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Chapter Text

They broke his body and the failed bond shattered his meridians and when he was nothing but broken broken broken, locked in the dark with only his terror and Xuan Su for company

he forgot, for a while, that he was meant to be human.

He was pain and regret and more pain and it's not like he could see himself in the pitch black of the cave. Something bled all over the walls, the floor and even the ceiling, and it could very well have been that neither sword nor boy knew how much blood there was supposed to be in the human body and that was all. It would have been strange, but not the strangest thing to ever happen. If some of the marks on the stone looked too much like claw marks, that was only a coincidence. Some luckily spaced sword slashes, his Shizun insisted when Mu shidi pointed them out the day they came to fetch him.

He eventually put himself back together, after all. Xiao Jiu was expecting his Qi-ge, not whatever the thing thrashing against the walls of the cave was. He sheathed Xuan Su - he didn't remember the heavy scabbard, carved bone and eerily warm to the touch, but the metal inlay matched the sword so surely it was already there. He just forgot about it. His Shizun stared at the bleached bone, his face going pale as a sheet, and ordered everyone not to touch it, as if it would bite anyone who was not Yue Qi.

Xiao Jiu was his reason, the center of his world, so he put himself together to be the best and warmest big brother his Xiao Jiu could ever want - and he would never talk about the thing in the cave. When he let himself think too long on it he was certain that Yue Qi died in the dark and he's whatever beast of pain and guilt that hatched from his corpse.

He couldn't bear to tell Xiao Jiu that Qi-ge wasn't strong enough to survive, not even for his sake, so he said nothing. Continues to say nothing. Whatever betrayal Xiao Jiu imagines, it couldn't possibly measure up to the enormity of Qi-ge's failure.

It takes a small thing to unmake him, in the grand scheme of things. He is walking with Shen Qingqiu from the latest Peak Lord meeting when something strange tickles the back of his throat. The tiniest bit of suspicious pollen that escaped the Medicine Peak's greenhouse, maybe a whiff of some rare beast Liu Qingge dragged back to show off to his disciples.

It's the strangest sneeze he ever experienced, one that seems to upend the very world, and when he focuses his eyes again Shen Qingqiu is staring at him with a wild mixture of fascination, anger and terror. Only when he opens his maws to ask what startled the other when he realizes that the shell of Sect Leader Yue has unraveled to show the beast he became in the dark.

Xiao Jiu was never meant to see him like this, never meant to discover the beast under the shell, so he never bothered to fix this part of himself. As far as he can tell from a cursory glance (Xiao Jiu makes a noise of distress when the beast tries to turn his head to take stock of himself, so he immediately turns back) he looks mostly like a dragon, albeit one that someone tried to put through a round or three of lingchi, skin and scales and flesh peeling from where he rubbed it raw against the walls of the cave. Makes sense, he thinks. He hasn't seen it in years, but there is a dragon etched into Xuan Su's blade.

Remembering his sword, he looks around in alarm to locate it.

"It's right there." Xiao Jiu sounds unusually queasy as he gestures towards the beast's chest. He twists his long neck until he can see and oh, there it is, safe and snug, sheathed between his ribs. He breathes deep to feel his lungs expand against it, twists around to see if any movement would dislodge it or not, but it's safe there. It doesn't hurt one bit. It belongs there.

"Thank you, Xiao Jiu." It comes out a little garbled, but he brightens up to discover that he can still speak, right until the moment Xiao Jiu makes a hysterical hiccuping sound. He made that noise before, when a horse kicked his Qi-ge and he thought the hoof had caved his skull in.

"Don't speak. Please ." After a moment of silence he rallies anew and swiftly strips off his outer robe so he can throw it over the beast's head. "And don't you dare take that off!"

It smells like Xiao Jiu, so the beast that was once Qi-ge is content to stay where he is while Shen Jiu turns into a hurricane of action - he drags Mu shidi and his medics over, yells at the disciples until they clear out one of the isolated stone gardens for him, sends runners to Wan Jian and to every peak's library pavilion to see if they can dig up anything useful - and all the while he is bombarding Mu Qingfang with questions, having soon sussed out that their shidi knows something about this situation.

While Xiao Jiu rakes poor Mu shidi over the coals the beast sits placidly among the many senior medics, listening to the Qian Cao head disciple mumble under her breath while she notes down all their findings. So, he's not quite a dragon, after all. Some parts of him are still clearly Yue Qi. That thought makes him smile a little as he looks down at one of his hands, rubbing the dried blood off his shattered claws. He broke all of them, trying to get out of the cave, as well as most of his bones. He is absently aware that he is in agony, but he can't fully comprehend what that means right now, so it's fine. No reason to make the medics worry over it.

The head disciple makes a very interesting noise of disbelief when someone reports that some of his bones are actually swords, apparently. They are not sure what his guts are made of, but based on the sudden, alarmed sounding whispers, it's probably nothing pleasant.

They let him take the robe off his head, but they have hastily covered all the surfaces where he might see his own reflection and some of them look decidedly green whenever they look at him directly, so he buries his face back in the soft fabric and lets his world narrow down to the scent of his Xiao Jiu.

He must have dozed off, because when he wakes up all the medics have left. It's only him in the garden and a tired looking Xiao Jiu. He sits up to show the other that he's aware and listening.

"Qi-ge, what have you done to yourself?" Xiao Jiu looks angry and hurt and all the things Yue Qi doesn't want him to be. "All these years. If only you had told me! Didn't I deserve to know?!"

Yue Qi hangs his head in shame. Opens his mouth, but swallows the well-worn 'sorry' down before it could escape from between his cracked teeth.

At long last Xiao Jiu sighs. Then slowly, bashfully, spreads his arms. "Aren't you going to comfort me? I'm giving you permission, just this once. Come down here and hug me, Qi-ge."

Joy surges through Yue Qi and he collapses into Xiao Jiu's arms before he can think twice about it and he's back , he's as human again as he will ever be, two arms, two legs and two eyes brimming with tears as he clutches his Xiao Jiu.

Xuan Su clatters to the ground and Xiao Jiu clutches him right back, long nails hooking into his back like they never want to let him go. "Don't you dare scare me like that ever again! Stupid Qi-ge."

Yue Qi can't promise the impossible, can't bear to lie to his Xiao Jiu. But he murmurs the promise that he will try his best into the silk of Xiao Jiu's robes and that has to be good enough for now.

"We will work on it, together," Xiao Jiu orders indulgently and Yue Qi doesn't remember the last time he was this happy.

For the first time since the caves he feels that maybe the boy and the beast are the same thing after all. They have to be, to hold the same love.

Chapter Text

Shen Qingqiu is walking with the Sect Leader, planning on what excuse to use to get Yue Qingquan off his back when he feels it. A light scratching at the back of his throat, urging him to sneeze. He resists, of course, would never be caught doing something so mundanely mortal when there are disciples lurking around  - there always are, on Qiong Ding, on the lookout to call Yue Qingyuan away with an excuse if the horrible Shen Qingqiu upsets him too much. His shixiong, however, cultivated a much more approachable image, so he can sneeze to his heart’s content.

He turns towards the Sect Leader, a sharp comment on the tip of his tongue, and freezes when he sees… Yue Qi?

The creature where the Sect Leader stood still has a mostly humanoid face that is very reminiscent of Yue Qi - the boy he knew, features soft with youth, rather than the chiseled features of their illustrious Sect Leader. The rest of him, however, is certainly something else. The closest analogue he can think of is that someone chopped off choice pieces of Yue Qi - his face, his hands, the scarred stretch of his lower back where he was branded - threw away the rest and then shoved parts of what seems to be a dead dragon in place of what was missing. He seems to be held together not so much by skin - did someone try to flay this thing?? What little scaled skin he can see hangs in useless tatters from the body - but by syrup-thick blood that oozes sluggishly from a seemingly endless number of injuries.

Xuan Su sticks out of his chest, the only thing on him still pristine and clean of blood. The sword almost seems more real than the body it’s lodged in, radiant with spiritual power.

Too dark eyes focus on Shen Qingqiu and the creature opens his mouth as if to speak. His jaw splits open all the way halfway down his neck, revealing vivid red flesh and an ungodly amount of broken teeth. It’s going to haunt Shen Qingqiu in his nightmares.

Yue Qi - he’s certain that this is Yue Qi, and he’s going to find whoever cursed him and personally rip them to shreds - seems to realize that something happened to him and tries to bend his long neck back to examine himself. Shen Qinqiu makes an undignified sound of terror when the movement parts the tattered skin at the base of Yue Qi’s throat and he sees the bright glints of blades within the skin.

Shen Qingqiu thinks the sight might have driven him into a qi deviation, because the next shichen is a dark blur in his memory. (A gurgling, wet voice saying his name, a perverted echo of Yue Qi’s usual warm cadence - it’s lodged into the back of his mind and for years to come he breaks out in cold sweat every time he remembers it.)

He sends for Mu Qingfang and his emergency curse team, for Wei Qingwei, for anyone who might have even a passing idea how to fix it, they can’t leave Yue Qingyuan like this! Despite his very understandable panic, Shen Qingqiu works the best under pressure and he regains his calm mask before his sect siblings get there.

The first to arrive at the isolated meditational garden he hastily cleared out to hide Yue Qi from curious eyes are Mu-shidi and Wei-shidi. Neither of them seems surprised. Wei Qingwei’s expression shifts into something pensive as soon as he lays eyes on Yue Qi, meanwhile Mu Qingfang stares at their cursed shixiong with naked horror.

“This is so much worse than I thought,” Mu-shidi says in a faint voice.

“Yes, but it does explain a lot.”

Before they arrived Shen Qingqiu didn’t suspect that they had anything to do with the curse. After hearing that, however, he grabs both of his shidis by the arm, drags them into one of the empty offices around the yard and slaps a privacy talisman on the door.

“Tell me every detail that you know of this situation. Everything. ”

Mu Qingfang and Wei Qingwei exchange a look and then start talking. The picture unfolding before Shen Qiingqiu’s eyes is leagues worse than what he could have imagined.

“Let me summarize.” At one point Mu Qingfang’s head disciple brings them tea, but none of them feel like drinking, so they end up sitting around the table, hands clasped too tight around their cups. “Yue Qi tried to bond with a sword not fit for him - the strongest sword on Wan Jian. And instead of accepting him, it tried to eat him?! ”

“Yes.” Wei Qingwei is the calmest about this madness, but even he’s gazing into his teacup with a haunted expression. “Because it was actually a yao. Happens sometimes, when a sword survives its previous master and we don’t perform the correct rites in time. They are mostly harmless if there are other swords there to keep them company so we keep them at the sword hall, but this is why we warn every disciple to only approach a sword that calls out to them.”

“Xuan Su tried to absorb Yue Qi’s cultivation by burning up his meridians, so the former sect leader broke his every bone and threw him into the caves to - to what? To die?”

“The caves can purify corrupted qi. Even if the sword managed to take over his body, the flesh would have died eventually and the yao would have become dormant again.” Mu Qingfang stares almost unblinkingly out the window, watching vigilantly as his disciples poke and prod at the Sect Leader. “We had a whole array of qi sensing talismans set up. I was there when the Sect Master went to the caves to recover his body. We were all shocked to find him looking normal - he seemed completely human! - and the sword was safely contained in its sheath. The Sect Leader thought Yue-shixiong must have somehow subdued the sword and named him as his successor that very day.”

Shen Qingqiu never wanted to drag someone back down from heaven to strangle them with his own two hands before, but today is a day full of revelations it seems. 

“But that’s not what happened.”

“No.”

“What did happen, then? Speculate, if you have to. We need to get to the bottom of this and we need to start somewhere.”

“Well, if we can speculate, I think Xuan Su tried to consume Yue Qi from the inside out and take a form that was powerful enough to break out of the caves, but its life force ran out before it could finish him. So Yue-shixiong was left with the yao half merged into him and then he just,-” Wei Qingwei makes a complicated and nonsensical gesture with his hands. “-willed himself back into a human form, I suppose.”

“Just willed himself back,” Shen Qingqiu echoes, unconvinced. 

“It’s not impossible if he had a strong enough motivation to want to be human.” Mu Qingfang finally tears his eyes away from the window, only to give Shen Qingqiu an infuriating look of sympathy. “Forgive this Qingfang for overstepping, but it's clear that Zhangmen-shixiong cares deeply about Shen-shixiong. As soon as we cleared him for night hunts after the incident, he went to get you.”

“Oh, he told you all about that, hasn’t he?!” It must be the stress and the sheer absurdity of the situation getting to him, but Shen Qingqiu can’t conceal how incensed he is. It’s out of character enough that Mu Qingfang reaches over the table to grab his wrist and direct a soothing stream of qi into him. It forces the red away from the edge of his vision and extinguishes his pounding headache before it could bloom into a proper qi deviation.

“Shixiong, as the head disciple of the medicine peak, I was tasked to erase the scars his former life left on Yue-shixiong, same as I did for you.” His eyes flick down meaningfully to Shen Qingqiu’s neck, where the slave mark was once burned into his skin, long erased without a trace. “I would have to be a blind fool to never make the connection between you and the ‘Xiao Jiu’ Yue-shixiong so often talked about.”

Shen Qingqiu deflates a little, unable to argue with that logic. He turns his face away, looking out the window instead, and notes with a pang of jealousy that Yue Qi buried his face in Quinqiu’s robe, apparently asleep.

“All these years he let me believe that he never came. That he moved on with his new life and left me behind.”

“Shixiong, far be it from me to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong, but how would you have explained something like this? If your situation was reversed, would you have the words to explain to him that you ruined yourself for his sake and still came up short?”

Mu Qingfang usually doesn’t involve himself in interpeak politics, so Shen Qingqiu had a neutral opinion on him before today. He’s swiftly reconsidering his stance on his shidi, filing him under ‘infuriating when correct’ along with Yue Qi and Qi-shimei instead. 

Soon after this Mu Qingfang excuses himself to go talk to his disciples, leaving Shen Qingqiu standing at the window, staring morosely at the sleeping Yue Qi and Wei Qingwei still sitting awkwardly at the table.

“Qingqiu-shixiong.” Shen Qingqiu turns halfway away from the window to pin his shidi with a glare. “I don’t know any of the medical stuff, but I know a bit about sword yao. That is… how to say this…”

Frustrated, he pulls his sword and drops it on the table next to the teacup. There’s a spike of qi in the room and the next moment Shen Qingqiu is blinking owlishly at the big, iron-scaled pangolin sitting where the sword was. He has seen that creature before - has seen his shidi use it as an anvil even - and always assumed it was some kind of spiritual beast.

“I didn’t realize that was your sword,” he admits in a faint voice.

“Yeah, well, we try not to make too much noise about it. My Zhenzhen is so cute, half the disciples would try to get a yao for a sword if they knew about her.” Shen Qingqiu can see some logic in this, at least. “Anyway, bonded yao will try and make themselves into something that their cultivator needs. There’s notes about them turning into pets or horses - or lovers, you’d… probably not be surprised how common that is, actually - or, well.” He pats the sides of his pangolin and it squares up its scales into a proper shape for an anvil. “But they can’t read your mind, so the first step in making that work is telling them what you want them to be. If Yue-shixiong works like something yao-adjacent, then you are his human, so…”

“You want me to tell him to turn back into a human?”

“He seemed very confused about what he is, so maybe not so bluntly,” Wei-shidi admits, tickling the soft underbelly of the pangolin. “I know you have your reasons for pushing him away. If you don’t want to, then I’m certain A-Fang and his horde of disciples will figure something out soon enough. But if you can bring yourself to humor him, then it would not hurt to try.”

“I’ll put it under consideration.”

“That’s good enough for me. Come on, Zhenzhen, say goodbye to the sharp shixiong. We are going to the peak library.” 

Shen Qingqiu watches in a daze as the pangolin lifts one clawed paw in a wave before it turns back into a sword. He stays rooted in the spot after they leave, silently counting to fifty in case this all turns out to be a bizarre dream after all. When he’s done he takes a look at the abandoned teacups on the table, then pulls out a jar of wine from his qiankun sleeve - something he confiscated from an enterprising disciple just this morning - and drinks until he feels like he can walk out of this room without having a qi deviation.

When he stands in front of Yue Qi he wishes he could blame how unbalanced he feels on the wine, but even his pathetic cultivation can nullify the effect of such cheap alcohol.

“Qi-ge, what have you done to yourself?” he asks, staring into the familiar-unfamiliar face. “All these years. If only you had told me! Didn't I deserve to know?!”

Yue Qi has no answer for him. He turns his face away in shame, as always. 

Shen Qingqiu wants to yell at him, to grab him by the neck and shake him until the answers fall out, wants to rip him into pieces and put him back together in the shape of his Qi-ge…

He takes a deep breath and swallows down the violent urges. They wouldn’t help. They never have before. Despite everything, Yue Qi tried to be there for him, even when he pushed him away with all his might and hurled insults at him at every turn. It’s time for him to return the favor.

A bonded yao will try to be what its cultivator needs. What Shen Qingqiu needs, more than anything, is his Qi-ge. He opens his arms, asking for a hug the same way he used to when they were children. "Aren't you going to comfort me? I'm giving you permission, just this once. Come down here and hug me, Qi-ge."

He doesn’t dare to look. Not until he feels the warm arms around him, the broad back under his hands, Qi-ge’s face pressed into his neck as he cries into Shen Jiu’s shirt. He tightens his arms around Yue Qi and possessively digs his nails into his back, uncaring if he draws blood.

His Qi-ge returned to him. Yao or man or god, Qi-ge is his , and he’s never letting him go ever again.

Chapter Text

Mu-shidi comes back, to poke and prod and examine qi levels and grumble beneath his breath that they politely ignore, and finally to decree that Yue Qingyuan is free to go do whatever he wants as long as he takes it easy for the next week and then goes to Qian Cao for a checkup afterwards.

Which leaves them here, in Yue Qi’s almost barren and much too big bedroom, standing hand in hand next to the bed like it’s some great beast to be defeated rather than simple furniture. It’s a sad, pathetic room, for a sad, pathetic man who until today has been missing the better part of his soul. The only thing of any note is the soft cloth laid down over the covers on the unused side of the bed, where Yue Qi usually lays Xuan Su when he retires to sleep.

“I can’t believe you live like this!” Shen Qingqiu scoffs at the barren walls and cold wood floor. His voice echoes unpleasantly, like this was a tomb instead of a home. “This will have to change. The next time you get your pay we are going to go to the city and buy all the things you need to turn this into a sect leader’s house rather than an ascetic’s cell!”

“I will buy whatever is needed to make this space comfortable for A-Jiu,” Yue Qi acquiesces easily, smiling like every word out of Shen Qingqiu’s mouth made his day brighter. A day before Shen Qingqiu would have hit him over the head and berated him for such brazen behavior, because what kind of man even says something like this?!

But his Qi-ge is not a man, not anymore, so it’s okay. Shen Qingqiu lets go of his hand to step in front of him instead and cups that familiar face in his hands. The trust and the adoration in Yue Qi’s eyes is just too much, it makes the planned barb die unsaid on his tongue. “For us ,” he insists instead, like he’s correcting a stubborn puppy. He will repeat this until it gets through to Qi-ge, he needs him to be his person , not his tool. “There’s no Xiao Jiu without his Qi-ge.”

Yue Qi doesn’t have the words to answer him. Instead he leans in for a kiss, clumsy and eager and soft, so full of adoration that Shen Qingqiu feels like he’s filling up to the brim with warmth. It’s everything he wanted his first real kiss to be.

Wei Qingwei said that yao sometimes become their master’s lovers. Shen Jiu thinks he wouldn’t mind having Yue Qi as a lover. He pictured it often enough when he filled the shelves of his bamboo hut with all those gifts, imagined Yue Qingyuan coming to him with a gift that can’t be mistaken for a bribe or an expression of his guilt and asking to court him like he still cared, like Shen Qingqiu was still worth something in his eyes.

He tugs and Yue Qi comes easily, moving exactly how he wants him to, following his lead in everything. He feels safe in Yue Qi’s arms, even when he starts taking a little bit of incentive, mouth and hands wandering over Shen Qingqiu’s body, leaving trails of fire in their wake. It’s perfect. His Qi-ge is perfect for him.

Despite his passion, he yields easily when Shen Qingqiu calls a stop to the kissing before it could escalate to anything more, and just as easily hands Xuan Su over when Shen Qingqiu asks to clear the air about their long misunderstanding.

“So that’s why you never unsheathe Xuan Su.”

He’s sitting cross-legged on the bed a little while later, the ominous sword laid across his lap. Yue Qingyuan has lazily stretched out on the bedding, looking up at Shen Jiu with a soft smile. Smitten fool of a sect leader.

“En.”

Shen Qingqiu runs his fingers over the ornate bone scabbard, fascinated by its almost body-like warmth. In hindsight, he’s surprised nobody has made the connection before. He trails his fingers back and forth over the carvings until Yue Qi lets out a contented sigh. “That’s really nice, A-Jiu. You are so nice to me.”

He pauses for a moment as the comment registers. When he starts again he runs his nails over the bone, scratching over the divots and watches as Yue Qi's face flushes with pleasure, his soft mouth opening with a wretchedly indecent moan. “You can feel that?”

“Yes. It feels so good, right here.” Yue Qi claws at his own chest, squirming on the bed. “Please, do it again, please.”

He does it once, indulgent (Yue Qi keens so beautifully for him). Then shushes the other and soothes him with light pets as he considers the implications. “In your other form the sword is in your chest.” The Qian Cao disciples thought it was stuck initially, but the head disciple’s notes clearly stated that the ‘sword’ was an integral part of Yue Qi, likely an outgrowth of a bone or other, same as with all the other blades bisecting his flesh. “Do you think perhaps it would be better if it were not apart from your body?”

Yue Qi idly taps his fingers on his chest as he thinks, before he turns a sly smirk on Shen Qingqiu. “A-Jiu, do you want to stab me?”

“Maybe I do. Will you let me?”

“Yes.” There’s not even a hint of hesitation. Ridiculous creature, Yue Qi. His ridiculous creature.

“Will it hurt you?” Shen Jiu is a greedy man. He would rather destroy what he can’t have anymore, but he takes good care of what is his.

“There is only one way to find out.”

They peel Yue Qingyuan out of his robes together until his chest is bare. No need to get blood on the expensive fabrics if there is any. Shen Qingqiu kneels over him, Xuan Su poised to stab, the blunt tip of the scabbard hovering over Qingyuan’s sternum. “Here?”

“A little lower.” Big, warm hands guide Qingqiu until the sword tip is just in position to slip under his heart and in between the lungs, mirroring its position from his other form. When Shen Qingqiu rests the weight of the blade on Yue Qingyuan’s skin he makes a soft, breathless little noise. “That’s the spot.”

Shen Qingqiu bears down, just a little bit, and watches in fascination as the skin parts easily like the sect leader is a thing of soft clay or an overripe peach - anything other than messy human flesh. There is a little blood, once the blunt tip of the scabbard presses further in, but it's syrup-thick and clings to the bleached, carved bone. Perhaps because of the indecent noises Yue Qingyuan is making, but all Shen Qingqiu can think of is lubricant to ease the way, as if the body beneath him was made to be penetrated.

“Good?” He asks, more as an excuse to slow down and marvel at Yue Qingyuan’s expression than because he needs any kind of reassurance.

“Yes. Please, A-Jiu. Please give me more!” As a child he always found it strange that his empty, false tears appealed to people more when Qi-ge could beg so sweetly it made you want to wrap the world into a present and lay it before his feet. He would have caved much earlier and forgiven him if he begged him like this.

So he gives him more, feeding the sheathed steel into his chest bit by bit. He adjusts his hold when enough of the ornate scabbard has disappeared into Yue Qi that he should have already hit bone or the bed beneath him, but it’s nothing but a smooth, steady press in. The motion shifts the sword a little and Qingyuan gasps in a mix of pain and fear when he thinks Shen Qingqiu is going to try to pull it back out, his hand flying up to Qingqiu’s to hold it there.

He shushes Yue Qi, pressing firmer on the hilt from a new, better angle and pets along the straining, sweaty chest of the man beneath him to distract him from the minute discomfort.

“Qi-ge looks so good under me,” Shen Qingqiu croons to him, captivated by the look of rapture returning to Yue Qi’s face. Pleasure has always been a good look on his Qi-ge, even when they were children and the greatest pleasure they could share was a bit of tanghulu. Yue Qi strains up against the press of the sword, reaching for Qingqiu, begging silently for a kiss. Shen Qingqiu wants to bite him , pin him down and claw him to ribbons, make him fall apart when it’s something other than cold steel and warm bone filling him up.

He bears down a little more and they meet in an electric kiss, Yue Qi submitting easily to the demanding press of his lips. His eyes are hazy with pleasure and adoration and Shen Qingqiu wants to pluck them from his head and keep them forever.

They both startle at the sound of a door breaking, Shen Qingqiu bearing down with his full weight on the sword in his surprise until it slips completely into Yue Qi, his palms now flattened on a heaving chest. Yue Qingyuan’s noise of ecstasy is drowned out by the worried cry of Shen Qingqiu’s least favorite shidi.

“Zhangmen-shixiong!” Liu Qingge kicks the bedroom door open and comes sailing in with killing intent and his sword aimed at Shen Qingqiu, who sits frozen in place because he has no trick up his sleeve right now and no time to draw Xiu Ya and defend himself.

There’s a sudden spike of qi and a shift ; Shen Qingqiu is straddling a thick, serpentine body and Cheng Luan clangs off a scaled limb that’s more edge than flesh. The bewildered Liu Qingge barely manages to call his sword back before Yue Qingyuan surges forward and pins him to the wall, hissing at their shidi in warning, his mouth parting to reveal seemingly endless maws of knife-like teeth.

Liu Qingge’s eyes roam the elongated body of Yue Qi for a weak spot until he spots the sword sticking out of his chest.

“A sword yao?! Shen-shixiong, get away from it!” As touching as it would be any other time to learn that Liu-shidi’s protectiveness apparently extends to him too, right now it’s just a nuisance.

“Enough, shidi! It’s just our sect leader.”

“But-”

“No buts! Mu-shidi and Wei-shidi both confirmed that the sword spirit has long dissipated. Yue-shixiong’s present state is simply the gruesome aftermath.” This is enough to make Liu Qingge stop struggling so hard, but he still turns a look of suspicion towards Yue Qingyuan.

“How long?”

“Since before I became the head disciple.” Yue Qi’s voice is still strange, echoes from deep within his chest, but it no longer sounds viscerally wet. He closes his mouth most of the way and his face returns to something far more recognizable, even if still distorted. “Stand down, Liu-shidi. I don’t want to harm you.”

Liu Qingge finally allows his sword to drop. “This shidi begs his shixiongs’ forgiveness for the misunderstanding!”

Yue Qi folds back into his human form just as swiftly as he transformed in the first place. He stands next to Liu Qingge, supporting him so he doesn’t lose his balance now that he’s no longer pinned to the wall. “There is nothing to apologize for. Shidi recognized a threat and rushed to protect his shixiong, despite your known dislike of each other. That is quite admirable.”

Qingge nods, still obviously shaken.

“What are you even doing in here, shidi?” Shen Qingqiu asks, picking up Cheng Luan and handing it back to the brute.

“I just got back to the peaks and came to report to zhangmen-shixiong when I saw your silhouettes in the window. I thought shixiong finally had enough and decided to kill sect leader Yue.” 

Ah. From the outside it really must have looked like a murder attempt. Shen Qingqiu is not addressing any of that.

“As if I would ever harm the big idiot!” 

When it looks like Liu Qingge wants to argue, Yue Qingyuan places a placating hand on his shoulder. “Sharp words have never hurt anyone, shidi. We had our disagreements over the years, but Qingqiu-shidi has never wished me genuine harm. In fact, the discovery of my unfortunate situation helped us shed light on an old misunderstanding, leading to reconciliation.”

Qingge mutters something that sounds suspiciously like ‘About damn time.’   Shen Qingqiu makes a mental note to take revenge for that comment when he gets the chance.

“If that is all, I would ask shidi to leave my house in peace. We would like to retire to sleep.”

Qingge slinks away like a chastised dog, leaving them alone in the privacy of the house. Yue Qi suddenly pulls Shen Qingqiu down with him onto the bed, his eyes burning with a newfound hunger. 

“Well, what is this? I thought sect leader Yue wished to sleep,” he teases, but doesn’t push the other away when Yue Qingyuan surges up to kiss him. He seems livelier now than before, more present.

“I didn’t want to taint our shidi’s poor, innocent ears with all the things I want my A-Jiu to do to me.”

Shen Qingqiu gives him a half-hearted smack for that ridiculous statement, but his mind is on something else altogether. “What happened to your sword?”

Yue Qi’s eyebrows furrow briefly and he holds out a hand. Xuan Su appears in a flash of light, the naked blade thrumming with qi, but no longer leaking it uncontrollably. The sword is powerful as ever, but now it’s restrained. Safe, for the lack of a better word.

“You are going to need a new scabbard,” Shen Qingqiu says, tracing his fingers over the details of the dragon etched into the blade. Yue Qi shivers under him. “One not made of your flesh and bones this time.”

“We can talk about it in the morning. Right now there is something else I’d much rather do with my flesh and bones.”

Stupid, insatiable creature, Shen Qingqiu thinks fondly. His stupid, insatiable Qi-ge, with his stupid, handsome face and his endless hunger for Xiao Jiu’s love.

He is the best man Shen Qingqiu could have ever asked for.