Shen Yuan (peerlesscucumber)

Other than one or two brief excursions for totally normal reasons,¹ Shen Yuan has given up on going outside. It's cold, it's windy, and any day now there's going to be, like, three feet of snow on the ground. Winter is for being inside, and cuddling your boyfriend, and reading bad novels, and going Full Gamer Mode. He has things he should be thinking about, worries he should be addressing, so due to a lifetime of habit he is ignoring all of them to focus on what's really important: unlocking every character and achievement in Super Smash Bros: Melee.

Anyone seeking Shen Yuan out for the next few solid weeks is going to find him in the game room. Attired in a cozy sweater or a thick winter robe, probably sweatpants, definitely wool socks, almost certainly accompanied by disgustingly processed snacks and a mug of hot tea gone cold and then made hot again by a series of warming talismans every time he remembers it exists. He's probably showered relatively recently, because he has a boyfriend now who he'd rather die than be stinky around, but otherwise he's the very picture of nerdcore hyperfocus, though ready enough to pause and chat with any friends (or non-friends) who come his way.

¹ See: last interlude.

Shen Yuan is standing in his room in the Mansion in nothing but boxers, absolutely surrounded by clothes. There are stacks of discarded robes in every color of the rainbow (except, notably, red; the Mansion had given him one of those and he'd yelped and hid it under the bed); intricate and wildly expensive guans piled in teetering towers; he's knee-deep in jeans, and boots, and button-up shirts, and dress pants. There's a tuxedo, still on its hanger, swinging from the closet door. Behind it, the closet has helpfully refilled with more options, including a few very pretty dresses that Shen Yuan did not, actually, ask for, but he can't blame it for getting confused. He's fucking confused. He's completely at a loss, in fact.

He groans and grabs an outer robe at random, pulling it around his shoulders, and then falls over backward and starfishes on the clothes-covered floor. He doesn't know what the fuck to wear on a date. Especially not a date with Binghe, a dinner date with Binghe, and of course it's going to be world-class food, because Binghe is incapable of cooking anything else. And Binghe's going to be looking at him. The whole time. And it's not for—for an apology, or even for a seduction; he's just there to talk, and to listen, and to eat, and to—to flirt!! Intentionally!! Like gay people do!!

He has to look good, but not so good that it's painful for Binghe not to ravish him, and like himself—Shen Yuan, the self he's trying to be with Binghe—but not so different from Shen Qingqiu that Binghe doesn't like him anymore because he just looks like some fucking guy. He can't wear what he would have worn on a hypothetical date with a girl, because that's way too cringe and straight. Also, he doesn't know what that would have been, either.

It would be easier to do this somewhere else, anywhere his wardrobe is limited by what he already owns or could readily buy, and not made up of anything he can possibly imagine.

He rubs his hands over his face, and then pulls two slips of talisman paper and a brush from the robe's sleeve. Writing above his head like he's texting in bed, the paper held steady by an invisible force, he finishes two different but equally urgent messages. They fold themselves up, and he paints a last few qi-imbued characters on the outside before they both zoom out of the room in opposite directions.

[Magnus and Galahad will each receive a note that only opens for them and will lead them back to his room once they read it. However, Shen Qingqiu has mixed up which message was for who, so Galahad's reads "SOS!!! date emergency!!!" and then has two little drawings of the prayer hands emoji, and Magnus' reads "I need a favor, if you have the time - your friend Shen Qingqiu."]