#luoshen

Luo Binghe isn’t verging on murder. No, he’s past that now, anger frozen in his veins in a thousand glittering shards. If he bleeds now, it would mark the floors he’s spent so long scrubbing, so he’ll have to ensure that Shizun’s bedmate doesn’t land a blow on him. He only wants Shizun to be happy and if this paltry stand-in is needed until Luo Binghe is old enough, has proven himself worthy of being everything Shizun deserves, then so be it. He’s not jealous, that would imply he considers the other to be an equal. 

He’s not.

Shen Qingqiu leans back, his hand knitted in the blankets behind him. The folds disguise the overall outline of what is there, but Luo Binghe can still make out the curve of a torso, the edge of a shoulder. 

“There is nothing amiss, Luo Binghe,” Shizun says, lying with a pretty smile that doesn’t reach his frantic eyes. There’s a high flush of colour in his cheeks that blooms down his neck, the hollow of his collarbone, exposed further as the neck of his robes slides open, threatening to display his fragile chest.

Luo Binghe allows himself a glance, a morsel thrown to a starving dog under the guise of kindness. It will only sharpen the hunger, the realisation of everything he is denying to himself, but that is the nature of beasts. An endless repetition of things he should know better if he didn’t have the instincts he does, the urge to bite and snap and snarl. 

“If Shizun is sure,” Luo Binghe demures. He’ll allow Shizun to win this battle in order to win the war. He moves forward, kneeling next to the low table, and begins to place the dishes out, one by deliberate one. There’s congee, made how Shizun likes it best with a delicate slice of green onions on top; a few cookies made with green tea, the colour still present after baking, the scent sweet; chicken shredded into a broth, egg mixed through in delicate golden ribbons—

A creature barrels out from behind Shizun, leaping at the table, and Luo Binghe has a choice to make: to block its advances towards the food, wouldn’t be difficult with his Shizun’s teachings, or to not. 

In the end, there’s no choice at all.

The beast barrels towards, into Luo Binghe, a mass of fur and quills, two dark eyes and an open maw. Luo Binghe collapses beneath the weight of it, a pitiful cry escaping his mouth as heavy paws indent his chest, the beast using him to throw itself upon the table.

“No!” Shizun dives from the bed, the sheet now vacant, billowing like a cape behind him. He’s scantily dressed, a thin robe knotted once at the waist and already further down both shoulders with his movement, a loose pair of trousers beneath it, his feet bare and dirt-streaked. 

He scoops up Luo Binghe without a thought of propriety and holds him on his feet, smooths warm hands over his cheeks, his hair, down the line of his throat before Shizun’s attention snaps beyond Luo Binghe’s shoulder, a dawning look of horror in his eyes. 

“What have you got in your mouth?” Shizun cries, his hands fluttering over Luo Binghe’s shoulders before he settles, his hands wrapped around Luo Binghe’s waist in an embrace as he presses his forehead to Luo Binghe’s shoulder. “What a nightmare.”

“Shizun?” Luo Binghe murmurs, pushes a brief tremor into the word and blinks wide and wet at the other man. Underhanded, but Luo Binghe is a young man at war with the world, he’ll use every weapon in his arsenal to win. 

Shizun’s hands cup his cheeks once more, his fingertips brushing through the base of the curls falling in front of Luo Binghe’s ears. “Are you hurt? The Lesser Spotted Rose-Hound isn’t poisonous, but I haven’t trimmed his claws yet. Liu-shidi just dumped him in my lap and it was sweet, I mean, they’re only found in some select regions to the east, but no food, no proper housing, not even a small heads-up that the beast would be alive this time, I mean, who does that?”

Luo Binghe’s bottom lip trembles, and a soft sound escapes Shizun, his grip tightening on Luo Binghe’s face for a moment before he forces himself to relax. In the mirror behind Shizun, the hateful creature swallows the remnants of the chicken, licks curved teeth, and somehow looks smug as two tails wag, knocking against the floor with a distinct heartbeat. It’s a clumsy-looking beast, dark fur bedraggled around its neck and paler markings over its flanks with sharp spikes protruding from the jab of the elbows.

Again, a choice that is no choice at all as Shizun starts extracting himself, moving away in fragments, his attention returning to the unneeded surprise dropped into his lap. Another complication in Luo Binghe’s plan.

The System bounces once, twice, before it circles into a buffering circle. Shen Yuan hums another note, his lip beginning to curl and oh, he hadn’t fully appreciated his older brothers’ complaints about their board meetings and the endless waste of time as older systems and colleagues alike fumbled through their thoughts. This is agony of an entirely fresh kind that he cannot escape from. 

✧˖°No✧˖° User knowledge is sufficient. Reminder, OOC lock is still in place until story mission completion. 

“I remember.” Shen Yuan sighs, rounding his shoulders away from his perfect posture that his body holds with a death grip. “You’ve only reminded me morning, noon, and night since I woke up here.”

Reminder, OOC lock—

“—will remain in place until this promised story mission. I know.” Shen Yuan abandons the rest of his tightly held caution and throws himself backwards onto the bed. The qinqin comes with him, cradled to his chest like an infant, a few notes humming out as he strums his fingers across them. There’s something hollow about it, butter scraped over too much bread, a spoonful of broth to flavour too many noodles, a missing richness to it. 

Someone knocks on his door. Light, delicate, undeniably terrified but doing it anyway. “Shizun?”

Shen Yuan sits up, his heartbeat too loud for his chest. His shoulders snap back into place, his back straight, and he settles his hands over the strings once more. “What?” Shen Qingqiu snaps, his gaze locked onto the System box, daring it to even try to deduct his points. 

He’s going to change his fate in this story. He has to. And if he has to dance around this OOC lock, then so be it. 

Luo Binghe nudges the door to the Bamboo House open, his hands full with a tray, balancing a selection of small dishes. Shen Yuan’s stomach twists. Yet more hollowness to carve through his bones from the inside out. It should be packed with flavour, the meat tender, the desserts sweet and velvet with indulgence, but it’s just fine. 

Bland.

“Begging Shizun’s pardon.” Luo Binghe speaks to the floor between them, his arms shaking with the effort of keeping the tray aloft. His previous bruises were healing well enough, pale yellow at the corner of his mouth, peeking out the edge of his collar. “This student was instructed by his shixiong to bring this tray to Shizun.”

Ming Fan’s doing, sending his shidi to his more-recovered Shizun’s doorstep so the world will right itself in his eyes. 

“Set it down there.” Shen Qingqiu doesn’t look at Luo Binghe, and continues running his fingers over the strings. A bead of sweat runs down his scalp, his focus locked on the boy’s movements. 

The dishes rattle as Luo Binghe does as instructed, his gaze downcast as he attends to his work. In the past, a staggering few days ago, everything about this situation would play out differently, a slap, a harsh insult meant to tear out any self-esteem by the roots, and Shen Yuan is constrained by that framework still.

Fuck it. He’s not that hungry.

“Wait.”

Luo Binghe freezes, a bowl clutched between his fingers. It’s meat with sauce, the thin ribbons of cream just catching the low light spilling through the windows, and Shen Qingqiu holds out his hand for it. Luo Binghe’s face falls, cold dread condensing over fragile hope, but he moves forward, bowing as he places the bowl in Shen Qingqiu’s outstretched hand.

Laying the qinqin across his lap, Shen Qingqiu brings the bowl to his lips. The sauce barely touches his tongue before he recoils, only mostly for show. It is crafted to be a perfect mouthful for his convalescence, what should be velvety sauce and tender meat is bland to the point of boredom. 

“Disgusting.” Shen Yuan doesn’t look away from the System as he shoves the bowl back into Luo Binghe’s hands. It isn’t as hard as Shen Qingqiu would—pointless to inflict injuries that have no purpose, he argues at the box preempting a warning beep—but the child still staggers, shit.

Shen Yuan can’t reach for him, so he forces his fingers down to the strings, plucks a few more notes. “Take it away. This master doesn’t wish for it to remain in his presence.”

“Shizun?” Luo Binghe looks down at the bowl, his fingers pressing against the slight smudge where Shen Qingqiu’s mouth had been.

Shen Qinqiu plucks a note sharply and Luo Binghe flinches as effectively as if he’d slapped him.

“This student will take the food away, Shizun.”

It would be amusing to a scum villain to imagine Luo Binghe picking through his leftovers, Shen Yuan argues. 

And now, Shen Yuan is hallucinating Luo Binghe calling out to him. There’s a strange symmetry to it all, that his favourite character, his beloved disciple, will be present at his demise. 

“Shizun!”

Don’t cry over this Shizun, Shen Yuan wants to say. The very edges of his being ached, chipped away at until he fit into this new body that had never belonged to him until it did, and the hollow space behind his eyes pulses with a very real agony. He doesn’t deserve it, he would like to say. 

“Begging Shizun’s pardon.”

Hang on. Shen Yuan squirms against his bonds, the thin cable cutting into his wrists, the backs of his fingers tucked beneath his chin. There’s only a few inches of space between his mouth and the thin wood of the coffin he had been bundled into before the bandits fled. Without-A-Cure is a plot device for a wife plot and it is a bastard to suffer through. “Luo Binghe,” Shen Yuan whispers, his breath shallow and sparing. “Can you hear this Shizun?”

“This disciple can hear you, Shizun. He has an artifact from An Ding Peak, all of Shizun’s disciples do.”

Wife-plot 321, or was it 312? It had been a flash update, one of a few chapters all uploaded at the same time and all as forgettable as the one before as Airplane slowly dissolved into nothing more than cheap tropes to string about any actual craft he performed. The wife had been a demoness, dark-skinned and heavily quilled over her head and spine, one of the few races that weren’t entirely typical of traditional demons. She had an ability to duplicate herself into semi-functional copies of herself and used the Rock of Distance Speech to communicate. It worked from her own spiritual energy and familiarity, so it wouldn’t be impacted because of his  weakened state, the fault of Without-A-Cure.

Another sliver of his being pressed onto some cosmic scales, a debt he can’t quite calculate the weight of yet.

“Shizun? Can you describe your surroundings to this disciple? We have several members of the other Sect’s searching as well.”

Shame pools over Shen Yuan’s tongue, a choking mass burrowing down his throat until he could choke on his reflexive denial, his insistence of being fine. “That is too much effort for this Master,” he says instead, his breath damp against the cracked lines of his palm, every inhale scented with cracked pine and disturbed earth.

He’s going to die down here all the same.

“Shizun?” Luo Binghe’s expression is easy enough to picture, his dark eyes overflowing with tears and bright flush in his cheeks. He wears forlorn misery well, almost too well for the fated stallion protagonist, clinging to Shen Qingqiu’s robes until he collapses like an overvalued cheesecake and pats his head. “Please tell this disciple where you are.”

It is a fool’s errand, the same type of quest that would send the new disciples scrambling around the Peaks looking for striped paint and hunting for an elusive snipe. He would be yet another myth, a ghost story to terrify children while the older search for his bones beneath the earth. 

“You’re underground, Shizun? Can you hear anything?”

His head hurts. There’s something important that he needs to do, a reminder scrawled in smudged pencil in his hazy thoughts and he cannot make out the shape of it. Shen Yuan huffs out a quiet sigh and can’t draw in enough air to fill the space it leaves. The universe trembles around him, pounding behind his eyes, in his chest. 

He is dying. A quiet death, choking and pinned in place, already buried. 

It is a shame. He had grown to like this life, the people he met in solid flesh and blood, the scant changes he had made that wouldn’t be enough for what was on the horizon.

“Shizun? Shizun!”