Chapter Text
Liu Qingge was used to recovering from surreal experiences. Once, while hunting a Miasmic River Toad, he had been turned into an enormous crawfish for a week. He’d had to spend it lurking in the stream behind Qian Cao, which was thankfully shaded by a graceful willow. He hadn’t minded eating grubs and such—he’d been protected from having to take in a bodyweight-proportional amount of freshwater carrion by his cultivation and inedia—but having to remain wet all the time was annoying, as was the absence of a true grip. Claws just couldn’t compare to hands, even if he’d been able to cobble together a functional sword-seal with them to control Cheng Luan.
By contrast, a simple venom with no body-transformation whatsoever, solved in a few hours by a trusted friend in private, should barely register. Even if someone else had been involved.
Liu Qingge sighed. Self-deception was a significant weakness. His old shizun had been frank with him, on the eve of his ascension to peak lord: it is fine to be stoic, but the virtue of not showing feelings should not be confused with the vice of not understanding them. A warrior had to know his temper and his heart intimately to be able to avoid planning or launching an assault when compromised. For this reason, despite the unpleasantness of the task, Liu Qingge had forced himself long ago to keep pace intellectually with his often-upsetting desires.
His shizun had been instrumental in this. Liu Qingge was the only one to know the location of her retirement cottage, which clung to the slopes of a distant mountain. The single room was decorated with a smug display of her trophies, a life’s work in taxidermy. She knew Liu Qingge so well that she was often able to fill in the gaps in his curt speech. When she couldn’t, the echoes of how much he’d feared her as a disciple meant that her hand twitching toward her cane could usually break his reserve.
“No surprise that we martial cultivators can be titillated by violence,” she’d observed, nonchalantly, when he’d managed to convey the content of the dreams that tortured him. When he’d narrowed his eyes at her use of the plural pronoun, she’d smirked at him. “You want to know my fantasies, boy?”
At his hurried headshake, she’d laughed. “Very well. Rest assured they would put hair on your chest; they sure raised the hair on my head when they started.” She contemplated him a bit longer. “My advice: look to the facts, and separate them from your fears and the experience of the dream. Don’t let the presence of the fantasy convince your mind of something that isn’t true.”
Grudgingly, he’d exerted himself. His conclusion: the dreams were unlikely to be a reflection of reality. Once Shen Qingqiu was back, the evidence mounted in support. When the dream shifted to grappling faceless bodies, no longer his shixiong and his—Liu Qingge ground his teeth—husband, Liu Qingge grimly adjusted his self-conception. New dreams had blossomed—differently upsetting, but at least less violent—but the old had merely changed, not disappeared. Liu Qingge’s mental map of his sexuality was a creased and ink-stained page with the old, easy answer of his early days as peak lord scratched out, followed by a tersely bulleted list.
“Who cares why,” his shizun had dismissed, irritated by the question. “If you have the who, what, and how nailed down, don’t torment yourself over the useless why,” she’d advised. “The facts are enough to begin dealing with fantasies.”
Brooding as he walked the line of his disciples practicing sword-forms in unison, flicking incorrectly placed ankles and elbows with little bursts of stinging qi, Liu Qingge noted that he didn’t have any new revisions or additions to that page, despite the wealth of new experiential data he’d collected. All he had was a long list of confirmations. At least he could be satisfied that he hadn’t erred in his previous self-assessments. He’d gritted his teeth before over the fact of his own absence from any imagined scene with Shen Qingqiu. Worse had been the unwelcome knowledge that imagining Luo Binghe’s pleasure excited him as potently as Shen Qingqiu’s. Facts were facts: Liu Qingge tried not to care why. His temper simmered nonetheless. What wouldn’t that entitled, selfish creature take from him?
No, the experience shed no new light on Liu Qingge himself. Grudgingly, he turned to the page he’d been avoiding: his furtive, embarrassing, and previously futile tactical and strategic analysis. Ponder and deliberate before you make a move.
Item 1: Liu Qingge could not defeat Luo Binghe. This was empirically true. The most straightforward, familiar route to what he should want—Shen Qingqiu alone—was thus barred.
Item 2: Luo Binghe’s devotion to and jealousy of Shen Qingqiu was superhuman, catastrophic, and unresponsive to persuasion, reality, or death. He could not practically be separated from Shen Qingqiu.
Item 3: Shen Qingqiu’s devotion to Luo Binghe was also unresponsive to persuasion, reality or death. Liu Qingge did not… he couldn’t… this marriage was what Shen Qingqiu wanted. No matter how little sense it made, Shen Qingqiu could not be more clear in his actions: he wanted Luo Binghe. He loved Luo Binghe.
Item 4: Under highly specific circumstances, which included morally suspect actions including spying and voyeurism—not to mention emergency medical treatment—Liu Qingge was indeed able to enjoy watching the two of them together. His shizun had cautioned him that fantasy didn’t always translate into enjoyable real-life experience.
Subitem A: It was unlikely he would ever see his original, violent fantasies play out in real life.
Subitem B: Luo Binghe would probably kill him if he found Liu Qingge watching.
Liu Qingge received the bows of his sweating, bruised disciples when their inspection was over. He stood on the dusty training ground frowning. Carefully, he inked a mental brush and drew a line through that last.
The display in the bath reinforced his other conclusions about Luo Binghe’s feelings. He was possessive, jealous, and obsessed. He reveled in debasing himself for Shen Qingqiu. He was smug and insufferable about showing off Shen Qingqiu’s attachment to him, Shen Qingqiu’s willingness to suffer embarrassment for him. He particularly enjoyed rubbing Liu Qingge’s nose in their marriage. Liu Qingge felt his mouth turn sour. Luo Binghe had suspected Liu Qingge’s feelings before, but had the details wrong. Now he knew everything.
Liu Qingge turned the bathtub scene over in his head, examining it from several angles. Instead of kicking him out—or kicking him to death—Luo Binghe had invited him in. Luo Binghe had constructed an encounter that fit—almost—what Liu Qingge had admitted he wanted, no doubt for his own selfish purposes. In his memory, Luo Binghe subtly reached for Shen Qingqiu’s groin under the water, trying to show Liu Qingge his husband’s pleasure, just what Liu Qingge had described wanting to see.
But he’d been rebuffed; Shen Qingqiu had stopped him. Instead, Luo Binghe had displayed for Liu Qingge his husband’s willingness to allow Luo Binghe ridiculous, embarrassing things—and to let Liu Qingge watch. He’d pivoted to showing himself off; his shamelessness, his hunger for and satisfaction in all of Shen Qingqiu’s body, even the lowly parts.
There remained two unanswered questions, Liu Qingge thought, as he kicked pebbles from the path to his cottage. Firstly, and most importantly, what did Shen Qingqiu want? Liu Qingge remembered Shen Qingqiu’s eyes on him toward the end—but speculating from that thin evidence was dangerous. He closed his own front door and locked it. Secondly, and likely more immediately pertinent, what would Luo Binghe do next?
The invitation to dinner was a threat; but of what? A repeat? Another scene for Liu Qingge to watch?
Liu Qingge didn’t kid himself—he wanted that. He wanted to go, to sit, to watch: to take whatever was offered.
But how to answer the first question? Liu Qingge suspected that Shen Qingqiu might go along with Luo Binghe’s plans even if he himself was uncomfortable. Shen Qingqiu was too soft for his monstrous disciple-husband. Whatever had happened with his qi deviation aside, Liu Qingge doubted that anyone had ever taught Shen Qingqiu the strategic necessity of ruthless self-awareness. Luo Binghe might have staked out the direction of his desires, but Shen Qingqiu hadn’t.
Liu Qingge was no Luo Binghe; he would rather die than pressure and manipulate his shixiong into satisfying his prurient fantasies.
Reluctantly, he sighed and admitted the rest. Shen Qingqiu would endlessly explain away and forgive Luo Binghe’s transgressions. A misstep by Liu Qingge risked real consequences.
Liu Qingge was no Luo Binghe; he did not enjoy the same privileges. A friend was not a husband.
Liu Qingge might be useful as a stock character in Luo Binghe’s staged play, a convenient villain to provide his husband a moment of entertainment, satisfy his craving for his shizun’s admiration and prove his own superiority. Such a villain was easily defeated and forgotten once its instrumental purpose was served. Liu Qingge did not want to be forgotten. And if Shen Qingqiu came to see him as an embarrassing sex prop wielded by his embarrassing but beloved husband, their friendship would be twisted—maybe lost.
Unacceptable. Liu Qingge methodically cleaned his weapons, planning for contingencies.
The reprieve lasted only a few days. Luo Binghe appeared at the training ground on the following Wednesday, which was the day the peak took on Liu Qingge in a formal melee. The demon smirked from the sidelines as Liu Qingge disarmed the last combatant, a promising young woman who’d been the final disciple standing the week before as well. Liu Qingge, his garments filthy and blade bare, glared at him in his fussy perfection, lounging around on other peoples’ peaks with his collars so low. Involuntarily, Liu Qingge lifted his chin slightly. Luo Binghe raised his eyebrows and tilted his head: really? Letting go of the impulse, Liu Qingge shook his head and sheathed Cheng Luan.
“I’m here to invite you to dinner at the Bamboo House, Shishu,” Luo Binghe leered, once the disciples had dispersed. “I was inspired to concoct a new menu in your honor.”
“Let Shen Qingqiu invite me, then,” Liu Qingge said, dismissing the invitation. Luo Binghe frowned and studied him.
“Shizun knows I’m here,” the demon added, having dropped the teasing tone.
Liu Qingge snorted. “I’ll say yes to him alone.”
“Hmm,” Luo Binghe said, and left.
Liu Qingge ate his dinner at home that night.
Some days later, Shen Qingqiu dropped by. Liu Qingge had just finished approving the disciples’ night hunts for the following month. Tedious, but necessary. He listened to them describe their plans as they chopped wood for the kitchen and laundry fires until he’d heard enough, then told them curtly “yes” or “no.” Rarely did he have to intervene and question or correct them further, but he was still exhausted. Too much talking.
“Shidi,” Shen Qingqiu murmured, more of his face behind his fan than usual. Liu Qingge rolled his eyes and led him to his favorite waterfall: 360 degree visibility for a great distance, plenty of white noise. Private, but not enclosed. Choose your ground well, his shizun cackled in his head. A surrounded army must be given a way out.
Liu Qingge offered him a seat on the least uncomfortable rock. He remained standing as his shixiong arranged his skirts carefully.
“Would you like to come to dinner tonight, Liu shidi?” Shen Qingqiu asked once he’d settled.
“Dinner?” Liu Qingge replied, with the emphasis—and scorn—the ploy deserved.
Shen Qingqiu flushed, but didn’t deny his shameless use of his husband’s euphemism; he dropped his eyes from Liu Qingge’s. The fan fluttered.
“Did he send you here?”
Shen Qingqiu sighed. “Does it matter?”
“I won’t be his tool,” Liu Qingge warned. “I’ll come if you want me there.”
“Me?” Shen Qingqiu asked, appearing genuinely surprised. “Why does it matter what I want?”
Liu Qingge stared at him. Shen Qingqiu’s face was guileless, open. Perhaps Liu Qingge should hogtie him with immortal binding cables and drop him at his shizun’s cabin. She could enlighten him. Probably.
“It matters,” Liu Qingge explained gruffly. “I’m not a toy.”
“Of course you’re not a toy!” Shen Qingqiu cried. “You’re the war god! You’re incomparably beautiful and deadly, fearless and faithful!”
Liu Qingge eyed him. “Are you poisoned?”
Shen Qingqiu huffed. “I only meant… anyone would want you,” he groused. “Of course Luo Binghe would. You’re his nearest rival: famously talented, heart-breakingly beautiful.”
Liu Qingge waited for more, but Shen Qingqiu was apparently finished. “You didn’t answer the question,” Liu Qingge observed.
“What question?” Shen Qingqiu fussed, cross. “Am I poisoned? No.”
“Do you want me,” Liu Qingge corrected, struggling for calm. His heart rate ticked up; he breathed carefully and slowed it again.
The fan came back up; so did the blush. “I said anyone would,” Shen Qingqiu muttered, staring at Liu Qingge’s fist, which was clenched at his side. “Will you come or not?”
Liu Qingge supposed that was an answer, after all.
“What—” Liu Qingge grimaced. “—is for dinner?”
“I don’t know; Binghe will make something,” Shen Qingqiu said, waving his fan dismissively. “It’ll be good, it always is; you’ll like it! He’s such a good cook,” he added brightly.
Liu Qingge eyed him again. This was excruciating. “—and after?”
“Oh,” Shen Qingqiu rearranged his clothes needlessly. “I don’t… I don’t know that either.”
“You… don’t know?” Liu Qingge asked, baffled.
“Binghe is… very creative,” Shen Qingqiu mumbled. Liu Qingge watched him squirm.
“I… didn’t ask for details,” Shen Qingqiu admitted, sheepish.
Was Liu Qingge really going to go along with this? He caught Shen Qingqiu looking at him over his fan—his shixiong’s eyes widened and then he quickly looked elsewhere. Liu Qingge felt a surge of desire.
He gave in. It was too late anyway. “What time?”
“Oh! Xu Shi,” Shen Qingqiu said, and broke into a little smile. “You’ll come?”
“Yes,” Liu Qingge said, terse. “But now I have… training,” he extemporized.
“Of course, of course.” Shen Qingqiu gathered himself up. They walked back toward the rainbow bridge to Qing Jing in silence.
“We’ll see you soon,” Shen Qingqiu murmured shyly as he left—or was he being coy? Liu Qingge couldn’t guess. He wiped the sweat from his palms on his skirts and resolved to train as hard as he could—spiritually, not physically; he might need his body—until the appointed time.