Chapter Text
-Art by SaraSP-
Shang Qinghua woke to the sensation of a pounding headache, a mouth dry as the Northern Desert, and a lurking background nausea to tie the whole experience together.
Ah fuck. He must have gotten drunk last night, which... was unusual enough by itself, actually. Shang Qinghua didn't get drunk often.
First, he didn't often have the time!! Juggling two full-time jobs doing logistics for Cang Qiong Peak and then the Northern Kingdom on the side, when exactly would he have an evening to take off work and get thoroughly smashed? For that matter, with the possibility of his king dropping in on him at literally any time always hovering in the air, was there ever a time he could afford to not be on his toes?
Second, once you reached a certain level of cultivation, normal liquor just didn't cut it any more. Part of a golden core's function was to suppress and cleanse poisons from the body, after all, and what was alcohol if not a fun little poison? Since this was not a problem exclusive to Shang Qinghua by any means, a great deal of study had been put into finding a solution. The wines brewed at Zui Xian Peak were made by cultivators, for cultivators, and there was more to them than plain old mundane ethanol. Whatever did go into them was a secret the Peak guarded jealously, but it was supposed to be good for health and good for cultivation, as well as guaranteed to get even a Nascent Soul cultivator rip-roaring drunk. But of course, since the supply was so limited, the wines of Zui Xian Peak were really something you saved for a special occasion.
The third and most private reason Shang Qinghua didn't drink was... well.
In the dark of the night, with memories of two lives stacked on top of him, squeezing down, things tended to get... blurred. The world wavered at the edges, his vision glitched a bit in worrying ways, and he was no longer sure what the truth of things was. Was he Xiang Fei, Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky, professional author and professional sell-out? Or was he Shang Qinghua, Peak Lord of An Ding? Which was reality -- modern Shanghai, or Cang Qiong Mountain? Both? Or neither? Was there any real 'him' in any world, at all?
On the few occasions where Shang Qinghua had put himself into a true blind stupor, the morning afters had tended to be... a little bit alarming. Things out of place that shouldn't be. Things added, that shouldn't be. Things missing. He couldn't trust his memory well enough to be sure, not for sure, that they had been there before.
So no, Shang Qinghua did not get drunk often.
But that -- like so many things -- changed after Cucumber-bro arrived on the scene. Drinking wasn't so bad with Cucumber-bro around. With someone else there who both remembered the world they'd come from, and had a lock on the world they inhabited now, there wasn't room for the creeping doubt. Shen Qingqiu had a mind like a steel trap, and an encyclopedic knowledge of worldbuilding facts that Shang Qinghua had long since forgotten. With Cucumber-bro around, the world didn't wobble around the edges. It wouldn't have dared.
So, it wasn't as alarming to wake up after a blackout drunk as it might have been ten years ago. Shang Qinghua looked blearily around, trying to orient himself. They were in his Leisure House, all right, very well and good. He was in bed, under the covers but still fully dressed in yesterday's clothes, now wrinkled and with suspicious wine-colored stains on the lapels. And there was -- yup, there was Cucumber-bro on the other side of the bed, corvid-black hair spread out messily over the pillow, face turned the other way, still asleep.
Shang Qinghua cringed, although there wasn't really any reason to think anything incriminating had happened. He was still fully dressed, after all, and the bed was so big that no part of them was even touching! This was an entirely chaste, passing out after a night of heavy drinking, platonic instance of bed-sharing. Swear to the Emperor!
Still, he began the process of disengaging himself as quickly and quietly as possible. If Luo Binghe barged in here looking for Shen Qingqiu -- which he well might, Luo Binghe considered 'privacy' and 'boundaries' as beneath his notice most of the time -- he absolutely refused to be caught in a compromising position. He did not want to be placed on Luo Binghe's short list of Romantic Rivals, thanks. Just the secondhand radiation he got whenever Luo Binghe and Liu Qingge were in a room together was bad enough.
Shang Qinghua managed to disentangle from the bedding and found the floor with his feet. He took a moment to sit on the edge of the bed, rubbing his face in an effort to chase away the hangover, before he took a deep breath and got up to start his day.
And nearly tripped over the person slumbering on his floor, also still fully dressed for the day in green and white robes, missing only his boots and hairpiece, corvid-black hair spilling messily over the couch cushion Cucumber-bro was using as a pillow, and --
Wait.
Wait a minute.
Wait just a god damned minute here.
If this was Cucumber-bro on his floor -- and it definitely, unmistakably was --
Then who the hell was in his bed.
With agonizing slowness, Shang Qinghua turned back to face the bed. There was Cucumber-bro on the floor, as established, and there was another Cucumber-bro in the bed, face turned towards the wall, looking unusually small and practically swimming among the bedclothes...
Oh. No. No, no, nooooo.
That was not Cucumber-bro in his bed.
That was Shen Qingqiu.
And now Shang Qinghua was beginning to remember the rest of last night.
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~to be continued...