Crazy How Far Just Yellow And Red Gets You

Crazy how far just yellow and red gets you

i love writing about shen qingqiu flirting with people but not knowing he does it, and never realizing what effect it has on people or when they flirt back

for instance, he doesn't quite have a grasp on the usage of flowery, poetic speech yet, so he uses it in ways that are more suggestive than he means to. he compliments liu qingge's fighting style but the words he uses are "dancing like a snow lotus in the high mountain gales" and liu qingge turns so red shen qingqiu thinks he has a fever. he also said to wei qingwei that if only he was better a guqing player he would capture the sound of his laughter (wei qingwei has a boisterous laugh and this was meant to be teasing) and wei qingwei lay awake for three nights thinking about that.

he'd try to banter with yue qingyuan in the sort of taunting style of the original sqq, but in doing so accidentally strays into "shixiong should just bring his pillow and move in with how much he visits" "well if shidi insists" territory, and he doesn't realize it.

he pretends to be jealous when liu qingge goes on a mission with someone else, saying things like "shidi is having so much fun with [other peak lord], am i not enough? has my heart been traded for another?" with a fake pout that's supposed to be playful, but that inadvertently causes liu qingge to only accept missions with him or by himself, and of course shen qingqiu keeps digging this hole deeper by then acting flattered when liu qingge invites only him to the hunt.

he also definitely goes a little shakespearean sometimes to be dramatic, but people take that serious too. one time shang qinghua was too busy to read/write with him, so he complained to whoever listened, "the cruelty of his words have ripped my heart asunder, never again will i feel joy from what has now turned to sorrow", and two days later shang qinghua asks him what the hell he said to make half of the peak lords show up angry at his house like scorned lovers

in my mind he has also made a "chain me to the bed to have your way" kind of comment about his without a cure treatment, because mu qingfang added twenty new concoctions to the list that are yucky and shen yuan doesn't like yucky things, but even he was like "hm" about that and their next appointment was a little awkward.

Ghostfire Shen Yuan loyally following the lonely, undying, forgotten Luo Binghe from the original outline.

They never even met.

Shen Yuan had died long before Luo Binghe’s story was set to start. Abandoned by his System, he was left wandering the realms, searching for anything to latch onto, anything to stave off the darkness encroaching on his consciousness whenever he stopped. He keeps himself entertained with little jokes and references that will never reach anyone. At least back home, there were other people on the opposite side of his screen reacting, seeing. Paying attention.

He never would have thought he’d miss the times he was perceived by others. He’d give anything, though. Anything.

He stumbles upon the protagonist as he’s ascending the stairs of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect for the first time. Dressed in rags and heaving with the effort, Luo Binghe is exactly as Shen Yuan had pictured: a little bun, soft and kind and so very brave.

The excitement wears off soon enough. When the tea ceremony is held, Shen Yuan watches, hopelessly trying to stop the cup from hitting Binghe’s head. He lunges at Shen Jiu; let him be identified and exorcised, at least he would have done something with himself, however useless. It doesn’t work. Of course not—nothing can come between Luo Binghe and his fate.

Shen Yuan thinks about leaving. Many times. But every time he considers the possibility of going back to wandering the world, or just passing on… Well. There’s still a lot to see, isn’t there? It will get better. It will.

Only, it doesn’t. Not really.

There’s no harem; there’s no warm comfort offered to Luo Binghe by a sympathetic beauty, no wedding celebrations, no moments of gentle companionship, however brief, however superficial. There’s no camaraderie with the demons underlings, his generals, his allies; it’s all casual cruelty and dismissals, before it’s violence and subjugation.

There’s no joy. There’s no hope. There’s no ‘better’.

Something is wrong, that’s clear. Something is wrong, and Shen Yuan has no one to blame.

This is clearly not the Proud Immortal Demon Way he knows.

Centuries later, when Luo Binghe begs for the heavens to allow him to die, Shen Yuan hears. When Luo Binghe rages against the passage of time, alone in the wreckage of his palace, left behind by everyone he’d ever known, Shen Yuan accompanies him. When Luo Binghe lies down in the Holy Mausoleum and refuses to get up, Shen Yuan waits until he opens his eyes again and leaves the palace.

They end up in a hidden realm so filled with Yin Energy that Shen Yuan can channel it to manipulate his form into that of his former body. It’s not detectable by the living, but it’s there. He feels stronger, too. He can walk, float, fly, interact with what few other ghosts they encounter.

Still, Luo Binghe cannot see him.

Luo Binghe doesn’t talk much. Well, that makes sense, he was never in the habit of talking to himself, but still. It’s lonely.

They end up in a town where a diviner takes one look at Luo Binghe and offers him a free reading. Shen Yuan can’t enter her tent, so he waits outside.

She tells Luo Binghe of the little hanger-on he’s got. A powerful one, too, though he’s still getting used to his powers. He’s been here for a long time, she says. Since he was a child. He comes from far away—farther than even the most distant star.

Luo Binghe begins talking to him. Shen Yuan isn’t sure why, but he’s not complaining!

Luo Binghe also begins meditating again, trying to soothe the damage done by Xin Mo over the centuries. For every meal, he places a few fruits across from him on a plate he’d made himself, which he eats only after finishing his own dish. He makes space by his side whenever he walks on a narrow road. He stops at every landmark and tells stories about them, always starting the same way.

“Do you remember when…” becomes Shen Yuan’s favourite phrase.

One night, Luo Binghe sighs and looks across the table. Shen Yuan places himself so that he’s in Luo Binghe’s focus.

“What is it, Binghe?”

Luo Binghe doesn’t answer him, of course. Still, it feels like a conversation, when he says:

“I wish I knew your name.”

Shen Yuan frets. He’s been trying to manipulate the physical world, but he never got the hang of it. He’d tried drawing in sand, with water, just pushing things off shelves. And yet, nothing.

“I’m sorry, I wish—” he tries, but Luo Binghe is already talking again.

“I wonder if we ever crossed paths when you were alive.” He’s expressed this thought more than once. Shen Yuan never likes to think about how they’ve missed each other, how they’d been set up for failure from the start. “I wonder if we would have been friends.”

Shen Yuan scoffs. Of course not. Him and the protagonist? No way.

But—those cold star eyes, blindly searching for him, trying to land on him… They make him want to say, I would have liked that.

He reaches a hand out to touch Luo Binghe’s forhead. He’s taken to doing it whenever Luo Binghe broods, or makes a silly joke Shen Yuan wishes he didn’t find funny. It’s soothing.

He wishes Binghe could feel it.

When his finger touches the demon mark, it blazes. Luo Binghe gasps, that heavy gaze settling on Shen Yuan’s face.

Shen Yuan startles, and jumps away.

“No! Wait!”

Shen Yuan hesitates. Luo Binghe is looking around himself, eyes begging for even a wisp of Shen Yuan’s shadow.

He can’t deny Luo Binghe this.

He can’t deny himself this.

He reaches out again. This time, he cups Luo Binghe’s cheeks. When those eyes clear of panic and widen in awe, he whispers, softly, “Shen Yuan. My name is Shen Yuan.”

Luo Binghe looks like he’s been handed a treasure so precious he’s afraid to touch it. He hesitates, raising his hands in careful starts and stops, before taking Shen Yuan’s face in them, gently caressing the soft, cold skin of his face. His eyes dance with the haste he takes in memorising Shen Yuan’s features.

Then, he smiles. Helpless and weak and so, so precious. Shen Yuan has not seen hope so bright in Luo Binghe’s face since that fateful day on Cang Qiong Mountain.

“Hello, Shen Yuan.”

burd.

Do you think if Bingge somehow gotten into Shen Qingqiu head via dreamscape(and dug deeper than Bingmei ever dared), he would see Shen Yuan in a room filled with his merch, where he was reading his story, defending him in comments and think: “he might love you most, but he loved me first.”?

he must be stopped