Work Text:
1.
The first thing Mobei-Jun notices is the smell - some kind of light, medicinal odor seems to be emanating from nearby. The second thing he notices is the pain in his lower back, somewhere in the vicinity of his right kidney. The third thing he notices is that he is not alone and the fourth, and final thing he notices, is the earring. It is affixed to the squirrely little cultivator’s ear, peaking out just under the hair that has escaped from his topknot.
Mobei-Jun stares at the earring, transfixed momentarily by its verdant shine in the low light of the room. He slides his eyes over to the face of the man the ear is attached to and observes him, squinting slightly through the minor throbbing headache that has apparently decided to lodge itself behind his eyes. The cultivator isn’t...unattractive. In fact, if Mobe-Jun used words like “cute” or “adorable” he might use them to describe the young man’s chubby cheeks, long eyelashes, and dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose. As he looked him over, Mobei-Jun recalled the circumstances of their meeting and the words the strange little man had practically screamed at him as he clutched at his thighs -
“My king, please let me follow you for the rest of my life!”
Well. If that’s what the twitchy cultivator wanted, at least he wasn’t hard on the eyes. And maybe he could be useful, even if just as a bargaining chip or, maybe as the he had suggested himself, a spy. Making up his mind, and deciding that laying there and just staring at his newly acquired servant was probably not the best use of his time right now, he abruptly shifted himself and kicked the sleeping cultivator off the bed.
2.
Mobei-Jun had been underground in the recesses of the Northern Kingdom for two weeks dealing with an outbreak of frost salamanders which, due to their increasing numbers in the past few years, were wreaking havoc with their extensive networks of tunnels and burrows underneath the few arable tracts of land in the far northern part of the kingdom. He was annoyed, he was tired, and frankly, he wanted to see the sun. Before he had even emerged from the underground tunnel, he made a hasty decision to pay a visit to An Ding Peak. Within seconds, he was stepping into the shadows in a dank underground tunnel in the far north and stepping out of the shadows in the corner of the Leisure House.
Giving his eyes a moment to adjust, Mobei-Jun kept himself hidden in the corner of the room, glancing around to ensure that the room didn’t contain any other visitors besides himself. While he did enjoy pretending to ignore Shang Qinghua’s squawking about coming into the room unannounced, Mobei-Jun did have enough sense to understand why he should exercise some caution in his comings and goings to the Leisure House and An Ding Peak in general.
Rather than seeing any other visitors, Mobei-Jun’s eyes instead caught on the extremely half naked human standing in the middle of the room, pulling an inner robe up in a bid to get dressed for the day. Mobei-Jun watched as Shang Qinghua tried, and subsequently failed, to stifle a huge yawn, allowing the robe to slide down his shoulders to pool near his elbows. As the robe slid down, Mobei-Jun noticed a slight twinkle in the region of Shang Qinghua’s chest and his focus honed in on it, curious as to what could be glinting in the early morning light.
Now, Mobei-Jun wouldn’t say he was staring per se, he was merely observing and uh...checking in on his servant before he let him know he was present. Contrary to what Shang Qinghua seemed to believe, Mobei-Jun did find him useful as a spy and wanted to ensure that no ill had befallen his person. Or at least, this is what Mobei-Jun’s internal monologue was telling him as he practically glared at the small, shiny ornament that was apparently affixed to Shang Qinghua’s chest...
Shiny ornament. Affixed to chest.
Mobei-Jun felt himself grow a little warm under the collar when he realized all at once that Shang Qinghua’s nipples were pierced. The small, shiny ornaments were slim, silver colored bars with gemmed beads on the ends that caught the light and dully flashed with Shang Qinghua’s movements.
Mobei-Jun felt the slight warmth that had been creeping up the back of his neck spread to the tips of his ears and, deciding that this had gone on for quite enough, stepped out of the shadows just as Shang Qinghua turned towards the corner he was standing in, pulling his slipped down robe back up to his shoulders in an effort to secure it shut.
Spotting Mobei-Jun silently walking out of the shadows from a corner in his room while he was in a somewhat scandalous state of undress, Shang Qinghua shrieked and stumbled backwards, causing him to trip over a book laying on the floor, which then caused him to fall flat on his ass.
“Ahhhhahahaha my king! When did you get here? This servant hasn’t seen you in two weeks! Is all well? Is there anything you need? Ahahaa...”
Mobei-Jun grunted at Shang Qinghua, still feeling the slight flush coloring the tips of his ears. He breezed right past the man sprawled on the floor and gracefully flopped himself down onto the nearby bed. As he turned over and closed his eyes to rest, he heard Shang Qinghua muttering behind him about “giving a guy a warning” and “materializing out of nowhere like a wraith.”
Mobei-Jun refused to admit that one corner of his mouth had tipped up into a slight smile as he listened to Shang Qinghua’s mild complaining - he was just relaxing his face to sleep. Nor would he ever admit to anyone that he may have now had the image of Shang Qinghua facing him with his inner robe halfway pulled up his body, his hair slightly mussed from sleep, his face relaxed in the early morning light, with his nipple piercings very noticeable, seared into his brain, forming what would become a crucial core memory for Mobei-Jun for a very, very long time.
3.
Mobei-Jun wasn’t sure if Shang Qinghua’s proclivities to outfit his body in adornments would ever cease to surprise him, but today would not be that day. To be fair, Mobei-Jun was relatively used to seeing demons with any number of piercings and skin markings, but he was distinctly not used to seeing humans with them. In fact, the only somewhat common type of adornment in the human realm appeared to be earrings. However, Mobei-Jun had come to realize over the years of his acquaintanceship with Shang Qinghua that the cultivator was anything but a common type of human.
Mobei-Jun also knew, conceptually, that he did see quite a bit of Shang Qinghua in his daily goings about, especially now that Shang Qinghua had, as he explained it, “taken a leave of absence” from An Ding Peak. So after Junshang had asked for advice regarding how to “woo” someone, as Shang Qinghua would have put it, he was only mildly surprised when Shang Qinghua told Luo Binghe to be “clingy” and, essentially, act pathetic. Mobei-Jun squinted slightly at Shang Qinghua as he gesticulated wildly, launching into a twenty minute monologue on the subject, hitting his stride about five minutes in and organizing his words and thoughts as if he were trying to rally soldiers on the battlefield to “woo” the opposing army.
As he watched Shang Qinghua flap his arms in an imitation of whatever a “delicate, verklempt disciple” was, his gaze zeroed in on, of all things, Shang Qinghua’s nose. It had been years since Mobei-Jun had surreptitiously began to catalog the freckles dusted across its bridge, since he had noted the gentle upturned slope at the tip of it, the delicate skin of each nostril. However, this time, something else had caught his eye. Like a moth to a flame, Mobei-Jun’s wandering eyes honed in on what appeared to be a flake of a...diamond? stuck on Shang Qinghua’s nostril.
Peering as closely as he could from his position across the room, Mobei-Jun finally realized what the shard was - it was a minuscule diamond stud that appeared to be affixed to Shang Qinghua’s nostril. Mobei-Jun had seen such fashions in the demon realm, with all manner of rings, stones, and dangling objects (it’s usually bones...actually it’s almost always bones) stuck through nostrils. However - and Mobei-Jun would only admit this in the back of his mind where no one else could hear it - the small, sparkling stud that Shang Qinghua had chosen to grace his face suited him. Like the man himself, it wasn’t too ostentatious but was still clearly something of a finer quality. Understated, but still quite literally as tough as a diamond. Mobei-Jun’s thoughts began to spiral about matching sets of earrings, nose rings, and nipple rings, delicate chains connecting all three until he realized that 1) Shang Qinghua had stopped talking and 2) he had scuttled over to Mobei-Jun’s side and was staring at him wide-eyed as Mobei-Jun stared right back at the center of his face.
Mobei-Jun snapped himself out whatever fantasy he had been concocting, eyes sharpening back to their usual reserved state. He turned his head slightly so that he wasn’t looking straight at Shang Qinghua and asked, “So, if you want to be liked by a man, the best method is to act pathetic?”
Shang Qinghua seemed to ponder this question and eventually responded, “In theory, that would be correct.”
Mobei-Jun had suspected that the small human had been trying to “woo” him for some time now, but that he was simply unaware that Mobei-Jun had been attempting to “woo” him right back with his thrice a day (GENTLE!) beatings. However, realizing that this course of action may not have been ideal based on Junshang’s reaction to his suggestion regarding said beatings, he decided to try a different tactic.
Mobei-Jun slowly reached out his hand and watched in slight annoyance as Shang Qinghua tried to cover his head. Cautiously, so as to not cause Shang Qinghua to flinch further, he lowered his hand to the fluffy bun on top of his head and tapped it gently. Feeling accomplished, and more than a little proud of himself at the amount of pathetic weakness he had shown with how gentle he could be, Mobei-Jun stood up and strolled out of assembly hall, his thoughts occupied by faces dusted with freckles and diamonds.
4.
Mobei-Jun was falling. Not just falling - he was plummeting. And the funny thing about plummeting is that you didn’t really know when, or how exactly, it will end. The likely assumption would be that it would end with your body slamming violently into the nearest hard, horizontal object at terminal velocity - not really something that was good for your general, overall physical state. The impact would certainly not be pleasant and would likely not be compatible with life, due to the whole breaking every single bone in your body and rupturing every organ you possessed thing.
So.
Yes.
Anyway.
Mobei-Jun was falling.
He had heard some demons (and maybe a human or two) describe the experience leading up to potential impending death as one where they had their entire life “flash before their eyes” or as an experience where every regret they had churned up from the deepest recesses of their bowels to come ripping out of their throat as a scream. However, for Mobei-Jun, the moments he spent dropping through the air coalesced into a vision of a skin marking on a forearm - that is, a skin marking on a forearm reaching out to him in the endless black as he hurtled toward the earth. The skin marking appeared to be in the shape of a writing brush, or at least what looked like a writing brush, etched into the flesh in gentle, sweeps of what appeared to be ink. The marking was rendered in a delicate wash of blacks and greys, faint washes of those same tones curling from the bottom of the bristles, like the brush had just been dipped in water so that it could be dried and prepared for the next epistle it needed to transcribe.
It was so simple. It was beautiful.
Mobei-Jun fixated on it, and it appeared to be growing closer by the second. In some part of his mind, he thought that perhaps this was what his creator must look like - a brush, endlessly marking the blank parts of an already partially filled out scroll, notating each part of his life down to the last detail. And now, the brush was drawing towards the end of the scroll to transcribe the final characters - after which it would be dipped in the clean water sitting on the table to clear the remaining ink that had summarized Mobei-Jun’s entire essence.
He breathed out a gentle sigh and shut his eyes, allowing the thought to wash over him as he continued to fall.
Literal seconds later, he was ripped out of his quiet acceptance of his fate with an ear piercing cry.
“MY KING! OPEN YOUR EYES AND GRAB MY FUCKING HAND!”
Mobei-Jun’s eyes flew open and traveled up the forearm with the ink marking on it, up to the shoulder it connected to, and then over to the face of Shang Qinghua, who looked, to put it mildly, simultaneously furious and violently anxious. Several things then happened at once. Mobei-Jun unthinkingly reached out his hand in response to the command that he had been issued by Shang Qinghua, who then grabbed Mobei-Jun’s as quickly as he could. The sword on which Shang Qinghua was careening downward on drunkenly dipped and skidded on the surface of the Luo River, bouncing like a skiff in the waves of a violent storm. As the sword skipped, Shang Qinghua tugged Mobei-Jun against his body, attempting to counter-correct their trajectory. Unfortunately, the opposing forces of Mobei-Jun’s bulk and Shang Qinghua’s attempt to channel his qi to stop the sword skipping caused the pair to go sailing off the sword and, with one bodily, final skip on the water, to flop onto the shores of the currently tumultuous river.
Mobei-Jun felt dazed - his body was resting in the mud, his head cradled to the side of Shang Qinghua’s neck. He could feel his heart still beating wildly from the shock of the fall and the only other sound besides the beating of his heart that he could hear was ragged breathing. It took him a moment to realize that the ragged breathing was coming from above and around him and, craning his neck slightly to look up, he discovered its source. Shang Qinghua was sobbing, taking huge, drawn, unsteady breathes, muttering nonsense about “almost lost” and “what would I do” as he tried to get enough air into his body to pull himself together.
Later, Mobei-Jun would rationalize his behavior to himself (and again, anyone who asked - or didn’t even ask but so much as thought about it) as being attributable to his near death experience. He raised his hand slowly to Shang Qinghua’s face and touched a single finger to one of the swollen trail of tears running down his cheeks, freezing it solid, and flicking it away like a speck of dust. He felt Shang Qinghua still next to him and noticed him cast his eyes towards him. Shang Qinghua gave him a watery smile and raised his hand to touch his face where the tears had just recently been streaming.
“Oh my king...” he muttered as he closed his eyes slowly, keeping his hand against his own cheek.
Mobei-Jun heard Shang Qinghua continue to speak but didn’t register anything beyond the sound of his voice, now infused with exhausted relief. He didn’t hear anything further because his eyes had zeroed in on where Shang Qinghua’s sleeve had pulled free from his wrist guard that kept his sleeve secured.
Underneath the now billowing sleeves, he could clearly see a skin marking in the shape of what appeared to be an ink brush in black and grey wash.
5.
There really wasn’t any way around it.
Mobei-Jun had turned over the entire norther border looking for Shang Qinghua for a month. Sure, he could try to sell the tale that he was looking for the cultivator to bring him back to the Northern Palace for interrogation regarding Linguang-Jun’s whereabouts, or that he needed Shang Qinghua to pay for the injuries Mobei-Jun had suffered during the ascension ceremony, or some other nonsense. But, if Mobei-Jun was being honest which himself, which he always was in his opinion, none of these excuses would fly.
Simply put, he had torn through the northern border searching for Shang Qinghua because he had missed him. It had snuck up on him at first, feeling like a dull ache in his chest that he had attributed to the lingering effects of the ascension ritual. But, as the days passed, he realized he was turning around to look for someone who wasn’t there, to ask them to give him a report, to hear them ramble ceaselessly about some kind of nonsense just to hear their voice, to just check that they were present at the desk in the corner of the room, writing away at who knew what. Mobei-Jun had finally swallowed whatever modicum of pride he had left and admitted to himself that he needed to find Shang Qinghua simply because he missed his strange little human’s presence.
And find him he did. After tossing his uncle into the ravine, after telling Shang Qinghua that he could strike him, after stealing a dilapidated cart and (once again, gently!) depositing his human into it and hauling him to a nearby inn, he could definitively tell himself, as he stared intently at Shang Qinghua’s slack-mouthed, sleeping face, that he had deliberately found him and did not intend to be the cause of his disappearance ever again if he could help it.
Shaking himself out of his staring, Mobei-Jun realized he had some slight amount of work to do in patching up Shang Qinghua. He had pulled the cart to the nearest inn, located a human doctor using only a small amount of intimidation, and fed Shang Qinghua hand-pulled noodles that he had made in the commandeered inn kitchen. After Shang Qinghua had assured him for the umpteenth time that “My king the noodles are just as good even if their shape isn’t uniform, I promise!” he had managed to coax his human into drinking the foul medicinal tincture that the doctor had hastily left after providing Shang Qinghua with a perfunctory exam, stating that he would be fine after a few days rest and perhaps a qi infusion if anyone was willing (with a very severe side-eye being directed at Mobei-Jun with this statement).
Mobei-Jun stared at Shang Qinghua’s face for a few more moments before puffing out a short breath and peeling back the covers from his prone body. He knew he needed to be the one to provide Shang Qinghua with a qi infusion, but he wasn’t quite sure what the human’s injuries were, beyond something affecting his ability to walk. After pulling the coverings off Shang Qinghua’s body, he relied on his sense of smell to lock onto the scent of dried blood. He quickly located the clean entry and exit wounds on Shang Qinghua’s lower leg and stared critically at the offending area. Thinking nothing of it, Mobei-Jun decided that the best way to survey the extent of the damage - now that Shang Qinghua was knocked out with whatever drugs the doctor had provided and wouldn’t be awake to grumble about “propriety” and “decorum” - was to just simply slice open the entirety of his trousers from mid-thigh to ankle with a sharp ice blade he had quickly conjured up.
Once he was able to observe the area better, Mobei-Jun noted the ugly purple and green bruising branching from the nasty puncture wound wrapping around Shang Qinghua’s calf and extending up to the side of his knee. Feeling some of the rage that he had felt when he broke his uncle’s legs resurface at the sight of the bruising, Mobei-Jun tamped it down and rested a hand gently on Shang Qinghua’s calf, sending a slow and stedy pulse of demonic qi into his skin, focusing on knitting the destroyed tissue and soothing some of the swelling in the surrounding areas.
Satisfied with his work after noting that some of the swelling in the area had decreased, Mobei-Jun removed his hand and made a motion to pull the bed coverings back over Shang Qinghua’s body. He paused, however, when his eyes caught on a slight flush of pink on the lower portion of Shang Qinghua’s thigh. Thinking he had perhaps missed another injury, Mobei-Jun peered closer at the exposed skin.
This turned out to be a mistake on his part, as it caused his gut to clench for an entirely different.
Twitching back the fabric covering Shang Qighua’s thigh revealed that the flush of pink was actually another skin marking - in fact, it was a rather large skin marking that wrapped around the back and front of Shang Qinghua’s thigh and disappeared up into the non-torn part of his trousers. From what Mobei-Jun could see from the exposed area, the marking was comprised of delicate plum blossoms, elegant bamboo stalks, bursting chrysanthemums, and garish orchids, all in various washes of colors. It was, in short, art.
Mobei-Jun sucked in a shallow breath as he traced his fingers slowly over the markings, watching in morbid fascination as goosebumps rose in their wake. There was a single piece of flora, however, that did not match the others, right on the side of Shang Qinghua’s thigh. It looked familiar, with it’s vibrant blues and contrasting greys, but Mobei-Jun felt like he may have been hallucinating it due to the stress from the last few days - what with finding Shang Qinghua and now having to care for him in the dingy hotel barely fit for a noble’s lowliest retainer.
If Mobei-Jun hadn’t felt like he was hallucinating, he would have thought the brilliant burst of blue and grey flora on the side of Shang Qinghua’s thigh were Cerulean Frost Flowers - the flower that had been associated with various rulers in his family’s line for centuries. But surely Shang Qinghua wouldn’t have inscribed this particular flower on his body - perhaps it was just some kind of orchid variation Mobei-Jun was unfamiliar (doubtful) with.
Letting his breath out again in one quick exhalation, Mobei-Jun pulled the covers back over his Shang Qinghua and settled in for the night, watching him breathe peacefully until he too drifted off with his head pillowed in his arms on the side of the bed.
+1
Shang Qinghua rolled over, sucking in deep gulps of air as he tried to catch his breath. He could feel the sweat on his body rapidly cooling and, rather than jumping up to clean himself up, he opted to sacrifice cleanliness for overall comfort and hauled the mass of furs at the foot of his side of the bed up and over his body, burrowing deep into them with a heavy sigh.
Rolling onto his side, he locked eyes with his husband, who was staring at him in a way that always made Shang Qinghua feel like he was being cataloged like a specimen under a piece of glass. He noted how Mobei-Jun’s gaze flicked from his nose, to his ears, and then to his partially covered chest, where one of his piercings was just peeking out from under the covers. He watched with some amusement as Mobei-Jun’s eyes finally rested on his forearm where he had his ink brush tattoo - something he had decided on in a pique when he was still an outer disciple, suffering through the drudgery of everyday life on An Ding Peak and thinking that perhaps his attraction to flowery prose would morph into something more substantive.
Well, if only he had known then what he knew now about how his own story had morphed into something so much more.
He felt his eyes crinkle at the corners as he grinned at his husband, shuffling over so that he could curl himself into the circle of Mobei-Jun’s arms. He felt his husband’s hand rest gently on his thigh, tracing over the tattoo he had there, specifically over the frost flowers he had opted to add to the massive piece at the last minute in a moment of desperate longing.
“Mmmm, my husband seems to appreciate the choices I’ve made with regards to adorning my body...Could he perhaps be interested in adornments of his own?”
To be fair, Mobei-Jun had long ago chosen to pierce his ears, when though, Shang Qinghua could not say. He did know it had been at some point after they had met, at the very least. He also knew that now Mobei-Jun opted to wear a variety of earrings from both the human and demon realm, some family heirlooms, but most sourced by Shang Qinghua. However, Mobei-Jun had kept himself shockingly free of the other body ornamentation that most demons chose to cover themselves in.
Mobei-Jun looked down at Shang Qinghua and arched a single, finely sculpted eyebrow, “And what would my husband have me adorn myself with? Would he have me carry skin markings like his own? Would he have me adorned with jewels as he has done with himself?”
Now, Shang Qinghua could admit freely that he was a shameless degenerate but, to hear Mobei-Jun ask him, point blank, what tattoos or piercings Shang Qinghua would like him to have made all of the blood in his body rush straight to his face and his ears. Wheezing slightly, Shang Qinghua buried his face into his husband’s ample chest and mumbled “I mean anything would be good but ahh a piercing, a tattoo, the possibilities are so vast...”
Shang Qinghua felt the rumble of Mobei-Jun’s laugh as he patted his head slowly. “This husband will let his Shang Qinghua choose how he wishes to adorn him. He seems to have such good taste with his own adornments that this husband trusts his judgment.”
Ahhh, too much my king, too much! Shang Qinghua had gotten most of his piercings and tattoos on whims or because he was just straight up bored. The only one that had any thought put into it was his thigh piece, and even that was minimal right until he allowed whatever longing he had possessing him to take control, prompting him to ask for the addition of the Cerulean Frost Flowers. He could still feel the heat emanating from his faet, and so, in an effort to avoid any more embarrassment, he burrowed himself further into his husband’s side.
“Ahh my husband is so generous. Well, I guess this husband will just have to make some choices, as any adornments would suit my husband well - regardless of where or what they are.”
Shang Qinghua, feeling his face being tenderly pried from its hiding place, he pulled himself a bit further back to meet Mobei-Jun’s stare. Mobei-Jun was looking at him with amusement, a slight uptick at one corner of his mouth, “Mmm this husband knows it will be good...” Mobei-Jun punctuated this statement with a gentle nip on the lobe of Shang Qinghua’s ear, where he currently had affixed a sapphire and diamond stud that Mobei-Jun had gifted him when he officially began courting him. Shang Qinghua yelped slightly at the sudden sharp ache, but relaxed into it as Mobei-Jun’s stroking on his thigh tattoo became more insistent under the furs.
“Ah my husband will look so fine in jewels and ink...This husband will ensure that the choices he makes are befitting him.”
With that, Shang Qinghua’s mind launched into a variety of scenarios of Mobei-Jun in numerous states of dress and undress with any number of piercings and tattoos on display, all chosen by Shang Qinghua and all being lovingly admired by him, just as Mobei-Jun admired the adornments Shang Qinghua had chosen for himself.