Forenote: Warning: brief descritpion of situational dubcon, no additional mind-altering substances. Consent in limiting circmstances. SJ's intense internalised blame.
Not a scary as it sounds! Ultimately- accidental magic plant baby product of PIDW-typical 'medicinal treatment'~
Shen Jiu stared out into the darkness past the cave mouth and listened to the winds howl beyond the protective arrays he'd set, trying desperately to focus on anything but the sleeping body in his arms and the consequences that would come to bear once he awoke.
He glanced down.
The moonseed moss lining the walls of this wretched cave cast a ghostly silver-blue light, casting a sickly corpse-hue on his skin and darkening the shadows around his eyes, beauty mark like a deep bruise. He looked dead.
Like he almost had been.
Like Shen Jiu was soon to be.
(If only the moonseed moss had been the only thing growing in these caves, if only snowspore lichen hadn't spread so close to the entrance, if only those wretched snow white Arctic Berries didn't look so damn similar to the lichen it grew amongst)
A shiver ripped through him, nothing to do with the current arctic chill seeping into him from the stone below. His eyes prickled with heat and his lips quivered around a panted gasp, a stifled sob. Pulling his arm up, he viciously bit into his forearm and tried to pull himself together, eyes squeezing shut and breaths carefully regulated, long and slow. Controlled. If he pretended they were not still hot and wet with… emotional upheaval, then they were not. Pretend, pretend, pretend. It had served him well thus far. It need only serve him a little while longer. (His stomach lurched)
It was irrational to be getting emotional about this. What he had done was...
Death was better than living if it meant becoming like him.
Oh, how the Young Master Qiu would laugh if he saw him now. Succumbed to the taint within him.
If the paltry consolation of his life provided some sort of peace for the young man in his arms, if it stopped him becoming a broken, bitter thing like She Jiu, then it was not only right but righteous and worth it. (His heart pounded against his ribs, wrenching with fear and agony despite himself.)
Movement. His heart stuttered. Dark brow slanted together in discontent. A huffed breath, as incoherent grumble and a face nuzzled deeper into his chest, right over Shen Jiu's racing pulse. He held very, very still, pointlessly prolonging the torturous waiting, as if in stillness he would not wake the rich young noble and could thusly escape the consequences of his… of his actions.
Eyelashes fluttered against his sternum, tickling the dagger of skin exposed by his flimsy inner robes. They slowly swept up and down… then stopped. Open. Beneath his hands, muscles suddenly tensed like a drawn bow. Before he could react, before he roused enough to wrap his hands or teeth around Shen Jiu's exposed throat, he moved wrapped arms securely around the other's shoulders and backs of legs, pinning down the green and white outer robe used as a blanket, then reversed their positions, gently setting him down in seated position propped against the spongy moss wall and still covered in the… 'blankets'.
Then, without a word, forcefully thinning his lips to suppress their tremor, Shen Jiu held his beloved Xiu Ya across his palms and knelt before Liu Qingge. Shen Jiu bowed his head, presented his sword and waited.
(And if his eyes squeezed shut once more…it couldn't be seen, so it might as well not be happening. Right?)
.
.
.
Liu Qingge gaped and blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.
It was hard.
His mind was fuzzy and sluggish and without Shen Qingqiu's contact (which- Shen Qingqiu, his hateful shixiong had, had held him in his… e-embrance?!), he suddenly felt very cold, even though he was almost smothered in…
Not blankets.
His face burned with the heat of a thousand suns. Shen Qingqiu (because who else could it have been?!) had swaddled him in their combined layers of robes, all of Shen Qingqiu's many, many sheets of white and green gauze and silk, apparently embroidered with warming talismans as well as superfluous decoration, all interspersed with thicker, far more durable white and storm blue hem and cotton.
Meaning- he cautiously lifted the mass of substitute blankets and looked down- yes! His eyes snapped up to She Qingqiu who was also! Just. In. Thin. White. Inner. Robes!
His face flushed harder, burning at the tips of his ears and spreading down his throat, but his focus turned away from embarrassment as he took in Shen Qingqiu. Who was still kneeling and presenting his sword like he was… offering his fealty to a lord or his blade for an honourable execution.
Why was he…?
Liu Qingge shifted uneasily, and with the flare of aching in a particular… place, a wall of recollection slammed into him like stepping under a waterfall.
They had been on a mission, to fight a Snow Bear for its liver and some random plant that only grew in the cave where the beast denned. Him and Shen Qingqiu. Because the plant could only be harvested safelywith a fiddly spirit technique that only Shen Qingqiu and Min Qingbao had the control to perform without a pre-set array. Because the bear was too dangerous for Mu Qingfang's power level. Becaue no one else among the succeeding disciples was strong enough to keep up with Liu Qingge and also knew enough about monsters and plants to be useful. And, most of all, because their Shizun were still trying to force him and Shen Qingqiu to get along before they Ascended.
So they found the beast. Fought it. Liu Qingge got sliced up a bit, more than Shen Qingqiu, who kept to attacking it from behind while Liu Qingge held its attention. All the qi it poured out stirred up blizzard and between that, the loose rocks underfoot on the exposed cliffside and the dagger-like projectile icicles from the bear, Liu Qingge fumbled his last parry while Shen Qingqiu drove his sword between the monster's ribs and into its heart, one of the razor-sharp ice spikes got through his guard, slicing into his thigh.
He'd stumbled into the cave system the bear had denned in, to get out of the blizzard and get a look at his wound. Blinking snowlakes out of his eyes, unbalanced from battlefever come-down and creeping bloodloss, he'd propped his full back against the wall without checking it well enough. Right in the middle of the plant they were supposed to collect. The one that if physically touched, deployed its defences. Fatal defences, the Qian Cao briefing had stressed.
Shen Qingqiu, who had been distracted dragging the bear into the cave, setting down arrays acros the entrance to put the kill in stasis and guard them from intruders, looked up, saw him and went pale as the snow outside. In an instant, hands clamped around his biceps and ripped him away from the wall.
The damage was done though.
Liu Qingge remembered the way the sticky sap from berries crushed against his back seeped cold like ice through his body, blood and worst of all, his meridians. He had started shivering immediately, teeth chattering violently, heat leaching away so fast he could barely recall what warmth was- except for Shen Qingqiu's hands gripping his arms. They had been warm.
Shen Qingqiu had dragged him deeper into the cave system, into a chamber that didn't have any hidden poison plants, but had a glowing silvery moss all over it. Then Shen Qingqiu had stripped his unresisting body of the sap-sticky outer robe, with Liu Qingge just too cold to either help or hinder him, and spat filthy curses when removing the source did nothing to halt the poison's spread. Firebrand fingers dug into his neck and wrist at the pulse points, molten qi flowing into him, circling through his sluggish, freezing meridian system like the esence of the sun. But, like golden sunlinght off the moon, it was quickly sucked in by the poison and reflected back cold, like moonlight. It only froze him faster.
Shen Qingqiu went really quiet for a long moment and when he turned back to Liu Qingge, he met his eyes and succintly laid out the situation with a solemn, grim frankness that Liu Qingge had never seen from him before.
He was poisoned, by the Arctic Berries he'd crushed within the snowspore lichen by leaning on the wall. It induced extreme cold in its victims like an ice-flow Qi Deviation, but unlike the Deviation just receiving qi or meridian cleansing would not cure the poisoning. Liu Qingge would die. Unless he agreed to the conditions of the cure. Which was Dual Cultivation.
Shen Qingqiu had spoken clearly and without any particular inflection.
He said if Liu Qingge did not… agree, then he would offer some of the herbs he had to aid in sleep, or to… do the deed if he desired a swifter end. He promised he would return his body to the Sect for burial. Offered to swear to it, to bind the oath upon his Golden Core.
He said if Liu Qingge did… agree, he would not cause him deliberate harm or pain. But the cure required Liu Qingge to be the… receiving. Partner.
Liu Qingge agreed.
Events blurred a bit after that point- clouded with the overwhelming relief of warmth at the following... physical contact, but also other sensations that were very. New. To Liu Qingge. The only thing he had a solid memory of was a single, crystal clear image of Shen Qingqiu's expression, something pained and hollow in typically sharp green eyes. Something like grief, like desolation.
He blinked back to the present.
Shen Qingqiu was still kneeling and had not raised his head.
Liu Qingge scowled. It was still bitterly cold and his qi was low as his body healed the wound in his side, even with the qi boost he had... received from Shen Qingqiu had mostly taken care of it. It was cold, he was tired and a bit achy, and trying to work out what Shen Qingqiu was doing was making his head ache.
The scholar had saved his life (which was another thing he'd have to revisit and deal with), there was no use being weird about it. Liu Qingge would pay him back somehow and then they'd go back to routinely sparring and antagonising each other into sparring. Though, once Liu Qingge had time to get his head around Shen Qingqiu saving his life, he might have to change a few of his standard insult set. Maybe.
But Shen Qingqiu was making it weird.
A shiver rattled through him, although the poison was cured, apparently its effects were the annoyingly lingering sort that had to be waited out. Shen Qingqiu would have contracted a mild dose of the poison from the... contact. Not enough to need... curing, but enough to prevent qi circulation to keep him warm and all the robes with warming arrays were piled up in the weird nest that Shen Qingqiu had left.
He had to be cold, right? Liu Qingge was almost shivering just looking at him.
But apparently the cold had made the scholar the brain-dead idiot he always accused Liu Qingge of being. "What are you doing?" he barked, tone harsher and colder than he really intended. Shen Qingqiu still didn't look up, didn't raise his voice back and fight like how things always were between them. He spoke though, which was a small improvement.
"This lowly one presents a blade for the noble cultivator to claim reparation for the, the disrespect cast upon him by this Shen Jiu. For this offence, my life is forfeit."
Liu Qingge took it back. Shen Qingqiu was offering what? And he was using formal address but referring to himself in the lowest terms of status, like Liu Qingge had never heard from him. And his personal name, that hadn't been uttered since he was given his title and name as succeeding disciple. And his tone was all... wrong. Another memory tugged at the edge of his mind; a voice murmuring broken apologies in his ear like lover's whispers. Now, with the word 'disrespect' spat so much loathing, leaving no imagining as to what exactly Shen Qingqiu was implying- no, what he was stating...
It unsettled him. The tone, the terms, the words, the- the memory. He sat up higher and shrugged off the layers, ignoring the painfully cold blast hitting him like ice water, this was more important, he was going to go over there and beat some sense into his prissy, scholarly snake of a shixiong right now.
He pushed up with his arms and tried to get his legs beneath himself for leverage, but the sudden dimness of his vison and drunken tilting of his internal balance sent him right back down into recline. He huffed.
"Hey. Shen Qingqiu." Still no reaction. Irritation bubbled in his gut, "Hey, look at me."
Finally, the scholar's head raised slowly, eyes opening slower still. Words clogged in Liu Qingge's throat, he looked- like a ghost. With his hair messy and undone, eyes red-rimmed like he's been crying and dressed only in a single white inner-robe... Liu Qingge swallowed. Worst of all was the look behind his eyes- or more like the lack of it. There was a haunting emptiness that robbed bamboo leaf greens of all depth, all soul. "Shen Qingqiu, what are you saying- don't be ridiculous. This shidi was poisoned and his shixiong cured him." Elegantly arched eyebrows started to draw together in a familiar expression of protest and the relief of it swept through Liu Qingge like a tidal wave, he forged on "It was the only option and Sh-Shen-shixiong did his duty. D-Dual cultivation is a standard medical practice, the was no... no disrespect."
Shen Qingqiu's eyes were narrowed in that look that said he both disagreed and was about to tell Liu Qingge exactly why he was an idiot for this opinion, but he was looking at him now and seemed more or less back to normal, if a bit quiet still, so for Liu Qingge claimed the victory.
He shivered, the cold of the cave gnawing on his bones without the covers and eyed Shen Qingqiu, who was still kneeling out in the open and clearly turning white and blue with each shiver. He huffed again and looked away. "If Shen-shixiong is sone being an idiot, he can help us both not freeze to death after he saved this shidi's life once. Not to waste the effort." He coughed once, face burning, "Standard survival practice in cold environments is. Contact." Shen Qingqiu didn't move, staring at him intently like he was complicated talisman array or ancient text in a forgotten tongue that needed to be deciphered. He scowled and shuddered some more.
He really didn't know what to make of this development, but he was too cold and tired to figure it out now. So, he accepted for now that Shen Qingqiu had saved his life and treated him... not poorly while doing so, so Liu Qingge was therefore safe to sleep with- in his embrace- nearby him to share heat.
When Shen Qingqiu eventually got within reach from his slow and cautious movements, Liu Qingge shot an arm around his thin wait and dragged him in close, yanked the 'blankets' over them both and aggressively burrowing his head under his shixiong's chin, blustering through the burning embarrassment and awkwardness and resolutely shutting his eyes.
It took mere moments of inhaling the semi-familiar scent of jasmine tinged with smoky petrichor to fall into deep, dreamless sleep.