Chapter Text
"So, you’re a demon," Shen Qingqiu began.
Binghe looked shifty. "Ye-e-es," he said, stretching out his words.
"But, you're also Binghe. My Binghe, I mean," Shen Qingqiu continued to clarify.
"I'm yours," Binghe said, eyes wide. When Shen Qingqiu reached for his fan, Binghe hurried to answer. "I'm also the Binghe you know, yes."
"Were you always a demon?" This whole time, even when he was a young teenager, who had been pure and cute and innocent and killed—
"Well, half. On my father's side," Binghe told him.
"And did you really," Shen Qingqiu hesitated a second. It was fine; Binghe was right here. "Really die? During the conference?"
Binghe explained the whole story. He hadn't died, not really, though, at times—Shen Qingqiu could tell, reading between the lines—he wished he had. An ice demon had attacked the participants, and before the lords could break down the wards, Binghe had lost against the demon, and been cast into an abyss.
After years of fighting and bleeding and suffering, he encountered a dream demon again, who told him about his real heritage.
“Again?” Shen Qingqiu asked. “When did you meet any demons before?”
Binghe looked guilty. “W-e-ell...” This Meng Mo had visited him as a disciple apparently. “But I had to be loyal to my master, who needed me so much without any memories! Sister Ning didn’t even give me a chance to consider it.”
“Yingying met this demon?” What had his disciples been doing while he’d been figuring out what a “Qing Jing Peak” was and why he was there?
“Anyway,” Binghe said. Meng Mo taught him how to work dream magic, tapping into his demonic powers for the first time, and he began to visit Shen Qingqiu. Somehow, the more he exercised his dream powers, the stronger he became. “I fought against it everyday,” he said solemnly. “But I knew that I needed to become stronger to leave.”
Shen Qingqiu cleared his throat lightly. “Ah. I think I know where the power came from.”
“Where? I was never able to figure it out,” Binghe said.
“From me.”
Binghe burst into tears at that. After reassuring him that Shen Qingqiu didn’t hold it against him, and he really was fine, Shen Qingqiu was finally able to coax him to continue. “I was able to expend the power in a single burst to create a portal back to the human realm.”
That— fucking— qi deviation!
But once back, Binghe had accidentally also brought demons from the Southern kingdom of the demonic realm with him. They had begun to attack humans, so he was trying to deal with them when he encountered Shen Qingqiu.
Shen Qingqiu could fill in the rest from there. “Come on, we should get back to Cang Qiong before Sect Leader Yue worries too much.”
“We?” Binghe asked, eyes still watery.
“You can still fly, can’t you?” Shen Qingqiu asked, suspiciously.
“No, it’s not that! You know I’m a demon,” Binghe sniffled. “I can’t ever go back to Qing Jing.”
“Half,” Shen Qingqiu said. “Come on.”
“I’ve practiced demonic cultivation!”
“Barely.”
“I’ve killed countless demons!”
“We try to encourage that in our disciples.”
Shen Qingqiu lost his patience, and took Binghe’s waist as he pushed him onto Xiu Ya. “We’re going.”
Binghe just squeaked, and stood rigidly for the whole flight back.
Yue Qingyuan was waiting outside Shen Qingqiu’s house when they landed.
“Qingqiu! Who’s this?” Yue Qingyuan already had his hand on Xuan Su.
“It’s Binghe.” Shen Qingqiu moved to pass Yue Qingyuan into his home.
Yue Qingyuan looked flabbergasted. “Binghe?”
“My disciple, Luo Binghe.” Had Yue Qingyuan already forgotten?
“Yes, well,” Yue Qingyuan looked even more off-balance than when Shen Qingqiu had first woken up. “Wasn’t he... dead?”
“He’s right here,” Shen Qingqiu said, angling himself between Yue Qingyuan and Luo Binghe. “Now, move aside.”
Yue Qingyuan called a peak lord meeting.
Shen Qingqiu only managed to stonewall the other lords for so long. After the thousandth iteration of “Yes, of course, Peak Lord Shen, we’re just asking how Luo Binghe is here now, alive and unhurt mysteriously after three years,” he finally gave up.
“He’s a demon.”
“Yes, of course, Peak Lord— what?”
“He’s a demon. On his father’s side.”
The whole story got dragged out again.
“You brought a demon? Into our sect?”
“He was already here, actually.”
The point that Shen Qingqiu refused to budge on, even as every lord attempted to raise reasonable objections, was that Luo Binghe had never hurt a human in his whole life.
“Which,” he said pointedly. “Is more than any of you can say.”
After a pregnant pause, Yue Qingyuan said, in a thick choked up voice. “He— can stay.” The other peak lords looked at him in alarm, but none dared to say anything.
In that way, Luo Binghe came to stay on Qing Jing again. There was an official decision to keep his origins under wraps. So, of course all the disciples knew within a day. Ming Fan, who had originally welcomed Binghe back joyfully with the rest of the disciples, had taken to leaving the room white-faced every time Binghe entered.
Shen Qingqiu wouldn’t stand for this bullying.
He turned to Binghe, who had taken up residence inside his home in the meantime, and said gently, “I won’t let Ming Fan scare you away from attending class. Go, and no one will say anything.”
Binghe looked up from the papers of Shen Qingqiu that he had been sorting through. “Ming Fan? Scaring me?”
Shen Qingqiu paused, feeling as if he was misreading something. “It’s good to attend class. You were such a diligent student of mine.”
“Is that what I am?” Binghe asked. “Your student?”
Shen Qingqiu paused again. “Yes?”
Binghe set down the papers and stood to his full height. “Is that all I am?”
Shit. How was this big baby so insecure after all this time? “You have so much to offer, Binghe. You’re strong and clever and handsome, and you’re good at many things. Don’t feel that being a student is a slight against you.”
“My teacher says all that, but claims the only thing I am to him is a student?” Binghe began to sidle towards him. “When I visited him in dreams, we were so close, and now in real life, he seems to be keeping his distance.”
“Ah, well.” Binghe was closer and closer, leaning in with bright eyes and a sly smile.
“Doesn’t he understand that the only thing that kept me going was returning to his side? Now that he’s allowed me here, I won’t ever leave.”
“Not even to go to class?” Shen Qingqiu asked weakly.
“Don’t pretend to misunderstand me,” Binghe said. “Look at me as an equal, Shen Qingqiu. Haven’t I proven myself that?”
Binghe’s magnetism was too strong. Shen Qingqiu wished he had a fan, something, anything, to hide his face. He parted his lips. He thought of the nights after nights they’d shared—not like that!—and everything that he’d privately thought of “Hu.”
“You have,” he said finally.
Binghe’s face seemed to glow. “Won’t you say it, Teacher?”
“I, ah—”
The door to the bamboo house swung open. “Qingqiu, I was thinking—”
Fuck! When would anyone give him a moment to think!