Work Text:
Shang Qinghua is a nervous wreck.
So what else is new, Shen Qingqiu, aka Shen Yuan, aka the Web-Reader Formerly Known as Cucumber, his friend-slash-brother-slash-hater would say. Has said. Because he’s a dick.
The friendbrotherhater in question is perched in his window seat, nose stuffed in the bestiary Luo Binghe gifted him yesterday, ignoring Shang Qinghua’s plight altogether.
It’s his twentieth birthday, it’s supposed to be cause for celebration! Not for death sentences! He doesn’t need Shen Qingqiu to hold his half of this conversation, can fill in the Don’t be so dramatic all on his own. The thing about twentieth birthdays, when you’re royalty in the country he’s gone and been reborn into, is they mark the finalization of betrothals, and his is to—gulp—Mobei Jun of the neighboring Northern Desert.
Shang Qinghua tosses himself onto the bed and says, “Tell them I’m dead.”
“Tell them yourself,” Shen Qingqiu says, flicking a page.
“Then they’ll know I’m not dead!”
Shen Qingqiu hums, uninterested.
“I can’t believe you don’t care my life is about to be over.”
“You keep saying that.” Shen Qingqiu shrugs one shoulder. “I don’t see the problem.”
Shang Qinghua groans. It’s easy for Shen Qingqiu to not see the problem! He was blessed with a fiance who’s completely obsessed with him, just like their oldest brother, Shen Jiu—the family names are a long story—so poor Shang Qinghua is the only one doomed to a loveless future. That’s assuming his betrothed doesn’t find some convenient way for him to die on their impending…excursion.
“Mobei Jun hates me.”
Shen Qingqiu still doesn’t so much as look away from his reading. “I don’t think he does.”
“He won’t even look at me! He hasn’t forgiven me for that thing at Yue-ge’s wedding banquet! Even though I tried apologizing and telling him it was an accident and how was I supposed to know complimenting his sword meant I wanted to duel him—”
“And then refusing because he’d turn you into a bloody pulp meant you were saying he wasn’t worth your effort?” Okay, so they’ve had this conversation a lot, it’s no wonder Shen Qingqiu can parrot his own words back at him. “You did invent the fucking world.”
“Stop bringing that up,” Shang Qinghua whines, scrubbing his hands over his face. “It’s not fair.”
“Just go take your damn bath and get dressed already.”
Shang Qinghua makes a protesting baby sound. It doesn’t save him from taking his damn bath and getting dressed already.
-
The birthday robes are itchy. Shang Qinghua doesn’t think they’re supposed to be itchy, that maybe it’s his nervous imagination feeding him mosquito-y bullshit, but it doesn’t matter because real or psychological itch, he’s having a terrible time trying to stand still at the head of his father’s throne room while all the royal delegations march their way in to greet them. Nobody told him what order the guests—his guests, they say, except not really, it’s not like he got any say in the invitations—would be coming in, so he has no idea when to expect Mobei Jun.
Go figure he’s trying to discreetly take care of an itch on the back of his leg when the Northern Desert’s royal family appears.
Their king, with the sternest, stoniest, gravest face Shang Qinghua has ever seen. Their queen, stunning in her icy silver-blue robes. The eldest princess, and the younger twin princesses, and—
Mobei Jun is as beautiful as he’s always been, and equally inexpressive. The same look Shang Qinghua got with the unfortunate sword incident—the sword is on his fiance’s hip today, too, and listen, it really is a cool sword! Black and frozen and wicked enough to slaughter a whole herd of Black Moon Rhinoceros-Pythons if he had the urge.
Or a single Shang Qinghua.
Presently living, Shang Qinghua bows and greets his future in-laws with only a teensy bit of trembling, before his future husband is before him.
“Mobei Jun.” Shang Qinghua dips his head. “It is an honor to have you here.”
“It is an honor to be here,” Mobei Jun says, everyone’s on the same damn worn-out script at times like these. “I look forward to spending time with you.”
Shang Qinghua more-or-less word vomits how he feels the same; Shen Qingqiu is much smoother about the whole process.
By the time this part of the day is over, Shang Qinghua longs to go soak in the bath again and possibly drown there this time around, but the dinner banquet in his honor—sobbing, screaming, all that on the inside—demands his presence.
It would be better, he thinks over his dinner, while Mobei Jun sits stoically across from him, if he wasn’t hopelessly attracted to his fiance. If he weren’t his favorite character, the one he basically wrote as Airplane’s Ultimate Fantasy. Instead he’s got the whole unrequited love, so much pining thing going on, and it. is. awful.
He does make a valiant attempt at conversation.
Okay, a half-assed attempt.
What’s he supposed to say, huh!? Ask about the weather? The Northern Desert’s only got the one kind of weather! Ask about his training and remind him of the whole accidental insult incident? No! He doesn’t need to put his own head on a pike! Meanwhile, at the other end of their table, Shen Qingqiu is making the Northern Desert’s empress laugh, while a late-arrived Luo Binghe shovels the choicest bits of meat onto his plate, his eyes full of hearts, and Shang Qinghua wonders if he could drown himself in his soup instead of the bath.
-
When the dishes have been cleared away and the tables too, leaving the hall wide open, the moment he’s been dreading arrives. The almost sympathetic look from Shen Qingqiu does nothing to quell his burgeoning nausea.
His father, long may he reign, whatever, announces in his booming voice that, “My second son is now of age. Thank you all for attending this little celebration. As you know, as we reach this age we have a time-honored tradition of seeking an audience alongside the betrothed, to see what blessings might be forthcoming in the marriage. Shang Qinghua, come here.”
Trying to look less miserable than he feels, Shang Qinghua moves to stand beside his father.
“Prince Mobei Jun, if you please.”
Prince Mobei Jun’s face suggests he does not please, but he comes to the king’s other side.
“Tomorrow morning, the two of you will depart together. You will pass through Mount Mingyun and cross the Nongli River, to seek wisdom from the Great Shou Jiaguwen. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Father,” Shang Qinghua says, while Mobei Jun rumbles his own agreement.
“Now, everyone, enjoy your night!”
-
Shang Qinghua does not, in particular, enjoy his night. His terrible friendbrotherhater won’t even let him get drunk because “you don’t want to be hungover in the morning, dumbass,” and what does Shen Qingqiu know anyway! Of course he wants to be hungover!
He nurses his single too-small drink for over an hour, watching with envy while their guests dance. If he were braver he’d seek out Mobei Jun and invite him to dance, try to do something betrothed-y, but he doesn’t have it in him.
“If you ask very nicely, I’ll poison you,” says a voice beside him.
“Huh!?” Shang Qinghua startles, then relaxes at the sight of his elder brother, who looks deeply unimpressed by the sight of him. “Where have you been? Where’s your husband?”
“Qingyuan is apologizing to our father for being late, he insisted on stopping to deal with a yao beast we came across on our way,” Shen Jiu says. He gives Shang Qinghua one of his mean little smiles. “Do you or do you not want to be poisoned, Xiao-hua?”
Shang Qinghua gives him a dubious once-over. Look, if there’s anyone in his family who’d come to a birthday banquet with a stash of poison up his sleeves, it’s Shen Jiu, but— “Do you really have poison, or are you making fun of me?”
“The two things aren’t mutually exclusive.”
Shang Qinghua narrows his eyes. “How painful would it be?”
Shen Jiu’s smile becomes, frankly, terrifying.
“I’ll take my chances with the Shou Jiaguwen,” he mumbles, and Shen Jiu grunts.
“You have time to change your mind.” He raises his fan in front of his face, he and Shen Qingqiu both have that stupid habit. “Or perhaps you don’t. Your betrothed is on his way.”
His betrothed is what oh fuck he really is, Mobei Jun’s stalking through the guests like he means to murder Shang Qinghua right here on the ballroom floor and use his bloodstreaks to read the future instead.
“Do you have another fan I can hide behind?” he asks, under his breath and in a panic.
“You think fans are stupid,” Shen Jiu says, lofty and merciless and why was Shang Qinghua cursed with such terrible brothers—
“Mobei Jun!” Shang Qinghua squeaks at Mobei Jun’s arrival, dipping into a bow so dramatic he almost conks his head on the marble floor.
“Shang Qinghua,” Mobei Jun says. “Do you want to dance?”
His voice is so grave it doesn’t sound like an invitation so much as an obligation, like when your parents remind you not to whistle unless you want to attract some ghosts to carry you away.
“I’d like that.” He’d like it even more if his stupid throat would stop squeaking! Please! He’s already got no dignity, it doesn’t need to fall into the negatives!
Mobei Jun offers him a hand, which is freezing, because ice demon. Shen Jiu makes a sound behind his fan. Shang Qinghua throws a furious look at him, then focuses on Mobei Jun leading him to the floor.
Shang Qinghua is…not good at dancing. Shang Qinghua has never been good at dancing, and has accepted he never will be. Intellectually he knows what he’s supposed to be doing with his feet, but translating that into the extremities themselves is a whole other story. To make it worse, Mobei Jun is stiff, like it’s not so much a dance as a death march.
“I heard from Luo Binghe,” Mobei Jun says, and Shang Qinghua swallows a curse as he half-stumbles, and Mobei Jun reaches out as if to catch him, only to change his mind. “You redid the military inventory.”
“It needed doing,” Shang Qinghua complains. It hadn’t been touched in like two hundred years!
“He says it was helpful.”
“Ah, hah.” Shang Qinghua rubs at the back of his neck, realizes that is not part of the dance he’s failing at anyway, and drops his hand back to his side. “It’s not too interesting though.”
“Shang Qinghua is modest,” Mobei Jun says, with an air of disapproval. Demons are all about taking credit for themselves—and others—aren’t they?
Shang Qinghua laughs, nervous and awkward and pretty sure he’s going to trip his way into Mobei Jun, who’ll shove him away hard enough to break a bone or twelve, and—
“This Shou Jiaguwen,” Mobei Jun breaks into his thoughts. “What is it?”
“It’s always been here.” Shang Qinghua jumps on the subject of anything but himself. “It’s probably older than the country itself. If it doesn’t approve, you can’t marry. For our family, I mean, all the farmers and soldiers and everything don’t have to go trekking through the wilderness to make sure it’s happy, they just go to regular fortune tellers.”
Mobei Jun’s brow furrows; he says nothing.
-
Morning comes on with a vengeance and a series of clacking sounds. Shang Qinghua is, crankily, forced to admit that Shen Qingqiu was right and he’d be really regretting a hangover right now.
Speaking of Shen Qingqiu: he and Shen Jiu are both sitting at Shang Qinghua’s weiqi board when he wakes up, already in the middle of a game, thus the clacking. This is how they communicate, he knows that, but, “Why are you playing in my room?”
“Waiting for you to wake up,” Shen Qingqiu says, and moves a white stone.
“To help you dress,” Shen Jiu says, like a threat, before clicking his own black piece into place. Shang Qinghua can’t actually see the board, he just knows they’ve been committed to their colors since forever. “Like good brothers.”
“Since when do we have those?” Shang Qinghua asks, and yelps as two discarded pieces are flung at him; he throws himself flat to avoid a concussion. “You’re both awful brothers, the worst, I’m living a tragedy and you’re—”
“Stop whining,” Shen Jiu orders; his mouth snaps shut. Shen Jiu has that effect. He narrows his eyes at whatever Shen Qingqiu’s next move is, scoffs and pushes away from the board with a muffled surrender. “You need a bath.”
“I can take a bath by myself!” Shang Qinghua protests, groping around his blankets for the weaponized weiqi pieces. One clatters to the floor. Before he’s found the other, Shen Jiu’s ripping the blanket away—oh, there it is!—and rattling off a list of what needs to be done before he goes. It’s a long, stupid list, and Shang Qinghua decides three items in to just accept his fate.
-
“There will be three trials.” Shen Jiu’s lecturing comes with his fingernails in Shang Qinghua’s scalp, washing his hair like he’s not about to be sleeping in dirt for the next few nights. Shen Qingqiu, meanwhile, is packing a bag on his behalf. All things he can do without help! It is kind of nice though…not that he’s telling them that.
“What do you mean trials?” he grouses instead.
“I don’t know,” Shen Jiu says irritably, with a yank that is one hundred percent harder than necessary. “It depends on you.”
Oh, good. Great.
“One trial for your passage through Mount Mingun. The second when you cross the Nongli River.” Yank.
Shang Qinghua hisses. “The third?”
Yank. “It could be before the mountain or after. Our father’s was after. Mine was before.”
What a fun surprise.
“I’m packing drying talismans,” Shen Qingqiu announces from across the room, where he’s overstuffing a qiankun pouch.
“Good idea,” Shen Jiu says—yank—and pats his head. “He’ll probably fall in the river.”
“Hey!”
-
Mobei Jun waits for him at the very back of the palace grounds, which open up into the forest. It’s a whole part of the tradition. They set off alone because it proves the beginning of their life together or whatever, blah blah blah, Shen Jiu had complained just as much when it was his turn, like Yue Qingyuan wouldn’t throw himself over a river of lava like a bridge for him if it came up. Which it wouldn’t, because they didn’t have volcanoes in this country, but if it had, his big brother’s then-fiance would have been ready.
Anyway.
Shang Qinghua shivers at the sight of his own betrothed, standing perfectly still like a predator awaiting its chance to pounce and tear out a defenseless throat. Which Shang Qinghua absolutely has! He bows his head now, all the better to not show it off, and murmurs, “Good morning. I look forward to sharing this journey with you.”
Mobei Jun grunts, “And I, you,” super convincingly, and turns. “We go this way?”
“Yes,” Shang Qinghua says. There’s no map, no compass, nothing but intuition, which has supposedly worked for every relationship in his family’s history.
…Except the one time it ended in a pit of hellishly venomous vipers and a new mausoleum for what would have been his great-great-great-aunt.
It’ll be fine!
And the journey does start well enough. As well as something so awkward can, anyway. Shang Qinghua is a nervous chatterer, always has been and assumes he always will be, and even knowing Mobei Jun can’t stand him and will probably shove him into lava rivers, viper pits, or whatever other dangers his family’s land blesses them with, he can’t stop his stupid mouth from running.
“I always liked spinning nettle hibiscus, what about you? I guess you wouldn’t have them in the Northern Desert…but you do have dragonfirs, right? I’d like to see one of those. I read the story of Empress Lian when I was little and thought it would be amazing to see her meteor shower that created them. Is it hard to reach that stand? I’m not sure I’d survive a trip up a mountain if that’s where it is. Have you ever climbed a mountain? You look like you could climb a mountain, you’re so—”
And on, and on, until he’s practically begging the gods to shove something down his throat.
The gods ignore him, but around dusk Mobei Jun slaps a shockingly cold hand over his mouth and hisses, “Be silent,” and he thinks, Fuck, I’ve really done it now, he couldn’t hate me more. Help!
Something moves in the trees, and oh! Oh! Night tigers! Right, they have those here, and one of them sure is making its leisurely way across their path. They’re enormous, twice the size of regular tigers, and they might not go out of their way to eat people, but that doesn’t mean jumping out in their faces is a great call. With Mobei Jun behind him, pressed practically flush, it’s hard to worry as much as he should about the night tiger and its beautiful dark pelt that ripples into the shadows. Hard to believe they’re the same age. Mobei Jun’s muscles sure don’t feel twenty years old.
Shang Qinghua goes slack against him, and holds his breath, and waits until the tiger is well past.
When Mobei Jun’s hand finally falls away, he sucks in hard and says, “Fuck, that was terrifying. What if it noticed us?”
Mobei Jun says an unruffled, “I would have killed it.”
“Oh. Right.” Shang Qinghua crouches, pokes at a flower. He doesn’t want to say anything too complimentary and have Mobei Jun take it as a challenge again, especially when they’re out here with no Shen Qingqiu to smooth over the messes his mouth gets him into. “Sorry I—wouldn’t have been much help. I’m not great with a sword.” His eyes stray toward Mobei Jun’s blade, and away again.
“I would not need your help.”
Okay, ouch.
“Of course you wouldn’t! I didn’t mean you would, just I’m sorry you’re stuck with someone like me, that’s—”
“Shang Qinghua.” Mobei Jun sounds disgusted. “Stop talking.”
He sticks out a hand to pull Shang Qinghua—not gently!—back to his feet, dusts him off with an intense frown, and says, “We’ll keep going. This isn’t a good place to camp.”
Camp! Shang Qinghua can be useful there, at least. He’s not the world’s greatest wilderness cook or anything, but wilderness cook he can. They don’t talk during dinner. They barely talk after, except for Mobei Jun to declare they’ll sleep close together in their super separate bedrolls, and then Shang Qinghua struggles to fall asleep between the noise in the forest and the knowledge Mobei Jun is close enough for him to reach out and touch and the wondering if the night tiger slinking by counts as a trial…
-
His nonstop mouth finds itself again in the morning.
“This probably isn’t what you want to be doing now, is it,” Shang Qinghua says with an attempt at sympathy. Not that he has any idea what Mobei Jun would rather be doing. They’ve never just…talked. Not like Shen Jiu with Yue Qingyuan or Shen Qingqiu with Luo Binghe. “What would you be doing if you were home? You must have a lot of responsibilities with—”
He yelps, as Mobei Jun hauls him over a fallen tree trunk, turning him silent in favor of gaping, because Mobei Jun did that with one hand and it is taking every trace of willpower in his mousy body to not say that was the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me I would like you to do it again please.
“I wasn’t forced to be here,” Mobei Jun says, already on the move again.
Huh?
“But if I were home, I would be training our soldiers or playing the erhu.”
…come again? Mobei Jun plays an instrument? He plays one of the most beautiful instruments out there? Since when?
“I’d like to hear it,” he blurts out.
Mobei Jun doesn’t answer. He’s probably grimacing.
Their trek goes on until they come to the mouth of a cave. It’s Mount Mingun, which really has some nerve calling itself Mount Anything, considering it’s more of a set of hills with delusions of grandeur. But those hills and their dreams do have a tunnel system, and Shang Qinghua is pretty sure they’ve gotta go through them. Woohoo, intuition.
The cave interior comes as a shock. Damp air, slick walls and floor, and best of all: pitch black! The sound of Mobei Jun’s footsteps falls away ahead of him, while he stands indecisively around the entrance. He should have brought a lantern. Or maybe a Pokemon that knows how to use Flash. There are probably massive spiders in here. Or massive bats. Or massive spider-bats. Or Zuba—
“What are you doing?” Mobei Jun rumbles from within the darkness.
“I uh. Can’t see in the dark?”
“You should have said something,” Mobei Jun says, footsteps becoming audible again. There’s a little bit of splashing with each step.
“I’m human,” Shang Qinghua retorts in his own defense. “Humans can’t see in the dark, I didn’t know I needed to—” Shit. Abort, mouth, you fool, abort! “Sorry! I shouldn’t have said it like that.”
“You said what you meant,” Mobei Jun says, and Shang Qinghua despairs.
And then yelps, because Mobei Jun’s fingers are around his wrist!
“I will guide you,” he says, leaving no room for protest. “Stay close.”
The good news: words fail him. The last thing he wants is his own rambling bouncing back at him from sarcastic cave walls.
The bad news: some ways into the cave, how’s he supposed to know how far without any navigational tools, something furry touches him.
His mind floods with images of giant spiders, giant bats, giant spider-bats, giant Zuba—the furry thing growls, and it sounds like a hungry laugh, and Shang Qinghua squeaks like a tiny mouse, and Mobei Jun yanks him along even harder than Shen Jiu’s attempts to render him bald before this journey. He lets it happen, only panicking again when he’s pulled into a tight, tight spot, so his face is all up on Mobei Jun’s chest.
Boobs, his brain supplies helpfully. Mobei Jun’s boobs.
“We have to go this way.” Mobei Jun’s irritation is loud and clear even with the dark hiding his expression. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“No,” Shang Qinghua says, hasty and muffled. “Not a problem, I was just surprised, ahahaha, let’s go?”
So back to the squeezing. It’s slow going, shuffling along together, and Shang Qinghua is pretty sure he feels more than Mobei Jun’s boobs as they make their way. At least he’s not thinking about whether or not the furry thing can fit into the crevice with them now! Surely there’s no room here for anything except ice demon boobs! He keeps his mouth clamped shut until they’re loose, then positively hurls himself away. Distance, gotta put some distance between them or he is going to die.
“Shang Qinghua?”
“Just, uh, tight fit, huh?”
Mobei Jun makes a dubious noise, and picks him off the ground. Shang Qinghua yelps, but doesn’t resist being guided to the end of the cave, which comes soon. Feels like he’s just gotten through Mount Moon instead of Mount Mingun, and with the added stress of being a puny gay man with messy hair.
Wait, did Mount Moon need to be lit up?
Focus, Pikahua!
Was that a trial? Mobei Jun’s glorious chest? What’s next, a sexy little dip in the Nongli River?
-
The Nongli River turns out to be pretty close by. They hear it before they see it, the rush of the water that doesn’t, on second thought, entice one to take a dip, because it probably wouldn’t be sexy in the end, it’d be more like—murdery?
When they reach the riverside, Mobei Jun stands there with his brow furrowed and arms crossed.
“Hey,” Shang Qinghua says, a polite distance away from him, since he’s spent more than enough time today all up in his fiance’s business. “Do you know how to swim?”
Mobei Jun’s attention turns on him, sharp.
“Sorry! I didn’t mean—”
“I can’t,” Mobei Jun interrupts. It’s for the best, the way he keeps interrupting, because Shang Qinghua absolutely will vomit out every word there is if he’s not stopped by external forces. For instance: being shoved into the river. “The Northern Desert is landlocked. There are no large bodies of water. I never learned.”
“Oh.”
“What do you suggest?” Mobei Jun asks.
“Me?”
“Who else would I be asking?” Mobei Jun’s mouth twitches, like it’s considering an unhappy twist, and hey, Shang Qinghua wouldn’t want to be stuck relying on his own input either. Listen—it’s not that he’s not good at things, most of those things are just more indoors, or theoretical. No river crossings involved, usually. “Is there a bridge?”
“No,” Shang Qinghua says, with a regretful shake of the head. “But—oh, we could build a raft. I know how!” At least hypothetically, he does. He’s never had any reason to do it in reality. “Can you cut down some trees?”
Mobei Jun gives him a slow looking-over. Suggesting his sword do some felling isn’t offensive, too, is it? No, no, Mobei Jun nods and asks, “Which trees do you suggest?”
Shang Qinghua sweeps a look at their surroundings, and chooses a few that look nice and thick and sturdy. It’s sort of at random, but nobody needs to know that. While Mobei Jun handles the cutting down, Shang Qinghua digs through his qiankun pouch for rope. There’s plenty, like Shen Qingqiu was under the impression they’d be scaling Mount Mingun several times over.
The actual building part doesn’t take too long, once Mobei Jun is ready. Shang Qinghua directs, Mobei Jun works with his hands; it goes surprisingly smoothly, the two of them in sync. Mobei Jun carves an oar, but it’s more the idea of an oar than really shaped the way it should be. A too-thick river pole.
Mobei Jun climbs onto the raft first, taking the pole with him. He offers Shang Qinghua a hand, and over he goes.
It, ah—does not go well?
It’s a disaster, actually.
The Nongli is fast and rough and something sleek and black beneath the surface knocks into it, and in short: Mobei Jun goes flying off the raft just before they reach the shore.
Shang Qinghua swears.
Shang Qinghua swears a lot, and dives for the land. The raft goes spinning down the river without him. He tears his qiankun pouch open again. Too much rope? Nope! A super reasonable amount of rope! He sprints along the shore, as much as he can sprint with all the plants in the way, watching the figure of Mobei Jun thrash and bob, and, “Shit, shit, shit,” he chants, and throws with all his might.
The good: Mobei Jun catches!
The bad, again: between the river’s power and Mobei Jun’s weight, Shang Qinghua is yanked hard toward the water.
He yelps, and just manages to throw himself behind a tree, which is anchored way, way better than he has any hope of being. He pulls, and he pulls, and he pulls, until he can’t even feel his arms, but the river has stopped hauling the rope—and his fiance—away.
“Mobei Jun?” he calls. “Are you okay?”
The first answer he gets is a round of coughing. The second is, “I’m fine.”
Phew. Shang Qinghua gives himself permission to close his eyes a minute or two and congratulate himself on a job well done.
When he opens them again, Mobei Jun is bent over him, looming even though he’s on his knees, and wow he has a lot of hair, Shang Qinghua can tell because it’s assaulting his face, and it’s so wet it’s like a little grumpy-faced raincloud, and Mobei Jun is even prettier this close, so he suddenly feels like he’s the one who almost drowned, his brain running on and on and on, a hamster going nowhere on its wheel.
He wheezes, “I’m glad you’re okay.”
Mobei Jun touches his cheek. Shang Qinghua’s hamster brain screeches to a halt.
“Thank you,” Mobei Jun says.
-
That was definitely the second trial, right?
From boobs—er, a creepy pitch-black cave—to a near-drowning feels like a hell of an escalation. If the night tiger back when they started out wasn’t the first one, just what the fuck is trial number three gonna look like? Is there a venomous snake pit in his future!?
“Shang Qinghua,” Mobei Jun says, and Shang Qinghua responds with a super eloquent “hmmngh?” or something to that effect. “Are you ready to keep going?”
“Hrrrgh,” he manages, and Mobei Jun makes a sound that might actually be a laugh.
Mobei Jun pulls him to his feet, only for him to slump against the tree that saved their asses. Then Mobei Jun tugs, not even hard, and he’s slumped against him instead. Hello again, Moboobs! That jolts him back to life, even as Mobei Jun says, “If you want to rest for the night…”
“Nope!” His voice is high pitched. Terrible. Shen Qingqiu and Shen Jiu would both mock him mercilessly. “Let’s go find the snakes!”
“What snakes?”
“No—sorry, there aren’t any. Probably. I mean unless we get really unlucky.” He takes an unsteady step aside. “I’m ready to go, are you? You’re the one who almost drowned just now.”
Mobei Jun dismisses his concern—typical demon—and their mission continues. It’s a lot of hiking, after the river. A stupid amount of hiking, while Shang Qinghua keeps his mistrustful attention on the ground, just in case it does give way to a pit of vipers without warning.
Their hike brings them through a flowering plethora of hibiscus and lilies and trees that get bigger and bigger. Shang Qinghua doesn’t even remember inventing most of them, or what they’re called. They were background flora, who cares!
They crest a hill. Spread before them is a valley, full of buzzing mosquitoes and bees, and fluffy cousins of squirrels, and—the night tiger. A night tiger, it doesn’t have to be the same one, he just gets the feeling it is. Also, it’s staring up at them from what looks like a place of honor among the wildlife. Shang Qinghua thinks, inanely, of Pride Rock and wardrobes; this night tiger looks like a friend of those kinds of mighty lions. Even though it’s a tiger. Dark pelt with darker stripes, no mane, fierce intelligence in its eyes.
Mobei Jun pulls him forward; he goes, docile, because his brain is on sabbatical now. Unscheduled travel, see you when I see you, buddy! Aside from one hand resting on the hilt of his sword, Mobei Jun seems pretty at ease as they head down.
The night tiger strikes Shang Qinghua as bigger and bigger and somehow bigger all the way, until they stand in front of it.
Instinct brings Shang Qinghua to his knees, an unsteady bow, face on the ground. “Are you the Shou Jiaguwen?” he asks, and he’s going to feel so ridiculous if he’s just talking to a tiger and it decides to rip his spine out, while he’s offering.
“You are the latest of the brood,” the night tiger says. Its voice is lighter than he expected. Almost like a lullaby. “And you are his prince of ice.”
That sounds…dashing? Fantastical?
Airplane, you are literally living in your own fantasy novel.
“I am,” Mobei Jun agrees. It’s surprising, somehow, to hear him go along with it. Considering they’ve come this far, it shouldn’t be, but…
“My brother told me there would be three trials,” Shang Qinghua says. His voice shakes, because of course it does. He forces himself to look up, and finds Mobei Jun already doing just that, while they’re stared at by eyes about the size of their heads.
The night tiger—the Shou Jiaguwen—dips its head. “You have experienced two.”
“What is the third?” Mobei Jun asks, sounding unsurprised by the revelation, and jolting Shang Qinghua with guilt for not telling him about the trials to begin with.
“Nothing too strenuous.” The Shou Jiaguwen studies them. “Your relationship is auspicious. You need only pick a flower. Any of them from my valley.”
“That’s…it? Really?” Shang Qinghua can’t help sounding befuddled; as it turns out, he is befuddled!
“That’s it.”
Huh. Okay. He can pick a damn flower. He begins to turn, with every intention of snatching a flower at random, only for Mobei Jun to say, “Shang Qinghua.”
Shang Qinghua stops. “Yeah?”
“If you do not want this marriage,” Mobei Jun says, face stony and unreadable as ever, “you do not need to pick anything.”
He feels like he’s the one who’s been thrown into the river this time. “Huh?”
“I will make excuses for you. You will not face any dishonor.”
“If I—what do you mean if I don’t want this marriage, you’re the one who can’t stand me!”
Mobei Jun gives him a narrow look. “When did I say that?”
“You don’t have to say it, you’ve shown it every time we’ve met! You’re always trying to get away from me and I know I shouldn’t have challenged you—even if it was an accident!—and then I shouldn’t have backtracked, but it’s not that I don’t like you! I like you a lot! But you never seem happy to be around me, and you shouldn’t have to marry me if you don’t want to, so—”
Silence.
Then Mobei Jun is grabbing him, and hauling him in, and his voice is mostly growl on, “You misunderstand me. I am not Luo Binghe”—thank fuck, Shang Qinghua doesn’t say, because there’s no time and also his mouth is dry—“I am not good at straightforward displays of feeling.”
"But-but you always—"
And suddenly, maybe not so suddenly, Shang Qinghua is being kissed. He’s being kissed hard, and thoroughly, and he has to grab onto Mobei Jun’s shoulders to not just fall right over. "I do not," Mobei Jun says afterward, when he's ruined the structural integrity of Shang Qinghua's knees, "know how to court someone so...cute."
Cute! Mobei Jun thinks he's cute!? And wait, are his ears turning blue? Is that a blush?
The Shou Jiaguwen makes a sound, exasperation or laughter, hard to tell with a giant tiger. Either way, it startles Shang Qinghua into remembering they’re standing in front of his country’s ancient oracle, and he cannot spit out enough sorry sorry sorrys.
Picking a flower is the easiest part.
-
They take their time getting back. It only takes a little while for Shang Qinghua to work out Mobei Jun’s face and tone are just like that; he also figures out that kissing makes for pretty awesome communication.