#i got hit with the urge to write some Ying Lei so here you go

[yingleis]

Follow up to this fic prompt, told from Ying Lei's POV this time

(So I read this post a while back...and let's just say that I'm someone who's very easily convinced).

Notes:

this fic contains spoilers for the ending of FoF >_<

post-canon, taking some liberties with their abilities

aged-up Bai Jiu, he's about 20-ish in this

can be read as platonic or shippy

Ying Lei did not know how, or why exactly, he had been able to come back.

All he remembered was falling into a dreamless sleep, an unending landscape of darkness that he seemed to float in for what felt like an eternity before something yanked at him, tugging him back into the light.

—

He was back on Mount Kunlun, somehow.

Ying Lei quickly surveys his surroundings, unsure if this was a sort of illusion made by Cheng Huang– or a dream created by Ran Yi. But that would be impossible, both of them had been dispersed– how else, then, to explain the situation he found himself in?

He rounds to the back entrance, determined to sniff out the source of this illusion.

It is there that he senses it.

Or smells it, rather.

Underneath the crisp coolness of the winter air, there was the familiar scent of herbs, that exact smell that had been missing from Bai Jiu ever since Li Lun took over his body.

But what would Xiaojiu be doing here, when he should be in the mortal realm doing what he does best and building a reputation as a genius physician?

His question is soon answered as he pursues the scent, wandering further into Mount Kunlun, and spots someone scaling the plum tree to pluck its fruits.

“Who's there?” Ying Lei demands.

(It is then that he belatedly realises Luwu shanshen’s absence. Just how had Mount Kunlun survived without a mountain god?)

The intruder yelps, and promptly falls off the tree.

Ying Lei winces, hurrying forward to check on the intruder– a teenaged boy, he realises. Likely a spirit that hadn't yet gotten used to their mortal form. It must be cold, landing in a pile of snow like that.

“Boy! Are you alright?”

“Well, at least you got my gender right this time.” The boy says derisively, slowly clambering to his feet.

“Xiaojiu?” Ying Lei asks, hardly believing his eyes.

It couldn't be– even if the bells in his braids said otherwise– so Ying Lei picks up a branch, sorely missing the familiar weight of his kitchen knife in his hands. “You're not Bai Jiu, he's not this big! Confess now, who sent you to impersonate him? What are you doing on Mount Kunlun?”

“Silly mountain god, nearly a hundred years have passed, how could I not have grown up?”

Ying Lei frowns, considering the imposter’s words. He may have Bai Jiu’s and his hair ornaments and loosely resemble Bai Jiu, (albeit a slightly older Bai Jiu) but how was he to know it wasn't yet another Ao Yin?

As if sensing his thoughts, this ‘Bai Jiu’ continues. “If you need proof, then. You died to separate Li Lun from my body, even though you were scared of going into the afterlife alone and leaving us behind.”

Xiaojiu starts making his way into the temple, and Ying Lei follows, reluctantly lowering the tree branch as he digests Xiaojiu’s words.

“A hundred years?”

A nod.

“Then, you–”

How long has Xiaojiu been here, to be so familiar with Mount Kunlun, for the temple to start smelling faintly of his medicinal herbs, for him to grow up from being the little kid who would startle at the slightest hint of a yao to a dignified, collected adult, eons apart from the Xiaojiu that he once knew?

“I'm part demon, part human and part deity, remember?” Bai Jiu says, having misunderstood his words.

“No, I mean, you've been waiting here?” Why? Ying Lei wanted to ask.

“What else would I be doing?” Bai Jiu replies, pausing in the middle of the room. His room, Ying Lei realises. Xiaojiu had all but moved into his childhood room, filling up with his medicinal tools and jars of herbs.

(But Xiaojiu had been careful to keep Ying Lei’s items in their original state, placing his things around them instead of throwing them out).

“You could've been travelling the jianghu, becoming the best miracle doctor of your time, meeting new people, anything other than staying here in this lonely and cold place!” Ying Lei says, aggrieved.

“But I wanted to stay here,” Bai Jiu replies, catching Ying Lei off-guard as he pulls him into a hug. “Who else would welcome you back, if I wasn't here?”

His Xiaojiu had really grown up now, Ying Lei realizes. The boy was nearly as tall as he was now, stray strands of hair tickling Ying Lei’s nose as he buried his face into his shoulder, doing his best to suppress his sniffles.

Ying Lei hesitantly returns the hug– Xiaojiu hadn't been big on physical touch, back then– trying to imitate how Wen Xiao shennü used to comfort Pei daren by patting her on the back. “I'm back, Xiaojiu. I'm back.”

—

Extra:

“A white eyed wolf indeed,” Ying Lei huffed at the sight of that tree spirit running up to Bai Jiu (for the third time that day!) “Being thick as thieves with someone else the moment my back is turned.”

(If Pei Sijing were here, she would definitely shake her head, quietly correcting Ying Lei’s use of the idioms.

They weren't entirely wrong– only that the context was a little misaligned. If one were to properly observe Xiaojiu and the tree spirit, they would laugh in amusement to see that Bai Jiu finally had a tail of his own as well.

For someone who used to tightly clutch at the hem of Xiao Zhuo daren’s robes to have his own follower one day, who would have thought?)

He huffs, turning to continue his exploration of the mountain god temple. Not much had changed, in the few decades he'd been gone, but rather it was the minute shifts that caught him off guard– such as Xiaojiu’s cypress tree in the yard, next to his little herb garden, the kitchen that Xiaojiu had built with Da Yao’s help.

The kitchen.

They hadn't had one, before.

His grandfather and the previous mountain gods before them never saw a need for one, after all, as gods didn't need to eat.

Ying Lei pokes around the kitchen, amazed to see one in Kunlun mountain, amused by the crockery scattered about–

He stops at the lone kitchen knife hung above the stove, perfectly sharpened and without a single speck of dust tainting its blade.