Chapter Text
Shěn Yuán’s eyes burned, his vision blurry from staring at his phone screen for what felt like forever. Even that was better than the alternative – the true cruelty of being so sick wasn’t the everpresent pain or the physical limitations. It was the boredom. Waiting to die was a very useless, languishing endeavor.
The hospital room around him would be dark if not for the bright, blue-tinged light seeping in from the hallway and the many beeping machines clustered around him at all times. The curtains pulled back from his window revealed a cloudless, star filled night sky. He imagined that the crisp air would be especially refreshing right now. He would press the call button to ask to go out to the hospital garden for a bit, but he hated bothering the nurses more than necessary. His parents visited often, but even then he spent most of his time alone and smarting with it.
He tried not to feel trapped. He tried not to feel lonely. He tried not to feel like it would be better to just succumb already.
Frustration sparked to a truly roaring flame within him. He’d watched the nurses enough times that he could put together his portable IV stand and monitors himself without triggering any of the machines into falsely coding. He just wanted to take a walk – surely he could do that much?
It took a lot longer than it should’ve, admittedly. His weak, trembling fingers needed multiple attempts to accomplish what the nurses could do at once with ease. But eventually, cold sweat coating his back and causing him to shiver, he got to his feet and then to the door. The hallway fluorescents were abrasive compared to the dark of his room and it took him a moment to adjust before determinedly getting on his way.
It was only after several long minutes that he realized he wasn’t actually getting anywhere. The hallway kept stretching ahead of him, suspiciously devoid of staff or visitors. The walls were blank and what would be the doors to the other rooms floated as indistinguishable dark shapes. It was only then that it dawned on him that he was likely dreaming.
He tried not to feel too bitter that even in a dream his useless body limited him.
Even when he turned around and went back the way he came, his own room has disappeared into the din of shapeless voids lining the hallway in place of doors. Without a choice, he continued to wander even as exhaustion came over him like sudden cold, deep in his bones.
Suddenly, a confused, “xiānsheng?” came from behind him. It might as well have been a holy choir.
After forever alone, the sound of another voice was so shocking that he jumped and gasped in fright. As hurriedly as he could, he shuffled to turn around without disconnecting his IV. The excitement he felt at coming across another meant he didn’t even process the unusual address.
“Hello!” He called, eyes still watching the various wires to avoid tangling anything. “I’m glad I ran into you! I think I might be a bit turned around, I just left my room for a moment you see-”
He finally looked up and registered the other’s appearance, and his words cut off into stunned silence. The man was shockingly tall, but even that was not the most striking thing about him.
“Are you a cosplayer?” Shěn Yuán blurted without thinking, blinking harshly as though to try and dispel a hallucination. It would make more sense that he was hallucinating than for him to come across someone in such intricate xiānxiá attire in the middle of the hospital hallway, dream or not.
His robes – because they were robes, not clothes – were richly dyed and well made, the quality of the fibers impressive even to Shěn Yuán’s untrained eye. The layered deep reds and ink-dark blacks did the man’s rich tan skin and handsome features incredible justice. He found it unfair for someone to be that good looking – Shěn Yuán was no expert, but even surgery couldn’t accomplish such fine bone structure or deep, expressive eyes. His hair was either the most expensive lace front ever created or he had the strongest genetics known to man, as it tumbled to his waist even from it’s high tail in shining, obsidian-dark, well-defined curls.
Shěn Yuán at once firmly decided that he was hallucinating. No more web novels before bed for him!
“A...cosplayer?” The stranger repeated, fumbling over the syllables of the word as if it was unfamiliar to him. He cocked his head slightly as if confused.
“Yeah,” Shěn Yuán responded, as if this was not the weirdest and most absurd thing to ever happen to him. He tried not to pay much attention to the elation that it evoked in his chest – it’s just that he’d been so alone for so very long. “Or maybe, a designer?” Shěn Yuán waved a hand in a general gesture to his whole get-up.
The man seemed to understand no better. He looked down at his robes with a raised eyebrow. “I did not make my robes.” He answered decisively. He looked Shěn Yuán up and down and seemed equally as puzzled by his attire.
“Your...robes,” the man said, the word ‘robes’ coming with utmost skepticism, “...they are...rather unusual.”
Shěn Yuán looked down at himself. Distantly, he felt embarrassed to be caught out in his patient scrubs, hair mussed and plain faced, by someone who was likely a model or an influencer. He felt the judgment as if it was palpable.
“Of course not,” Shěn Yuán couldn’t help but defend, “you do know you are in a hospital, right?”
Before the man could respond, Shěn Yuán dragged a hand over his face to get a grip. Arguing with a figment of his imagination within a dream – maybe he needed to add psychiatry to his medical team?
“Nevermind, nevermind,” he waved his hand in dismissal of the conversation. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“You may call this lord Luò Bīnghé,” the supposed Luò Bīnghé introduced himself, rather self-importantly if you asked Shěn Yuán. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, because figment of imagination, dream, etc. etc.
“Right,” Shěn Yuán drawled out, before recognition hit him like a slap upside the head. He felt his mouth drop open, glasses sliding down his nose almost comically as he looked at Luò Bīnghé with new eyes. “Oh! From Proud Immortal Demon Way! No wonder, I need to stop reading that crap.”
Before Luò Bīnghé could respond, Shěn Yuán tilted his head and drew his mouth into a tight line as he hummed in derision.
“Nothing like the official art at all,” he finally concluded, shaking his head. “What kind of tricks is my head playing on me now?”
Luò Bīnghé took this all in with grace, simply watching Shěn Yuán with an equal amount of bafflement as Shěn Yuán gave to him.
“How odd,” Luò Bīnghé returned, something shining in his gaze that Shěn Yuán didn’t know how to name. “Shīzūn is very different than I would have expected.”
A punched out sound that couldn’t quite be called a laugh wheezed in Shěn Yuán’s chest. “Shīzūn?” He echoed, disbelieving, “what, as in Shěn Qīngqiū? Didn’t you torture him to death? Sorry, but you’ve got the wrong guy. My name is Shěn Yuán.”
This had the opposite effect of what Shěn Yuán had intended. Rather than being dissuaded, Luò Bīnghé lit up as in victory. Suddenly, they were toe to toe, so close that Shěn Yuán could make out the deep red sheen of Luò Bīnghé’s dark, starry eyes.
“Yes, Shěn Yuán, I’ve been looking for you,” Luò Bīnghé breathed out, as if in awe. Shěn Yuán felt like a crashed .exe file. Just what in the fuck was his subconscious cooking up these days?!
“Well, you’ve found me,” Shěn Yuán congratulated tersely, barely holding in the biggest eyeroll of his life, “now move on! I have to find my room before the next floor cycle if I want my meds!”
Luò Bīnghé’s features seemed to sharpen before Shěn Yuán’s eyes. Suddenly, one of his large, broad palms was wrapped firmly around Shěn Yuán’s elbow.
“Shīzūn is sick?” He asked, tone gravely serious. His eyes flicked up and down Shěn Yuán’s frame assessingly, seeming to understand the medical connotations of the tubes and wires running between him and his travel stand for the first time.
“Who’s your shīzūn?!” Shěn Yuán felt the need to reiterate. He did his best to tug his elbow free and his arm barely even jostled in Luò Bīnghé’s hold. Great.
“This...device,” Luò Bīnghé said, gaze still pointed to the IV stand. “It controls you?”
Shěn Yuán openly gawked at Luò Bīnghé before bursting into stomach-aching laughter. The hold Luò Bīnghé had on his elbow soon became a stabilizing force, keeping him upright.
“Ahaha!” He laughed and laughed, tears clouding the corners of his eyes. “Ah, that really got me! Thanks for that, I needed a laugh. No, no my IV doesn’t control me. It’s just to keep me hydrated. It’s good for me.”
The tense set to Luò Bīnghé’s shoulders gradually eased. Even then, the hold on his arm didn’t loosen. If anything, Luò Bīnghé seemed to come even closer, so close that he and Shěn Yuán were breathing the same air.
“Shīzūn,” Luò Bīnghé whispered, breathless with it, gaze never leaving Shěn Yuán’s own, “I promised to free you. Will you let me?”
Uncertain, Shěn Yuán shifted from foot to foot. With what little space there was between them, he ducked his chin to look down at the ground. His rattling lungs just couldn’t function their pitiful amount when looking directly into Luò Bīnghé’s eyes, dark and sparkling like the night sky that had driven Shěn Yuán out of his hospital bed.
Shěn Yuán finally felt like he understood.
“Ah, how cruel,” he chuckled to the bleached white hospital linoleum. The tears that had sprung from laughter were back in his eyes. “I guess I can’t lie to my own mind.”
Trapped. Lonely. Wishing to just succumb already.
Wishing to break free.
Suddenly, warm fingers found his chin. Gently but firmly, Luò Bīnghé pulled Shěn Yuán’s chin until their eyes met again.
“Please?” Luò Bīnghé begged, his own tears crowding his waterline, and Shěn Yuán couldn’t help but let out a watery laugh. Just who was this simpering crybaby, trying to impersonate the overpowered stallion protagonist of Proud Immortal Demon Way? The man who had a harem that reached triple digits, who merged the three realms together, who bent the very world itself to his will, disregarding protest or pleading?
“You’re nothing like I imagined,” Shěn Yuán told him, honestly, for some reason choked up and hitching over the words, “but I think that’s a good thing. I know you’re not real and this is a dream, but I had always hoped you would hold onto your humanity. It was what made me fall in love with you as a protagonist. I was always rooting for the washerwoman’s son, not the emperor of the three realms.”
Luò Bīnghé was holding Shěn Yuán cheeks between his warm palms. His wide eyes did not dare blink, even with the tears that fell in glimmering tracks down his sharp cheekbones. His chest didn’t seem to be rising with breaths.
In wake of his silence, Shěn Yuán continued on. “I’m proud of you,” he said, earnest, raising his own hands, pale and cold as they were, to hold Luò Bīnghé’s face in turn. “I wish I could have taken away even a small portion of your suffering. You never deserved any of it, I hope you know. But you rose above it, again and again, and continued on. I wish I could be like you, but I’m just a regular person. I have to follow the laws of reality. I can’t bend them like you can.”
I am going to die here, without ever seeing or doing much of anything, Shěn Yuán did not say.
“Shīzūn, please,” Luò Bīnghé begged, releasing his gentle hold on Shěn Yuán’s face to grab ahold of his wrists when Shěn Yuán started to draw away, keeping his hands in place at either side of Luò Bīnghé’s sharp, refined jaw. “Let me save you. Please, this lowly one begs of you. Please.”
Shěn Yuán couldn’t help but stare at Luò Bīnghé openly in astonishment. “What are you begging me for?” He couldn’t help but laugh, deep, belly aching laughs like he so rarely did. “Aren’t you king of the world?”
Luò Bīnghé cried out as if struck. Shěn Yuán felt all the breath leave him at the choked sobs that shook his tall, broad shoulders.
“Who cares about being king?!” He wept, really, truly wept, as if in true and utter despair, face pinched and shining with tears. “Who cares about any of that?! Shīzūn, all I ever wanted in this life was to be acknowledged by you, to stand by your side, to be loved in any way that matters! What use is power without anything worth protecting?!”
“Silly boy,” Shěn Yuán stroked Luò Bīnghé’s cheeks with his thumbs. He didn’t know where this fondness was coming from. This dream was very strange, nonsensical, but the emotions he felt were deep and true. Undeniable. “What would your wives say if they heard such a thing? Your generals of war? Have you not accomplished so much?”
Luò Bīnghé scoffed. “What solace can I find in political marriages? In the obligation of rulership? Shīzūn, I just want to bring you home.”
“Home,” Shěn Yuán echoed, letting the word peter out into the long, ever-stretching hallway. “Don’t you get it? I’ve been through every clinical trial I can legally participate in. I’m terminal. I’m not going home.”
“Let me fix it!” Luò Bīnghé cried, “please, there’s no ailment that can’t be cured with the help of a heavenly demon. My blood or my cultivation would surely be able to save you! Shīzūn, please!”
What was this grief? What was this sorrow? The pain clotting within Shěn Yuán’s chest like blood was reflected back to him in Luò Bīnghé’s desperate face.
“Who’s your shīzūn?” Shěn Yuán repeated, but the words seemed to fall to the floor like snow; fragile, insubstantial. “I’m just Shěn Yuán. I’m nobody. I’m one of thousands who read your story.”
“But you tried to save me,” Luò Bīnghé maintained, fiery certainty blazing in his tone, “you knew what would happen and you still did what you thought you had to.”
All at once, Luò Bīnghé fell to his knees. Shěn Yuán gasped aloud, staring down at him with wide, shocked eyes.
“Please, shīzūn,” he lowered his head, still clutching Shěn Yuán’s hands to his face. “Please, I beg of you. I will beg for as long as I must.”
Shěn Yuán bit his lip at the sorry sight. He looked up at the endless hallway with the out of reach doors and blue fluorescents. He looked down at Luò Bīnghé’s bowed head. He thought of all the time he wasted waiting to die without ever truly living.
“Okay,” he found himself saying, acquiescing in the face of Luò Bīnghé’s tears. There was obviously a deeply rooted part of himself that wanted to at least try and live, that didn’t want the last sight he saw the be the same four white walls. At least in a dream. “Please free me, Luò Bīnghé.”