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This is Shang Qinghua’s fault.
It’s Shang Qinghua’s fault even though he is literally on the other side of the world when Binghe is attacked by a Howling Void Scorpion, and it’s Shang Qinghua’s fault even though Shen Qingqiu is the one who throws himself in front of its stinger so that it doesn’t get anywhere near Binghe’s exposed back, and it’s still Shang Qinghua’s fault even though Binghe is technically the one who ruined Shen Qingqiu’s innermost robe last night and Shen Qingqiu is the one who decided not to wear it this morning, thus presenting said Howling Void Scorpion with bare skin unprotected by his usual silk collar.
It’s Shang Qinghua’s fault because he invented the fucking Howling Void Scorpions in the first place, stupid hack author, stupid shitty novel. Isn’t it enough material for a wife plot to have the venom be mostly fatal? What kind of shitty writer do you have to be if “almost fatally stung to death” isn’t dramatic enough material for your protagonist, huh? Why add more stakes on top of that? What’s the point, except to make Shen Qingqiu’s blood vessels pop with rage?
“Shizun!” Binghe cries out after severing the scorpions into four different pieces, rushing to lift Shen Qingiu up from his swoon. His swoon. He thought he was done with this after Binghe helped him get rid of Without A Cure. A familiar broad hand cradles Shen Qingqiu’s face, and he allows himself to lean into it.
“It’s all right,” Shen Qingqiu says, closing his eyes until the dizziness recedes. “This husband has read about Howling Void Scorpions before. There is a treatment, although an unpleasant one.” Unpleasant because the effects of the sting will worsen the longer they wait until it is given; in the chapter he’d read, Liu Mingyan had lost consciousness before Bingge fucked her back to sensibility.* Binghe won’t like that. “Any moment now a mark will appear somewhere on my body—”
(*Bingge didn’t, actually. He hashed this out with Airplane a few years ago, to satisfy his curiosity about all the unfilled plotholes he could remember. It’s mostly down to a continuity error on Airplane’s part, but at the exact moment when Bingge should have been screwing Liu Mingyan back to life because of being stung by a Howling Void Scorpion, he was knocked unconscious by one of the Little Palace Mistress’s magical schemes, and ended up screwing her in the dream realm for another three chapters. By the time Airplane remembered the Liu Mingyan soulmate plot, the tension had kind of been sapped away from that whole situation, so he handwaved the whole thing with a little bit of dream papapa, making Liu Mingyan show up for an unexpected threesome in the Little Palace Mistress’s dreamscape. At the end of the day, Liu Mingyan came out of it okay, and no readers except the really daring sisters on the forums noticed that the last character mentioned in the actual physical room with Liu Mingyan’s cursed and needy body was Sha Hualing.)
“It’s here, shizun,” Binghe says, picking up Shen Qingqiu’s right hand and pressing a quick kiss to his index finger. “It looks like someone tied a glowing red string to your finger.”
Shen Qingqiu wrinkles his nose. “That’s a little on the nose,” he says, and grips Binghe’s hand hard when another wave of dizziness hits him. There’s a familiar internal prickle as Binghe tries to dispel the venom with his demon blood. The dizziness does subside a little, but he knows better than to think a wife plot can be so easily subdued. It wasn’t so easy for Liu Mingyan, and it won’t be so easy for Shen Qingqiu.
“What do I need to do,” Binghe asks, anxious. “Please tell this husband how to help you.”
Shen Qingqiu sighs. “You’ll need to wait until the corresponding mark appears on you,” he says, making himself comfortable in Binghe’s arms. “Then we’ll need to dual-cultivate in order to re-balance my energies.”
“All right,” Binghe says, and strokes his hair. “That’s not so unpleasant so far. How long should it take for the second mark to appear?”
Shen Qingqiu isn’t sure. Liu Mingyan had held on for a few pages in Bingge’s arms, worried that perhaps she wasn’t Bingge’s fated lover, and therefore he wouldn’t be able to cure her. But by the time she joined him in the dream, the corresponding end of the red string of fate was tied firmly around his finger, driving the Little Palace Mistress wild with envy and prompting a really interesting assassination plotline that of course ultimately went fucking nowhere because Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky was a coward and a hack.
“Not long,” he says, and sighs. “Perhaps we could return home?” he suggests, a little hopelessly. These things usually wind up with Binghe lovingly fucking him back to health on a riverbank or a cliff’s edge, which is always scenic but very rarely comfortable, and they are only an hour or so away from their mountain cottage by sword. They might be able to make it back, if Binghe doesn’t mind holding him so he doesn't pass out. It turns out Binghe doesn’t mind at all, and Shen Qingqiu spends the next hour in his husband’s arms, the landscape flying by beneath them.
Binghe’s hands are visible the whole time, and Shen Qingqiu finds himself idly stroking his husband’s fingers, wondering if he’ll be able to feel the moment that the circuit closes and connects the two of them, whether Binghe will be so overcome that he’ll have to land and take his husband against the nearest tree.
But nothing of the sort happens, and Binghe’s fingers stay bare all the way home. He suppresses the venom a few more times with his blood on the way, casting Shen Qingqiu a worried look each time. By the time they actually alight outside of their cottage, Shen Qingqiu is starting to wonder if maybe the damn thing has to be consummated in dreams, and Airplane just never mentioned it. He almost suggests to Binghe that they take a nap, but before the words can come out of his mouth, the cottage door opens from the inside.
Binghe stiffens, shifting Shen Qingqiu’s body impossibly into the crook of one arm so he can summon his sword up into the other.
Mobei Jun walks out of the cottage, looking grimmer than usual, which is saying something.
“Mobei Jun,” Binghe says, lowering his sword but not sheathing it. “What is the meaning of this?”
Mobei Jun manages to look even more intensely unhappy without changing expression or moving a muscle. Instead Shang Qinghua peeks out from behind him, white as a sheet.
“Shang-shidi,” Shen Qingqiu says with polite threat, pushing gently at Binghe’s arm until he reluctantly puts the sword away. “How wonderful that you and your king have come to visit this master and Emperor Luo. Would you care to explain the occasion?”
“Shen-shixiong,” Shang Qinghua says miserably. “I need you to remember this is not my fault, okay? I had no idea what you were doing today! I was with my king in the Northern Court all morning! I am in no way responsible for this!”
“Shang-shishu should inform this emperor exactly what he thinks he hasn’t done,” Binghe says in a pleasant voice that makes Shen Qingqiu’s skin prickle, Shang Qinghua flinch, and Mobei Jun go still in an indefinably forbidding way. “Especially if shizun is concerned.”
“I, I, I will, Lord Luo,” Shang Qinghua says, looking terrified. “But I really didn’t do anything!”
“Out with it,” Shen Qingqiu snaps.
Slowly, visibly shaking with nerves, Shang Qinghua raises his right hand into the air, and shows it to them.
A glowing red string is knotted around his index finger.
The movement of his hand sends a little ripple through the air, and they all see the string flicker briefly into existence like a spider web catching the light, a little barely-there thread tying the knot on his finger to the knot on Shen Qingqiu’s.
*
There’s a lot of shouting after that.
Most of it is Shen Qingqiu and Shang Qinghua, and most of it is in English. Shen Qingqiu is barely aware of what he’s saying because his ears are ringing too hard and it’s easier to shout at the man who is indisputably at fucking fault for this than process what is—apparently—happening.
“What the fuck,” Shen Qingqiu finds himself snarling, holding onto Binghe’s neck with a one-handed death grip. “Clearly this isn’t a fated lover strings-of-fate situation, so what the fuck is it!”
“I don’t remember, bro!” Shang Qinghua wails back, literally wringing his hands. Mobei Jun and Luo Binghe are looking at each other, not at the two of them. “I don’t know anything! It was a literal lifetime ago now! I don’t remember writing any soulbond macguffins! Why don’t YOU remember? You read the novel more times than I did!”
“According to the text of the novel this was about fated lovers, ” Shen Qingqiu shouts, digging his fingers into the ball of Binghe’s shoulder and then soothing it when he realizes he’s doing it. “Liu Mingyan got that whole breakdown from the fortune teller in the village! The only thing that can cure the sting is your one destined person, the soul fate meant meant for yours, the friend of your body and spirit, and you’re not my fucking destiny!”
“I mean,” Shang Qinghua says, wincing. “I mean, aren’t I kind of your zhiji, though?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m just saying! I’m just saying, bro, don’t we, like...I mean don’t we kind of get each other?” Shang Qinghua says, with a desperate, wide-eyed look. “Aren’t I kind of your Bo Ya? Aren’t you my biggest fan?”
“Anti-fan,” he hisses.
“Anti-fan, anti-fan! But still the biggest one, bro, you have to admit it—why else do you remember about the stuff the fortune teller told Liu Mingyan, eh? That was one little extra! Not even I cared about it! Maybe that’s why! Like, it could have gotten confused, because, like, I don’t know, we have, like—a unique bond—and the magic...misinterpreted!”
“Misinterpretation,” Binghe says, horrifyingly, in English. His accent is frankly better than Shang Qinghua’s. “That’s the only sensible thing Shang-shishu has said so far.”
The blood fully drains from Shang Qinghua’s face; a hot wave of dizziness hits Shen Qingqiu again, and he can’t tell if it’s the venom or the shock. Binghe soothes it, whatever it is, with his blood, and Shen Qingqiu forces the question out of his suddenly dry throat: “Binghe,” he says, automatically pulling away to look at him. “How can you understand us?”
“I pay attention when shizun speaks,” Binghe says, and there’s a little edge to his voice that means they’ll have to talk about this later. Fuck.
“Qinghua,” Mobei Jun says flatly, apparently tired of being the only person left in the dark, and Shang Qinghua immediately switches languages. “Sorry, sorry, my king! My shixiong and I were just discussing the—the obvious magical mishap—that in no way means that the two of us have any kind of, uh, interpersonal bond, like, maybe a metaphysical one but that’s something totally different and very platonic and non-intimate, and—”
“The only cure for the venom is dual cultivation with his bonded partner,” Binghe says with silky threat, and Shen Qingqiu and Shang Qinghua wince simultaneously. The little red string shivers briefly between them.
Mobei Jun takes this in. “Qinghua,” he says again, in more or less the same tone as before. Shang Qinghua must hear something different in it, though, because he softens, reaching out to touch Mobei Jun’s arm with one nervous hand.
“Nothing like that, my king,” he says. “I’m—I can’t just leave him like this.”
“No one is leaving,” Binghe says, with real menace, “until shizun’s health is no longer at risk.”
There’s an awful silence that barely registers to Shen Qingqiu, because panic sirens are blaring so loudly in his brain that he can’t even think. Not System sirens. Regular emotional sirens. Sirens that say, more or less, “I CAN’T SLEEP WITH AIRPLANE BRO! I’M MARRIED! AND HE’S TAKEN! AND I’M NOT EVEN GAY!” His grip tightens on Binghe’s sleeve involuntarily, until his fingers hurt.
There’s a miserable little whine, and for a second Shen Qingqiu thinks he’s the one who’s made it, but of course it’s Shang Qinghua, casting terrified looks back and forth between Luo Binghe and Mobei Jun.
“Qinghua’s assistance would of course be greatly appreciated in this matter,” Mobei Jun says coldly, staring directly at Luo Binghe in a way that makes a chill run down Shen Qingqiu’s spine. He doesn’t want there to be a war in the north! The amount of wars he and Binghe have had to participate in post-Maigu Ridge has been holding steady at “zero,” and he’d like to keep it that way! If there’s a war, Binghe will definitely kill Mobei Jun, and then Shang Qinghua will never speak to him again! Who is Shen Qingqiu supposed to get drunk and reminisce about Naruto with? Binghe! Think of your husband’s happiness! “However, this Mobei Jun’s servant is not required to engage in intimacies against his will,” Mobei Jun continues, still making extremely insubordinate eye contact with Luo Binghe.
“Of course he can say no,” Shen Qingqiu says loudly, trying to stop Binghe from saying or doing anything that will mean he can never talk to anyone about Uchiha Sasuke again.
“Does Shang-shishu intend to refuse?” Binghe asks almost at the same time, in a silky, menacing tone that isn’t at all helpful.
“No,” Shang Qinghua says, and looks right at Shen Qingqiu for the first time in—a while. Something heats up and goes taut behind Shen Qingqiu’s eyes. A new effect of the poison? “No, this one will not refuse.”
“Binghe,” Shen Qingqiu says, not breaking eye contact. “This master is going to go inside with Shen-shishu now. When I come out, we will not speak of this again.”
“It’s a freebie,” Shang Qinghua adds, taking an anxious step forward. “It really won’t count, Lord Luo!”
“Of course it won’t count,” Shen Qingqiu snaps, glaring at him.
“Shizun’s life is in this fool’s hands,” Binge says angrily, “and shizun wants me to leave him to it?”
Mobei Jun makes a small scoffing noise that makes Shen Qingqiu instantly want him out . Stop causing problems, Mobei Jun!! Who told you to show up and be judgy anyway!
“I—I hate to bring up further matters of, um, delicacy,” Shang Qinghua says, cringing, “But if Lord Luo stays, the—the chances of successful—I mean, like—the odds of this being, let’s say, a quick experience—”
“Stop talking and go inside,” Shen Qingqiu hisses, his whole torso hot with embarrassment. “Mobei Jun—”
Mobei Jun gives Shen Qingqiu a short, extremely curt nod, his face still expressionless but somehow disdainful at the same time.
“Leave,” Binghe commands, his aura darkening—and a moment later, Mobei Jun is gone, and the cottage door is banging shut behind Shang Qinghua.
Shen Qingqiu takes a deep, stabilizing breath, and then lets himself turn to look up at his husband’s face. Binghe looks—upset, of course. Jealous. Worried. “Shizun really doesn’t want me there?” he asks quietly, touching his hand to Shen Qingqiu’s face. A threesome won’t make this easier, Binghe! “Shizun’s life is in danger. He won’t let me take care of him?”
“Binghe is taking care of me,” Shen Qingqiu insists, pressing his own hand over Binghe’s. “Trusting this master to fix the problem in the fastest and simplest way is the best care right now. In a little while we need never think of this again.”
Binghe looks unhappy, but Shen Qingqiu can tell he’s won by the way his mouth turns down slightly at the corners. He carefully reaches up and kisses his husband, trying not to think about where his mouth is going to go next. “Thank you,” he whispers.
Binghe doesn’t crush him to his chest in reply, but it’s a near thing. “This husband will be waiting for you,” Binghe says, with considerable restraint, and kisses him once again before finally letting him go.
Shen Qingqiu allows himself one moment to look back reassuringly over his shoulder before stepping over the threshold, into his own home.
*
Shang Qinghua is standing uncomfortably in Shen Qingqiu’s bedroom, and he looks like he’s going to hurl. Which is fine, honestly, and not insulting at all, because Shen Qingqiu also feels like he’s going to hurl.
“Think of it from my point of view, Cucumber bro! I’m about to push down Luo Binghe’s favorite wife! I may not live to see sunset!”
“Who’s pushing me down!”
“Okay, fine, we’ll make sweet love. Ow! Ah! Stop hitting me!”
Shen Qingqiu does stop hitting him, because he gets too dizzy to keep standing, and the only dignified option is to drop his fan onto the table and sit down on the bed. Shang Qinghua looks about three degrees sicker.
“This is your own fault,” Shen Qingqiu says, sullen. “If you had just had a single ounce of integrity back then—”
“—all of this wouldn’t be happening, but then something else bad would be,” Shang Qinghua says, and takes off his belt in a sudden nervy gesture. “Stories are generated by conflict, so even if we were in a perfectly written wuxia or something, you would probably still be poisoned except you’d die at the end instead of being cured by my dick! No one wants to live in that tragedy! Definitely not Luo Binghe, and definitely not me! Isn’t this, like, a little bit better than that?”
“Come here,” Shen Qingqiu says, annoyed, and as soon as Shang Qinghua steps within grabbing range he kisses him.
Shang Qinghua makes an alarmed sound against his mouth, and then basically falls over onto Shen Qingqiu on the bed, trapping him under his thighs.
“What are you—” doing, Shen Qingqiu wants to ask, face kind smushed into Shang Qinghua’s cheek, but then Shang Qinghua’s hands slide into his hair and adjust the angle, and Shang Qinghua starts kissing him back.
Shang Qinghua is—a very wet kisser.
“Didn’t you tell me once that my son is a biter?”
“Don’t call him your son when your spit is all over my chin.”
“That’s how kissing is supposed to work!”
“In what universe is this how kissing is supposed to work,” Shen Qingqiu says, waving his hand in exasperation, which sends the glowing red cord fluttering between them like a ribbon.
“Just, like,” Shang Qinghua says, his mouth very pink and wet and puffy. It looks almost painful, wow. Shen Qingqiu kisses him again. “I’m saving your life, here,” Shang Qinghua complains about thirty seconds later, worming a hand inside Shen Qingqiu’s innermost layer. “So!”
They argue for a while about how to do it while they take off their clothes and finger Shen Qingqiu open, each arguing for their own more considerable expertise and experience (“You said my son is trash in the bedroom! You complain about being chainsawed in half literally every week!” “That was taken out of context! He’s gotten much better!” “The context was you and some pear wine, Cucumber-bro!” “At least I’ve never given Binghe a black eye in bed!” “Okay, look, listen, I know you’re a control freak, but all I’m saying is that I think reverse cowgirl is a bad idea if you’re feeling dizzy!” “Shameless!” “You are literally touching my dick right now, bro!”) They eventually settle on lying down on their sides kind of spooning, Shang Qinghua pressed up against his back. Then they have to get up and braid their hair back, because Shang Qinghua does not have Luo Binghe’s magical gift for not accidentally leaning on it or half-swallowing it while trying to kiss him.
“Okay,” Shang Qinghua says breathlessly, finally naked and lubed up on the bed behind him. “Are you ready?”
“Fuck you,” Shen Qingqiu says. His heart is racing for some reason. “Are you ready?”
Shang Qinghua gives his ass a friendly squeeze in reply, and Shen Qingqiu flinches, wound too-tight with nerves and horniness and, fine, a little guilt. "Uh?"
“I’ve never,” Shen Qingqiu says, and then feels incredibly stupid for it. “I mean, of course I’ve—but just with Binghe.”
“Oh,” Shang Qinghua says, and then lets go of his ass. Instead he kind of leans over Shen Qingqiu from behind, one hand patting at his chest, and presses an awkward, gentle kiss to his cheek. “That’s okay,” he says. “It’s only me.”
Shen Qingqiu shuts his eyes against another head rush, his ribs hitching. “Just put it in,” he says, and grabs Shang Qinghua’s hand, interlacing their fingers. “Who knows if I’ll even be able to feel it after the demon dick you stuck me with.”
“Yikes,” Shang Qinghua says, squeezing his hand a little and starting to nudge between Shen Qingqiu’s legs. He arches back a little to make it easier. “So much to unpack there, bro.”
“I’m,” Shen Qingqiu begins, but he forgets the rest of it because Shang Qinghua finally fits the head of his cock against his hole, and slowly pushes inside.
Several things happen at once.
First, Shen Qingqiu notes that it does feel different from Binghe. There’s still an aching part at the beginning, but then he just kind of—slides the rest of the way in, instead of the usual thing where the ache deepens until he can feel it radiating down his legs and up his spine. It’s so easy he almost doesn’t know what to do.
Second, Shang Qinghua makes a weird choking/giggling/gulping sound in his ear that he absolutely has to remember so he can make fun of him for it later.
Third, the strings on their fingers blaze into light, the whole room suddenly lit up neon red as a nightclub, and a familiar horrifying ding sounds in Shen Qingqiu’s ears, a popup screen filling his vision.
Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations! Important things should be said three times! Mission: What If? Fated Lovers On Another Planet has successfully been activated!
“No,” Shang Qinghua moans in his ear, and Shen Qingqiu fervently agrees, trying to stab frantically at the cancel button and missing because he forgot about the dick in his ass and the movement makes them both fumble it.
“No, no, no, no—!”
Montage Mode: Initiated! the System chirps, and the world fucking tilts and disappears.
Shen Yuan can’t feel his body, can’t see anything except red, can’t feel anything except—somewhere he must still have a hand, because Shang Qinghua is squeezing it hard enough to hurt. He squeezes back, trying to shove back the terror that something irrevocable has gone wrong, that he might never see Binghe again, and then—
*
Airplane is sitting up in bed eating noodles. He knows it’s Airplane, even though Shen Yuan has never seen his face before, familiar and stupid and faintly spattered in sauce. He’s alone in his tiny apartment, laptop balanced on his knees, bowl clutched to his chest, and he hasn’t spoken to anyone except his supervisor at work for the last seven days. A part of his brain always keeps track, even though he tells himself not to. But that’s okay, because his real job isn’t data entry, it’s writing weird porn for people on the internet. Who paid for his new microwave after the old one broke, boss? Horny netizens, that’s who!
Airplane puts the bowl of noodles down, and hits refresh, then refresh again. He just posted a chapter, and now he’s waiting for his favorite part. Well, maybe his second favorite part—the money is definitely his favorite, ha.
The third refresh does it. A comment appears on his screen, enormous and intimidating in its solid blocks of characters. Peerless Cucumber has Thoughts, it turns out. Peerless Cucumber always has thoughts. Even when Airplane himself has absolutely none. Peerless Cucumber faithfully comments on every single chapter, almost always within an hour of posting. They even leave comments on their rereads! That’s validating for a fragile author even if the comments are, like, super mean. Every single chapter Peerless Cucumber will find twenty things to be extremely mad about, and then one thing that he really likes (usually to make a point about something else he’s even more mad about.)
Today Peerless Cucumber is mad about the unrealistic sex scenes—apparently he kept forgetting that this week’s wife was only sort-of corporeal due to demon poison reasons, oops—the lack of followthrough on the Sha Hualing assassination subplot from two chapters ago, and—he stops. Not enough detail given about the meals Luo Binghe prepared for his newest wife this week. Airplane snorts. Not enough detail??? Peerless Cucumber objects every single time he spends a paragraph or two describing a sister’s pillowy breasts and pearly thighs and says he’s “wasting the reader’s time” on “descriptions he’s used a thousand times before,” but he wants to hear him describe Bing-ge’s delicious baozi for the millionth time?
I hate it here, the comment ends. I don’t know why I fucking bother.
His readers can be so cute sometimes.
Airplane reaches for his bowl of noodles, already imagining the scene he’ll slip into the next update, just for Peerless Cucumber, where Binghe and Ning Yingying make wontons in the kitchen together before he fucks her over the kitchen counter and they have a creative experience with ginger, and then—
the world shifts again, everything shining and red. Airplane squeezes his hand hard, and Shen Yuan squeezes back, shaken. What the fuck was that? Where was he ? Did he transmigrate into Airplane ? In the past ? There’s music playing. Familiar, cheesy. Mandopop?
The world shimmers back into being around him. Teresa Teng is playing over tinny speakers, and he’s sitting by himself in a restaurant.
Shen Yuan—actual Shen Yuan, with Shen Yuan’s face, so loathed at the time and yet kind of nostalgic for him now—is eating tangbao from a new shop. It’s been a rough week. Oh fuck, he remembers this week. He got into a fight with his mom, and his sister took their mom’s side, and he found out he’s failing his grad program. Not that it matters , not that he cares , he doesn’t need to graduate this year—he doesn’t need the degree at all! But. Failing. He hasn’t ever failed anything before. It’s a cold day, and the soup is the exact right hot temperature, and if he wants to eat it and pretend that a stupid character from a stupid web novel made it for him, he’s allowed to do that. It’s not like anyone will know.
Out of nowhere, between bites, he thinks I’m really fucking lonely, and then he wonders where that came from. He’s not lonely, he just hates most people. He’d rather be alone.
Bro, someone whispers, and where did that come from?? Where did that—who said—
Their hands are aching and aching. Is something wrong with their hands? Everything goes red and strange, and then—
Airplane is riding the subway, looking bored behind a face mask. He’s got eleven stops to go and his phone is dead in his pocket. At first he was trying to lean back in his seat and write some papapa for today’s chapter update in his head, but he kept getting distracted by the train metal on metal noises, the little kid laughing at the end of the car, the aunties complaining to each other a few seats away.
Then his eyes land on the guy sitting opposite him at a diagonal, and—
—he has a Xin Mo keychain. It’s unmistakably Xin Mo, the actual design Airplane commissioned and put up as a way to squeeze a little more income out of his fans, even though it was objectively less cool than some of the fanmade merch people keep selling despite his exhausted pleas for them to stop. A closer inspection reveals that the guy also has Binghe’s demon mark doodled several times on his hand, like he was doing it himself while bored during a meeting.
The guy himself doesn’t look like how Airplane pictures his fans, which is kind of exciting, even though that’s probably unfair of him! He loves and respects his fans, swear! It’s just that this guy—this Xin Mo keychain wearing demon mark doodling guy looks hot . He has a really nice face, even though the expression he’s wearing as he types vehemently on his phone is kind of sulky. He’s wearing a watch that looks fancy AF. He’s fit. He’s wearing shiny dress shoes. A hot guy who wears dress shoes on the subway reads Proud Immortal Demon Way! A hot watch-wearing guy reads the shitty porn Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky writes and posts on the internet!
He can’t stop himself from giggling, sharp and high, and Hot Binghe Fan looks up from his phone to give him a suspicious look.
Airplane thinks about explaining, introducing himself—he’s never met one of his fans in person before! What if Hot Binghe Fan was excited to meet him! They could go get a drink, maybe! Shang Qinghua could tell him funny anecdotes about things he almost put into the book, but didn’t after he lost his original outline! Hot Binghe Fan could tell him what he likes about Shang Qinghua’s story, besides Xin Mo and maybe Binghe generally! Maybe they would really hit it off. Maybe they could be friends! Maybe Hot Binghe Fan would be so fanstruck that he’d get confused enough to take Airplane back to his probably opulent apartment—ooh, or maybe a hotel, if he’s visiting from out of town!—and let Airplane give him a blowjob while on the eightieth floor, pressed up against the floor to ceiling window, looking out at a dizzying view of the city!
Hot Binghe Fan looks up from his phone again to give him an out and out glare this time. Which, okay. Airplane is technically a sweaty stranger staring at him on the subway and fantasizing about sucking his dick. Ha. Okay, fair enough, Hot Binghe Fan.
He stares at his shoes instead. He’s tempted to tell Hot Binghe Fan who he is anyway, to redeem himself a little in Hot Binghe Fan’s eyes—but he thinks better of it. It’ll probably ruin the mystique for Hot Binghe Fan if he knows the author rides the subway in wrinkled khakis and a sweat stained shirt from a hard day hunched over a monitor in the cubicle farms. Wouldn’t he rather have Hot Binghe Fan’s money than his good opinion?
Yeah. Yeah, a guy needs to eat. Airplane stares fixedly at his own shoes for three more stops, until Hot Binghe Fan gets off the train.
I was writing a review for you, asshole! Shen Yuan tries to shout, because suddenly he is Shen Yuan again. The subway car is already dissolving around them. I was sitting there reading PIDW and thinking about you, and do you even know how much I would have loved getting to yell at you in person? I had carpal tunnel! You should have thought about my wrists! You should have talked to me! You shouldn’t think those things about yourself!
I didn’t know that back then, Shang Qinghua says, and the way he says it makes Shen Yuan feel like crying, and he’s not sure why.
Shen Yuan, Shang Qinghua begins, sounding urgent, but then they’re shoved headfirst into another memory.
Shen Yuan’s mom is in the hospital, and he’s sitting in the stupid waiting room reading Proud Immortal Demon Way on his phone, and it’s so fucking stupid, it’s making him so angry, and that anger feels like the only thing grounding him to the earth at this particular moment in time.
Bro —
Airplane just lost his job in the cubicle farms, so writing full time it is! Okay, writing full time and applying for jobs full time at the same time. What if he wrote a paid extra where Luo Binghe has to write job applications to work at a shitty call center for some reason, and then went on a rampage and gutted all the interviewers who asked about weird gaps on his resumé? That would be fine, right?
He gets a notification. Peerless Cucumber is angry on Liu Mingyan’s behalf again. For a stupid second Airplane thinks about replying. He never replies to anti-fans, and he’s never replied directly to Peerless Cucumber; it sets a bad precedent, and it might make his anti-fans feel self conscious and stop, if they, you know, remember he’s watching. Or it might make the attacks get more personal, which he would also like to avoid! But. Sometimes it feels like Peerless Cucumber being angry at him is the only thing he can count on in this world. It’s bad that he finds that kind of comforting, right? That’s probably pretty bad. Get it together, Airplane.
Shang Qinghua, I didn’t—I would never —
Shen Yuan is incandescently angry. PIDW is done? How can it be done? What kind of justice is this to the characters that asshole built up over all these years? How is this fair to his readers? How is it fair to Luo Binghe?
Stupid author! Stupid novel!
He can barely breathe, he’s so upset. He’s so upset that he’s not paying very close attention as he eats the lunch he fucking carefully selected to go with reading the final update, and then something gets caught in his throat, and he really can’t breathe. He can’t—something is wrong with his throat—the room sparks black, and then it melts into a familiar red.
Oh god, oh holy fuck, Shen Yuan? Are you okay? Are you—
Airplane reads Peerless Cucumber’s final review, a weird pulse of actual shame throbbing in his chest, and then he spills his bowl of noodles directly on his laptop. His hand fumbles for the charger, and then his world sparks white.
Airplane, Airplane —
“Airplane,” Shen Yuan rasps, his voice hoarse and ruined. He’s back in his own familiar bed, Shang Qinghua pressed up against his back. Shang Qinghua is still inside him . He doesn’t know if he’s shaking, or if Shang Qinghua is.
Montage Mode complete! the System chirps, and a cascade of B points descends onto him. Mission Initiative: Remember to enjoy yourselves! He swipes the notifications away, his vision blurry.
Shang Qinghua makes a little sound like a sob, right into Shen Yuan’s shoulder, and Shen Yuan twists instinctively towards him, not letting go of his hand. He wouldn’t be surprised if their hands have melded together from all the squeezing. Sorry, Binghe, sorry, Mobei Jun, they have one fucking hand now. He finds Shang Qinghua’s mouth and kisses him quiet. The tears against his face are very familiar. They’re both still shaking.
Shang Qinghua’s hips jerk into his, instinctive, and Shen Yuan rocks back into him. They find a rhythm together, kissing the whole time.
“I’m,” Shang Qinghua says against his lips, and Shen Yuan strokes the back of his neck.
“You can,” he says, jerking himself off faster with his free hand, “come on, come on—”
Shang Qinghua makes a little choked off noise and buries his face in Shen Yuan’s hair.
For one heartbeat, then two, it’s like they’re the only people alive. Shang Qinghua moves in his body, and Shen Yuan clutches onto him for dear life, and it doesn’t make sense, but he has the fevered thought that this could almost be the whole world. Like Binghe and Mobei Jun and Liu Mingyan and Sha Hualing and Zhangmen-shixiong and Liu Qingge and everyone else they know are somehow here in the bed with them, like the circuit between them hasn’t made the world smaller, but brought it all closer. It’s too much for his brain to hold; too big, too true and not true enough. He takes a fragile, gasping breath and lets it all go.
Shen Yuan comes back to himself slowly.
Shang Qinghua has slipped out of his body without it even hurting, which is a first. His arms are wrapped around Shen Yuan’s neck and his mouth is pressed to Shen Yuan’s forehead, and he’s still tearstained.
“Stop crying,” Shen Yuan says, leaning back enough so that he can brush Shang Qinghua’s wet cheeks with his thumb. “Why are people always crying in bed with me?”
“Wow,” Shang Qinghua whispers, sounding shaken. “You’ve always been like this, huh?”
Shen Yuan can’t even reply, because something is wrong with his throat. He feels scraped raw, like some important defensive skin has been peeled right off him, and that whatever Shang Qinghua says next could really hurt.
“Mean, mean boy,” Shang Qinghua murmurs, and kisses his nose.
Shen Yuan’s eyes feel hot for absolutely no reason. He wants to hide his face in Shang Qinghua’s shoulder, but he manfully resists. He opens his mouth to defend himself, but what comes out is—
“I love Binghe.”
“Yeah, I know,” Shang Qinghua says, with a weird laugh. “You’ve been pretty consistent on that front, bro.”
“So,” Shen Yuan says, his chest feeling strangely heavy, “So this doesn’t mean—”
“Yeah, no, obviously not,” Shang Qinghua says, and pulls his hands away from Shen Yuan’s neck so he can scrub them over his eyes. There’s something kind of weird happening with his voice, but Shen Yuan isn’t sure what it is. “Like, I’m very happy with my king, too! And I’m not going to try and steal my son’s girl, aaaah, I want to live.”
“Who are you calling a girl,” Shen Yuan says, because he doesn’t know what else he’s supposed to say.
“I just want to say, though,” Shang Qinghua says, his eyes shining again already, “I’m really glad I know you, Cucumber-bro.”
Shen Yuan’s chest hurts, even though nothing they did should have strained his chest. “I’m glad I know you,” he mumbles, and then wishes he hadn’t because the look on Shang Qinghua’s face is. Just. He can’t look at it dead on. “I mean!” he adds, trying to salvage the moment. “I mean, without you, neither of us would have—” he gestures futilely, vaguely, at the entire world. “I mean, neither of us would be happy.”
“Bro,” Shang Qinghua says, his voice wobbling.
“Stop crying,” Shen Yuan pleads, and for some reason this makes them both laugh, the kind of laughter that builds and builds for no real reason, until just looking at Shang Qinghua’s face sets him off again. They stay like that for a little while, laughing with their whole bodies, lungs totally contracted, mouths wide and silent, shaking the bed together.
Eventually the laughter subsides into giggles, and then Shang Qinghua sits up and wipes the tears from his eyes again, still red and smiling. Shen Yuan sits up too, and they both get out of bed and start cleaning themselves up. He feels strong, whole, obviously completely healed. The stupid soulmate string thing is gone.
When they’re both mostly clean and fully dressed again, they kind of stop and stare at each other for a moment.
“Okay, uh, I’m going to call my king now,” Shang Qinghua says, biting his lower lip. It makes him look like a hamster. Ridiculous. Soft.
“Cool,” Shen Qingqiu says. “Thank you for—” saving my life? Being nice to me? Not making the whole involuntary out-of-body movie montage we experienced of some of the most vulnerable and embarrassing moments of our lives thing too weird? Thank you for understanding? “—coming,” he lands on.
Shang Qinghua makes a funny snorting sound, and then waggles his eyebrows.
“Oh, fuck off,” Shen Qingqiu says, cheeks heating up.
“Anytime, bro,” Shang Qinghua says, still laughing at him a little bit. He shoots him a pair of finger guns. “See you later.”
“See you,” Shen Qingqiu says, and opens the front door. His chest still feels very strange, too-tight and heavy and hollow at the same time.
From behind him there’s the familiar empty-air sound of one of Mobei Jun’s portals opening up, and then the sound of it closing.
He steps outside, into the familiar front garden where Binghe has been trying to grow vegetables, the air filled with the clean scent of growing things. Binghe isn’t waiting right outside, but of course he isn’t far. It takes him maybe five minutes to find Binghe in a little wooded clearing by the house. He’s whittling something, which isn’t really a hobby he’s expressed any interest in before, but he’s probably very good at it. Shen Qingqiu’s husband is good at everything.
He looks up when Shen Qingqiu steps into the clearing, troubled expression falling away, replaced by a familiar brightness. He drops the wooden stick and the knife immediately. “Shizun? Are you all right?”
“This master is fully cured,” Shen Qingqiu says, and gestures for Binghe not to get up. Instead he tucks himself into Binghe’s lap, wanting the comfort of Binghe’s arms around him like a weighted blanket. His sticky husband obliges him, wrapping him up tight. “Binghe didn’t need to worry.”
“Shizun is really well?” his husband asks again, as though Shen Qingqiu didn’t just answer his question.
“I really am,” Shen Qingqiu says, and lays his head down on Binghe’s chest. Binghe strokes his hair, and that feels really nice. “We don’t need to talk about it again. Or think about it. It’s all over now.” It didn’t really mean anything.
Binghe keeps stroking his hair. Shen Qingqiu thinks he might fall asleep, and then thinks maybe it’s rude to fall asleep on your husband after having sex with someone else. This is not an etiquette question he thought he’d ever need to research! Something else that’s Shang Qinghua’s fault, maybe. “What does Binghe want to do now?” he asks, uncertain.
“Whatever shizun wants to do,” Binghe says softly. Predictably.
Shen Qingqiu—wants to forget the last hour of his life completely, forever, if possible. He also wants to take a bath and cry? He wants to get drunk with Shang Qinghua and talk about Naruto and never think about petty, complicated joys in lonely, boring lives, never think about Airplane noticing him in a subway car ever again. Could he forget about his entire life as Shen Yuan? If the System let him, would he choose that? “Can we stay like this for a little while?” he asks after a pause, and Binghe’s arms draw even more tightly around him.
“All night, if shizun wants,” Binghe tells him, a warm, comforting rumble.
Shen Qingqiu tucks his head back under Binghe’s chin, and closes his eyes. Stupid author, stupid novel. Stupid beautiful world, stupid wonderful Binghe. What on earth did he do to deserve all this? Write shitty reviews very consistently? He shivers.
“What is shizun thinking?”
“Can we eat tangbao for dinner?” Shen Qingqiu asks, just to say something.
Binghe kisses his temple. “Of course we can. What kind?”
“Crab roe.”
But Binghe doesn’t move, and neither does Shen Qingqiu, although in a few hours he has no doubt that he’ll be able to warm himself with steaming crab roe tangbao. If there is an invisible string that stretches beyond the System into the other world, he decides, it must not be a straight line. Maybe it’s wound around him and Airplane a few times, like yarn over pushpins on a conspiracy corkboard, just to keep everything in place. But it must have been leading him here, right? No matter how strange or convoluted the path, he can’t believe it doesn’t end here.
It’s a nice idea, anyway.
END