Thread by @bingjiuwus

#bingjiu

Shen Jiu had never slept in such a soft bed before.

For a while he luxuriated in the sheer comfort of it all, halfway between wakefulness and dreams, his face buried in a silk-soft pillow and the warm duvet over his thin body that felt so much like an embrace.

"You say we're married," SJ said. "But why do you keep calling me Shizun then?"

LBH grinned. "Because you were my teacher before we got married."

"What?" SJ sucked his breath in horror. "That's - who would do that! How would I have agreed to marry you then?!"

"Probably because I seduced you?" LBH said, and laughed when SJ blanched.

A couple of days had passed since he'd first woken up in the surreal new world he'd found himself in. SJ didn't know if he truly believed anything LBH said, but he had nowhere else to go for now, and for what it was worth, the man remained cheerful and kind to him.

If there was a catch to SJ's situation (and there shouldn't be if LBH was telling the truth), then he hadn't found it yet.

They were having lunch now in the bedchamber they shared, though now SJ was a teenager again and couldn't remember any part of his married life, he demanded the whole bed for himself, and LBH agreed at once.

At night the man slept on the luohan bed instead, and maybe it said something that SJ still somehow got a great night's sleep regardless. His body was really... not on guard when it came to this man.

LBH had cooked lunch for them and made all the dishes he said were SJ's favourites when he was older. Present SJ kind of liked them too, he thought sullenly as he stabbed into the deep-fried squirrelfish with his chopsticks and took an enormous chunk of white flesh for himself.

LBH was a good cook. He had also pinned and altered the clothes SJ was wearing now - the same beautiful clothes he had gawked at before.

To think one day he would wear white silk robes like a scholar and wear hairpins inlaid with real gems, SJ marvelled. Somehow, his future self had really dug himself out of the hole he'd gotten in with WYZ and become a teacher to a demon lord (??) before marrying him (?!).

How could he be so audacious? How could he still walk around in public with his head high after marrying his own student?

Honestly, he didn't know. The depth of his future self's daring (and depravity) flabbergasted SJ.

At the same time...

"Eat well," LBH said, sliding a plate of de-shelled shrimp towards him. SJ frowned, seeing his greasy fingers even as he wiped them clean with a wet handkerchief.

"You're a lord, aren't you?" he asked. "Why are you doing that personally for me? Shouldn't you get a servant to do it?"

"And let them see you like this?" LBH teased, though whether he meant SJ's current youthful state or the state of him in _general_ he didn't know; the man made a lot of jokes about his own possessiveness, though whether they were really jokes SJ didn't know anymore.

"I mean." SJ flushed. "It's undignified. You're a lord; you shouldn't do servant's work."

"It's a husband feeding his wife, what's wrong with that?" LBH said. "Not to mention Shizun had me chopping wood and hauling books for everyone all day long when I was your age. I'm used to getting my hands dirty."

SJ's heart dropped. "You mean me? I made you do that?"

LBH nodded.

Oh. SJ hadn't thought about the kind of teacher he would have been, but he shouldn't have been surprised.

"Did I make you do chores a lot?" he blurted out.

"Yes," LBH said, grinning. "You even liked to pick on me sometimes. Little beast do this, do that..."

"I called you 'little beast'?! What was wrong with me?!"

LBH raised a brow, looking inexplicably smug at the awful nickname. "Shizun still calls me beast sometimes," he said. "Don't look so aghast, A'Jiu. I think it's cute."

"It sounds terrible," SJ croaked. "I don't understand. You still wanted to marry me after that?"

"Yes." LBH smiled. "A'Jiu, I know it might be hard to believe, but you were good to me too, sometimes. I couldn't help but want you the older I grew. And when you accepted my courtship and agreed to marry me, you made me the happiest man in the world. I still am."

"Don't know about that," SJ muttered. "Sounds like you got the rough end of the deal."

And when LBH opened his mouth, no doubt to protest and add some sappy bullshit about how much he loved SJ's future self despite the man sounding like a psycho, SJ picked up a piece of squirrelfish and stuffed it into his mouth.

"No more," SJ ordered. "I don't want to hear about this asshole anymore."

LBH coughed - then swallowed - and coughed again. "But A'Jiu, that's you - "

"Well, I don't like him," SJ said.

LBH's expression froze. "I know," he said gently. "You never do. Even so, I love him more than anything. He's a good person. You are too, A'Jiu."

"If you say so," SJ grumbled, and ate the rest of his meal in silence.

*

(tbc)

(For once a one-shot gets a tbc hehe... will finish this later! Brb sleep now)

*

"And the Empress truly doesn't remember what caused his current condition?"

"I already told you, I have no idea how this happened!" SJ barked at the physician - a grey-skinned demon with black sclera and two sets of arms - before leaping up from his seat and stalking out.

He ignored the voices calling out in concern after him as he left the physician's quarters, desperate to be anywhere but just one more place where people didn't want him.

Three weeks had passed since he - his present self - had started living at the Underground Palace, and though SJ still had a ways to go before he could explore every reach of the vast compound (it sprawled out across and below truly enormous stretches of land like an ant colony),

he was familiar enough with the routes that _he_ used every day that it didn't take long for him to outpace anyone who might be looking for him, and find a place to seclude himself until he calmed down.

SJ didn't know how long time had passed between when he climbed up an ancient stone ladder and hid in an unoccupied watchtower, one of the few parts of the palace that was actually above ground and thus susceptible to the wild and capricious weather of the Demon Realm,

and when LBH finally tracked him down, the Saintly Ruler's expression sombre when his head popped out from below the rusted metal trapdoor SJ hadn't even tried to latch shut, and saw him huddling in a corner with his arms around his knees,

looking less like the supposed Empress he was and more the rangy brat who had just thrown a temper tantrum and run out on his lord and master.

"A'Jiu..." The man climbed up fully into the small confines of the watchtower, then knelt next to SJ, who refused to look at him.

"This isn't a good place for you to be," the Emperor said in a soft, cajoling tone. "Look, you're shivering already. Come back to our chambers, alright?"

SJ shook his head and buried his face in between his arms.

There was a long, slow sigh.

And then LBH said, "Silly boy, you're going to be the death of me," and wrapped his outer robe around SJ's bony shoulders, all but engulfing him in its solidity and warmth. "What is this lord going to do with you, hm?

Should I pull out all of Doctor Yun's fingernails for offending you back there, hm?"

"You should." SJ lifted his head just to respond, glaring at LBH with damp eyes. "If you love me, you'll cut his tongue out too."

LBH's lower lip twitched. "Unfortunately he's married to one of Mobei-jun's cousins, so I can't. He's also pulled me back from the brink of death on multiple occasions so I can't really bodily maim him just because. Even if..."

He reached out slowly across the infinitesimal divide between them, brushing away a tear on SJ's cheek with his thumb. "Even if he broke my Empress' heart with his line of questioning. Not without maiming myself as well right after.

"Now, my love," he said in a soft voice, when SJ's eyelids began to sag from exhaustion and he leaned in - despite himself - into the rough warm hand cupping his cheek. "What's wrong?"

"Do you..." SJ mumbled. "Really..." He didn't finish, mumbling incoherently under his breath.

"Say it again, baobei," LBH murmured; SJ was swaying now, too tired to stay awake any longer. "I didn't hear you."

"I said," SJ croaked. "Do you really... want my older self back so badly? Aren't I good enough for you now? Why do I have to leave and he gets to have all this again... have _you_..."

LBH's heart squeezed tight. "A'Jiu, you know it's not like that. You're him and he's you. You're not going anywhere, you'll just be returning to yourself. You'll still be here and you'll still have me. You'll _always_ have me."

SJ shook his head again. "But I won't remember you," he whispered. "Not in a way that matters."

And unable to keep his head up any longer he closed his eyes in fatigue and slumped over directly into LBH's chest, who held the boy in his arms and stroked his hair with a gentle hand and dark eyes, and stayed there in silence for a long, long time.

*

Everything had been so good at first.

SJ had realised LBH wasn't lying - not about being Junshang _or_ that he was SJ's husband when the first day the man let him out of their chamber and they walked around the Underground Palace together,

that every demon they ran into would greet them _both_ - always LBH first, calling him Junshang and saluting or bowing profusely depending on rank -

And then they would greet SJ as well!

Most of the time people (and again, by that he meant _demons) would call him Empress, or Your Majesty, despite the fact he was a wild-eyed skinny brat and clearly not the older, elegant person (also asshole) they must be used to.

Sometimes people called him Consort Shen, then LBH would shoot them a nasty look and they grudgingly address him again, this time as Empress.

("Why the difference? Why doesn't everyone call me the Empress outright if that's the title you gave me?"

"Unfortunately, not all of my subjects approve of me taking a human for my only spouse, especially as I have no plans to marry anyone else.

You - well, Shizun, that is - can't exactly give me a child the old-fashioned way, and they think I'm giving up on my only chance to revive the heavenly demon line by refusing to take anyone else into my household."

"More like they just want to sink their claws into you using one of their own and get you to do everything their way by using pillow talk."

"... well yes, that as well. But A'Jiu, where exactly did you learn a term like pillow talk?"

"Forget it, let's keep walking!")

But really, the title SJ was most fascinated by was that of _Peak Lord Shen_.

For some reason or another, LBH hadn't actually told him outright what SJ's older self used to do for a living - beyond teach him when he was younger, apparently -

and he only found out when one morning SJ was greeted by a random subject not as the Empress nor Consort Shen, but Peak Lord Shen of all things.

And then SJ immediately swivelled his head towards his "husband" and demanded to know what _that_ was about, assaulting him with questions and suspicious glares until LBH relented him and took him to a chamber SJ had never been in before:

his own office.

The moment SJ stepped into the room (which was apparently all of two hallways away from the bedchamber he shared with LBH, and he'd never noticed?!) it was like he was coming home, though he was in a space he had never been in before.

Unlike the other dark and richly decorated rooms of the Underground Palace, this room was furnished with light bamboo furniture and white and green hangings.

There was a large desk cluttered with gorgeously carved brushes and jade inkwells and xuan paper, there were shelves upon shelves of books and scrolls, there were even watercolour paintings hanging on the halls that looked achingly familiar somehow,

and there was even a luohan bed against one wall with a half-finished game of weiqi still on the small table, next to a small plate of jade cream cakes that must have gone stale days ago.

The only gentleman's study SJ had ever been in before was Qiu Jianluo's, and that place had evoked as much terror in him as hell itself never could.

_This_, though, he realised, belonged to his older self. A room of his own, a space no one else ever dared impose themselves into.

There was even a green outer robe hanging on the back of the chair behind the desk - _his_ desk, the shade and material matching the clothes SJ was currently wearing _perfectly_.

And just behind his desk, behind his chair, stood a sword rest, with a sword in it.

His sword.

SJ had only ever used knives and daggers and rusted old swords WYZ threw at him to do his bidding; he almost didn't know if he should dare approach. How could something so precious belong to _him_?

But he did, and when he grasped the hilt of the sword and felt the spiritual energy there spark up in familiarity and welcome, he jolted in shock, then _knew_.

He was a spiritual cultivator. SJ - _Peak Lord Shen_ was a cultivator and an immortal master.

He'd made it. None of QJL's sneering or Shifu's so-called "warnings" mattered anywhere. _SJ_, somehow, somewhere, had become a cultivator and even a Peak Lord. Against all the odds, he had _won_.

No one could take anything away from him after that.

*

"Why didn't you tell me?" SJ demanded from LBH right after; the man had followed him into his office and stayed quiet as SJ explored the room to his heart's content; now he had questions.

"It's almost been a week, and you didn't think it was important to let me know I was a cultivator?"

"... A'Jiu." The man almost looked uncomfortable with his line of questioning; he even crossed his arms, as if to protect himself. "I didn't keep it from you on purpose. You needed to get settled in first, and I didn't want to overwhelm you with information.

It wasn't immediately relevant either - "

"Of course it was!" SJ cried out. "If you _knew_ me, then you should know cultivation is the most important thing in the world to me!"

"... really?" LBH tilted his head, face strangely blank. "Is it?"

"I mean..." SJ faltered. "Isn't it?" Didn't his older self care, if he'd worked hard enough to become a Peak Lord? Why wasn't the other man agreeing with him?

... or, something a little like guilt whispered in the back of his mind, his older self valued something more instead?

Something precious enough for him to defy both his oath as a righteous cultivator and a teacher and choose to marry his demonic student?

Something - no, someone - more important than his own cultivation, his ability to protect himself?

... right?

"I mean..." SJ said, after an eternity of a silence LBH had refused to break on his own. "After you?"

The man's brows rose into his hairline at the addendum. "After me?" he repeated.

SJ coloured; had he guessed wrong? "You - you're my husband," he stammered. "So you must be important to my older self. More than a typical spouse too, if I was willing to commit a taboo twice over by marrying you."

(Also, the fact that only one person had called him Peak Lord Shen so far probably meant he wasn't in good standing with his sect anymore, if he hadn't been cast out entirely for marrying a demon.)

"So that means I must be more important to you than your cultivation?" LBH's lip twitched. "Because you wouldn't have committed a 'taboo' for me otherwise, A'Jiu? Very interesting logic."

Abruptly SJ realised the man was trying not to laugh. "Oh forget it!" he yelled, flooded with embarrassment for trying to emphatic with this asshole. "Why am I trying to console you about our relationship when you already know everything and I don't! Why should I even care - "

There was nowhere in the room to hide and LBH was blocking the only way out, so SJ did the only thing he could - he grabbed a brush from his desk and chucked it at the man, hoping it would leave a dent on his pretty forehead and make him bleed!

Instead, LBH caught it in mid-air.

"Careful," he murmured. "This is a gift from someone your older self knows very well. He'd be upset if it broke."

"I was hoping it would break your forehead instead," SJ snapped. "Can you just go away already? I don't want to talk to you anymore."

"My dear..." LBH's mouth twitched again. "I'm sorry. I just didn't expect you to say any of those things. Shizun's never - "

He stopped, struggling with something of his own. LBH sighed, then put the brush carefully down on a side table, and said wryly, "You're right, of course. Shizun would have never married me if I wasn't important to him. I've just never heard it stated so directly aloud before.

It surprised me, that's all."

SJ narrowed his eyes, still wary. He could easily believe his older self wasn't the type to gush about his feelings - who would! - but he didn't like the way LBH was talking either.

As if some part of him had never actually been _sure_ until SJ had just spoken right now that yes... his husband actually loved him more than anything else.

That... he mattered to him.

_So much for that idyllic relationship_, SJ thought as he rolled his eyes. Of course that shit was too good to be true.

(_He_ was involved, after all.)

"You still haven't answered my question," he said. "Why didn't you tell me I was a cultivator right away?"

LBH smiled ruefully. "Jealousy? Because I wanted your attention all to myself for a while longer? I'm a greedy man, A'Jiu. I think you get that by now."

"Even so." SJ frowned. "You're my husband. Who else would I be paying attention to?"

"Well, yes, I see that now," LBH said wryly. "I just meant... that you'd want to go back to your sect again when you found out, and I'd have to share you with a host of annoying people...

all who still care for you very much, and would like nothing more than for us to separate and never see each other again."

If that wasn't a loaded question then SJ had never seen a bow and arrow in his entire life. "... this sect," he said blankly. "Was this your sect too? If I taught you..."

"Yes," LBH said. "When I was younger, and before I knew about my heritage. It was never a kind place to me though." He pursed his lips. "It wasn't to you either. Nevertheless, it was the place you called home before we wed, and you chose to live with me instead."

Here. In the Underground Palace surrounded by demons, some of whom barely respected him, and with only a room or two that held his own distinct presence, that looked like he even lived there.

Suddenly, SJ didn't know if he still disliked his older self... or pitied him.

"Later," SJ found himself saying. "I want to go see this sect and talk to all these people you say miss me so much. I deserve that much."

"Yes," LBH said. "You do. Alas," he added with a small smile. "Even A'Jiu at seventeen is a force to be reckoned with. How can this husband defy you?"

As if both of them didn't know that LBH could pull the wool over SJ's eyes for as long as he was like this, and he would be clueless to do anything about it.

"_But_," SJ continued. "Since it's only been a few days for me since I 'woke up', and I have no desire to let other people keep getting the better of me, I want to catch up first with everything I should already know."

"And by that, A'Jiu means..."

"All this." SJ gestured towards everything in general. "Cultivation. Sword training, and whatever I've been doing in this office. _Clearly_ I haven't been sitting on my rump and just eating snacks all day." (He couldn't even imagine.) "And you're going to teach me."

"Obviously," LBH said immediately. "But A'Jiu, that's quite an ordeal you're getting yourself into. I'd be glad even if all you wanted to do was rest and play until you recovered - "

"I don't," SJ said. "I want to learn." He raised a brow. "Unless you think I can't do it?"

"Of course you can," LBH said. "You've always been the most brilliant person I know."

"Good." SJ sniffed. "Then let's get started."

*

(tbc...

Didn't expect this random AU to take this turn, but yeah clearly it's gonna be a long piece haha, and end up dealing with bingjiu's relationship anxieties - who knew, huh??? I kinda know how it'll end already but hmm, who knows when I'll finally get there.

Anyway, I'll post here and there until this piece is done and might polish it up as an Ao3 one-shot depending on how long it is! Hope you enjoyed reading, more to come later!)

*

(now that I re-read the latest part, why does Binghe sound so much like YQY ehhh. Well, he's just trying to be nice to younger SJ, that's my excuse 😅 he doesn't exactly want to be super-direct with the kid for obvious canon reasons!!)