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Luo Binghe crawls out of the Abyss early, a half-starved, wounded thing, barely recognizable as a person. Xin Mo still whispers to him, begging him to find it; perhaps he will, someday, but in desperation he’d let himself be eaten by one of the giant, formless blobs that seem to travel between the Abyss and the greater world. Now he lies unseeing on the edge of a rift, waiting as his organs and skin and bones slowly knit themselves back together. He’s been dissolved nearly to a skeleton by the creature’s corrosive acid, even his bones starting to melt away faster than his healing can replace them.
He knows only pain, a thousand nerve endings waking up one by one and sending frenzied impulses through his new-built skin. He has weathered this before; he has died a hundred deaths, in a hundred ways, and come back from the brink every time. It has never hurt this much.
Someone is here.
This close to the edge of the Abyss, where the walls of reality are thin and malleable as overworked dough, that can only mean trouble. If Luo Binghe were capable of movement, he would scramble away.
But somehow the pain lessens, a cool flow of energy entering him so sweetly that he could weep with the relief of it. His heart pumps fresh blood through his veins, his organs regrow and skin folds over his exposed bones, rippling outward. He opens his eyes - he has eyes again - and swallows through a dry throat, suddenly feeling the desperate pinch of hunger.
The one healing him seems to understand. Cool, dry lips meet his, coaxing his mouth to open, and he is carefully, slowly fed the sweetest water he’s ever tasted. His savior, seeing that he can be moved, helps him to sit up; through still-blurry vision, Luo Binghe registers impossibly long, dark hair and a concerned frown.
“Not sure if… should be safe, with your healing… need food or you’ll…” A soft, musical tenor. Luo Binghe’s hearing is still tinny and incomplete, the words filtering in and out as his savior mutters to himself.
The pad of a thumb, parting his lips. Obediently, Luo Binghe opens his mouth, feeling his jaw creak, and lets the thumb press down on his tongue, leaving behind an earthy, deep flavor. He swallows reflexively, coughs. The hand moves away and returns with a small portion of - mushroom? The texture is odd, different than he’s expecting, but his mouth waters as he swallows it down.
He suddenly finds himself ravenous.
“More,” he croaks out, and for a time all he knows is the rich taste of mushrooms and the sweetness of the water given to him in small sips. His body, overworked and wrung out, cannot last long; he fights to keep his eyes open, but his savior smooths a hand over them, telling him to rest now, that he’ll be safe here.
Somehow, he believes that.
His savior introduces himself as Shen Yuan. Luo Binghe almost laughs at the irony; he seems completely serious, though, and at Luo Binghe’s expression he hastily clarifies that the “Yuan” is the character for “wall,” despite his proximity to the Abyss.
Luo Binghe wonders if this Shen is a distant cousin of his cruel shizun. Though they only look somewhat alike, their careful elegance is much the same, and something about the set of Shen Yuan’s lips and the tilt of his eyes seems to match Luo Binghe’s memories. Shen Yuan wears the face much differently, though, smile lines around his eyes and mouth rather than frown lines, a little dimple on his right cheek.
Shen Yuan looks nearly human, which, in Luo Binghe’s experience, generally means he’s the furthest thing from it. His hair is just a little too long and flows unnaturally in the wind, his eyes a very particular shade of moss-green Luo Binghe has never seen on a human.
He’s lovely.
Luo Binghe has done this dance before in the Abyss. If he’s been saved, his savior must expect something in return, and all he has to offer is his body. And so, he offers, as soon as he is well enough. Telegraphing his movements, he pulls Shen Yuan close, letting his hand trail downward, a promise. He’s never lain with a man, but he imagines it must be much the same, in many ways.
“Binghe, if you’re bored, there are other things we can do,” Shen Yuan says, though Luo Binghe feels his interest starting to show.
“Let me repay you for your kindness,” Luo Binghe replies. “I’ve been told a night with me is pleasant enough, and I am pleasing to look at by all accounts. How do you want me?”
Shen Yuan shoves him back, stepping away. His body language is closed, curling into himself. “That’s not - sex is fun, sure, but I can get that anywhere I want. Don’t feel like - you don’t need to thank me by sleeping with me, that’s not -”
“It is all I’ve been able to do to show my gratitude in the past.” Luo Binghe’s head tilts, studying Shen Yuan’s face. He reaches out a hand to catch a trailing lock of dark hair. “It would be no hardship.”
“There is no need to thank me at all,” Shen Yuan says forcefully. “I only did what anyone would have. You are welcome to stay as long as you like, but please don’t force yourself to do anything for me.”
“Wait, I -”
But Shen Yuan is already walking away into the forest.
Luo Binghe looks around the small cottage, searching for signs of anyone else living there, but finds none. It’s nearly bare, the papers and trinkets spilling over the simple desk the only thing making it look lived-in. From what he’s surmised, Shen Yuan is some kind of forest spirit, and there are others around who mostly keep to themselves. Except, apparently, to meet up for - what, dual cultivation? Or simply for pleasure, to sate a need?
The image stays in his mind, Shen Yuan with some faceless, featureless person, head thrown back in the throes of pleasure, hair spilling across the forest floor in inky rivulets. Luo Binghe grits his teeth and tries to think of another way to repay his debts.
When Shen Yuan returns, smiling as if nothing had happened, Luo Binghe is ready.
“All I have is my body, but there are other ways I can use it, if sex or - or dual cultivation isn’t on the table. I have been told I’m spiritually strong, and my yang energy is -”
“Binghe,” Shen Yuan cuts him off, and the look on his face tells him all he needs to know. He’s been thoroughly rejected, but he can handle rejection from one man he doesn’t even know! “If you feel you really must repay me, you’re welcome to do some chores around the house or something. I live simply out here and rarely entertain visitors, so it doesn’t much matter to me if the floor is swept, but if you’d like to sweep it, you’re welcome to.”
“I can also do that,” Luo Binghe says brightly. “I can cook, too. But that wasn’t what I had in mind.”
He lifts his hand, revealing a blood-red jewel in his palm. “My blood has certain properties. I don’t think something like this would have much value, but perhaps it could be traded, or made into jewelry. Is there a shape you’re partial to? A ring, or a necklace or maybe a hairpin?” Concentrating, he shapes the pool of blood in his hand into a long, thin hairpin, carefully working a subtle spiral into the pin’s shape.
Suddenly, Shen Yuan is in his space, staring raptly at the object in his hands. “Can that be shaped into anything?” he asks, wide-eyed.
Luo Binghe thinks about it. He hasn’t had cause to try very often. Once, when caught on the back foot by a powerful demon, he’d instinctively formed a dagger out of blood, and had the thought (while a little delirious from blood loss) that it looked almost like a jewel. He’d remembered it, earlier, and thought Shen Yuan might enjoy some kind of trinket.
“Anything like what?” he asks.
“What about a creature? Something you saw in the Abyss.”
It seems simple enough. Shrugging, Luo Binghe thinks of something small - a centipede-like insect he’d seen in a pool of lava once. Its tiny legs tickle his palm as it turns around in a circle.
“Oh, that’s a Hundred-Legged Obsidian Crag Eel! It’s almost alive,” Shen Yuan breathes, stroking its back as if it were a pampered pet and not a perfect replica of something that proceeded to fling itself from the lava and try its level best to choke Luo Binghe to death.
Luo Binghe uses a long nail to open a new cut in his left palm, drawing out the blood and using it to form a little mouse where the centipede-creature had been. The blood-mouse opens empty eyes and silently chirps, turning its head towards Shen Yuan as if asking for permission, before climbing onto his hand.
“Binghe is incredible, to be able to do something like this.” Shen Yuan carefully pets the blood-mouse’s little head. Luo Binghe feels a faint answering tingle in his own scalp.
“It’s nothing,” Luo Binghe replies automatically, but he feels a pleased flush creep over his cheeks all the same at the praise.
“There’s so much you could do with a power like this. And it barely seems to use a fraction of your spiritual energy!”
Luo Binghe never thought about it that way before, but it’s true. He’s never relied on his blood to save him, but perhaps he should start, should preemptively build himself weapons for when he returns.
He should return. To the sect, but before that, to the Abyss. Now that he has some distance, some reprieve from the constant fear and pain, the sword’s call in the back of his mind is growing ever louder. It seems rational to retrieve it; after all, how else will he -
“Luo Binghe,” a voice says forcefully, startling him from his thoughts. He comes back to himself and finds he’s walked several paces away, in the direction of the Abyss.
“I’m sorry, Shen Yuan, I -”
“You,” says Shen Yuan, “are not leaving here until you’ve been rid of whatever influence has wormed its way into your brain. Whatever it’s offering you, you don’t need it; you’re ridiculously overpowered on your own, with that blood of yours.”
“I barely know how to use it,” Luo Binghe protests. The blood-mouse has dissipated into a formless blob that hangs in the air by his side. No one ever taught me.
“Then we’ll figure it out together,” Shen Yuan says decisively. “And if I have to restrain you at night to keep you from throwing yourself into that rift until it closes, I will.”
Until it closes. “When?”
“I’m not telling you that,” Shen Yuan says, looking sidelong at him. Luo Binghe isn’t sure if that means he doesn’t know or if he does and is trying to - what, withhold the decision from him? Something within him bristles at that, but it’s quickly pacified by Shen Yuan’s hand gently resting on his arm, steering him back into the house.
(“You’ll teach me, then. So, this Binghe will call you Shizun from now on,” Luo Binghe says, bowing.
“Don’t be ridiculous. A strong cultivator like you must already have a shizun. Surely Binghe hasn’t been on his own all this time?”
“I have no other shizun,” Luo Binghe insists. None he will ever again acknowledge.
“I don’t know any more about this than you,” Shen Yuan protests.
“But you -” want me, Luo Binghe wants to say, doesn’t. “- are willing to help me figure it out, and that’s enough. This disciple will be in your care.”
“Binghe….” Shen Yuan sighs, but his eyes are fond.)
Guided by nothing but Shen Yuan’s boundless enthusiasm and the spirit of experimentation, Luo Binghe learns, slowly, to mold and shape his blood. He starts to keep a qiankun pouch full of it, draining himself in small increments under Shen Yuan’s watchful eye. Were it up to him, Luo Binghe would bleed himself nearly dry in one go, just to get it over with, but Shen Yuan, despite assurances that Luo Binghe will survive even if he accidentally goes too far, will not allow it. To him, Luo Binghe merely feeling pain is enough to stop an experiment immediately and fuss over him until he’s schooled his face into something more neutral.
It should teach Luo Binghe to better hide his pain. Instead, he finds himself playing it up; Shen Yuan’s gentle scolding and tender care becomes an addiction, until he’s letting tears well up in his eyes over a paper cut. Shen Yuan seems to have caught on, but he never says a word, only smiles knowingly and pats Luo Binghe’s head.
There is one use for his blood that Luo Binghe already has at least a passing familiarity with. If another creature ingests it, he has some measure of control over them, can track their movements and cause them pain, if he wishes. He’s used it a handful of times in the Abyss, at first nearly by accident, and then, armed with Meng Mo’s limited knowledge, on purpose, to get himself out of various situations. He’s never left it inside someone long enough to experiment with it; every creature who has ingested Luo Binghe’s blood did not live to tell the tale.
He doesn’t think it’s dangerous, on its own.
He has to at least try. After all, if Shen Yuan were to up and leave one day, Luo Binghe would need to know where he is. If he just adds a drop or two to his tea, it will be enough to track him, not enough to break the fragile trust between them, not enough that he feels it.
So he pricks his finger and lets a drop fall, two, when preparing Shen Yuan’s tea, a deep-red berry tisane where the deeper red of his blood will not be noticed at all.
That night, as he lies awake and Shen Yuan sleeps peacefully, two drops of blood slowly seep through Shen Yuan’s clothes, just below his shoulder, and fall to the floor. Their unnatural behavior is enough for Luo Binghe to know that the blood is his own. They leave no mark, and when he calls to them, they return easily to his qiankun pouch, barely needing his guidance. As if Shen Yuan had unconsciously rejected them and gently admonished them to go on home.
He doesn’t try again, after that.
He cannot touch Shen Yuan’s dreams, either. He isn’t entirely sure if Shen Yuan dreams at all. When Luo Binghe tries to slip into his dream realm, it’s… shielded, as if a thicket of vines is protecting Shen Yuan’s dreaming mind from harm. He tries, night after night, to coax them apart, but when he finally gains entrance there’s simply nothing there: if Shen Yuan is dreaming, they are dreams Luo Binghe cannot comprehend. When he wakes, he’s left with only impressions. A deep, dark green. The smell of wet, rotted wood. Something slow and creeping, like roots, like tendrils.
The days seem to melt away. Luo Binghe makes himself useful, as he’d promised, foraging in the nearby forests and meadows, hunting the monsters Shen Yuan tells him are edible, and cooking what he finds. For a place so close to the Abyss, the monsters are not nearly as abundant as he’d have thought, and much easier to kill.
In the evenings, he mends his own clothes, then Shen Yuan’s. When he runs out of things to mend, he starts to use the scraps he finds to make an army of little creatures, lovingly crafted to match real monsters he’s seen. They sit atop Shen Yuan’s desk, slowly accumulating. Shen Yuan seems to keep finding more scrap fabric for them, even after Luo Binghe is sure they’ve run out.
“When does the rift close?” Luo Binghe asks over dinner one night. He’d nearly forgotten.
“Oh, that? It closed weeks ago,” Shen Yuan replies offhandedly.
He will simply have to stay, then, and wait for another one to open.
After weeks of creating larger and larger creatures - insects, a swarm of blood crows, then a wolf - Luo Binghe carefully crafts his largest yet, a horse. It may not be completely anatomically accurate; he’s ridden only a small handful of times, and that usually on the slowest, oldest nag available, nothing like the tall, proud stallion he’s attempted to recreate.
As soon as he’s finished sculpting it, he regrets it. It’s terrifying. The light shines through it just enough to highlight every little impurity and imperfection. It gives off far too much heat and makes a faint thrumming sound as it moves, as if it’s being cycled endlessly through nonexistent veins. It cannot otherwise make a sound, opening its mouth in a silent whinny as it’s immediately spooked by a leaf.
“It’s perfect,” Shen Yuan declares, petting its flank.
He insists on riding it. Luo Binghe insists on walking by his side, in case the whole construction should fall apart and drown Shen Yuan in blood.
He feels it when Shen Yuan’s thighs tighten around the horse’s back. Feels it, too, when he strokes its mane, as if it’s a real animal. They walk slowly through the meadow, Shen Yuan soothing the horse, which seems determined to rear up at every little shift in the wind, and Luo Binghe leading it by reins also crafted of blood. Shen Yuan talks, the whole time, of the possible applications, the way Luo Binghe could be nearly self-sufficient. How this would cut down on travel time while removing the spiritual energy drain of sword flight. As this is an innate ability, they’ve discovered that it has nearly no limits, only Luo Binghe’s ability to concentrate. Shen Yuan believes he’ll one day be able to create completely autonomous, trackable creatures, impervious to harm. And Luo Binghe… believes in Shen Yuan.
“I wonder how fast it can go,” Shen Yuan muses. Before Luo Binghe can stop him, he digs his heels in, and the reins slip from Luo Binghe’s grasp as the horse takes off at an impossible pace.
Frantically, Luo Binghe tries to wrest back control, but the horse really does seem to have a mind of its own. Dissolving it at this stage would only be more likely to hurt Shen Yuan. Instead, he whips out a tendril of blood from his qiankun pouch and wraps it around Shen Yuan’s waist, tying him down so he can’t easily be thrown. All he can do is watch helplessly as the horse and its rider do an unnaturally rapid circuit of the meadow. The blood in his veins sings with fear and wild joy.
It’s like controlling any other beast that has his blood inside it, Luo Binghe discovers. While slightly more stubborn than other constructs he's made, he still has power over it. He takes back control, slowing the horse to a more reasonable pace and giving it an order: never to let its rider fall.
They come to a stop, finally, beside him, as Luo Binghe’s heart threatens to beat out of his chest. Shen Yuan is grinning madly, long hair whipped by the wind and robes in disarray. The air smells of copper and damp earth.
“Did you see that?” Shen Yuan leans down, taking Luo Binghe’s face in his hands. “It wouldn’t respond to you! It had a mind of its own! And it was so fast, do you know how much that will cut down on your travel time? I don’t think even the cannibalistic horses of the Southern Demon Realm are that fast, and its stamina should be - infinite! It’s incredible! You’re incredible.”
Luo Binghe barely dares to breathe.
Shen Yuan, still laughing, leans down just the tiniest bit more, until their lips touch.
Luo Binghe has kissed people before, in the dozens, but it’s always felt like going through the motions. With someone like this, he doesn’t have the first idea what to do. The kiss is a mess, poorly aimed and full of teeth, but it shifts something within Luo Binghe, the pieces of something larger falling into place.
“Sorry,” Shen Yuan gasps, scrambling back upright. “I don’t know what came over me, you were just so - and I - and after all that, before, about this not being just, some way to show gratitude, you must think I’m -”
“I was lying to you, before,” Luo Binghe says softly. “It was never just that. It always has been before, but with you - I just wanted it, wanted you. Would that be all right? If I just wanted -”
Shen Yuan lunges down to kiss him again.
Luo Binghe needs to feel him everywhere. The insistent pressure of his thighs around the blood horse isn’t enough, could never be enough. Still trading messy kisses, he dissolves the horse into a mass of tendrils, gently setting Shen Yuan on the ground. It’s instinct; he freezes, thinking Shen Yuan will be put off, but instead, he strokes the tendril nearest his cheek, leaning his head against it.
The tendrils reach outward, forming a dome over their heads, a shield; another application Luo Binghe has been practicing diligently.
“That was wonderful, Binghe, so fluid, but why -”
Lowering him down into the grass of the meadow, Luo Binghe kisses the words from his lips.
This, too, he has done a handful of times. It has never felt like this, like every touch lights him on fire, like he won’t last more than a minute or two. Shen Yuan doesn’t seem to be faring much better, a charming blush spreading over his cheeks and those eyes flashing a deeper green as he rolls Luo Binghe over and straddles him.
It’s not dual cultivation. It’s barely even sex, though both of them end up sticky and panting, too absorbed in each other to bother cleaning up. It serves no purpose, doesn’t repay a debt or save anyone from poisoning.
Luo Binghe feels it when Shen Yuan gasps and comes, twitching against his thigh, and knowing that being with him made Shen Yuan feel that way, that he’s done something right, is -
It feels like the most important thing in the world. It feels like dying. It feels like he will lose himself if he ever stops touching Shen Yuan again.
It’s different between them, after that. Shen Yuan becomes permissive, though huffy, about physical affection, though there are some days when he’s cryptic and shy about his own body and won’t allow Luo Binghe near.
After that first time, Shen Yuan says, off-hand, that it had felt odd to be so enclosed. “Something like that, in private, isn’t it only for… you know, lovers?”
Luo Binghe, who wants terribly to be his lover, nods and smiles and swallows his words, and asks what the norm is around here. After all, he wants Shen Yuan to be comfortable. He wants to be allowed to stay.
“Oh, just -” Shen Yuan waves his hands awkwardly. “When I’ve dual cultivated before, or just, like that, for fun, we always do it out in the open. Something private like that feels, I don’t know. Taboo.”
Luo Binghe, of course, is already planning a way to get Shen Yuan to embrace this taboo. But keeping things out in the open has its own kind of appeal; the demon blood in him stirs at the thought of laying such a public claim. Of Shen Yuan’s past partners, whoever they are, being able to walk by and see .
So he steals kisses whenever he’s allowed. He finds excuses to accompany Shen Yuan outdoors, or begs Shen Yuan to accompany him, and Shen Yuan sighs and rolls his eyes and allows Luo Binghe to press him against a tree and take both of them in hand.
Once, Shen Yuan finds a bounty of bittersweet purple berries that have some kind of positive effect on cultivation; he explains it in detail, but Luo Binghe’s eyes are tracking the juice running down his chin, and he doesn’t hear a word. Shen Yuan feeds him a handful, long, delicate fingers already sticky, a fat drop of juice running down his forearm. Luo Binghe licks them clean, licks the taste from his mouth, and leaves a messy trail of kisses down his chest. He looks up for permission.
“You really shouldn’t,” Shen Yuan says, and does not explain why, and does not move away. His hand settles in Luo Binghe’s hair, his thumb teasing open Luo Binghe’s lips.
Luo Binghe leaves one, delicate kiss on the dark trail of hair below where Shen Yuan’s bellybutton should be. (There is nothing there, only smooth skin. It should be concerning, but Luo Binghe has always known Shen Yuan is only pretending with this humanlike shape, and it would embarrass him to have his mistake pointed out, so he says nothing.)
“I shouldn’t?” Luo Binghe asks, looking up at him through long lashes.
“Well,” says Shen Yuan.
“Shizun smells so good,” Luo Binghe breathes, and means it. It’s not quite the scent that rises from his own body, when he touches himself, or when Shen Yuan touches him. It’s deeper, darker, not quite sweat and salt but something much earthier. Luo Binghe could stay here forever until the only air he breathes is this.
“Binghe, that’s…”
“Mmm?” Luo Binghe brushes his lips, featherlight, over Shen Yuan’s hipbone.
“...well, if you don’t swallow anything, it’s probably all right.”
So Luo Binghe doesn’t. He opens his mouth wide, after, showing pearly white liquid pooling on his tongue, and lets it drool slowly out.
“Binghe, that’s disgusting,” Shen Yuan scolds breathlessly.
Luo Binghe makes a helpless little noise and opens his mouth wider. In the ensuing scuffle, Shen Yuan doesn’t notice him swallowing what he’s been holding under his tongue.
(Xin Mo no longer calls to him. Instead, he thinks only of Shen Yuan. Something about it feels unnatural, but he can’t bring himself to care; if some outside force is influencing him, it’s only giving him an excuse to do what he wants to do anyway.)
The summer heat simmers higher and higher. Luo Binghe, thrusting desperately into the soft, plush space between Shen Yuan’s thighs, breathlessly suggests dual cultivating for real - for the mutual benefits, of course. Shen Yuan could use him as a cauldron and he’d allow it happily, but he knows Shen Yuan would never do such a thing.
“Yeah,” Shen Yuan slurs, mouthing at his neck. “Yeah, Binghe, you can - inside -”
Luo Binghe quickly becomes addicted to it, the wet heat of him, the way Shen Yuan throws his head back in pleasure and claws at his shoulders. Luo Binghe wants it the other way around, too, wants it every way he can have it, wants to feel Shen Yuan filling him and pressing him down into the soft earth and driving into him until he can’t remember his own name, but it’s the one thing Shen Yuan can’t be convinced to do.
Most of the time it’s not actual dual cultivation, despite that being the excuse he always uses; they get too carried away, and Shen Yuan, despite his apparent distaste for Luo Binghe taking in any of his fluids, is perfectly happy to take as much of Luo Binghe’s as he’s willing to give.
He shows more and more of himself, in these moments. Once, still trembling with the aftershocks of his third orgasm, Shen Yuan’s hand plunges so deeply into the forest floor that it starts to grow roots, pale, thin things that Luo Binghe almost doesn’t see at first. He’s embarrassed beyond belief afterward, despite Luo Binghe’s constant assurances that it was cute. Another time, Luo Binghe denies himself again and again just to watch Shen Yuan squirm, to force him to beg for what he wants. Shen Yuan, eyes dark with frustration, lets gnarled, twisted vines spiral forth from his right arm, winding around Luo Binghe until they’re pulled flush together and Luo Binghe is nearly forced to enter him once more. It’s all he can do not to come on the spot.
As summer turns to fall, Shen Yuan seems to find it harder and harder to hold a human shape. Moss grows in his hair; the vines become visible just under the skin of his right arm, and the smell of damp earth that always accompanies him becomes even stronger. Luo Binghe waits patiently to see all of him and worships the little he is given.
He is beginning to think he will never see it at all when he stupidly gets himself injured.
It’s nothing, not to him, but it looks bad. He stumbles back to the cottage with a slow-healing hole in his chest and a missing arm and collapses, insensible, at the threshold. Something big, something that likely didn’t belong in the demon realm. There must be another rift open.
Luo Binghe hadn’t noticed.
“Binghe?!” Shen Yuan’s voice is faint, fading in and out. It’s all right, Luo Binghe wants to say, I’ll be fine in a couple of hours, but the words won’t leave him, his body won’t obey.
“All right, it’s all right - I’ve got you, just hold on,” Shen Yuan says frantically. Luo Binghe lets himself drift and be fussed over, his eyes drooping closed.
That taste again.
Automatically, Luo Binghe takes a bite of what he’s been offered. A mushroom, deep and earthy. Not stringy like before, but tough, ridged where his tongue runs over it.
He waits until Shen Yuan determines his condition to be stable and turns away to pace the room before he dares to crack one eye open. A flash of long, mossy hair, falling over a shoulder covered in rotting bark. Colorful shelf mushrooms sprout from his collarbone, exposed where his robes are hastily pushed off one shoulder. Luo Binghe catches a hint of another mushroom, white and textured almost like shaggy hair, somewhere around where a ribcage would be.
When Luo Binghe “wakes up”, Shen Yuan looks perfectly human.
He shrugs off every advance for nearly a week and keeps a watchful eye on Luo Binghe at every waking moment. He won’t even let Luo Binghe get close, or touch his hand, only vaguely protesting that it’s not safe.
When he finally goes to sleep after nearly a week of constant vigil, Luo Binghe watches, and waits.
Human skin melts into bark. Vines sprout down the length of his right arm, patches of moss fill out his long dark hair, and mushrooms puff their spores into the air. The mane-like mushroom nestles in a hollow where his ribs should be, and little puffballs dot his skin like beauty marks. Scaled patches of lichen creep over his forearms and ankles; Luo Binghe wonders how far they go, whether they decorate his sensitive inner thighs or the soft curve of his ass.
Silently, Luo Binghe bends down and reaches into the cavity of Shen Yuan’s chest to tug free a small section of the bounty it hides, not enough to be noticeable in the morning. Shen Yuan does not stir.
Luo Binghe pops it into his mouth, savoring it, and imagines he feels something taking root inside of him.
“Shizun is beautiful when he sleeps,” Luo Binghe says in the morning, propping his head on his hand to gaze at Shen Yuan over the breakfast table.
“Were you watching me?” Shen Yuan sounds equal parts creeped out and oddly pleased. Luo Binghe smirks.
“Only a little,” Luo Binghe lies. “But this disciple was wondering why he is never permitted to see that side of Shizun while he is awake.”
“What side, what do you mean? What, you want to see me drooling and, and -”
“I already see that,” Luo Binghe says primly. Shen Yuan flushes a deep red and throws a mantou at him. “No, I meant how Shizun really looks.”
“This is how I really look,” Shen Yuan says unconvincingly.
“It’s a body you like, and I like it too, very much. But you’re the spirit of one of the trees around here, aren’t you? One that’s been decaying a long time?”
“I - that’s,” Shen Yuan swallows hard. “I understand if you want to leave. It’s probably about time for you to be getting on with what you need to do, isn’t it?”
“Why would I ever want to leave?” Luo Binghe catches both of Shen Yuan’s hands in his. “I’ve said it before. I want to see all of you, and what I have seen is beautiful. That wasn’t a lie.”
Shen Yuan mutters under his breath, looking away, "...really shouldn't be around me as much as you have. I shouldn't have allowed it -”
“I’m perfectly fine,” Luo Binghe protests.
“You will be.” Shen Yuan mumbles into his sleeve, “probably.”
Things go back to some semblance of normal after that. Shen Yuan, begrudgingly, allows Luo Binghe more glimpses of his true form: a little restraint with his vines, letting his control slip as Luo Binghe lifts his leg over his shoulder for long enough that Luo Binghe can see a dark substance - a slime mold? - spreading in thick tendrils over his inner thigh. He does not allow Luo Binghe to get close to the mushrooms. Once, a puffball sprouts just above the swell of his ass as Luo Binghe is enthusiastically making use of his tongue; when he gives Shen Yuan a reprieve and drops kisses and bites across his skin, Shen Yuan jumps and shies away as soon as Luo Binghe’s nose presses up against it.
Luo Binghe continues to be, to all appearances, fine. His blood thrums in his veins too loudly for Shen Yuan to hear the rot slowly creeping inside him, for now that he knows some of the truth, Luo Binghe cannot resist taking as much as he can get away with from Shen Yuan’s sleeping form. He knows it is doing something to him, changing him, and still he craves more and more. If this is what it feels like for someone who’s ingested his blood, he would not blame them for coming right up to him and taking a bite out of his shoulder. The feeling of Shen Yuan inside him, surrounding him, changing him is like nothing else in the world.
A patch of small yellow mushrooms has crept into the corner of the little cottage, peeking through the slats of the floor. Luo Binghe watches them grow day by day into little cones like paper umbrellas. Every so often, he squats down and carefully helps them to dislodge their spores with the brush of a finger. He does the same with the moss that sprouts starlike flowers in the kitchen, and makes sure it has enough water, too.
“What are you doing?” Shen Yuan asks, his deep-green eyes tracking Luo Binghe’s movements as he painstakingly arranges the ivy descending from the ceiling.
“Some of the leaves weren’t getting enough light,” he replies absently.
Shen Yuan is seated on the floor in his favorite corner of the house, scribbling away at his notes, spread out around him like fallen leaves. He watches Luo Binghe rig up a little hanger from bits of string, the notes momentarily forgotten and a soft look on his face.
When Luo Binghe passes by, on his way out to forage, he meets sudden resistance. A vine snakes out to catch his ankle, brushing teasingly up his calf before letting go.
“Hm?” Luo Binghe turns back, leaning down automatically.
Shen Yuan makes a rope of his long hair and twines it around Luo Binghe’s neck, using it to pull him down into a kiss.
No foraging is done that day.
The local spirits have, apparently, created some kind of harvest festival, which seems to Luo Binghe to be an excuse for an orgy. Despite his own past experience, he’s never taken part in anything like this, but Shen Yuan blithely prattles on about this or that spirit whose yin energy would be just perfect to balance out Luo Binghe’s yang, as if he’s trying to get rid of him.
“How many have you had,” Luo Binghe asks flatly, toying with a lock of Shen Yuan’s hair. It’s mossy today, the texture creeping further and further away from human hair.
“What? Partners? Oh, I don’t know. Not more than you, surely?”
Luo Binghe counts, rapidly. “Ten,” he says.
“Oh. Really?” says Shen Yuan. “I thought it’d be closer to thirty, with how strange you were about going around thanking people by sleeping with them.”
Luo Binghe is not sure if he should be offended.
“So,” he says. “Not more than me?”
“Hm? Oh, more, actually.”
“How many.”
“Does it really matter? I’m not sure of the exact count.”
“Will they all be there?”
“Will they all - Luo Binghe, what is this line of questioning, you silly boy! Why on earth does it matter?”
Luo Binghe placates him with a kiss, and another orgasm, and then another, and quietly, privately seethes.
Despite all his talk, it’s easy, so easy to get Shen Yuan’s attention only on him. Other spirits tangle their bodies together around them under the harvest moon, limbs and vines and tendrils of all kinds meeting with slick, wet sounds. Luo Binghe wonders, still, how many of them have been inside Shen Yuan, how many times he’s been inside of them. But it doesn’t seem to matter, not when Shen Yuan is consuming him from the inside out, not when he belongs wholly to Shen Yuan.
“Want you inside me,” he breathes, all the same, always, always greedy.
He doesn’t expect Shen Yuan to say yes. The atmosphere must be getting to him, though, because a vine creeps downward to tease at Luo Binghe’s entrance the way he’s teased at Shen Yuan’s so many times.
“Yes,” Luo Binghe whines, and “please,” wriggling desperately when the tendril abruptly pulls away.
“Be patient,” Shen Yuan says softly. Nearby, a woman’s cries reach a fever pitch. Another spirit, more creature than human, growls softly as it writhes atop her, impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins, and a third takes their place above the two of them.
Shen Yuan, perhaps unconsciously, has shielded them; not from view, but from intrusions. As Shen Yuan coats his fingers in a viscous sap, a man, tall and beautiful with an impressive rack of antlers, tries to approach, slick already coating his inner thighs and the small nub of his cock standing at attention. Shen Yuan smiles vaguely at him in recognition, slides his fingers into Luo Binghe, and as Luo Binghe’s eyes roll back in his head he sees the man bounce right off an invisible wall surrounding the two of them.
The stranger seems undeterred; by the time Shen Yuan finally, finally enters him, Luo Binghe can see him kneeling over another man’s face, rocking his hips as a long, black tongue laves over him. Others try, too, but Shen Yuan seems not to see them at all, so focused is he on utterly taking Luo Binghe apart.
“You should have - ngh - should have done this before,” Luo Binghe pants, clinging to the sapling behind him for dear life as Shen Yuan holds his hips off the ground and rocks into him. “When you found me. Should have - dual cultivated - I could’ve taken it, I would’ve wanted it -”
“Luo Binghe ,” Shen Yuan says, somehow still scandalized while calmly fucking into Luo Binghe in front of an audience of dozens. “Your guts were falling out all over the ground! Your organs had half melted away!”
“You could’ve fucked a heart back into me,” Luo Binghe says dreamily.
“You’re such a little freak,” Shen Yuan says fondly, and rams into his prostate so hard he sees stars.
Luo Binghe is in ecstasy, except for one thing: Shen Yuan’s form is growing less and less human, and Luo Binghe can barely see him between the tears in his eyes and the angle. Letting out a low, frustrated grunt, Luo Binghe maneuvers himself upright and flips their positions, pinning Shen Yuan to the ground with his cock still buried inside.
Like this, Luo Binghe can let his hands and eyes roam Shen Yuan’s body, riding him at a stuttering, frantic pace. A clear, sweet-smelling sap oozes from the space just above Shen Yuan’s ribs; Luo Binghe has never craved anything more.
He knows Shen Yuan will pull him off, but he bends his head anyway and delicately laps at the fluid. When Shen Yuan just makes a sound low in his throat and doesn’t stop him, he goes further, sealing his lips around the wound and suckling. Shen Yuan’s hand flies to the back of his head, and Luo Binghe prepares to be thrown off, but instead his head is pushed down roughly. His tongue finds every crevice of the small hollow in Shen Yuan’s barklike skin; his eyes cross as a rain of spores descends from the shelf mushrooms above, painting his face in shimmering white.
The one nice thing about an orgy, Luo Binghe decides afterwards, is the easy frame of reference. He can point at another little cluster of people and say “I want that, do that to me,” and Shen Yuan will, often, actually do it. The public claim Shen Yuan has laid on him is nice, too, but Luo Binghe’s brain is melting out his ears after a thin tendril of vines had slid its way inside his cock. He is already trying to find a way to get Shen Yuan to do this with him again.
He wakes up the next morning with pieces of his skin sloughing off.
It’s all right; he’d known it would happen, welcomed it. He can stave off the necrosis for long enough. He won’t die, not really; he’s not sure he’s even capable of dying. He will simply rot away, slowly, forever, and nourish his Shizun’s body forever, and it’s the best thing he can possibly imagine.
Shen Yuan, when he catches sight of the blackened patch on the inside of Luo Binghe’s wrist, does not seem to feel the same.
“We can’t do this anymore,” he says, already putting physical distance between them, as if merely being close enough will cause the rot to spread. “I knew this would happen, I just - didn’t think it would be so fast. I’m so sorry, I didn’t - I got cocky, I - should never have done that, last night -”
“It’s okay,” Luo Binghe says frantically, trying to grasp at his hands. “It’s okay, I’ll be fine -”
“You won’t,” Shen Yuan bursts out. “Even you can’t be, not if it’s this bad, not if you - you need to leave.”
“Shizun -”
“I’m not. I’m not your shizun. You have - you have a home, somewhere, to return to. Even if it’s terrible, you have someplace else to go, right? You have things you need to do, I’m holding you back from that with this - stupid dalliance. I’m sorry, Binghe. I hope you learned something worthwhile, at least.”
“Shen Yuan,” Luo Binghe tries. “If you could let me -”
“It was nice while it lasted,” Shen Yuan says quietly. “Thank you.”
Luo Binghe chokes back a sob.
You cannot belong to someone who does not want you.
Luo Binghe takes his leave.
He wanders for a long time, trying to find a pocket of energy unstable enough to open another rift into the Abyss. Xin Mo’s call returns in full force; where it had been a little itch in the back of his head before, now it rings incessantly in his ears, whispering to him over and over. The forest around him has grown eerily silent, not even a single bird daring to sing. He’s not sure if it’s his own oppressive, roiling demonic qi or something else, something he doesn’t want to think too hard about.
It could have been days or even weeks by the time he finally finds the beginnings of a rift at the edge of a cliff, buffeted by the wind. The passage of time has ceased to have any meaning, only the thrumming in the back of his mind, the only thing he has left to hold onto in this world where he is utterly alone.
He channels demonic qi into the thin place in the barrier between the Demon Realm and the Abyss, gives it more and more of himself until he can feel his consciousness start to slip away. He needs to get to Xin Mo. It can help him. It’s told him so, told him how powerful he’ll be, how he won’t need to worry about anything.
How he can have anything he wants.
As black spots start to swim in his vision and he sways on his feet, he feels something wrap around his ankle. He tries to shrug it off, but it stubbornly holds on, barbs cutting into his flesh as another tendril and another join it to wrap tightly around both his legs. Luo Binghe growls, instinctively creating a blade from the blood he still keeps in a qiankun pouch at his side and slashing at the vines again and again.
They cling to him stubbornly, weeping clear sap. A scent, sweet and slightly earthy, starts to rise, even as they encircle his thighs, his hips, his chest.
He slashes at them again and again, but the barbs only cut into him deeper, the blood flowing freely from the wounds mingling with the clear, sweet sap. He stumbles backward, foot catching - how could he let himself get so confused, disoriented, how could he lose so much of his control -
The vines fall away, withering to nothing in an instant, and he’s held in warm, familiar arms instead.
“You fucking idiot,” Shen Yuan’s voice says witheringly in his ear. “After all the effort I expended keeping you from your obsession with that cursed sword, after all that time training, you’re still going back to it the moment my back is turned?”
“I need it,” Luo Binghe says stubbornly. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“No, you don’t! You’re so powerful on your own, you could do anything you wanted -”
“Not anything.” Luo Binghe’s voice goes small, a lost child.
“Luo Binghe, you’re amazing! You’re worthy of being the protagonist of some heroic tale for future generations, why on earth would you throw that away for some stupid hunk of metal that’s obviously going to do nothing but hurt you?”
“How can I be that person without you?” Luo Binghe bursts out, and bursts into tears.
“What - oh, Binghe. Oh, come here, I’ve got you, come on -”
Carefully, Shen Yuan turns him in his arms until his head comes to rest on Shen Yuan’s collarbone. He’s not wearing the human shape. Luo Binghe buries his head in a shelf of mushrooms and wails pitifully.
“I can’t - come with you, on your quest, or whatever it is you have to do when you leave here,” Shen Yuan says quietly. “You know that. I thought it would be - easier, this way. I didn’t know - I didn’t know. Binghe, I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want a quest,” Luo Binghe sniffles, pressing Shen Yuan down until he’s seated on the ground with Luo Binghe curled in his lap. “Only want you.”
“Silly boy, you can’t mean that. I’m not the kind of creature you stay with. You’ve seen what I am. Binghe, I’ll kill you.”
Luo Binghe thinks of the stag he’d killed here, once. Mushrooms sprouted from its head, branching like a second set of antlers, and patches of its skin were rotted through, showing the bones inside.
It had still had a use.
“If I must die. If I can die,” Luo Binghe amends. “It will be for you, and you only.”
“You - Binghe, that’s -”
“Let me stay here,” Luo Binghe mumbles into the folds of his robes. “Forever. I’ll be so good, so useful to you, so you won’t have to throw me away again.”
“Binghe. You should know by now. I never throw anything away, only let it go back to the earth when it’s served its purpose.”
Shen Yuan draws him up, one hand under his chin, and kisses him, once, decisive.
“Come back to the house with me,” he says, leading Luo Binghe by the hand.