[open post - dream big]

[protagonisthalo]

Luo Binghe does not need to sleep every night, and at home he is too busy to do so. But there is less to do here, and he grows bored in the nighttime when there is no chance of seeing any of the few people he likes. And Nina must not have any nightmares on his watch.

He curls up on his bed now, enduring the ache he always feels to be in it alone. Sleeping alone is one of the things he most despises. The only saving grace is that his powers let him make himself sleep instantly. In his youth, he often ended up fighting his thoughts for hours in place of sleep, even when physically exhausted. He wishes Shen Yuan were here, or if not, perhaps Sagramore—not to do anything that would disrespect Shen Yuan, but just to warm Luo Binghe's bed with his presence. But he would prefer almost anyone in the mansion over no one.

He ignores this customary melancholy and forces himself to sleep. He will first check on Nina, to guide her mind towards its best dreams without intruding, as he promised. After that, all dream paths are open to him.

[If you'd like a Luo Binghe dream visitation, please comment with how and where your character is sleeping, and perhaps what might be on their mind. If Luo Binghe does not know the character well, the dream will be more generic. However, he can read thoughts and memories, so feel free to DM the typist if there's anything you'd like Binghe to pick up on. Sweet dreams!]

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[protagonisthalo]

Luo Binghe frowns. "Were you hurt in the attack?"

[sagramore]

"No, I-- I've made myself difficult to love, lately, but I'm trying to do better." Because this is a dream, and it seems not to matter very much, he adds, "I've been sick since I was a child, and it's shaped me into someone who fears nothing so much as burdening the people around me. Now I'm being asked to share the things that weigh on me, and I'm having to learn how to do that."

[protagonisthalo]

Luo Binghe exhales, uncomfortably empathetic. It's not that he's feared being a burden—if anyone finds him to be too much, that is their problem to resolve—but he has certainly made himself difficult to love. It is a hard thing to change. He has more to say on that subject, but hearing about Sagramore's illness diverts his attention. A good handful of Luo Binghe's wives have had some kind of lifelong condition, whether a physical ailment or a curse, and Luo Binghe has attended to all of them. He and Sagramore have already slept together—and that method only really works for poisons anyway. But...

"It's possible I could help," he says carefully, unsure how much Claudius might have told Sagramore. "With the illness, not knowing how to be easily loved—I am equally unskilled in that matter. Demon blood has strange properties when ingested."

[sagramore]

That makes him smile a little. "Shen Yuan did urge me to sleep with you to cure myself, but I thought if that would help I surely would be already well." And then sobering again, "Well, it wouldn't be the first time I'd been given blood to drink as a cure."

[protagonisthalo]

Luo Binghe laughs, charmed. He can easily imagine Shen Yuan pushing a night with Luo Binghe onto a friend like a particularly delectable dish. It's good that Shen Yuan isn't possessive of him; women who feel that way have typically not thrived in his harem, even though the idea of being with anyone other than Shen Yuan is unappealing. Although, if Shen Yuan did get a little possessive and jealous... Luo Binghe takes a moment to indulge that thought. Perhaps if Shen Yuan found out he and Sagramore have already slept together, he would grab Luo Binghe by the hair–maybe forcing him to his knees—and growl, "You're mine." Perhaps he would bite down on Luo Binghe's neck, marking him to show everyone who he belongs to. (He is temporarily ignoring how quickly he heals.) Maybe he would be so angered that Luo Binghe was given pleasure by another that he would pin him down and take him wherever they were, like Claudius tried to do in the kitchen.

"Yes, that works for poisons and often curses, but not all ailments. As for my blood..." This is tricky. He doesn't want Sagramore to think he intends to harm him, but it would be worse if Sagramore found out later how dangerous demon blood can be. "I will tell you directly: it's not a benign cure. If someone drinks my blood, it allows me control over their body. I would know where you were at all times—I couldn't stop myself from knowing it. And it would allow me to cause pain or pleasure at a whim. But depending on the illness, it is possible that I could ease it."

[sagramore]

"Do you want to cause me pain or pleasure at a whim? Or otherwise control me? I'd think you had enough going on as it is," though the idea doesn't alarm him as much as perhaps it should. People here don't seem to care that he's sick, and he feels the shame of it less in the abstract, but he still hates the reality of the seizures when he has them -- the loss of control over his body, the helplessness, the mess, the fear and anxiety in Laertes afterwards, even though he tries not to show it for Sagramore's sake. He feels sometimes as if he's taken every cure in the world, herbs and drinks and blood-letting, efforts to balance his humors, aromatics and hypnotism, purgitives, baths, diets, inhalation of smoke from a burned goat's liver, his own blood rubbed on his lips during a seizure, talismans, ointments of peony, the blood of strong and healthy men given as a drink, changes in air and observation of the lunar cycle, exorcism, cramp rings, abstinence, a feather dipped in oil smeared around the inside of his mouth. None of these treatments has ever made him whole, and drinking Luo Binghe's blood hardly seems worse.

[protagonisthalo]

"I have no desire to cause you pain—and I think we've discovered I have other ways of causing you pleasure, if necessary," Luo Binghe says with a smirk. "Find me sometime in waking hours, then, and I'll attempt it. As for the rest... Do you remember how we agreed that Shen Yuan does not know himself? He speaks of himself as an unremarkable, unappealing person, when you and I both know he is a man of exceptional beauty and warmth. There is the same disconnect when you say you are difficult to love and a burden. It is not flattery if I say that you are effortlessly charming, well-liked, and unusually considerate. It's as plain to me as Shen Yuan's generosity, and as baffling to hear you discount it."

[sagramore]

The genuine compliment from Luo Binghe is so wholly unexpected that he half-wonders if this isn't really a dream from start to finish, with none of Luo Binghe's intervention.

"Thank you, my lord," he says at last; it's easier to accept if he pretends for a moment that he's still Luo Binghe's servant, and that it's an emperor's indulgent generosity to call him charming and considerate. "I'll find you later when I wake."

[protagonisthalo]

Luo Binghe nods. "Enjoy the view, then."

He lets himself fade from Sagramore's dreamscape. Sagramore's own mind will take over the dream eventually, freed from Luo Binghe's influence, but the peaceful setting should persist until then.