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As Yue Qi’s body died, pierced by a hundred arrows, the part of his soul bound in Xuan Su lingered. He watched as Luo Binghe stalked over to his corpse, a triumphant look in his red eyes, and drove his demonic sword down hard into Yue Qi’s heart. It was then that Yue Qi felt Xuan Su shatter, his own being shattering along with it.
After a period of interminable darkness, Yue Qi opened his eyes to see the inside of a familiar cave. Before him, hovering in the air, was Xuan Su. There was no blood on the walls, and Yue Qi felt cold, a sensation he hadn’t experienced in many years.
At length, when he gathered his senses, he realized what was strangest of all: his soul felt entirely whole. He felt a thin bond to the sword in front of him, but it was no longer a part of him. He looked down at his own body, and his dizzy suspicion was confirmed. He was wearing the grey robes of a Qiong Ding disciple, and his body was lanky and smaller than it should be.
He had experienced dreams like this before - false second chances. Perhaps this was a particularly vivid hallucination in the final moments of his life, or perhaps the gods really had given him a second chance. It was impossible to say, but what he had to do was the same either way.
It was a simple matter to steal food and supplies from Qiong Ding’s storehouses and sneak past the patrols and wards. Even the mere disciple he had been so many years ago would have been able to leave easily - though he would not have known how to use the secret routes disclosed only to the sect leader.
Getting to the Qiu household posed more of an issue. The city where he and Shen Jiu had grown up was far from Cang Qiong - back then, getting to Cang Qiong (the only famous sect which accepted disciples purely on the basis of talent, rather than clan ties) had taken weeks. And this body’s core was too weak, his connection to Xuan Su still worryingly tenuous. His Shizun would have warned against the risk of flying long distances under such circumstances. Yue Qi had decades of cultivation knowledge, but that would be of little help if this body suffered a qi irregularity and fell off of Xuan Su, hundreds of feet in the air. But he had no choice - he didn’t know when exactly Shen Jiu had been pushed past his limits, didn’t know when he had burned down the Qiu mansion, and Yue Qi couldn’t risk waiting too long and failing. Not again.
The night air felt cold on his skin as he flew. It was strange to feel the cold so sharply again, a sharp reminder of his vulnerability. The landscape passing under him turned from mountains and forests to farmland and small towns. He remembered loving flying like this as a disciple, before, when it had still felt like freedom.
Finally, after a day and a half of flying intermittently, stopping when his still-weak core forced him to, mind running in endless circles of worry, Yue Qi reached the edges of the city he and Shen Jiu had grown up in, its grubby streets and houses casting long shadows. Alighting in a deserted alley, he walked with sure steps toward the Qiu mansion - one useful thing about having that place haunt his nightmares was that he remembered precisely where it was.
As children, Yue Qi and Shen Jiu had often gawked at the Qiu mansion. It was the largest and grandest residence in the city, with a high wall around it that only further drew the curiosity of young beggars like they had been. When they climbed a nearby tree to look into the courtyards, they could see a beautifully maintained garden, occasionally glimpse the sumptuous decorations of the rooms within the house. It made good fodder for their daydreams, the stories they would tell one another about the better life they would one day lead.
The tree they had climbed was still there. Yue Qi waited for the nearby street to be clear, then climbed it, feeling oddly young as he did so. He looked into the nearby courtyard, which was less impressive than he remembered it being, and waited.
He could, of course, simply knock on the gate and ask for an audience with Lord Qiu - he was dressed as a cultivator, he would likely be accepted in. He could demand to see Shen Jiu, could fight off the Qiu family's guards and take Shen Jiu away over their dead bodies. If he had to, he would. But it would be better to find Shen Jiu discreetly and spirit him away in the dead of night - he wasn’t sure of his abilities in this form, for one, and there would be less chance of being followed that way.
For hours, he watched the courtyards, busy with the typical comings and goings of a rich noble household. Finally, as dusk was approaching, he saw a thin figure of a boy cross one of the walkways, what looked like a laundry basket balanced on his hip. Yue Qi was too far away to make out the boy’s features, but he knew this was Shen Jiu. Yue Qi whistled out a fake birdcall, a signal they had used as children to aid in their small crimes.
The boy turned his head, slowing to a stop. Yue Qi sprung off the branch and over the wall, landing on his feet in the courtyard in a move that would have been more graceful in a more trained body with a heart that wasn’t beating like a wild animal was trying to escape from it. He stumbled toward Shen Jiu.
The Shen Jiu standing across from him - hands clutching hard to the laundry basket - was so young. He was too thin, his face sallow and even more angular than usual. His dark eyes were wide, locked on Yue Qi with an expression he hadn’t seen in them in so many years - an expression that looked like hope.
“Qi-ge?” Shen Jiu breathed, barely loud enough for Yue Qi to hear.
“Xiao Jiu,” Yue Qi said, trying to think of what to say, all of the planning he’d done over the past day feeling useless in the face of the reality of seeing Shen Jiu again.
“You… I wasn’t expecting -” Shen Jiu cut himself off. “Are we leaving now?”
Yue Qi tried to pull himself together. His initial plan had been to ask where Shen Jiu slept, and sneak back in after dark, but the courtyard was already deserted, Shen Jiu was already here, and - Yue Qi couldn’t bear the thought of waiting any longer. He nodded, throat feeling tight.
“I’ll need to fly us away,” he said, drawing his sword and moving onto it before stretching out his hand. “Let’s hurry.”
The words felt inadequate, but Shen Jiu ran toward him anyway, spilling the laundry into the dirt of the courtyard as he went. Yue Qi took Shen Jiu’s hand in his, helping him onto Xuan Su behind himself. He focused on attuning his core with the sword - a strange feeling, when it had once been an inseparable part of him - and lifted the two of them into the sky, the Qiu estate shrinking below them.
They didn’t speak much as they flew - even if Yue Qi had known what to say, he had to focus on guiding the sword or risk endangering the both of them. Shen Jiu’s thin arms were tight around his waist, almost painfully so.
Finally, when Yue Qi’s qi reserves were too depleted for him to safely continue flying, he brought them down to clearing in a forest, near a river. Shen Jiu let go of him and jumped down from the sword, not waiting for Yue Qi to help him. Yue Qi sheathed Xuan Su - and it still felt strange to draw and use it so freely, without fear that his own life force was being drained. He gathered dry timber and built a fire, as Shen Jiu watched silently.
Finally, as Yue Qi started to take out food from his qiankun pouch, Shen Jiu spoke.
“What took you so long?” Yue Qi could hear the rawness in Shen Jiu’s voice, although he was clearly trying to sound harsh and accusing. “I had thought Qi-ge might have died, but apparently you’ve done quite well for yourself.”
If Yue Qi had been the boy Shen Jiu thought he was, he might have responded with excuses - at this age, the first time, Yue Qi had only been cultivating for a couple of years, and had been unable to reliably fly a sword over any long distances, was lacking in both the strength and the confidence to protect anyone, much less the most important person to him. But he wasn’t that boy anymore - this Yue Qi knew he had failed, knew how empty and worthless those excuses had proven.
“Xiao Jiu is right,” he said, still kneeling in front of the fire, unable to make eye contact with Shen Jiu. “I should have come sooner, I should never have waited so long, I’m sorry. Xiao Jiu - Xiao Jiu, I’m so, so sorry.”
Shen Jiu breathed in sharply. “That’s - are you crying?” Shen Jiu walked over and grabbed Yue Qi’s face, forcing him to look up into Shen Jiu’s eyes. Against his will, Yue Qi started crying harder, his breath catching in his throat. Mindlessly he stammered out more apologies, not quite sure what he was saying but unable to stop.
“Who knew you were so pathetic,” Shen Jiu said, but his voice was almost soft, and his hands were still cradling Yue Qi’s face. “Stop crying, you look awful. You came back for me, didn’t you? So it’s fine.”
Yue Qi managed to stop the broken pleas for forgiveness, but the tears kept flowing. Shen Jiu was so close, calloused hands on his cheeks, voice harshly gentle in a way Yue Qi had almost forgotten. Shen Jiu’s words had sounded like forgiveness, which hurt far more than his condemnation had.
Shen Jiu sighed, and pulled Yue Qi roughly to his chest, arms twining around his back. “So pathetic. I’m the one who had to live in that household while you became a prestigious cultivator, but now I have to comfort you?”
They stayed that way for a while, Yue Qi gradually calmed by the embrace, just as he always had been as a child. Shen Jiu was right, Yue Qi really was pathetic - he had been older by nearly two years, was now older by far more years than that, but Shen Jiu was the one always protecting him, reigning in his stupidity. He had no right to have the comfort of Shen Jiu’s warmth back, but it soothed his heart anyway.
When Shen Jiu saw that Yue Qi had stopped crying and shaking, he pushed him off and rolled his eyes. “Now can we finally eat?”
After their dinner - during which Shen Jiu had torn impatiently into the food Yue Qi had brought, barely seeming to chew, with a vigor Yue Qi remembered from the first days he’d finally been able to eat his fill after going hungry for years on end - Yue Qi brought out the bedrolls and handed one to Shen Jiu. He set his out under a nearby tree, and was almost brought to tears again by the way Shen Jiu set his own right next to Yue Qi’s, no space between them.
To Shen Jiu, it likely wasn’t anything remarkable - as children, they had huddled together nearly every night, for warmth and the illusion of safety. The spring night wasn’t frigid, but was certainly cold enough that sharing warmth was a good idea for those without golden cores strong enough to maintain a constant body temperature. But for Yue Qi, who still thought of Shen Jiu as a man who rightfully despised him, the wordless trust represented by the paired bedrolls was a painful shock.
He didn’t say anything, though, simply lying down on the bedroll next to this heartbreakingly young Shen Jiu, looking up at the dark treetops. Shen Jiu moved closer, making an annoyed sound.
“You’ll tell me everything tomorrow,” Shen Jiu said.
“Of course, Xiao Jiu,” Yue Qi lied.
Before Yue Qi could think of anything else to say, Shen Jiu fell asleep, his breath coming in regular little huffs in exactly the way Yue Qi remembered. Yue Qi listened to that breathing for hours, exhausted but too afraid to fall asleep. Afraid this hallucination would end, afraid someone or something would come to attack them in the night, afraid of something else he couldn’t quite put into words.
At some point, though, he must have fallen asleep, because he fell into a familiar nightmare. Yue Qi had always been able to tell when he was dreaming, though he usually wasn’t able to wake himself up.
In the nightmare, he is outside the barred room of the Qiu mansion where he had left Shen Jiu so many years ago - or two years ago, in this world. Behind the bars, Shen Jiu screams as a silent Luo Binghe tears off his limbs one by one. Yue Qi tries to yell, to break the bars, but neither of the figures can hear him and nothing he does affects the tableau before him. It’s a dream he’s had before, but this time the Shen Jiu being tortured in the room is not the elegant Qing Jing peak lord, but rather the boy sleeping next to him, and the bones of his thin limbs break easily under Luo Binghe’s merciless touch.
He must have been tossing and turning in his sleep, because before Luo Binghe could perform his regularly scheduled ripping out of Shen Jiu’s tongue Yue Qi was shaken awake.
The moon was a thin sliver in the sky, and Yue Qi could barely make out Shen Jiu’s features in the darkness. Shen Jiu moved even closer, until they were huddled together like children.
“It’s okay,” Shen Jiu whispered.
After waking up and eating breakfast, Shen Jiu insisted on bathing in the nearby river before leaving again. (“You may be fine with being filthy, but I’m not.”) The river was beautiful, lined with smooth stones that shone in the morning sun. The water was cold but refreshing, and Yue Qi found himself smiling uncontrollably as an underwater Shen Jiu grabbed at his shin to dunk him in the water.
Once they were clean and drying off in the sun, Shen Jiu began to ask questions. Where exactly did he go, after he left? What was Cang Qiong like? Who was his master? What was training like? Did he think they would take Shen Jiu in?
Yue Qi answered to the best of his ability, explaining the twelve peaks and their roles, describing his own Shizun - sect leader Cui Mingjie, a strict and unyielding man, who would surely have a series of punishments lined up for Yue Qi when he returned. Training was difficult at first, when improvement came slowly, but ultimately rewarding. Of course they would take Shen Jiu in - at this point, Shen Jiu was the same age Yue Qi had been when he entered the sect, so he was still at the tail end of the window in which core formation could be effectively started. In his original life, Shen Jiu had just barely passed out of that window when he arrived at Cang Qiong, and that charlatan Wu Yanzi had left him with a flawed partial core that couldn’t be rebuilt due to his age.
They got back on the sword, and this time Shen Jiu held onto Yue Qi less tightly, seeming interested in surveying and occasionally commenting on the landscape passing below them. Yue Qi had to fly more slowly with two people, and take more breaks, and he told Shen Jiu that they would have to camp out for another night before reaching the peaks the next day.
The day went by quickly, Shen Jiu in high spirits the entire time. Yue Qi had almost forgotten what a happy Shen Jiu was like, how contagious his enthusiasm could be. They fished for their lunch, and Shen Jiu recounted viciously observant stories about the goings-on in the Qiu household. It didn’t escape Yue Qi’s notice that Qiu Jianluo never featured in these stories, which instead focused on the Qiu matriarch’s penchant for hiring male prostitutes, or the way one maidservant had sought revenge on another by sneaking an ever-increasing amount of flies into her food.
Yue Qi tried to think of stories to tell in return, but in truth his memories of the years he’d spent in training before his soul merged with Xuan Su were blurry at best. He ended up telling Shen Jiu about some of his favorite stories from the sect’s libraries (at this age, originally, he hadn’t been able to read well at all, but thankfully he wouldn’t have to endure that arduous learning process again) and rambling at length about the different natural landscapes of each of Cang Qiong’s peaks. Yue Qi was astonished by how easy it was to forget his pain and fear and simply talk with Shen Jiu again. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed that.
“You know, we don’t have to go to Cang Qiong,” Yue Qi said that night, as they were finishing dinner. “We could go anywhere - there are other sects we could join, or we could be traveling cultivators. I could teach you what I know.”
Yue Qi didn’t have much hope that this offer would be accepted. Cang Qiong had been Shen Jiu’s idea in the first place, and Shen Jiu was nothing if not stubborn. But although Yue Qi had come to love Cang Qiong, as someone might grow to love a spouse in an arranged marriage, he couldn’t shake the feeling that once they returned there he wouldn’t be able to prevent certain parts of their history from repeating.
Shen Jiu rolled his eyes. “Don’t talk nonsense. You’re already a disciple at Cang Qiong, our best prospects are obviously there. Why wouldn’t we go?”
Yue Qi looked into Shen Jiu’s dark eyes, feeling helpless. “I just… I wish every day could be like this. I won’t be able to see Xiao Jiu as much, if he is a disciple at a different peak.”
Shen Jiu smiled. Shen Jiu had several smiles - a sharp smirk when he’d triumphed in some plot, an innocent beam when he was trying to fool someone, a suppressed upward tilt to his lips when he was secretly pleased. But Yue Qi’s favorite smile was this one - unguarded, wide, toothy, and all too rare. It wasn’t a smile Yue Qi would have labelled as beautiful on anyone else but on Shen Jiu there was nothing Yue Qi would rather see.
“Qi-ge really is so ridiculous. It’s a wonder he survived without me for this long.”
They slept huddled together again that night, and Yue Qi slept peacefully. He suspected Shen Jiu might have been plagued by nightmares instead, because when the younger boy woke there was a haunted look in his eyes, and his enthusiasm from the day before didn’t return.
When they finally arrived at Cang Qiong, Cui-zhangmen lectured Yue Qi for nearly an hour about the importance of obedience and the impropriety of his actions, and assigned him a series of punishments that would last for a month and a half, but he agreed to let Shen Jiu be tested for entrance to the sect just as he had in Yue Qi’s previous lifetime.
Also as before, the Qing Jing peak lord Shi Mingyun was impressed by Shen Jiu’s performance on the standard tests, and accepted him as a disciple. Yue Qi watched Shen Jiu bow before his new teacher and walk away. But unlike Yue Qi’s memories of the first time this happened, before he passed out of sight Shen Jiu turned and looked at Yue Qi, nervousness and hope obvious in his dark eyes. It felt wrong, undeserved - Yue Qi remembered all too well the way those eyes had been shuttered to him, the emotions behind them guarded fiercely.
But to have Shen Jiu’s trust back, to know his heart again - Yue Qi would do anything to keep that privilege, undeserved though it was.
It was all too easy to fall back into the rhythm of life on Qiong Ding. Yue Qi spent every day busy, consumed with the endless training and working expected from a disciple at the top peak. He talked about meaningless things with his fellow disciples, who seemed to like him, though Yue Qi had never understood why.
There were two main differences from his original past, though. First, his cultivation was undamaged and his connection to Xuan Su was still in the early stages, meaning that he had the chance to attempt Unity of Man and Sword again, hopefully in a way that wouldn’t shatter his body along his meridians and leave him wracked with torturous pain for a year. He considered not trying for it this time, allowing his cultivation to progress normally, but ultimately the reasons he had for seeking that path still held true. Shen Jiu was still in danger from the world, and Yue Qi was still too weak to protect him. So he began following the manual he’d rushed through the first time, adding to his already heavy workload of tasks. At least this time he had the advantage of being able to read fluently.
The other change was, of course, Shen Jiu. A week or so after returning to Cang Qiong, as Yue Qi was leaving the dining pavilion to retire to the disciples’ quarters, Shen Jiu appeared and demanded Yue Qi help him catch up to the other disciples. From then on, at least every other night, Shen Jiu would show up - or Yue Qi would sneak over to Qing Jing - and the two of them would spar, or raid the kitchens for extra food, or race to the top of the peak. They would talk or just sit in silence as the mountain grew dark around them.
As Yue Qingyuan, Yue Qi had always been praised for his morality and kindness. Until his doomed attempts to defend Shen Jiu irreparably stained his reputation, Yue Qingyuan had been seen as the model of a righteous cultivator. Someone to be emulated and admired.
But Yue Qi wasn’t righteous. He had always had the tendency to mold himself into whatever others wanted or expected of him, and as a Qiong Ding cultivator he had done exactly that. He donned the guise of a noble man, but in truth he had never felt strongly about morality, about goodness, about the righteous path. He didn’t even care about most people. He had never had Shen Jiu’s bitter disposition, never felt inclined to speak harsh words or retaliate against others. Instead, he simply felt a deep apathy for most of his fellows, the cultivators of Cang Qiong, people born into privilege who would never spare more than passing pity for children like he had been.
In all his life, he had only ever loved Shen Jiu. No one else.
The fact that Shen Jiu wasn’t what anyone else would consider ‘good’ didn’t do anything to change that love. He worried at Shen Jiu’s more destructive qualities, of course, but on a deep level it didn’t matter to him what Shen Jiu did. The goodness of the noble cultivators was cheaply bought. They had never had to live through hell, never had to fight to survive in the uncaring world. Yue Qi was sure it was easy to follow the noble path when you were born into it. Shen Jiu had never had that option.
So with Shen Jiu back, he had no desire to scold the younger boy when he would start ranting about the hypocrisy and ridiculousness of this disciple or that teacher. He would far rather join in, tell Shen Jiu the judgments he’d developed of the people who were supposed to be their peers or betters. For a long time, Yue Qi had had no one to tell the truth to.
(“-and that coward Shang Qinghua,” Shen Jiu said one night. “Why is he even here? Much less the head disciple of a peak, even An Ding?”
“That idiot would sell his own mother out if it benefited him,” Yue Qi said, with all the vitriol built up over years watching Shang Qinghua inadvertently and then deliberately fail Cang Qiong. “He deserves to rot.”
Shen Jiu looked surprised for a few moments, before his face broke into the sharp smirk that always indicated an oncoming plot.)
Despite the lack of sleep, both Yue Qi and Shen Jiu’s cultivation abilities progressed well. Perhaps something in Xuan Su remembered Yue Qi’s soul, because after only a year and a half the sword was once more a part of his being. The difference from his previous lifetime was stark - where before drawing Xuan Su had been a horrific effort, as the connection tangibly eroded the edges of his soul, now wielding the sword felt as natural as breathing. It was simply a part of him, like an arm or a leg.
Yue Qi could tell Cui-zhangmen was impressed, although the old man did scold him harshly about the dangers of trying for that path on his own and in secret. Only months later, Cui-zhangmen announced that Yue Qi would be the new head disciple of Qiong Ding.
In their original past, Shen Jiu had struggled to keep pace with the other disciples, with a flawed core that could no longer be fixed. In order for him to become head disciple, Yue Qi knew, some unfortunate accidents and coincidences had had to befall the other, more promising candidates. Some of those had almost certainly been planned by Shen Jiu, and Yue Qi had arranged for others.
But this time around, Shen Jiu’s stubborn dedication allowed him to quickly develop a strong core and reach the level of the other disciples in almost all pursuits. Yue Qi had always been impressed by Shen Jiu as a scholar, but in that other life he hadn’t had the privilege to witness that development up close. Now Yue Qi could know Shen Jiu’s thoughts on politics and history, hear his deepening voice recite his favorite poems, even read the poetry he began to compose. Ultimately, Shen Jiu’s abilities surpassed those of the other Qing Jing disciples, and he was chosen as head disciple without him or Yue Qi having to exert any unusual efforts.
As the head disciples of the top two peaks of Cang Qiong, Yue Qi and Shen Jiu had more legitimate opportunities to spend time together. After they passed the age of majority, they began to get sent on night hunts and missions together, with other senior disciples and candidates to be peak lords.
It was on one such mission, almost seven years after Yue Qi had brought Shen Jiu to Cang Qiong, that Yue Qi’s world once more turned upside down.
Yue Qi, Shen Jiu, and Qi Qingqi were sent to investigate a series of disappearances in a nearby town. The mission was a relatively straightforward one, and after the first day of investigation the three retired to the town’s only inn with a clear plan of how to eliminate the resentful spirit murdering the townspeople.
The inn was quaint, with friendly waitstaff and a jolly matriarch running the place. Riding high on the success of the day, Yue Qi smiled widely at his companions around the dinner table. Qi Qingqi was telling a story about some of her sect-sisters, who had apparently decided that dying the current Xian Shu peak lord’s hair green would be a good idea.
Qi Qingqi had never been a friend of his in their original past. Yue Qi had always been too focused on Shen Jiu; she and the other peak lords had faded into the background. They were colleagues, but little else.
This time around, though, Yue Qi had discovered that Qi Qingqi made a great friend. She was like Shen Jiu in some ways - ambitious, occasionally brutal, with a dark sense of humor that Yue Qi enjoyed greatly.
Yue Qi noticed too late that Shen Jiu wasn’t laughing at Qi Qingqi’s story. He was leaning back into a dark corner, eyes narrowed and angry, mouth pressed in a tight line.
Yue Qi felt a shudder run through him at that look on Shen Jiu’s face, but he recovered quickly enough. As soon as Qi Qingqi finished telling her story, Yue Qi yawned and stretched his hands above his head.
“I think I might call it a night, Qi-shijie,” Yue Qi said with a smile.
“Goodnight then, little shidi,” Qi Qingqi said. “I think I’ll chat with the waitresses a while longer down here.”
Yue Qi nodded and stood up, looking over at Shen Jiu with a smile he hoped looked innocent before he went upstairs to the room the two of them were to share.
As Yue Qi expected, Shen Jiu went up to the room soon after.
“So -” Yue Qi started to say.
“What a lovely day,” Shen Jiu said coldly. “You and Qi Qingqi certainly looked like you were enjoying yourselves.”
“I thought it went quite smoothly,” Yue Qi said carefully, knowing he was walking on thin ice.
“Very smoothly, yes.” Shen Jiu said. “Have you fucked her yet?”
Oh, Yue Qi thought. So Shen Jiu wants Qi Qingqi. Shen Jiu had been more prickly and unpredictable than usual lately, but Yue Qi hadn’t known why.
“Of course not, Xiao Jiu,” he said, in a tone as reassuring as he could muster.
“Xiao Jiu, Xiao Jiu,” Shen Jiu said mockingly. “Stop fucking calling me that. I’m not your little brother.”
Yue Qi felt himself slipping into panic at the familiar order. “I - I’ll call you whatever you want, of course, but - haven’t we always been as close as brothers? Have I done something wrong?”
Suddenly, Shen Jiu slumped. He leaned against a wall, arms crossed protectively across his chest. “No, of course not, how could perfect Qi-ge ever do something wrong.” His tone was strange, and Yue Qi still felt off-balance and anxious. Was this really about Qi Qingqi? Or was it something else entirely - had he remembered something from their original life?
“I'm not perfect,” he said. “If I’ve done anything Xiao - anything you disapprove of, if there’s anything you want, please tell me, I’ll do whatever I can -”
Shen Jiu cut him off. “What I want isn’t something you can give me.”
“Please let me try!” Yue Qi’s voice was strained.
Shen Jiu glared at him. “You want to try? Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Then Shen Jiu grabbed the collar of Yue Qi’s robe and pulled him, until their lips collided. Shen Jiu kissed him for a moment, too-hard and clearly unpracticed, then stepped back, eyes desperate.
Yue Qi stood in shock. Of all the things he might have expected Shen Jiu to do, this had never been one of them. In his previous life, yes, Yue Qi might have harbored some shameful thoughts, dreamed of things he would try to forget upon waking, but since he had returned here he had never imagined - certainly never hoped -
Shen Jiu had kissed him.
“But - you like women,” Yue Qi stuttered.
“Wow.” Shen Jiu hissed. “No, Qi-ge, obviously I do not. How long have you been telling yourself that? Is it so shameful to think I might be a cutsleeve?” He said the word like a curse.
Yue Qi’s mind raced, but as Shen Jiu moved to stride out of the room he decided that trying to figure out what was going on with the brothels in that other life was not the most pressing task.
“Shen Jiu! Wait!” Yue Qi reached for Shen Jiu’s hand, pulled him back. Acting on instinct alone, Yue Qi kissed him, deliberately gentle, trying to express all the things he couldn’t come up with the words for.
When he pulled back, Shen Jiu’s eyes were wide with shock and hope, and Yue Qi realized what the words were. Realized that he wasn’t the person Shen Jiu thought he was, and however their relationship would change after this, it couldn’t be based on a lie.
“I love you,” Yue Qi said, “and there’s something I need to tell you.”