his injured shoulder and missing arm, draped to expose the hint of one bare bruised shoulder, the white of the bandages and his slim chest ever so slightly tantalizingly exposed by the open front, his neck bare for the first time in her memories. His hair - no longer just streaked, the white having spread and overtaken like snow covering a mountain - was pulled into a loose style of three thin braids on each side connecting, bound with a tight ribbon, the majority of his hair left to run over his back and shoulders like water.

He was resting, sleeping against a mound of silk pillows and rumpled blankets, somehow as artfully seductive as the women being painted rooms away, with three women resting with him. He looked completely eased here - in the resplendence of this beautiful forbidden world.

Behind him, his head rested against her chest, her legs steeped around his body, a petite fairy of a woman in rose silk, her skin like porcelain. Her hair a deep rich black like obsidian. Her eyes a startling cinnamon. Her face was soft and round, her eyes doll-like, and her lips were painted a deep berry-like shade, the black around her eyes drawing attention to her thick eyelashes.

Sitting beside him, another beautiful woman in deep berry with delicate red flowers embroidered up the silk, sharp faced in the same was Shen Qingqiu was, her skin a deep buttery caramel, her eyes black as coal, her deep red lips pursed in annoyance as she glanced at them with a sharp gesture of her finger on her lips promising death if they woke him.

(Qi Qingqi could understand - given what Mu Qingfang had explained, whatever Liu Qingge was feeling, Shen Qingqiu was too, and vice versa. They should not be so far apart because neither of them would be able to feel anything but panic, the longer they stayed so distanced, the worse it would get. It was likely a relief that Shen Qingqiu fainted after his panic attack and the qi deviation he most likely had following - If Liu Qingge's state and the way Shen Qingqiu's hair no longer held any of its usually rich brown, was an indication.)

The third woman was running her hands lovingly through his silver-white hair, like moonlight upon a lake. A woman just as tall as Cheng Qinghui, but far slighter, with hair of deep brown and skin of snow, her eyes and unusual startling azure. She was the eldest of the women in the room.

When they entered, she gently kissed Shen Qingqiu, leaving a print of blood red lipstick on his forehead, before she stood and led them beyond their sleeping martial brother into an office hidden behind a sliding screen. He shifted in his sleep, brows furrowing, lashes fluttering, lips pulling into a familiar frown, but the other two quickly soothed him back to sleep.

She did not let them speak as she prepared the tea, Qi Qingqi didn't dare after she thwacked Cheng Qinghui on the head with an elegant jade-handled fan that she was certain belonged to their sword brother. The way she moved, in that gentle elegant way, the barest hint of her beautiful wrist, the artistry, the seduction - this too was a habit Shen Qingqiu held.

Though, whether they adopted the habit from Shen Qingqiu, or if it was another courteasanal habit he'd learned in their company, was starting to become very unclear.

(Cracks appearing in the fragile glass of her perception of the man. She didn't understand him. She didn't think she'd ever tried.)

As soon as the tea had been served - a gentle blend of orchid and white tea - the woman sighed and spoke, her face was stern. "My name is Yi Lenghua, I am the proprietor of this establishment."

Qi Qingqi smiled, friendly, "A pleasure to meet the esteemed Madam Yi, I am Qi Qingqi, Lady of Xian Shu Peak, and my companion is Cheng Qinghui, Peak Lord of Sen Bao."

Cheng Qinghui slapped her hand against the desk, completely ruining her attempts at polite patience. "Look, the truth is Shen-shixiong is currently suffering from an ailment that means he needs to be with our martial brother, Liu Qingge, or his health and mental state will continue to decline rapidly. So, just be clear with us, what do we need to do to leave with Shen Qingqiu?"

What happened next, completely shattered Qi Qingqi's delicate understanding, everything she thought she knew of Shen Qingqiu.

(A cold girl on Bai Zhan with the elegant sharp bladed metal fan that appeared three years ago and never left her person after a boy was found brutalized.

A giggling girl with pink ribbons in her hair clinging to Shen Qingqiu's long skirts as he ran fingers through her hair.

A girl on Sen Bao with a Qing Jing green ribbon wrapped tightly up her wrist, another victim, another girl saved from some danger without their knowledge.

A hallmaster of An Ding being kicked mercilessly down the thousand steps and a girl in a yellow uniform smiling as his body rolled and broke like a falling doll, her hand gripping the edge of one long teal sleeve.

A small group of disciples from several peaks, seemingly devastated and distraught when Shen Qingqiu was banned from Xian Shu, pleading that Shen-shibo was not bad. The azure hairpins they wore in solidarity as they took a vow of silence in protest.

A little girl stamping her feet, "You aren't taking Shen-ayi!"

And ...)

A small sound like a giggling hum, but far too malicious, "Sweetheart," A beautiful woman cold and unapproachable, voice dripping with disdain, a fan pointed threateningly at Cheng Qinghui's throat, "You may bring A-Jiu's brute here if it will bring him comfort, but there is nothing that you can say or offer that will entice us to return our brother to that mountain of snakes you call a sect before he is ready."

Chapter Text

Liu Qingge knew he was dreaming. Conscious as he felt, it could not be anything but a lucid dream.

He stood next to Shen Qingqiu, both dressed in robes not dissimilar to their usual styles yet the fabric was entirely white. There was something intangible about the scenes, the way their clothes disappeared into the fog.

The room was dark and dirty. Shen Qingqiu, far younger than he'd ever seen him, in clothes more like rags, was on the muddy floor. His arms and legs were held by four men in dirty disheveled clothes, his legs spread and pinned by a doctor as he screamed bloody murder around the fabric stuffed in his mouth. A man stood watching, dark hungry eyes and black curled hair pulled into a lordly style, as the younger Shen Qingqiu struggled through the birth.

Liu Qingge stood in horrified silence, unable to look away, his hand twitching with the need to comfort the young intangible memory or the man standing beside him, and the knowledge that Shen Qingqiu had never accepted touch and likely wouldn't find comfort in it now. From the outside view, the child when it came had no face, no way of seeing the gender. It was more of a wax doll than a newborn.

Shen Qingqiu watched dispassionately beside him as the man dragged the baby away from his screaming younger self and drowned it, then turned away into the mist.

The scene changed.

Liu Qingge watched his younger self, yet older than Shen Qingqiu had been, pace restlessly in front of the large wooden doors, the sounds of his mother's screams muffled by heavy wood. He remembered how anxious and scared he'd been at Liu Mingyan's birth, but after watching the horror of his martial brother's memory, this felt almost mocking.

When the screams quieted, his younger self stood rigidly, impatient, until he was let in. His mother was covered, her face pale and exhausted, but his younger self only had eyes for the blanket swaddled in her arms, where his new baby sister rested.

It changed again, white mist taking the scene away. They were silent ghosts haunting old memories.

The next scene, Liu Qingge wasn't sure whose memory it was.

He was training blindfolded in the bamboo forest on Qing Jing, moving through his exercises in peace without the disturbance of his sect mates and the battle royale of his own peak. Unknown to his younger self, he was watched by sharp assessing eyes, his training having interrupted Shen Qingqiu's, then Shen Jiu's, qin practice.

His younger self froze in the middle of his training and he drew the sword, pointing it out into the bamboo - the blade nearly cut Shen Jiu, the sharp point a hair length from his cheek. "Who's there!" He shouted, "Announce yourself."

Yet, Shen Jiu, only blinked slowly. He ran a finger along the blade, pushing it away from his face, then vanished into the bamboo as Liu Qingge's younger self tore the blindfold from his eyes.

As the scene dissolved into fog, Liu Qingge finally spoke. "That was you?" Beside him, Shen Qingqiu produced a fan to cover the bottom half of his face. "I thought it was a ghost."

"That was the first time I saw you." Shen Qingqiu revealed. "Two days later, we met for the first time."

Liu Qingge grimaced. Their first meeting had not gone very well. As if to mock him, the scene changed to that meeting.

He watched, wincing as his younger self barged onto the peak to challenge Shen Jiu to a duel. He remembered that his friend, Ji Jue, claimed Shen Jiu had smacked him across the face with a fan for no reason, he had a black eye, the angry welt from the jade handled fan. Liu Qingge, then still Liu Anyu, had been appalled and instantly demanded a duel. He turned his eyes from the scene, not wanting to watch himself shove Shen Jiu into the dirt, not wanting to listen to his younger self howling about dishonorable means as Shen Jiu flung dirt in his eyes. Shen Jiu had not looked so fragile in his rage, but watching from the side brought new clarity.

"Why did you hit Ji Jue?" He finally asked.

Shen Qingqiu raised one sharp eyebrow. "Does it matter? This was over a decade ago. You cannot change what happened."

Liu Qingge frowned, then nodded resolutely. "It mattered then. I'm just..." He paused then sighed, "You've always been right about me, I'm a thoughtless brute. I never asked your side, I never do. I just assume I know best, that one side of the story is enough knowledge, but you've always been complicated. I've never taken the initiative to know you, but I want to. I meant everything I said in the caves. I'm trying to do better. It mattered then, it still does." Shen Qingqiu stared at him with that same sharpness he always did. "Please, Shen-shixiong."

Shen Qingqiu sighed, exhausted. The scene behind them faded into mist. "He was being aggressive with one of my Shimei. She had repeatedly told him she didn't want to court him, but he would not listen. He contacted her parents for permission, she was furious. She tried to confront him, he grabbed her, and I shoved him. He tried to punch me, I hit him with my fan and kicked him off the peak."

Liu Qingge winced, feeling guilty. "I'm sor-" His apology was cut off by a sharp smack of a white bamboo fan on his forehead. He stared wide eyed at Shen Qingqiu. "Ow!"

"I don't like apologies." Shen Qingqiu said curtly, "It's empty, meaningless. Just do better, and explain yourself if you wrong me. I have no use for an apology if it doesn't come with action."

Liu Qingge thought about the thousands of meaningless gifts and apologies he witnessed Zhangmen Yue giving an irritated Shen Qingqiu since long before they received their generational courtesy names. He nodded stiffly, "I will do better, I pro-" he cut himself off as Shen Qingqiu's eyes narrowed in displeasure.

The sect leader did that a lot too. He broke almost all of them

The scene changed. Luckily this memory was much nicer than the others, Liu Anyu, age three or four, running through a field of purple flowers. It was his earliest memory, and he knew it wasn't a bad one.

"Can I ask something?" Liu Qingge asked.

"Technically you just did," Shen Qingqiu's eyes squinted at the corners, Liu Qingge thought he might be smiling behind his fan, "But you may."

"It's kind of personal." He warned.

Shen Qingqiu was quiet for a moment, his eyes fixed on the serene scene playing out in front of them. Liu Anyu's father had caught up to him and scooped him up, his younger self was giggling, trying to escape the tickling.

"It can't be more personal than this." Shen Qingqiu reasoned, then he lowered his fan, frowning. "If these memories follow a pattern, you'll get your answer regardless. This is your first memory, correct?"

"Yes." Liu Qingge frowned too, confused. "Why does -"

"You want to know what my relationship to Zhangmen-shixong is." He interrupted, Liu Qingge blinked in surprise, but nodded. "He's my first memory."

Liu Qingge didn't know what to say, shocked by this knowledge, but before he could the fog covered his memory and the scene changed again.

Sure enough the sect leader was there - a tanned boy of seven or eight huddling in a filthy alley with a tiny dark haired boy half his age. They were both shivering, dirty, dressed in rags, barefooted, heels cracked and bleeding.

"Gege!" Tiny Shen Qingqiu was smiling, holding a dirt-covered stick of tanghulu like it was the most precious treasure in the world. "She dropped one!"

Liu Qingge watched on as his worldview was shattering. It could be a scene just as sweet as his first memory, but the smell of the alley and the dirt and the thinness of the two boys was heartbreaking. Especially when compared to his first memory. Especially knowing both as he did now - distant.

Even worse was what the little version of the sect leader responded with.

"We need to make it last." Tiny Yue Qi counted the six hawthorn berries down the stick. "Here didi, four for you, two for me. You can have one right now and we save the rest for later."

Tiny Shen Jiu pinched him harshly. "You get the same as me." he hissed.

"But, we haven't eaten in a few days." Yue Qi tried to reason, breaking Liu Qingge's heart all the more, "You need it more."

Shen Jiu just bit him and glared, such a familiar scowl on such a tiny face. "Gege gets three or I won't eat any."

"Didi." Yue Qi whined, but in a way that suggested the emotional manipulation and biting of little Shen Qingqiu was working.

He wasn't horrified, but he was having trouble finding another word to describe the feeling - his chest feeling crushed, his eyes stinging with tears he refused to shed, too deep to be sadness, too angry on their behalf, too ... much. He didn't have a word for the feeling.

The scene faded into the white mist.

It was quiet for a few minutes, as they waited for another memory, but none came. Eventually, Shen Qingqiu spoke.

"It's my fault, you know." Liu Qingge turned to stare at him in confusion, that turned to panic as he realized Shen Qingqiu was crying. "He never said it was my fault, not in those words, but it is. I asked him once, how he found me, how he ended up on the street, and it was because of me."

"No, it's not." Liu Qingge said, because even if he didn't know the story yet, how could it be.

Shen Qingqiu continued as if he didn't hear. "He heard crying and left his mother's side during the Dongzhi Festival, where he found me drowning in Luo river. He couldn't find his way back to his parents, so he just kept me, and kept waiting where he remembered seeing her last until it got too cold and he had to find somewhere else. He ended up on the streets because of me. He was just a child. He should have just let me drown."

Liu Qingge sat with him, then slowly, broadcasting his movements, wrapped his arms around Shen Qingqiu. He waited for the sobbing to quiet before he spoke. "Qingqiu, it wasn't your fault, and I am really glad to have you in my life, so don't ever say that again."

"I ruined his life, he only found his parents again after we got separated. I ruin everything, but I can't forgive him for leaving me there after promising to bring help." Shen Qingqiu mumbled, breath warm and shaky against his arm.

Liu Qingge thought about the first memory, and he didn't need to ask to know. Yue Qingyuan was sixteen when he joined the sect. Shen Qingqiu was seventeen. Three or four years difference in age, fifteen years old when the child was born, he was not with Yue Qi when he joined - it wasn't hard to do the math. For whatever reason, Yue Qingyuan had left Shen Qingqiu to that horrible fate.

"Did he ever explain why he left you?" Liu Qingge asked, but even as he asked, he already knew the answer. It wasn't a surprise, it was simply a piece in the very complicated history they shared. He nodded resolutely, tightening his hold. "When we wake up, I'm going to get you an answer."

He wouldn't promise, he would do it. It was the least he owed Shen Qingqiu.

With those memories sharp in his head, he needed to know too. Because the love in little Yue Qi's eyes for tiny Shen Jiu was the exact same love Yue Qingyuan held in his gaze for Shen Qingqiu all the time. And, if he loved him the same now, then what could have possibly stopped him from going back.

There was a rumor about the Ling Xi Caves ...

Chapter Text

Yue Qingyuan's first memory was of a very cold man - not cold in the way Shen Qingqiu was, where his frostiness was born from the harshness of their youth, and his own failures; cold in the sense that there was no pleasing the man.

His father was a shadow of memory, harsh hands and sharp tongue, and little love for his shu wife and the four sons she bore him. He wasn't Yue Qingyuan then, he wasn't even Yue Qi, but the name he'd been called was lost to time and memory. He was the youngest shu son, and he knew even then there was nothing he could do to gain his father's love.

His mother, he barely remembered her.

He remembered the sound of her voice as she sang in the garden with his head upon her lap, the smell of her peach blossom hair oil, the way she would hold him close and name the stars and constellations. He didn't remember that, unlike his three elder brothers born by her, he was the only one who looked exactly like her. That knowledge only came to him when he reconnected with his birth family, quite by accident, shortly before he joined Cang Qiong Mountain Sect. He didn't even know her name until then - Yue Yanlin, but it was her name he took when joining the sect as Yue Qi.

His relationship with his birth family was complicated these days. His father was still impossible to please, and their relationship was distant.

His father hadn't formally acknowledged him as a son until after the former sect leader, Bin Meilun, acknowledged him as his successor and they received their generational courtesy names upon their ascension. His brothers, both the eldest of them, born of the di wife, and his elder brothers barely knew how to talk to him, and hadn't tried to reach out in these long years since he became a cultivator. And his mother ...

His mother died after he ran from her to the sound of crying, lost to sickness and grief, lost to a fever that orphaned him before she could even search for him.

Yet, even so, Yue Qingyuan could not regret following the crying to the frozen river. After all, that was how he met his soulmate, his real family, the only person who mattered in the entire world.

Xiao Jiu had been such a tiny wrinkled little thing back then, when he was just a nameless baby brother being raised by a boy too young to know what he was doing. That winter was harsh.

Yue Qingyuan had never told Xiao Jiu that he'd waited in the village square for his parents for long enough they both nearly froze to death. How could he, when he'd seen the guilt in Xiao Jiu's young eyes when he finally confessed some of the story of how he ended up on the street? How could he tell him that his father had walked right past them both, not days later, ignoring Yue Qi as he ran after him with his new brother in his arms?

Truly, wasn't it far kinder to pretend he'd just gotten lost, than admit his father had abandoned him and the baby he rescued from the river, to starve and freeze while his mother was dying of fever and grief.

He'd stayed there weeks, as the winter grew colder and the snow covered the ground. That they only were forced to move when they nearly died if not for the kindness of a woman with a badly scarred face on the street. She took the two in for the first winter - a former brothel woman who'd been sent to the streets when a client cut her badly and marred the beauty that had secured her livelihood. She had born a child recently enough that her milk was not dried, yet he never saw a baby.

Yue Qingyuan, even as a child, wondered if perhaps, this had been the woman who bore Xiao Jiu - they had similarly dark brown hair, similar white jade skin, and striking deep forest green eyes - an unusual enough color that Yue Qingyuan had not known how to ask, but he knew nonetheless. True, the child she bore could have died in the harsh icy winter that year, it could have been a coincidence, but Yue Qingyuan had suspected this had been Xiao Jiu's mother.

Whether she was the mother of his Xiao Jiu or not, whether she'd attempted to abandon her newborn, only to be forced to rescue them both - it was only due to her that newly born Xiao Jiu had milk to help him survive the first year. She never gave him a name to call her, never asked for theirs, and when they were five and one years each, she vanished one winter and never returned. Whether she abandoned them or was killed, Yue Qingyuan never learned the truth.

It wasn't an easy life. They wandered city to city so they could avoid slavers, after a brush far too close in the early months on their own. For years there was no true home. Xiao Jiu grew, survived with all the resilience of a boy who never new any other life. Yue Qi, then a lost nameless orphan just like Xiao Jiu, did miss the comfort of home in the beginning, but eventually he grew used to the difficult life they led. Far too often, his brother was the one getting them out of trouble, helping him clean up the messes his stupid kind heart got them into.

The only kindness they ever received was by women in brothels - not a somewhat classier place like the warm red pavilion Shen Qingqiu frequented, though he he could stand to take advantage after seeing such ugliness up close was beyond Yue Qingyuan's understanding - but the dirty grimy kind where women sold their bodies in drugged haze, or where they were paid to act high class for lowborn men to pretend they had some worth beyond what coin they could provide. 

Xiao Jiu was everything to him. His reason for surviving. The only thing keeping him going. And then, when he was around fourteen, and Xiao Jiu was around ten, the slavers caught him. He was stupid, they'd been working separately and he made the mistake of trying to pickpocket one of them. Two weeks later, three villages away, Xiao Jiu let himself be caught - he had followed their trail, hunted them, and let them catch him too.

So, Qi and Jiu became their names, when they had not had any before, content to be gege and didi. The ten of them were a strange sort of family, born of suffering, street kids and sold children. Xiao Jiu was closest with the girls, more protective of them in the same way the girls protected them. They were closest with Yi - long ago sold to a brothel with two others, though Yue Qingyuan never learned the name of the place. Some died within the first few months, others were sold, and some escaped. For two years they were all paraded about city to city in the seedier parts of society, forced to use their street smarts at the behest of greedy men.

Yue Qingyuan could never forgive himself for getting caught, because Xiao Jiu was sold to a monster. It was all his fault.

His fault Xiao Jiu fell into the hands of slavers. His fault Xiao Jiu was sold to a monster. He should have let Shi be killed. He should have taken Xiao Jiu and ran long before that. He should have let Qiu Jianluo catch him and do as he willed. He didn't. He left him.

And without Xiao Jiu to keep him from being too stupid, Yue Qingyuan broke himself. Two and a half years pushing himself harder than anyone until he made a mistake and drew a sword he could not control. Bin Meilun broke him again, fused his soul with his sword, broke every bone in his body, scorched his spiritual veins, and threw him into the Ling Xi caves to be remade or die trying. He went insane, he qi deviated again and again, trapped screaming for a year.

The moment he was freed he ran from the sect, ran to find Xiao Jiu, ran with the intention of buying his contract or slaughtering everyone to free him. Whatever it took.

He was too late.

Yue Qingyuan still wasn't entirely certain exactly what kind of torture Shen Qingqiu faced with the Qiu's, but he knew how it ended. Fire, every man in the household dead. Yue Qingyuan hunted down Qiu Haitang and finished the job, the only vengeance he could offer.

With Xiao Jiu seemingly long since dead, Yue Qingyuan didn't have anywhere else to go. He went back to the sect.

Two years later, he reunited with the only person he'd ever loved, an apprentice to a dangerous demonic cultivator infiltrating the Intersect Alliance. Two years later, he made Xiao Jiu into a hero and dragged him before the peak lords, ready to beg for Xiao Jiu to have a place in the sect. He still didn't know why Shen Meigang took one look at his bloodied dour friend and claimed him as not just a disciple but a son. He would never know.

Yue Qingyuan swore that he'd stand by Xiao Jiu's side, explain himself.... But every time he tried to talk about the caves he froze up. He couldn't speak. The memories were too much.

All he could do was fail him. Over and over. Gifts and apologies that didn't show his most precious person how much he meant, promises broken unintentionally only made them more distant, and trying to help bury the darkest parts of Xiao Jiu only made it impossible to tell which rumors were truth and which were only hurting Xiao Jiu even more. Truthfully, even if the rumors didn't seem like something his Xiao Jiu was capable of, wasn't it safer to be cautious rather than let him suffer?

They were little more than strangers, their closeness shattering.... He couldn't fix it. Xiao Jiu couldn't forgive him for not rescuing him, for abandoning him, and Yue Qingyuan couldn't explain, but as long as Xiao Jiu stayed he could try. It wasn't too late.

He was a failure.

And then, while he was away, Xiao Jiu nearly died and the sect was attacked. It was only as he almost lost Shen Qingqiu that he realized he couldn't live like strangers anymore. And, if he couldn't speak without the darkness swallowing him ... Well, there were flowers that could compel someone to speak their truth. He could procure some easily.

For Xiao Jiu, he would do anything, even if his heart was no longer Yue Qingyuan's - and honestly, what had happened in those caves to allow Liu Qingge to find space in Xiao Jiu's cautious broken heart? Even if it broke them even more when he finally explained everything he'd never been able to speak. Sometimes, in order to be whole, something had to break.

Wasn't he a testament to that very truth?