Work Text:
Liu Qingge keeps coming back bloodied.
Yue Qingyuan watches it happen, day after day, and tries to soothe the long-dormant ache in his chest.
Shen Qingqiu’s death is something that hit the entire mountain hard.
His disciples are distraught - they have been ever since that fateful day. His absence hangs heavy over the mountain like a weighted raincloud, dampening the spirits of peak lords and disciples alike.
Yue Qingyuan feels his absence too, of course. But sometimes he aches with the knowledge that he is perhaps the only person that misses the person that came before. The one that greeted everyone with a sneer rather than a smile.
Liu Qingge seems to feel Shen Qingqiu’s absence harder than anyone else on the mountain, although he doesn’t seem to fully understand why.
It’s obvious to anyone with eyes - Yue Qingyuan has watched the way that Liu Qingge’s eyes followed Shen Qingqiu after the change, the way he started leaving the beasts on his doorstep and picking up his fans everywhere he went.
Sometimes, the fan that Liu Qingge is spotted carrying is one that Yue Qingyuan had gifted Shen Qingqiu himself, years and years ago.
Before the change, Shen Qingqiu would not have been caught dead using it. Then, Liu Qingge carried it over to return to him. Now, there is nothing.
It begins with Liu Qingge returning, poisoned.
Actually, it probably began long before that.
Yue Qingyuan had always been faintly aware of Liu Qingge’s regard for him - the way that he seemed to respect him above anyone else, the way that his demeanor completely changed when Yue Qingyuan entered the room when they were disciples. Perhaps, if Shen Jiu had remained a dead memory, Yue Qingyuan might have entertained the idea.
Then Shen Jiu was found, and all that consumed Yue Qingyuan’s mind was guilt.
Now, Liu Qingge is poisoned and the only cure is dual cultivation - perhaps once upon a time, Liu Qingge would have sputtered and blushed and insisted he would be fine, only for Shen Qingqiu (the new one. Yue Qingyuan’s Shen Jiu would never) would place a hand on his shoulder and -
He doesn’t know, actually. The new Shen Qingqiu was oblivious to the advances of so many around him, maybe he wouldn’t have done anything at all.
Now, however, Liu Qingge takes the news that he’d die without dual cultivation with a stone face, no outside reaction whatsoever.
Yue Qingyuan is perhaps the only one who really understands the expression in his eyes, however. That Liu Qingge is so beyond the point of grief that he would be fine with dying.
So he stands, places a hand on Liu Qingge’s shoulder, and offers.
Trust is an odd thing.
Liu Qingge trusts him with this. He can see it in his eyes, the way he goes boneless under Yue Qingyuan’s touch. The way he shudders and comes apart. The way he hands himself wholly over to Yue Qingyuan, trusting him not to break.
He doesn’t quite know what to do with all of it. There’s something addicting in it, the way that Liu Qingge looks at him with something beyond despair in his eyes for the first time since Shen Qingqiu fell.
He wonders, when all is said and done, if this could have ever happened in any other time. Could they have been together like this, while Shen Qingqiu was still alive? Is there another life where Shen Qingqiu never came to this mountain and they could have this as it is?
He knows that the answer is no, of course. He knows himself well enough for that.
He allows himself this, though. To bask in the absolute trust in Liu Qingge’s eyes, to know that he never earned that in Shen Jiu’s.
And now he never could.
They only spoke of Shen Qingqiu once.
It is something entirely strange, Yue Qingyuan thinks, to talk about two different people as if they were one and the same.
Liu Qingge is not stupid. He knows that Liu Qingge was suspicious of Shen Qingqiu from the beginning, the most outwardly suspicious that he had been possessed. And yet, they became close anyway, Liu Qingge and this new Shen Qingqiu. Closer even than Yue Qingyuan had ever really allowed himself.
It was a few words, exchanged in the depths of night. Liu Qingge had gone and dressed himself, only to freeze at the sight of the fan that had clattered to the ground out of his robes.
Yue Qingyuan had long suspected that he carried such a thing with him. He can’t say he’s surprised at the way that Liu Qingge stills at the sight.
“You miss him,” is all he says.
“You miss him too,” Liu Qingge finally replies.
Yue Qingyuan can’t help but wonder if Liu Qingge realizes that they are not talking about the same person. He suspects he does.
They never speak of that moment again. Shen Qingqiu’s name is never spoken. Perhaps it is for the best.
Yue Qingyuan knows very well that this entire thing is doomed. There is only so much that can grow out of the corpse of a love lost.
But it continues to happen - despite the pretense of the poison being gone, Liu Qingge comes to his chambers every once in a while after returning from fighting Luo Binghe. It doesn’t always turn to sex - sometimes Liu Qingge simply meditates in the corner - but more often than not it does.
It’s a coping mechanism. That’s all it is.
Yue Qingyuan doesn’t know when, or how, but he does know with absolute certainty that this entire thing will fall apart, sooner or later. He has never been one who is allowed to keep a good thing.
But it’s nice, to hold someone. It’s nice to touch. Liu Qingge sees his scars but knows better than to ask about them, and Yue Qingyuan does not tell him. Their relationship exists on the periphery of grief, and that is all it truly can be.