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In the stories Xiao Jiu and his Qi-ge had once heard and whispered to each other, cultivators were something otherworldly. They were elegant immortals descending from their mountains to dispense help and wisdom to the common folk, as beautiful and elegant as fairies.
It had been a dream back then that he and Qi-ge could escape one day to join the initiate trials that the cultivation sects were known to hold. Even as a child Xiao Jiu had enough control over his qi for small tricks, though he hadn’t had the knowledge to understand it as such back then, and he’d hoped that it would be enough to dazzle a cultivation sect into taking them in.
A life where one was unrestricted by the past, based off of one’s potential instead of one’s birth, where even the lowest slave could hope to ascend to the heavens—to be free, for once, living in a beautiful place with as much food as he could eat, and the sort of clean pretty robes he sometimes saw cultivators wearing on the rare times they passed through the city.
It had always been something to hope for, no matter how unrealistic.
Reality was always colder and harsher, the beautiful façade of a cultivation sect’s head disciple shattering into the familiar face of Yue Qi, looking at him with that horribly guilty look, even if there was a part of Shen Jiu that wasn’t surprised that he’d been left behind.
Who had need for a slave who couldn’t escape, whose cultivation was forever marred by the tricks he’d had to learn to survive?
Shen Jiu sighed, shifting his hold on the stack of books as he trudged down the path that would take him back to the library. Now he was three years in and the shine had definitely worn off, though he couldn’t say he regretted it.
He registered footsteps on the path behind him just in time to step aside as a figure came rushing down the path and came to a crashing halt right before he would’ve crashed into Shen Jiu.
“What are you—"
“Shh, shidi,” Shen Yuan interrupted him as he grabbed his sleeve, nearly dislodging the pile of books as he tugged him off the path and started running through the bamboo, weaving a trail that only he seemed to know. Shen Jiu struggled to keep up, nearly losing his hold on the books before Shen Yuan stopped and took half the stack, then continued on without releasing his sleeve.
“SHEN YUAN!!!” The dulcet tones of one of their seniors rang out behind them, somewhat further away, and the person in question winced.
“What did you do??” A small storage shed appeared through the bamboo, apparently Shen Yuan’s target, and his sleeve was finally released as they reached it.
“Ah, well,” Shen Yuan fiddled with the door and pushed it open, despite the fact that it looked to be locked, and tugged Shen Jiu in after himself, closing the door again behind them.
The shed appeared to be a dumping ground for miscellaneous unwanted bits and bobs, half full of haphazardly stacked furniture that looked to be either old or broken or both. What appeared to be a selection of discarded disciple robes had been spread out to cushion half the floor, and Shen Jiu watched dubiously as Shen Yuan carefully set the books on a nearby table and then cheerfully dropped down on it.
He would like to blame Yue Qingyuan for shattering his illusions of cultivators being peerlessly elegant immortals, but it was really Shen Yuan’s fault, if he was going to blame anyone.
He sighed and set down his books as well, dropping carefully to sit next to his senior.
Up close, he could see that Shen Yuan’s robes looked…bulkier…than usual, and mentally and physically sighed again when a dark furry nose stuck itself out of the neck of his robes, followed a face that looked a bit like a weasel if you were drunk, insane, or possibly Shen Yuan.
He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers.
“So,” Shen Yuan said as if this was all perfectly normal, “someone found a spider-weasel in the paper storeroom.”
“…And now it’s yours, I assume.”
Shen Yuan looked vaguely guilty as he coaxed the creature out of his robes, gently petting it as it peered around with bright eyes. It was objectively somewhat horrifying looking, a long furry body with far too many legs, like someone had badly drawn a weasel from memory and then crossed it with a jumping spider. Unfortunately, exposure to Shen Yuan’s love of horrifying things meant that Shen Jiu could reluctantly agree that it was kind of…cute.
“I didn’t want them to kill it,” he said. “They’re very clever even if most people consider them pests.”
“Most people don’t like them because they’re the size of a small cat,” Shen Jiu said dryly.
Shen Yuan shrugged, not arguing. “Well, I may have had an argument with Mo-shixiong about it, and he wanted me to get rid of it. I told him I’d take it to the other side of Qing Jing, but that wasn’t good enough.”
“And then…”
Shen Yuan rolled his eyes. “I may have insulted him, but he was being stupid.”
Shen Jiu sighed and dropped his face in his palm. “Have you considered that his fear of spiders might be the problem here.”
Shen Yuan gave a half-hearted but all too expressive shrug as if to say that it clearly wasn’t his problem. He was too tender-hearted though, and where someone like Shen Jiu might see that as a weakness to exploit, he would only try to keep his creatures away from someone who was afraid of them.
The spider-weasel crept slowly closer to Shen Jiu, nosing at the edge of his sleeve. He held out his fingers and it sniffed him tentatively, slowly creeping in closer. He ran a finger up its nose, then gently started petting it when it seemed to have no objections. It was surprisingly warm and soft.
A small soft smile crept over Shen Yuan’s face, then turned mischievous. “I might see if An Ding would take it for their warehouses, spider-weasels like dark spaces and mostly go after small vermin.”
“Hmm.” Shen Jiu couldn’t see them going for it, but that would be An Ding’s problem, not his.
Shen Jiu still wasn’t sure if it had been fortune or misfortune that Shen Yuan had been one of the first people he’d met on joining the sect. He’d been the first one to call Shen Jiu shidi, but then when asked for his own name shrugged and told him to call him Yuan-ge.
He’d thought Shen Yuan was making fun of him at first, since Shen Yuan had been a year or so older than him and far more assured. As the head disciple, he’d been in charge of getting Shen Jiu settled in.
It was…not unexpected when many of the other disciples avoided him, secure in their little cliques that had been formed years ago. He was too old at sixteen and an outsider to boot, with a bad cultivation base and worse manners from his upbringing. Though Peak Lord Shen seemed to have made a project of him, privately tutoring him in everything from the four arts to proper ways of dressing and speaking, it was clear that she was the only one who seemed to think that he was worth anything.
The rest were dismissive at best and cruel at the worst, and it was clear that the only way he would ever gain anything close to respect would be to rise above the rest of them. There was no other alternative, when failure might mean someone in power deciding he wasn’t worth keeping in the sect.
He had expected that Shen Yuan would be the same—dismissive, haughty, looking at him as though he was worth less than nothing.
Instead, he’d been the first person who looked at him in this new life with a warm smile as if he was worth something.
(Not even Qi-ge had looked at him like that since he’d gotten to Cang Qiong…)
“Shizun’s collecting Shens, I suppose,” he’d joked, but with a grin that invited Shen Jiu in on the joke, instead of making him the target of it. Instead of a rival he’d somehow become a friend, insistent despite Shen Jiu’s wariness.
He was…comforting, when so many of the other male disciples put him on edge, and when Shen Yuan found out that he’d taken to sleeping in one of the storerooms for lack of a safer option, he’d somehow convinced Shizun to move him to a room of his own in the overflow dormitory, usually reserved for visiting students and scholars.
This did little to endear Shen Jiu to the other disciples, but it was hard to care when he was finally able to sleep soundly for the first time in years.
Shen Yuan tried to coax Shen Jiu out of his shell with friendliness and snacks, as though Shen Jiu were another of the monstrous creatures he liked to try to befriend. Shen Jiu couldn’t deny that it was working.
“Yue Qingyuan,” Shen Jiu said stiffly, swallowing back the anger that flared sharp and hot in his stomach. It wasn’t actually a surprise to see him given that he was on Qiong Ding to bring over some paperwork from his shizun, but he had hoped to slip in and out unnoticed by this peak’s head disciple.
“Shen-shidi,” Yue Qingyuan said politely. He was perfectly put together, of course, disciple robes perfectly tied and hair perfectly in place.
He had always been fussy about things like that, even when they were street children who had few options for keeping clean.
A part of him wanted to simply turn around and leave. He could either find someone else to leave the papers or make it Shen Yuan’s problem.
Unfortunately, Shen Yuan had been the one to ask him to bring the paperwork over and given that he was the head disciple he was allowed to do that. He was nice enough that he would probably do it himself or have someone else do it if Shen Jiu didn’t, but even the thought of disappointing him made something squirm uncomfortably in his stomach.
He forced himself to straighten up and held up the stack of papers. “I have Qing Jing’s quarterly disciple reports, is there somewhere I should leave them?"
"I can take them,” Yue Qingyuan said, rather quickly and unsurprisingly. He took the stack from Shen Jiu with an eagerness that made him frown. Who got that excited over paperwork? Honestly.
“Thank you,” he responded stiffly, and turned to leave regardless of whether that might be considered rude.
“Xiao Jiu—” Yue Qingyuan called behind him, stopping him in his tracks.
“Don’t call me that,” Shen Jiu said vehemently, turning quickly to glare at him.
“…Sorry.” Yue Qingyuan was drooping, looking horribly uncertain, and it was infuriating.
Shen Jiu scoffed. “It’s always sorry with you, do you even know what you’re apologizing for?”
“I—”
“Forget it,” he snapped, turning back and leaving in a huff.
On the surface, Shen Yuan was entirely what Shen Jiu had hoped to be in his dreams of someday becoming a cultivator. He was good at everything and sort of effortlessly cool and had a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of seemingly everything, even things that no one would have expected him to know.
(It drove Shen Jiu up the wall sometimes, when Shen Yuan would casually mention something as if it were common fact, when it was something so obscure that it was barely mentioned in passing in some dusty scroll hidden in the depths of Qing Jing’s library.)
He had a sort of delicate pretty softness around him, with peach blossom eyes and elegantly arched brows, dark hair falling like a waterfall of silk behind him whenever it was down, but usually tied up neatly out of the way with a green silk ribbon. He had been just of a height with Shen Jiu when they’d met, though a late growth spurt meant that he was now just a bit shorter.
He had very pretty manners, too, that would have put the Qiu to shame, and no one who met him could think anything other than that he certainly deserved his position as the head disciple.
Except that (as Shen Jiu found out not even a week after landing on Qing Jing) it was all a very carefully crafted façade, and Shen Yuan was, in fact, an absolutely incorrigible menace and not at all the delicate scholar he appeared to be.
The manners were real enough, true, but never mind what one would expect from the head disciple of the scholarly peak, Shen Yuan’s real aspirations involved finding (and nearly being killed by) every sort of obscure plant and creature, no matter how horrible or demonic.
The stories were still being told of his numerous attempts to join the beast-taming peak as a younger disciple, though he was no physical cultivator and likely wouldn’t have lasted a month. Privately, Shen Jiu thought he might have succeeded out of sheer stubbornness alone. Shen Yuan might call himself lazy, but there was a single-minded stubbornness about him that meant that he tended to succeed at whatever he set his mind to.
Regardless, he was told that it had been a terribly common sight to see Peak Lord Shen dragging her errant head disciple from wherever he’d wandered off to by the back of his robes, as if she were a mother cat dragging an errant kitten home.
So much for a peerless beauty; Shen Yuan was just as likely to be found scrambling around with his robes askew, covered in dirt smudges of unknown origin, hair half falling out of the ponytail he’d haphazardly thrown it into. To his eternal disgruntlement, he was forever on the edge of being banned from going on missions outside of the sect due to his habit of wandering off to look at interesting plants and animals, which had resulted in his being nearly eaten or kidnapped nearly seven times alone in the last year.
Despite his overall geniality, he could be nearly as cutting as Shen Jiu when he disagreed with someone and furthermore had a bullheaded tendency to dig his heels in whenever he thought he was in the right. He had some sort of rivalry with An Ding’s head disciple that no one could quite explain, that seemed to fluctuate wildly between threats and arguments and the two of them sneaking off to cause problems together.
It was, perhaps, why Peak Lord Shen had narrowed in on Shen Jiu as her successor not even two years after his arrival and why he’d now practically taken over the position already, despite the fact that Shen Yuan was still nominatively Qing Jing’s head disciple.
In comparison to Shen Yuan, he was a perfect disciple. His own rivalry with Bai Zhan seemed much less exciting when just last week Shen Yuan and Shang Qinghua had been caught liberating a merchant caravan’s stock of exotic beasts smuggled (illegally) in from the demon realms. Neither of them would admit how they’d known and where the animals had gone to, and no one really knew what to do with that.
But despite Shen Yuan’s obvious reluctance he was still one of the most talented disciples on the peak and clearly the most deserving of being named head disciple—his paintings were effortlessly beautiful, his qin playing inspired, and he had soundly beat almost everyone playing qi.
Even his calligraphy—his self-proclaimed weakest subject—was still good enough to cause envy from his peers and admiration from the younger disciples. The general consensus was that of all the disciples in their generation, he was perhaps the most fit to someday become the future peak lord.
Had Shen Yuan truly wanted the head disciple position, there was nothing that Shen Jiu could have done to unseat him, unless he was willing to stoop to the kind of dirty tricks that made even his stomach turn. Instead, Shen Jiu had worked as hard as he could to catch up, and then pushed himself further, until the complaints about his being brought into the sect late slowly turned into begrudging acceptance.
And then, several months later, Shizun called him into her office to convey the news.
“You and I both know that Yuan-er would’ve been good at it,” she said wryly, “but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have high aspirations for you as well. He’ll be happier in the library, anyway.”
Shen Yuan found him later, tucked away in a small pavilion on the far side of Qing Jing, overlooking one of the many streams that trickled down Qing Jing. Since most of the main buildings and dormitories were located on the other side there wasn’t as much over here, but a few buildings and pavilions could be found here and there, occasionally claimed by the older students for a quieter study space.
The spider-weasel was curled up in his lap as he petted it, doing something that could questionably be called purring. It seemed to be thriving, dark fur glossy and soft, its eyes bright and inquisitive. He still had no idea of whether it was a he-weasel or a she-weasel, but that wasn’t particularly important.
The warm weight of it was nice though, and despite the horribleness of it the creature had somehow decided that Shen Jiu was a friendly face. It had lasted all of a week on An Ding before the head disciple had discovered it and promptly exiled it back to Qing Jing, but at least he’d gotten Shen Yuan to retrieve it instead of just disposing of it.
He wasn’t sure where it was living now, but it seemed to be good at finding him.
“Shidi?” Shen Yuan called softly.
He swallowed past a dry throat. “Yuan-ge,” he said stiffly.
It seemed ridiculous that now that he had been given everything he wanted, something cold and horrible twisted in his stomach.
Shen Yuan took that as an invitation and came and sat down next to him, though he left a fair amount of space. Irrationally, Shen Jiu wished that he would sit closer.
“We missed you at dinner,” Shen Yuan said casually, pulling a wrapped bundle out of his sleeve. “I saved you some pork buns though, if you want them.”
“…Sure,” Shen Jiu said. The spider-weasel suddenly perked up, standing up and then clambering off his lap in a flurry of legs in order to get closer to the bundle, leaning up to sniff at it.
Shen Yuan laughed. It wasn’t as though his laugh was anything special, but the sound of it made something finally relax in Shen Jiu that had been tense all day.
“No, sorry, these aren’t for you,” he said, lifting the bundle out of the spider-weasel’s reach. “She looks like she’d doing well, though.”
“She?” Shen Jiu asked in spite of himself, and took the bundle when Shen Yuan passed it to him. It was still warm and the buns were still fresh, and suddenly he was hungrier than he expected, opening it and taking one to bite into. The meat was soft and fragrant with scallions and spices.
“Mhm,” Shen Yuan said, scooping the spider-weasel up and lifting it onto his lap. He lifted one of…her? paws. “The males tend to have redder fur around their paws, though it’s not a guarantee.”
“Huh.” He’d eaten three buns without stopping, and forced himself to slow down a bit. He held out a tiny bit of meat for the spider-weasel, and she sniffed at it before delicately taking it from his hand.
“You’re going to spoil her,” Shen Yuan said, laughing, and Shen Jiu found himself smiling in return.
He ate the rest of the buns quietly while Shen Yuan pet the spider-weasel, murmuring at it all the while, then folded up the cloth and set it to the side.
“Why don’t you want to be head disciple?” he asked, finally.
Shen Yuan looked at him, something he couldn’t quite read in his eyes.
“You’d be good at it,” Shen Jiu insisted, “so why not?”
“I never really wanted it,” Shen Yuan said, shrugging. “Not like you do. I was just good at it and Shizun insisted.”
He was looking off to the side now, like he did sometimes when he was thinking.
“Ah, it doesn’t matter,” he said with a tired sounding laugh. “You’ll be fine, and it’s not like I’m going anywhere.”
“You can’t,” Shen Jiu said, insistently. The idea of Qing Jing Peak without Shen Yuan was unthinkable. “If you leave I’m leaving too.”
Shen Yuan snorted. “Fine,” he said, eyes curving up in a smile. “I’ll stay if you’re staying. You can lead the peak and I’ll take care of the library.”
That was—he could live with that. “Fine.”
Things were more comfortable after that. Shizun was pleased, anyway, and started making him do more of her paperwork. Shen Yuan settled in at the library and nothing too important caught fire and he and An Ding’s head disciple mostly stayed out of trouble.
Shen Jiu avoided Yue Qingyuan when he could help it and kept things to the minimum required for courtesy when he couldn’t, no matter how sad Yue Qingyuan’s eyes were. It was a bit awkward sometimes because Shen Yuan was still on good terms with him, and seemed convinced that he could repair their friendship on strength of will alone, but at least he wasn’t insistent.
It didn’t stop him from contriving to get Shen Jiu and Yue Qingyuan in the same room as often as possible, but luckily Shen Jiu was good at sniffing out intrigue and had gotten better at slipping away from such situations.
Before he knew it, a year had flown by. In a matter of weeks, Shen Jiu would come of age and receive the courtesy name that would cement his position as successor to the peak lord.
It was terrifying and exhilarating and exhausting all at once.
And then…
His coming-of-age ceremony should have been a triumph, the culmination of everything he had worked for and hoped for in joining Cang Qiong Mountain Sect.
His eyes were drawn unerringly to Shen Yuan, beaming proudly at him as Shizun replaced the simple leather wrapping on his hair bun with a proper metal guan and spoke his name for the first time—
“Shen Qingqiu.”
—only to catch the way Shen Yuan blanched at the name, a moment of shock that was quickly wiped away so quickly that he would have missed it if he hadn’t been looking.
He had his own misgivings about the name, the qiu that was the same as that family, but for Shen Yuan to react so strongly? It wasn’t like it was a surprise, either, since Shizun had told him the name she had planned once she confirmed that he would be her successor. It wasn’t like it was a surprise, and even if he hadn’t told Shen Yuan he’d assumed that their Shizun would have told him.
The rest of the ceremony went in a blur, the newly-named Shen Qingqiu feeling off balanced as though he’d missed a step.
Shen Yuan was noticeably missing from the line of well-wishers afterward, coming to congratulate him and pass along small gifts as good wishes for his coming of age.
Even the sight of Yue Qingyuan holding a box that was far too ornate couldn’t quite bring him back, though there was a part of him still that couldn’t help but hope that maybe he’d finally explain, that he’d get something more than useless guilt and empty explanations that didn’t actually explain anything.
“This one greets Yue-shixiong,” he said stiffly.
“Congratulations, Shen Qingqiu,” Yue Qingyuan said awkwardly, clutching so tightly at the box that Shen Jiu was surprised that it didn’t splinter. “I’m, well…this is for you.”
He shoved the box at him gracelessly, and stood nearly vibrating as Shen Qingqiu slid it open to reveal a fan made out of beautifully polished dark wood.
He lifted it out and flicked it open. It was beautifully made and opened smoothly, made with fine creamy-white paper that was curiously blank. A white silk cord hung off the end, threaded through a beautiful green jade bead that was carved like a bamboo stem.
“Shen Yuan suggested that you might like to paint it yourself,” Yue Qingyuan said in a rush, going faintly red.
“…Yes,” he said quietly, closing the fan softly and placing it back in the box. “Thanking shixiong,” he said stiffly. It wasn’t as excessive as he’d feared, even knowing that Yue Qingyuan received a better stipend as the head disciple of Qiong Ding and heir presumptive to the sect.
Just the once, he would have to thank Shen Yuan for meddling. Which, speaking of…
“Have you seen Shen Yuan?” he asked, and Yue Qingyuan’s brow wrinkled in confusion.
“No, but I assumed he’d be near you.”
Shen Qingqiu frowned and turned to the next person, dismissing him.
Politeness demanded that he stay a while longer, unfortunately, but eventually the crowd dwindled to the peak lords and their head disciples and anyone else who was important enough to have to stay out of politeness. There would be a feast later for that same group and some of the others in his age group from Qing Jing, but some time was left between the two to allow time to rearrange Qing Jing’s main hall into a more intimate space.
Shen Yuan was still missing, but there was time to go find him before he would be needed again.
He made it just far enough down the path for the sounds of the crowd to fade away before footsteps rang out behind him as someone came running after him. He stopped and turned to see Yue Qingyuan, looking agitated as he stumbled to a halt in front of him.
“W-wait,” Yue Qingyuan stammered out, reaching out to grab his sleeve. Shen Qingqiu gave him a sharp look and he quickly dropped his hand.
“Just, I’ve been told that I should…talk, to you.”
Shen Qingqiu took a breath and tried to stay polite. “About what, Yue-shixiong?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I know I’ve said it but I really am.”
Shen Qingqiu felt his patience fray. “Sorry? Isn’t that what you’re always saying? How is that different?”
Yue Qingyuan was already shaking his head. “No! It’s just, well, I know I failed and you want nothing to do with me, but please, if I can fix anything—”
“What’s there to fix?” Shen Qingqiu bit out. “Should I have been surprised that you should want to leave the trash behind on your way up?” He was breathing quickly; it was always so frustrating how little control of himself he had when he was angry.
“No,” Yue Qingyuan exclaimed, more vehemently than Shen Qingqiu expected, reaching out again to grab his sleeve more deliberately. “I shouldn’t have left you, I should have come back sooner regardless—”
Shen Qingqiu felt like he was having a qi deviation. “What do you mean, come back sooner,” he said, more coldly than he thought himself capable of.
Yue Qingyuan was crying now, the idiot. “I came back too late, I know you hate me for it and I’m sorry—”
Shen Qingqiu whirled around and grabbed the front of his robes. “What do you mean you came back?” he snarled. “I thought you left me!”
Yue Qingyuan looked cracked open, the soft heart of him exposed like a live wire. “I did come back, but it was too late. Xiao Jiu, I’m sorry, they wouldn’t let me leave, and then the house was burned down and I thought you were dead, and—”
“—Shut up,” Shen Qingqiu said, feeling hollowed out, as if the anger had been suddenly extinguished and the ashes themselves blown away. Yue Qingyuan was staring at him, something like hope slowly dawning over his features.
He forced his hands to relax out of where he had clenched the front of Yue Qingyuan’s robes into wrinkles.
“…I knew there wasn’t any reason to return for trash like me, I thought you were just embarrassed that I showed up anyway…”
“No,” Yue Qingyuan said again, looking anguished. “I only hate that I couldn’t come back sooner, but I, ah, they wouldn’t let me leave.”
Shen Qingqiu felt…it was too much to deal with right now. He forced his fingers to release. “Tell me later,” he ordered, “I need to go find Shen Yuan.”
He started walking away, and if Yue Qingyuan said anything outside of agreement he didn’t hear it, but the soft gratefulness of his expression was something Shen Qingqiu would never forget.
It took a few tries to find Shen Yuan, since no one had seen him at the library, and a few other haunts were similarly deserted.
But back on the far side of Qing Jing there was a pavilion tucked into the bend of one of the streams that wound their way down the mountainside, and here was sitting the familiar shape of Shen Yuan.
“Yuan-ge,” he called out as he approached, catching Shen Yuan surreptitiously wiping his face with the edge of his sleeve. He was wearing his good robes for the occasion, in a darker version of Qing Jing’s green. It was a very striking color on him. The spider-weasel was a furry lump in his lap, one of his hands busy petting it, though she poked her head up when Shen Qingqiu approached.
“Shen Qingqiu,” Shen Yuan responded, turning to him with a familiar smile, brittle around the edges. If Shen Jiu hadn’t known him better he would have assumed everything was fine.
Shen Jiu ignored him and sat down next to him, staring instead at the box in his lap. This was too many emotions for one day, but unfortunately he would have to power through it.
“Something’s bothering you,” he said bluntly.
Shen Yuan snorted out a laugh. “Nothing gets past you.” He crumpled the edge of his sleeve between his fingers.
Shen Jiu waited him out, and it wasn’t very long before Shen Yuan sighed and slumped against him, his arm a line of warmth against Shen Jiu’s.
“You know,” he said slowly, “sometimes I know things I shouldn’t.” He stared off to the side, seemingly unseeing, until Shen Jiu nudged him to continue. Shen Yuan blinked, then slumped further against Shen Jiu.
“There was a story,” he murmured softly, quiet against the burbling of the stream and the sound of wind and birds in the bamboo. “About a villain named Shen Qingqiu, and a child that he mistreated who ended up growing up to be the emperor. And that child returned every slight against him a thousand times over. He ruined him.”
It would’ve been easy to dismiss as nothing but an overwrought imagination, if it wasn’t the sort of ridiculous impossibility that made up Shen Yuan.
“And?”
“I was terrified when I thought it was it was going to be me,” Shen Yuan said, the words settling between them like a stone.
“I’d thought that if it wasn’t me it wouldn’t matter,” he continued, “but now you’re Shen Qingqiu and I can’t, I can’t let that happen to you.” He reached out blindly and clutched at Shen Jiu’s hand, pulling it closer to himself. It felt like a piece of Shen Jiu that had been loose ever since the ceremony and worsened by the conversation with Qi-ge was finally slipping back into place, leaving him feeling warm.
He sighed and tugged back, feeling tired but stupidly fond. “…You know who the child will be, right?”
“I guess?” Shen Yuan blinked at him.
“Then when the time comes,” Shen Qingqiu continued, “I’ll just give him to you, and you can keep him busy learning about your bugs.”
“…What?”
Shen Qingqiu sighed. “If the point is that Shen Qingqiu will mistreat him, then Shen Yuan should be fine, right? So you’ll keep him busy learning about your bugs instead.”
“…Demon bugs are important,” Shen Yuan said weakly, still gripping his hand tight. “But that. Look, I…I can’t let that future happen, not if it’s you.”
“Then we don’t. I don’t know, make Shang Qinghua deal with it, he’s logistics, he can figure something out.”
Shen Yuan laughed somewhat hysterically, tugging him in closer until they were nearly breathing the same air, dislodging the spider-weasel who made an affronted chirping noise and scampered off.
“It’s just, it’s you, and I didn’t think you would matter so much until you did.” He rambled, somewhat nonsensically, and then suddenly he was tugging Shen Jiu closer.
The touch of his lips was a surprise, warm and dry and a little chapped from where Shen Yuan had been chewing on his lip. It was unexpected in a way that made him feel like he’d skipped a step when walking downhill.
Shen Jiu felt breathless when they broke apart, Shen Yuan immediately pulling away and apologizing. “Sorry, I—”
“Shut up, gege,” he snapped, having had his fill of apologies for the day, and tugged Shen Yuan in again, this time fixing the angle so that their mouths slanted against each other more comfortably, nipping gently at his bottom lip. Shen Yuan made a noise against his mouth, half laugh and half sob, deepening the kiss into something hotter and wetter that made his breath catch.
It felt like both forever and no time at all when they broke apart, Shen Jiu half in Shen Yuan’s lap, clutching at him like he was the last port in a storm and the only home he’d never expected and ever hoped to find. He felt cracked open and washed clean, lighter than he’d felt in years.
“We’ll figure it out,” Shen Jiu said fiercely, pressing his forehead against Shen Yuan’s. It felt like nothing was impossible now, if he could have a half-way decent conversation with Yue Qingyuan and kiss his Yuan-ge.
If he could rise from a lowly street child to become not just a cultivator, but a head disciple of Cang Qiong, then what else could he do?
Suddenly, nothing felt impossible.
“Yeah,” Shen Yuan said with a wet laugh, “maybe we will.”