Shen Yuan (peerlesscucumber)

Shen Yuan leaves Sagramore and Laertes' rooms pleased and excited, light-headed both in the stoned way and in the literal less weight on his scalp way. He can't stop touching his new haircut, the short hairs at the back of his head, the soft, longer strands that frame his face. It's so strange—it's just hair—but it feels—he feels—it's nice.

Binghe's not in his room, but Shen Yuan takes a minute in there anyway, changing out of the robes he had on earlier and into a pair of jeans and the Naruto shirt he'd left in there at some point (he'd left it on the floor; Binghe had folded it alongside other abandoned clothes and put it away in the closet) then heads to the lounge Binghe prefers when he wants to be left alone to read but doesn't want people to forget he also exists in the Mansion. He peeks around the corner into the room and spots his beautiful head above the back of the couch. He knows Binghe knows he's coming, but the point is that he doesn't see him coming, so he relies a little more on his cultivator speed than normal and dashes over to the back of the couch, slipping his hands around Binghe's face to cover his eyes. He's reading something—Shen Yuan can't see the front of it, but it looks like a self-help book of some kind?? He'd probably be able to puzzle it out if he took a second and tried, but he's too nervous and excited to try right now.

"Hi," he says. "Hi, sweetheart. I have a surprise."

After Airplane's gone, and Liu Mingyan is presumably gone, and King Arthur is gone, and Jiang Cheng is gone, and the Mansion is filled with just the expected people once more, Shen Yuan feels—exhausted. Every time he sets into some kind of normalcy here, makes some kind of plan, feels some kind of way about why he's here, what he's doing, what he wants, something upends the whole thing and throws everything into question again.

Or—well. It's not like seeing Airplane again and meeting Liu Mingyan actually changed anything. It just made it—kind of more real, the idea of leaving here eventually—possibly a soon eventually, now that Luo Binghe has Xin Mo again—and going to her version of things and not to his. Shen Yuan's, Airplane's—well, it was Airplane's version, actually, but not the one with him in it.

Liu Mingyan had seemed so sad. Not actively, not about what was happening to her in the moment, but passively sad, like it was her normal state of being. And she was Empress!! If she was sad, married to Luo Binghe and with all the riches of the Three Realms, what about the normal nobodies of Proud Immortal Demon Way?? He hadn't thought his world was all that different than the original goods, not in the broad strokes, but he'd spent most of his time, well... goofing off, with the other Peak Lords, when he could, and pretty much all of them were dead at Luo Binghe's hand. Who was he supposed to goof off with, when Luo Binghe was too busy being Emperor to have time for him?

The concept of Luo Binghe being too busy for him at all is displeasing enough, and he's man enough to admit that in the mood he's in, what he really wants is to be held. So he's sitting on Luo Binghe's bed, in Luo Binghe's bedroom, idly flipping through Luo Binghe's copy of Veiled Moon and waiting for him to come back.