#guardianweek2020

Da Qing frowns, his nose scrunching a bit more. He scratches his cheek with a finger, muttering, “Yeah, I still don’t really remember much of that,” to himself. 

No, duh, Zhao Yunlan rolls his eyes and throws his arms wide open in a ‘well, see, that’s my point’ kind of gesture. 

“What I don’t get,” he says, shaking the book in his hand, one of the few he’d found to mention Kunlun and the things that happened so very long ago (he’d gone on a hunt after he got back, a bit of a side-quest for knowledge… and admittedly, some self-satisfaction), “is how the hell I went from war general to some kind of mountain god in this version of events?”

He’d found the scroll book hidden in a nook in Dixing’s palace library, and he doesn’t know what made him reach for it, but before Zhao Yunlan had known what was happening, he was reading a very… embellished tale of his brief exploits ten millennia ago. 'A Mythology of the Mountain God Kunlun,' the title said. It was as ludicrous as it sounded.

“Maybe it’s just a misunderstanding.” Da Qing swipes the book out of his hand now, and unrolls it, reading bits and pieces here and there. Zhao Yunlan watches his face go through multiple emotions before settling on a cross between disgust and resignation. 

“See?”

“Oh, I see. I see now why Professor Shen acts the way he does around you if this is the way you behaved with him back then,” the cat says, and Zhao Yunlan suddenly remembers the lewd, smutty, completely false things the book details, and no, nope, he will not have his honor besmirched like that (nor Shen Wei’s, for that matter).

“If you actually believe-” he starts, taking the lollipop he was sucking on out of his mouth and using it to more effectively point at Da Qing. 

Da Qing just cuts him off, without so much as looking up from the scroll. “That you’d have your vile, wicked way with young, trusting, enamoured Shen Wei? Yep.”

And, well, Zhao Yunlan can’t deny he hadn’t thought about it, a little bit, when those wide eyes had looked at him like he was the moon and stars, and those red lips curved around the lolly he’s surprised Shen Wei with. 

He’d thought about it, yes. 

He’d never actually done anything about it, though.

“I didn’t touch a hair on his head,” he informs Da Qing, as seriously as he can, willing him to understand, to believe. 

Da Qing looks at him, long, considering, before he shrugs. "I guess. I wouldn't have picked you as my master if you were that much of a lecherous bastard."

Zhao Yunlan nods. "Glad we understand each other."

"Still," Da Qing carries on, rolling the scroll book back up, careful not to damage it. "It's both hilarious and disturbing that someone actually sat down and not only wrote about your imaginary sex life, but made you into some kind of god. I mean, there's myths, and there's myths."

Zhao Yunlan shudders, crunches on his lollipop. "Ugh. Yeah, well, I'm just glad there seems to be only one copy, that one, of the thing, from what I can tell. Somehow, I like how ‘warrior general’ sounds more than ‘mountain god’."

He wonders, looking at the beautiful calligraphy of the title, if Shen Wei has read this book. He'd probably roll his eyes at the inaccuracies and flush at the implications in it at the same time.

Zhao Yunlan grins, pocketing the book. Well, he thinks, he hasn’t surprised his dear Professor Shen with anything in a while now. 

It’s about time he got to it.