#imagine if one day shen qingqiu wakes up and he no longer knows which one he is

[fairsweetlonging]

imagine if after the transmigration shen qingqiu became a combination of shen yuan and shen jiu, not in a "second person living in my head" kind of way, but a "this house is haunted and carries the echoes of the dead" kind of way; imagine shen yuan having nightmares about a house, a fire, a faceless boy behind a door he can't remember; imagine him having flashes of emotions he doesn't understand, rage at a name he doesn't recognize, helplessness when yue qingyuan apologizes for something he won't mention, nausea when ning yingying says the name "a-luo"; imagine parts of his own self have changed too, how he now likes bows in his hair, pretty flowers and flowing robes, but can no longer stand a stranger's touch, a man's touch, yet he longs for the brothels, but never sexually, only fondly, like there's something there he misses. there are many empty spaces in his heart where he feels something is missing

[ryukoishida]

LiuShen Week 2019 | Day 4 | In which they share kisses in different situations.

Written for LiuShen Week 2019  @liushenweek

Day 4: Loved (Free Day)

Title: And the Reason is You Fandom: Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System Characters/Ships: LiuShen Rating: Slightly NSFW Summary: Three times Shen Qingqiu kissed Liu Qingge, and that one time Liu Qingge initiated the kiss. A/N: Holy shit. Am I writing again? I know, I’m shocked at myself too.

-

i.

“Liu-shidi, I—”

There was a hint of strain in his usually calm, assured tone, as if he was using his last ounce of strength to hold himself back from reaching out to the man sitting so close to him.

His shivering fingers lightly wrapped around the back of the other man’s neck, and he pulled his head down, their breaths mingling for just a brief moment, hearts thundering and drowning out everything else.

Even when he was slightly under the influence of the venom, Shen Qingqiu still somehow managed to kiss him with such careful precision and control. The mesmerizing taste of his osmanthus-scented breath — a clear sign of him being poisoned — was overwhelmingly saccharine when he touched his lips gently against Liu Qingge’s, who could only widen his eyes at the unexpected turn of events.

Two hours ago, they had dragged their exhausted bodies back to the inn after exterminating a group of high-level flower demonesses who had enchanted and kidnapped the town’s young men in order to suck their vitality in aid of their cultivation.

It wasn’t a particularly difficult encounter they had in terms of an extermination mission, but the leader of those demonesses had been cunning, enough that Shen Qingqiu – who, at least according to a scoffing Liu Qingge, had been too easy on them as the lord of Qing Jing Peak had initially planned to extract the kidnapped victims in a more polished means without causing too much of a mess – had fallen into the demoness’s trap.

Neither of them was seriously injured in the end, but Shen Qingqiu inhaled some of the dangerous sweet pollen, which as he soon found out to be a very potent aphrodisiac, and no long cold soak in the bathtub was able to completely erase the devastating effects of such venom. Tendrils of tantalizing heat and sparks of prickling sensation snaked up from within the depth of his body and spread to the surface of his skin, making him slightly flushed and breathless, almost as if he had a fever.

Shen Qingqiu had been absolutely vigilant of any physical contact since they came back, but it was all over the moment Liu Qingge’s fingers brushed against the back of his hand — swelteringly warm and over-sensitive – when he was handing him a cup of warm tea in an attempt to sooth the twitching, pulsing desire within him.

It took Liu Qingge much longer than he was willing to admit to react to the kiss, for the initially chaste touch of their lips quickly turned into something much more intense, something that threatened to rip Liu Qingge’s breath and last strand of logic away.

Then the acute, unnaturally sweet floral taste of Shen Qingqiu’s tongue shattered the illusion when he tried to deepened the kiss, and Liu Qingge quickly staggered back, shoving away the slightly shorter man, who was putting up quite a fight for someone who was supposedly poisoned and weakened.

“Shen. Qing. Qiu.”

With each syllable of the man’s name, Liu Qingge’s voice dripped with icy impassivity and quiet fury: a warning, or a subtle sign of fear.

“Damn it, Shen Qingqiu! Wake up!”

Shen Qingqiu’s eyes were clouded with raw lust stirred up by an artificial source, but the kiss had been real, the little noise of discontent rolling from the back of his throat when Liu Qingge pushed him back had been real, the desperate grasp of his sleeves when he attempted to come closer once more, and the eager way with which Shen Qingqiu called for him had also been real.

But…

You are not yourself, Liu Qingge thought.

He wondered why his heart was hurting so much when he finally lost the will to fight and simply allowed Shen Qingqiu to embrace him as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

And I am not the one you truly want.

-

ii.

“Liu-shidi, stay exactly where you are and don’t move!”

As soon as the Sha Lu Er flopped lifelessly onto the ground with a thundering thud, its gaping jaws twitching a few seconds more as human blood dripped from its yellowing fangs before it laid completely still, Shen Qingqiu returned Xiu Ya sword back into its sheath and ran towards his companion, his furrowing brows and hastened pace the only signs of his unease.

“Are you all right? Dear god, your arm…”

“I am fine,” Liu Qingge would roll his eyes at his shixiong’s melodramatic antics were he the type to do so; instead, he just acted how he usually would – avoided eye contact at all costs and pretending everything was fine, like the flesh and bones of his left arm weren’t crushed into a bloody, mangled mass by that damn fifteen-feet-long shark-deer monster that had been wreaking havoc and endangering the villagers in nearby towns. “Shen-shixiong has no need to be overly concerned for me.”

A pause, and then something hard hit the back of his head.

Liu Qingge uttered a pained groan and glared at the other man through the messy fringes of his forelocks, his iron-grey irises blazing in irritation despite his pale complexion due to blood loss from his injury.

Shen Qingqiu’s grasp on the handle of his fan tightened until his knuckles turned white, his lips pressed into a firm line as he maintained their eye contact.

“What the hell was that for?”

“What do you mean — that I don’t need to be concerned for you?! Liu Qingge, I thought we’ve gone over this already! What you did just now, throwing yourself so carelessly into the fight, I—” Shen Qingqiu exhaled harshly, turning his head away as uncomfortable warmth crept up from his neck to his cheeks when Liu Qingge continued to stare at him with a hint of curiosity laced within the initial frustration. “That was for making me worried sick!”

Liu Qingge blinked once, twice, finally comprehending what Shen Qingqiu was insinuating, and he stumbled the two steps forward to close the distance between them, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

“Shen Qingqiu…” he murmured, eyes lowered in a silent apology.

Shen Qingqiu lifted his arm and gently gathered a strand of Liu Qingge’s ink-black hair in between his blood-stained fingertips.  He kissed his locks with a warm, tender light in his eyes that Liu Qingge had never seen before.

He didn’t dare imagine; he didn’t dare hope; he didn’t want to be disappointed.

“I cannot bear the thought of losing you, so please, Qingge, I beg you, don’t put me through that again.”

-

iii.

Shen Qingqiu kissed the back of the other man’s hand reverently, lips lingering on the skin marred with battle scars and tongue gliding over callouses hardened by swordsmanship training over the years. He traced his lips over the elegant structure of his fingers until he reached the tip of Liu Qingge’s middle finger, which he then took into the wet cavern of his mouth in its entirety, until the fingertip grazed the back of his throat, and he swallowed hungrily around it.

It was shameful: the wet sounds of Shen Qingqiu sucking on his skin like he couldn’t get enough of his taste reverberating in his ears, those mesmerizing red, swollen lips wrapping around his fingers, the trembling eyelashes surrounding the darkened irises that looked like Shen Qingqiu wanted nothing more than to consume him whole.

It was shameful, and Liu Qingge wanted to turn away from this unbecoming sight, but he couldn’t stop noticing how Shen Qingqiu’s chest was rising and falling deeply with each breath, or how his long hair, freed from the length of his hair tie, flowed like rivers of ink over the pale canvas of his shoulders.    

“Mnn… Shen Qingqiu, stop playing around and get to it…” he’d meant to sound menacing, but the breathless way with which he uttered the threat betrayed the swelling desire barely contained within his shivering body.

At long last, as if finally satisfied by the teasing he’d instigated against his beloved shidi, Shen Qingqiu pulled his head away with a knowing smirk, a thin string of saliva still connected from his lower lip to the tip Liu Qingge’s finger.

On the battlefield, Liu Qingge incited fear in his enemies and admiration in his allies simply by his presence and the powerful arcs and sweeps of his Cheng Luan sword; in the privacy of their shared bed while lying underneath Shen Qingqiu, Liu Qingge somehow lost the prideful and confident air that made him one of the strongest combatants in the cultivation realm. Instead, he would relinquish all his control to Shen Qingqiu, who would then patiently guide him between the valleys and peaks of pleasure through agonizingly gentle touches and ferocious, carnal ecstasy.  

“Qingge, is this how you ask your shixiong for something? Where are your manners, hmm?”

Shen Qingqiu had a light grip of Liu Qingge’s chin so that the other man couldn’t turn away as Shen Qingqiu had suspected he would.  

With bloodshot eyes and lips that’d been bitten raw, Liu Qingge muttered a fairly impressive, “fuck you.”

“I thought that was the plan, was it not?” Shen Qingqiu laughed, amused by Liu Qingge’s lackluster insult as he placed a soft kiss on the other man’s forehead. “Or are you having second thoughts?”

“Never.”

-

+i.

Shen Qingqiu was not good at cooking. He wasn’t awful at it per se, as he had the skills of making instant noodles with various toppings back in the good, old days without burning down his tiny apartment, but he’d choose to go exterminate a bunch of evil demonic beings over doing this any day.

But for his cultivating partner — the light and love of his life, his newly-wedded husband — he would cook him a proper meal even if it killed him.

Perhaps he was being a little over-dramatic in this matter.

Shen Qingqiu chopped the tofu half-heartedly, trying to recall the specific way Luo Binghe had taught him, but all his effort only resulted in uneven chunks of the silky white curds, one-fourth of the portion he was certain he’d turned into useless mush that couldn’t be pan-fried in the wok.

On second thoughts, maybe he should have taken actual notes when Luo Binghe had been teaching him how to make a few homely dishes just a few days ago.  

He was about to get another cube of tofu sitting in the wooden tub of cold water when Liu Qingge’s voice could be heard from the kitchen’s entryway.

“Shen Qingqiu, there you are,” the lord of Bai Zhan Peak had a slight, confused frown to his brows when he stepped into the kitchen and gradually made his way towards his partner. “I have been looking all over for you… what in the world are you doing?”

He raised one of his brows in puzzlement. “What is this? Are you… are you making dinner?”

“Trying,” Shen Qingqiu emphasized the keyword in this matter. “And failing miserably, as you can see.”

He stepped away from the counter to let Liu Qingge observe his progress — or lack thereof, rather.

Shen Qingqiu sighed, placing the knife down on the cutting board.

“Binghe spent almost four hours the other day teaching me how to make this dish, too. Now I feel terrible for wasting his time. It seems that I have learned nothing from our culinary lessons.”

Liu Qingge’s eyes flashed dangerously at the mention of Luo Binghe.

“Wait, you were with that brat? On your own? When was that? How many times have I told you to stay away—”

“Oh, calm down,” Shen Qingqiu chuckled, swiftly going over to his partner and wrapping his arms around the taller man’s shoulder, pulling him closer as he continued, “he’s just a mere child, Qingge. Why must you two always act so childish and hostile to each other every time you meet? It’s understandable for him to act this way since he’s still a teenager, but Liu Qingge, you are the renowned, respectable Bai Zhan Peak Lord. You don’t have to stoop down to a child’s level like that. I know you are better than that.”

“Hmph. I do not understand why you are so protective of that brat, but he is your disciple after all. Just… promise me to be careful of his intentions when you are around him by yourself.”

“Duly noted,” Shen Qingqiu noticed the genuine worry in his partner’s eyes, and he nodded solemnly in response. With the ill-chosen topic out of the way, Shen Qingqiu once again glanced over at the atrocity he’d created in the short span of twenty minutes of meal preparation. “Now then, I suppose I should clean up this mess and let the kitchen staff reclaim their space.”

“Wait,” Liu Qingge placed a hand over Shen Qingqiu’s as the Qing Jing Peak Lord was about to reach for the knife.

“Hmm?” Shen Qingqiu turned to look at his partner, his head tilted to the side slightly in question. “Qingge, what is it?”

“I…” Liu Qingge bit his lower lip as he struggled to put his thought into words, his cheeks gradually turning pink. “I would like to try your cooking, i-if you do not mind, that is.”

Almost as an afterthought, Liu Qingge lowered his head and pressed a firm but gentle kiss against Shen Qingqiu’s lips before he stood up straight once more, the tips of his ears burning such a bright red that it was impossible for either man to ignore.  

“Um,” Shen Qingqiu lost the ability to process for a good five seconds before he said with a bright smile that made his entire being glow with pure happiness, “sure.”