#ruenwrites

(As a whole, the AU is a bit vague. Is it a full language barrier or a lack of skill to understand, such as one being deaf and the other unable to speak sign language? Valid options both, I think, but for this particular idea I'm moving towards a weirder option.)

Canon-wise, Shen Jiu destroyed the Qiu family when he was fifteen, though in AUs I tend to make him suffer in there longer. In this case, he's pushing marriable age and Qiu Jianluo's possessiveness over his sister (and his hatred/abuse of Shen Jiu) are ramping up. I feel Shen Jiu tried to fight back One Time, and in response Qiu Jianluo actually got some understanding of how far Shen Jiu will go to destroy his abuser, so for further security over his household and over the servants (and the slaves in particular), he casts a spell that anyone within the house lose the ability to understand their fellows of the same social class. As the slaves very rarely leave the household, this is most effective on Shen Jiu, which was the whole point anyway.

Suddenly Shen Jiu can only understand spoken commands by those deemed superior to him, and his suffering intensifies. He is reduced to a beaten doll about to burst from simmering rage.

Shen Yuan comes in as some nobody NPC that is a fresh, new domestic slave in the Qiu household. He too is put under the same spell, so by the time he's paired with Shen Jiu to shadow and learn how to keep house, they are unable to speak to each other words they can comprehend.

Shen Yuan surprises Shen Jiu by his willingness to talk to him with hand gestures and badly drawn pictures. It's such an honest effort that Shen Jiu starts paying attention to this odd slave who has clearly never washed a floor before. The long days are filled with unexpected warmth and fun, dare he say it, even if he's mostly amused at Shen Yuan's general fail at common cleaning skills. Still, Shen Yuan learns, and he learns fast, and somewhere in the evenings, when all they have is candlelight between them and fumbling fingers drawing words in the air, a true connection is made.

For Shen Yuan, he knows how this story ends. Shen Jiu - his sharp, quick witted, so angry Shen Jiu - will kill every man in the house and set it on fire. If Shen Yuan can't find a way to free them, he's gonna be burnt to a crisp! But of course, this villain is far more human than he was expecting, more complex and heartbroken. Under that rage is a person, a real person, and the more Shen Yuan uncovers it, the more tender his heart feels.

For Shen Jiu, it's far more confusing. He's already made peace with the fact that his sexuality is Fucked. He wants only men, but hates men, fears men, is revolted by men. Somewhere between all the abuse and listening to Qiu Haitang plan their wedding, his sexuality just... died. This life wasn't a life meant to feel anything but pain and resignment. He'd be a slave even in his marriage, and while she would treat him better, he couldn't muster up more than a brotherly feeling to her.

You have a world torn by war, where immortal cultivators struggle against the rising threat of demons. Somewhere in the struggles, a plan is hatched: find someone of unsurpassed beauty to give as tribute to a demon. This beauty will be a spy, an assassin, a blade that will strike at the heart of the demon forces. A good plan. A solid plan.

Shen Jiu is chosen as that beauty. He's taken into the cultivator ranks, freed from Qiu Jianluo, and trained for this one terrible purpose. He becomes Shen Qingqiu, a man of cunning and peerless beauty, with a reputation as sharp as his sword. To the demon side, he is a worthy prize, and they accept him as a bride.

Shen Qingqiu expects rough pawing, endless abuse, and other terrible things he's been taught that demons do. What he gets is a strange demon groom who smiles and laughs and blushes and treats him with respect. He's not dragged off to bed, and every seduction attempt is gently thwarted. What was hate becomes curiosity, and slowly the lines between enemy and friend begin to blur.

He was taught that demons are nothing but beasts, yet these beasts treat him better than the more civilized cultivators that tossed him into a lion's den. The more he tries to fulfill the mission, the more complicated it gets, and somehow, some way, his husband outsmarts him at every turn.

How could he know this demon, beloved comrade of the half-demon prince, knows his moves before he makes them? Transmigration is not something he knows about, and Shen Yuan isn't about to reveal his hand any time soon. Hell, it's basically keeping him alive up to this point!

Beauty and the Beast meets Gothic AU but make it a vampire being studied by a dude who just wants to learn what vampires are all about. In the name of Science, you understand.

Vampire Shen Jiu who is gorgeous and cold and ruthless, who was turned centuries ago just to be another vampire's plaything. He's a killer of his own kind, who thinks of humans as rather annoying bits of food. His own bad past as a human only makes it easier to eat them, honestly. Inner humanity? Never knew her.

Then along comes Shen Yuan, bright eyed and fussy and oh so curious. A piece of meat so willingly coming to the waiting maw? Saves Shen Jiu the hunt, at least, but of course this particular snack is chatty and oddly unafraid and offers up a taste for a price. Not the strangest concept, to be sure, but he doesn't ask for money. He asks to learn.

And suddenly Shen Jiu has this weirdo following him around taking notes, asking questions, making observations that give Shen Jiu pause. He's so fully into the monster that he can't see the garden for the roses, so to speak. He's so twisted up with hate and anger and self-loathing that he finds himself thrown that anyone could find something good about him and his situation, who can see a beast and still find something beautiful in its savagery.

Shen Yuan sees the bad but also the good and Shen Jiu begins to wish he could see the world with as much clarity as this strange man who makes him wonder why it feels like his heart skips sometimes, even though it barely beats.

Welp. It happened.

Scene from the first chapter of Good Vibrations which used the prompts from @jiuyuanweek Day One, as well as Day Two - Mirror!

I was doing research on the Great Wall of China in a strange sleepless night delve and the fact that they utilized convict labor (as well as military and peasant labor) made me think:

What would happen in a timeline where Shen Jiu never made it past the burning ruins of Qiu manor before being caught?

A fifteen year old mass murderer of a prestigious family, an heiress who is demanding punishment - but death is, of course, far too easy for someone she trusted, who turned around and betrayed her. Why execute him so easily? Why not send him off to labor and die in a far away land, torn from any promise of cultivation training, from Yue Qi saving him, from everything familiar. Let him rot.

A teenage Shen Jiu who somehow survives, not just some miserable years, but a dozen, maybe even more, before being sent to labor in the most inhospitable landscape to build a wall. The conditions are harsher than anything he's faced to that point. Lack of full nutrition coupled with hard work has turned his body into a bony battlement. His eyesight is going, his hair is thin. His barely there cultivation that once made him a slave of Qiu Jianluo is all that is keeping him alive, much to his resentment.

and because it's me, unrepentent JiuYuan lover, Shen Yuan transmigrates into this hazardous, terrible reality. Perhaps it's the guards who find amusement in their shared last names, perhaps it's just luck(?) of the draw, but soon the half blind Shen Jiu is shackled to this strange, earnest, far too kind and very annoying chatterbox who seems determined to be cheerful.

oh, and I meant that literally. shackled. Tied to each other. one leading the other. From tent to quarry to mud to wall and back again. Shen Jiu bristles at the forced proximity, at his own vulnerability, while Shen Yuan grows more kindly baffling as the days stretch on, sharing food, tending to wounds and other strange sweet things that leave Shen Jiu angry... and wondering.

How could it be that here, at the edge of the civilized world, at the border of pain and suffering and barbarian threats, when darkness is at its closest and death beckons him so sweetly... why is it here, now, that hope finds him?

Shen Yuan being charming. Shen Jiu thinking him sus.