Chapter Text
The world of Proud Immortal Demon Way is filled to the brim with stupid, hack wifeplots to milk every possible drop of cheap entertainment out of the story that could possibly be gained. The cheapest and most reliable of these hacky wifeplots had been, of course, the good old classic sex pollen gambit. A prudish or stubborn wife is dosed with the stuff, and who is there to help save their lives but Binghe and his Heavenly Pillar? Like clockwork, this tired trope had popped up at least once every five chapters or so. The protagonist might as well have opened up a revolving door clinic for how many maidens he saved with that thing!
It had never really occurred to Shen Qingqiu that he would ever be the victim of one of these trashy wifeplots, but why not? He’s clearly taken on the role of a wife, and all of the plots that would have been reserved for Luo Binghe’s vast harem need somewhere to go to, like a great mass inevitably flowing towards the nearest available hole.
Poor phrasing. Ahem. What Shen Qingqiu really hadn’t thought to consider was ‘what if a trashy wife plot hits me while Binghe isn’t around.’ After all, since the mess at Maigu Ridge they’ve practically been inseparable, his sticky husband gluing himself needily to Shen Qingqiu’s hip. After all of the hardship and misery Shen Qingqiu has put him through, he doesn’t have the heart to shoo him away, instead giving Luo Binghe all of the affection and attention that he so dearly craves. In some ways, being his husband is a full time job!
This, however, is one of the rare times they had to separate, Luo Binghe’s demonic empire demanding his exclusive attention for days on end. Shen Qinqqiu had wished him luck, had gotten bored in less than a day sitting around and gathering dust at the Underground Palace like a stay at home wife waiting for her husband to get home from work, and decided to go and pay Cang Qiong Mountain Sect a visit. He’s still a peak lord, after all! He has responsibilities, doesn’t he? Duties! He’d quickly decided to go out on a night hunt, eager to prove that he hasn’t grown rusty during his extended honeymoon.
So, perhaps he’s a little rustier than he thought. Of course this happens the one time he doesn’t have Luo Binghe’s Heavenly Pillar within reach…
“Fuck,” Shen Qingqiu says once his soupy thoughts congeal back into something capable of coherence. He blinks dazedly up at the blue sky broken up by a canopy of bright green leaves, then sits up to take in the damage. A white and blue robe slips off of him, revealing said sticky, messy damage dripping down from between his legs…
Embarrassed, the first thing he does is clean himself up so he’s no longer leaking, and then covers himself up as much as he can - his belt wasn’t just undone, but ripped in half with an inhuman strength. Such impatience! But he understands, he can remember just how frantic he’d been, almost feral with need--
“Liu-shidi?” he calls out, remembering just who else had suffered this thinly veiled tropey excuse for yet another papapa scene along with him. Yue Qingyuan had of course insisted that Shen Qingqiu bring a fieldtrip buddy with him, fussy as always. A beautiful, pop idol face flushed feverishly pink, eyes hazy with something almost like drunken worship as he thrust artlessly inside of--
Honestly, poor Liu Qingge! He must be humiliated, having been forced to commit such acts with a man. And Luo Binghe will likely cry a full liter of tears over this…
Getting up, he brings the blue robe with him and wanders off in search of his martial brother - he’s an experienced enough homo by this point to ignore the ache from earlier, vigorous activities. What Liu Qingge had lacked in size (at least, compared to the incomparable protagonist) he had more than made up for with enthusiasm and athletic prowess!
He finds Liu Qingge quickly. Kneeling by a river, fully clothed - oh, good, he must have cleaned up. And now he’s holding Cheng Luan--?
Shen Qingqiu sprints forwards as soon as he realizes that Liu Qingge is shifting his grip on the hilt to position his sword, point first, against his very own stomach. Before he can get the leverage or the resolve to shove the blade inwards and through, Shen Qingqiu smacks the blade aside with a hastily drawn Xiu Ya.
“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” he roars, not quite as calmly and empathetically as he might wish to in such circumstances.
Liu Qingge, kneeling in the dirt, stares up at Shen Qingqiu dumbly. Dressed again, he doesn’t look quite as composed as he usually does, his clothes rumpled and his hair tie still missing, with a rather incriminating hickey high up on his throat - the sight of it embarrasses Shen Qingqiu, reminding of the many, many hickeys he left behind on the man.
“Shixiong,” Liu Qingge says, and nothing more. Shen Qingqiu could slap him!
“Shidi, what on earth were you doing?” Shen Qingqiu asks, as if he couldn’t see it for himself perfectly well. What he means is why. Is it-- had it really been that bad, to--?
Liu Qingge folds himself up into a kneeling bow, pressing his forehead into the ground so that he’s prostrate before Shen Qingqiu. “Sorry. You can kill me yourself if you want.”
WHY WOULD I WANT THAT?
“... I don’t want to,” Shen Qingqiu makes himself say after a long moment spent getting his screaming out inside of his head. “Shidi, can you explain yourself? You’ve given this master a fright, threatening to harm yourself like that.”
Liu Qingge comes up from his bow just enough to speak properly to Shen Qingqiu - good! He prefers his conversational partners to direct their words to his face rather than the ground.
“For tearing your clothes off, holding you down, and defiling your honor,” Liu Qingge says, spelling out a list of deeds that makes Shen Qingqiu want to hide his burning face behind his fan, “this shidi is repentant and welcomes death.”
Shen Qingqiu takes a moment to take that in. Sheathing Xiu Ya, he takes his fan from his belt instead. Then, firmly and decisively, he smacks Liu Qingge over the head with it. Liu Qingge, who had watched the entire process silently, blinks stupidly.
“Who asked you to do such a thing?” Shen Qingqiu demands. “Did I ask you to go kill yourself for my honor? This master certainly doesn’t remember doing any such thing!”
Honor, what honor!? Shidi, if you knew the sorts of things this master has let his husband do to his body by now, then you’d know that there’s nothing left to defile! Nothing has been left untouched!
“You were unconscious,” Liu Qingge says.
“Yes!” Shen Qingqiu says. “I was! Imagine what a nice wake up call it would have been for me to wake up to your corpse! Exactly how would I explain this to Zhangmen-shixiong!?”
“He would understand,” Liu Qingge says with an offensive amount of certainty.
What the hell is there to understand!?
“You should have woken me up!” Shen Qingqiu snaps. “If you’d asked me, then you’d know I don’t want anything like this.”
“But…” Liu Qingge says, looking up at him uncertainly. Seeing, Shen Qingqiu realizes, all the ways that he is still rumpled and bearing the marks of what they’d done together. He imagines Liu Qingge looking at him this way when he was totally unconscious, naked and sticky. That must have been when he draped his outer robe over him, covering him up before sneaking off to… “You’re married.”
Right.
“Binghe will… understand,” Shen Qingqiu says slowly, but with certainty. Well. Ninety-nine percent certainty! Sure, his sticky bun will likely cry and whine about it, either throwing a little tantrum or slinking off into a corner to grow mushrooms, then come creeping back to needily ask whether he still likes Luo Binghe best, if Liu Qingge was better, and wanting to know every detail of what they did so he can replicate and best his shishu. Shen Qinqiu is prepared for the onslaught! What matters is that he’s sure that Luo Binghe will accept that Shen Qingqiu hadn’t done it on purpose, and neither had Liu Qingge.
… Alright, he might have to explicitly forbid Luo Binghe from beating Liu Qingge into the ground over this, but besides that he’s sure that Luo Binghe will be understanding!
“I’m not talking about him,” Liu Qingge says brusquely. “I mean you. You wouldn’t want to do that with anyone but him. You were unwilling.”
Well! Shen Qingqiu unfolds his fan from where he’d used it as a weapon, half hiding behind it.
“That’s not,” he says, then recalibrates. “Not in the, the moment. Because of the pollen, you see, I wanted-- that is, right then I wasn’t…”
Liu Qingge stares at him blankly as Shen Qingqiu trails off into awkward mumbling. Ah, Shidi, please don’t make him say it! Don’t you remember the way he acted? Scratching at Liu Qingge’s back, meeting each thrust wantonly and wrapping his legs needily around his back, Shen Qingqiu could not have possibly more loudly screamed ‘I consent’ without actually saying those words!
“... It wasn’t upsetting,” he mumbles, almost entirely hidden behind his fan now.
“But you weren’t in your right mind,” Liu Qingge points out. “I should have--”
“Left me to die from that poison?” Shen Qingqiu asks him archly. “I promise you, I much prefer any alternative to that, Shidi. And I’m certain my husband would agree, as bitterly as he might do it.”
Liu Qingge looks dissatisfied and frustrated, however. “I should have seen it coming. I should have shielded you from it.”
Shen Qingqiu waves his fan dismissively through the air. “Such ‘what ifs’ could be said of a thousand different events. It’s useless to linger on such things, Shidi. An unfortunate accident took place, of which both of us would have preferred to avoid but were unable to. There is nothing for it but to move on as adults.”
Liu Qingge opens and closes his hands into fists against his thighs, still kneeling before Shen Qingqiu. His mouth twists, his expression deeply unhappy. Honestly, what is it going to take for Shen Qingqiu to convince Liu Qingge that he doesn’t want to see the man disembowel himself over an innocent--
“But I did want it,” Liu Qingge spits out, a raw confession with his eyes squeezed shut. “I’ve wanted - you.”
Huh?
“Huh?” Shen Qingqiu blurts out.
Liu Qingge bows his head. “Something like that… I would have enjoyed it even without the poison.”
What? Did he hear that right? Did Liu Qingge just say--
Liu Qingge, the Bai Zhan War God, is a homosexual?
“Maybe if I hadn’t wanted it,” Liu Qingge goes on, still caught up in his confession, “then I could have resisted it and flown you back to the mountain…”
There seems to be some sort of underlying assumption that Liu Qingge can resist his urges while Shen Qingqiu is apparently helpless, but he’s too busy processing everything else that he can’t even linger on it. Unsticking his jaw, Shen Qingqiu says, “Excuse me.”
Liu Qingge stops talking, watching him like a defendant awaiting his judgment - or perhaps a criminal their execution. A nobly resigned criminal, however, committed to accepting whatever punishment is meted out for his sins.
Shen Qingqiu takes three steps away from him, turning his back on him - he can’t go any further for true privacy, as he really can’t trust Liu Qingge alone with his sword until this mess is cleared up - and takes out a small obsidian mirror from inside of a sleeve pocket. Pricking his thumb, he rubs his blood into the surface, activating it with a pulse of his qi.
Three seconds later, Luo Binghe’s face appears in the mirror. Wearing his emperor’s crown, clearly in full court regalia he urgently says, “Husband? Husband, what is the matter?”
“Binghe, would you be willing to have a threesome with me and your Liu-shishu?”
Behind him, Liu Qingge chokes. Luo Binghe’s face goes completely blank, and then he turns his face serenely to the side and says, “Everyone else leave the court room.”
There is the distant, muted sound of dozens, possibly hundreds of people awkwardly shuffling out of the room without a word. Shen Qingqiu briefly imagines dying.
“Why does Husband ask?” Luo Binghe asks lightly, as light as air.
“There was - an incident, and me and your Liu-shishu were forced to dual cultivate,” Shen Qingqiu says. In the mirror, one of Luo Binghe’s eyelids spasm. “I’m sorry, Binghe, this master would have sought permission first if only the circumstances had been different…”
“It is fine,” Luo Binghe says stiffly. “And Husband enjoyed himself?”
Shen Qingqiu embarrassedly ignores the question, which should be answer enough. “It seems like Liu-shidi is struggling with some guilt over the incident, so I was wondering if Binghe would be willing to, to let this master show how unnecessary that is. But I would only wish to do so if Binghe were with us.”
Luo Binghe, tense and crisply composed, seems to soften and melt at this last bit. Shen Qingqiu strikes while the iron is hot. “Binghe of course doesn’t have to do anything if he doesn’t want to, if he could just be there…”
“This husband will give Shizun anything he wishes for,” Luo Binghe says sappily, like the sweetheart he is. No doubt, he’ll be more needy and troublesome during the actual event, but right now he’s just adorable--
“You don’t,” Liu Qingge says, “have to do this.”
Shen Qingqiu looks imperiously down on Liu Qingge over his shoulder. “Shidi, do you think that you should perhaps stop assuming that I’m being cruelly forced into things that I’m choosing to do?”
“Yes, Liu-shishu should stop being so presumptuous,” Luo Binghe interjects immediately, eager to establish his dominance.
Liu Qingge looks hopelessly up at him, as if utterly lost. Shen Qingqiu sighs, and gets down on the ground with him for the first time. Picking up the forgotten and discarded blue robe, he hangs it off Liu Qingge’s shoulders.
“Shidi, you’re very…” Sweet, he thinks, but decides to try and find a word that will save more face for Liu Qingge. “... chivalrous and good intentioned. Honorable. This master has always appreciated and admired this in his shidi. But, ah, please don’t be so ready to assume that you’ve tarnished my virtue and need to submit yourself to punishment for it. You’re very… that is, this master feels…”
“Shizun doesn’t dislike you,” Luo Binghe says for him, grudging and curt.
Liu Qingge blinks. “What?”
Shen Qingqiu clears his throat, looking away. “Binghe is correct. What, what we did, this master… that is, I would be willing to do it even if I were in my right mind. That is what I want to show you.”
“You don’t,” Liu Qingge starts, then stops before he can finish that sentence. Good! Shen Qingqiu is sick of hearing it! “... you’re. Certain.”
“Yes,” Shen Qingqiu forces himself to say, his face hot. Don’t make him repeat it!
Liu Qingge opens and closes his mouth, and then only says, “Oh.”
“... Shizun, you’re not doing anything together right now, right?” Luo Binghe asks, anxiety creeping into his voice - Shen Qingqiu hasn’t angled the mirror so he can see anything right now.
“No, Binghe, don’t be worried,” Shen Qingqiu says, instantly fussing over him. “We’ll wait for you!”
“Good,” Luo Binghe says firmly, and then, “I should be able to wrap this up in a shichen.”
“Wha--”
The mirror shuts off. Hang on, hadn’t that been a serious diplomatic incident requiring several days of intense concentration to solve? Binghe, don’t rush matters of state for the sake of a no doubt messy threesome with this old man and your martial uncle!
“Well,” Shen Qingqiu says, putting the mirror away. “That’s been handled, then!”
Something occurs to him.
“You, uh… Shidi does wish to do this, right?” Shen Qingqiu asks, filled with sudden uncertainty as he realizes that he hadn’t actually stopped to ask him.
Liu Qingge stares at him for a long moment, as if lost for words, and then only gives a single, slow nod.
“Yes,” he says. “I… don’t dislike you either.”
Truly, even if Liu Qingge isn’t a straight man he certainly still is ‘straight.’