Thread by @10thmusemoon

#QiJiu where Shen Jiu is a private school teacher and when he confiscates a smut magazine from his students there’s a fold out of Yue Qingyuan naked and tied up and he just has to go the rest of his day knowing that’s in his desk, that there are People Who Have Seen Qi-Ge’s Dick

He doesn't deviate from his schedule, staying after hours to do some grading and lesson planning for the next week. He takes the train home like he always does, eats his dinner like always, and then opens the magazine as if his world hasn't been tilted on it's axis

He hasn't seen him in years, has tried not to think about his childhood friend that he lost track of after he as adopted and Shen Jiu stayed in the group home with the Qiu.

And now here he is, tastefully tied up in red ropes. All tan skin and dark nipples exposed to the world

(To Shen Jiu!)

(To his /students!/).

The magazine is part of a feature about some new production agency acquiring a smaller one, and with it, their new actor Yue Qingyuan. Shen Jiu has to see him posing with some twinks and that's all he gets, that's all he knows about Qi-ge.

So then he very calmly, very deliberately, ignores his sweaty palms and opens up his laptop and does a search and oh.

He suddenly knows a lot more about Qi-ge.

🔞
LIke what he looks like with his head between someone's thighs, the face he makes when he comes, what his /dick/ looks like when it bounces as someone piles into him. Or the way his hand squeezes against the hip of startling variety of twinks.

/Shen Jiu has hips./

He tries to find an official site separate from the production company to no avail.

He had hoped for- for a live or a- a way to dm- surely it wouldn't be that easy but- it's /Qi-ge/. There has to be a way to- to reach him.

There isn't.

The company he signed up for is very, very protective of their talent and if they choose not to be publicly accessible then they won't be.

He just has to sit with the knowledge that anyone, at any point, can just look up what Qi-ge looks like naked and he can't even /talk/ to him.

So Shen Jiu goes about his days like normal, he teaches, and lesson plans, goes grocery shopping, and then at night he watches Qi-ge.

and the stupid faces he makes with stupid men who probably don't even know he was scared of thunderstorms.

🔞The worst of it is the men with the long black hair that Shen Jiu can picture himself replacing.

Or the nights he turns the monitor away from him so all he can hear is Qi-ge saying sweet things, dirty things, and just imagining it's just the two of them.

It's fine, it's fine.

(It's not.)

He goes about his life as normal, nothing changes. He certainly doesn't expect to run into Qi-ge at the farmer's market wearing a soft sweater with sunflowers beneath overalls. And /crocs/.

It's-
it's so /dorky/.

It's so Qi-ge.

It's so startling, so unlike the image he's put together in his mind over the last few weeks of the man he has become that he can't help but laugh at the sight of it.

It has Qi-ge looking at him like he pulled the sun to rise from the north instead. An impossibly happy thing.

The woman at the vegetable stand, who Shen Jiu knows is a horrible gossip, clears her throat and calls over a woman from the honey booth next to her.

Shen Jiu watches in a mix of horror and amusement about how they set their sights on Qi-ge and grill him. Is he new in town, they haven't seen him before? Where does he live? oh they love that neighborhood, has he tried the coffee shop on the corner of this and that?

No but he'll make a note it.
/and then he does/. In a little notebook he pulls out of his back pocket with a tiny pencil attached to it.

Shen Jiu feels the blood in the water immediately.

'A handsome man like you, are you single?'

and is he imagining that glance at him?

Qi-ge raises his arm to rub at the back of his neck and Shen Jiu's eyes immediately catch on patch of skin revealed from the side of his overalls. He shouldn't be this flustered, he's seen more of his body than this multiple times now. Even so, his heart accelerates!

And he /turns to Shen Jiu/ and says no, he's not in a relationship right now. And he doesn't turn away from him to answer whatever follow up questions the women have about their daughters or /their/ schedules and Shen Jiu sees his opportunity.

He asks him out, planning to get dinner later this week but Qi-ge insists on /now/ does he need to do more shopping? He can help take his groceries back if he does- where does- where does Xiao Jiu live?

The idiot doesn't even think about exchanging numbers.

The spend the day together, and it's nice, and sweet and this is very much the Qi-ge he knows. Knew.

It's a direct line from the boy that would make wishes on dandelions to the man that fosters new born kittens for a local shelter.

Qi-ge shows him pictures and videos of him feeding orphaned cats with syringes and he realizes he doesn't want this day to end.

But he also can't escape the maws of guilt. They haven't brought up their occupations yet, he sees the way Qi-ge weaves convesation around the topic.

It's practiced. Expertly done.

He could- he could just not bring it up. Ride this reunion to it's natural conclusion and then keep talking like any two strangers turned friends. All the while hiding what he knows.

But-

He doesn't want that.

He doesn't want to start this new part of their lives together with a lie. With the guilt omitting what he knows. A power imbalance like that, it doesn't seem fair. Shen Jiu knows all about that.

They're walking through a park, groceries still carried between them, when he tells him. About his students, about the videos, about trying to find a way to contact him. He almost regrets it.

Qi-ge's charming smile visibly dims, sets into stone as he keeps talking.

"And what do you think?"

"About what?"

"What I do?"

And Shen Jiu has thought about it a lot over the last few weeks, even more so the last few hours. He's gone through the whole range of emotions. Multiple times.

And he settled on this.

"If you're safe, and you like it, what does it matter what anyone else thinks?"

And Qi-ge swallows, puts his hands in his stupid overall pockets as they sit on a bench surrounded by the chirping of birds sand leafs in the wind.

"But what does /Xiao Jiu/ think?"

He's been honest this long, it's not like Qi-ge has missed the way his eyes have trailed across his body. Has even preened at it.

"I was jealous. I wished it was me."

Thick eyebrows furrow together, Shen Jiu notices there's a tiny scar at the end of one.

"I'm not going to stop, it's my job to sleep with other men."

Mouth going dry, Shen Jiu tries not to think about any implications not being directly said.

"Who's asking you to do that?"

And Qi-ge's smile, back dropped by the setting sun, should be bottled and sold in the winter. He can't imagine anyone who has seen it ever going cold.

"Okay, okay."

The gentle kiss pressed against his jaw, somehow feels more intimate, more familiar than any relationship Shen Jiu has ever been in. How can he resist pressing a kiss to Qi-ge's forehead after that?

He can't.

It's illegal not too look at that pleased expression and not do something about it.

Qi-ge walks him home, they make sandwiches using the vegetables and fresh bread they bought at the market.

The night is marked by teasing and laughter, reminiscing about their years together and those spend apart. It ends with Qi-ge's cold hands wrapped around his waist, pulling him close as they fall asleep to an old movie on Shen Jiu's couch.

It is somehow, simultaneously, the slowest romance Shen Jiu has ever been in and the fastest he's ever fallen in love.

Through gritted teeth, he learns about Qi-ge's previous relationships. About the men who wanted the man on the screen and those that sought to posses him. Qi-ge, he learns, does not fear an ultimatum.

It's a hard thing to learn.

Shen Jiu knows himself, knows his possessive tendencies, how he already wants to crawl inside Qi-ge's ribs and build a home there that can never be uprooted.

So he tells him as much.

Puts the vicious ugly unlovable parts of him on display, an offering spread out on a table like a feast. Let Qi-ge know the baggage he comes with, all the ways that orphaned boy got worse with time. All the wounds still bleeding, the scars pulled tight.

And Qi-ge who names each foster kitten and lives in knitted sweaters like it's a uniform, stares in to the putrid hateful thing that Shen Jiu has become, that the Qiu and Wu Yanzi made him, and says "Okay" and kisses him anyways.

Reassures his paranoia, holds him through panic attacks, and nightmares, and tells him off when his anger, his acerbic tongue, is this side of too cruel.

They're not perfect, they argue and fight and tear into each other's insecurities and come crawling back together with heartfelt apologies and promises to do better.

And they do.

And that, notably, makes this different than any relationship either of them have been in. They make mistakes, but they don't repeat them. They're both too aware of what life without the other looks like, both hold too much of each other's souls in their hands to want to let go.

Shen Jiu, who has more indoor plants than sense, realizes that's he's never cared for, never cultivated, something as carefully as this thing between him and Qi-ge. Has never been treated, cherished, in this way either.

It feels like time collapses around them, they have always been together, they have just got together. Qi-ge has held his heart for so long, it seems strange that he's only just held his hand. Relationship benchmarks that people rush towards are spread out across years

What is the rush when they are here now? What does the future hold that this moment does not already encompass? They have time. They have each other. And that's all they've ever needed.

By the time they finally marry, Qi-ge is long retired and Shen Jiu has taught his first student's /children/. It's a small affair, just them, their witnesses, and the exhausted clerk, what was the point when the whole world had already known they were each other's?

They have always been each other's. They have only just become each other's. It's all the same to them.

Shen Jiu and Yue Qi go home, where they're surrounded by too many cats and too many plants, and they fall asleep holding one another on a couch as movie plays in the background. They go to the farmer's market, they make sandwiches with fresh vegetables and still warm bread.

Nothing changes.

The world keeps spinning and two old men fall in love, again and again. They have time, they have each other, and that's all they've ever needed.

/end

lmao i bet you thought this thread was gonna be porn and miscommunication again didn't you