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starryeyedjanai · 8 months

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all that you've conquered was already yours

stommy | explicit | 2.3k

read on ao3

happy birthday @stobinesque!!! hope your day was amazing!! 🥳

When Steve leans back against the pillows on his bed, he doesn't question it when Tommy slips onto the bed next to him.

They just got back from some house party that was more trouble than it was worth. The beer was shitty and the jungle juice was even shittier.

It's December and the snow on the ground made the trek across campus even worse than normal.

Steve didn't have any luck with any of the girls he talked to tonight and Carol's sick and couldn't come out tonight so he didn't even have her to bitch about everyone at the party with him.

"Did I tell you that Carol sucked me off right before I left for the party?" Tommy asks out of nowhere, breaking the comfortable silence that was stretching between them.

"No, you didn't," Steve says, rolling his eyes, but getting ready for whatever is about to come out of Tommy's mouth. He does this sometimes. Talks and talks and talks about him and Carol and the things they get up to.

Steve usually doesn't stop it because as much as he wants to pretend he doesn't care, he's gotten himself off plenty of times to the things Tommy talks about. To memories of Tommy leaning in close or sitting close enough that he could whisper and Steve would still hear him, talking about eating Carol out or Carol tying him up or the first time he and Carol tried anal.

"Well, she did," he says, sighing, leaning back so he's shoulder to shoulder with Steve. "I told you before that she doesn't normally like when I come in her mouth, but she can't taste anything right now because of the cold, so she let me come in her mouth, then she, like, played with it?"

"Played with it?" he asks, shifting on the bed.

Tommy hums, "Mhm. Like, held it in her mouth, opened up wide to let me see it on her tongue. It was hot."

Steve lost most of the effect of the alcohol on the walk back home, but he's still a little bit buzzed, so he knows as soon as Tommy's done talking about it, he's going to excuse himself to the showers and wrap his hand around himself thinking about that - Carol with her mouth wrapped around Tommy, letting him paint her tongue with his come. Just the thought has him chubbing up in his jeans.

"Sounds hot," he says in agreement.

"It was." Tommy turns onto his side to face him and Steve looks over at him. "She sat on my face before that. She likes to get off before she gets me off," he says, looking into Steve's eyes.

"Okay," Steve says, not looking away.

Steve doesn't know how he's always so collected when he says stuff like that. His tone is calm and cool, like he's completely unaffected. The only giveaway that he's feeling anything at all about the words that come out of his mouth is that his face always gets so red, like he's almost embarrassed, but he still says it anyway.

Tommy leans a little closer and puts his hand on Steve where he's a little hard in his pants. Steve is horny and a little buzzed, so he lets him, his heartbeat picking up.

Tommy just cups him through his pants at first, still looking at him. He leans in after a minute and presses a kiss to Steve's neck, just one, before leaning back

Steve lets him touch him through his pants and only stops to think about it when Tommy leans back and starts unbuttoning his pants.

He asks, "Why?" Just- why.

And Tommy answers, "I kind of cockblocked you earlier, right? It's only fair."

It's sort of true. He did come over and sling his arm around Steve's shoulders as he was putting the moves on some girl. She left pretty quickly after that, but he didn't have much hope there anyway and it's not like he's hard up for it or anything. He hooks up a lot so it's not exactly a hardship to hang with his best friend when he's a little drunk.

But it still doesn't make him stop Tommy when he gets his pants undone. He even lifts his hips to help when Tommy starts dragging them down his thighs. Tommy helps get them all the way off and settles back on his side next to him.

He sucks in a breath when Tommy's hand touches him through his underwear, where he's most of the way hard now, just this light touch that makes Steve's brain whir a little bit.

"What about Carol?" he asks, his breath getting a little bit faster with Tommy's hand so close to touching him for real.

Tommy stills his hand on him. "You know we're kind of open. I told you that," he says.

"I didn't realize that included men for you," Steve says, looking at him and putting his hand on Tommy's, moving it for him along Steve's dick, back and forth, as he gets harder.

Tommy grins at him and says, "It includes you," all casual, like it doesn't make Steve's blood boil, a flame lit up inside him.

"For Carol too?" he asks meanly, almost baring his teeth at the thought.

Tommy laughs. "Why? You wanna fuck my girl?" he asks, leaning in so close that Steve can feel his breath on his mouth.

"Maybe," he quips back, licking his lips, Tommy's eyes following the movement.

"Take these off," Tommy says, snapping the waistband of his briefs back onto his skin.

Steve complies, shoving his briefs off. "You're more demanding than I thought you'd be in bed," he says.

"You think about me in bed often?" Tommy asks. Steve gasps in a breath as he puts his hand back on him, wrapping his fist around him.

"The two of you. Sometimes."

Tommy hums, stroking his hand up and down Steve's length. "When you touch yourself?"

"Yeah," Steve pants out, closing his eyes as Tommy plays with the head of his cock, his thumb pressing into the sensitive nerves along the frenulum. "I think about the stuff you tell me. Like, if you weren't doing this, I'd be in the shower thinking about your come on Carol's tongue."

He can hear the smile in Tommy's voice when he says, "I always kind of hoped that's what you were doing when you would wander off after I talked about her."

"Is that why you do it? Because you wanted me to jerk off thinking about it?" he asks, curious. It worked, in any case.

"Not just that," he says. "I don't know, it's. Carol likes it, too. Likes to hear exactly what I told you. And she likes to talk about what she'd do to you if she had you in her bed."

"What would she do?" he asks, voice strained.

Tommy starts stroking him again. He says, "If you think I'm demanding, just wait until you hear Carol. It's like she's directing porn sometimes, the things she says. She wants you tied to the bed, my cock inside you, with her bouncing on your cock."

He can imagine it, all four of his limbs spread out and tied to the posts of the bed, Tommy between his thighs, Carol straddling him. He's never really thought about being tied up or held down, but, "I could get into that," he says.

"Yeah? You think we can make that happen, the three of us?" Tommy asks.

"Oh, for sure," he says, opening his eyes to look at him. And because he has to poke fun at Tommy a little bit, he asks, "You afraid if I get Carol alone, she's gonna realize I'm better in bed?" He bucks his hips up into Tommy's grip.

"I think that's a competition Carol would love to be the judge of," Tommy says, pulling his hand back.

"I bet she would," Steve says.

His breath stutters when Tommy slides down his body and settles between Steve's thighs, his head almost in his lap.

"Can I?" he asks, blinking up at him.

"Yeah," Steve whispers, bracing himself for it.

Tommy ducks his head and licks the precome gathered at the tip, closing his eyes like he's savoring it. Fuck.

He takes the head into his mouth and sucks lightly, pulling a gasp from Steve's throat. He licks at the head like it's all he wants to be doing, like he has all the time in the world.

He swirls his tongue along the sensitive skin under the head that he was playing with earlier before he slides his mouth further down, taking more of his cock.

Steve reaches down and pushes a hand through Tommy's hair, cradling the back of his head.

Tommy pulls back and says, "You can, uh, you know. You can direct me or whatever."

"Yeah?" Steve asks. "Can you take the whole thing?"

Tommy nods and opens his mouth back up, so Steve guides him back onto his cock, moving him down his cock. He stops when he feels the resistance of Tommy's throat, just keeps him there, on the precipice of it, for a moment, the head of his cock almost in his throat. He can savor this too, the feeling of Tommy's throat opening for him.

Tommy relaxes his throat and lets Steve bully his cock further in until his nose is nestled in the coarse hair of his pubes. He's breathing shallowly through his nose and Steve can feel it tickling the hair there.

The feeling is heady, having his cock squeezed by Tommy's throat, the feeling of him swallowing around him making Steve ears ring, making his eyes cross.

He pulls him off his cock and lets him breathe for a second before he says, "Tap me if you need me to stop, okay?"

"I will," Tommy says, putting his mouth back on him, eager.

Steve puts both bands in Tommy's hair and plants his feet on the bed to fuck up into Tommy's mouth.

He drops his head back on the pillow beneath him and keeps shallowly fucking his mouth. It's warm and wet and his throat is tight around him whenever he pushes into it. He's close already, from Tommy touching him, from feeling Tommy's mouth wrapped around him, because it's Tommy making him feel like this.

He can feel his balls drawing up - they're so wet with Tommy's spit.

That thought alone - Tommy getting him all messy and sloppy with his spit - is what pushes him over the edge. He comes with his cock buried deep in Tommy's throat, feeling him swallow around him, trying not to choke on it all.

Tommy taps his hip and Steve drops his hips and hands back on the bed, letting Tommy pull back off his cock at his own pace. He laps at the sensitive head, cleaning him up, and Steve shudders through it.

He lets Tommy lick and kiss his dick until it gets to be too much, the sensitivity turning the stinging pleasure sharper. He puts a hand back in Tommy's hair and tugs and Tommy pulls away with a parting kiss to his cock.

He crawls back up and settles next to Steve, back in the same position this started in, while Steve catches his breath.

Steve looks over at Tommy, ready to return the favor with his hand, maybe his mouth, but Tommy's pants are undone, and his shirt is splattered with his come.

Tommy sees him looking and has the nerve to blush. He shrugs and says, "I came when you were fucking my throat."

"You like it that much?"

"Yeah, I like it," he says. "I suck Carol's strap a lot and that always gets me off so quickly."

Steve's brain goes offline for a second, the thought of Tommy on his knees for Carol making him cock twitch - her strap down his fucking throat, his hand shoved into his pants as he takes it.

"Jesus christ," he says, flinging his forearm over his eyes.

He hears Tommy get up, hears him opening and closing drawers, cleaning himself up and changing into clothes that aren't covered in his come. He stays laying there, thinking about what just happened, thinking about what Tommy said earlier: wait til you hear Carol.

Tommy climbs back onto the bed with Steve. He cleans Steve up, uses a wet wipe on his dick where the come and spit have started to dry down. It's an intimate feeling, Tommy handling him with such care, looking after him.

He must toss the wipe somewhere because his hand settles on Steve's stomach under his shirt when he's done cleaning him up. Christ, he's still wearing his shirt, Winnie-the-Pooh-ing it this whole time.

"Do you do this a lot? With other guys?" Steve asks, biting his lip. He doesn't want to get his hopes up, but he does want to hear what Carol would say if he was in her bed with both of them. He might want more than that, if he's being totally honest with himself.

He lowers his arm and looks over at Tommy.

Tommy strokes his hand over Steve's stomach, making him shiver a little. He shakes his head. "Not really. I mean, I have before. But not recently. And they were never really who I wanted to be doing it with, so-" He cuts himself off, looking away for the first time all night.

Oh.

"Oh," Steve says.

"Yeah, oh," Tommy says, still not looking at him.

Steve reaches over and cups his chin, turning him back towards him. He says, "I said I thought about the two of you sometimes, but I also just think about you sometimes."

"Oh," Tommy says, a smile spreading across his face, the blush returning.

He realizes throughout this all, they haven't even kissed. He realizes that he wants to - wants to feel Tommy's mouth against his, wants to taste his come on his tongue, wants to kiss him until they're panting and raring to go again.

"Yeah, oh," Steve says, leaning in.

#stommy #with a hint of future stomarol #stranger things #st fic #steve harrington #tommy hagan #happy birthday read!!! 💗💗💗

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cod-dump · 1 year

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'I'm Not Simon Riley, I'm Ghost' incorrect quotes that may or may not hint to things I have planned in the future

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Price: Um, whatcha got there?

Runt, holding a skull and meat smoothie: A smoothie

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Gaz, running for his life: I'M SORRY

Ghost, attempting to chase him with Runt clinging to one of his legs: I'M GOING TO FEED YOU YOUR SPLEEN

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Runt: I'm the bane of your existence :)

Price: I haven't slept in four days please have mercy

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Soap: Am I really going to defile this grave for love?

Soap, looking at Ghost digging up another grave like a dog: Yea... Yea I am.

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Runt, licking (REDACTED) across the face: I licked it there for it's mine

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#some of these I thought were funny and others are legit hints to future chapters #I'm Not Simon Riley I'm Ghost #simon ghost riley #eldritch simon ghost riley #call of duty #cod mwii #incorrect quotes #john soap mactavish #john price #kyle gaz garrick #phillip graves #modern warfare ii #soapghost #ghostsoap #runt #eldritch fic

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bellaroles · 8 months

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It's no wonder Dan Heng x Blade is such a fine danmei material. Hoyoverse obviously knows what they're doing. And I'm falling right into this again. (Right after Kaveh x Alhaitham)

#their beauitful past frendships and definitely something more #the 'betrayal' that is definitely more than it seems #i've never paid this close attention to this game lore before but I'm reading everything i can about them #gotta go digging AO3 for some renheng fics to read lol #honkai star rail #omg the arm bracers how could they have been more obvious than this!#renheng #not to mention how their appearance and costume were designed #and i was about to quit hks again until il dan heng banner came #i was this close to stop spending money on games lol oh no #the friends to lovers to bitter enemies plus memories erasure and some hinting at future reunion and reconciliation tropes #i can't resist those damn it!

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lavenderbythelune · 6 months

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Something I've thinking about lately is Killer and Nightmare.

Killer lost his personhood through the resets, so much so it warped his soul. But isn't Nightmare's soul warped too? And what if after everything he didn't feel like a person anymore? Maybe when he was first exploring the multiverse he considered himself a force. He wasn't the guardian of negativity. He was Negativity itself.

Then he comes across Killer.

Nightmare is the God-like being that stepped into Killer's meaningless life and diverted its course forever, as easily as picking up a stone. But Killer is the first being Nightmare properly interacted with after the incident, and the first person aside who was not his brother that he had even a semblance of a positive relationship with.

Then as Killer begins to consider himself a person again, he stops following Nightmare's orders blindly. He starts messing around in missions and finding his own ways to complete tasks. He becomes the trouble maker of the gang. He befriends Color, despite Nightmare's anger, and starts experiencing the multiverse from a new angle, one not under the control of Nightmare.

What if Killer left Nightmare, or at least threatened to, and Nightmare can't let him go. Because Killer might be a nobody without Nightmare, but without Killer the only thing Nightmare has is the Negativity. He can't be reduced to just that again.

I keep thinking of a scene where Nightmare decides to stop trying to take over the multiverse or to kill his brother over the fact that Killer made him choose between him and the multiverse.

As he realised that he could live without the control of the multiverse, but he couldn't survive without Killer.

#utmv #nightmare sans #killer sans #killermare vibes #there's so much in their relationship I want to explore #but writing it in a fic is difficult #so have this ramble instead #potential focus of a future fic #the eventual happy ending hinted is mandatory #give our poor blorbos happy futures ;-;

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sophiethewitch1 · 13 hours

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Hi! You've mentioned that 'What We Want' has a playlist. If it's not to spoilery (and you feel comfortable doing so) could you share some of the songs on it.

I hope you start feeling better soon. ❤️

oh my god im so glad someone asked!!! I'll share some of my favourite songs from the playlist, the ones that i think like... summarise the stories feeling the most. Idk. The ones with the highest vibe quality. Some of these you will actually see referenced in the fic later on lmao.

Here's the playlist for your listening pleasure

If you have any more questions, theories (what song relates to which character, where in the story, etc) please send it in! I love talking about this.

#sophie speaks #sophie answers #series:www #also reader canonically likes bastille i feel its very much her favourite band/singer idk #and what you gonna do??? is like. the anthem for the fic basically #u are in this insane situation your life is changed irrevocably you are sad and miserable and embarrassed and lost #and yet you have the opportunity to do so much good in the world #to change YOUR life the lives of the ones YOU love #to change the city you live in to fix the broken system you suffered through #...to get the revenge you so desperately crave?#ALSO ALSO thelma and louise is dick's fallen in love song and werewolf is jason's fallen in love song thank you all have a good day #both have their own future scenes in www and i love love love both of them. theyre both so filled with joy and hope and feeling UGH #edit: wait tims is coffee i forgot. which is unfortunate considering... the themes of the song...#hinted spoilers my beloved #i want that grovel bby we are working on ourselves for our love <3 <3

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altschmerzes · 6 months

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ted lasso fandom stop posting things labeled as gen fic with both & and / tags listed for the same relationship leaving me wondering if i want to open the box of schrodinger’s gen fic and get shipping jumpscared today or not challenge

#gav gab #all fandoms do this but boy this one is bad about it eh #if im wondering if the fic you posted and labelled a gen fic #is a ship fic or not #something went very wrong with your tagging #while im at it ‘pre-relationship’ or ‘if you squint’ or ‘hints of x/y’ tags are just #functionally completely useless #because ive seen them regularly used to mean anything from like #‘these characters are worried about each other or possibly make physical contact at all’#to ‘the pov character is actively pining for the other person in a direct way’#and those are wildly different things #please say what you mean :’)#tbt the time i was reading a fic that was completely tagged as gen and with & tags #and a ‘hints of possible future x/y’ on it which given it was an h/c fic is like #are we referring to Care and Comforting Someone When They’re Hurt as hinting at a possible future romance?#bc often yes that’s the case!#in this case it was literally the pov character at the most situationally inappropriate moment fantasizing about a sex act w the other one #which is uh #call me a bitchy stick in the mud aro if you want but #that’s not covered by ‘hints of possible future’ if you ask me that’s pretty damn direct #stop putting it in the damn gen tag #it’s already hard enough to find gen fic without all the ‘actually ship fic but nobody fucks so people think somehow that makes it gen’#shit that gets in there #at least it’s not the spn fandom out here tagging things like ‘gencest’ which truly proves that nobody in that fandom #can be normal about platonic relationships #like what the fuck are you talking about actually

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sketchnskribbles · 1 year

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*Throws up hands* ART

#rottmnt #tmnt #rise of the tmnt #komorebi au #Rottmnt Komorebi #tmnt Komorebi #sketchnskribbles #skribble's art #some of these doodles feature hints toward future Komorebi scenes #also some doodles of fics I enjoyed #and the rest was just me being silly

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thefangirlofhp · 6 months

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26. the beast

The odd business of funerals and burial held a sort of desensitized protocol, in which tears were expected and scheduled into the procession but uncommon really. It is Azriel’s first funeral, and he had no idea how well or how bad it had gone. When he claimed his mother’s body at the hospital (alone and unaccompanied, is prudent to add) no one bat an eye, and Azriel had to ask a muggle how these things usually went. The man pitied him for all of three minutes, before snapping into brisk Englishman efficiency as he proceeded to list all the things that would be expected of a burial. A grave to bury her in, obviously; a nice ceremony at a local church that had little to do with the late woman’s devoutness or relation with her faith (or a funeral home, the man added after several moments of hesitation, as if he were confessing to the positives of rock music); and someone to say a word or two over her grave, preferably a man of the cloth.

Azriel had little clue on how to accomplish any of that, or where to begin for the matter. He did however manage to trace back her life and find her hometown where she grew up and when he spoke with the pastor he remembered her, and was more than happy to do the ceremony and gather the townsfolk for the service in her memory. She was remembered, and coming face to face with the reality of this fact took Azriel by surprise. His mother was, as far as he was aware, the loneliest woman on earth and remembered by few. But to see a considerable amount of people show up in the cold and snow to pay their respects stole his breath away, left his heart staggering and his mind dizzy and grief a heavy weight on his chest as a new thought brushed his mind to join the pile of the unvoiced words he wishes he could have told her: you weren’t alone.

Rhys’s parents show up, and Mrs. Blackwood hugs him for a second longer than what he expects and somehow his heart lingers, or wants to, but his mind could condone no such businesses.

“Azriel, sweetheart,” she squeezes his arms, her eyes worried and warm and reminding him too vividly of his mother. “We’re here, we won’t leave your side. It’s going to be okay.”

“I know,” his voice is hoarse, the stripped quality of it floating before him in a cloud of deflating fog. “Thank you.”

Her eyes seem to pinch, as she purses her lips with worry, and he wishes he can relieve her of the responsibility to claim a friendship that was in passing and limited to school. He wishes he can reassure her they were merely school-mates, and were friendly at best and that his mother was a woman so caught up in her head it was enough to blind some corners of her sight. He tries to extend this gift, this grace, of reassuring her she did not have to see him as anything more than her son’s friend but the words catch in his throat, and he’s already lost one mother and he is not in a hurry to lose another.

“Stay the night with us,” Rhys’s father invites but it sounds more like an order with his flat baritone voice. “Rhysand’s room is all made up.”

“I—” Azriel’s voice catches in his throat.

Mrs. Blackwood rubs his arm, her eyes earnest and pleading. “What do you say? We’d love to have you. Diana would be over the moon—she actually wanted to come but we insisted she stay in bed. Down with a nasty cold, you see.”

“Oh, is she all-right?” the sentiment softens his voice, makes it easier for it to come out.

“She will be. I suspect she’s making most of the attention while she can,” her lips fleetingly curve up in an attempt at an encouraging smile. “I don’t suppose you’ll be returning to Hogwarts tonight, will you?”

“No,” Azriel confesses. He has his mother’s tiny flat to pack up. He’d meant to do it tonight, after the service but the self-resilience was waning, little by little, with every passing second and every drifting snowflake. He wants nothing more than to bury his face in a scarf, curl in the corner of a couch and forget anything that’s happened the past week.

“It’s settled then. I simply won’t allow you to stay in Diagon Alley, all alone.”

“I don’t want to impose,” he softly pleas. His aforementioned wants did not, in any sense, include putting on his best behavior around the parents of his school-friend. Even if they were well-acquainted and he’d spent some time at their place before. But then was different; back then Azriel would be back home in time for dinner, and he still had a mother, and his friends were there. Back then, Azriel was not an orphan.

“Nonsense,” Minister Blackwood decrees, fixing him with a sharp hawk-like stare that seemed to look into his insides. With the Blackwoods’ renown daemati ability, Azriel does not find it unlikely. “Tomorrow you’ll finish your affairs and return to Hogwarts promptly.”

Mrs. Blackwood looks so eager, pouring the depths of her blue eyes into his with no reprieve that he caves, averts his eyes and nods. She beams, and curls her arm into the crook of his elbow and thanks him for letting them look after him, even if it was for a night.

That night after dinner, Minister Blackwood summons him to his study and Azriel finds himself closing the lid on this crucible of a week, and settling in as the ceramic grows warm. Whatever returns to Hogwarts the following evening, returns alone, and whatever Azriel thought he would be when he grows up is melted into this new skin, this new body’s reinvented purpose.

#MORE hogwarts!au #ravenclaw!azriel #this could be considered a prequel to the fics no. 11 and 25 #in which i vaguely hint to azriel's future after school #yes it does involve his shadows and spying however could you tell #eugh the more i write snippets of this au the more i want to get to writing the entire fic

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rearranging-deck-chairs · 9 months

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i need to write more he/him 13

#yesterday i was writing fic and idk what happened but in the middle of a sentence i was like 'she' and i went 'uhh???'#like it was so immediately clearly wrong and jarring #i never have that with 13 even in the he/him fic i wrote it took a couple of sentences to get into it #i should check what the sentence was theres probably some gender bias for me to dig out there #anyway i need to find an idea for this #maybe i'll do he/she 13 where the fam isnt entirely sure what to do and the doctor wont explain anything so #everyone is just doing whatever and 13 is giggling to herself thinking of what he said to bill on the roof #waiting for someone to ask so she can brush them off with an evasive non-answer pretending she doesnt know exactly what hes doing #get more genderfucky by having her dress up in period clothes and everyone in the past (and future) is #using hints from his clothes except those gendered hints arent always the same as ppl from the 21st century would take either so #it just confuses everything more

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chrisbitchtree · 2 years

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When Billy had first seen Harrington, Wheeler, and Byers sitting in a corner of the lunchroom, heads together, whispering so that no one could year, he’d thought it was some fucked up threesome situation. He knew that Wheeler had left Harrington for Byers but thought maybe they’d taken pity on him.

Now that Billy had been let in on everything going on with the Upside Down a few days prior, he was jealous. He had to spend his lunches listening to Tommy and Carol yammer on about nothing while the other three were probably discussing plans to take down interdimensional monsters. That didn’t really seem fair, but he didn’t know how to infiltrate their little group.

He hadn’t really done the friend thing in years. It was more like people just clinging to him because of what being associated with him could offer them. Sure, it was kind of nice to have people who would do whatever he wanted, no questions asked, but there was no substance.

He looked over at Harrington, who was waving a French fry in the air as Wheeler and Byers laughed and laughed. Billy wanted to know what pretty boy could be saying that was so funny. Instead, he turned back to Carol and Tommy, pretending to listen for the last five minutes of lunch. He turned just too quickly to see Steve looking back at him, a small smile on his face. Billy may not feel seen, but he was noticed.

Over the next week, Billy built it up in his head. There was no way Harrington, Wheeler, and Byers wanted him to sit with them. Sure, they talked to him when they had their little meetings at the Byers about everything going on, and he got a few high fives when he’d kill a demodog in a particularly spectacular fashion, but they were just being nice.

Another week before Billy said fuck it and plopped his lunch tray down next to Harrington. To his surprise, none of them batted an eyelash as he sat listening to them talk as he ate his fries. Before long, Tommy wandered over.

“Hey Billy,” Tommy said, an odd, nervous quality to his voice, “Did you not see us over there?”

Billy shrugged his shoulders. “I already have lunch plans.”

“Oh,” Tommy said, looking over at Carol, “that’s ok, we can just come eat with you guys.” He started to wave Carol over.

“Sorry, table’s full,” Billy said, and Harrington and Byers slid their backpacks into the two empty seats.

Tommy walked away, a look of confusion on his face, but clearly not wanting to raise a fuss with Billy.

“So, you coming hunting tonight?”, Wheeler asked, eyebrow raised in question.

Billy nodded, laughing as Harrington tried to stealthy steal a couple of his fries. “Want one of my Twinkies?”, he asked, mouth full of potato.

That wasn’t all Billy wanted from Harrington, but that could wait. For now, it just felt good to maybe have some real friends.

#harringrove #billy hargrove #steve harrington #billy x steve #hinted at #for the future #nancy wheeler #jonathan byers #my fic #chrisbitchtree writes #harringrove fic #harringrove ficlet

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crimsonlyinglilly · 7 months

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No. 14: “Feed me poison, fill me ‘till I drown.”

Flare | Water Inhalation | “Just hold on.”

More of stolen three, the end goal Elijah's plans come together.

Hints of Elijah/Jackson, i’m not a fan of love triangles and in the age old quote, Hayley has two hands, as do Elijah and Jackson.

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Modern day.

Elijah has worked for years for this, yet somehow when it happens he’s still surprised. He can feel the bindings now free from Freya and Finn adding to his own, and can feel the echoes of Dahlia’s and Esther’s magic twisting together as it attacks itself.

But there Dahlia laid, her mind trapped in the hollow of their power unable to hurt anyone until she died. He couldn’t stare too much he still had one thing to do before he’d end up being pulled in with her.

Dahlia could die with the person who she loved most, Esther could die for her children to make up for the damage she had done to them. It would take a few days for the magic to truly destroy itself, their line was powerful and had had centuries to grow stronger.

He just had to break the curse and free the wolves and then he’d be done.

“Just hold on.” he told the child, his niece, “it’ll all be over soon.”

“What have you done?” the Hybrid asked from where he had been about to tie himself to Dahlia, a terrible choice, Elijah would know.

“Dealt with her, the moment she attempted to bind another I made sure she was linked to another witch.”

“Who?”

“Our mother, brother.” It was odd referring to someone other than Finn as brother, well it wasn’t something he’s had to get used to. “I’ve changed the ritual, their magic’s going to waste away attacking each other. Even if they make up, they don’t have control anymore, " he chuckled, “it’s strange to have all the control.”

It’s not hard to follow Dahlia magic back to the curse she had cast so recently and using all three of their magics undo it, Elijah alone he would have failed, but he wasn’t he could almost understand Dahlia’s want for a coven but after all the cruelties she has put upon them, had long crushed any sympathy.

“What about Freya and Finn?” Klaus calls him back before he could let the sudden exhaustion take him, the bindings pull was growing.

“I knew how to break their binding years ago.” he answered with a wave that was more of an attempt to steady himself than a flourish, “it’s just they would never have allowed it.”

“Why not?” Klaus was frowning, glaring almost, which Elijah found rude, here he was saving Hope, freeing his family of both their mother and aunt, and Klaus was looking at him the way he thinks Freya and Finn would, anger and disapproval.

“Because breaking theirs rebounds onto me, and they promised to never leave anyone behind.” he explains and suddenly he understands, Klaus was raised by a witch he understood what it meant.

“You didn’t?” a female voice asked and Elijah blinked, Hayley was standing in front of Hope, he didn’t have long left if the pull was causing him to lose time.

“Oh I did but I'm not leaving anyone behind, I'm staying behind and letting them go.” he barely managed to get the words out before he stumbled, losing his battle against gravity. And was caught by a solid arm, Elijah starred as Jackson came into focus in burning vision bringing with him the pointless painful regret he had since Elijah had started to let himself feel, to want.

His relationship with Jackson, the one he could have had with Hayley. A future to know his niece and siblings, getting to see Finn allowing himself to love his vampire, getting to see Freya heal.

It had to be this way they would understand, it was to save Hope from his life, a life on knowing Dahlia’s broken love.

Freya and Finn would be free, he broke their rule, broke the promise they made before Elijah had truly understood their life, but they would have time to move on.

He’d make sure by taking both their nightmares with him, the one that gave them away and the one that made their lives hell.

“It seems my times up,” he tried to blink the growing dimness away but it stayed “Thank you Jackson it was real, and tell Frey and Finn I’m sorry but I made a choic-“

The darkness swallowed him and Elijah breathed in the magic pulling him down like water drowning him.

—--

He had said it with almost childlike awe, a difference from Eli’s calm controlled confidence Jackson had first met, there again he had also seen Elijah’s fear when he arrived to revive Aiden, when he had relived himself as the missing Mikaelson the fact the entire pack could smell his terror at idea defying Dahlia.

‘It was real’ like he hadn’t believed it himself, Jackson was so stuck by it that he almost missed when Elijah dropped.

It was werewolf reflexes that allowed him to catch the witch before he completed his fall to the floor, he had no doubt Eli would frown at the mess it would make of his suit.

“Is he okay?” Hayley asked, Hope was safe in her arms and the witch that had caused all the problems seemed to be in a similar state to Eli on the floor.

“Asleep.“

“Get him in the truck.“ Normally he wouldn’t have accepted the order but there was an urgency in Klaus’s words.

“What? Why?”

“We need to see if Freya, Finn and Davina can undo this.“

“Why? Can’t we wait until their magics gone and he’ll wake up?”

“No, he’s the anchor to the spell but he’s bound to both of them, there magic goes, they die they’ll take Elijah with them. And as much as I want Dahlia dead I’m not giving her my brother as a consolation prize.”

—-

When he opens his eyes he finds himself on a hill, watching as Dahlia and Esther embrace, and it’s seeing the peace on Dahlia face that makes him want to snarl to rip them apart because how dare they make up, when Freya heart will always have a hole in, when Finn chokes on apologies at the sight of his own blood, when Elijah can’t-

He stops his train of thoughts with a deep breath and interrupts them with a call, smiling at him.

“Mother, Aunt Dahlia, we’re all here to die.” it’s a relief to finally say the words, he chuckles.

“Elijah it was you.”

“I’m putting my hopes in you mother,” he addresses Esther, and crushes the urge he always has at Dahlia’s anger to fix it and soothe her anger. “going against Freya’s belief that you care nothing for your children.

“Elijah, you betrayed me.”

“Aunt Dahlia, I have loved three people throughout my life. I have long known that the only way two of them would be safe and happy would be the removal of you”.

“You chose them over me.” she snarls back and suddenly is easy to ignore the little boy that just wanted her to smile, the foolish child that once thought he could help her, the anger he had been biting back for decades consumes him.

“Don’t take that tone, Dahlia.” he snaps, it’s a delight to see her taken aback by the same words she had used against Finn and Freya so often, “You’re the same, nothing we could have ever done would place us before her in your heart.” he’s attempt to swallows back the true rage in his tone fails, he had stopped expecting anything more since he was fourteen, yet somehow the pain remained. “So I gave you what you wanted, you can die with the one you loved the most, Freya and Finn can be free to live as they want.”

“And you?” it’s his mother who asks, he’s almost amused that it’s not Freya she reminds him of but Finn. He is however confused by the concern he sees, she had him for barely a year, she had Freya and Finn for five each, raised the others their whole lives, can’t she just be relieved her actual children are safe.

“I can stop.” The admission tires him, years of plotting countless young honest souls used and thrown away. Jackson’s look of concern when he found the scars, the way he had looked as he dragged Elijah around the bayou,there was nothing to gain there yet Elijah had followed, Haley’s kindness even after she learned who he was, he had wanted, it had almost made him find another way, but it was too late for that.

“Stop?” Dahlia's eyes are sharp and he wonders what she wants, is she looking for something to use to change his mind or simply to hurt, it doesn’t matter anymore so he confesses the truth.

“Stop being torn between my love for you while you tear us apart to soothe your own hurts. Stop questioning what is me and what is what you made, what I made of myself to please you.”

The truth of why he chose to die instead of taking a chance, he doesn’t know what he is without her and he’s too scared to find out. A coward, oh Mikael would be ashamed, wouldn’t he? From what he heard from Klaus during the few weeks they knew each other he was sure but the four days he had learnt from the man he’s not sure, that man had missed his children, had wanted Elijah back even while he stood at Dahlia’s side.

He walks away from them, footsteps changing from one step to the other as grass changes to polished wood, a piano appearing in the space, he looks back at them as he sits on the bench.

His mother and aunt, surrounded by green grass and flowers looking far younger, innocent to them, from a time before they had the chance to ruin lives.

“Just hold on,” he repeats the only words he would ever say to his niece “it’ll all be over soon.” His fingers find the keys without looking, he’s amused to feel them bare, free of his gloves and showing the various scars he had gathered, he offers them his best smile and starts to play.

Time moves faster here, two days in the real world would be just hours here. He’ll enjoy his last hours making something.

—

Dahlia watches him, even as she has the closeness she had longed for, even as she has her sister back, watching him play his music alone as they wait to die.

She had accepted death, as long as she had Esther she could accept it was a long past their time, but there was something she couldn’t accept so easily.

Elijah, her bright, brilliant boy, the one she should have known would have been the threat, with his patience and calm mind, the way he was methodical in all his tasks. They were all her children, she had raised them, but it was Elijah that took after her most, in more than their similar looks.

She suddenly understands why people want children, not to increase their power but to leave something behind, to watch something grow and then outgrow them. And Elijah had done that.

She didn’t want him to die, she wanted to leave him behind.

Dahlia wanted Elijah to thrive after she died, yet here he stayed, an anchor to his spell, bound to them by her ritual, doomed to follow them because of it.

Because Dahlia had fed the boy poisoned affection, now it was going to kill him.

Because she had made him and he refused to live without her.

It was perfect, it was what she wanted but now it was ash in her mouth.

“Sister!” Esther whispered, she knew her sister had likewise had been watching him, she didn’t need to whisper Elijah wouldn’t hear them over the music but still it brought back memories of staying up late and whispering so as not to wake their parents. “We can’t let him do this.”

“Do you have any idea how to stop this? Our magics are entwined, the only one here with any power is he and if Elijah could be convinced to stop this he wouldn’t be here. This has been long planned for. We will die and my binding on Elijah will ensure he follows.” it almost hurt to say aloud

“Release him.” Esther almost begs but her sister is smart enough to know if it was that easy she would have done so to begin with.

“I can’t break the binding without my magic.” she replies barely keeping her irritation under control.

“Unless we place our magic within him, use the binding as a-” Esther's answer is sudden, for a moment it gives her hope.

“Conduit.”it was almost like when they were children, first learning magic always there to give each other a boost, “But there's still a risk that much power already in conflict will kill him, even if we only have a little left, Elijah has always-”

“I trust his siblings, but this is our only chance.” Esther’s looking at her with the same eyes she used to when she wanted Dahlia to sneak away from her chores. “For our boy.”

“Together.” She took his sister’s hand.

—-

Elijah didn’t notice as something changed until water swallowed the keys under his figures and the shock caused him to lose hold of the piano’s shape, the water climbed up him with speed after that, that he only had time to turn and see them, before it reached his chin

Dahlia and Esther were still looking as young as they had before, their hands still linked but both were looking at him with an intent that he hadn’t planned for he could see their mouths moving but the water was growing louder that he had no hope of hearing them.

Shit, this wasn’t to plan ,what were they doing? Had Freya been right and Esther cared for her own life more. He could tell the water was a representation of their magic but all this was doing was killing them faster, he could already see them fading.

“What ar-” he choked as he inhaled the water, his chest grew tight and before he could question how he was drowning, he discovered what they were doing as he felt sharp sparks erupt within his chest, they were pouring their magic into him, thankfully blackness swallowed him, so he would miss the feeling of the foreign magic burning throughout him and likely tearing him apart.

—-

He woke up to a starving hunger and a glass shoved into his hands. He sat up and downed the glass without hesitation before he looked up at the crowd of people.

“Wha-” before he could finish his question, Freya and Finn nearly flattened him.

“Never do that again!” Finn’s hands were heavy on his shoulders.

“What were you thinking!” Freya nails dug into his arm.

“We made a promise!”

“And yes you left us, you left us behind here.”

“We’re never letting you out of our sight!” he was pulled into Finn’s chest and Freya joined the hug to flatten him between them.

“How could you!” Freya seemed to run out of words at least, one on her hands had moved to ran through his hair.

“I’m sorry, I've been waiting for years, when she came after Hope it was the best opportunity.” he told them, pushing back to look them both in the eye.

“You didn’t tell us.”

“She might have found out, besides she’s always easier on me, if i was found out it wouldn’t have been as bad.” he explained.

“Sorry to cut this short but he’ll likely want more blood so how about we take this elsewhere.”

“Blood?” he asked, suddenly realising the taste in his mouth was metallic, Blood , he looked at the floor to find ritual marks.

“Kol had researched the original spell to make them.” Finn told him as he and Freya stepped back.

“And big brother Finn is excellent at developing shortcuts in spells.” Kol added a smirk spread across his face, “you're not quite an original but you’re a hella more than a normal vampire.”

“It took all their blood to get past Dahlia’s spell.”

He pulled himself up stumbling slightly only to be steadied by another hand, he followed it back to find Jackson, this was becoming a habit he thought, but couldn’t get the words past his throat to make a comment on it

All his words dried up as he stared, he hadn’t known Jackson was involved with the Mikaelson when he first met him, but after he found out he hadn’t stopped even when Dahlia had used his body, he had let himself become selfish with the belief he wouldn’t have to live with the consequences.

“We’re going to have a long chat after this.” Jackson told him quietly, before letting go and Elijah couldn’t crush the spark of hope that flared.

“Really?” he couldn’t stop the word escaping him because he’d understand if Jackson wanted nothing to do with him

“You walked into a pack of pissed wolves and brought Aiden back despite the fact that we all could smell how terrified you were of his murderer.”

“You're going to explain why our dear aunt placed a spell on you to stop you from being turned.” Klaus called to him as he finally joined them in a kitchen.

“I think you would know the answer to that.” After all, she hadn’t done it until after Elijah had told her of the strange vampire that he had made a friendship, over creating beauty and also enjoying violence, during the year he was awake in the 16th century.

It would seem Freya’s spell to draw them back to their family had worked since he had met their father and at least two of their brothers during his brief freedoms.

“Ah,” Kol cheered, “so you are Klaus’s lost little musician.”

“Little!” he sputtered, he was ignored but Finn pulled him under his arm.

“The one that got away, there's a portrait of you in the music room.” Kol continued.

“Shut up Kol.” Klaus grumbled.

“Wait? What?” he couldn't help but ask, he had only sat for Klaus once and it had to be over a century before they moved here.

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the-darklings · 2 years

Note

Dude your writing is truly out of this world you captured Dream and The Corinthian so perfectly!

Side note? : I have a feeling petty Morpheus will take Cori's ring since it has a pice of his beloved Wanderers' soul in it perhaps what pushes him to flee into the waking world AAAAAHHH THE POSSIBILITIES

if you mean this ring right here in present timeline (aka what I always intended to be Wanderer’s ring, and what I modelled it after):

… then no 👀 Dream doesn’t know Wanderer gave him the ring. Close enough Dream might be able to sense it but would likely just write it off as how close Corinthian was/is to Wanderer/her influence on him.

#i clocked that ring first time I saw it and it was immediate ‘well can’t wait to use /that/.’#basically consider this a hint for the future: he still wears it/has it.#asks #fic: today i bury you in me #corinthian & wanderer #thank you so much tho 🤧💕

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eleanorfenyxwrites · 2 years

Text

War Manners

My housemate requested I write Meng Yao losing control for one (1) fucking second and kissing Nie Mingjue when they're not together, and the fallout from that/how Meng Yao would have to navigate knowing he'll never get Jin Guangshan's favor now. So this is (hopefully) that!

[Masterpost] [AO3]

-/-

Meng Yao has had very many Thoughts (the emphasis is more than appropriate) about Nie Mingjue. Nie-zongzhu. Chifeng-zun. These Thoughts can be reasonably and broadly categorized into two main sections — Professional and Unprofessional — and then further sorted into their appropriate little drawers in the mental cabinets Meng Yao has consigned these Thoughts to for his own sanity.

Within the Professional drawers there are mundane thoughts (no emphasis needed) such as troop deployments, war meetings with whom and when, missives and assignments to keep track of, and all the hundreds of little daily tidbits that go into successfully keeping an army out in the field. True, things like kitchen tents and bandage replacements and armor repairs and the like are all things that he happily delegates to the appropriate authority figures on such niche matters, but he still has to think about them. All of that sort of thinking is neatly and tidily sorted away and carefully labeled so that he can continue to be the competent and trusted vice-deputy Chifeng-zun needs him to be.

Within the Unprofessional Thoughts drawers there’s quite a bit more…variety. Those drawers are for rummaging through in the privacy of his extremely limited free time, mainly when he’s either falling asleep or just waking up to face the day. Let it never be said that Meng Yao allows himself to be distracted during important meetings by idly flicking through memory after memory of Nie Mingjue’s face from every imaginable angle and in every light. (Meng Yao’s favorites are from the times where it had only been the two of them alone together in the gentle candlelight of Nie Mingjue’s personal tent, the pair of them kept up long into the night poring over maps and reports and strategies together until Nie Mingjue is all fuzzy and sleepy around the edges. It happens a lot, which is wonderful for Meng Yao’s ever-growing catalog of such moments.)

These two categories of Meng Yao’s are not, under any circumstances, allowed to overlap. They exist in wholly different spheres. There is Chifeng-Zun, who requires one set of his very real services. Then there is Nie Mingjue, who is by now half-imaginary, and in the imagining he welcomes Meng Yao’s other services that have nothing to do with how well he can memorize the rosters of their commanding officers and the squadrons they represent. Two very very different things. Two different people. Meng Yao does not let their paths cross.

He’s sleep deprived and still riding the wave of his usual post-battle cocktail of emotions — something like fear and relief and triumph and exhaustion and world-weariness for the evil of men — when this is no longer true.

Nie Mingjue doesn’t actively participate in every battle, that would be absolutely impossible, but he fights in plenty of them, citing that if he isn’t willing to fight then why should any of their soldiers do so on his orders? So – he’d gone out today and he hadn’t returned with the rest of the soldiers when they’d stumbled back into camp, bloody and footsore but victorious. No one has been able to tell him where Nie Mingjue had ended up, as they’d been separated by enemy lines – though for some reason they’re all utterly confident that Nie Mingjue is fine. Meng Yao doesn’t doubt his General, but nor does he think leaving the man to fend for himself in the midst of a battle (or its aftermath) is the wisest decision when one wishes to keep said General both alive and well enough to lead the army, possibly as soon as tomorrow if necessary.

Which is how Meng Yao finds himself tromping through blood-churned wilderness until he finds a ring of dead bodies piled three-men deep with Nie Mingjue in the middle of the destruction, kneeling hunched over Baxia in either pain or exhaustion, nearly every inch of him splattered with mud and deep red gore.

“Mingjue!” Meng Yao exhales just loudly enough to be heard, the impropriety of such an intimate address his first (unnoticed, unheeded) warning of the dangerous slip he’s about to make. Nie Mingjue lifts his head to look at him, eyes weary and unfocused until the moment they meet his and relief seeps through, unmistakable. Soft around the edges. Meng Yao hurries forward, picking his way without thought over swords and splayed limbs and viscous puddles of indeterminate substances until he can crash right into Nie Mingjue, grab his blood-flecked face in both hands, and yank him into a too-hard kiss, the man still on his knees in the mud and therefore, for once, easily accessible.

Meng Yao has pictured kissing Nie Mingjue so many times now that at first he barely registers what he’s done. His extremely unprofessional admiration for the man frequently manifests as sexual desire, and Meng Yao sees no reason not to indulge in harmless fantasy to sweeten long sleepless nights alone. He kisses Nie Mingjue in one of the many ways he’s always wanted to, hard and yearning, teeth nipping sharp at his lip and a quick inhale to brace himself as he curls over him, Nie Mingjue’s head tipped back by the insistent press of his hands beneath his jaw.

“Meng Yao?!” It comes out startled, muffled against his mouth, and Meng Yao jerks back as if stung, eyes wide.

He doesn’t lose control. He doesn’t. But he did, he has, and now Nie Mingjue is staring up at him equally shocked, no doubt by his completely inappropriate and downright presumptuous behavior. Meng Yao is politeness and manners personified, he is the sort of elegant gentleman his mother always hoped he’d be, and yet here he is, kissing his commander (and personal savior) as if they’re a young couple freshly in love, too anxious to hold themselves apart any longer than they have to.

“I’m sorry,” he chokes. Nie Mingjue has never once looked down on him for his origins, has never acted like Meng Yao is dirty simply for existing, but despite the very real mess covering Nie Mingjue from head to toe Meng Yao can’t help but feel, in that moment, that what he’s done is the filthiest thing of all. “Chifeng-zun, please forgive this humble one-“

Strong hands yank him up from his hasty bow and Meng Yao has less than a heartbeat to realize Nie Mingjue has gotten to his feet before it’s his turn to tip his head back at the bruising press of fingers under his jaw so Nie Mingjue can lean down and drag him into another almost-violent kiss. He gasps around the sharp nip of teeth and tastes iron on the tip of his tongue when Nie Mingjue’s brushes it, the tang of blood and the sharp rot of mud thick in his nose, the back of his throat. There’s no softness at all, nothing like those nights spent with their heads close together in Nie Mingjue’s tent, but Meng Yao has imagined it like this, too. Violent, desperate, adrenaline-fuelled, thoughtless need. There’s no art or finesse to it, just raw animal want, and that’s just as good. Better, even. It’s perfect.

-/-

The nice thing about the Nie - in theory if not exactly in practice - is that they don’t bother to worry about someone’s lineage and instead allow their talents to speak for themselves. It’s why Meng Yao had come to the Nie after his violent expulsion from Jinlintai, and it’s why Nie Mingjue had promoted him on the spot upon hearing a group of his disciples blatantly disobeying this first and most important sect rule – though of course he wouldn’t have if had Meng Yao not earned it first through hard work. Unfortunately, the reality (that Nie Mingjue does not seem to realize he lives in) is that those disciples had been the rule, not the exception.

In practice, then, Meng Yao is still looked down on by nearly everyone in the sect for who and what he is. It’s a fact of life that burns in his blood every single day and makes him yearn to claw his blood-soaked way back up all those stairs in Lanling if he has to just so he can stand in his rightful place at his father’s side. So he can prove to the world that his mother’s legacy gift to him was not “bad blood”, but instead her hardworking dedication and her ability to learn everything necessary to support herself and her son in a cruel world.

But maybe this is why, at first, Meng Yao doesn’t notice much is amiss.

A hiss of, “Filthy trash,” as he passes by a group of men huddled around the cookfire one overcast noon barely registers as more than the usual grievances he has to deal with for committing the crime of existing. He whisks his way past them straight into Nie Mingjue’s tent, where he absolutely Does Not kiss him again, but instead devotes himself to copying maps for the evening to send with each of their commanders leaving in the morning for the next leg of the campaign.

“Conniving whore, just like his mother,” is the next audible barb hurled at him just two days later, the vitriol spit at him from someone he can’t easily pick out of the group practicing with their sabers on the outskirts of the Nie camp, where stray blades can’t do as much damage. That one is…significantly harder to ignore, specific as it is. Still. None of it hurts as badly as that impromptu flight down the stone steps of Jinlintai, so he pushes it away with an effort to simmer in the back of his mind – not forgotten, of course, but set aside for the time being – and returns to his duties with only a single hitch in his step to betray that he’d heard.

Only this time, it doesn’t stop. Murmurs and derision are common, expected, normal, and they continue on as usual. But heaped on top of them, like so much shit in a wheelbarrow, are scathing remarks about not only his mother but his own behavior. Suddenly, where none had been before, there are so many remarks about him using his body to get to his position that within two weeks it’s not only an accepted fact amongst the Nie – but among the camps of the other Sects in the field. Apparently.

“Excuse me – what did you say?” Meng Yao asks as politely as he can manage when he can’t shake the rage trembling in his hands or the terror twisting his gut into knots. “I must not have heard correctly-“

Unfortunately, he had heard the man just fine, he knows he had, but rather than taking the generous opportunity to backtrack, the Jin soldier sneering at him only doubles down harder. “I said that Jin-zongzhu was right not to let the bastard son of a scheming bitch so much as step foot in his home. Barely a year later and you’ve shown your true colors haven’t you? Fucking your way into Nie-zongzhu’s good graces so you can try to corrupt another righteous Sect since you couldn’t get at ours! Whores never produce anything but devils-“

Meng Yao stays perfectly still as the Jin soldiers around their cookfire jeer and hawk their wine-sharp spit at his feet, some of it hitting the hem of his silver Nie robes, impeccably clean save for the mud stains around his ankles that will likely never come out. When he feels he can move again through the nauseous bile climbing up his throat he turns on wooden legs to march back out of the orderly ranks of pale gold silk, through the empty ground demarcating their camp borders, and back into the stark deep gray corridors of the Nie encampment. It offers absolutely no relief, no sense of being welcomed home, but at least it holds the flimsy protection of his own personal tent. He can’t really stop anyone who tries to cross the threshold of it of course, but with Nie Mingjue’s own command tent a mere row away – within shouting distance for sure – no one has yet dared to try.

Meng Yao’s mind is utterly blank as his feet take him through the camp using nothing but muscle memory. He can feel eyes on him – as unwanted a presence as groping hands – burning with their judgment and their commitment to despising his very existence. Shadows are gathering in the hollows between the tents with the oncoming evening, heavy behind bloated clouds that threaten rain, and Meng Yao can’t help but feel like each gap between the tents hides another hateful glare, another set of eyes watching him and waiting to see him fail.

Meng Yao thankfully only loses the battle with his rising bile once he reaches the confines of his own personal space. It feels as if it’s still not private enough to reveal so much weakness, but there’s nothing else for it. His shallow wash basin serves now as a convenient bucket to empty his stomach into, and there’s nothing he can do to keep from heaving up his rations for the day into the wooden bowl.

It’s all over, he already knows it. His hands clench around the urge to go find the soldiers who had sneered at him and split them from groin to throat – the Nie are still butchers in many ways, and Meng Yao has seen the absolutely savage way they fight one-on-one when their lives are at stake. He’s seen it done more than enough times to be fairly sure he can mimic it, might even be able to copy the particularly gruesome style of killing utilized by the most vocal of his critics to pin him with the blame but –

But if a common Jin foot soldier has already caught wind of his indiscretion, it’s only a matter of time before the flame is fanned in the direction of the man he still harbors dreams of impressing, if it hasn’t already reached his ears. There’s nothing Meng Yao can do to stop it – no boon or honor he could earn, no underhanded trick sly enough to win the spot he so desperately craves in spite of what Jin Guangshan has done to him. He’s laid at the bottom of the stairs of Jinlintai, Jin Guangshan standing at the top to lord it over his broken body one more time before he’d turned to head back in to see to his beloved son’s birthday celebration, but still Meng Yao has never felt further from his approval and acceptance than he does now.

He judders through another dry-heave and clenches the edges of the basin until his nails bite into the wood and his knuckles turn white with the aching strain, and none of it changes the fact that he’s lost everything. One moment of weakness in a lifetime of denying himself everything selfish, and already he’s been forced to reap the consequences.

Even as he stands hunched over the basin Meng Yao’s mind begins working, flinging through plan after plan until his thoughts are littered with half-remembered scraps, all discarded. They all rely on him maintaining some degree of reputation, enough to carry him into the halls of any of the other Great Sects, or even some minor one. There are many that pledge allegiance to the Jin, and to work his way up to Jinlintai through one of them would be an even more arduous process than going through the Nie, but once upon a time they could have been his last-ditch emergency attempts to achieve his goals. Now, though, they mock him from where they lie scattered on the floor of his mind, all hope he might have had at gaining respect anywhere in the cultivation world lying discarded with them. He certainly feels filthy and miserable enough that he thinks not even Wen Ruohan, maddened tyrant playing at joining the immortal gods though he is, would deign to accept him now. What good is a conniving, scheming whore to anyone, after all, even the insane?

In the end, there’s really only one plan left that has any hope of succeeding. It’s truly his last-ditch attempt, and it leaves a sour taste in his mouth that has nothing to do with his rising bile. He will steal what he can carry, and he’ll run. It’s in direct opposition to what Meng Shi had wanted for him, it’s not what he wants for himself either, but if his life will consist of nothing but scorn and mocking at every turn then he can force himself to admit defeat, to run somewhere no one knows him. Start over. Earn respect all over again somewhere new through the hard work he’s never once shied away from.

Meng Yao gives himself two more deep breaths to accept the new direction of his life before he stands up straight and stirs himself into action, ignoring the roiling mass of emotions still tugging and stabbing in his gut in favor of beginning to stuff the mobile contents of his tent into his single qiankun pouch - a gift from Nie Mingjue. He doesn’t stop to appreciate the silver brocade or the cool weight of the silk against his skin, the slight tingle of the magic he doesn’t have enough qi to cast himself but can make use of, considering Nie Mingjue has so much qi to spare for such things. (It could sell for a fortune, but Meng Yao already knows that he’ll sell anything else, even his body, before he’ll part with such a treasure no matter how hungry he gets.)

It takes less than half an incense stick for Meng Yao to empty his wardrobe into the pouch. He turns next to his desk, intending to take anything at all even remotely worth saving (read: selling) – and immediately bounces off a solid wall of leather and muscle.

“What are you doing?” Nie Mingjue demands as he steadies him with a hard grip around both of his biceps, fingers digging just this side of too hard into the meat of his arms. Meng Yao swallows down a fresh bout of nausea and slowly raises his eyes to meet Nie Mingjue’s, unsure of what he’ll find.

“I..Did you…hear-” Meng Yao feels his throat tighten around the rest of the question but he can see anyway that Nie Mingjue already knows.

“Jin Zixun couldn’t even wait for the strategy meeting to start before he decided to let everyone know what he saw. So yes.”

Ah.

Meng Yao closes his eyes against the fact that this is somehow worse than he’d feared. Nie Mingjue’s hands tighten painfully around his arms but Meng Yao doesn’t bother protesting – at this rate he’ll be lucky if Nie Mingjue lets him leave camp alive for all that he’s done to drag not only Nie Mingjue but also the Nie Sect through the muck of the world alongside him. It doesn’t matter that there isn’t a friendly face in all of the Nie encampment, or that Meng Yao has done anything and everything they’ve asked of him since the moment he joined the Sect as a lowly servant to these same disciples.

None of it fucking matters.

“This humble one apologizes for such an insult,” Meng Yao manages to say around the knot in his throat threatening to stop him breathing altogether. “It was never my intention to bring shame upon the Nie, nor to - to-“ Meng Yao chokes again on the words hurled at him like daggers, his little remaining pride unwilling to bend into humiliation even for the sake of apologizing (and potentially saving his own neck in the process).

“To what?” Nie Mingjue’s voice is as hard and unyielding as Meng Yao could expect, but just because he’d been expecting it doesn’t make it any easier to hear. He can’t imagine that Nie Mingjue hasn’t heard what people are saying about him, the assumptions that he’s sleeping around to get where and what he wants. Nie Mingjue might be a stern man but he’s never been cruel – Meng Yao readjusts that opinion a hairsbreadth to the left, since the man seems determined to make him say such horrible things about himself instead of allowing him the easy out.

“To sully you with my…association.”

It burns on the way out, his throat thick and stinging with it even as he forces himself to say it. Nie Mingjue’s eyebrows – always so severe anyway – mash down into a straight line over his bright eyes, and even now Meng Yao adds this expression to his mental catalog of such things to be reexamined later, likely when he’s forced to survive somewhere far less than pleasant, and he’ll take any good memory at all. Because even now, even like this, being with Nie Mingjue is better than the quickly-approaching future in which he will not be anymore.

“Your association with the Nie began the moment you joined my Sect! What should we care what the Jin have to say about…what we..did.”

Meng Yao, against his better judgment, can’t quite stop the snort of hollow amusement for the way Nie Mingjue’s blustering abruptly drops into awkward hesitation at the mere hint of the kisses they’d shared that afternoon weeks ago. They haven’t mentioned it again, either of them, but Meng Yao’s hope that that would mean the lapse in judgment would just fade into awkward obscurity is now very clearly – detrimentally – in vain.

“How can you not care?!” Meng Yao tries to ask, but it comes out much closer to a demand, desperately feathered around the edges. “The things that they say matter, though perhaps they don’t affect you!”

“If Jin Zixun is the sort to slip through the woods so he can stay and watch a private moment only to then gossip about it during a war meeting says far more about him than it does us!”

“We -” Meng Yao gestures frantically between them with one hand - “are not an ‘us’ !!” He’s definitely desperate now, frantic to make Nie Mingjue understand that whatever part of this he thinks will blow over absolutely will not do that! “We are the most respected cultivator of the generation and the general of an army, and the bastard son of a prostitute who has defiled him to seemingly better his station in life! Tell me again what that does or does not say about me!”

“But it isn’t true!”

Meng Yao does not scream, nor does he rip his hair out at the roots in anxious handfuls, but by the gods are both options tempting.

“I wish I could live in the world that you do. You have no earthly idea how much I wish I had the luxury of the truth mattering! They don’t care what the truth is, they only care that people like me remain in our place and don’t shatter all the fine illusions you gentry paint for and of yourselves! The truth is that Jin Guangshan is my father, and yet such a man who dotes on one son saw the other thrown down the foot of his throne. The truth-” he practically spits that hateful word as he finally vents the anguish that always seems to weigh him down - “Is that your own soldiers spit on me and steal any rewards I manage to scrape past their attempts to stop me from accomplishing anything in the first place! You have elevated me to the highest position in your Sect besides your own, but all that’s done for me is paint a bigger target on my back because you still – in your arrogant expectation that the world must operate exactly as you see – will not help me!”

Meng Yao is breathing as heavily as if he’d just run through their entire encampment corner to corner, his chest heaving and his shaking hands curled so tightly into fists at his sides that he can feel blood welling beneath his nails. He isn’t scared, though. Nie Mingjue could kill him outright for such horrendous disrespect and no one would bat an eye, but Meng Yao truthfully has nothing to lose now. He’d prefer not to die, he thinks, but if Nie Mingjue wants to kill him at least he could die feeling like it was justified. To be struck down by the man who had picked him up from the dirt in the first place, the man who is, as he’d said, the most feared and respected cultivator of their generation…it would not be a shameful death. Even in the circumstances they’ve found themselves, it wouldn’t be embarrassing to face his mother in the afterlife like this. He can tell her he tried. He will tell her he did everything in his power to win what she’d wanted, and he’ll pray for a few more lifetimes as her son to attempt to make up for his failures.

Meng Yao drops to his knees almost woodenly when Nie Mingjue’s hands release him as suddenly as if he’d been burned, and in his mind’s eye he can see the man reaching up for Baxia on his back. He’s lost count of how many times he’s watched Nie Mingjue practice with her, finding excuses to squeeze in a glimpse or two between all his other duties simply to admire the raw, untamed beauty of the way man and saber work together. She’s an extension of Nie Mingjue, as much of an appendage as an arm or a leg. The only way he can think of for Nie Mingjue to kill him more intimately would be to climb atop him and strangle him with his own hands, so he sees no problem in settling for Baxia’s cold touch rather than Nie Mingjue’s too-hot grip.

“You’re wrong,” Nie Mingjue rasps, and it sounds like it’s coming from a li away though the man hasn’t moved, Meng Yao kneeling close enough to his feet for the splayed skirt of his outermost robe to brush against Nie Mingjue’s boots. “There is one position left above yours that isn’t Sect Leader.”

Meng Yao opens his eyes reluctantly, stops imagining the whistle Baxia would make as she’d split the air between her razor-sharp edge and the soft give of his bared throat. He looks up, up, up at Nie Mingjue, towering over him like that first day they’d met, and he finds an eerie calm overlaying his usual temper, for once tightly reined in. Meng Yao would honestly prefer it if he were shouting like usual.

“What?” he manages to croak in response, his voice just as hoarse. “There’s not, you can’t –”

“I can.”

Meng Yao’s thoughts are more than a little scattered at the moment, but his mind is still as agile as ever. He meets Nie Mingjue’s gaze, lets the intensity of it burn him, pin him in place and force him to acknowledge what Nie Mingjue doesn’t seem willing to say directly.

There really is, in fact, one more rank between his current status as Nie Mingjue’s deputy and the man’s own status as Sect Leader. As things currently stand, the only person he actually answers to is Nie Mingjue, but that’s mostly because anyone who fools themselves into believing Chifeng-Zun has time to meet with the matchmakers is very swiftly and sternly disabused of such a ridiculous idea. Sometimes by him.

It wouldn’t be difficult at all to play the secret lovers card, if they were so inclined.

“No,” he protests to both Nie Mingjue and the traitorous direction his thoughts are happily careening towards. “Absolutely not! You cannot possibly believe that making me…Nie-furen would solve this?”

Nie Mingjue glares down at him from under the harsh, unyielding furrow of his brows, looking as serious as he ever does. Meng Yao sort of wishes Nie Mingjue had just killed him instead of whatever the fuck this has turned into. Is it possible this is a stress-induced hallucination?

“It would help.”

“How?!”

Nie Mingjue huffs and finally moves, though sadly not to grab for Baxia in a sudden change of heart to just put him out of his misery and let him start everything over, a blank slate. Instead he begins pacing in tight circuits, back and forth across the center of Meng Yao’s tent, his leather shoulder pauldron brushing the center support pole with each abrupt pass.

“Jin Zixun has told everyone who will listen that he caught us kissing in the woods.” Meng Yao’s ears are suddenly far warmer than they have any right to be. “He’s only talked about the part where you kissed me. No one seems to know that I also kissed you.” Which he had most certainly done. Passionately. “It’ll be easy enough to turn the tide of gossip in our favor. You already wear inner family braids, you’ve been at my side since I promoted you, your word is my word in every way that matters. Or it should be, at least, and anyone who doesn’t treat it as such now will have no choice but to change their ways or leave once you become furen.”

“I haven’t actually agreed to that,” Meng Yao feels compelled to point out, still kneeling there on the beaten dirt floor of his own fucking tent, gobsmacked and a little dizzy with everything happening far too quickly.

“If you become furen then,” Nie Mingjue dismisses easily with a wave of one massive hand. He’s in full battle-planning mode now, Meng Yao recognizes the signs, and there’ll be no getting him out of his track until he’s walked this thought all the way to the end of it. Best to just walk alongside him and see where it takes them.

“And am I to believe that you will suddenly be so much more compelled to defend my honor after this? If spreading my legs for you were all it takes, then the men will wonder why you’ve suddenly elected to discipline them now for the behaviors they never bothered to stop even after you first promoted me. They will never believe that we’ve been hiding a relationship for so long that it’s produced an affectionate engagement, since you haven’t stirred yourself once to defend me yet.”

As far as accusations go, this is far too sharp and pointed to be anything but insubordination and disrespect of the worst sort (except maybe for grabbing Nie Mingjue and kissing him like he’d done. That ranks fairly high as well). But Nie Mingjue simply shoots him a look that is half apology and half irritation, nothing at all close to the murderous rage he likely deserves for such a display.

“If you would tell me these things then maybe that wouldn’t be the case!”

“Should I have to beg you over and over again for the protection you promised me when you brought me to your side?”

Nie Mingjue practically growls at that, clearly incensed, but apparently he still won’t be distracted from this new…tactical endeavor.

“What they say won’t matter so long as you’re furen, is the point I’m trying to make! You’ll be just as much the commander of Bujing Shi and the Nie as I am, your word will not be backed by me, it will be mine. It’s the best protection I can offer you, and it would cut these gossiping hens off at the knees. So they want to accuse you of sleeping your way to the top and refuse to believe differently? Fine. Then we’ll make sure you’re actually at the top! Any disrespect to you, then, will be no different than if they’d said it directly to me! I can respond to each insult with as much force as I want, then, and damn the consequences.”

Meng Yao’s breath catches in his throat and his fingers curl into fists again on his knees, the bites from his nails stinging slightly as he presses on them. As far as solutions go, it’s not precisely the best. Actually turning the rumors into truth will do very little to take the sting out of them, but it would mean power and – at least from Nie Mingjue – respect. Rather than retreating in disgrace, with his name a curse on everyone’s lips, there could be some small comfort. There could be Nie Mingjue.

When Meng Yao stays silent, Nie Mingjue suddenly stops and sighs gustily, eyes bright as he looks down at him still kneeling there waiting for death. He reaches into the fold of his robes at his chest and pulls out, of all things, one of their precious letters with a hard cover and the Nie seal. Most of their correspondences have long since been scrawled on whatever sorts of loose paper they can find, but whatever Nie Mingjue is holding has been written on their proper stationary, silver and deep grey flashing between his fingers as he holds the letter for a long moment before he passes it down to Meng Yao.

“I had intended to..give this to you, after the meeting. Before Jin Zixun decided to make a mess of everything.”

Meng Yao opens the letter warily, darting a questioning glance up at Nie Mingjue and his uncharacteristic hesitation.

It is, he finds, a letter of recommendation, written carefully in Nie Mingjue’s neatest calligraphy.

“I know that you still wanted to be recognized by your father. You’ve made a good name for yourself here, good enough that you should have been able to find the same or a better position in any of the Great Sects – including the Jin.”

Meng Yao’s vision swims a little as he stares down at the letter, not actively reading it, just…marveling. The sting of rejection is waiting in the wings, he can feel it even as he sees how much Nie Mingjue appreciates him, how high he holds him in regard, in order to spell it all out so plainly for anyone else to see.

“If you want to, you can take that letter anywhere you wish to go and try again with someone else. I thought…if you stayed here, what I could offer you would never be what you truly wanted. I don’t want you to go, but I don’t want you to stay if it will only make you miserable. Obviously things are a bit different now, but my…feelings haven’t changed.”

Meng Yao can see it so easily. He could take the letter, he could walk away hurt by Nie Mingjue’s dismissal of him but eager to prove himself in Lanling anyway. He could leave the Nie for the Jin and attempt to earn his father’s attention again (he isn’t foolish enough even in his daydreaming to imagine he’ll ever earn Jin Guangshan’s love).

If things were even slightly different, he would do it.

Meng Yao studies the letter for one more long moment, silent. With a deep breath he carefully folds it back between its covers to tuck such a precious thing into the front of his robes, safe and close to his heart.

“Any chances my father may have some day given me were ruined the moment Jin Zixun saw us. Even had we never kissed at all, he would have eventually found some way to ensure I would never find a place at my father’s side. It could never have gone differently, in the end,” Meng Yao says, calm and steady. Because he knows himself, and he knows that he would always find a way to love Nie Mingjue, so there would always be the possibility of him slipping up and damning them both. Now, or later, it doesn’t matter. Meng Yao tips his head back to look up at Nie Mingjue again and is unsurprised to find that his eyes are red-rimmed, though his cheeks are still dry for the moment.

Meng Yao inhales deeply again, sets aside the maelstrom of his feelings to tell him, “I want to stay. I want to be worth something to you. I want your respect and your power…and your affection. I want all of it. Don’t..don’t make me go somewhere else. Please.”

Meng Yao’s twisting heart begs silently for Meng Shi’s forgiveness as Nie Mingjue crosses the small distance between them to haul him up straight into his arms. Meng Yao hides in his chest and mourns for the loss of everything he’d dreamt of one day having - and Nie Mingjue holds him so tightly his tired body aches just right.

-/-

Nie Mingjue - in a move that would most likely shock every matchmaker in Qinghe - is a wonderful husband. Their engagement had essentially lasted only as long as the war, their wedding the first major (non-victory related) celebration of any kind amongst the Great Sects after its end. Meng Yao had thoroughly enjoyed rubbing the reality of their wealth even after a war in the faces of the rest of the Great Sects - particularly the Jin (perhaps..exclusively the Jin. He respects the Lan too much and cares about the Jiang too little to bother trying to make them jealous).

Still. It had been one thing to flaunt their power at a wedding in their own home, and now it’s another thing entirely to be attending their first cultivation event as the dual masters of the Unclean Realm – a group hunt. In Lanling.

Nie Mingjue, still his best source of unwavering support, stands at his side stern and silent at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to Jinlintai. Two lines of disciples stand behind them in neat rows, just as silent and imposing as their leader and – as they’d all been personally recruited by Nie Mingjue to replace some of those they’d lost in the war – wholly loyal to Meng Yao as much as they are to Nie Mingjue. With so many powerful people on his side, there’s no logical reason for him to fear ascending the steps in front of them. Mercifully, in spite of that fact there’s still no hint of impatience from any of the Nie while Meng Yao takes a deep breath in and looks up the mountain of stairs, the golden rooftop of the tower just barely visible over the steep slope of them from here.

Meng Yao takes another deep breath in when Nie Mingjue rests a hand subtly on the small of his back, a firm support that does nothing to attempt to propel him forward. He leans back into the press of it with a tiny smile up at his husband, who he finds is already looking down at him from the corner of his eye, brows furrowed into a concerned frown.

“Let’s go,” Meng Yao finally says. Nie Mingjue does him the courtesy of not asking him if he’s sure. Instead, they simply step forward as one and their disciples fall in smoothly behind them, their swords and the silver ornaments in their hair clinking softly as they ascend.

“Qinghe Nie Sect!” one of the guards at the top of the stairs announces when they reach it, and Nie Mingjue’s entirely proper hand on his back slips around to curl around his waist instead, his arm warm and sturdy around him as they approach. It’s inappropriate – practically bawdy by the standards of the Lan who have just gone into the banquet hall ahead of them – but Meng Yao manages to keep his head high and even smirk a little as they stop in the courtyard, ready to be greeted.

“Nie-zongzhu,” Jin Guangshan says with his usual (utterly fake) jovial smile and a bow that’s just this side of too shallow to be a proper greeting. The well-practiced smile on his lips sours into something ugly and pinched at the edges when Jin Guangshan turns to him and forces his spine to bend in an identical bow, his shoulders visibly tense to the point of faint trembling as he holds it and says, “Nie-furen.”

“Jin-zongzhu,” Nie Mingjue greets for both of them as they return the bow even more shallowly than they’d been offered; by now, with the both of them unequivocal heroes of the war and the Qinghe Nie not only rebuilding but flourishing already under their combined efforts, it’s no secret in the cultivation world that their reputations and wealth far outstrip the money Jin Guangshan has been throwing at everyone’s rebuilding efforts in an attempt to hide how little he did for the war effort when it mattered most. Their barely-polite greeting is no more nor less than anyone present would expect them to offer.

After all, everyone knows by now that even while embroiled in a war the Jin had somehow found the time to launch a smear campaign within the ranks of their own allies with the intent to drag their General’s beloved partner through the mud. They won’t be able to buy their way out of such shameful behavior until the Jin coffers are echoing empty, Meng Yao thinks with a savage sort of glee.

Despite the anxious roiling in his gut, Meng Yao sweeps past his father the moment it’s acceptable, head held high and the bright sunlight glinting off the silver guan threaded securely through his intricate loops of braids, the crown a match for Nie Mingjue’s. He spares Jin Zixun – standing just inside the door and aggressively flirting with one of the serving maids – enough of a passing glance to see his cousin’s eyes widen upon catching sight of him looking every inch a Sect Leader, and the nausea churning in his gut abates a little under another flash of pleasure.

Nie Mingjue, a man of his word through and through, has done precisely as he’d promised that day in his tent. Meng Yao answers to nobody – not even his husband who is his equal – and though he’s sure there must still be some in the cultivation world who will look at him and sneer, who will never believe that the son of a prostitute could be a valuable leader, the success of the Nie Sect speaks for itself already, and will continue to do so under their combined guidance.

And his husband is fully prepared to gut anyone who criticizes him in their hearing anyway.

“Married life suits you two quite well,” Lan Xichen tells them both with an amused little smile once the banquet is well underway, music and dancing and chattering filling the opulent hall. Meng Yao doesn’t duck his head, or blush shyly, or attempt to deflect. He simply smiles up at his and Nie Mingjue’s best friend (and most vocal supporter) and tries to look a little less smug. It clearly doesn’t work judging by the laugh Lan Xichen hides behind a genteel hand, but Meng Yao doesn’t mind one bit.

“We’re still willing to swear brotherhood with you, you know, even though we’re married,” Nie Mingjue says as he slings his arm around Meng Yao’s waist like he had earlier. The comment could be completely innocuous, a clumsy nonsequitur, but Meng Yao takes a delicate sip of the wine in his hand to hide the smirk that creeps across his lips when the offer lands precisely as it was meant. Lan Xichen coughs delicately and does an admirable job pretending that his ears aren’t glowing red at the tips.

“Three heroes of the Sunshot Campaign,” Meng Yao muses before Lan Xichen can get his metaphorical feet under him. “Three of the strongest leaders in the cultivation world bound together in an alliance between the Nie and the Lan, to stand across from the Jiang and Jin making their ties through marriage. It’s a good political move, and an even better personal one.”

Lan Xichen clears his throat and offers them a nod that, for him, is practically begging for relief from their teasing. “I have thought about it,” he confesses. Meng Yao wonders if it hurts for his ears to be blushing so fiercely. “And I accept.”

Nie Mingjue’s hand tightens on Meng Yao’s waist, possessive and excited in equal measure. Meng Yao sips at his wine again, pleased with the fact that soon he won’t have just one powerful man in the palm of his hand, but the two most powerful cultivators in the world. Sect Leaders, to boot.

It’s not anything close to what Meng Shi had in mind for him, he thinks, but it’s also so much more than she’d ever taught him to expect from his life that he also likes to think she doesn’t mind too much.

#the untamed fanfic #Nieyao #Nie Mingjue #Meng Yao #future 3zun hinted at #she also specifically requested that I give it a happy ending because and I quote #'you can slide into angst without warning'#which I would be offended about if it weren't painfully true lol #Also I'm doing my best with novel canon using exclusively what I've learned about it from fic so #as usual we're here for vibes not accuracy

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