Work Text:
For the third night in a row, Liu Qingge wakes with his breath frozen between his teeth, qi roiling under his skin, his body tensed to lash out and strike at-- nothing. There is nothing, not so much as a cricket, in the room: nothing but himself, his bed, and Cheng Luan. Certainly no threat coming towards his unguarded back.
Or-- isn't there? Xiu Ya hadn't touched him, but that doesn't mean much. Shen Qingqiu must know half a dozen dirty tricks to poison or curse someone without contact: a blast of dust carried on the wind, a breath of pollen, a drop of sweat, grit scattered on the ground itself. Shang Qinghua might not have even noticed, or perhaps that was what he had tried to say. Liu Qingge hadn't been in any mood to listen to him. That could have been a misstep.
He still isn't in any mood to listen to Shang Qinghua, though, to be blunt, and it's probably useless. By now, Shen Qingqiu has had time to corner and threaten him; if he'd known anything before, he'll have conveniently forgotten it by now, and the thought of navigating a never-ending circuitous conversation where Shang Qinghua does everything possible to avoid getting to the point and telling him exactly that crawls on his already-taut nerves, sends an unscratchable itch somewhere down behind his eyes.
There's no chance of getting more rest tonight, no chance of meditation or of regaining his focus enough to lose himself in practice; exactly like the past nights. It has become a problem. But tracking Shen Qingqiu down on Qing Jing Peak and forcing him to undo whatever he did would be an admission that it had worked. He can't bear the thought of that, either.
The itching impatience grows worse as he paces until at last Liu Qingge yanks on an outer robe, ties up his his hair into something approaching acceptability, and throws open his door. This deep in the night, Bai Zhan is as quiet as it ever is, and there's no one to notice or stop him as he unsheathes Cheng Luan and takes off.
At first he's not even sure where he's going, only that being still is no longer acceptable; that going somewhere is better than doing nothing. He leaves his peak behind him without a thought, soaring over the bridges, past silent, closed doors and darkened peaks until there, in the distance, is a light, where his subconscious map of Cang Qiong doesn't expect there to be one. He turns towards it, flies silently over the dimly lit halls of Qian Cao's infirmary and leaps lightly off Cheng Luan to land before a lantern hanging from a staff in -- a field? It's too bare and plain to be a garden.
Mu Qingfang glances up at him from where he kneels in the dirt, raising one hand to shield his eyes from the light. "Liu-shixiong? What are you doing here?"
"Hm," Liu Qingge says. Behind them, a long trail of small, raised mounds stretches out to the edge of the field, a small straw poked into each. A basket beside Mu Qingfang holds a bundle of similar straws, a chipped clay watering pot, and a spade. He dismisses this. If he is cursed or poisoned or whatever, Mu Qingfang should be able to diagnose it and most likely fix it; there's no need for anyone else to know at all. Since they're both here now, there's not even any need for his name to be entered into Qian Cao's patient logs, really. It's satisfying, for everything to work out so neatly.
"Something's wrong with me," he adds, resheathing Cheng Luan and striding across the field to present Mu Qingfang with his wrist.
Mu Qingfang's eyebrow lifts, but he brushes dirt from his hands and transforms from a gardener to Qian Cao's head disciple with no more than a slight straightening of his back and a somewhat tarter than usual "If Liu-shixiong would take care to not step on this shidi's Thousand Night Pearl Roots?"
Liu Qingge glances down. He hasn't stepped on any, as far as he can tell; at least, none of the little mounds that Mu Qingfang had apparently been messing with have been disturbed, and his boots are no dirtier than normal. Nevertheless, he's careful where he places himself as he kneels down.
At first, nothing seems strange. Mu Qingfang's fingers are cool on his wrist, their careful placement just as correct as always-- but are they a little cooler than normal? Is the faint, diagnostic flush of qi that twines through his meridians more yin-heavy than it should be, or is it Liu Qingge's own unsettled qi that is tilted and unbalanced?
Liu Qingge frowns at his own thoughts, staring down at the hand resting lightly atop his wrist as if the sight alone would clear his thoughts, resolve whatever it was that Shen Qingqiu had done to him. In the end, of course, it does not, and Mu Qingfang releases him, again as usual.
It is odd, though, for Mu Qingfang to look down at his own fingertips afterwards, to brush them together as if testing the viscosity of something invisible between them. "Poison?" Liu Qingge asks. It makes sense. A poison to disrupt the flow of his qi just enough to destabilize him far enough to create further openings the next time they fought, or the next time he turned his back in the dark, or...
"No," Mu Qingfang says slowly.
"A curse?"
"No."
"What, then?" Liu Qingge asks, glancing up impatiently only to see Mu Qingfang looking not at but through him, deep in thought. He's seen that look on his shidi before, once or twice, when hunts at the very edge of Cang Qiong sect's range had sent him through truly rare varieties of poisonous plants, things that had taken serious effort for Mu Qingfang and his shizun to research.
Things that had taken a good week laid up in an infirmary bed to heal.
Liu Qingge itches again thinking about it, digging his fingernails into the meat of his palms, then forcing himself to straighten his hands, to touch the bare earth beneath him. He realizes with a start that there's qi flowing through it; that he feels Mu Qingfang's qi slipping steadily through the earth, connected in dozens of tiny glowing nodes hidden beneath each mound of dirt, a smooth, even cycle, perfectly controlled.
"--off," Mu Qingfang says, and then repeats himself patiently at Liu Qingge's distracted hm?: "When did you notice that something was off?"
"Three days ago." Liu Qingge frowns again, then continues. "Haven't slept properly since the night hunt with Shang Qinghua and Shen Qingqiu." The weight on that name comes out entirely without his conscious intent, but that's fine. The name on its own is enough explanation, anyway. Everyone knows what he's like, the things he does, the honorless way he fights.
"I see."
The silence of Mu Qingfang's thinking drags out too long again, but something about the wide-open field makes it easier to bear. He feels less trapped here, under the joined light of the moon and the lantern, with Cheng Luan at his hip and a trustworthy shidi with him than he had inside his own bedroom, on his own peak.
At last, Mu Qingfang sighs quietly-- but it's a good sigh, a sigh of resolve rather than exasperation, annoyance, or defeat. (Liu Qingge is far from alone among Bai Zhan disciples to know these by their sound, but it still pleases him to be able to identify it.) He sets his hand over Liu Qingge's, pressing it gently into the dirt beside the un-marked mound between them. "Do you feel them?"
"Hm?" Liu Qingge says, stretching himself out again. All he senses is the same steady cycle; Mu Qingfang's solid, stable cultivation, flexing with his breathing, as if the earth beneath them lives through him and he lives through it. A soft, deep scent rises from the disturbed soil, something cool and enveloping.
Mu Qingfang lifts their hands from the dirt, takes the clay pot from his basket, and wraps their hands about it, his own over Liu Qingge's. "Pour it with me, shixiong."
Watering plants has never been among the tasks entrusted to Liu Qingge, and if he had done it alone he probably would have made a hash of it. But Mu Qingfang's hands are close over top of his; they guide him with surprising strength and deftness in tilting the pot, letting a thin trickle of qi-infused liquid splash out onto the mound of soil, then tilting it back.
"Follow the water," Mu Qingfang says, but Liu Qingge already is, unthinking, following the rich tea-like water into the earth, joining seamlessly into the circulation of Mu Qingfang's qi.
It's like the sudden shock of falling in a dream and waking to realize that there is no height, that the bed beneath you is firm and flat: Liu Qingge is not falling; he is steady for the first time in days, supported by Mu Qingfang's unwavering cultivation base. He follows the wide cycle, flung so much farther out than his own tight physical cultivation, and Mu Qingfang is there when he is unsteady, like a firm touch correcting erring form.
Their qi meshes, grows stronger as Liu Qingge grows more confident in the motions; flows to the edge of the field, loops back through each pearl root node, into Liu Qingge himself, straightening tiny misalignments along his meridians with the calm, soothing flush of it; travels through their hands and into Mu Qingfang. Here, too, there are things that are not quite right; Liu Qingge is surprised to note the slight ache between Mu Qingfang's shoulders from holding his back improperly when he stoops. He corrects it, straightening Mu-shidi's shoulders from within, and feels the slight rueful thanks as if it came from his own core.
They sweep out again, along the line, back. Liu Qingge's hands reach out for the bundle of straws to mark the mound; Mu Qingfang moves the basket to where the next root waits. Time means nothing. The itch behind Liu Qingge's eyes fades to nothingness, taking his anger with it; all that remains is the quiet focus of their movement, the circulation and refinement of their qi as it flows around and through the treasure roots.
Eventually they reach the end of the field. Instead of holding the water pot between them, Mu Qingfang tucks it back into his basket and wordlessly offers Liu Qingge his bare hands instead. Liu Qingge takes them, but despite the contact he can feel them beginning to separate again. It isn't painful; it only feels... strange, to be two people again, when a moment ago they had been one. To feel only his own strength and not his shidi's steadiness and calm.
But the restlessness, the sense of wrongness that has plagued him, is entirely gone, banished by-- he realizes he has no idea what Mu Qingfang's treatment was or how it actually worked, despite having been there himself for the whole of it. "What was it?" he asks.
Mu Qingfang sets the marking straw into the final mound and straightens, bending his shoulders in a careful stretch. "Hm?"
Liu Qingge, watching, recalls a massage that will work the last of that strain from the muscles between his shoulderblades. He glances up at the sky, judging the time. There should be long enough to do it and get back to Bai Zhan by dawn, if Mu Qingfang doesn't have other strange midnight farming to do. He shakes his head and stands. "What was wrong with me?"
Mu Qingfang climbs to his feet as well, sending a scatter of dirt from his robes with a quick brush of qi and collecting his basket. (No more farming, then, probably.) He doesn't quite smile when he meets Liu Qingge's eyes, but it's a near thing. "Stress," he says.
"Stress," Liu Qingge repeats.
"Indeed," Mu Qingfang says.
"Huh."