Can I hope for a little cucumber plane ficlet?? If it's eating me this much idk how much it's devouring u. No pressure tho
Dw my darling anon I gotcha back ;3
“You remind me of my husband.” Shen Qingqiu says one day, out of the blue, as he’s sipping his tea and watching Shang Qinghua do paperwork.
Shang Qinghua pauses. He lifts his brush up and away from the paper so that no excess ink drops and ruins all his work, and pin his bestie with a hard look.
“I’d hope so?” He says flatly, puzzled. “Because … we are married…. How many husbands do you got, bro?”
“I think the fact that we’re married and you still call me bro is grounds for a divorce,” Shen Qingqiu promptly replies, as usual. “No, I mean, in my last life. Back in… you know. Modern times.”
Shang Qinghua is quiet. Then, “You were… married before?”
“Yeah? I’m a total catch, you’re not special.” Shen Qingqiu scoffs, and then hurriedly adds, before Shang Qinghua has the chance to pull out the Devastating Broken-hearted Puppy Eyes — don’t give him that look. his husband had coined the term, not him — “Shut up, obviously you are or I wouldn’t have married you. But, yes. you’re my second husband. If we’re counting my past life. Which we are.”
“If we’re counting past lives, from before,” Shang Qinghua says slowly, setting aside his brush, “then you’re not my first husband either.”
There is a beat of silence.
“I think I shouldn’t be as surprised as I am to hear that, considering I married you myself here,” Shen Qingqiu says, after a long moment. “But, still. You?”
“What? I’m a catch,” Shang Qinghua defends mockingly, voice dry.
“I know that, shut up,” his husband smacks out at him absently with his fan, a thoughtful look overcoming his face as he stares across the room at the wall. “What was he like, then?”
A little awkwardly, Shang Qinghua shrugs. “Um. Well. You, I guess.”
Shen Qingqiu turns to look at him, eyebrow raised. “You really only have one type, don’t you?”
“You only have one type!” Shang Qinghua raises his hands and gestures air quotes with his fingers. “‘You remind me of my past husband.’ How can I remind you of someone I’m not like? You’re a hypocrite.”
“A hypocrite who is your type.” Shen Qingqiu points out. “What did he do?”
“Nothing, he was a spoiled rich trust fun baby and I had to teach him all about memes so he wouldn’t embarrass me in public. He didn’t know memes, bro, can you believe it? Lived under a rock before I saved him. At least you know about memes.”
“I’m glad I’m apparently a step up from your last marriage.” Shen Qingqiu says, dry as a desert.
“What did your husband do?”
Shen Qingqiu pats at his lips with the folded end of his fan. It’s a tiny fidget but it’s a cute as hell habit and Shang Qinghua loves watching him. “He was still going to college, when I died. Majoring in business and management. He did something on the side to make some extra cash because he refused to let me carry us with the money I got from my parents, but he’d never tell me what it was.”
“Oh.” Shang Qinghua says. He picks up his brush again, fully intending to return to the report he was marking over, when he stops. Sets the brush back down. “Wait.”
“Hm?” Shen Qingqiu blinks at him, head tilted. Adorable as hell. Shang Qinghua shakes his head slowly.
“Bro.” He says. “Husband. Love of my life, of my — What, might I ask, was your name? Back then?”
The slow and idle flapping of Shen Qingqiu’s fan slows to a stop. “What?”
“Okay,” his husband — his husband, wait wait wait, his??? Husband??? — says, slowly, like he thinks he’s stupid. “Shen Yuan.”
Shang Qinghua picks up his calligraphy brush and throws it across the room. It paints a long, thin black line down the wall. He picks up the ink stone and chucks it after it for good measure.
“Bitch!” He says, pointing a finger at his fucking husband accusingly. “We’re both stupid!”
“Um, slut? Don’t insult me without telling me why!”
“My name back then,” Shang Qinghua wails, tugging uselessly on his own bangs, “it was Shang Lei!”
Shen Qingqiu — Shen Goddamn Yuan — blinks. And then he splutters.
“Fucking what!” He shrieks.
“I married you,” Shang Qinghua groans, bending over to slam his face into his desk, and likely getting the ink he had painstakingly brushed over the report smeared all over his face, “twice!”
It takes a while, all afternoon and evening really, for the both of them to finally calm down. They’re still mindblown when they cuddle up in bed that night, but when Shen Yuan curls in to stick the frozen tip of his nose to Shang Qinghua’s neck like the icy bitch he is and always has been, he sighs.
“It’s gotta mean something, that in an entirely new universe we still ended up together without actually meaning to.” He says, and Shang Qinghua can feel the man’s smile against his skin as he wraps his arms around him. “Are we in a goddamn soulmate fanfic or something?”
“Aw, babe,” Shang Qinghua nuzzles downward and peppers his husband’s face with kisses. “That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me!”
“Don’t fucking tell anyone.”
“Nobody would believe me even if I did!”
“What’s that suppose to mean?!”
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