Work Text:
Ming Fan had been enjoying his afternoon. It was springtime and blossoms floated gently on the breeze as the birds chirped high in the air. In a pavilion across the pond, Ning Yingying was plucking at a guqin and gossiping quietly with Wu Yulan.
Luo Binghe had been sent off to An Ding with a delivery alongside little Wen Min, getting them both off the peak for the afternoon. Ming Fan was toying with the idea of signing them up for a dull escort mission with Qian Cao in the next few days just to get them out of his hair. Ning Yingying always complained whenever she thought he’d been too harsh on their shidimen, and it would be easier to do that than to explain, again, how Luo Binghe consistently failed to meet Shizun’s standards and that was why he was being punished.
His standards were, of course, impossible for a boy like that to meet, but that was of no concern to Ming Fan. He was not the head disciple because he had some special understanding of his Shizun. His job was only to carry out orders and make Shizun’s life easier.
But Shizun was off-peak, on a mission with Liu Qingge that he’d complained about not being able to avoid, and so Ming Fan was lying back against a tree and reading a new cultivation manual with the sounds of faint music in his ears. The only laps being run today were the ones he’d ordered of the juniors, and he wasn’t going to bother the hallmasters about punishments unless someone really deserved it.
He turned a page, avoiding a particularly complex diagram about the effects of certain strains of demonic qi on the meridians, and was promptly startled by a shout.
“Ming-shixiong,” panted Wang Xiao, one of the oldest of the juniors, as he ran over the grass. “Shizun’s back early, and he wants you at the bamboo house!”
Ming Fan stuffed his manual into his sleeve and sprang up. “Get back to your laps,” he ordered, and started running.
As he sprinted across the peak, he wondered. Shizun was meant to be gone for days yet, so something must have happened. Had Liu Qingge attacked him again? Had they been fast and successful, or had they failed in quelling the town’s demonic infestation?
Ming Fan slid to a stop at his shizun’s front door. One deep breath, and then he knocked. “This Ming Fan asks permission to enter,” he called out.
“Enter,” he could hear Shen Qingqiu snap, muffled.
Ming Fan opened the door and stepped inside. The room was just as clean as he’d left it the day before, its items untouched. Empty of life.
He turned, hearing movement. Shen Qingqiu was in his bedroom, the door open, but not visible from where Ming Fan stood in the main room.
“Shizun?” he asked carefully, choosing to remain still. There was no answer. “Did Shizun’s mission go well? Does he require something of this disciple?”
Abruptly, Shen Qingqiu appeared at the door to his bedroom. He looked…askew. His robes were mussed, his belt loosened, and strands of his hair had fallen out of their pins. “Liu Qingge is a brute and a failure,” he spat. “That man went haring off after the demon he thought had caused the poisoning, leaving this master to root out the actual infection, and then when he returned with the body, he failed to recall that the blood of Crimson-Crowned Eel-Monkeys is poisonous.” He pinned his eyes on Ming Fan. “Does this master’s head disciple recall its effects?”
Ming Fan wracked his brains. The last time he’d studied creatures had been years ago, but… “Answering Shizun, but doesn’t it cause qi deviations? And…it’s an Eel-Monkey species, so this disciple thinks it probably has different effects on people of different constitutions.”
Shen Qingqiu smiled grimly. “Imperfect. But the renowned Cheng Luan sword did not even know that.” His fingers tightened on the doorframe, his eyes a little manic.
Ming Fan’s eyes caught on the blood splashed across Shen Qingqiu’s front, dyeing his formerly green robes dark. “If Liu-shishu deviated, and Shizun saved him,” he started, fully aware that this was not what a deviating Shen Qingqiu looked like, “then what has the blood done to Shizun?”
His master’s lips thinned. He let go of the doorframe and strode over to Ming Fan. When he stopped, they were mere inches apart, and Shen Qingqiu was staring at him fiercely.
Ming Fan had come into his adult height several years prior, pleased to find that it put him level with his master, and even more pleased when his father’s blood had left him looking strong in addition to tall. Shizun hadn’t liked it, but he wasn’t willing to starve Ming Fan like he did Luo Binghe, so that had been that.
It was helpful, anyway, when he had to attend Shizun in the wake of qi deviations and take him to Qian Cao. A scrawny thing like Luo Binghe would have had a lot more trouble even with muscles made strong from wood-chopping.
“What is Ming Fan willing to do for this master?” Shen Qingqiu asked abruptly. “To what lengths is he willing to go?”
“Anything that Shizun requires,” Ming Fan said immediately, reflexively, wondering what is wrong with him? Why is he breathing like that, why are his eyes so bright—
Shen Qingqiu grabbed the neckline of his robes. “Tell anyone, and I will ruin the Ming,” he hissed.
Despite his confusion, Ming Fan had to suppress a sigh. I’ll ruin your family, Shizun always said, I’ll send your mother back to the brothel, I’ll frame your father for treason, I’ll destroy your cultivation—
It was a refrain. It was the system that Shizun operated under to keep Ming Fan in line, for Ming Fan to be allowed to know any of his secrets, any of his weaknesses. To save himself the shame of needing someone’s help.
Maybe it had been necessary in those first months, when Ming Fan had gone to sleep hurting and shivering and angry, pathetic and weak-willed. But somewhere in the last ten years it had become rote, unnecessary…and almost funny, really.
Shizun didn’t need to say any of it. Ming Fan would not betray Shen Qingqiu, not when he had been given so many gifts. This man had gotten his mother out of the brothel and married to a rich man; this man had taught him cultivation and made him an inner disciple; this man had made him his most trusted person.
This man had given Ming Fan power.
Shen Qingqiu’s gaze was fever-bright and there were spots of color high on his cheeks. Suddenly, Ming Fan recalled the rest of the bestiary entry on Crimson-Crowned Eel-Monkeys.
“Yes, Shizun,” he said, and leaned forward to kiss him.
For a moment, Shen Qingqiu stood still, and then he threw his arms around Ming Fan’s neck and licked into his mouth like an incubus, the demonic blood a dangerous aphrodisiac to his spiritual-cultivator’s constitution.
It wasn’t that Liu Qingge had gotten off easily, not with how dangerous a qi deviation was to any kind of cultivator, but ultimately this kind of aphrodisiac would, if untreated, induce the same result: death.
Shen Qingqiu must have been in its throes already for hours, if not days; it was astonishing that he was still walking and talking, that he had made it back to Qing Jing in one piece. It was likely a testament to his restraint, Ming Fan supposed, and his general avoidance of bodily pleasure. The man did not indulge in food, alcohol, or sleep, and from not only his mother’s reports but having been responsible for the dispersal of his laundry for many years, Ming Fan was also aware that he abstained from the pleasures of the body.
A lesser man would already be dead. Shen Qingqiu was being ravaged, his body pushed out of balance and to extremes; it was impressive that his legs were still managing to support him at all.
“What exactly does Shizun need?” Ming Fan asked when they separated, pushing his master back by the shoulders, his lips tingling. “This disciple will do it.”
“Surely your mother taught you,” Shen Qingqiu snapped, grabbing the chest of his robes again and trying to pull him close. He was trembling.
Ming Fan put an arm around his waist and moved, pushing-pulling him toward the bedroom. This was where Shen Qingqiu had left evidence of himself today: the sheets were a mess; the curtains drawn. “My honored mother knows little about cultivation,” he reported steadily, “but this disciple understands the methods of dual-cultivation. Does Shizun need his mouth, his pillar, or something else?”
Shen Qingqiu’s hands became like iron on his neck, his jaw. “Shizun,” he whispered, every word a blade, “is aflame, and his weak, useless body needs his stupid disciple’s yang energy to douse it.”
Ming Fan met his glare. “Then this one will do it.” He ignored the grip and set his own hands to disrobing them, to tearing off their belts and robes, layers sliding off like water.
Shen Qingqiu’s skin was red and irritated, his scars standing out white in the expanse. His inner robes were damp with sweat, and his trousers worse, already covered in come. Ming Fan peeled them off and pressed him to the bed. Instead of lying back, though, his master snarled at him and got up onto his hands and knees, his rear presented, the forbidden sight of his back on full display.
Something in Ming Fan squeezed. “Shizun would prefer this?”
“Just do it,” Shen Qingqiu spat. “I’m ready.”
His hole was glistening, and Ming Fan realized there was an open bottle of oil on the nightstand to his left. It wasn’t the thick sexual lubricant offered at Qian Cao, but some kind of hair or sword oil.
Ming Fan shrugged off his last layers and put a hand on his master’s hip, feeling bone through skin. He would be a fool to try for reassurance, to tell him to relax. Shen Qingqiu had already decided how this would go.
He lined up his cock and pushed, sinking in. It was swallowed greedily, and he heard Shen Qingqiu gasp as if he were being choked. When Ming Fan seated himself fully, his moan was echoed.
Shen Qingqiu’s body was hot and inviting, and Ming Fan fell naturally into rhythm, into thrusting in and out and watching as his cock disappeared into the sordid embrace of his master’s hole. Shen Qingqiu lost the last of the strength in his arms and fell to the bed, rocking against the mattress with every shove, and it was clear that the aphrodisiac had him in full grip because he was making noises that Ming Fan had never heard.
“Please—more—”
Ming Fan leaned over him, covering those scars, gripping his waist, biting at his shoulders and making him cry out. He had been whipped by this man, hurt, ordered to do cruel and inane things, shaped like clay into the disciple Shen Qingqiu desired. He had also watched as the man fell prey to his own weaknesses and heart demons, the deviations occurring like clockwork.
Countless times had Ming Fan found his master shivering on the floor, bleeding, and wiped his face with a damp cloth and taken him to bed. Countless times he had had ceramic thrown at him as he ran to call for Mu Qingfang, worried that this would be the last. Ming Fan had been hit and clawed and even bitten trying to care for his master when some awful memory would take him, when he only knew how to lash out at the feel of hands on his skin.
Then, Ming Fan had learned how to pin him down, how to force stillness into him, how to get him into a bath and let down his hair and comb it until Shen Qingqiu had words again. How to use his own qi to calm the storm. How to offer the plainest congee because most days that was all his master could stomach even if he wouldn’t admit it. How to fend off the sect leader from evening visits, because there was nothing that set his master off more than words like I’m sorry and Xiao-Jiu.
Ming Fan had not been magically granted these privileges. He had fought for them, weathered storms and abuse until he was the only thing standing that could yet support Shen Qingqiu. Ming Fan let his master rail at him, curse him, threaten his family and livelihood as if it still mattered, as if he wasn’t here because he wanted to be.
And when Shen Qingqiu was dying, when he was poisoned, when his own body betrayed him, it was Ming Fan he ran to like an animal to its hole; Ming Fan whom he ordered to fuck him so that his life might be saved.
Ming Fan dug his teeth into his master’s skin like a claim, sheathed his pillar within him like a husband to his wife. He flooded the body beneath him with his yang energy, his duty and desire mingling, and forced it through Shen Qingqiu’s lower dantian and into his veins, clearing the heavy static of the poison that had been strangling them.
His master gasped and clenched upon him, body releasing like a rope that had been cut.
He collapsed to the bed, and Ming Fan had the presence of mind to roll of off his back as he went with. They laid there panting.
Ming Fan recovered first, having had a relaxing morning and zero poisonings to his name. He shifted and took Shen Qingqiu’s limp wrist, testing his meridians, reaching out with qi that had never been limited by whatever twisted techniques haunted his master’s past.
Shen Qingqiu, exhausted, tried to tug his wrist away, but Ming Fan did not let him, waiting until he had completed the circuit.
“It’s gone,” Shen Qingqiu hissed at him, hoarse. “Leave me be.”
Ming Fan watched him for a moment. “Can Shizun move, or would he like this disciple to draw him a bath?” he asked quietly. It did not look as though he was in any state to wash himself, let alone fill the tub, and his master had always prized cleanliness.
Shen Qingqiu shut his eyes.
Suppressing a sigh, Ming Fan reached over to pull the pins out of his shizun’s hair, releasing the long mass to the bed. He deposited them on the nightstand and then pulled the drawer open, seeking a familiar red jar. He left it next to the pins and then stood up to go prepare a bath.
Himself, he wiped down with a wet towel before re-dressing. His was merely a uniform, even at the head disciple level; it was easily washable. He did not mind the splash of water as he filled the tub, nor when he lifted Shen Qingqiu into his arms to take him to the bath.
“Put me down,” Shen Qingqiu hissed, gripping his wrist painfully tightly. “I am not an invalid!”
“Shizun was poisoned,” Ming Fan insisted. “When he can stand again without shaking, this disciple will put him down.”
The resulting fingernail marks in his wrist were worth the rebuke. Thusly did he get his master into the bath and cleaned up and re-dressed. When he carried him back into the bedroom, Shen Qingqiu was breathing hard despite having mostly been manhandled by his disciple.
He laid him down on his stomach upon clean sheets.
“Now leave,” Shen Qingqiu told him, his expression tight in the way that told Ming Fan he was in pain.
“Allow this disciple one more impertinence,” Ming Fan said staunchly, and reached over to pick up the red jar.
“This master does not need—”
Ming Fan laid a hand on the back of his waist, pressing gently, and Shen Qingqiu’s words cut off with a hiss.
As much as his master did not like to be seen as weak, or to lose his pride, he also hated to be in pain. And as good as he was at disguising it, Ming Fan had cataloged the things that made his shizun grit his teeth and wince and clam up—or, sometimes, lash out.
It was his fingers, sometimes, and his wrists; his left knee; his back. As the years had progressed and Ming Fan had been granted glimpses of the body beneath the layers of robes, he had seen the scars and understood the cause.
It was not his place to ask. It was not really even his place to soothe, and yet if he did not do it, who would? Shen Qingqiu would allow no other so close, not even Mu Qingfang—not even Yue Qingyuan, who paid dearly for the mere hope of such a privilege and was rebuked time and time again.
Ming Fan pushed the hem of Shen Qingqiu’s tunic up, his trousers waist down, and scooped up the unguent to apply to his back. His master made no noise, but Ming Fan felt the tension in his body. He smoothed the balm across the muscles, across the worst of the scars, and then withdrew, tugging his inner robes back into place.
He twisted the lid shut on the jar and wiped his hand on the towel he had brought for the purpose. “Unless Shizun has anything else for him, this disciple will take his leave.”
“Out,” Shen Qingqiu demanded, his face muffled in a pillow, his braided hair coiled over his shoulder where Ming Fan had left it.
The hem of his tunic was slightly rumpled, askew across his thighs, not because it had fallen that way naturally, but because Ming Fan had arranged it so.
Shen Qingqiu was alive, his pain eased, because Ming Fan had given himself, had pushed his master down and fucked him.
It wasn’t taming. Ming Fan might wake up tomorrow to find that Shizun had ordered him to the discipline hall for overstepping or assigned him to the escort mission he’d been planning to drop onto Luo Binghe. He might be forced to attend to his master with a back aching from the discipline whip and to pour tea and have it splashed back into his face for some perceived insult.
But that paled in comparison to what he had taken for himself: that the other peak lords often treated with Ming Fan in lieu of Shen Qingqiu; that he had mostly taken over training the disciples, both junior and senior; that Shen Qingqiu trusted him with his life.
That, sometimes, he felt like a first wife attending to her husband’s household, and sometimes, like a husband managing his demanding first wife.
Ming Fan would never be a first-rate cultivator, not the most powerful or the most learned. In those areas, he disappointed his shizun constantly—and yet, his shizun was also satisfied with that, because he despised being surpassed.
So, yes, he was content with what he had. It was more than he would have been granted back home, the second son of a tea farmer and his former prostitute of a di-wife. Ming Fan would have been a small-time rich boy who married young and tended the accounts.
Following Shizun, attending to him, having this power in what might as well have been their combined home given how much time Ming Fan spent existing within it, arranging it, controlling it…
The time was coming for Ming Fan to step down as head disciple, for him to transition into a hallmaster role or to leave the peak and set out on his own. But when it did, he would remain here. Shizun would never countenance being proposed to, but if he saw that he could keep Ming Fan on as an attendant, keep on the one person who knew these secrets of his, Ming Fan knew what his decision would be.
And so Ming Fan would stay close to him, because he had ensured his indispensability, because he wanted it.
He took one last look at his master, at the rise and fall of his back as he breathed, at the way cracks of light from the blinds lay across the sheets.
Then he closed the door softly and left.