Work Text:
It was an embarrassingly short time later, less than a week, after they had parted from their disastrous... adventure. He had not appeared to hurry home, but taken the shortest path possible, his mind unable or unwilling to settle upon a thought until he reached the full privacy of his sect residence.
Instead, her final interactions once Sect Head Yuan He arrived replayed over and over. Her look of disappointment and revulsion, and utter distaste.
She will never even look directly at me again. I had hoped to share something with her. The final chamber was supposed to bring us closer. Form a bond.
That first night was the only time he cried actual tears, and even then they were but few, squeezed directly into the sleeve of his robe.
He had managed to make a friend. She had approached him initially even! Some few words exchanged in the library. A helpful nudge or explanation here and there. The first signs of rapport. She was striking, this common girl with uncommon talent. She wandered about directionless at first, but continued with determination. She showed no disgust or disdain in her hesitation to talk to him, just a little shyness at first. She fought with her flute, calling a cold mist with a heartbreaking song that resonated with loneliness.
When she earned her Baroness title and swore fealty as direct retainer to the Cai, he first considered her as a real possibility for a partner, instead of an indulgent distraction. She'd be no peer ducal connection, but close enough his clan wouldn't reject her. More personally, she might actually grow to love him as a friend or even more.
And then! She somehow, impossibly, hatched a xuanwu. A xuanwu! Here, on the far edge of the Empire! His clan would never deny her now. A mystery where she got the egg, but she had even come to him for advice raising the child. It almost blunted the child's outright rejection of him. Almost. But this dark, powerful sorceress... well, he couldn't help but see the similarities to Hotene from his books. He had imagined himself as the adventurer Yu Long many times in play as a boy, and sometimes wistfully imagined his journey to study at the Argent Sect to be like the tales in The Voyages. He'd yearned for friends like the crew in the Voyages, and despaired at the monumental task of finding even one. He had not truly believed that a Hotene awaited him, beautiful, dark, powerful, and mysterious.
He had found the perfect opportunity. The very location of the trials that laid the first stone of the foundation to their epic romance had been made real here at the Argent Sect. A somewhat ancient student's note hidden in the Sect's copy of the first volume hinted at a code, and he followed the clues easily enough to find the entrance. And then the lock, the perfect reason to invite her along, and maybe they'd emerge from the adventure as something a little more than they went in, just like in the tale...
But tales, especially old ones, rarely have just one version, and the most compelling narratives never give away their endings so easily.
In his fog of mortification and grief, he managed to get some of his more menial tasks around the workshop done, but his mind returned too often still to his failure and humiliation at the temple.
By the third night, he began to feel the mental exhaustion of mourning the loss of his friendship and the constant self-flagellation that it was his fault, and once again, his mind emptied. He lay on his cot staring at the bare stone ceiling.
And with the tortured squirming of his mind stilled, the remaining snippets of the encounter with Yuan He played themselves through.
"...the old goat could not get his original manuscripts published..."
The original manuscripts...
Did they still even exist? Once upon a time, he would have stopped at nothing to get to pour over the early works written directly by the hand of the author, but now, he knew how different they would be...
"My Sect Uncle Lang was a good man, but he had opinions on propriety and certain forms of openness that made him… unpopular."
And discovered more of the author's questionable motivation...
"...if my uncle’s work spoke to you, then does it matter that it might have been planned to include some illicit content?”
No. It was a little easier to reach the conclusion now, but he couldn't help some bitterness. He had come so far across the continent in search of the final volumes, and to learn more of the man who penned them so long ago. He could not put aside such a drive so easily. It did make him wonder just how different the original drafts were. Would they reach him the same way? Would the... additional content detract from the themes he held dear?
His blank expression gave way to a furrowed brow as he struggled to think of how the missing content could possibly have enhanced the final product. Such acts were necessary for the continuation of life and clan, but not something to dwell upon.
“Young lady, I think you will find that the men and women of this world can take most anything and make it a horror."
He cycled his qi to push away the ache of her reaction, the wound too worried at for further prodding, and instead focused on Yuan He's words.
A horror... his impression of the acts that room was meant for had always been that of a necessary biological function. Messy. Base. Superfluous distraction. The purview of mortals mainly, whereas those who drank from the well of the world had far nobler vistas to cast their eyes upon and devote themselves to.
Not a horror, though. Was that how she viewed the act? What horror- well, it did not take much to imagine her fear. Even the published Voyages hinted at... coercion, though the framing would of course be different for a girl in a wholly mortal upbringing. Had she feared that from him? Had someone in her past...?
A new flavor of shame stung him, and his tired heart ached anew, but he did not push away the feeling this time, for it was not for himself.
"This place was, however, built to bring young men and women together in joy and comfort away from judging eyes.”
Joy and comfort. Taken for what they were, without the associations of that room, were they not noble goals?
Together in joy and comfort. It was not he first phrase he thought of when thinking of intercourse... sex.
He knew it was considered a duty for married spouses, necessary to produce heirs. He knew spouses needed to be well matched to achieve procreation in the higher realms. He knew the basic mechanics of the lower realms and mortal bodies.
Comfort seemed only practical, since the physical joining required sustained contact in unusual postures. He hadn't really considered the role of emotional comfort and joy in the process.
He had tried imagining performing the acts shown in the diagrams in the books left for him, with some unknown woman, or with the young women his clan had failed to finalize betrothal to. It had always seemed odd and counterintuitive, despite the fascination he knew it held for others.
Now his imagination showed him Ling Qi’s face above him, her body arranged over his as in one of the diagrams. Skipping forward to a future that would now never be, when it would be his honor to grant his wife a child.
But Ling Qi’s phantom turned aside in uncertainty and fear, and suddenly "together in joy and comfort" made all the sense in the world, and he wanted nothing more than to ensure her comfort and joy, in all things. His heart ached once again, but this time-
He had not felt the tug of that qi flow in a long while.
It was often one of the first discreetly taught to young boys who had awoken to cultivation. He was grateful that he suffered thankfully few inconveniences of arousal nonconcordance before his awakening allowed him to master the trick of controlling his qi flows affecting auxiliary bodily functions.
He could make his excuses and feel the guilt for it later, but his heart and mind were exhausted from three days of humiliation and grief, and he let himself grow hard.
It was unlikely she'd ever show her face around him again, so what more harm could it do? A fantasy never to be realized, where she turns to him, just this once, in joy and comfort?
He vowed to do all in his power to never cause her to fear him again. If removing himself from her presence were necessary, then he would do so. But for now, he wished to see her untroubled, relaxed in his presence. He wanted to bring her joy as she sat astride him, his body buried in hers.
He suppressed a gasp and shut his eyes to focus the image which sent a wave through him, hardening him further. He lay there as his breath quickened and turned his awareness to his own body.
His hand opened the front of his robe to grip himself through his smallclothes, that he might match his imagined angle of entry.
His whole body reacted to the warm pressure, shifting and tensing like a foreshock through the earth. The soft material slipped easily over his skin, and his breaths came deeper.
In his mind's eye, she smiled down at him, icy blue meeting his green and black. He smiled back, willing himself to temporarily forget the reality that made this impossible. He lifted his free hand and tried to trace the air where her thigh would fall next to his hip. How would she feel? How would she want to feel?
He knew the answers to such questions in vague hypothetical terms. He knew the real answers only she could tell him truly. Would he have ready answers for her? Too late, too late for now. He would trust her to guide them as needed if the time came, and her smile above him grew.
So he let his grip do what it will and flexed his core. He imagined her tipping forward with a laugh, catching herself with her palms on his chest. Her face would be even closer now, her night-dark curls slipping past her shoulders.
What details would be discover this close, in her smile, in her eyes? Would the curtain of her hair block out the light, or would her own cultivation provide a subtle starlight in the space between them?
He wanted to reach up and caress her cheek, feel her hand on his, search her face for-
So deep in the dream was he that he gasped when her smile turned from fond to mischievous, his building tension lending more details to the illusion. She entwined her fingers with his and leant far forward, pinning his captured hand and placing her face next to his. He could practically feel the loose strands of her hair tickling his face and the puff of wind in his ear when she whispered directly in it,
"Shi..."
Joy! suffused and rumbled in his entire body, and he came completely undone.
As sensation subsided and his blood began to cool, he saw her fall to the bed beside him, pleased and smug. But already the fantasy faded, and she was gone before he could pull her close.
Xuan Shi had no doubts that Ling Qi could bring him joy, but there was so little he knew about doing so for her. He ran a hand across the cold and empty patch of bed next to him. He would study and ask and learn. If he ever had another chance...
He sighed and slowly stood, grimacing at the odd sensations. Whatever else his mindset was wrong about, sex was decidedly messy. He washed and dressed in sleeping clothes, and resolved to put aside his dreams of a life with Ling Qi. Resolved to become a better man in the morning, striving for the impossible horizon where he was worthy of what he wanted.