Work Text:
I.
He's pulled out of the pond, spluttering and gasping for air.
The arms that grasp him are strong, likely capable of great violence should it be asked for, but they hold Shen Qingqiu gently.
What the fuck?, he thinks. But Shen Qingqiu is a graceful master, a stern man known for his calm and attractive aloofness, a teacher--
He pushes that thought aside and pretends that the pain in his chest is from swallowing too much water.
So he can't curse that shitty writer out loud or call down a thousand curses upon his name. Instead, he has to finish coughing up far too much water, and hope that he doesn't look too much like a pitiful drowned wreck of a man.
Liu Qingge doesn't seem to care however, which Shen Qingqiu chalks up to Liu-shidi's utter indifference to anything that isn't fighting. Instead, his hands run carefully along Shen Qingqiu's back, carefully patting and rubbing the sodden cloth. His fingers even reach up to Shen Qingqiu's hair, gently picking out weeds from the tangled mass of hair.
Really, Shen Qingqiu thinks. This xianxia aesthetic is deeply inconvenient when it comes to almost drowning.
“Thank you, Liu-shidi,” he eventually gets out. “I'm grateful for your assistance.”
Liu Qingge frowns. “What were you doing?” he asks. “You should know better.”
You'd think that, Liu-shidi, but you'd be wrong. But Shen Qinqqiu doesn't say that, because again, saying those kinds of things out loud leads to people looking at him sadly and checking up on him and there's only so much tea he can drink with Zhangmen-shixiong before those gently concerned eyes have him feeling obscurely guilty for a variety of things.
“I was just going for a walk,” he says weakly. “And it was a nice day.”
Liu Qingge grunts.
“And I thought I'd sit by the pond and meditate a little.”
Another grunt.
“Then I saw a duck so I thought I might feed it--”
There's a thunk. Shen Qingqiu looks over to see Liu Qingge hitting his forehead against a tree, while his eyes are closed. He also appears to be sighing.
“Liu-shidi?”
Without opening his eyes, Liu Qingge says in a tone that pretty much implies he's trying not to yell at the idiot in front of him, “You do know what pond this is.”
“No?” Look, Shen Qingqiu may be far more familiar with Airplane-Bro's work than he will ever admit, but this is uncharted territory at this point! No one ever expects to live the parts of the book that are glossed over by the words “years passed and then all the exciting shit occurred.”
Liu Qingge shakes his head. “Of course,” he says. “Only you would stumble into the domain of one of the fiercest demons in the Cypress Groves and try to feed it.”
Shen Qingqiu blinks.
Looks back at the pond and sees the cloud of white feathers floating atop it.
Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me, he thinks.
II.
“You really are very pretty,” Shen Qingqiu says, smiling dopily. He reaches up a hand to pat Liu Qingge's face. “Like you're grumpy and mean and yell at your disciples all the time, so I thought you'd look fierce.”
He frowns a little. “Maybe also have a mustache.”
He can't really see Liu Qingge's face, since it keeps wavering in and out. Shen Qingqiu tries to adjust his position, but Liu Qingge's arms tighten around him and Shen Qingqiu gives up after a few seconds, nestling against his chest. “But you're very strong, Liu-shidi, which I guess you got from fighting anyone who called you pretty. Seriously, your abs are amazing.”
Liu Qingge doesn't say anything.
Shen Qingqiu closes his eyes. The world's spinning too much, his head hurts, and most importantly, he's been poisoned—again! And of course, Liu Qingge happened to be right there, to see Shen Qingqiu swoon like some helpless damsel and catch him in his arms.
It can't be fair to Liu Qingge that instead of some beautiful maiden who's very grateful to him and swears eternal love and devotion, he keeps getting Shen Qingqiu. Yes, his fate is slightly better this go-around in that he's not dead of a qi deviation, but Shen Qingqiu is acutely aware that he's not really making Liu Qingge's life any easier.
No one's life, really.
“I'm sorry,” he says. “You shouldn't have to deal with this.” He opens his eyes, not sure if he's turning red from the embarrassment or from the toxin, which thankfully, seems to be curable in this world, unlike his other problem. “I promise, once we get to Mu-shidi, I won't trouble you any further.”
Liu Qingge's hand slips down further, and Shen Qingqiu has a momentary panicked thought of “oh shit, he's going to drop me because of all the stupid shit I just said and then I'm going to have to hope some other Peak Lord stops on by and fuck, knowing my luck, it'll be that idiot who'll just say, hey, I remember the Revolving Sun! Seriously, Cucumber-bro, what kind of luck do you have running into that?”
Look, Shen Qingqiu's thoughts are very complex and he's been able to practice his panicking to a high degree, allowing him to compress multiple levels of stress and worry in a matter of seconds!
All Liu Qingge does is nestle Shen Qingqiu more firmly in his arms. “I know that you like to study these... things,” he says, in a tone that implies he's clearly given up all hope for Shen Qingqiu ever being reasonable or able to slice off a creature's head with one clean smooth stroke, “but you can't be friends with them. They'll just end up hurting or killing you.”
And yeah, Shen Qingqiu can clearly hear the subtext behind that sentence, even through the mist that is his brain. But he can't think about it, not right now. Possibly not ever.
Not until he's forced to.
“Liu-shidi,” he says softly. “I promise I'll take care of myself better.”
Liu Qingge's hand wraps around his wrist and Shen Qingqiu closes once more, letting the warm familiar rush of qi sink into him. He's not going to die, not this time, but he thinks that if this was the way he was going to go, sinking into a gentle darkness, it wouldn't be so bad.
III.
“No.”
“But--”
Liu Qingge's hand is tightly gripping Shen Qingqiu's as he drags him away. “We're leaving,” he says curtly. “I'll come back once I've dropped you off.”
“Liu-shidi,” Shen Qingqiu protests. “It's just a piece of cloth! I can help you.”
Liu Qingge's face shows an impressive amount of doubt, resignation, and “this man in front of me is an idiot, but I promised Zhangmen-shixiong I'd take care of him and try to keep the yelling to a minimum.” He grunts instead and keeps pulling Shen Qingqiu.
“If I could just take a look at it, maybe I could--”
“Get tangled up in the cloth somehow, dragged into a pond, and then I have to wrestle the demon while keeping you from drowning and then explain to both Yue Qingyuan and Mu Qingfang why I let you do something so stupid. Am I wrong?”
Shen Qingqiu pauses. “No,” he reluctantly admits. “But--” He stops, frustrated. “I can't just keep relying on you to save me.”
Liu Qingge doesn't say anything, but he doesn't let go of Shen Qingqiu's hand until they're back at Qing Jing and Shen Qingqiu is left alone in his house, his hand still tingling from the tight grasp Liu Qingge had on it.
From his unwillingness to let go.
IV.
This time, Liu Qingge doesn't even need to look at Shen Qingqiu before he's opening his mouth to ward off the inevitable scolding.
“I know, Liu-shidi,” he says as Liu Qingge barricades the door with a table. There's scratching outside and he can hear the sounds of more of them coming. “But the village needed assistance and I was the only one around.”
“Of course,” Liu Qingge answers. His voice is perfectly level, which is far more terrifying than any yelling. “Shen-shixiong was just wandering along, keeping to himself and staying out of trouble, when he happened upon the only village in a fifty mile area to have corpse problems.”
Yes, Shen Qingqiu thinks. Because the convenient bullshit here is strong and apparently, the narrative has decided that all of Airplane-Bro's insanely “ripped-off from movies he saw late at night” world-building should have a chance to flourish.
Look, he's not the one that made Airplane-Bro watch an entire marathon of Ricky Lau movies and then write several delirious extras with this shit! Not that Shang Qinghua would ever admit it to him... again.
“I'm just lucky,” Shen Qingqiu says, pushing down the rage that comes from realizing you're living out a 1990s Hong Kong comedy that someone threw into your already chopped-up xianxia world and hit puree on. “And now that there's two of us, we can definitely take care of them.”
The feet get louder. There's a distinctive sound of dozens of feet, hopping at once, like maddened giant crickets.
The door begins to splinter.
Liu Qingge already has his sword out and is pushing Shen Qingqiu behind him.
Shen Qingqiu rolls his eyes and pulls out Xiu Ya. “I do have a sword,” he says mildly. “And this won't do it alone. We'll need a mirror, or some peach wood, or best, some glutinous rice.”
“Or fire,” Liu Qingge adds. “We could set them on fire.”
Why does Shen Qingqiu suspect that this is Liu Qingge's back-up plan for most thing if his sword isn't enough? “Liu-shidi, the villagers wanted us to handle this discreetly. Two dozen flaming walking corpses isn't that subtle.”
“No,” Liu Qingge corrects, “at least a few of them didn't want it handled at all. Or else they wouldn't have sent you to an abandoned shack surrounded by hastily dug up corpses.”
“You saw that too,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Well, that was going to be my second step, after dealing with the living dead.”
Liu Qingge stiffens and oh, shit, Shen Qingqiu does just realizes what he admitted to. “You mean to say,” Liu Qingge says in a deathly calm voice, “that you knew you were walking into a trap designed to kill you, by yourself, and you didn't think to ask for assistance or to perhaps go away and come back with some of your fellow Lords.”
Shen Qingqiu opens his mouth, but no words come out. What can he say to that?
“Are you really so arrogant, Shen Qingqiu, that you will accept only the help you are forced to, even if it means endangering everyone else with your insistence on doing it yourself?” Liu Qingge's back is rigid and his voice has gotten colder.
Shit. Shen Qingqiu tentatively reaches up and touches Liu Qingge's tense muscles. He's half expecting Liu-shidi to whirl around and just stab in the front to get rid of the problem that he keeps having to constantly solve. “It's not arrogance,” he says quietly. “I just don't want to get anyone else killed.”
“But it's fine if it's you,” Liu Qingge murmurs. “If you're the only one getting hurt, then we'll all be good with it.”
Shen Qingqiu's hand drops away from Liu Qingge's back and he looks down. “I don't want to be hurt,” he whispers. “It's just--”
Liu Qingge turns around quickly and Shen Qingqiu takes a step back at the intensity in his eyes. “Then stop doing things on your own,” he says. “And let me in.”
Do you realize what you're saying, Liu-shidi?, Shen Qingqiu wants to ask.
He can't.
Liu Qingge may normally be almost impossible to read, but right now, even Shen Qingqiu can see that he's left nothing unrevealed. He wants Shen Qingqiu to see something and oh, he's not ready for that.
It's a welcome relief for Shen Qingqiu's heart when the door bursts open and the corpses come hopping in.
V.
“Help!” Shen Qingqiu screams, but the storm is so fierce, he knows no one can hear him.
The creature's mercifully gone – dead or dying, Shen Qingqiu doesn't really care, because Liu Qingge is dying, and what kind of idiot takes a dart in the back just to protect him?
They're both drenched now by the rain. Shen Qingqiu tries to shelter Liu Qingge with his body as best he can, but there's no way to avoid the torrents raining down upon them.
He has to get Liu Qingge to safety. He knows this. He also knows he's fortunate. They ran into the kind that like to make their prey suffer longer, inflict the pain before killing.
It means Liu-shidi has a chance.
But only if Shen Qingqiu can do this.
“I'm sorry, Liu-shidi,” he says to the pale body. “You'd be able to do this, no problem. You'd just toss me across and take off on the sword like it's nothing.”
He bends down to shift Liu Qingge, gather his body up. At least Shen Qingqiu is far stronger than Shen Yuan, who would probably already died of pneumonia by now just by being outside.
“I'm also sorry,” he adds, “that I'm probably going to fuck this all up and get us both killed. At least, they'll figure out that you were trying to save me and be very nice about it.” Yue Qingyuan will likely put up a statue or a monument, which will be nice.
Surprisingly, the System is completely silent on the whole matter of Shen Qingqiu dying in a completely different way than the book – and much earlier, to top it off.
He guesses it's probably fine with him now that he's accomplished its main objective. If a detail or two changes, and Shen Qingqiu can't be around to get tortured and killed later, well, the story's still mostly on track.
Still, a small part of him says, fuck this. Don't give up. You've gone this far and Liu-shidi's done so much for you and his reward is this?
Doesn't he deserve more?
Even if you don't?
Shen Qingqiu takes Liu Qingge's body into his arms and steps on Xiu Ya. It's wobbly under him as it rises and the wind keeps trying to push him off.
“Stay on,” he tells himself. “Just keep going.”
The storm wants him to fall. It pushes at him, and he grits his teeth, keeps going as he's blinded by wind and rain, not even sure if he's going in the right direction.
You could let him go, the voice in his head says. You'd make it. You'd survive.
You don't want to die.
Yes, Shen Qingqiu thinks. I don't.
But I don't want those I love to die either.
Oh.
Huh.
Shen Qingqiu wobbles. At first, he thinks it's from having a minor realization that oh, he can't think about too hard right now because that would mean—oh, shit shit shit.
“Does that mean I care for Liu-shidi?” he murmurs. “Oh, if he doesn't die, he's going to kill me for that.”
But as his veins get sluggish and he gets even more unsteady, the thought shifts from, “well, this is a great moment to have a revelation” to “hey, did you kind of forget the whole deathly curse on you?”
Aw, fuck.
The sword spins and yes, that is the ground rushing up at them.
Shen Qingqiu is relieved that yes, apparently, he will be passing out long before impact.
Darkness.
VI.
He's sort of surprised to open his eyes again.
Okay, deeply shocked because even in a cultivator body, falling that far onto hard dirt isn't going to leave you with nothing more than a lingering soreness that's chased away by the gentle warmth filling your body.
It's familiar and--
“Liu-shidi?” he blurts out.
Liu Qingge has his hand on Shen Qingqiu's wrist and is sitting next to his bed. The flow stops temporarily. “You're awake,” he says. “Good.”
“We're not dead?” Shen Qingqiu asks.
Liu Qingge scowls. “No,” he answers. “We were close enough to Cang Qiong that Mu-shidi was able to get to us quickly.”
“But we were falling.”
“I stopped it.”
“You stopped it?” Shen Qingqiu looks at Liu Qingge with amazement. “Liu-shidi, you were unconscious and almost dead. How did you--”
“You were about to die,” he says, his scowl fading away to be replaced by a more uncomfortable look on Liu Qingge's face. “I couldn't let that happen.”
“Neither could I.” Shen Qingqiu reaches out and takes Liu Qingge's hand. “So don't yell at me this time, Liu-shidi.”
“I wasn't going to,” he says, and he moves closer to Shen Qingqiu, sitting next to him. “Just let me say one thing.”
Shen Qingqiu nods and lets his eyes flutter back shut as a wave of exhaustion hits him. A few more hours, he thinks. He'll be fine. It was just the adrenaline of the moment that had him thinking he—well, felt that way. “Yes, Liu-shidi?”
“I won't kill you for it,” he says and there's a soft breath, a hesitant touch of lips on his forehead. “Ever.”
Oh, Shen Qingqiu thinks as he drifts away, Liu Qingge's warmth keeping him company. Liu-shidi—and that means—and when I wake up, I think the first thing I want to do is kiss him back--
Shit. The monsters were far less scary than this.