Work Text:
Shen Qingqiu had always admired Luo Binghe’s decisiveness: the way he knew what he wanted, and how capable he was of cutting through the vagaries of the world and the opposition of his enemies to get it. Luo Binghe easily overcame the Gordian knots of indecision which always gave Shen Qingqiu a pause that could stretch into an outright full-stop. This force of will had been impressive in chapter 638 of Proud Immortal Demon Way, when the original Luo Binghe had gone to the aid of an embattled Liu Mingyan despite the chance that Mobeijun’s besieged forces would be overrun without him there to offer support. It had been impressive last night, when this Luo Binghe had looked at their options for dinner and said they’d use the chicken, the mushrooms and the tofu in a hot pot to prevent any waste—despite the risk that the last of the leftover crispy-fried shredded beef wouldn’t retain any of its crunch by the morning. To the brave goes the un-spoiled food. (To some spring rolls went the now-less-crispy shredded beef: a compromise that garnered even fussy Binghe’s satisfaction.)
Luo Binghe thought, but he didn’t over-think. Shen Qingqiu had always envied him this, though when he put such pettiness aside he was forced to admit that this made Luo Binghe his favourite person to work with on any mission. Shen Qingqiu could provide an informed analysis of the paths before them: their advantages and their pitfalls. Lou Binghe could listen well, process his advice on the spot and suggest a course. There was no one in this world or any other who Shen Qingqiu would rather have at his back—and that was before he took Luo Binghe’s OP protagonist halo into consideration!
Besides, Shen Qingqiu was enough of a fanboy (...was he a wifeguy now? ‘Spouse-simp’?) that he had to bring his hand to his mouth to cover a polite cough when he watched Luo Binghe in action, so that he didn’t do anything truly humiliating (like involuntarily clap). He couldn’t help the feeling, okay? Just his response to it! A week or so ago in training, Luo Binghe had executed a kick-flip combo that Shen Qingqiu still itched to gif. For all his core strength, Luo Binghe had a narrow, almost girlish waist. He tied off his robes in such a way that you never forgot it. The manoeuvre's pure awesomeness aside, the mere memory of its twisty-waist component still made Shen Qingqiu swallow, hard. Well. Anyway!
The point was, knowing decisive Luo Binghe as well as he did, Shen Qingqiu felt he really should have realised what would come of telling his lover that he needed to severely level up his bedroom skills before he’d be authorised to re-enter certain advanced areas of the quest map. (Time for some grinding, as it were.) (…eugh.) After all, Luo Binghe had always been a wonderful student, peerless in his dedication to his studies—or perhaps, Shen Qingqiu thought with retrospective insight, a wry twist of his mouth and a slight flush of his fan-shaded face, to the person who’d assigned him them.
The morning after their second attempt at making love, Shen Qingqiu awoke alone in bed. He sat up and looked around crossly.
Sometimes children had favourite blankets or toys that they insisted on carrying with them everywhere, and couldn’t bear to be parted from for even a moment. Such children’s mothers had to wait until their brats were asleep to stealthily prise the blankets out of their hands, so that they could finally wash the mucky, too-well-loved things. Wholly unbeknownst to himself, Shen Qingqiu sought Luo Binghe with exactly the look of a six-year-old who’d woken up holding a substituted pillow rather than Binky the Sock Monkey and was about to scream the house down about it.
He was somewhat embarrassed to find said security blanket sitting at his desk, watching himself be missed. Shen Qingqiu didn’t precisely understand how badly he was pouting, but he nonetheless quickly schooled his expression to a neutral ‘and what of it?’, as though he’d not even noticed Luo Binghe’s absence.
“How did Shizun sleep?” Luo Binghe asked, respectfully (but with that insufferable knowing glint in his insufferably perfect, starry eyes).
“Tolerably, thank you,” Shen Qingqiu said, meaning ‘well, with you’ (and irritated to discover that Binghe very likely knew it).
“Only tolerably?” Binghe asked. He stretched, bending his back and arching like a supple reed before straightening up (at least, Shen Qingqiu supposed, as straight as he ever got, these days). Binghe stood, resting his hands on his hips and framing that waist again.
Binghe took a few loose-limbed steps towards Shen Qingqiu, smiling gently in a way Shen Qingqiu knew full well to be predatory. Shen Qingqiu resisted the urge to scramble back before that look—Binghe would only take his ceding territory on the mattress as an invitation for a more aggressive assault.
“Does Shizun require some alteration for his comfort?” Luo Binghe asked, all condescension, as he wrapped his hand around a bed post. “A new pillow? A new bed? For my shizun’s rest to be simply ‘tolerable’ is intolerable to me.”
What an asshole. Shen Qingqiu’s lip quirked.
“What’s all that?” Shen Qingqiu asked, nodding at the materials on his own desk rather than giving Luo Binghe the satisfaction. He paled, however, when Luo Binghe’s already-bright eyes lit up like twin Qixi lanterns at the question.
Oh no, had all this been a diversion aimed at making Shen Qingqiu just walk into the real attack? The protagonist’s forward planning skills were truly too much! You could tell he’d been up since mao shi—and here Shen Qingqiu was, waking like a snake leaving its hole.
“Shizun knows what good friends I have on Xian Shu Peak, due to his excellent advice regarding the courtesy one should afford one’s martial sisters,” Luo Binghe said. The perfect politeness of the response warned Shen Qingqiu that he wasn’t going to like this answer.
Shen Qingqiu grabbed his fan from the side table and rolled it in his lax wrist—yes, yes, get on with it.
Luo Binghe, standing before the bed like a minister before the Emperor’s throne, caught the distracting moving object easily, pressing his lips to the pulse at his shizun’s wrist—making Shen Qingqiu gasp, and lightly whap Luo Binghe's cheek with his fan guard to free his hand.
“Sorry,” Luo Binghe said, sounding anything but. “Instinct.”
What instinct? Was Binghe part house cat, as well?
For his own part, Shen Qingqiu could give no good explanation for having been so flustered by a kiss that he’d lashed out as if he’d been unexpectedly groped. So, he didn’t try to give one. Instead he shifted on the bed, adopting a more prim position and pretending he wasn’t flushed.
“My disciple was explaining his excellent relations with the young sisters of Xian Shu Peak?” Shen Qingqiu prompted pertly.
“Each of whom might as well go about as veiled as their head disciple, for all I mark their features when you are in the world,” Luo Binghe countered.
Eugh. Binghe was getting better at flirting, now he’d a bit of confidence. His reaction time was improving, too. Soon Shen Qingqiu was going to have to hold himself back from clapping for this nonsense as well. Ridiculous.
“The point, Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu snapped, as though he wasn’t charmed.
“Shizun will further remember that just last night, he offered a practical critique on my progress in the new arts he introduced me to, and commended me to my studies.”
Luo Binghe traipsed away, bent to pick up a volume (Shen Qingqiu snapped his head back, and would die before admitting that it had craned automatically to follow the motion of Binghe’s lovely ass) and returned—that swinging, nigh-dancing, so-fucking-proud-of-himself gait serving, for a moment, to distract Shen Qingqiu from the content of the page Luo Binghe presented to him. When his eyes flicked down to mark it, they widened. Shen Qingqiu sat straight up and scuttled back on the bed, turning his head to the side.
Just as he’d predicted, Luo Binghe looked at the proffered inch and took a mile, popping onto the bed and swinging his knees around Shen Qingqiu’s legs so that they could study the volume together.
“They have such materials as this at Xian Shu Peak?” Shen Qingqiu squawked, indignant.
Luo Binghe only nodded enthusiastically, the tips of his demonic talons leaving tiny indents at the very corner of a picture of—Shen Qingqiu glanced back, only capable of looking at the illustration from the corner of his eye. Two men at a desk: one seated on the other’s lap.
…no, but like, on his lap. In an active sense. And you could tell from the ‘enthroned’ character’s facial expression (not to mention the erection tenting his robes) that he was as into it as it was into him. The man being thus fucked was painting out calligraphy with an unsteady hand.
“Shizun did say we were both behind on paperwork,” Luo Binghe reminded Shen Qingqiu in an insinuating fashion, as though ‘paperwork’ could be made sexy. Sorry, but no; it seemed that even the power of the protagonist had some limits.
But the thing was, if all Shen Qingqiu had to do was just—sit there and take it, then… Then that might teach Binghe a little sorely-needed patience. It might train him to tolerate a weapon of ass destruction that no one could ever look for and miss. And further, though Shen Qingqiu hadn’t chosen to quite explicate this aspect of the problem to Luo Binghe, it might help with the whole sensitivity issue.
Part of the problem with their lovemaking as it stood was that Shen Qingqiu was wholly unused to any form of erotic touch. He thus experienced each such sensation like an earthquake. He needed to learn to tolerate such contact without being so terribly undone, before the act could possibly become comfortable and pleasurable.
“I thought,” Luo Binghe said, having given his shizun a moment to take in the suggestion, “that we might have breakfast and then a bath together.” He leaned over Shen Qingqiu, ostensibly to look at the illustration. “Perhaps I could help my honoured master dress, and then simply hold him throughout the morning while he undertook his duties, and I mine. Which naturally include training, and pleasing my good shizun.”
Shen Qingqiu gave Binghe a cool look for laying it on so thick.
“What’s for breakfast?” he asked.
“Dumplings,” Luo Binghe said.
Shen Qingqiu narrowed his eyes. Dumplings were a special treat, and Binghe was hardly above using his knowledge of Shen Qingqiu’s weaknesses to get what he wanted.
“Acceptable,” he said of the dumplings (and with them, the whole plan), weaving around Luo Binghe in the same moment to stand up.
“Acceptable is like tolerable,” Luo Binghe said, turning to follow him with a wistful sigh that almost reminded Shen Qingqiu of Binghe’s dreamy, romantic father. “An assessment I’ll endeavour to improve upon.”
When Shen Qingqiu discovered that the dumplings were filled with pork, ginger, ginseng, turmeric, scallions and wild oats, Shen Qinqiu could only lift his gaze from the plate to glare at Binghe. Four of the six ingredients were noted testosterone and circulatory stimulants. In other words, breakfast alone ought to keep them hard enough for even Binghe’s ambitious proposed regime of exercise.
Luo Binghe smiled at him, all innocence (and as usual, Shen Qingqiu had to fight not to smile back at him).
“Shizun always said an appropriate training diet was very important in order to progress in any physical study.”
Shen Qingqiu had only wanted a good justification for his excessive indulgence in Luo Binghe’s cooking! His gluttony coming back to bite him literally in the ass like this was really—much like Binghe’s Heavenly Pillar—too much to bear!
An hour later, Shen Qingqiu found himself rubbed pink and clean, dressed and decent (but for these preparations), and draped over Luo Binghe as though the silly boy were a chair—a three legged stool, Shen Qingqiu thought grimly, rolling his ass over a development which had begun in the bath and which now cheerfully insisted on making its presence felt.
Binghe had filed his claws down to soft half moons before getting in the water, and had then spent the bath ensuring that his shizun would be as ready as he could be for the morning’s activities. It had been a slow, warm and wet process, which had left the both of them slick with perfumed ointments. Shen Qingqiu’s muscles had loosened with relaxation and a sense of safety: it was only his Binghe, here. This was only a different form of the sensual touch than he’d become so accustomed to sharing with the boy.
Binghe had lost that front of playful arrogance—had frowned in concentration as he’d listened to Shen Qingqiu’s hitches of breath for signs of urgency, or hesitance. For the tones of a new dialect Shen Qingqiu was trying to teach his own body to speak and his voice to enunciate. Now Shen Qingqiu was something like drowsy; something like alert. He was dressed in his daily finery, and under his pooled, rucked-up robes he’d been coated and coated with oil, outright lavished with the stuff, until it dribbled out of him. With Binghe at his back—where Shen Qingqiu wanted no one else in the world to stand. Binghe’s large hands spread over his waist, making him look—
Shen Qingqiu swallowed. He couldn’t bear to take the sight of it in. It made his cheeks raw-red with shame and his stomach hurt with desire. He jerked his head in a nod. Binghe kissed the back of it, the crown of Shen Qingqiu’s hair, and then pulled him down and down. At first Shen Qingqiu thought he’d be able to help, but at the sheer pressure his eyes flew wide, then closed. He could no more have assisted Binghe in this than he could have changed himself into a bird on the spot. His head dropped back. Shen Qingqiu shuddered, impaled on Binghe, and twitched when Binghe pressed his lips to Shen Qingqiu's neck, where his pulse jumped. It was hardly a kiss: just a breath of air, a touch of his tongue-tip. Shen Qinqqiu whined, and had no idea how those bastards in the illustration had gone about their business like, like this.
He forced himself to breathe, and then to take those dramatic gulps of air and make of them something less severe and more nourishing. He eased down into Binghe’s lap, settling himself, and saw, from the corner of his eye, Binghe’s fingers clutch and unfurl with the rhythm of his own breath.
“Shhh,” Shen Qingqiu said, forgetting his own agitation in his need to soothe Binghe—running the tips of his fingers over the straining veins of Binghe’s hand.
“All right?” Binghe asked, seeming to force the words out around a thick, disobedient tongue. Shen Qingqiu, trying to adjust to being outright impaled, expected he knew how that felt.
The stretch and stretch of it. The burn. The heavy weight. The kiss-light press of Binghe against what the borrowed documents he’d referred to over breakfast had (enragingly) insisted on calling ‘the hidden disc-floret buried at the core of his shierjinchai chrysanthemum’.
“Give me a moment,” Shen Qingqiu managed, circulating his qi to bring down his heart rate and ease his muscles.
“We don’t—” Binghe began, shifting to lift him.
Shen Qingqiu could hear all the unsaid things. We don’t have to do this today, we don’t have to do this ever. So long as he was with Binghe, Shen Qingqiu honestly believed that Luo Binghe, stallion-protagonist bar none, might, with truly enviable grace, be willing to go without satisfaction beyond what he could provide himself. Binghe didn’t want to hurt him; Binghe wanted him. Shen Qingqiu's affection and esteem, presence and touch. And in Binghe’s absence, Shen Qingqiu himself just—no. He didn’t want to think about that now. He never wanted to think about that again.
Shen Qingqiu shook his head, to cut Binghe off. He curled his fingers around Binghe’s palm, slipping in to touch the heart of it, which was soft and uncalloused. Binghe’s fingers bore the signs of his prowess with the sword, with weiqi stones, with everything else Shen Qingqiu had taught him to handle. Binghe had come to excel at each, in time.
“It’s only new muscles.” Shen Qingqiu murmured. Binghe knew well the process of making one’s body ready for new skills and new strength—the inherent periods of strain, and adaptation. Cultivation bottlenecks and breakthroughs.
”This master wants to.” Shen Qingqiu said, swallowing his embarrassment to answer Luo Binghe’s unvoiced but palpable declaration: that anything Shen Qingqiu wanted would be manageable, so long as they stayed together. With Binghe at his back, Shen Qingqiu was protected from the full force of that earnest gaze. Which made it easier, in the clear light of day, to clarify his own meaning—to add “I want you.”
That could be the start of any sentence. It began just as though he were telling Binghe to run to the woodshed to fetch logs for their fire. But Shen Qingqiu found that everything he needed for his comfort was already here. The novel had finished; the sentence was complete as it stood.
Luo Binghe sucked in air through his teeth at that, and then pulled Shen Qingqiu’s hair away from his neck to lay kisses on the nape and sides of it. Luo Binghe was as reverent as if this concealed part of his shizun was the inner sanctum of a temple he’d finally been permitted to enter, after a suitable period of devotion. Shen Qingqiu twitched when a kiss was too light, and tickled; Binghe made a considering sound, then pulled him closer and kissed him more firmly to alleviate that effect. Learning every moment, his Binghe.
Shen Qingqiu leaned forward, bracing his arms on the desk, and waited for ease. He brought Binghe’s hand with him, to clutch and to worry at. He’d left the other free, and so Binghe ran an ever-steadier hand down his spine. After a moment, Shen Qingqiu felt the warm, whisper-buzz of Luo Binghe’s human qi. Touch and rolling power—kept low, low as a fire on the edge of guttering.
“More,” Shen Qingqiu said. Luo Binghe, who nearly always took his meaning, raised the rate of energy transfer until Shen Qingqiu held up his hand to indicate that he could stop. The escalation itself was smooth and graduated—even, not jerky, as it had once been.
“I used to do this every day for you,” Luo Binghe murmured into Shen Qingqiu’s hair. “I never knew how much you’d find comfortable. Ideal.”
He breathed out, stirring the strands of his shizun’s hair—Shen Qingqiu felt them flicker across his cheek.
“Sometimes I asked, just to make conversation. But of course, you’d fallen out of the habit of confiding in me.”
It wasn’t even a particularly bitter joke. To Luo Binghe, the awful years of draining himself to the dregs, just to pour well-nigh everything in him into Shen Qingqiu, were simply another part of his life. Luo Binghe’s life had, thus far, contained more wretched desperation than either safety or contentment.
Shen Qingqiu brought the hand caught under his own to his mouth and laid a kiss on the palm. His death—the pain, the real risk of its permanence and the years it had stolen from him—had all been meant as an offering to his poor, wronged boy.
Oh, Binghe, Shen Qingqiu thought, wretched with fondness. Who would have supposed there was something of myself that I could give you, which you’d refuse?
He sat up straight, pressing his back against Luo Binghe’s stupidly hard abs.
“Try the blood parasites,” Shen Qingqiu said, because that was better than declaring his trust and his willingness: it was making both manifest. This world had been written into existence; it could be amended after the same fashion. “Begin with the same level you started at with your qi.”
The parasites were stronger, or at least they were more alien to Shen Qingqiu’s human, cultivated constitution. He was less familiar with their movement. Their effects felt more severe.
“That’s the limit of what’s comfortable for me now,” Shen Qingqiu said after only a minute of processing the slow upwelling of strange, foreign power in his muscles. Luo Binghe immediately dropped the level a degree.
He felt Luo Binghe shift under him, as though uneasy.
“It’s so much lower that a normal energy transfer,” he muttered. “In Jinlan City, I thought—”
Shen Qingqiu cut Binghe off with a light rap to his thigh. “Learning entails accepting the inevitability of mistakes, and not dwelling them more than is helpful.”
That was his own vice; recovering and moving forward was one of Luo Binghe’s greatest strengths.
“It would feel far lighter, to you,” Shen Qingqiu pointed out, “because of your lineage. For me, for now—just so much as this. Delicate, Binghe.”
“Yes, Shizun,” Binghe said, a promise to care for Shen Qingqiu in his tone.
The experiment had taken his own mind off Binghe’s sheer size, as Shen Qingqiu had hoped it would. He could breathe around the girth of Binghe in him, now.
A thought occurred to Shen Qingqiu. In the novel, Luo Binghe could simultaneously wield both forms of the qi that dwelt within him. It had yielded some deeply awesome battle scenes (and Shen Qingqiu thought he remembered Airplane’s having used it in some foursome with BingGe and those three Daoist nuns) (for the last several years, Shen Qingqiu had been trying not to remember that kind of ‘plot development’ in any great detail).
“And now, in concert,” Shen Qingqiu instructed, closing his eyes. “The parasites and each of your qi forms, all at the lowest level you can manage.”
Under him, Luo Binghe started. “You believe this disciple can?” The notion clearly ran through Binghe’s head for a moment, but then he decidedly said, “no. I might hurt Shizun.” He sounded simultaneously brim-full of his youthful loyalty and like the Emperor he had grown into: accustomed, now, to decision and command.
“You’d call me ‘Shizun’ while ignoring my instructions?” Shen Qinqiu said, cool. “Keep the flame burning as low as possible, Binghe. This master knows you can handle it.”
And I have never once, Shen Qingqiu did not have to remind him, been wrong about that. Whatever else Binghe had become, Binghe was his disciple first and foremost. Shen Qingqiu perfectly understood the depth and disposition of his abilities.
Binghe gave a shaking exhalation, and then Shen Qingqiu felt the hand at his back pulse with a breath of blended qi. The hand clutching his called blood to blood, like to like. He felt the delicate, involutional twitch of his own muscles. It was terrifying, and thrilling.
“It doesn’t hurt,” he said before Binghe could ask. “Find the meridians.”
Play with me, he didn’t command, but Binghe knew to test both their limits. They found the upper boundary—somewhat lower than either qi level or the parasites alone—and then descended, circling. Without the parasites. With Shen Qingqi’s own qi rising, and without. Energy, washing over him. Energy, pushed in the circle of dual cultivation, human and demonic.
“Try making the way easy for me,” Shen Qingqiu suggested, feeling safe in the euphemism. Luo Binghe scrambled to direct his qi and his parasites to where they could do the most good: the tender, almost untrodden passage Luo Binghe had bullied open to make space for himself. Shen Qingqiu fidgeted in Binghe’s lap as the parasites teased him and plucked him wide without pain. As the warm brush of a cultivator's qi stroked his unsettled nerves, setting them gently humming.
“Good,” he breathed. “You’re doing very well, Binghe.”
Shen Qingqiu could feel Binghe’s breath shake with the weight of his approval—as if he were the one piercing, filling Luo Binghe. He knew he could be, if he asked. He knew he would be, when he accepted the offering.
Hesitantly, Shen Qingqiu slid up higher on Binghe, who understood what he wanted and reapplied a thick layer of scented oil before easing him back down into the cradle of his lap. Such movement still wasn’t easy, but fuck it was easier. Shen Qingqiu contracted his muscles, pulling Binghe’s qi deep into his body and curling it into the well of native power in his own lower dantian.
“You make a good lingam,” Shen Qingqiu remarked absently, remembering to blush after he’d said it.
Binghe outright whined and throbbed in him, making the immortal in his lap choke on the unexpected stimulation. Shen Qingqiu realised that the suggestion he might use Binghe as a tool for his own pleasure and cultivation was like throwing gasoline on Binghe’s fire.
And really, who knew what would happen now, in cultivational terms? Six hundred women had been nourished to immortality by the demonic emperor’s jing—might not Luo Binghe’s dual cultivation with a partner who could pour all that stored energy right back into him, rather than a thousand flowers, spur some hitherto unlooked-for growth in the protagonist’s power? And here Shen Qingqiu was, claiming all that jing for himself! It seemed almost bound to result in a power up that would make his own Sun and Moon Dew body look second-rate. Shen Qingqiu felt a unpleasant curl of guilt for thinking something so selfish—but then he knew that if he voiced the thought, Binghe himself would absolutely eat it up, just like he had the ‘lingam’ idea. So Shen Qingqiu could never tell him (or at least, he ought to save it for a special occasion).
“Settle,” Shen Qingqiu said, soft as the wind through the grove outside. And Binghe tried, for him. Shen Qingqiu wondered at his own power, in a purely human sense, over another person’s body and soul: over Binghe, who couldn’t cry and mean it without half-breaking Shen Qingqiu’s own heart. Binghe felt vast in him still, but natural: like an interlocking part of Shen Qingqiu, external but shaped to fit. Like a key, tripping the complicated latches of his locks. Like the workings of this borrowed yet now comfortable body, which Shen Qingqiu had used more thoroughly and knew better even than the body he’d been born in.
“How does it feel now?” Binghe asked, with a quaver in his voice.
“Easy,” Shen Qingqiu admitted. He cleared his throat, feeling awkward. “Right,” he clarified, because Binghe deserved that.
His own initial hardness, which being over-full had chased away, began to creep back, plumping Shen Qingqiu under his robes. The System (quieter these days, but still present) was doubtless saving up its comments for its new monthly total tally, but Shen Qingqiu assumed that he was probably levelling up. Earning his ’Take it Like a Man’ badge, or whatever cringe name the System would inevitably see fit to impose.
Fighting to make his hand steady, Shen Qingqiu leaned forward again, in what would, if not for Binghe’s presence inside him, have been a lazy sprawl. He drew An Ding’s summary reports for Qing Jing before him. He took deep breaths. He read the first paragraph once. Twice. Began to understand all the words, despite the wild disturbance in his body and the pulses of qi still rolling low in his belly. Read it a final time, and knew he was doing so properly and fully. Made himself master of the first page. Felt Binghe drape himself across his back, holding him close and nuzzling his neck. Smelling his hair—was this a demon thing, or a Binghe thing? Perhaps he’d ask, later—though Binghe himself might not know. Airplane would, but Shen Qingqiu did not want to think of him, at such a time as this.
Shen Qingqiu read the second page through, carefully. Felt Binghe lean back, putting a few cun between Shen Qingqiu’s robe-clad back and his own similarly-attired chest. Handed Binghe a closed letter-fish from the desk, which Binghe obediently took, lightly pushing the wooden case to the side when he’d fished the missive out of its belly.
“You can always open these, if you like,” Binghe said. His voice was almost level—as if he wasn’t squirming, just slightly, under Shen Qingqiu.
From here on out, Emperor Luo Binghe’s letters would of course contain state secrets more often than not. But Binghe wasn’t concerned with hiding anything from Shen Qingqiu—would be upset, Shen Qingqiu knew, at even the implication of such a thing.
Shen Qingqiu hummed an acknowledgement.
A quarter shi slipped by. Nearly Wu Shi, when only horses and inexhaustible Luo Binghe were energetic.
Shen Qingqiu shifted his hips up once again. Luo Binghe applied yet more oil, to replace what slickness had been lost to time and the greed of Shen Qingqiu’s own too-tight body.
“You used to be so difficult to train, in physical things,” Shen Qingqiu remembered as he resumed his seat and finished his steady-handed comments on the report, with ink which Binghe had paused in perusing his own letters to grind for him.
“Remember when I was trying to teach you sword forms?” Shen Qingqiu smiled. “Over and again, you—”
He trailed off. It had been very strange, had it not, that brilliant prodigy Luo Binghe had spent half their private sword training crashing into his arms? ‘Tripping.’ Needing his grip adjusted. Falling all over his master, who’d gently rebuke his clumsiness and adjust his stance. A hand on his hip, a flick of Shen Qingqiu's fan to correct his oddly-bent knees—
“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu said sternly. “That was very low of you. Think how much time we wasted, when you might have been better prepared—” He swallowed the rest of the sentence. For what was to come. He’d been trying to speed-run Luo Binghe’s training. He’d wanted him so ready for the Abyss, if he couldn’t be safe at home.
Luo Binghe elected not to revisit that old wound: long scoured clean, and healed into some new and functional shape, like a once-broken bone.
“You’ve only now realised?” Binghe laughed into his hair. “This disciple wasn’t as subtle as he thought himself at the time. But not a shi spent with Shizun was ever wasted.”
“You ought to have mastered your forms,” Shen Qingqiu sniffed, trying out—and successfully executing—a punishing little clench around Binghe. This hardened him up nicely, despite the slight flag time had wrought in him. Shen Qingqiu felt a thrill of self-satisfaction, and patted Binghe’s leg. Such a good boy.
“I wanted to study yours instead, sir,” Binghe responded after taking a moment to absorb the impact.
“Not master it, Binghe?”
“This disciple wouldn’t dare, Shizun.”
Shen Qingqiu tsked. “No wonder you’re diligent, now you’re getting what you want.” He took up the senior disciples’ progress self-reports and pointedly turned his attention to them.
“Who I want,” Binghe corrected peaceably. “Shall I do one of those for you as well? Shizun will perhaps find the proposed course of my current studies of personal as well as scholarly interest—”
“Quiet,” Shen Qingqiu snapped. “Play with your fish. Wretched boy!” Who he loved more than anything, in either world. More than anyone, in either life. Who would write him a progress report, just to be insufferable, and to prove himself the best of Shen Qingqiu’s disciples. (“Landmarks in Cultivation Progress: Acquired demonic sword of unfathomable power. Subsequently broke, for plot reasons. Personal Goals: Learn to make Shizun cry on my cock, but like, in a good way.”)
Under the guise of correcting his own posture, Shen Qingqiu gave a single, cautious bounce on Luo Binghe’s flatteringly stiff cock. It was starting to feel—good. Outright good, just to be here. Shen Qingqiu caught himself rolling his hips on Binghe with every bend he took to wet his pen, and smiling slightly at the resultant catches in Binghe’s breath. Even just this felt a little unnecessary; a little luxuriant. All of Binghe in him, thick and distinctly interested—Shen Qingqiu couldn’t move, couldn’t so much as breathe without knowing it. There was nothing inside Shen Qingqiu that Luo Binghe didn’t touch, no part that didn’t register the pressure of him. The heavy promise of Binghe against that interior ‘bud’. The sheer glut of him: like stuffing himself with Binghe’s perfect food until he was too full to move. Who’d told Binghe he could be so big? Certainly not Shen Qingqiu!
“And here’s another plan I didn’t see through. You just wanted to be close all day,” Shen Qingqiu scolded, taking a sip of his tea (poured from the pot Binghe had made them at the start, which had been kept warm by a talisman) and clenching as tight as he could. “Tch. What a needy thing.”
Now, was he referring to Binghe, or to this representative element of him? This eager, too-mighty and too-warlike delegation Binghe sent into the heart of his lover’s territory, in hopes of its meeting with kind hospitality? Shen Qingqiu didn’t know himself.
“Shizun,” Binghe purred without pause, rocking up in counter-attack and nearly making Shen Qingqiu spill his tea, “of course I did. Can we—”
Shen Qingqiu shook his head.
“Not just yet, Binghe. Be patient.”
Luo Binghe whimpered, and Shen Qingqiu fought not to smirk into his tea.
“Don’t you like it, Binghe?” he asked, all innocence himself, now.
“You know I do, Shizun,” Binghe whined, working more oil around Shen Qingqiu’s hole with twitching fingers, which he then wiped off on a square of unhemmed patterned cloth. “When you’re stern with me, it shows me how much you care. How much it matters to you that I get it right. I want to learn to fuck you well—”
Shen Qingqiu made a soothing, shushing noise, because it turned out that when he was sufficiently roused, Binghe’s pleading voice went straight to his cock. Binghe quieted obediently, but Shen Qingqiu knew Binghe could see the red creeping over his pale neck—a spot where his long hair usually hid his reactions from scrutiny. He knew Binghe could feel the trembling of his body, could feel the drop of precome at the tip of Shen Qingqiu’s cock when he ‘accidentally’ brushed it in fetching his next letter. Shen Qingqiu knew that Luo Binghe had just been given proof of how much he could affect his master: just the sound of his voice. Shen Qingqiu found it difficult to mind that lapse, at present.
Significantly into wu shi, Shen Qingqiu began to outright ache. He’d been perched on Luo Binghe like a fishcake on a skewer for over an hour, all told, and was beginning to truly feel it. He staved off the soreness with a thorough circulation of his qi, which Binghe felt, and put his own work aside to ask after.
“I’ll be able to handle it longer, next time.” Shen Qingqiu said.
He felt one of those pulses of self-satisfaction which he usually tucked away. But like this—mellow and lax on Binghe, safe in their old house, replete and content—the feeling spilled out of the interior walls Shen Qingqiu had long ago built to contain it. A glow of pride suffused him, like the gold afternoon light beginning to spill across the table. Shen Qingqiu found it difficult to reach embarrassment, when the sharp edges of his personality had been so carefully smoothed down, and with such care as this.
He was learning to understand Luo Binghe, and to make him happy. He wanted to be better than all those harem girls who laid back and let it happen, as though making love to his Binghe were easy. Like this was light work they didn’t much care for. All those fucking awful, impersonal women who’d said ‘oh, Lord Luo! Oh you’re so good!’ and never Binghe—who’d called whatever he did perfect before they’d even given Binghe a chance to work for it, and test himself, and win, when anyone who knew Binghe could see that he wanted to earn his victories—that Binghe had to, to believe them. To enjoy them.
Shen Qingqiu felt ready to be enjoyed.
Fuck, it used to drive Shen Yuan crazy. ‘Oh, Lord Luo, I can feel you in my stomach, in my throat, take responsibility!’, blah blah blah. Shen Qingqiu had felt Binghe in his fucking teeth for the better part of the day. Binghe was his responsibility, thank you very much. Wives, who?
Shen Qingqiu was properly erect now, which could hardly escape Luo Binghe’s sharp-eyed attention for long.
“Is Shizun ready?” Binghe asked, making so bold as to cradle Shen Qingqiu’s cock in his long fingers. To drop intriguing, wet kisses on the junction of his neck and collarbone, which lit up Shen Qingqiu like a whole city getting the power back on after a tsumani. To wrap a hand around Shen Qingqiu’s stomach for leverage, as though he’d bounce up into him. Binghe’s voice was so satisfied already. Muzzy with it, treacly with it, syrup-slow and simply happy.
I did that, Shen Qingqiu thought, smug as could be. I made him happy. Fuck Rei and Asuka, Shen Yuan for best girl.
“Not this time,” Shen Qingqiu said, knowing that for all this preparation, he still wasn’t fully ready for Luo Binghe’s Patented Pushdown. This was like cultivation. You didn’t fuck up all your hard-won progress by rushing your stages!
“Let this master take care of it,” Shen Qingqiu said, giving the arm wrapped around his stomach a little pat. “Just like this, Binghe. I have you.”
Binghe’s little sound of agreement was too, too sweet. Shen Qingqiu rolled himself on that throbbing, sorely-tested, here-for-both-a-good-time-and-a-long-time demonic erection. Shen Qingqiu was already more than half way up the mountain: he knew he could make it to the summit. And he knew that he had to bring poor, suffering Luo Binghe with him. After all, Binghe had sweetly done every little thing Shen Qingqiu had asked of him, all morning. Had been such a—
“Good boy,” Shen Qingqiu whispered, this time aloud rather than in the privacy of his own mind. “You’ve been such a good boy for me. You feel lovely now, Binghe.”
“Shizun!” Binghe gasped, his arm clenching too tightly around his master for a moment before he remembered himself.
At the intensity of Binghe’s reaction, Shen Qingqiu felt like he’d cracked a video game puzzle level. Not a terribly difficult one, but still, certainly satisfying. Of course he knew how to make Binghe come in him, just like this: neat as a tied-off bow. He knew what Binghe liked, and how to give him what he needed. Anything he had to do for it was all right, because it was for Binghe.
“Stay still,” Shen Qingqiu reminded him. “Stay good for Shizun, dearest.”
“Uh huh,” Binghe breathed, nodding frantically against the crown of Shen Qingqiu’s hair.
Of course he would, Shen Qingqiu thought, complacent in his triumph, to the best of his considerable ability. Anything for me.
Shen Qingqiu rocked gently on Binghe’s monstrous cock: letting himself feel the swell of that fat head and the unrelenting rigidity of the broad column supporting it. Every ridge of it, the whole breadth of the thing, for him, for him, for him. Shen Qingqiu let the better part of Binghe’s cock slide out, clenching so that it came away ever-so-slow. Each cun was gravity’s hard-won prize. Then Shen Qingqiu let himself go lax and dropped right back down, his own mouth popping open in a soft ‘oh’. He did it again and again. He felt Binghe squirm under him, struggling not to outright thrash. He listened to Binghe pant for the gods, and he knew that for Binghe, that pretty much meant him.
“When I was young,” Shen Qingqiu spoke before knowing he’d say anything at all (still rolling on Luo Binghe like a boat on a storm-tossed sea, where the motion of his own hips was the slow and drumming tempest), “when I was about the age you were when you came to live with me, I was so much more foolish than you ever were. I wasn’t like you, Binghe. I never knew what it was I wanted, so desperately. I was too frightened and ashamed to even think it.”
Binghe wasn’t listening carefully now, he knew. But Binghe would remember every word, and would card over them later. So Shen Qingqiu knew that he still had to be a little careful in this. Luckily he was used to navigating the obfuscations his transmigration required, in even the most extreme scenarios.
“I read,” Shen Qingqiu panted with a laugh, trying a fresh twist of his hips, “the worst sort of spring books. Outright trash. But I liked them all the same, because they were about the adventures of a boy who was like you in nearly every respect—except, of course, that he was far less wonderful.”
Luo Binghe, who’d been managing to sit upright, dropped his back straight down, fingers scrabbling at the floor instead of his lover’s tender skin. Even his blunt, filed claws left little scratches in the bamboo matting.
Shen Qingqiu gave a pleased hum and continued.
“The boy in the books had a thousand lovers, and it was so,” Shen Qingqiu picked up speed, letting Binghe hit him nicely, “frustrating, Binghe, because he didn’t care for any of those girls! None of them made him happy.”
He let his ass smack against Binghe’s rucked-up robes, the fabric of his own chastely falling around and encircling them both. Shen Qingqiu discovered that it was possible to use your own qi to stroke along a cock inside you, almost as though your power was a finger. He thought Binghe liked it: the bitten-off moan seemed like a good sign.
“And I wanted him to be happy—Binghe, try using the blood parasites now. Tighten me where you like, make it nice for yourself. Guh—”
Well that worked. More updates on this breaking news as they came.
“Now,” Shen Qingqiu continued, bouncing cheerfully by this point. Too ambitious, really. He knew he’d pay for this tomorrow. (Worth it, honestly.) “I’d read my favourite taking all these women. And I always found fault with them. No personality. Not clever enough for him, not a good cultivator. Insufficiently devoted. But you see, Binghe,” Binghe yowled as Shen Qingqiu really put his back into it, and Shen Qingqiu nodded—yes, good, Binghe did see, “if they’d made him happy, I’d have been miserable. Because I,” he laughed at himself, “never saw why other people liked such scenes. I didn’t understand that I wanted to be in those girls’ places, not in the boy’s. I wanted someone to cherish me, but I also—I also wanted that someone to be like you, Binghe.”
Eugh, emotional vulnerability was the worst. But he did want Binghe to come, and Binghe’s kinks were Binghe’s kinks. They were just lucky there was no crying this time—oh, spoke too soon, a hitched sob from Binghe back there, classic. Anyway, this was all for Binghe, who really was owed a better time of sex than he’d had thus far!
“I wanted this you—” Shen Qingqiu stressed. “the person you could be, if someone cared to make you happy. Binghe, you’re exactly what I wanted all along. What I needed, and I never saw. But you did, you saw me—”
Binghe rocked up into Shen Qingqiu, who allowed it with a gasp. He worked the best spot inside himself against Binghe’s cock, using him to chase the feeling. Wrapping a hand around his own cock, more pressure than strokes. Close, close, close. Mother fuck, mm, Binghe was—
“My stupid little friends and I would visit shops where they sold toys, as a ‘joke’. I couldn’t even bring myself to buy one a finger wide. I was too embarrassed. I hardly understood anything. But what I wanted—Luo Binghe, I wanted a toy just like this. Too big, and too thick, and much too much. And now,” Shen Qingqiu trembled, stopping his rocking. He just held Binghe in him, tight as he could, and pulled at his own cock with a desperation he’d not felt since he and the character Luo Binghe had both been seventeen, when Luo Binghe had lost his virginity at the Immortal Alliance conference.
“This is mine,” Shen Qingqiu breathed, trembling, twisting a quick-sliding, greedy fist around his own slicked erection. “This perfect toy,” He relaxed on Luo Binghe, only to squeeze the life out of him a moment later, “is mine. And so when you’re good enough, and when I’m ready, I want this disciple to take me apart. I want Binghe to fuck me to pieces. I need you to. I need you, Binghe,” Shen Qinqiu outright begged.
Luo Binghe came whimpering ‘Shizun’, his feet scrambling against the floor and his hips helplessly pushing up and up. Shen Qingqiu spent in his own hand, his spine arching, and fell back on Luo Binghe’s solid chest like he’d been felled.
Shen Qingqiu drifted down to himself like a leaf caught by drafts, coming slowly to rest on the ground. To Shen Qingqiu’s certain knowledge, Luo Binghe had never once heard his Shizun curse. So he’d thought that would do the trick. But he understood that one needed to build up to these things, to set the stage. He didn’t like lying to Binghe, where he could help it, so he’d had to be overly-free with the truth, just to help Binghe finish. That was the only reason he’d said all that.
Somehow, Luo Binghe got his arms to work to the point where he could delicately slide Shen Qingqiu off him, flip him around and cover his face with overly-aggressive, bitey kisses.
“Love you,” Binghe said between them, sounding gratifyingly fervent. “Shizun, Shizun, I love you. Shizun—”
Shen Qingqiu stilled Binghe with a hand on his cheek and gave him a deep, proper kiss to surge up into. Shen Qingqiu didn’t see a need to reply—really, he’d just said as much himself!
Shen Qingqiu knew that he’d be sore tomorrow, and busy the day after. But perhaps the day after that, they could try again? Education was a process, after all. They could build up to the whole ‘face-down-ass-up’ business (if that was, indeed, still the way Luo Binghe liked to fuck—so far, not so much, but then Shen Qingqiu’s data pool was, admittedly, limited: 'further research is needed'). They had serious work ahead of them! And as anyone would say of either of them: when he undertook a thing, he did it well.