Chapter Text
At the door to his home, Shen Qingqiu halts the boy he now plans to raise as a girl in every way that matters. Part of that will be instilling habits more common in tea houses. He pulls a hot wet cloth from a qiankun pouch, one set up for cleaning abrasions originally. There is a faintly astringent smell to it, comforting as he kneels to tend Bing-er’s feet in much the same way he had to check Ying-er’s feet whenever she would decide shoes didn’t feel as good as mud between her toes.
There is a sort of fondness to the action, if coming from a different place. Bing-er’s feet show signs of long wearing reed sandals that were ineptly woven. The thick cheap weave had obviously been lumpy and had worn heavy calluses in places. Bing-er has a working child’s feet. The kind of rough grit that comes from a life without any protection but what he scraped together for himself. Yet with all that self reliance, the boy seems to be eagerly throwing himself to his new mentor’s mercy. So pliantly letting hands far bigger than his feet move and manipulate his toes and heels this way and that.
Shen Qingqiu is busy turning the relaxed leg at the ankle so he can look over the entirety of the small foot now that he has cleaned it, when Bing-er speaks up for the first time since he has begun this task. The boy so meekly thanks him, tentatively and hopefully asking if this is also something he can do for his mentor. It leaves Shen Jiu snorting, too amused at himself and the situation to stay distanced from it.
He had just begun to think the child was getting too used to being spoiled. How could he forget this boy is too much like what he once was so long ago? His gaze drags over the boy’s wide eyes, so beautiful even in such a ragged and ill fed face. His tamed hair up in its silken ribbons, the woven loops combined with his young age leave little to mark him out as a boy at all. It is the work of minutes to tell the boy he can return this favor when Shen Qingqiu is returning from night hunts or the like.
He leads the boy back to the bathing chamber. The boy seems just as wide eyed at the chamber pot as he had imagined he would be. He then begins carefully tending the boy’s hands and feet once they have handled the talismans and explanations thereof. A pumice stone and soakings, combined with moisturizers take the rough near hoof of a slave boy into one closer to fitting a young blossom trained for decorating a bed. Once more he is struck by how light the boy is. How frail and tiny his foot is resting on his large palm. His hand so easily can cover the entirety of that sole, the knobby ankle so delicately pronounced from hunger. It takes so little gauze to wrap the thick creams onto the boy’s feet and ankles.
His boy would be devastating if well fed. He needs to ensure his little Bing-er works fast and hard on softening himself. As Bing-ers body recovers, his boy needs to embrace that feminine side more. It is as he is watching the boy repeat the moisturizing steps under his sharp gaze that the boy’s stomach reminds them both of the boy’s lack of meals for the day.
It is time for Shen Qingqiu to help the boy learn that following and serving, has rewards. The fine art of being a good flower, like the very most pampered hothouse blossom in a lord’s harem. The boy moves himself to keep his hands from brushing against either set of robes, and Shen Jiu wants to smile. Such a good boy, he has in his arms. Like the best parts of himself and Ying-er combined.
Shen Jiu marvels at how right the boy feels in his hold. He orders his boy still- and still he stays. The foods on the tray are all designed to help the boy recover. Jing will do the rest, once his body is filled with these foods to build from. He works through bites of each dish, explaining that he will feed Bing-er like this, not the other way. It isn’t long before he is showing the boy how to eat a few of the more delicate dishes.
Shen Jiu alternates praise with information. Shen Qingqiu, ever the strategist, pairs tactile praise with the boy staying still and open on his lap. His eyes are drawn to how the small lips part for red berries, and unbidden comes the fleeting thought of how the boy would look sucking his cock.
He shoves the thought away, that is, not what he will do to Bing-er. Of course he won’t. With that resolve he sets to guiding Binghe’s body in taking as much of the dense spiritual food as possible. Thousand year hawthorns, hundred year pink plums, blessed maiden ice melon. Soup dumplings with recovery herbs packed into them.
The boy’s stomach is rounded, stretched tight as a drum under those pronounced ribs. It looks painful and yet the boy doesn’t complain. It bodes well for the boy’s training in the future. Ying-er could never have sat so quiet or still, not a day in her life. His boy is so very good for him.
The flow of energy is easier than he feared it may be. The lesson begins almost as simply. The boy is a sponge, eagerly soaking up orders and praise with equal enthusiasm. The process of easing the ache, of walking the boy through unfurling his abundant energy into his body the correct way is as simple as breathing. The energy in the food is so abundant that even before they begin creating jing, the boy’s body is starting to visibly recover.
His ribs are slowly filling out like smears of clay building up a sculpture. The roughness of his skin slowly shifting towards smoothness. The smoother it becomes, the more his boy’s body fills out, the more his body becomes appealing. The skin invites touches now. For all Bing-er is a child, the more his energy unlocks, and the more his body pulls from the small fortune in rare herbs and mythical fruits he was fed just a bit before, the more obvious Bing-er’s innate beauty becomes.
Bing-er truly would not be out of place in the fanciest of tea houses. Those lips that part so eagerly are looking plumper by the bite, the soft swell of slowly growing muscles along his back appealing as they slide under less leathery skin. It isn’t as hard as he imagined it might be to stroke that body. He traces the meridians, and takes the time to explain and name them each. But in his mind, he is marveling more at how with only the food and this guided meditation, his boy is already this strong.
He lets his fingers ghost just above the boy’s growing cock. He cups the dantian, and if he has to hide a flinch, well. The boy is so small, his cock however is rapidly becoming something very much not. There is a part of Shen Jiu that wants to smack that growth down, to somehow change Bing-er into a maiden instead. It is only how the boy stays so utterly obedient, so small compared to him, that the stirring and growing cock is able to be ignored.
They have to meditate together, pooling energy and pushing the boy’s body to shape a true dantian sea. His boy’s body flexes inside like a receptive partner, chrysanthemum instinctively preparing to be penetrated as a result of the jing, even as his cock jerks. There is something intimate about sharing energy like this. Something appealing even as it is frightening.
There is an urge that takes him, without his permission, to push the boy down. As the boy begins to sweat and pant, Shen Jiu can’t help but remember his dream. Can’t help but be drawn to the yang power all but pouring out of his boy. If he plucked him, if he thrust into him savagely, he could easily double his own power. Would it be so bad, to recover himself within this boy? To pull all that yang into himself? They are creating jing so easily, with just this much. How much stronger would it be if he took it by force? He can feel the jing hardening him, a sympathetic reaction that urges him to fuck and take the defenceless boy in his lap.
Shen Jiu wants to scream at himself, at the dream filth that Jianluo has pressed into his soul. He shoves that revolting idea down and instead begins to teach his boy about dual cultivation. About the jing they are creating so incredibly effortlessly. His boy shivers, yet stays so open, head tilting back to show that golden throat to him.
Shen Jiu could not tell you what words he was saying. All his mind can focus on is the fight between the part of himself that wants to kiss this boy breathless, and the part that wants to go crawling away. Wants to throw the boy from his lap and scream for him to leave. Or to hurt him, just to prove he was never as foolishly trusting as his idiotic boy is.
Shen Jiu’s heart hurts, hammering as it is in his chest. He talks about kisses, and then, then he is kissing that berry red mouth. That hot tongue is like a brand as he suckles it, then moves it aside to map the boy’s mouth like some perverse part of him wants to map that untried chrysanthemum.
He knows, to his bones, that the dream was right. Part of him wants to push Bing-er down and hurt him. Part of him wants to take from him. Part of him wants to thrust into him, to never be weak again. To punish this boy for being so defenseless.
He has never wanted to understand the men that used him as a furnace. He has never wanted to know the appeal. Now he can’t unsee it, can’t unfeel it. The boy’s hands move, his chest hitching. It’s enough to pull Shen Jiu away from nearly deviating. It feels almost like he’s been kicked in the chest, he’s breathless as he scolds the boy.
But through it all, his boy notices none of it. Notices nothing of the conflict he is stirring within his mentor. Within his master, some voice inside hisses, and it sounds like himself and it sounds like Jianluo. The kiss this time is less a mapping and more a devouring. If he can just push these thoughts aside. There is so much jing. Why would he need to pluck the boy? Why would he ever think to hurt him that way? There’s so much energy.
Shen Jiu wants to tear away and scream. To go back to the past and kick those men. If there is this much energy with Binghe- was there this much with him? Did they only hurt him because they could? Because it felt good to hurt him? He feels nauseous, remembering Jianluo getting hard even when he wasn’t the one plucking him in that dark room. There was nothing about the jing in that.
It gives him the will to more gently break away from Bing-er. To quench his own rampant beastly nature. He may be hard. He may be overflowing with jing- but he doesn’t need to become a monster. He won’t hurt Bing-er. He won’t take him against his will. He will never be Jianluo or all those other men taking what was never offered. Bing-er will never be forced to do anything he doesn’t want to do. Not ever in bed.
Shen Jiu is hiding shudders, shivers as the kiss breaks once more. He slowly peppers kisses over that fuller face, now so beautiful as to be haunting. The face of a boy that will become a heavenly beauty in just a few more years. The kisses are wet and if maybe there are a few tears in with the sweat on his own face, that is nothing anyone will ever know. His good boy has his eyes closed.
It is hard to slowly fish the boy from his pants. He talks about gems and pillars, while in his own mind there is a screaming of how obscene the size of said pillar is. The boy is filling out with the jing and food. His body looks less starved and more just thin. And with it, puberty seems to be hitting early and rapidly. The cock in his hand, as he moves to grip it, is almost of a size with his own.
Some horrified part of him can’t help but imagine that when Binghe is fully grown, his cock will be as large in comparison to him, as the cocks that took his own first time were to his pre-puberty self. Shen Jiu tries to bury that thought, hiding his face in the boy’s neck. Taking in the smell of the oils he had used on the boy. He is talking about blossoms and using one’s mouth or hand. But all he can keep thinking about suddenly is how frightening the sheer size of the girth in his hand is.
Some part of him can’t stop thinking about the dream. It’s so foolish- so dumb. Yet even as he praises the boy he can’t help but remember working those adult men’s cocks in the furnace room. Can’t help experiencing it again. His skin is sweaty, and the men are jeering at him. It is before Jianluo let others pluck his chrysanthemum or plunder his mouth. Back when only his hands or armpits were open to the servants to use. Pluck- or be plucked. And Shen Jiu won’t pluck this boy. Won’t hurt him that way. He can’t.
He flinches, his own eyes spilling hot tears as his hand jerks from the hot hard spurts of yang and jing filled come spring over his hand and wrist. He stares at it with revulsion, feeling sick to his stomach. He had actually thought of pushing down the boy. He had the monstrous thought of doing to his Bing-er what was done to him. To hurt his boy so deeply by taking from him so brutishly.
He closes his own eyes, wanting to sob, to curl up and just make this all stop- to rip at all the beastly awful parts of himself. To crack himself into pieces and leave those rotten bits behind. He feels like he is trapped on a blade’s edge. There is jing all around him. There is gentle flowing yang buffering and warming him. The boy is in his lap, eyes still closed, palms still up so defenseless and gentle and-
The boy is speaking. Is offering to lick up the seed. How- why? Shen Jiu shudders, and part of him wants to shake the boy again. The boy isn’t ready. Men’s cocks are awful, terrifying things. Shen Jiu just promised himself he wouldn’t and yet here is the boy laying himself out like a feast. A lamb walking itself into the oven to be cooked.
The boy’s lips, so red and full from where the boy had been nibbling at them. Bruised from kisses and teeth both, glistening like tanghulu where they frame a pink little tongue. His mouth stays open- seeming to beg for his cock to fill it. If Bing-er were a whore in a tea house, he would do this on his knees, and be paid extra for it indeed. Open and soft and so utterly defenseless. Those lashes like black silken fans on thin yet rosy cheeks.
Shen Jiu finds himself curious if the boy will hate the musty nasty bitter taste as much as Shen Jiu had. He almost wants the boy to scrunch his nose and cry as he had. He lifts his hand, ready to praise the boy for trying but scold him for making such a face. Instead the boy looks interested. Eager even as the little triangle of a tongue tip flicks out and laps up the globs of come. There is no revulsion. There is no sounds of disgust or gagging.
If anything the boy leans his mouth up further, eager tongue chasing every drop in a slow motion that is stimulating and grounding at the same time. As Bing-er suckles his fingers, all Shen Jiu can think of is teaching the boy to suck his cock that way, instead of his fingers. The feel of those lips pulling and sucking, the teeth well hidden away.
The want Shen Jiu feels is like a fist twisting in his gut. He wants to grab those loops of hair and ribbon. He wants to feel that tongue on himself. He wants the pleasureful worship being laved on his hand to be laved onto his own cock.
He begins gently petting the boy’s hair instead of grabbing it. He asks if Bing-er liked it. He hopes so, because Shen Jiu is not sure he can hold off if the boy doesn’t after all. When the boy replies he wants to be useful, wants to be worthy? Shen Jiu almost shoves the boy down. A hurt cracking part of him wants to beat the boy for being so foolish. But the boy keeps talking, asking to earn his place. Offering, Shen Jiu realizes with true shock- to lick Shen Jiu’s own cock. Those sinful lips, begging to be taken. To have his mouth plundered and plucked. To take that too small throat as his own was taken.
The boy wants it- is asking for it, nearly begging and demanding for it. Shen Jiu’s shudder this time is a violent, near full body affair. His entire body is coiled, ready to spring on this little sex demon of a boy. A perfect little yang fountain. A perfect match to his own cauldron.
It takes everything in Shen Jiu’s body to keep gently petting the boy. To take a deep breath and slowly let it back out in a sigh. The boy’s face is sinfully perfect where it is tilted up towards him. Shen Jiu tries so hard to make words make sense. To make words that convey he is not against that idea. But to give the boy space. He swears he WILL manage to stop himself if his boy changes his mind. He must. He won’t be those monsters from his own slavery.
Shen Jiu tilts the boy’s face up, tracing the fuller curves, still a long way from glowing round cheeks that are the ideal. But so utterly hauntingly beautiful all the same. The kiss he gives now is a promise. He won’t be those men. He will be exactly the master they both deserved. Not cruel. Fostering this wonderful little jing spring, nurturing and encouraging his hunger for sex. Of course the boy, without pain or shame, is as greedy for this as for food.
It will only ever feel good for his boy. He pulls back, his own mask in place once more as he watches the boy’s bashful smile. So shy even when the boy was just begging to learn how to suck his cock. Shen Jiu can’t help but smile as he clucks his tongue at his foolish beautiful boy.
He wants to kiss him again, to tuck him into bed just as they are. Instead he carries his precious spring to the baths, hands tracing the smoothing skin. With daily moisturizing the boy will be as soft as a spring blossom, as smooth and perfect as the finest jade. There is the fleeting desire to press his teeth to the skin, to mark it. Instead he focuses on teaching Bing-er.
His boy is so perfectly pliant as his master rubs the oils and lotions into his body to reshape him from a rough slave boy into a cossetted little flower, so perfect to adorn his bed. Shen Jiu is distracted from his own musings by the boy’s sleepy eyes and more sleepy garbled questioning sound. It is so adorable, that Shen Jiu wants to kiss the boy breathless and never let him go.
It is impossible not to tease such a pretty and perfect little boy. His foolish little Bing-er being so confused by how tired he is due to the healing he is doing still. It is just as foolish and silly as Ying-er always was. His boy is so perfect for his girl. A matched pair of sweet fools. He wants to kiss that confused yet smiling face.
The boy, as they settle into bed, seems even more perfectly matched into his embrace. The new padding to his chest and hips is just enough to leave his hands resting comfortably. A sensitive little nub of nipple is traced by one finger, while the top of the boy’s outsized and frankly too large cock is rubbed by the other. He keeps circulating the boy’s energy, drinking in the overflowing yang, and feeding back his own cooling yin.
Shen Jiu wonders, as he slowly drifts off to sleep, if perhaps Ying-er will want her shizun to stay on with them, after he has passed the mountain and it's peak lord position to them. Maybe, perhaps he could sit with the boy, after he has married Ying-er, and share energy through hands as father in law and son in law.
He ignores the tiny voice inside him saying something about keeping the boy. That will never happen. He is doing this all for Ying-er. For Ying-er and Bing-er.