WIP Wednesday
SET UP: post canon demon emperor binghe getting out to like the FRINGES on one of the PIDW politics plots and they're like and of course this must be the first wife, of your harem--and binghe goes to CORRECT THEM!! and sqq is like oh yeah mmhm it's me, the empress. just favourite wife, nothing to see here.
by this point they've been married a BIT and Binghe is chill enough/knows to just go along with it when sqq has a plan, and alone sqq is like--they understand wives as political power, like a lot of tribes, and if they figure out later they misunderstood the situation then that's on them, let's not look weak/stir up trouble with a lean entourage? we could take this guy but why when we could just--firm up this alliance and get out
and so there's a dinner and a lot of questions where the people have misunderstood and think that like Hualing (a wife in PIDW, in SVSSS just an employee) is still a wife and are casually asking about her and SQQ, master of bullshit, is like oh yeah she's a firecracker but *I'm* in charge of the household
and LBH is a bit amused but after they have very PIDW influenced sex where sqq is like Iiiiiii am the favourite wife tho right binghe? like you'd ditch the others for ME right?
because SQQ was (without Getting It) insanely into like, Original Binghe and was always privately like--they're not good enough for *binghe*, and like has not fully like, grappled with his OTT Edgelord Binghe with Harem!! kink and how he kind of wants to be like the special mary sue wife/the one who Turns him/kind of doted on in those terms, the ridiculous spoilt bitch shit
***
They were on the fringes of the Demon Realms proper--not the border with the humans, but rather the shuddering decline of the Western mountains, where black volcanic rock began to bleed into sand as white as bone. Some said that was precisely what it was: powdered bone, the remnants of a catastrophe that must have taken place near the beginning of things. It sounded far-fetched, but then again, who could deny it? No stranger had ever walked out of that desert begging for water, or with goods to trade, or telling wild stories in unknown tongues. Parties had, of course, been sent to explore the vastness by previous demonic emperors. Those that returned claimed to have walked months and months, and found nothing: no end to the wastes.
Luo Binghe never told Shen Qingqiu that if, while his shizun lay dead, he’d received some absolute confirmation that the man’s soul had been irrevocably shattered, his own soft and shapeless plan had been had been to map out for himself the limits of the desert and his body alike. To give himself over to the silence of the place. To just--start walking, and not stop until he fell, and leant the sands another inch of bone. He known that would be poor repayment for the gift of his life, bought at the price of Shen Qingqiu’s own. But anything would have been, to him, too little. So why not this?
The wind whipped his husband’s ink-black hair into Luo Binghe’s eyes. With a frustrated gesture, Shen Qingqiu gathered it with a ribbon, holding the end of the silk--which rippled out like a banner--in his neat white teeth. I love you, Binghe thought, as he did a thousand times a day. Shen Qingqiu was doing nothing particularly seductive. He was simply himself: comely, and annoyed. Brusquely pragmatic. So readily concerned for Binghe: moving unthinkingly to protect his disciple from the world, in small things as in great ones.
When Luo Binghe died, he hoped to do it in Shen Qingqiu’s arms. It would hurt his husband to know he’d once planned to give the desert they surveyed something that was Shen Qingqiu’s by right--that Binghe had contemplated such an act of rank ingratitude in the face of Shen Qingqiu’s sacrifice. So rather than allude to it, Binghe caught and kissed Shen Qingqiu with particular intent.
“Thank you for being here,” Binghe said, which might have meant less than it did.”
His husband smoothed Binghe’s own bound hair back with his fingertips.
“I’m your husband,” Shen Qingqiu said, the edge of either a scold or a pout kissing his cool, considered tone like white sand licked at black rock. “Naturally my place is at your side.”
To that end, he drew back and asked Binghe to remind him of some particulars of their business with the lord of the western mountain. He narrowed his sharp, dark eyes as he heard the terms of the suzerainty with which these lords governed their underpopulated territory--a place so out of the way that Shen Qingqiu hadn’t already had cause to learn of such matters.
***
It had been Shen Qingqiu’s idea to bring a large crate of tea with them, as an offering to the lord. Binghe had frowned at that, and attempted to delicately suggest to his husband that not everyone shared his refined tastes, and Shen Qingqiu had only waved a dismissive hand and said it wasn’t meant for delicate sipping.
***