WIP Wednesday: Coraline

[x_los]

Almost 3k, this is a WIP draft of an SVSSS/Coraline fusion (Bingqiu). Kind of a weird one.

One night, Luo Binghe notices something odd about the way his blood is pooling on the floor of the woodshed. There’s a fair amount of it from the whipping he endured a few hours ago, when Shizun’s bully-boys let themselves into the scrap of safety Luo Binghe has carved out for himself—at their shared master’s instruction, to hear them tell it—and beat all four-feet-in-worn-boots of Luo Binghe raw. (This time it was for over-familiarly with his shijie, the one person who’s spared Luo Binghe a kind word in the entire year he’s been a disciple.)

The thing about oil-sealed bamboo slats is that anything spilled on the slick-side stays where it lands. The shed is lined thus to prevent gnawing insects and rats from getting into the woodpile; on more than one occasion, when Ming Fan and the others have had their fun and gone, Luo Binghe has faced the additional indignity of having to clean up a little pool of himself. One or two lingering blotches linger on the strips: a testament to Luo Binghe’s residence here, and to the favour he has found in Qing Jing.

Tonight, though, when he manages to pull his small body loose from its defensive, miserable curl and sit upright, Luo Binghe frowns at the trailing line of blood. It creeps away from him, as though the floor isn’t level. Luo Binghe eyes track the long, viscous roll, and narrow in confusion when it ends at the shed’s wall. It’s as though the blood is slinking under the floorboards, but Luo Binghe knows that wall is good and flush. (The other side isn’t; that’s where the drafts come in from.)

Taking up the rag he uses to clean both this place and himself as best he can, Luo Binghe advances towards the joint where the wall and floor meet. Pressing with his fingers, he finds the slats solid. He’s about to dismiss the whole thing when he glances up. He draws back, startled.

There in front of him, as though it’s always existed, is a closed moon door: just the size of a very small boy. Luo Binghe knows this must be magic, and that his not having heard of this form of array before doesn’t necessarily make the door remarkable.; try as he has since coming here, Luo Binghe is still a very ignoramus in such matters. But what a curious place to find a hidden realm! Who could have put it in the woodshed, and why?

Luo Binghe does not yet know this of himself, but he is a boy who loves mysteries and adventure: a boy who wants to be delighted by novelty, and who relishes each fresh challenge. The fact that this hidden realm is a little world which no one’s ever spoken of in his hearing—which might be a special thing, just for him (a place of real safety, where no one can hurt him)—makes Luo Binghe’s small heart thump hard under his bruised ribs.

Don’t be ridiculous, he chides himself, even as he wants so much to be special. Luo Binghe cannot yet admit it, but wherever the door leads, he knows it will be better than this place. Than the home he’s sworn himself to; than the dream of his young heart, which, realised, turned out to be a common nightmare.

When Luo Binghe opens the Binghe-sized moon door, he finds an earthen tunnel. This confirms his suspicion that he’s discovered some form of hidden realm: the walls of the woodshed give on to level ground. But when Luo Binghe crawls through the tunnel and comes out the other side, he looks around him with confusion and disappointment. Surely this is just Qing Jing? After all that crawling, perhaps he’s come out at some other part of it, but—actually, no. This looks exactly like the area around the woodshed?

It takes Luo Binghe a moment to realise that in fact, it’s as if he’s turned around. The prospect before him ought to be behind: everything is reversed, like an image in still water. And the more Luo Binghe observes his surroundings, the more he notices odd, small differences. Luo Binghe looks back over his shoulder, and sees that the woodshed, which usually only just keeps out the elements, is smartly turned out, with painted decorations that make it look like a guard-gate at a grand palace. The insect-drone has died away, and the qi-signatures of several hundred sleeping cultivators are nowhere in evidence.

Judging by those signatures, there is one really alive thing here besides Luo Binghe—and it is terribly alive. The qi is as strong as Shizun’s; fittingly enough, Luo Binghe follows the resonance towards a mirror-reflection of Shen Qingqiu’s bamboo cottage. Luo Binghe has only been inside that house once. On that occasion, he’d been accepted as a disciple and spurned as a boy. Wary, standing outside the cottage on the white-gravel path—so perfect that it looks to have been drawn upon the ground—Luo Binghe hesitates. What’s in that house? Can he really be thinking of knocking? And while he’s standing there contemplating the question, the door flies open.

Luo Binghe flinches back before the man flowing towards him. Stupid. He was stupid not to guess that if there was a bamboo house, and a power as great as Shizun’s, then despite the absence of all other life on this mountain, there would have to be a ‘Shen Qingqiu’ in this place. What is Qing Jing without a master?

On instinct, Luo Binghe respectfully looks down and cups his fist in his palm in greeting. He’s been slapped across the face for failing to do so sufficiently quickly before, and the lesson took.

He’s shocked, however, when Shizun’s voice—in a wholly unfamiliar register, warm and light as spring—says “Binghe?” As if finding him in the path was a surprise, but a pleasant one.

“You’re Luo Binghe!” Shizun continues.

Luo Binghe tentatively glances up. Shizun’s white and pale green robes make him look ethereal in the moonlight: every inch the immortal cultivator. They float out behind him in a dramatic profusion of curling fabric, as does his hair: as though there is a wind, though all is still. He looks like a thing arrested in motion, like a painting of the goddess Chang’e. His features are as they always are: flawless. But two equally odd things arrest Luo Binghe’s attention. The first is that Shizun’s calculating eyes have been replaced by shiny tortoise-shell buttons, sewn right into his face with bright red threat. The second is that Shizun is smiling. Not sneering, not some slight curl of the lip—he’s beaming at Luo Binghe. He’s extending his long-fingered, white hand to pinch stock-still Luo Binghe’s cheek. To pat his head. To wrap a curl around his finger, twining it up like wool on a spindle.

“I can’t believe it,” Shizun laughs. (Shizun! Laughs!) “It’s really you! Oh but you’re a mess, aren’t you? Come inside, come inside—”

Helplessly, Luo Binghe lets himself be shepherded through a very queer version of Shen Qingqiu’s house, into a kitchen that looks half familiar and half bizarre. There’s a high table, and Luo Binghe is urged into a strangely tall chair, like a throne. On the table sits a huge, hexagonal glass jar with a metal lid, which Shizun’s deft fingers spin off. He coats their tips in the unguent within, and then, to Luo Binghe’s shock, begins to slather the stuff on his bruised face and arms. It smells of mint. It tingles. There’s a happy tiger on the label, which moves while Luo Binghe watches it: rearing up playfully, prancing about, winking at him.

The ointment makes Luo Binghe feel not just unhurt, but refreshed.

“There now,” Shizun says triumphantly, wiping his fingers on a patterned cloth and closing up his jar. In a fluid motion, he slides to an upright metal coffin perched behind the great butcher’s block as though it belongs here. Shizun flings it open, while calling behind him, “you must be hungry, right? You hardly eat, during the disciple arc. I think I’ve got everything for a hot pot. Do you like ma la?”

“I don’t know, Shizun,” Luo Binghe says, bewildered, nervous—expecting at any moment to be smacked again by that large, powerful hand. “What’s ma la?” He’s embarrassed by his own ignorance.

Shizun snorts, like Luo Binghe’s said something funny. “In that case, I’ll show you.”

His button eyes, when he turns them back on Luo Binghe, are not specially cold to him, out of particular disdain. They are unaffected; shining but unchanging. How could this been Shen Qingqiu? This place, those eyes—but he’s done nothing to harm Luo Binghe. Quite the opposite. And how could a portal to some demonic secret realm go undetected in the heard of Cang Qiong?

“You don’t have to call me Shizun,” the man says, off-handedly, as he rummages through wooden cabinets hung against the wall. “I’m not actually Shen Qingqiu, I’m just wearing him. Shen Yuan’s fine. Oh, try these!”

He tosses a package to Luo Binghe, who catches it.

Luo Binghe frowns at the shiny, almost metallic sack. “How do I—?”

“Oh, here—” Shen Yuan plucks the thing from Luo Binghe’s fingers and plucks it wide, fishing out a piece of something identifiable. “Say ‘ah!’”

“Ah?” Luo Binghe dutifully responds, which makes Shen Yuan crack up as he pops what he’s holding in Luo Binghe’s open mouth. Salt explodes on Luo Binghe’s tongue. The thing is nearly too good.

“Do you like it?” Shen Yuan asks, and Luo Binghe nods frantically.

“Thank you,” Luo Binghe says fervently; Shen Yuan coos.

“Oh you’re my favourite; what a little sweetheart you are at this age!” Encouraged, Shen Yuan plies him with bites of strange, airy, creamy cake and gummy, sugary candy. He serves Luo Binghe something he calls bubble tea, complete with a funny machine that seals off the lids and a big straw you push through that. Every food is more outrageous than the last. Dinner—after all this, Shen Yuan wants to feed him dinner!—is a ‘hot pot’, with the promised ‘ma la’: there are a dozen broths, all bubbling away in a divided pot on a little gas stove Shen Yuan sets up on the table. There are several kinds of meat, all manner of vegetables, tofu, fried tofu, and Shen Yuan wheels out a whole tray of sauce ingredients for Luo Binghe to play with, sweetly cajoling Luo Binghe to make him one, too, and praising his creation. Luo Binghe has never eaten so well: not at any festival. He wants to cry, with how good it is. How bright every colour. The way Shen Yuan laughs gently when the ma la paralyses his tongue for an instant and Luo Binghe has to give for his bubble tea. Every ‘here, Binghe, try this one!’

“That’s the MSG,” Shen Yuan says almost proudly when he catches sight of the moist sheen of Luo Binghe’s eyes.

Luo Binghe has no idea what ingredient that is, but he suspects that more even than the wild luxury of eating like this, what’s overwhelming him is the care. No one has tried to offer him up a choice little strip of meat since his mother passed.

“Shen gongzi?” Luo Binghe asked when the meal was over—after some hesitation, Shen Yuan had at least allowed Luo Binghe to help him clean up. This involved putting the used plates in a magical machine that Shen Yuan said would clean them for them. Luo Binghe bent to watch, through the window, a little ocean storm rage inside the box. A small soap boat danced upon the waves, battening its sails in the torrent like a real ocean junk.

“Mm?” Shen Yuan asked.

How did you come to be stuck here, Master?

Well, I died—

shen yuan transmigrated here into this pocket dimension and it was MESSY, the transmigration goes super wrong, he doesn't know how long he's been here

I can’t exactly cry about it *gestures to eyes*

Shen Yuan is stuck in a pocket dimension that binghe can access as Protagonist, trapped there with sad button eyes

SY is like omg I can just tell you things!! Okay so sha hauling will come—meng mo—

SY is like the cultivation manual he gave you… isn’t the one you need (lying, LBH can tell—being kind)

Borrow yingying’s older one, and if you bring it here, I’ll help you with it—oh you. Don’t have to come back, but, it's VERY lonely —you have to go back to the peak your whole future is there and of course it might not be healthy for you to stay here TOO long

I’d love to see you again

LBH of COURSE I will

Sword training

Reading

SY tells him about cultivation AND RL stuff

People used to scrawl questions in tortoise shell when they wanted to ask the gods something important

Food and food and food

LBH doesn’t know whether it’s nourishing/substantial—if he feels healthier because he’s eating, or happy

Runs the risk of being sleepless but Shen Yuan is careful with his time, makes him sleep in the house, tucks him in, and no one can give LBH more chores if they can’t find him

LBH visits every night and each day he brings SY a book and SY thanks him and LBH likes the dependency

LET me call you shizun, please PLEASE accept me as your disciple?

He wanted to be shen yuan’s so bad

Not to be a cultivator like with shen jiu but more, he HAD to belong to him

Inchoate poignant young longing

Uproar over liu qingge’s death

Jiu continues to suck

Weirded out and annoyed by LBH’s skill

LBH: can you be saved?

SY: oh no, I don’t think so, no, sweet of you tho

Binghe clocks SJ’s class thing

Binghe is like oh absolutely fuck Shen Jiu, MY goal is to bring my Other Shizun back with me--

LBH is like... no you deserve to live more (and I am in love with you)

14 men mo comes and LBH has been waiting for him

SY has told him he won’t die but he CAN’T, what will happen to Shizun??

SY fusses

SJ freaked out and furious by LBH’s cold acceptance of the fight and massive triumph

LBH realises he’s in love with other shizun

LBH & SJ class confrontation

right like, in part SJ HATES Binghe bc it'd take another street rat to see that his pronunciation is Too Good a la My Fair Lady and he has some old habits he's missed and he never Wastes ink like these rich kids he hates and is stuck raising do casually--like LBH is the one child with a good chance of Seeing him

LBH uses this to provoke SQQ into striking but that’s what he uses to latch onto his qi

LBH drags shen jui through to the other qing jing (willing to chop off his limbs with the woodshed axe to make him fit) like, by the hair/uses meng mo training to knock shen jiu out and drag him into the other world and switch their eyes,

Shizun?

Shen jiu thinks he’s been addressed, in that odd syrupy tone, but it was the man behind him

Strange copy

Meng Mo makes Shen Yuan pass out, when normally he can’t sleep (which is why he dotes on LBH’s sleep)

Meet my Other Shizun

He’s better than you. He’s perfect. But there’s something he’s missing.

shen yuan is like... I mean it's horrible but like. him or me and he's a hideous child abuser whose back story I don't know? It’s a LOT better than his canon end, this guy shouldn’t be in charge of children, it’s prison, but

LBH: the eyes are so beautiful on you

LBH still occasionally checks up (hard to tell how time passes: demon emperor regalia eventually, ‘my wife’) (Re demon mark, you always were an inhuman little wretch

LBH is too powerful to play with like that now

Children are what you make them, shizun. Who made you?) like--you doing okay in there, worst person I know? and in a way Shen Jiu is like... you know what no one can ever hurt me in the parallel version of my own house, i just read with my button eyes and it's peaceful and safe, and like, it's sort of hell but. it's also sort of what I wanted?