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The Lord of the Northern Desert does not waste time or mince words. He is not a creature given to expending energy where not necessary. Like most truly great predators, indolence is his indulgence. He can afford to rest and be idle. He can rest, and risk discovery while resting. He has glutted himself on the failings of his forefathers, and become mostly unchallenged.
Mostly. Luo Binghe is an exception, but Mobei Jun no longer fears him. Once, when he first learned that Shang Qinghua had somehow been correct that he would have to bow to the half-breed usurper, he had felt a brief thrill of fear—fear he had not felt since he was a child, lost in Huan Hua's territory, hunted for sport.
But Luo Binghe only mostly tore his arm off and nearly killed him the one time before Shang Qinghua's groveling and quick-spoken promises assured him of their cooperation.
It was the first time that Mobei Jun looked at Shang Qinghua and saw the truth. Not just a servant, not just a spy, not just a beautiful bauble on the shelf. An ally. An ally.
There are some beasts in the world which never truly bond. They come together only to mate in an act that's as much warfare as it is sex, and then split from one another. The carrying of the couple will withstand rearing a child for some time, then drive it off with teeth and claws when it tires of the company.
Mobei Jun, driven off young with teeth and claws, isolated always, has always assumed that he is of this kind. That like his father, like his mother, like his uncle, he will inevitably, invariably, be alone.
But the day Shang Qinghua knelt in his blood, knelt to a greater monster than he, and begged not to serve him instead of his so-called king, but instead for both of them to enter Luo Binghe's service…
"Behold," Mobei Jun tells Shang Qinghua, voice low, leaning over his shoulder and pointing, as he knows how difficult his ridiculous cultivator finds focusing his eyes through the snow.
"Haha, yeah, I'm, uh—I'm beholding! That's some…Some sort of penguin thing. With teeth. Why do they have teeth? Gosh their whole bodies open up, huh, that's wild."
"Not that," Mobei Jun corrects, and huffs a cold breath against Shang Qinghua's scalp in punishment.
He does not hit anymore, but he still likes the little squeals of objection Shang Qinghua makes when he's assaulted by a sudden chill—never mind that he has Mobei's qi to keep him safe from any real harm.
"My kiiiing," whines Shang Qinghua, a shudder working through his tiny form, making his whine warble and shake. "Won't you give your poor servant a tiny hint? What am I supposed to be looking for, huh!?"
He presses closer in spite of his complaining. His eyes are clever, his attention dangerous. Mobei Jun has been saved by his intuition before. To see it fail them both so badly now…
Well. It is indicative of the difficulties they have faced in understanding each other through their many years. If only Shang Qinghua had stuck back. Or perhaps, he thinks with some level of thrill at the thought of daring, if he himself had thought to be a little pathetic in return…
"Their danger is known and irrelevant," Mobei Jun allows him. A hint can be afforded to his Qinghua. "What else?"
"Uh," Shang Qinghua hedges, shifting his weight left to right, widening his footprints in the deep snow. Likely his pale toes are pink with the cold. Equally as likely is that he's stuck warming talismans on the soles of his feet. It would explain how he's slipping slightly in his stance rather than freezing neatly in place like Mobei Jun himself. He is a clever man. A survivor.
"They, uh… Looks like they're eating those crystal things? Or, no, decorating?"
"Not that."
"Huh…" One of the creatures rises, unfolding its long legs from within its round body, and Shang Qinghua slaps Mobei Jun lightly on the stomach. "That thing? The leg thing? Is that the thing?"
Mobei Jun stares down at him blankly for a moment, then looks back to the beasts.
They are crag-jawed puffins—lesser beasts in every meaning of the word. Their powers are insubstantial, and though they are voracious eaters, their inclination is towards fish, not demons or mortals. Not that they would turn down an opportunity to devour Shang Qinghua—he is not entirely wrong to be concerned about the mouths that split their bodies along the white and black markings.
But Mobei Jun watches them bend towards each other, the one standing craning over its mated partner to delicately tooth-comb the crest of feathers atop its head. They are all in twos, save for those with young crowding their jewel-lined nests. They are in pairs, and so they will remain until their deaths. They are predators, at the top of their food chain in this specific corner of the North, where the seal tooth-hounds rarely bother to tread.
They are never alone. They grow up with their parents setting fish into their toothless jaws, and by the time their parents grow tired of sheltering them, their agemates have begun courting displays. They find each other, they choose each other, and they stay.
They stay.
"They're, uh… Kind of cute?" hazards Shang Qinghua, sliding by inches towards the drop-off without seeming to notice. Perhaps the fact that he can fly makes him incautious of such falls. Mobei Jun wraps an arm around his waist and drags him back against his body.
"...Mn." he agrees. It's not what he means, but it's at least in the right direction. Shen Qingqiu had cornered him not too long ago spouting a great deal of nonsense about 'positive affirmations' being 'key to a healthy working relationship.' He had been talking about how he desired Mobei Jun to communicate with Luo Binghe, but then Shang Qinghua had been talking about Shen Qingqiu when giving his advice on human courting rituals.
As frustrating as it is, despite being many years ahead of the most annoying power couple in existence, Mobei Jun has not made as much progress as they have. Perhaps it is worth taking advice sometimes, when it is valuable.
"My king?" Shang Qinghua says, voice a little strained. Mobei Jun loosens the arm he has around his middle and smothers a laugh when Shang Qinghua wheezes out a relieved breath. "Ah, haha… could it be you…Really brought me here to see cute animals?"
Mostly accurate. Mobei Jun permits him another: "Mn."
Shang Qinghua pauses for a long moment. His breathing is steady but quick, as though he smelled prey nearby or is anticipating a good battle. Neither are the case, but it pleases him, to read excitement in his body.
"What the hell. Is this some kind of a date?" Shang Qinghua mutters, almost to himself, leaning a little of his weight on Mobei Jun almost idly, the way he leans on desks or walls while he's thinking. Then he stiffens, and turns in Mobei Jun's loose hold, almost falling again. "My king, is this a date!?"
"Explain," Mobei Jun demands, tearing his eyes off the way two of the puffins have pressed their faces together, sharpening each other's teeth by grinding them together.
"Did you come here to fight these?" Shang Qinghua asks.
Mobei Jun scoffs.
"To kill them for some purpose?" Qinghua suggests.
Mobei Jun frowns his disagreement, strongly considering taking his bloodthirsty cultivator's sword away.
"You just came to look at them?" Shang Qinghua clarifies, his voice strangely smaller, his posture caving in as though Mobei Jun were threatening him. "With me?"
"You like them." Mobei Jun declares. "They are cute."
"...Mm." Shang Qinghua agrees, tearing his eyes away from Mobei Jun to stare at the creatures again, wrapping his arms around himself and holding on tight. He is inches from Mobei Jun, but abruptly it looks wrong to him. Perhaps it is the contrast of those awkward predators across the gorge from them, crooning and stroking and grooming one another.
Though Shang Qinghua is so close, he looks alone.
Mobei Jun has never been… Emotional. He knows that empathy exists, because a particularly awful fairy once infected his great aunt with it, and she went mad and murdered a whole wing of his family shortly after. But though he is cold and hateful, though he wishes it were true that he was as immovable as the ice, he has a molten heart.
For the first time, he wonders about a young cultivator abandoned by his fellows, facing certain death. He wonders about a boy so unlike him he did not look like a person at all, betraying everything he knew in the hopes that Mobei Jun could give him something more.
Pathetic, yes, he's always thought so, but… Lonely, too. Two lonely creatures, both hunting something stable, something safe, something that would stay, and finding each other.
Mobei Jun sets his claws against the top of Shang Qinghua's head and gently threads them through his bangs, like the monsters grooming one another so close to them. He has brought Shang Qinghua here to show him the path they could have together. Monsters, yes, dangerous, yes, but together, forever.
"Stay," he tells Shang Qinghua again.
And though he doubts Shang Qinghua understands, he leans in again, looking up at the claws in his hair with confusion but not fear.
"Of course?" he says with a scoff, as though Mobei Jun is being ridiculous. "I mean, haven't I promised before?"
Mobei Jun glances up to the creatures again, gauging his response, then bends and presses his lips to Shang Qinghua's head, where he usually only puffs cold breaths in reprimand. The contact is scalding against the sensitive skin of his lips, and he filters more of his cold qi into Shang Qinghua's head.
As expected, Qinghua's advice on capturing a mate was more effective than Shen Qingqiu's. Still, he feels his human turn his head towards the embankment of creatures and sink into Mobei Jun's hold, and thinks it at least wasn't useless.