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Luo Binghe hates the strange world that Shen Yuan comes from. The filth of the city air has to be constantly cycled out from his body, and what little natural qi exists near Shen Yuan’s home has been strangled by terraforming efforts and blankets of asphalt. The health of the world reflects onto the health of the body; in a place like this, even Luo Binghe cannot neglect the chore of keeping his body free from impurities.
Luo Binghe does not hate this world just for that, though. If he hated everything that tried to kill him, he’d have wasted all the energy he could have otherwise spent doing something about the things trying to kill him.
No, Luo Binghe hates this world for the way it tries to kill Shen Yuan.
“Binghe, honestly,” Shen Yuan complains, weakly batting Luo Binghe’s hands away from where they're fussing over Shen Yuan’s blankets. “It’s a cold, not the plague.”
“For an illness that you claim is so trivial, it’s persistent,” Luo Binghe hisses.
He doesn’t mean to sound so frustrated about it. He often doesn’t mean to show such ugly parts of himself to Shen Yuan. There’s just so little left of him that hasn’t been warped by years of cruelty and anger that if he really hid all of it, there wouldn’t be much left to show Shen Yuan at all.
Shen Yuan is far too clever of a person to bother being entertained with someone who shows so little of themselves, and Luo Binghe would rather be remembered by Shen Yuan as cruel and ugly than to be forgotten as unremarkable. In the end, he shows his ugliness to Shen Yuan constantly.
Shen Yuan sighs, the sound of it stifled by the congestion in his sinuses. Gently, he brings up a hand to poke at Luo Binghe’s furrowed brow.
“What are these wrinkles, ah? Are you trying to waste your good looks? The common people would weep if they saw you squandering your blessings like this, you know,” Shen Yuan tuts.
Usually, Luo Binghe would take the bait easily, preening and coaxing Shen Yuan into calling him ‘pretty’ again. Now, he only silently leans into Shen Yuan’s touch, the pressure of Shen Yuan’s finger between his brows sharpening until it’s uncomfortable.
Shen Yuan hums in quiet dissatisfaction, but he indulgently keeps his hand where it is so that Luo Binghe can keep leaning into his touch for a moment longer. When Luo Binghe finally gathers himself and pulls away, Shen Yuan’s eyes linger on the spot his finger had pressed; undoubtedly, there’s a small crescent indent where Shen Yuan’s nail had dug into Luo Binghe’s skin.
“Better?” Shen Yuan asks.
“Yes,” Luo Binghe lies.
Shen Yuan narrows his eyes. “I can feel your creepy blood mites crawling around inside me,” he accuses. “Which is something you only do when you’re still actively worried about something.”
“They should be able to fix this,” Luo Binghe stresses, reaching out to fuss at Shen Yuan’s blankets again. “No matter how severe or trivial the illness, they should be able to fix it.”
“Maybe they can’t fix it because it’s from my world, and your blood only works on stuff from yours?” Shen Yuan says. Then he sniffles loudly and holds out a hand expectantly.
Obediently, Luo Binghe hands him a tissue.
“What determines if it’s from my world or yours? Cuts can be healed by my blood mites easily, even when they’re caused by things in this world.”
“Narrative weight?” Shen Yuan offers, then pauses to blow his nose. It sounds truly miserable. “It isn’t especially interesting if you have to worry about healing a cold - it isn’t as interesting as cuts that get blood everywhere or illnesses that could really be deadly.”
“Colds that get snot everywhere aren’t so different from your ‘narratively weighty’ bleeding cuts,” Luo Binghe grumbles, taking the used tissue back from Shen Yuan to throw away.
Mercilessly, Shen Yuan cuffs him over the head, but then he sighs and nods along anyway.
“It is a stupid boundary,” he mutters. “It feels so arbitrary. I think ‘narrative weight’ might actually be the dumbest bullshit idea I’ve used to try to explain it yet - it doesn’t even make sense! ‘A cold isn’t an important illness to cure’ is only true for people who are otherwise in good health. Even for the average healthy guy, we still say that a cure for the common cold would make a man rich.”
Luo Binghe tips his head down, unwilling to let Shen Yuan look at the way his expression has contorted into something ugly.
Is Shen Yuan in good overall health? Good enough that a cold is truly trivial, the way he insists it is? Wouldn’t someone who was really in such good health not even think about how a cold might affect people worse off? What about the sorts of health conditions that a person may not even realize are afflicting them until something else - something like a cold - comes up on top of them?
Shen Yuan, a person whom Luo Binghe had at one point thought to be one of the least emotionally in-tune people he had ever met, notices the second that Luo Binghe’s thoughts start spiraling like this.
“Ah, what is it now, you big baby…” Shen Yuan sighs, reaching out to gently raise Luo Binghe’s chin up again. “Why am I the one comforting you, anyway? Shouldn’t you be rushing about making me soup and bringing me hand-woven blankets and whatever else to - Luo Binghe you get back here right now!”
Luo Binghe, who had been in the middle of bolting upright with the intention to rush into the kitchen and make some soup, obediently returns to his position kneeling at the side of Shen Yuan’s bed.
“If I don’t start dinner now, we’ll have to eat the leftovers from yesterday instead,” Luo Binghe grumbles, even as he settles back into his spot.
“You love leftovers,” Shen Yuan says, rolling his eyes. “We’d be eating leftovers anyway - you probably didn’t even think about making a fresh dinner until I mentioned soup.”
“Soup is good when you’re sick,” Luo Binghe says, but he doesn’t refute the bit about leftovers.
He does love them. He loves the luxury of being able to preserve the leftover pieces of a meal, loves knowing that no piece of it is going to waste. He loves the domesticity of it, too; when you’re an emperor, no one dares feed you the same meal two nights in a row. It isn’t practical to, anyway - if there are leftovers, then they ought to be tossed to the scrappier servants who can’t afford to purchase additional meals outside of what is provided to them.
Luo Binghe likes that Shen Yuan knows that he likes leftovers too, the way that he likes when Shen Yuan knows any of a million small details about Luo Binghe.
Still, the warm glow of being known by Shen Yuan is not enough to chase away the anxiety of seeing Shen Yuan’s cheeks flushed with sickness.
They lapse into silence, Shen Yuan sinking back into his bed and Luo Binghe kneeling at his side. He focuses on the feeling of his blood in Shen Yuan, memorizing the layout of his veins.
It’s different from both ‘Shen Qingqiu’s that Luo Binghe has met.
It’s identical to every ‘Shen Yuan.’
Luo Binghe withdraws his consciousness from his blood within Shen Yuan’s body. When he looks up towards Shen Yuan’s face, he finds Shen Yuan watching him with a conflicted expression.
“...Is this about the, uh, y’know -” Shen Yuan breaks off, making a vague gesture with his hand. “The other ‘me’s that you’ve met?”
Luo Binghe’s mood instantly turns sour.
“I didn’t meet all of them,” he says. It feels important, making that distinction. “I didn’t meet most of them, really.”
“That is definitely avoiding the question,” Shen Yuan snorts. “So it is about that, then.”
Luo Binghe looks away.
He hates this world, but the truth is that he didn’t used to. This world used to be akin to the heavens in Luo Binghe’s mind; it’s the place that Shen Yuan is from, after all.
Luo Binghe hates this world because he has learned to. He’s learned that regardless of the fact that this world birthed Shen Yuan, it does not care to keep him. He’s learned that even with the underlying unhealthiness of this world, something far more deadly than dirty air or poor qi flow will always come for Shen Yuan.
He’s learned over and over just how eager this world is to kill Shen Yuan, if only to send his soul off to another world entirely.
Of course, Luo Binghe hadn’t known that at first. He’d only known that soon after he arrived into a world containing a Shen Yuan, that Shen Yuan would always die.
His first attempt, Shen Yuan died before Luo Binghe had even figured out exactly where he lived. The next several times after that, he died before Luo Binghe could figure out a way to naturally integrate himself into his life.
Perhaps, he’d thought, if I sit at the same cafe as him every day until he recognizes me, then I could engineer a moment where he ‘makes’ me spill my own drink, and -
- Shen Yuan died in a car crash.
Alright, Luo Binghe had thought some handful of worlds later, I need to get closer to him more quickly. Perhaps if I get hired on as a cook or assistant for his parents, or -
- Shen Yuan died from food poisoning.
I’ll pretend to be cosplaying as myself, Luo Binghe had thought, beginning to feel a bit frantic from all the failures. And I’ll stand around outside his apartment until he comes up to ask me if there’s a convention happening nearby, and -
- Shen Yuan died in an earthquake, and from electrocution, and in a freak accident that no one could make heads or tails of, and -
And eventually, Luo Binghe grew sick of it, and tried to directly follow Shen Yuan to wherever he went after death. He’d already united the three realms in his own world, after all - it couldn’t be too much more difficult to ascend to the heavens in one of the ones Shen Yuan belongs in.
It turned out that ascending to the heavens would have been easier.
‘Transmigration’ - that’s what Shen Yuan had called it. A soul transplanted from one world to another, quietly taking over another person’s life. Presumably, transmigration is the explanation for how Shen Yuan’s soul had originally ended up in that odd ‘Shen Qingqiu’ that Luo Binghe had met, once upon a time.
It also means that Shen Yuan never actually makes it to the heavens. When a ‘Shen Yuan’ dies, his soul is sent off to another world entirely.
Xin Mo isn’t capable of cutting perfectly through the boundaries of worlds. The energy used to cut across space-time always produces some amount of entropy. Luo Binghe can only control it to an extent; if he requires that the space be correct, then the time will likely not be. The effects only get worse when hopping between worlds instead of simply moving within one. Even if Luo Binghe crossed over to the world that Shen Yuan’s soul had transmigrated to in the same instant that Shen Yuan’s body died, he’d arrive in the world years after Shen Yuan himself did.
In those years, Shen Yuan’s soul would have already met the ‘Luo Binghe’ of that world. ‘Luo Binghes’ that had no cultivation, ‘Luo Binghes’ that were already the emperor of the combined realms, ‘Luo Binghes’ that lived in strange worlds where cultivation didn’t exist or where it took on strange and opaque forms - it seemed like every ‘Luo Binghe’ in every world imaginable was one that was destined to have a ‘Shen Yuan’ hand delivered to him.
And yet Luo Binghe himself - the original Luo Binghe, and he knows that he must be the real and original Luo Binghe because it is his story that Shen Yuan always reads about prior to his death - is left to chase desperately after Shen Yuan’s soul.
He only tried a couple times to coax Shen Yuan’s soul away from the ‘Luo Binghe’ of whatever world he’d transmigrated into. The short time that Luo Binghe would lose from Xin Mo’s inaccuracy would always be enough for Shen Yuan’s soul to grow deeply attached to the ‘Luo Binghe’ imitation there, and that in itself spelled a loss for the real Luo Binghe.
After all, if he’d be content with taking the second-hand love meant for another version of himself, he’d never have needed to go on this hunt to begin with - he could have found a way back to the world with the Shen Yuan that inhabited Shen Qingqiu. Luo Binghe had never bothered to because the victory would have been empty if the person he ended up with didn’t love him.
Shen Yuan sighs, and Luo Binghe drags his eyes up from the blankets to look at the weary expression on his face.
“Binghe… you can’t get this scared every time I so much as stub my toe. I’m not going to die so easily that a cold is a threat.”
Luo Binghe has spent a long time now being taught exactly the opposite of that: this world wishes more than anything to send Shen Yuan away to a different one.
This Shen Yuan - his Shen Yuan, the first Shen Yuan he ever got this close to - is precious. He’s better than Luo Binghe had even imagined, and he’d imagined perfection. He’d thought, Shen Yuan must be perfect, in order to be mine in so many worlds. He must be perfect, to love me in whatever form I take.
But Shen Yuan turned out to be bitchy and lazy and deeply, deeply unwilling to recognize his attraction to men, and those were only the irritations that Luo Binghe had discovered about Shen Yuan in the first week of knowing him. Whatever half-baked image Luo Binghe had in mind of being graced with the love of a saint - of being loved by a person so perfect that it must reflect unto Luo Binghe’s own self importance - it was nothing like the actual feeling of winning Shen Yuan’s affection. A saint wouldn’t gossip with Luo Binghe, or complain to him, or order him around, or be so fascinated with Luo Binghe’s sharp teeth and claws.
This Shen Yuan is precious, and he’s Luo Binghe’s, and Luo Binghe really is scared that he’ll have to watch this Shen Yuan be taken from him like all the others.
“Shen Yuan must find it funny,” Luo Binghe says bitterly. “You read countless stories about my strength and courage, and now I’m -”
Luo Binghe breaks off. Even if loving Shen Yuan has made him feel pathetically soft, it still feels like too wretched of a thing to put into words.
Shen Yuan only snorts, though, either oblivious to Luo Binghe’s internal struggle or ignoring it completely.
“I’m used to you looking like a wet, kicked dog by now,” he says, and Luo Binghe makes a noise of offense.
“Don’t act so surprised, ah!” Shen Yuan laughs, reaching out to pinch at Luo Binghe’s cheek. “You sulk for hours if I go see a friend without you, and you fuss over me constantly, and if I don’t eat the food you place in my bowl before anything else then you make my least favorite vegetables for our next meal out of spite!”
“Yes: out of spite,” Luo Binghe stresses. “How could Shen Yuan claim that an act of revenge is pathetic!”
Shen Yuan raises an eyebrow at Luo Binghe silently. Luo Binghe, suddenly forced to imagine a world where his revenge against his greatest enemies involved making them spitefully healthy vegetable dishes, deflates.
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Shen Yuan says, giving Luo Binghe’s cheek one last kneading pinch. “As it turns out, I like dogs just fine.”
Luo Binghe huffs, leaning down to rest his chin on the edge of Shen Yuan’s bed. He knows the angle makes it so that he must peer through his lashes to look up at Shen Yuan, and he knows that Shen Yuan likes it when Luo Binghe looks like this.
Predictably, Shen Yuan stares down at him for a long moment, his cheeks slowly going pink, before reaching out and rubbing viciously at Luo Binghe’s head as if to rub away the image of Luo Binghe looking so sweetly up at him. Luo Binghe lets him; he also knows that Shen Yuan will like the way he looks when his hair is a mess just as much as he likes it when it’s put together nicely.
“Ah, Binghe, you’re really so -!”
“Good?”
“Certainly not that,” Shen Yuan laughs. “A good boy wouldn’t still be worrying about my silly cold after I’ve told him not to so many times.”
Luo Binghe’s mood sombers again. He focuses on the feeling of Shen Yuan’s bed sheets against his chin and neck, the smell of sweat and human skin that lingers on them.
If this Shen Yuan died, would Luo Binghe ever manage to smell him so intimately again? Would he even want to, if it meant it was a different ‘Shen Yuan’ that he was so close to?
The thought doesn’t make Luo Binghe feel any better.
He’s always had a hard time telling Shen Yuan about the other worlds. Originally, he didn’t think he ever would. What business does Shen Yuan have to know about it? What right does he have to know about Luo Binghe’s constant failures and fears and rejections, when Shen Yuan’s image of Luo Binghe is one of a perfect stallion emperor, and when Shen Yuan’s only job should be to love Luo Binghe in the way that Luo Binghe needs to be loved?
How foolish of Luo Binghe, to assume he would feel loved if Shen Yuan didn’t know all of him. In reality, Luo Binghe feels most loved when Shen Yuan looks directly at the parts of Luo Binghe that are ugliest. He’d ended up telling Shen Yuan about the other worlds a mere month into knowing each other, and he hasn’t managed to shut up about them since.
How truly pathetic.
“...If you were to meet another me,” Luo Binghe says, speaking more to the bedsheets than to Shen Yuan, “would you love him?”
Shen Yuan hums, thinking about it. Luo Binghe wishes Shen Yuan didn’t have to think about it. He wishes he’d never asked.
“Probably,” Shen Yuan says eventually, tipping his head back to stare up at the ceiling of his bedroom. “I don’t think I could imagine a ‘you’ that isn’t so…” Shen Yuan waves a hand lazily, and Luo Binghe wonders almost desperately what that means. “So - yeah, I think I’d - uh, y’know. I’d like you very much.”
“It wouldn’t be me,” Luo Binghe stresses.
“Wouldn’t it be?”
“No,” Luo Binghe says, and then he has to promptly shut himself up, alarmed at how distressed he sounds.
Shen Yuan looks back down at Luo Binghe, his brow furrowed. He looks like he pities Luo Binghe.
“Binghe,” Shen Yuan says, his voice soft and coaxing. “I think - I’ve been meaning to say this for awhile, now, actually. The other ‘Shen Yuans’ that you met, before you met me - even if they ended up with a different ‘Luo Binghe’ than you, isn’t it still you that they loved first?”
Luo Binghe looks up at Shen Yuan helplessly. Shen Yuan’s cheeks are pink, and his fingers are twisted in the hem of his shirt, embarrassed.
His shirt has Luo Binghe’s demonic sigil on it. Many of Shen Yuan’s things do; Luo Binghe had truly taken great pleasure in discovering that every Shen Yuan was so taken with Luo Binghe that they branded themselves in this way. Merchandise with Luo Binghe’s face in every corner of Shen Yuan’s room, the story of Luo Binghe’s life read with such vigor that Shen Yuan has every detail memorized.
It’s proof that Shen Yuan is destined to know about Luo Binghe - the real Luo Binghe - in every life, even if the story that Shen Yuan read is a bastardized and impersonal account of what Luo Binghe felt when living through those same events. It’s proof that every Shen Yuan is destined to love him, even if only as a reader might love a story.
And yet -
“It isn’t enough,” Luo Binghe says. His voice is rough, and his eyes feel tight. “It isn’t enough to be loved first - I need you to love me last. I want to be the only one you ever think of fondly or with want. I need you to love me the way I love you.”
“Oh, Binghe…” Shen Yuan sighs. “You say that, but haven’t you loved, like, a bunch of ‘Shen Yuans’ until now? Isn’t it the same?”
Luo Binghe shakes his head. He feels nearly sick with the implication that those two things are the same. He feels furious with it.
“I've wanted many Shen Yuans,” Luo Binghe corrects.
He wets his lips, trying to center himself. He doesn’t want to say this next part out of anger. At the same time, he kind of wishes he’d spontaneously bleed out right this second to prevent him from saying it at all.
“You’re the first I've ever gotten the chance to love,” he says weakly. “I don’t think - I don’t think I knew how to love until I spent time by your side.”
Shen Yuan’s face blooms red, splotchy and objectively unattractive. Luo Binghe thinks he’s the prettiest man in any world he’s been in.
“The other ‘Shen Yuans’...” Shen Yuan tries, voice weak.
“I barely got to meet any of them. The closest I ever got to any of them,” Luo Binghe says, “was the first one - the one that transmigrated into Shen Qingqiu. He combed my hair, and I spent the night in his bed, but I didn’t know how to appreciate it, then. It was the closest I ever got before you, and yet I spent the whole night furious.”
Some of Shen Yuan’s blush fades, his brow furrowing. “You… you really chased after countless versions of me just from that?”
“You’re the first one,” Luo Binghe says, his voice cracking on the words. “The first one that I’ve been able to make a meal for, and that I’ve been able to tease, and -”
“Alright, alright,” Shen Yuan interrupts, sounding a bit flustered. “I get it. It’s just me, for you, even if there were others that, uh, showed you the path towards me, or whatever.”
Luo Binghe nods, rubbing his face in Shen Yuan’s blankets. “It’s just you. And I need it to be just me for you, too.”
Shen Yuan reaches out to dig his fingers in Luo Binghe’s hair, tugging gently. It grounds Luo Binghe, and he wants Shen Yuan to pull harder, to grab Luo Binghe with both hands and tug at him until he tears into pieces small enough for Shen Yuan to swallow. Luo Binghe wants to be a part of Shen Yuan so completely that if Shen Yuan ever leaves, Luo Binghe will go with him.
“How long have you been living with me, Binghe?” Shen Yuan asks, his voice quiet and coaxing.
“Nearly a year,” Luo Binghe answers.
He knows the exact date; he could probably count back to the very minute that he arrived in this world and - desperate from so many past worlds where he could not meaningfully connect with Shen Yuan before Shen Yuan died - simply knocked on Shen Yuan’s door and bullied his way inside.
“A year is a lot longer than the mere night you spent with that first ‘Shen Yuan.’”
“Mm,” Luo Binghe says. It isn’t long enough, he thinks.
“Then,” Shen Yuan says, and his grip on Luo Binghe’s hair turns tight, urging Luo Binghe to look up and meet his eyes. Shen Yuan’s expression is intense. “Forget about him. Forget about all the others. You say it’s just me, for you - if that’s true, then you don’t need to think about anyone else.”
Luo Binghe’s breath catches in his throat. “Okay,” he says, helpless. He’d agree to anything Shen Yuan said, if he said it like that.
“Good,” Shen Yuan says viciously. “Then you don’t have to worry anymore.”
“But -”
“Every ‘Luo Binghe’ gets a ‘Shen Yuan,’” Shen Yuan says. “And if I’m the only one you know, then I must be the one that belongs to you.”
Luo Binghe’s vision blurs. “I’ll forget every other ‘Shen Yuan’ I’ve met,” he swears.
“Good boy,” Shen Yuan praises, finally easing his grip on Luo Binghe’s hair. “Now, go get me another tissue, hm?”
Luo Binghe scrambles to obey. As he does, and as he hands the tissue over, and as he watches Shen Yuan make a snotty mess of it, he thinks -
I love you, I love you, I love you. You’re mine, and I’m yours, and I love you.