Chapter Text
Shang Qinghua would like it to go on record that whatever had happened was categorically, metaphorically, literally, any word that ended with “ally” - that applied to the at hand situation, not his fault.
He frantically cracked his knuckles, hands tucked inside his overlapping sleeves so that no one could see him doing it and mistake the action as a sign of aggression. It was a habit from his disciple days when shit like that had the Bai Zhan peak disciples ready to go.
He watched Cucumber-bro walk towards him and felt nothing but a chasm of dawning horror when he immediately spotted the two Luo Binghe’s following behind him.
Two of them. Like they had multiplied, split into halves via mitosis or whatever he could still remember from high-school science after years spent inside his own novel. They looked…happy…maybe? At least they were smiling solicitously at Cucumber-bro, and that was pretty much the same thing for a Luo Binghe. Cucumber-bro really was the only thing standing between everyone and certain doom, far too often for Shang Qinghua’s liking, but why mess with what worked? Especially when the alternative didn’t exist.
What tripped him up was that last time Luo Binghe, the original, came to Proud Immortal Demon Way: The Danmei Edition, there was much more fighting. Luo Binghe, the remix, took offence to having another him in The Danmei Edition, or something. They weren’t fighting now. Far from it.
They were both amiably walking a half-step behind Shen Qingqiu, one with what looked like their hand on his lower back, the other claiming the a choice spot between the shoulder blade area. They seemed content to idly molest Cucumber-bro’s form with their beady red eyes without the requisite eye-gouging by either party for the audacity. More surprisingly, they both had their claws out. The thing was, Luo Binghe had tried to keep those tucked away — or at least he didn’t have them out whenever Shang Qinghua saw him in recent years. He usually didn’t have fangs either, or red eyes. It was like he thought that playing human would stop them all from remembering the five years he held Shen Qingqiu’s body hostage and happily took swipes at anyone dumb enough to face him. Okay, so that was a lie, Luo Binghe wasn’t thinking about them at all, but he usually tried to make himself look harmless for Cucumber-bro. Shen Qingqiu running away from him so often must have taken a toll.
In the back of his mind, he noted that his heartbeat was running rabbit-quick the way it always did when a high level demon was in his vicinity. It was a fear response, his body telling him to run for the hills, his mind forcing him to stay in place.
Luo Binghe one and two looked exactly the same which would make it hard to know which one he should call Junshang in the grovelling to come.
They gazed at him then and his blood turned cold under their predatory eyes.
One of them cocked his head a bit like he could hear Shang Qinghua’s heartbeat and knew that he was afraid, and that, that amused him. The other twitched his nose before his lips pulled back into a smile that wasn’t joyful, so much as it was a barring of teeth. He looked at Shang Qinghua like he was something small and furred with brittle bones. Shan Qinghua shakily smiled back and tried to make himself a smaller target by hunching his shoulders over. Sweat had already started to form on his neck and back.
Shang Qinghua didn’t know if the goosebumps that came over him were from the cloying waves of Demonic Qi sliding off of Luo Binghe, the plural, or just his own knowledge of how fucked up his son really was.
He didn’t know how Cucumber-bro could stand it.
His own king’s Qi was cold and sharp. A dark winter that used to cut him, or at least felt like it would in their earlier days. His disciple era had him stocking hot drinks as an emergency supply in defence of a Qi signature that made him feel like he had been submerged in an icy lake. Even now, with Mobei-jun as his husband, there was something comforting about his Qi but it was never not dangerous. There was never a moment where Shang Qinghua relaxed into that winter night without a second of adjustment. But Cucumber-bro was never like that. He knew as much, if not more than Shang Qinghua, given his memory, about Luo Binghe and he still gave no second thought to leaning into his touch or relaxing into his Qi.
And Luo Binghe felt like ash and shadow. Blood and hunger. His time in the Abyss marked him in ways that left him, somehow, more discomforting than most Demons Shang Qinghua had ever met. Luo Binghe’s Qi, and he did not want to go in the direction of cheesy over dramatic prose but really there was no better way to describe it, shut up inner Cucumber-bro, felt like death.
The writer-cum-An Ding Peak Lord could feel Luo Binghe’s Qi coating his mouth like ichor when he breathed, could feel it roil over his skin. His own Qi wavered and made itself small to match the efforts of Shang Qinghua’s body.
These days, unlike his demonic traits, Luo Binghe never bothered to tuck it in. Why he thought his Qi was less disconcerting than his claws, Shang Qinghua did not know. Luo Binghe did a great job at suppressing his Qi at Huan Hua when he was trying to pass as human so he could do it, that wasn’t the issue, he just chose not to. Luo Binghe, when he became somewhat more comfortable with the idea that Cucumber-bro was at least somewhat invested in him, liked to let it seep out so that he could cry to his Shizun about how the Qing Jing disciples flinched from him.
Cucumber-bro’s face, hidden behind his fan, had a small, gentle, smile gracing its features as it did most of the time he looked at his disciple. Shang Qinghua knew it did. Shen Qingqiu’s eyes flicked to either side slowly as he made sure his…Shang Qinghua still didn’t know what was happening so he went with: so that his husband and his guest were fine.
Like anything could hurt them?
Something moved in the corner of his eye. Shang Qinghua’s hyper-awareness was working double-time so while he wasn’t surprised that he noticed things that happening in his periphery, he regretted it. The shadows under the trio’s feet undulated in a way he did not like. They blended together and overtook Shen Qingqiu’s own shadow to form an amorphous blob that looked too black to be normal. He couldn’t even see the grass underneath, the shadows looked like a pool he could fall into.
“A’Hua,” Cucumber-bro called out.
Shang Qinghua was startled from his examination of the highly suspect shadow pool to look up. Did Cucumber-bro, did fucking A’Yuan, really have to call him like that? In front of Binghe(s)?
Two sets of red eyes glared at him. Why were they glowing like that in the daytime? Didn’t it need to be night or something for the full effect to work? It was mid-afternoon and the sun was high but Shang Qinghua knew deep in his bones that nothing would stop the two protagonists from looming over him eerily or killing him.
One of them, the one on the right, took a strand of Shen Qingqiu’s hair and began to twirl it, adding one more proprietary motion to match the hands that started to clench at Shen Qingqiu’s robes. Shang Qinghua could see the crease in them from the front.
He guessed that was their Binghe.
He cleared the fear from his throat and answered, trying to look like he wasn’t about to run, “What can this humble An Ding Peak Lord do for Shen Qingqiu?”
Shen Qingqiu sighed like he was the one being difficult. No bro, he wanted to cry out, I’m trying not to die. I do not have your danmei shou halo, I am but a humble side character, go calm your rabid Binghes!
“It’s fine A’Hua, they know everything now,” Cucumber-bro said.
Shang Qinghua’s mind felt like it was about to melt from his ears. For a moment he swore he blacked out.
What the fuck did that even mean, and how was it meant to be comforting? What was “everything” and why did both Shen Qingqiu’s husband Luo Binghe and Bing-gege, man with 600 wives and grudge the size of the Abyss know it?
He gathering his thoughts and ignoring his heart, he could feel it thump in his chest, and he asked a question he already knew he’d regret, “What does Shen Qingqiu mean?”
Cucumber-bro had the audacity to blink and look confused, and shit, now that Shang Qinghua wasn’t constantly looking at the threat, not that he looked away, he noticed that Shen Qingqiu’s eyes were rimmed red. Pink, really. Like he had been crying.
“A’Hua, check the System.”
….
Shang Qinghua got out of the conversation in one piece, somehow, and closed the door behind him. He leaned back against it, and slid down until he could get his head between his knees.
He curled his hands behind his head and interlaced them, like a weird hat, and he began to breathe. His inhales puffed his cheeks out as he held his breath poorly, his exhales stuttered. He nearly spat on his knees from the force of them.
The System was gone. He didn’t -
He’d gone his entire life in this shitty book with a voice in his head and an agenda to have the plot proceed the way it was “meant” to go. Born Shang Chenhua, his name was the same as his first life, his parents wanted him to be a scholar, not a cultivator and he himself didn’t exactly want to work his way up the ranks of Cang Qiong on An Ding Peak of all places. It was brutal, tedious, dirty, work being the head of logistics in a place that didn’t respect the effort put into keep the Sect running, but he did it.
The story even ended successfully! His money grab of a stallion novel reached the end and everyone who was important was alive! He was alive and not on his way to being killed by his king. He even did the stupid closing interviews and somehow got himself the man of his dreams!
But still. It was decades of his life spent under the aegis of the System, locked into a role he never wanted, the threat of death or another transmigration over his head and now, here, he didn’t have to worry about that anymore.
He’d never dream of waking up with another clip of that awful music, and the System’s monotone voice ringing in his head going: Congratulations, Congratulations, Congratulations — in a new world.
Yeah, he had been given the option to go on home once the storyline ended, the perfect escape, and that had been nice, but it was pretty much the only nice thing the System ever did for him. He knew Cucumber-bro didn’t even get that much. It was Luo Binghe or bust for him and even when he knew how gone Shen Yuan was for the protagonist that was still discomforting.
Shang Qinghua’s own choice stay, even outside of his ties to the Northern Desert, had a lot to do with the way that he was used to being in Proud Immortal Demon Way. He'd been Shang Qinghua, An Ding Peak Lord for longer than he’d been Shang Chenhua, failing novelist and he had nothing go back to. So why wouldn’t he stay with his brat of a king and his grumpy best friend, and his weirdly loyal disciples who threatened to defect to the North with him once his marriage came out?
He wiped his eyes on his knees and tried, once more, to breathe through the tears.
It was over.
The awful, terrible mind-overlord was gone but that did not erase the look of satisfaction on both of the Luo Binghe’s when Shen Qingqiu said, “Binghe, well, both of the Binghe’s…they absorbed it, it’s all over A’Hua.”
That…wasn’t as comforting as Cucumber-bro clearly thought it was.
It was over, but at what cost?
Both of the Demon Lord’s had smiled when Cucumber-bro spoke, their upper lips pulled back to show gleaming, pointed, white incisors.
They never moved more than a step away from Shen Yuan. Their hands never left him in some way, and their Qi tried to blend itself into his own.
…
Weeks passed and no one really questioned why there were two Luo Binghe’s now. No one dared to.
They yelled and acted surprised when they found out but no one pressed for answers in a way that felt more than casual. Everyone just got used to the way that there was always at least one Luo Binghe around Shen Qingqiu at all times when before they’d sometimes have a break of a few days if his Demon-Lordiness had things to do, instead.
No one was sure if they were both his husband or what, but they knew not to cross the man who nearly destroyed the cultivation world in an attempt to find out.
Shang Qinghua noted that Luo Binghe kept to his decision about his more demonic traits. It wasn’t just his huadian and the Qi that was out. His ears were pointed, his teeth were sharp, and his nails were black claws, maybe a a third of a cun long to Shang Qinghua’s estimate.
His shadow still wavered and Shang Qinghua didn’t know if that was a consequence of the whole — System eating thing — or if Binghe was just like that. Sometimes, Shang Qinghua swore he could see Luo Binghe’s curls swaying on days that were completely windless. Or indoors, in Peak Lord meetings when Binghe would stand behind Shen Qingqiu like worlds’ most terrifying guard-dog. They undulated so softly it could almost pass a trick of the light.
Binghe would ignore them all during Sect meetings, them, some of the strongest in the cultivation world, and play with strands of Shen Qingqiu’s own hair. He would pick up a piece and gently twine it around his fingers, or shake a strand up and down. Or press one lock to his lips when Yue Qingyuan’s eyes stayed on either him or Shen Qingqiu for too long.
They wanted Shen Qingqiu to send him out, at first, but when Shen Qingqiu refused they had no way to bar him from entry. Luo Binghe beat Liu Qingge back for years, and he wasn’t doing anything actively harmful now, so how could they just tell him to leave?
Yue Qingyuan was the only one who may have actually been able to do something against Luo Binghe but not without great cost. Unfortunately for all of them, Luo Binghe following his rightful husband wasn’t enough for Yue Qingyuan to draw his sword, not when Shen Qingqiu seemed fine with it all.
Shang Qinghua spent those meetings hoping his sweat didn’t drench through to the back of his robes. Everyone else was too much of a coward to fight a losing battle when they didn’t have to, when the threat wasn’t trying to kill them and theirs. They talked such shit but when push came to shove, no matter the rhetoric, it would be everyone for themselves.
Shang Qinghua had been with his martial siblings longer than Shen Qingqiu. He was pretty damn sure that Qi Qingqi and half of the others saw Shen Qingqiu as a price to keep a leash on Binghe, and that Yue Qingyuan and Liu Qingge would be the only two who would fight if Shen Qingqiu said he didn’t want to be with Binghe anymore. Or if Cucumber-bro got scared.
Shang Qinghua hated that he didn’t know which side of that divide he fell under.
He hoped he’d never have to find out.
…
He was only coming over for tea, something they did pretty frequently, to bitch about this and that.
Shen Yuan was always happy to have him over no matter how much he complained. Shang Qinghua knew what it was like to be unwanted, and Cucumber-bro’s thundering huffs were nothing compared to disdain he faced with both sets of parents. So he was pretty sure of his welcome. They’d set a time and everything, he’d packed some nice rice wine, and some Northern sweets to share between them.
Shen Yuan always kept some of Luo Binghe’s treats back when he knew Shang Qinghua was coming, so that he could try them and Shang Qinghua knew that Shen Yuan didn’t do that for anyone else, and he appreciated it. His sons’ craftsmanship was amazing even when he was too scared to actually eat it.
He slowly opened the door, not wanting Cucumber-bro’s hand to slip and some paperwork to be messed up by a surprise jerk of the hand. It sucked when that happened. He froze in place, the door barely cracked open, when he saw what was happening inside.
One Luo Binghe was behind Shen Yuan, his face curled into his shoulder. It would be sweet if his hand wasn’t wrapped around Shen Yuan’s thin neck. Those black claws were gently pressed against his jugular. The grip was firm but not tight enough to bruise, or to choke.
The other Luo Binghe was sobbing, not the fake crying that honestly scared the shit out of Shang Qinghua, that he did when he wanted to get his way, but real crying. Tears flowed over his stupidly perfect high cheekbones, which did nothing to take away from his feral red eyes.
His face was a mask of pain, his lips curled in a snarl and frozen there as he grit his teeth in order not to cry out. His brow was furrowed, his nose wrinkled. One of his hands gripped Shen Qingqiu’s front and the other was wrapped around one thin wrist. Unlike the one on Shen Yuan’s neck, this hand gripped Shen Yuan’s wrist hard enough to bruise. Shang Qinghua could tell by the way the skin was displaced, by the way those fingers turned white in some places from the exertion of pressure.
He wasn’t talking, he was keening.
Low and hurt like a kicked dog. Wolf, Shang Qinghua’s mind automatically corrected.
Shen Qingqiu smiled, that sweet gentle smile he reserved for his terrifying husband, was it husbands now, Shan Qinghua still didn’t know, and cupped one hand around his cheek.
He couldn’t hear them but A‘Yuan must have been whispering comfort as he softly wiped away the tears.
Shang Qinghua’s eyes kept darting to their hands, the way they clenched. Those sharp black nails. The threat they represented.
He closed the door.
…
Biting into his lip Shang Qinghua wondered whether he should bring it up, it was his first time with his friend, alone. No protagonist lurking in the bedroom or puttering in the kitchen. The slime demons of the South over-bred and now there were thousands inching their way to the capital. It didn’t necessitate both of the Luo Binghe’s to go, but it was faster, so they went, and so did Mobei-jun and Sha Hualing in the hopes that two months of work could be finished in a weeks’ time.
“Hey, uh,“ he started, eloquent as he always was.
Shen Yuan nodded, and poured him more tea.
“Does…Binghe ever scare you, sometimes?” He asked.
Shen Yuan paused and asked, “Now? Not, like, during the Water Prison, but now?”
He was looking at him like Shang Qinghua was crazy for bringing it up. Yeah, okay, Shang Qinghua could see Shen Yuan’s bias when Binghe was a disciple, a human-shaped disciple who Shen Qingqiu could beat but now? Now? When the man, men, loomed over him, and retaliated aggression to anyone who wasn’t Shen Yuan with twice the aggression? Was Cucumber-bro really not seeing it? Cucumber-bro had seemed so sensible once upon a time. Like when they were growing mushroom bodies together in case they died, the main potential cause being…oh…Shang Qinghua thought sarcastically…death by Luo Binghe.
“Y-yeah, now.” Shang Qinghua continued because he was coward but fuck, he was trying to do right by his friend. The asshole who always believed he could write even through his vitriol and who always did his paperwork correctly. Who brought him tea and snacks in his snooty, awkward way.
Shen Yuan laughed lat the question like it was funny, “Why would I be scared of Binghe. He’s harmless.”
Shang Qinghua nodded and pretended he understood what it was like to have Shen Yuan’s iron core of certainty that he wouldn’t be hurt by a megalomaniacal Demon Lord.
“But like…what if you…ever…wanted to leave him?” He asked.
A‘Yuan looked offended at that, like Shang Qinghua just did something impolite. Well, excuse him for being worried.
A‘Yuan replied, “Why would I ever want to leave Binghe?”
He plucked the hem of one sleeve as he continued to speak, “He’s such a sweet boy….and I want to make everything up to him…but it’s not like I’m staying with him just because of that. He’s Binghe, you know? If Binghe ever wanted me to leave, or to…leave me, I…I would,” A’Yuan’s voice broke at the thought. “But other than that, I don’t get the question Airplane-bro, he’s, he’s Binghe.”
A‘Yuan said “Binghe” like that was supposed to be an answer, like it was the only thing that mattered, and for Shen Yuan it probably was. Shang Qinghua also wanted to laugh at the sheer delusion it took to believe that there was a possibility greater than zero that either Binghe would be going anywhere away from Shen Yuan willingly.
Shang Qinghua took a sip of tea and prayed to gods he did not believe in that Shen Yuan would remain steadfast in his affections. He didn’t really think A‘Yuan had the option to leave anymore, after all, and it would be best if his friend was happy.