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lemonysharkbait · 3 years

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Love Potion - Revisited

Mo Guan Shan x He Tian 19 Days fic

Read on AO3

There's a witch in the woods. He doesn't make love potions. Not anymore.

“I need a love potion.”

“I don’t make those anymore.”

Whatever herb the redhead was picking smelled divine. He Tian watches the sweat bead on his neck. “But you are a witch?”

Guan Shan pauses for a second, then picks up his basket and brushes past He Tian. It was a long way to this little cottage in the forest and He Tian didn’t have much time to sneak away from the watchful eye of his family. But he was enchanted as soon as he walked past the threshold and onto the land. And he didn’t care how long he spent out here. He’d deal with the consequences later.

“I don’t have time to be giving rich city boys spells they don’t even know how to use.”

He Tian smiles, “It’s not for me.”

“Well of course it’s not for you, that’s how most people assume love spells work. You give it to the person you’re infatuated with and whether they want it or not, they fall madly in love with you. But love is ugly business and I don’t meddle with it.” The red head scowls. “Not any more.”

“Been scorned before?” He Tian asks the question teasingly but the witch blushes, pink dusting the freckles on his cheeks. They’re both inside the cabin now, which is impossibly larger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Bundles of drying herbs hang from the ceiling and hundreds of glass vials and bottles line floor-to-ceiling shelves. He Tian runs his fingertips over the spines of books crammed amongst ingredients. A grey cat with piercing green eyes materializes out of some sleeping nook and purrs as it rubs against He Tian’s leg.

“Take a seat.” Guan Shan snaps He Tian out of his reverie with a brisk motion at a cluttered table. Two cups of hot tea send up steam.

“Tell me the details of your need for a love potion and I’ll see what I can do.”

“He is beautiful and smart and kind.”

“Of course he is, they all are.”

Not a start or a stutter or a mention of the unspeakable. No raised eyebrows at the mention of He Tian’s preferences. Red tongue, pink lips, honey tea. His brash reply is a relief.

“And rude.”

That gets a raised eyebrow. “That ones new. Where’d you meet? Or are you one of those creeps who just looks?”

“We met during a bar brawl.” He Tian says.

“Did you talk? To him.”

“Yes. And he even talked back.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Things.” He Tian lifts a shoulder, easily noncommittal.

“You fucked.”

He Tian chokes on his tea. “We were drinking. And strangers.” Guan Shan shifts and a floorboard squeaks. He Tian relents. “We kissed.”

There’s a bold scent like a night without the moon or being in a cathedral when no one else is there. A glare from the sun makes He Tian squint. It shouldn’t be slanting through the windows at this time of day. When had he come here?

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“There’s a lot I’m not telling you.”

The witch’s jaw slides. “Then get out.”

He Tian leans forward and it shifts the sun’s glare out of his eyes. Something behind Guan Shan clatters. He Tian opens his mouth. Bird bones in a bowl. The cat licks its lips.

“You fix broken things. Your love potions do. And they,” He Tian drops his voice, he doesn’t know why. The room is all cool blue, right on the teetering edge of night. It bleaches the color from the witch’s features and He Tian wonders if there was a fire in the hearth at some point, tries to conjure the layout of the little cottage in his head but the thought drops like a stone. “They don’t have to be taken by the other person, the beloved.”

He reaches for his tea and it's perfectly hot. That bothers him for some reason and he frowns.

“Who told you that I fix broken things?”

He Tian blinks. “I did.”

Guan Shan rolls his eyes and stands up, arms uncrossing, legs graceful but it’s all perfunctory and sharp. He Tian notes the edge of the full moon outside. It makes sense that the cabin groans. It’s settling. Because it’s night.

It makes sense that the floors creak and the walls pop as they walk through a library, then a greenhouse, a circular room with no pattern, a place where the books feel like they have eyes and they’re watching from the shelves. Finally, they stop in a room of white statues. With the blue light, He Tian can’t tell if their mouths are twisted open in ecstasy or pain.

Guan Shan sits on the large base of one, crosses one leg over the other and leans back on his hands. A single dangling earring glints from his ear.

He Tian falls to his knees like rapture. “Yes.” Bows his head to the floor and wonders which of them has spoken. The tile is cool and smells like dirt.

“You’ve been seeking relief.”

“Yes.”

“Have you found it.”

He Tian pulls himself up from the floor, flushing and knowing the witch can see his cheeks heat in the stark white light of this cloudless day. He feels like he’s just done something embarrassing, something he shouldn’t have done. A fantasy of falling to his knees in a dark room flashes through his mind. He feels foolish. Thoughts like that aren’t for the bright light of day.

“You have good taste.” He Tian brushes off his cheek. The room is dusty.

“How would you know?”

He Tian snorts. The statue Guan Shan is perched on is, from this angle, is unmistakable in its passion. Toned legs are positioned so one man is seated in the lap of the other, who is prone beneath him. As He Tian rounds to see their faces, the statue unfolds like a neat trick. Combat-locked arms wrap in a deadly hold. Neither man has a look of triumph.

“So will you make it for me?”

“Make what.”

“The love potion.”

“I don’t make those anymore.”

“Just tell him you love him.”

He Tian sighs, leans against the counter.

The witch nudges him back. “You’ll get blood on your shirt.”

He Tian doesn’t care. The rabbit on the counter is skinned clean except for the back feet. Those sit in a bowl, fur and all.

“But your potion, when someone takes it, doesn’t force the other person to love them.”

Guan Shan grunts.

“So, it won’t really, I’m already, it’s already,” words feel like the slick thick of guts squeezed during an episode of sick. “It won’t change anything.”

“Then you don’t need a potion.”

He Tian frowns. “But he doesn’t know.”

“Then tell him.” Each word is punctuated and slow. The rabbit is stuffed with garlic and rosemary.

“I can’t.”

The metal knife clatters on the counter, a frustrated toss. “Why not?”

There’s a large meal waiting on the table and a beautiful sunset outside the window. He Tian lifts the fork to his mouth and wonders that he has never had something so good.

“Because. I wasn’t myself.”

“You lied to him.”

He Tian carefully wipes his mouth. “I. I know you’re stringent but your work, your potion. It fixes broken things.”

“Like you.”

The early morning light sets Guan Shan in pinks. He Tian feels pleasantly full. He palms the tablecloth of the empty table. “I tried to lie to him, but he saw right through me. So if, if I could just have the potion and fix this.”

“What do you think the potion does?”

“Makes you feel loved.”

When the witch shoves up from his seat, He Tian thinks it’s all fury. But it’s just to swat a cat off the table.

“Why won’t you tell me his name? The man you love.”

He Tian shrugs. “He might not want to be,” He Tian chooses the word carefully “revealed.”

He follows Guan Shan into the cabin’s interior, into quiet nooks and crannies carefully stacked with the mundane. Candles of thick wax spilling over window seats, vines growing in a room with no light, two hallways forming a perfect crossroad. The floorboards in that particular spot thump with something rhythmic but Guan Shan just thunks back at the sound with his heel and He Tian stares at the floor, feeling like there’s something that interested him a second ago but he can’t quite remember what it was.

When the witch stops it’s in a room of mirrors covered in dust and peeking out from poorly thrown drapes. He Tian peers into one but can’t see his eyes. He rubs them, looks again, still can’t see in the shadowed blue light that fills the room. It’s just slightly too dark.

Guan Shan murmurs behind him. In the reflection of the mirror, he appears in front of He Tian, bright and clear, stooped and eyes sharp, peering directly into the reflection or rather, He Tian realizes calmly, the reflection is gazing out at them.

“Ah,” The voice issues from behind He Tian, but the reflection in front of him moves its lips. “You don’t want to see it.”

“See it?”

The reflection tilts sideways and He Tian sees himself, fuzzy and impermanent, cozied up to a witch with fire-flame hair. They are closer than he remembers. Is that what I sound like? He Tian wonders dumbly as the memory plays and flickers. They talk, they drink, they kiss. It disgusts He Tian.

His shape in the memory is that of another man, a different person, a cloak he slips on when he no longer wants to be himself, when he no longer wants to be the son of a rich lord. His lies fall slick from his lips, and the Guan Shan from this memory is sweet. The memory shifts and He Tian tries to close his eyes. But he can see them. All the times he slipped away to escape. Into pale arms dotted with freckles. Into a soft throat that arches with a moan. Into copper eyes and the smell of sage and butchered rabbit. In all of them, he is not himself, not his true shape. He’s a nameless lover with simple clothes and soft brown hair and green eyes.

The mirror cracks and He Tian can see his eyes in one of the shards, clear and dark.

“See it.”

He Tian whips around. The room is dark as night.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You knew? I’m sorry. I just wanted,” He Tian stretches out, falls to his knees, the grass he hits is soft and smells like fresh summer rain. “I just, you don’t have to love it back.” And he is. He is an “it”, a thing that can change its shape however it wants. A thing of slick lies. “I just, if I could just have the potion. I could. It would.”

You could love yourself.

There is a witch in the woods. He doesn’t make love potions, not anymore. He made one and it worked.

#19 days #19 days fanfiction #he tian #mo guan shan #tianshan #witch!moguanshan #dark #dark magic #alternate universe #love potion

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