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gingersnaaps · 3 years

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sandman

to be taken by sleep really isn't such a bad thing - not when osamu's the one waiting in your dreams.

wc: 3.2k

tags/tw's(PLEASE READ): explicit n*fw, dubcon, creampie, breeding mentions, penetration, fingering, sex dreams, sleep paralysis, incubus!osamu vibes, vaguely supernatural, you fall asleep forever at the end, fem!reader with inner genitals

a/n: written for @ultimate-astridwriting's wonderful collab and inspired by my recent stint of sleep deprivation also i feel like i may have strayed a bit from the prompt but oh well

i don’t want minors interacting with my content

You can’t recall when Miya Osamu first started appearing in your dreams.

It was a subtle thing at first: the features of strangers, normally blurred beyond recognition, melded into his half-lidded eyes and soft smile, and you’d catch glimpses of his face in the reflection of windows and out of the corner of your eye. You didn’t think too much of it. You’d read an article somewhere that mentioned how faces in one’s dreams came from the interactions in our real lives, and with how much you’d been frequenting his onigiri shop, you suppose that his appearances were to be expected.

Still felt a little strange for you to be having a dream so intimate, though.

You’re lying on top of his broad chest, one arm on your waist, the other resting gently on your thigh. His thumb rubs tender circles into your skin, stroking softly as you rise and fall with the movement of his chest.

“‘Miya?” you ask tentatively. “How did I end up here?”

He chuckles. It’s a deep, rich, sound, one that reminds you of rivers running steady and full moons in the countryside, the vibrations passing from his body to yours. When he speaks, his voice is low and a little quiet, but with his lips grazing your ear, you don’t miss a single word.

“Call me Osamu.”

The familiarity leaves your face slightly flushed, embarrassment tingling across your skin. He shifts you around in his arms, tilting your body so that you meet his warm, inviting, gaze. The hand on your thigh seems to burn red-hot, and you wonder if he can hear the heartbeat pulsing just inches away from his fingertips.

He smiles softly at you. “You’re a beautiful girl.”

Your heart seizes, malfunctions, pounds erratically-

You wake up in the dark, damp sheets clinging to your skin, heart skipping like a schoolgirl and drunk off the compliment from your dream.

There’s a bad ache in between your legs. You trail a hand down your front, fingers sliding into your pajama shorts to quell your want.

Dusk is falling across Tokyo when you head to Miya’s - no, Osamu’s - onigiri shop. Twilight makes giants of the pedestrians, stretches out the shadows that loom tall in the soft gray-orange of the setting sun, the darkened shapes scurrying through the city’s rush hour.

Unlike them, you’re not going home.

A busy schedule meant little time for home-cooked meals, and the food here really was excellent. When you push open the door to his shop, the jangle of a bell sounds somewhere above you, and Osamu barely looks up before a smile settles on his face.

“The usual, I suppose,” he says, beckoning you inside.

You nod gratefully. The atmosphere of the shop is comforting - there’s just a few customers trickling through, picking up their to-go order that he’s prepared. You pick a seat near the window, one that gives you an unobstructed view of the sunset outside.

The chatter dies down as the last customers leave the shop, their onigiri clutched in hand, and a peaceful silence descends on the space around you. He brings out your food just a few minutes later, setting the dish in front of you.

“As requested by my favorite customer,” he says, a wry grin on his face. “Glad to have you back tonight.”

Your stomach flutters at the closeness between the two of you, and you suddenly feel embarrassed - ashamed of how much you’d been thinking about him, of the dreams you’d been having, of the way his touch had left you wanting for more in those same dreams - but it’s a good kind of embarrassed, one that leaves excitement bubbling in your core.

It feels a bit like a crush.

“Couldn’t miss out on the food, could I?” you reply.

“So you’re only here for my onigiri.”

“I- no, of course not."

“Just teasing.”

He smiles crookedly, and for just a moment, there’s a knowing glint that flashes in his eyes - the kind of expression that makes it seem like he’s aware of more than he’s letting on - but it vanishes almost immediately, passing too quickly for you to be sure of anything.

He turns to go back inside the kitchen, lifting up a hand casually to wave goodbye. “See you soon.”

Upon your arrival home, the first thing you notice is how very tired you are.

It’s not too out of the ordinary - it was a Monday afternoon, after all, and that had always been your least favorite day of the week - but the minute you crash onto the couch, your eyelids seem to droop with sleep, limbs growing heavy as the room around you swirls into a half-conscious haze.

You’ve still got chores to take care of. There’s dishes from the morning to wash, laundry to fold and put away, a few work emails to respond to that were probably very important, but you just can’t seem to stave off the overwhelming fatigue that seeps through your veins and numbs your entire body.

You need to sleep.

So you let it happen. You let your eyes flutter shut, let yourself relax and melt into the soft cushions of the couch, let your mind go nice and blank and empty.

After you give up the struggle of staying awake, the dreams come quickly.

“Glad to have you back so soon.”

The warm, quiet, voice from yesterday rumbles somewhere above you. You’re laying on his chest again, ear pressed to the soft fabric of his faded black shirt. You make a small, confused, noise, but he just laughs, gently brushing aside your hair, a hand trailing down your body and creeping closer to your inner thigh.

His touch feels electric. Every brush of his fingertips against your thigh, feather-light and teasing, leaves you with your heartbeat thudding in your cunt.

“We’ve gotta get you ready,” he murmurs. “Prep you well enough so that you’ll feel good when the time is right.”

You clench around nothing at his words, and maybe he can feel it with his hand so dangerously close to your pussy, because he smiles lazily and asks, “Are you that desperate?”

You’re not sure whether you should deny it - he can probably tell you are, anyway, but the thought of nodding, of saying yes, ‘Samu, want it so fucking bad - it leaves you with your cheeks flushed hot with shame.

He doesn’t need your explicit confirmation to read the way your body twitches against his, though, and he moves his hand lower to cup around your pussy. His palm is warm, the pressure steady and constant as he holds his hand still against your throbbing cunt. You can’t help but squirm against him, sloppily grinding your clit against his waiting hand, bucking your hips back and forth for any friction you can get. You’re panting, breaths quick and shallow as you feel the drag of the cotton panties in between his skin and yours, and a lewd moan tumbles from your lips. “Touch me,” you mumble, voice thick with arousal.

You look so pretty down there, hair mussed and mouth open slack in a perfect o, getting off all by yourself - he should give you a hand, shouldn’t he?

He nudges your damp panties aside, the thin fabric creasing the fat of your pussy as he brings a thumb up to your clit. His ministrations start slow, circling your clit patiently while you writhe from the pleasure, just barely dipping his index finger into your hole, his long, dextrous fingers skilled and patient as he works to search out the sensitive spots that leave you gasping and delirious.

“I want you dripping,” he says softly, sliding his finger inside all the way to the base of his knuckle. “Want you spread out on my hand, soaking me through, wet enough for me to fuck you full.”

You shudder with anticipation at his words, hips wriggling and rutting against his stiffening cock as his finger drags along the ridges of your g-spot. Every movement of his is accompanied by an embarrassingly audible squelching noise, your cunt already swollen and hot with arousal, your slick running in a cool trail down the crease of your thigh.

He flicks his thumb against your clit, this time more harshly. “ ‘m gonna fill you up so good when you’re ready,” he whispers. “Fuck you until your pussy milks my cock dry.”

Your eyelids flutter, a rush of pleasure crashing down on you as he pops another finger inside. Your hand fists at his shirt weakly, grabbing and pawing at the fabric as he curls his fingers just right inside you.

“You’re gonna feel so fucking good, sweetheart.”

You wake up from your dream as an orgasm ripples through your body, eyes flying wide open as you squirm and thrash on the couch. The pleasure coiling tight inside your core unwinds, pulsing in your cunt as you moan.

The room is dark and empty.

You rub the sleep from your eyes, vision bleary as you reach for your phone - it reads 7:00 AM. You’ve slept for almost twelve hours.

As you get up, swinging your legs off the couch and righting yourself, you notice one intense, overwhelming, feeling that roots you to the couch and leaves your limbs limp and loose:

You still feel so tired.

The rest of the week seems to pass by in a blur. You’re so exhausted you can barely think straight, stumbling from your office to your home - and sometimes to Osamu’s onigiri shop - going about your life half-dazed and barely conscious.

The only respite you get is in sleep.

Your dreams have gotten particularly intense as of late, head clouding full of visions where you’re fucked in every position: shoved up against the wall, facedown in the mattress, and even hoisted up on the counter. Through it all, there’s one constant.

Miya Osamu features in every single one of them.

You know his voice by heart now, a low, quiet, rumble that both soothes you and sets your cunt thrumming with anticipation. His silver-gray hair, his round, half-lidded eyes, the softness and the warmth of his body - they’re as familiar to you as your own features by now. You’re pretty sure you’ve even memorized the feeling of his cock buried deep inside you.

In every dream, he whispers the most tantalizing promises in your ear, breathing promises of how he’s gonna fuck you so good, sweetheart, gonna fill you up, gonna breed this pretty pussy until you’re carrying my seed inside you.

And even though you never wake up well rested anymore, you find that you don’t particularly mind. After all, there’s not much you look forward to in your waking hours. Every grating hour you spend working your stupid little job, or attending your lengthy, useless, lectures - it all feels like you’re just going through the motions, like you’re just trying to make it through so that night falls sooner and he can finally come visit you.

The week comes and goes, and soon enough, it’s already Friday.

You stumble in through the front door, a yawn itching at your throat, and you head straight for your bedroom. You pass by the ever-growing stack of dirty dishes in the sink, the stack of bills on the countertop, the laundry you’ve left in the drying machine. You’ll get to it next week.

For now, you just want to sleep.

The bedroom is gloomy and dim, grey light from an overcast twilight filtering through the blinds. The room feels stuffy in the dark, the four walls suffocating the small space, but you don’t bother with turning on the lights. Why would you, when you plan on heading straight to sleep?

You undress clumsily, almost tripping as you pull off your pants and shrug off your blouse, and stagger into the soft, warm, embrace of your bed.

A warm burst of comfort surges through you as the familiar feeling of drowsiness overtakes you. Your eyelids grow heavy, lashes fluttering slightly, the thump of your heart slowing - you’re right on the precipice between the conscious and the unconscious, straddling the border between sleep and waking -

You hear a voice sound from shadowy recesses of your room.

It’s a voice you’d recognize anywhere.

“I missed you at my shop today.”

You open your mouth to respond, but no noise comes out. It’s as if your vocal cords have been plucked from your throat, your voice frozen somewhere deep inside your trachea, and the only sound you can make is that of silence. A bit belatedly, you realize that you can’t move either, your limbs settling uselessly at your side as you lie paralyzed on your back.

A head of gleaming, silver, hair emerges in front of you, and your breath catches in your throat. You’re not sure if this is a dream anymore.

You blink once, and suddenly, you find him in your bed. He’s hovering above you, arms pressed to either side of your head, gazing down with a hungry, hungry, expression. He’s waited all week for this, sweetheart - won’t you finally indulge him?

He pulls the comforter aside, large hands gliding over your body and hoisting up your hips. You feel like a ragdoll in his hands, limp and immobile, and he rearranges your limbs and positions you until he gains easy access to your ready, waiting, cunt - the same cunt that he’s been preparing all week.

He drags a finger through your slick folds, already wet and sticky from the ministrations of the previous few days. There’s no need to bother with prep. He can already feel the way your cunt pulses at his touch, can see the need etched into the gleam of your eyes even as the expression on the rest of your face remains frozen.

His hand glides over his clothed cock, strained and throbbing with need as he pulls it out and strokes slowly, eyes fixated on your body the entire time. His dick is big, flushed almost purple as cream beads at the tip, balls fat and full and heavy.

Osamu’s had enough of waiting.

With a groan, he pops his cockhead into your drooling, twitching, hole, pushing in steady, thrusting all the way into your tightening cunt until he hits your cervix.

“Feels so fuckin’ good,” he murmurs, face scrunched with pleasure. “So tight it feels like you’re trying to milk me dry.”

He rolls his hips slowly, dragging his cock along the front of your walls, the ridge of a vein pressing right into your sweet spot. Your legs twitch uselessly as he pulls halfway out before slamming his cock back in.

“I wonder if you’d like that,” he muses. He brings a thumb to rest at your puffy, swollen, clit, pressing down in steady circles, his touch unrelenting and firm, sending spasms of pleasure that leave you clenching and gripping down onto his thick cock.

“I think you would. I think you’d love it if I filled you up, if I fucked you full of cum and bred this tight little hole,” he says, the barest hint of an amused smile tugging at his lips. His voice is calm and steady - a striking contrast to his filthy words, his brazen promises.

His slow, steady, strokes quicken, hips slamming roughly into yours, each thrust satiating the want in your cunt. Your walls pulse as if they need to be filled, squelching lewdly as he fucks you hard and deep.

He leans down. His lips hover millimeters away from your forehead, just barely grazing your skin with tender, light, kisses. “Take it,” he whispers, thumb rubbing harshly at your clit. “Take it like a good girl for me. I know you can.”

The kisses he presses to your forehead start to travel down the underside of your jaw, soft little nips and bites with his blunt teeth that leaves a trail of his glossy spit on your face. His mouth finds your ear.

“When I cum, you better not waste a single drop,” he breathes. “Wanna fill you up, make you mine. I want to own this pussy.”

He brings his hand down to pat your stomach where your womb would be, rubbing the soft surface of your skin in tender circles. His balls are aching so badly - he needs to cum, needs that release, needs to stuff your messy cunt.

“Cum with me,” he urges. “Right now.”

The pleasure pulsing inside you draws taught - snaps - and you’re pushed over the edge. If you were still capable of speaking and moving, you’re sure you’d be moaning loudly, hips twitching uselessly as he creams your pussy over and over. He fucks you through your orgasm, spent cock softening inside you as you squeeze his dick. After all, he doesn’t want any of it to leak. He wants it sloshing around in your hole, filling you up until you’re warm and wet and sticky, wants to breed you, to mark you down as his.

You look beautiful with your insides stained white, he thinks.

You can feel your cunt twitching slightly as you come down from your high. He smiles warmly, gives your pussy a little pat -

You blink and he’s gone.

Almost as if he was never there in the first place.

Sleep takes you quickly after that. You’re exhausted from being fucked, exhausted from the constant stimulation, and you quickly fall fast asleep. All is silent and still in your darkened bedroom.

The next day, right as the sun starts to drop over the horizon, glinting stars nestled in the sky high above, you find yourself back in front of Osamu’s onigiri shop.

It’s partly due to the hunger gnawing in your stomach, but it’s more out of curiosity than anything. You need to know if it’s real, if he’s real, if the past two weeks were nothing but a fever dream.

And you really want to see him again.

As you push open the door to his shop, you’re greeted with his friendly smile, as usual.

“Same thing again?” he asks.

“Of course.”

The exhaustion hasn’t gone anywhere. You’re still constantly tired, always drifting off during the daytime, limbs weary and worn. When you sit yourself down at the usual spot - the table near the window - that irresistible fatigue seems to creep up on you again.

It’s so calm and comforting in his little shop. The lights are warm, the view is pretty, the quiet chatter of his few customers soothing to your ears. It’s so easy to rest your head in between your hands, shoulders slumping, mind empty of every little unimportant thought, so easy to just close your eyes, so easy to fall into the rose-tinted haze of your nice, pleasurable, dreams.

Osamu comes out of the kitchen in the back of the shop, carrying your food on a plate, and finds you fast asleep with your head on his table.

He’s not surprised. In fact, he’s quite pleased.

In fact, if he has his way, you’ll never have to wake up again.

tyvm for reading!! i really appreciate reblogs and comments - it's part of what motivates me to keep making content :)

here's my masterlist if you'd like more.

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sanguinescorpios · 3 years

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How about overstimulation with the dsmp where the reader(fem/afab possibly) wakes up to dream, sapnap and george all around her, taking off her sleep shorts/underwear to take turns and overstimulate her by eating the reader out? Maybe even a bit where they ask her to be more vocal

i kinda got carried away with this one, hope it’s what you were hoping for!!

you woke up to the feeling of the elastic of your sleep shorts loosening, the string holding them up being unraveled by long fingers. another hand gripped your hips, sliding the fabric down your legs as a third pair of hands lifts your t-shirt up. what the fuck? you thought to yourself, confused but feeling like the explanation was somewhere in the back of your mind. you peeled your eyes open, squinting at the bright light coming in from the cracks in the window blinds.

before you stood your three roommates, towering over your horizontal figure and grasping at your skin with fervor. the sight of all three of them above you, half undressed and staring at your body with pure lust in their gaze, paired with the feeling of hands all over your body was almost too much to handle. holy shit, they actually took you up on your offer.

“boys,” you addressed them, a sleepy smile taking over your face.

“up,” dream ordered, tapping at your thigh as an indication. you lifted your legs off the mattress, allowing sapnap to pluck your shorts and underwear fully off you and throw them behind him haphazardly.

“wanna have our way with you, that sound good?” sapnap asked, much less stern than dream — per usual.

you nodded eagerly, still a bit groggy from just waking up but growing more wet by the minute. george was quiet, but his touch said everything his mouth didn’t. he began rubbing your clit as soon as your panties were out of the way, dragging the wetness that had been collecting at your core up through your folds. he was slow about it, pressing down hard and effortlessly pushing two digits into you. you whimpered at his touch, breathing out his name quietly and meeting his eyes, silently begging for more.

“want more, slut?” dream asked, drawing your attention back on his tall frame and now significantly less dressed figure. his member stood tall and large, your stomach turning at the idea of fitting him inside of you. still, you moaned out a yes without question. george pulled his fingers out of you at this, eliciting a whine of protest from you.

“shh, baby,” he soothed you, bringing his hand up to cup your breast and rub your nipples, “i’ve got you, princess.”

george brought his head down to suck on your breasts, twisting the opposite nipple with his fingers as you whimpered at his touch. you could feel him rutting against the bed next to you, unable to remember at what point he had set himself free. everything was moving so fast, despite somehow feeling like it was occurring in slow motion.

sapnap had pulled his cock out as well and begun rubbing at it, thick and heavy against his own hand. he watched as dream teased himself at your entrance, readying you to take him raw. you called out to him, waving him over and opening your mouth as he did. he gulped at the sight, the dots taking a moment to connect in his head before he realized what you wanted. when he caught on, he didn’t hesitate to push his cock between your lips, nearly falling against the bed at the feeling.

“fuck,” sapnap let out, broken and raspy, “so good.”

eventually, dream pressed himself into you, grunting and sighing as he sheathed his dick in your soaking cunt. you let out a near pornographic moan around sapnap’s cock, causing a groan from sapnap and a laugh from dream.

“such a fucking whore we’ve got ourselves, huh boys?” he chuckled out as he set a steady pace. the other two men nodded eagerly. dream, clearly running the situation, observed each act you were committing in detail. his eyebrows furrowed as his gaze landed on george, who was attached to your tits and thrusting his cock against the mattress.

“george,” he called, getting the attention of the other man with ease, “she’s got hands for a reason.”

george’s eyes widened and he turned to look at you, who just simply held your hand out. enclosing your fingers around george’s pretty dick felt like an honor. he let out a high and breathy moan as soon as you did so, relief covering his entire body as he reattached himself to your tits.

dream was fucking you expertly, hitting you in all the right places and tapping that sensitive area deep inside you with every thrust. you felt so full of him, clenching around him was near impossible with how stuffed you were. sapnap was fucking your mouth lazily, grabbing at your head every so often to bob you on him exactly how he wanted, but overall just enjoying you sucking him however you wanted. george wanted more than just your hand, but he couldn’t complain when your fingers rubbed him up and down and passed over his tip at exactly the right moments.

feeling them all over you, hands grabbing you in so many places and stimulation coming from all directions, was mind numbing. hearing their moans from all around you and watching as they took advantage of you in their own ways was fucking hot, to say it simply. you couldn’t count how many times you had felt yourself pushed to and over the edge, even just the recognition of what was happening was enough to throw you over the cliff of your next orgasm.

the three men had stamina for days, it seemed. each time you came, you thought it would be your last. but every time, they just kept going. dream lasted the longest out of all of them, sapnap finishing first and taking it upon himself to rub directly on your clit once he had recovered. george came next, shooting his cum onto your exposed chest and scooping it up with his fingers to let you taste it before he continued toying with your breasts. dream, on the other hand, was relentless.

you tried to moan your feelings, so exhausted and overwhelmed from the stimulation that you couldn’t form the words. you needed mercy, needed to cum and have it be the last time. still, no matter how many times you came you still found yourself chasing that next high. sapnap noticed your restlessness, and smiled patronizingly at you.

“use your words, babygirl.”

you groaned at this, rolling your eyes at the smug look on his face.

“did you not understand what he said? too stupid for our cocks that you can’t speak?” george asked in the same tone, earning another frustrated moan from you. him, too?

“please,” you finally begged, “can’t take any more.”

“i can go all day, sweetheart,” dream said with a smirk, somehow fucking into you harder, “we all can.”

and they certainly did.

#anon #dreamwastaken smut #sapnap smut #georgenotfound smut #dream team smut #writing asks

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chickenmcstucky · 3 years

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From the Shadows

Bucky Barnes x reader

Angst, fluff || ~2k

She’d been watching him. Always silent, always alone, the White Wolf carried on. When she overhears the plan to test his recovery, she is inexplicably drawn to the place where he - Bucky - will be tested. But the night won’t hide her forever.

She wasn’t supposed to be here. She shouldn’t even know it was happening. A hushed conversation in Shuri’s lab had fallen on carefully tuned ears listening from a vent above. She knew eavesdropping was wrong, but she was drawn to the long-haired man who couldn’t hide the sadness swimming in his crystal eyes.

***

To be honest, she wasn’t sure he even knew of her existence past stolen glances around the palace complex and gentle waves through golden grasses in the border lands where the man kept his home. She knew his story - how could she not - knew why he was there in Wakanda. He sought peace, healing. Safety. He - Bucky, her mind supplied - drew her in inexplicably. Perhaps it was the foreignness of his presence in her home, perhaps the quiet way he carried himself so as not to impose on the world around him, perhaps the wistful longing on his face when he thought no one was watching. But she was watching.

Sometimes, she felt guilty about it; shame for spying on this man’s life when he so clearly removed himself from those around him. Yet she was convicted - a man with such depth shouldn’t be overlooked. He deserved for someone to watch him, to notice him. Her heart broke watching him go about his life alone. She had always had a bleeding heart but this was something new even to her. They had never even exchanged words yet her day was incomplete if she didn’t rest her gaze on his lonely silhouette. She yearned to reach out and touch him, feel him, know him. She sensed a kindness within him and yet her fear of rejection, of overstepping kept her at arm’s length.

Until now. Until she was in the right place at the right time and learned what was planned for that night. All afternoon she agonized over it, terrified it would go wrong, that Bucky would hurt himself or others and retreat further into his shell, never to come out again. She thought part of her heart might die if she lost even this most tenuous connection with him.

***

Now, instead of holding her back from him, her fear spurred her forward into the warm night. The lump in her throat grew with every step along the hidden path to the clearing where she knew she’d find Ayo, find him. Every inch she stole closer to the distant fire brought fear anew she would be caught, reprimanded. Sent away from her blue-eyed boy. She knew she was intruding, was sure he would be angry that some young girl he barely knew was watching this ugliest part of him be bared to the starry sky. Still, she kept on.

Slowly, she crept to the edge of the trees, miraculously unnoticed by the two figures shrouded in flickering shadow. Suddenly the flame jumped, the small fire bursting into the air, and she saw his face. Framed by loose tendrils of chestnut hair, he was beautiful even as his expression twisted in pain. The calm voice of Ayo carried across the clearing to her ears as she realized the process had already begun. Her breath caught in her chest as she watched Bucky’s sobbing form. She ached to run to him, to take him in her arms and shield him from the danger, but the beast was inside him and she was helpless but to watch, and hope for his healing.

Tears cascaded down her cheeks as she watched Bucky’s face contort with pain and fear with every new word that fell from Ayo’s lips, and yet the warrior showed no fear. The girl began to believe it was working, that the broken man could become whole again.

His voice, thick with tears, cut through her reverie. “It’s not gonna work,” he gasped, defeat and terror in his voice. Her heart tore its way out of her chest, yearning to soar to him and revive his fractured soul.

Ayo continued, determined and confident. “Рассвет,” she intoned. “Печь.” Bucky’s chest heaved with gut-wrenching sobs; she could see the fight within himself.

“Девять,” the wretched man grimaced, thousand-yard stare boring into the flame as he battled demons she could not see. “Неопасный,” a fresh waterfall of salty tears escaped her traitorous eyes as she saw the pain etched on his face, saw the tears swimming in his eyes.

“возвращение домой,” Ayo’s voice grew stronger, louder. The moment of truth approached as the flames flickered across their faces, one composed and determined, the other fracturing infinitely. “Один.”

Bucky bared his teeth as she crept forward, her feet moving without permission, inching her closer to the freedom of the clearing. “грузовой вагон,” his glassy eyes spilled over, tears running down his ruddy cheeks.

His body shook violently, his piercing gaze never leaving the fire, as if he feared what he might see if he looked up. His beautiful face scrunched in agony as Ayo’s final word hung in the air, its specter holding the girl’s breath hostage. Enraptured and terrified, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the scene.

Ayo’s graceful expression gave way to a small smile as she uttered salvation. “You are free.”

This man, this beautiful broken soul that she knew held fathoms of love, kindness, and pain, this brave warrior, crumpled. Disbelief twisted his face as he sobbed, his teary eyes bright in the fire light. Finally, he raised his head as his gaze met Ayo’s in cautious joy.

“You are free,” the kind warrior repeated, and the girl’s heart soared. It had worked. She let out a breathy sob, slapping her hand over her mouth as she realized what she had done. It seemed the pair didn’t notice, and she peered on as Bucky broke down in true sobs, no longer reigning himself in. His heart clear on his face, she saw the relief in his eyes, the agony in his tears, the joy in his red cheeks. This defeated man had finally reached the promised land, and it was tearing him apart. It was tearing her apart; she felt her soul rupture and rebuild around his. Though merely an uninvited witness to this sacred moment, she felt part and parcel now of his new beginning. She felt hope grow within her, and, closing her eyes, she willed it to him.

He clenched his fist to his shaking lips. Hope glimmered in his crystalline eyes; she wondered if it was hers.

An eternity passed as she beheld his reckoning. He racked with sobs, a man brought back from the dead and given a new life.

***

“You can come out now.”

She should’ve known she wasn’t unnoticed. The sharp voice tore her from the trance Bucky’s salvation had put her in. Ayo’s command left no room for running or pleading. She stepped forward into the clearing, revealing herself to the pair.

Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. Shame pierced her to her core as his eyes met hers across the flames, confusion in his still shining eyes. Then - recognition. Her shame gave way to warmth.

His sweet lips formed her name, and she was reborn. She had never allowed herself to believe he might find her worthy of the same courtesy she had granted him, that he would see her and ache to know her. Yet the care with which her name left his lips left her with no explanation but this. A strange sensation of being known came over her, and she wondered if he shared in it.

Drawn forward by the promise of his teary eyes, she made her way to his side. The heat of the fire licked at her skin, yet she was chilled by the prospect in the air, the idea she might finally share a moment with this man she’s warped her life around these past months of his recovery. Until this moment, neither had realized how deep the other had burrowed themselves, irrevocably building a home in each of their broken hearts.

Caught in a trance once more, neither of them noticed Ayo slip into the darkness, towards the path back to the city.

Still standing over his seated figure, she reached a hand to caress his wet cheek. His eyes fluttered shut as he gently leaned into her soft hand. It felt like a homecoming.

He placed his larger, calloused hand over hers, cupping her nimble fingers in his own as he pulled her hand from his cheek and grasped it tightly. He moored himself to her, no longer adrift in agony and unrest. He was found.

Slowly, he stood and her gaze followed him up, refusing to leave his. Her name left his lips again with a smile. “You’re still watching me, little one? After all this time?”

Heat rushed to her cheeks, but her eyes didn’t leave his. She had been found, right where she wanted. No longer did she need to hide from him.

“I thought you didn’t see me,” she whispered, disbelieving even as his blue eyes stared right into her soul that he would take the time to notice her, to know her.

“You’re all I see, now,” his voice caressed and grounded her as his hand clutched hers tighter, her own hand tightening in return.

Gently, she reached her other hand back to his face and wiped away the lingering tears, yet more took their place as he smiled into her touch. Suddenly he was in her arms as if the earth herself had moved them. His sweet face pressed into the crook of her neck as he sobbed anew, his arms clutching at her sides as she wrapped her own around him, caressing down his back and running her fingers through his unruly locks.

“It’s alright, it’s alright now,” she cooed, heart breaking and mending in tandem with his. She wasn’t sure how long they stood like that, as she gave him the comfort he so desperately craved. A celebration of his renewal, a mourning of his lost past. A vision of their now mingled paths.

Finally, he broke from their embrace. “Ayo...she’s gone,” he said, his voice raspy.

“The Dora do not often dawdle after a successful mission,” she replied. “Her job is done.”

“You are free,” she whispered. “Free,” louder this time.

And - oh. He laughed and her heart ascended to the stars, yearning for more of his sweet sounds.

“Thank you,” his soft voice was convicted.

“But..I did nothing,” she was bewildered. How could he thank her, when she’d merely stumbled upon a forbidden moment?

“I felt your eyes on me, felt you watching from a distance. You made me feel worthy even when I knew I wasn’t,” his voice broke. “You gave me the courage to fight, and to make it to this night. I found myself so that I could look back at you and feel deserving of your grace.”

“But,” she gasped, tears running down her cheeks once more, “how could you feel all that? How could you - me?” she breathed, her eyes widening with incredulity.

Not finding the words to answer, he simply leaned down and pressed his lips to hers with a gentleness that could move mountains. Her eyes drifted shut as he chastely kissed her.

“You,” he affirmed as he pulled back. “You.”

Now his turn to wipe away her tears, his hand lingered at her cheek as he leaned in once more for a soft kiss. Innocent, but filled with promise.

“May I walk you home?” his voice was sure, but the uncertainty lingered in his eyes.

Smiling, “It’s a long walk,” she laughed wetly, the tears not long gone.

“I’ve got time,” his own soft smile matched hers, and he lifted their clasped hands to his lips, brushing her knuckles. His lips met hers once more, and they walked on into the night.

***

#Bucky Barnes x reader #Bucky Barnes x female! reader #Bucky Barnes fanfic #Bucky Barnes #Wakanda! Bucky x reader #mcu fanfic #Bucky Barnes angst #Bucky Barnes fluff #fatws #tfatws #fatws spoilers #falcon and the winter soldier #fanfic #fanfiction #Marvel fanfiction #Bucky Barnes fanfiction

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falling-pages · 3 years

Text

Let me be your strength: MoriHaru

I transcribed this at 2 a.m., so it's not edited nor well put-together. But I liked it and thought it was cute, and there is not nearly enough MoriHaru content. Shoutout to @ohshcscenerios for listening to me cry about this AND for making the mood board!!!!

Summary: When the pressures of life threaten to snap Haruhi like a twig, she learns to fall into the arms of an old friend.

(AKA me thirsting over Takashi for 4k words)

Takashi Morinozuka x Haruhi Fujioka

Genre: Fluff

Warnings: Talk of terminal illness

It wasn’t the champagne that made Haruhi lightheaded or twisted her stomach into knots, but she refused her second glass and sent the waiter away with a polite wave. The heat from the throngs of crowded pressed down on her, though the space was large and cool. She wished she could move outside, but the unbearable heat of a summer evening kept her clinging to her cold glass of water and air conditioning.

She dabbed at the sweat lining her brow, threatening to wash out the makeup Renge had so carefully applied. Haruhi rarely wore it, and when she did Renge always did it for her. They usually stuck together at parties, but she had slipped away as soon as they walked inside. For that, Haruhi couldn’t fault her--the ball was to celebrate hers and Tamaki’s engagement, after all.

The foundation was sticky in her pores, thick eyelashes framing her vision. She was too hot, too tired, too shifty. She tried to enjoy the party, but the source of her discomfort roared deep inside.

“Hello, Haruhi.”

She jolted, briefly, at the voice, so locked up in her thoughts she didn’t even notice the man approach her. Her old classmate towered above her, but his presence was welcome.

“Hi, Mori,” she sighed, leaning into the shadow he cast. Her skin cooled, but her heart burned at how close he was. “It’s nice to see you.”

Mori chuckled, eyes aglow with mirth. Or maybe alcohol, she couldn’t really tell. She had spent the last few minutes searching for anyone she knew at the ball, and it had seemed everyone was classily drunk on their wealth and drinks. It only added to her longing to go home, the guilt lodged in the back of the throat.

How could she be at a party when her father was so sick at home?

“Same to you,” her friend replied. His silver eyes raked down her body, taking in her dress, her makeup, her hair. His glance didn’t feel perverted, though, nor unwelcome. More like an artist working his eyes over a classic masterpiece. “You look very beautiful.”

Haruhi blushed magenta. Renge had worked her magic, lining her eyes and brushing pink wax against her lips, transforming the tired law student into a high-society lady for a night.

“Thank you,” she whispered, holding his gaze, despite every nerve telling her to look away. “You don’t think it’s too much?”

Mori inhaled. He blinked, washing his eyes anew, forcing the bourbon out of his system. He needed to see her straight, and he looked. He looked carefully. Dutifully. Rolling something over in his mind. “On you?” he answered. “Never.”

Haruhi sucked her tongue and smiled, letting herself feel beautiful, letting her insecurities dissipate under his gaze. “You know, this is all Renge’s work,” she explained. “The makeup, and we went dress shopping together.”

Mori grunted, envisioning it a precursor to wedding dress shopping Renge would surely drag her to in the upcoming months. He had to admit, the young lady did a great job -- the light green stitching against the pale yellow silk made Haruhi look like a flower in spring.

“We had to lock Tamaki in the house to keep him from coming with us,” Haruhi continued. She joined Mori’s laughter. “He still thinks of me as a doll he can dress up and play with.”

“Would you rather he had gone with you?”

Haruhi considered, squinting her eyes. “I’m not sure if he would have calmed her down or just doubled the madness.”

“Calmed her down, doubled your madness.”

“Yeah.”

“Mm.”

They shared an easy smile before Mori stepped away, by her side, to scan the crowd. Tamaki and Renge were sitting at a table overflowing with wine and hors d'oeuvres, chatting as he fed her a bit of cheese on a cracker. Both of them, likely drunk out of their minds, fell into laughter as he missed her mouth, snapping the cracker against her cheek.

“They’re good for each other,” Haruhi mused, not bothering to hide her wistfulness. “The king of excessive compliments, and the queen of backhanded ones.”

Mori noticed the lilting quirk in her voice, veering on the slight edge of jealousy. He grunted again, prompting an explanation.

“While we were getting ready, I asked her if it were too much,” Haruhi said. She sipped from her water glass, swallowing delicately. “I didn’t want to outshine the bride-to-be at her own engagement party. And you know what she said? She said, ‘Don’t worry, you don’t outshine me.’” This time Haruhi was the one to grunt, indignation crossing lines on her forehead. “Maybe she didn’t mean it like that. Maybe she meant something nice in French and it just came out bad in Japanese.”

Mori stayed silent as a waiter approached them with a tray of champagne. He reached for a flute, raising his eyebrows in a silent question to her, but she shook her head, and he refused as well.

“It’s strawberry.”

Haruhi perched her lip in question.

“The champagne.” He finished his bourbon, setting the glass down on a nearby stand. “They did that for you. They remembered you like strawberries.”

Haruhi briefly smiled, but took another sip of water. “That’s kind of them.”

Mori noticed the way she gripped her drink, the way she stared at the happy couple with blacked-out pupils. She couldn't be jealous of them individually, he knew. But of them as a couple? As a concept? Of their happy smiles?

He wanted to tell her she could outshine a thousand suns, that the golden shimmer on her cheekbone reminded him of a fairy queen, that in the lightness of her skin she could have trapped the moon. But he didn’t; he raised his fist to his mouth, cleared his throat, and tore his eyes away.

“You’re jealous,” he muttered. “Why?”

Haruhi snapped her gaze back to him. He had always been able to read her like a book, a riddle solved without explanation as the others stood scratching their heads. He looked back down at her, seeing how small she really was beside him. Confusion stirred in her deep eyes.

“Are you not?” he repeated.

She tore his eyes away from his, feeling movement in her chest. The terrifying ordeal of being known. She knew the champagne wasn’t the cause of her stomach knots, this time, either; rather, the smell of his cologne, strong and musky, left her lips parted in silent contemplation.

“I am,” she confessed. The drink weighed heavily in her hand. “They’re so carefree. There’s not a thought behind those eyes. They’re happy and don’t have stress or law school or a sick parent at home they should be caring for right now--”

Mori took the glass from her hand and set it on the table before stepping in front of her, bowing and extending his hand. She paused her rambling, just now noticing the change of music into a love song and the couples thronging onto the dance floor.

“Haruhi,” Mori said, “may I have this dance?”

Without hesitation she slipped her hand in his, allowing him to lead her onto the floor.

Just that little bit of touch sparked an inferno in his lungs, and he strained against the desire to just wrap her in his arms and whisk her away.

Once they floated to a free space, he took her right hand clasped in his left and took her waist with the other, spreading his fingers over the soft bodice of the gown.

“Is this okay?” he whispered.

“Yes,” Haruhi gasped, nearly euphoric at the feeling of his strong hands on her. She had been alone for so long that she didn’t even realize how touchstarved she was until his thumb rolled over her knuckles. Like it was right, like it was the only thing that mattered.

Mori led her in a waltz, guiding her clumsy feet with his experienced steps. He was a man so prone to the wild that she had nearly forgotten he was raised in aristocracy, trained and learned in all things fine and elegant. He probably learned this waltz as soon as he could walk.

And yet he held her with firm hands, looked at her with gentle eyes, softly correcting her mistakes without annoyance, only a speck of amusement playing in the upturned smile on his lips. He was in control, and this dance was the only thing she didn’t have to stress over. It made her want to fall into his arms and have him take care of everything else, too.

She noticed, too, his handsome features, as there was nowhere else to look but his face. He was taller now than in their youth, a broad-shouldered man of 26, heady and well-established and strong. She thought him too tall and muscled to be a graceful dancer, but she had forgotten he was a hunter, a fighter, a swordsman at his core. His suit, dark green and black, barely clung to his athletic frame. He was absolutely massive compared to her. Gone were the lanky, tall boy and flat-chested girl that once walked Ouran’s halls. Now they were man and woman at their peak.

She wondered how he had not found a wife yet, then wondered how she had never noticed him before.

He noticed, too. Every girlish feature he had adored in high school matured into ones of a woman mother nature scorns. When his fingers brushed her ribcage, she turned her attention back to his face. He was looking at her with the same intensity, but not the same recognition, like he was seeing something he had always known. His nose was noble, lips full, jaw sharp as his eyes. But what caught her attention was the scar, white against his tan face, jutting through his left eyebrow. It had healed long ago, the result of a kendo accident his first year of college, but the hair of his eyebrow never grew back correctly. The scar was turned and jilted and railed against the puckered skin, so untameable that Mori had stopped trying.

But Haruhi thought it suited him. The man could outrun the wild, but the wild would always catch up to him. The bit of evidence that he was more than what his last name got him.

Suddenly, she wanted to touch it. She had never felt the urge before; she barely noticed it, to be honest, and would never disrespect her friend like that.

But then again, he had never held her so intimately before.

Before she could, Mori cleared his throat. He had waited until she was settled in the dance to question her further, but she was staring so intently at him that he kept quiet. Had he been less tan, she would have seen him blush.

“What else is going on,” Haruhi?” he asked, turning slightly to avoid bumping into another couple.

She took a breath, disappointed that her reprieve had ended. She enjoyed looking at him. If he allowed it, she would have all night.

“You know, my dad,” she said simply, and Mori nodded, pulling her closer. Feeling his hand squeeze her made her woozy. “He’s still so sick. Not getting any better, not getting any worse. Just on the verge of needing someone to care for him at all times.”

Mori nodded again, chin hovering above her head. She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he spoke. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No, thank you.” Haruhi did not miss the singular I. “Kyoya has been gracious with paying for the medical care, and for the nurses staying at our house. You all have done enough. Truly.” She looked up at him and did her best to smile, but even she knew he wouldn’t believe it. “It’s just so difficult because he needs care 24/7. So I feel guilty about going to class, guilty about sleeping, guilty about being here.” Her steps and voice faltered, eyelids fluttering to avoid tears. “I shouldn’t be here,” she whispered, tugging her hands away from him. “I should be at home, with him. He needs me--”

She tried to turn around, but Takashi grabbed her waist and pulled her to him, shuffling so she could look into his eyes. Her gaze wandered just above them--to his scar, he was sure--but he shook her very slightly, very gently, like waking a baby. “Haru,” he whispered, taking the liberty of a nickname. Her eyes flashed in pleasure, in a memory, bright with tears and charm. But her bottom lip trembled.

“You deserve a break,” he said, using his strength against her for the first time, making her look at him, to hear every word he spoke. “You have done so much. You have suffered so much. You deserve a break.”

Haruhi tried to fight him, but it was useless--he was right, and he was here, willing to provide it. Beneath her anger, beneath her sadness, there was just exhaustion, burning like a bed of red-hot coals, and she was dangling just over the edge of it, so close she could feel the hellish fumes on her face. They drew smoke up her nose, wracking coughs through her chest, burning and blistering her palms as she clung to the rope just barely keeping her alive.

Either the rope would snap, or she would.

Her father had depended on her ever since she was a child, and she had no choice but to claw her way up the frayed thread. But now her lungs burned, her fingers bled. All she wanted was rest.

She had to drop sometime.

A warm hand on her shoulder roused her back, and she looked into her friend’s steel gray eyes, now warm and pooling like molten lead. When his fingers glided along her cheek, she realized she had been crying, and wiped away the tears. He didn’t speak, only caught the ones she missed.

“I’m not strong enough,” she whispered. Her mouth twisted into neither a smile nor grimace, but a ghostly combination of both. “They were right. I’ll never be like my mom, I’ll never be good enough.” Her exhaustion poured over her in buckets, weak knees finally giving in, stumbling forward into Mori’s chest. He caught her without reservation; he had since the moment they met, and he always would.

He was strong enough to stay still when she fell, propping her back up and sheltering her against him, within his arms. He held her fastly, tightly, as she cried, nine years worth of pining and love for the taking, manifesting in front of their very eyes.

He knew how difficult it was. He had just graduated from the same law school only months prior, had the same professors and took the same classes. He himself barely scraped through at times. Even though he had given her his old books and notes, she struggled--and no wonder, having to constantly take care of her father.

“You’re right,” he said against the shell of her ear. She shivered, and he ran a hand up and down her back to soothe her. “You’re not like your mother. She ever had to carry the burden you do.”

Mori saw the weights tied to her feet, dragging her over the edge. She was going to slip, and soon--she couldn’t continue the facade of strength when she barely slept at night, barely processed her mornings over coffee, barely found the motivation to shower and brush her teeth when all she wanted was to sit at her father’s side and cry.

Maybe she thought she was concealing it well, but he was a Morinozuka, trained and battle-hardened and able to pinpoint weaknesses. He didn’t want her to hide from him.

A cold hand wrapped around Haruhi’s heart, and she pressed further into Mori’s chest. Then she realized herself and flung back, cheeks reddening at her boldness.

“Gosh, I’m so sorry, Mori, I forgot my place,” she said, keeping her eyes fixed on his very expensive shoes.

“No, no, Haru, no,” he said, scrambling for words. He cursed his silent nature. “I’m not going to let you fall. You are safe with me. I am never going to let anything happen to you.”

For a man whose strategy was always holding his cards close to his chest, he threw them down, baring his heart and soul to her mercy, desperately, as he tried to comfort her. He bent down, awkwardly long limbs sufficient in holding her, pressing her head to his chest. Her shampoo smelled so sweet, like the cherry blossoms waving just outside, and she felt so small curled up in his protective embrace. It sparked a heat in his knuckles, anger in his heart.

No one so sweet and good should have to suffer like this.

When she was ready, she moved away from his chest, accepting his willing hand wiping away her tears and the handkerchief in this pocket to hide behind until she regained her composure. Her makeup was ruined, and her hair was in disarray, but Mori thought she had never looked more beautiful than under his arm, pressing her cheek against his hand, chasing his comfort.

As soon as she smiled at him again, he took her hand and spun her back into the waltzing position. Mori built up the confidence to speak again.

“Is it alright if I call you Haru?”

A blythe smile. Pink tinged around her ears. “Yes.”

“Good.” He swallowed. “Haru, you are strong, and beautiful. It breaks my heart to see you like this. If you need to lean on someone, lean on me. Let me be your strength."

A fluttery sigh escaped her lips. “Okay.”

Mori nodded, leading her quickly back into the dance. Amazing, how many songs could be waltzed to. His agile feet knew them all by heart, so he could bask in the young lady’s presence.

Their eyes met periodically, blushes exchanged, and then gazes wandered. His traveled to the dance floor, landing on Tamaki and Renge.

They danced like two fools in love--which they were, obviously. Clumsy, falting steps, swathed in each other’s arms, mouths colliding in mismatched kisses and loud laughter. When he read their lips, he saw them chattering away in French. He saw the light pouring into each other’s eyes, both of them the sun pouring warmth through the window of the other’s soul.

He saw the way Tamaki’s bride-to-be looked at him, and wondered if the woman in front of him would spare him the same glance.

“You’re jealous,” Haruhi said suddenly. “Why?”

He turned to look at her, eyes narrowed in suspicion. Why did she use his own words against him?

She hid her smile behind her hand. “Are you not?”

He rolled his eyes, taking her firmly by the waist, as her hand returned to his shoulder.

“If you must know,” he muttered, twirling her under his arm, smiling as she giggled, “I am jealous. Because Tamaki has a beautiful lady in his arms, whom he loves, and who loves him, whom he can kiss and woo whenever he pleases.”

The orchestra suddenly roared, or maybe it was the blood in his ears when he noticed Haruhi’s hand tense in his. But, at least she didn’t drop it. She spun back into his chest, clinging to his shoulder like her grip would imprint on his suit. And when she looked at him, eyes bright and wide and full of wonder, he saw the knowing glint within.

She cocked her head aside. Her steps slowed, and she looked at him, running her eyes up and down his body as if just now realizing how long they had been dancing together.

“And you long for that?” she asked.

Mori sighed, ears pricking as the music ended. He let her go and bowed, assuming her wariness a rejection. Parallel to the floor, at least, gave him time to hide his face, regain his composure, mask the pain flowing quickly to his hands.

“Yes,” he sighed. And then, throwing all decorum out the window with a cracking toss of the head and a to hell with it for social commentary, he spoke again. “I long for it the way a bird longs to fly. And it makes me jealous of them, because I, too, had a beautiful lady in my arms, whom I love most dearly, whom I also wish to kiss and woo, but I do not know if she loves me back.”

His heart rose in his throat, and he gasped as he uttered the last words, oxygen leaving his lungs and brain at the sight of her chewing her lip. She had likely never heard him speak so many words at once. But they had clouded his mind. He had lived with them for nine years, pushed them down beneath the surface even as they slithered and crawled around in the form of blushes on his cheeks and pats to her head.

Finally, she spoke. They had stood there for an eternity, watching the other breathe. Wondering whose heart would give out first.

“Well,” she whispered, stepping forward and taking his hand, “she does.”

And then she pressed herself on her tiptoes and kissed him, just in time of the climax of the new song, in beat with the swells of strings and cymbals and trumpets, forgetting, momentarily, where they were. Takashi didn’t forget, but he couldn’t have given less of a damn. He turned off his practiced decorum, the polite manners of the aristocracy, all he had ever known, and kissed her like a man starved. Like she was his last meal, like he was poisoned and she was the antidote. It was Tamaki and Renge’s ball, yes, but he, too, deserved to be selfish for the first time in his life.

Haruhi knit her brows in concentration. His body was so hard, rough and solid and muscled from his years of training, but his lips were soft. Even harder were his practiced hands as they clung to her waist. They bunched the dress, moving and touching and exploring, and it reminded her of some exploring she also wished to do.

Without breaking the kiss, her hand wandered from his shoulder to his jaw, threading in his hair, before landing at his temple stroking the fine hairs of his eyebrow. But she hesitated. Even as her tongue was in his mouth, she was nervous.

When her fingers brushed the scar, he grunted. Though it was muffled by her mouth, the shame filled her stomach. She moved her hand back to his hair, but he grunted again, pulling just inches away to see the mortification hollowing her pupils. He pulled her hand forward, pressing a kiss to it, and replaced it where it belonged. He clutched her closer, watching in amusement as she touched as she pleased. The scar was rough and tattered, like the rest of him, but it distinguished him from the fine elegance of the ball.

She never cared for fine elegance, anyways.

Mori leaned down to press a softer kiss to her swollen lips. Haruhi’s stomach twisted into knots. How this force of nature could love her so tenderly was beyond her.

But when the song ended all too soon, he took her hand and led her to a table, snagging a glass of water for her. He whispered her name, his voice the soft type of strong that made her feel safe. “If you’ll have me, I’d like to call you mine.”

Haruhi’s mouth filled with cotton. She cautiously moved her hands up his chest, circling the knot of his tie.”Mori…”

“Call me Takashi, please,” he said, reaching down to hold her face. His thumb swiped gently over her lips, seeing how flushed and full they were. “Or you can call me Mori, or anything else you wish. It only matters to me that it comes from your lips.”

She gave off a sigh, a damp, fluttering sound from the back of her throat. “Yes,” she cooed, breathless. “Yes, Takashi, yes.”

At her perfect annunciation, Takashi swept her into his arms, lifting her high into the air, almost like the first time in Music Room Three, but this time she was smiling, and laughing, and maybe it was the candlelight and stringed musicians that made him feel so romantic, but he thought he could see forever in the way her glistening tears met her smile.

#ouran high school host club #haruhi fujioka #takashi morinozuka #mori x haruhi #moriharu #takaharu #takashi x haruhi

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spencerscoven · 3 years

Text

— sad girl

about ; Spencer wants you more than anything, but he already has someone waiting at home for him.

gif by saramichellesgellar

CONTENT WARNING: smut, oral sex (fem receiving), slight choking, fingering, semi public intercourse, unprotected sex, cheating, brief mentions of violence, slight angst

a/n : came out of the fic closet for this <3 any request, concepts, or if you would like to be in a tag list, send your request to my inbox !! and enjoy

Being a mistress on the side, it might not appeal to fools like you...

What you could never tell a soul was that it started months before, weeks before he had ever first officially laid his hands on you. The lingering eyes, antsy hands, the words that had meant something else that went unsaid. They had implied the words that Spencer would never say out loud, in fear of the guilt that lined his stomach: I want you. But I have her.

Creeping around on the side, would not be something you would do...

JJ kissed him on the cheek, hands softly massaging the knots of his shoulders while she whispered the words that announced, "something came up..." and with that, she left Spencer with the taste of desire on his lips as his eyes gaped towards your direction. He watched you like he always did when he got a chance, seeing how the tips of your fingers ran across the edge of your cubical, your legs cross and eyebrows furrowed in thought. He knew what you were reading— only because his eyes glazed over the same file. The unsub was a 43 year old man with the signature of engraving x's into his victim's chests. And he wondered, thought hard, if you could focus on the case while you wore a skirt that tight.

"JJ's gone? Hotch just left, looks like it's just you and me. Now, what do you think of this?"

You inquired, shocking Spencer into looking up to see you standing beside him, the steps you took to get there unknown to him at the time they had happened. He pinched his thigh through his slacks. Get a grip.

You slid into his cubical next to him, stacking "The Narrative Of John Smith" in the next corner, along with his other books that were too advanced for you to even begin to understand, so you could sit your hips on his desk and place the annotated file next to him.

"So, I've found that Avery Pincher was abandoned by his mother at eight. She found another life elsewhere, and he didn't fit into the picture... you get the gist of it all," You looked up and smiled sheepishly, flattening out the top of your skirt which allowed Spencer's eyes to heed recognition of the smooth goosebumps laid on your thighs. He wanted skin to skin, mouth to mouth.

But you haven't seen my man... you haven't seen my man.

"Cold?" He questioned, sight trailing up your torso, only to see that your eyes already met his.

He could keep this up like he had for months, he could act like he couldn't cut though the tension between them. He could imagine that Morgan didn't squint his eyes at him every time he said your name in the conference room. He could set his hopes on thinking he had enough strength to go home and meet JJ, make love to her instead of fantasizing about fucking you. It was part of his job, bending people to his decree and staying in control. But he just didn't have the will when it came to you.

"Cold? No Reid— So I studied the letters his mother sent him after she left, all of them signed with an X, for kisses, as she signed them off. She thought it was endearing, he didn't seem to like it... hence his signature and the victims looking like her—"

"Then why do you have goosebumps?" He announced, rather than asked, as his long fingers wrapped around the top of your knee. He felt you take in a sharp breath before he heard it.

He's got the fire, and he walks with flames...

"Think about what you're doing, Reid. You think I haven’t caught onto these little things? Because I have,” Your words were spoken with quiet vexation even though you leaned towards his chest, but most importantly they told him that you knew. Your eyes were criminal, finally revealing your awareness of the depraved cat and mouse game that kept up between the two of you.

You'd seen the way he watched you. You'd felt his eyes down your blouse, his fingers that ghosted too long on your waist as he opened the door for you in the mornings. You’d spent nights thinking, rationalizing that Spencer was brilliant, and surely knew what was good for himself. You fought so hard, only to land on the realization he was just a man. A man with an insufferable craving in the pit of his stomache.

"I can feel your pulse. I have thought about this. Day in, day out. You don't think I've seen you looking too?" He stood, hands dragging further up your legs, to your waist, under your skirt, your hipbone, the insides of your thighs to feel your heat. He couldn't stop the soft smile forming on his lips when you sighed.

"Here you are, ass on my desk, pussy right in front of me, and you're telling me you didn't know this was bound to happen?”

His Bonnie on the side, his Bonnie on the side...

His lips mashed into yours, wasting no time, both your breaths hitching as teeth clashed and he fought to destroy you, to drown you in dizziness and lust. Finally, finally, finally, skin to skin, mouth to mouth. With his hands wrapped around your neck, nails digging in and stifling the moans threatening to uprise in your throat as he held you back from his lips, allowing you to gaze up drunkenly as your head lulled back and forth.

"I've barely touched you." You could hear the smirk in his voice, sticking your tongue out as he slowly pulled at your wet panties, your black skirt already bunched up your waist.

"This is what you want?" He mockingly laughed, gathering his saliva and spitting upon your tongue, serving his passion with hostility.

Obediently, you swallowed, thrusting your lower half into his own abdomen before your lips connected again, good sense and respect thrown out the window as you two forgot completely about the world outside, allowing each other to envelop each whole.

"You've been waiting to do this forever, I can taste it on my lips... so go ahead and ruin me." You murmured softly, as if the building was full and it was only meant for him to hear, but roughy in nature, your hands reaching for his cock that was already hard and showcasing a tent in his pants. Spencer slapped them away, placing your hands back on the edge of the desk as he situated himself in the leather chair of his office, pulling your pussy closer to his face.

"Spencer—"

"I think about you a little more than I should. I think about this," He hungrily ran his middle finger down your vagina, spreading your wetness from your hole to your clit, basking in the way it glimmered off the insides of your thighs before placing the tip of his finger between his lips, a selfish act. "well, I think about this a lot."

You reach your hands down to cup his cheeks in silent approval, his pupils dilated while he begins to pump just his middle finger in and out at a steady pace, your hips thrusting up to meet his just seconds before his tongue pounces. At first he doesn't hear your noises— too focused on your taste and allure as he takes your clit into his mouth and sucks, adding another finger. Above him, you grasp the short cubical wall, holding on as if you'd fall into endless abyss without it, making animalistic noises that make Spencer think he could die right there and here, his face and fingers buried in your cunt. He's a man of science, yet he thinks he's seen God.

He witnesses you grab his head of hair, pushing him up against you and grinding up and down as if you couldn't get enough, shouting his name, and spouting your release on his lips. You twitch, riding out your high with his face planted between your legs and your soul located on another planet.

You look down to witness Spencer cleaning you off with his tongue, his mouth swallowing your wetness that had spread to your thighs, his hips under a spell, causing them to thrust into the empty space, allowing you to realize in that moment that he hadn't even noticed he was doing it, either. You grab him by the top of his sweater bringing his face to your level with a simple request,

"Fuck me, Spencer?"

He smiles gleefully, reaching down to unbuckle his trousers that already spotted precum on the front of them, a moan rising lowly in his throat.

"I need to get this dick inside of you before I cum." He pumps himself a few times, before pushing into your cunt, hand rising to hold your legs back, unable to keep the strident moan from coming out of his throat, your fingernails drilling into his hips, waist, mouth, neck, anything you could grasp.

He's got the fire and he walks with flames...

One after the other, his hips snap to yours quickly, meeting in a smack as his thumb connects between the both of you in circles to rub, coaxing your second orgasm out.

He's got the fire and he talks with flames...

You both moan out, cumming over one another, producing what Spencer would call "the perfect melody", if there had ever been one.

He kisses you one last time, and this time's different. It feels like longing, and you can't be too sure as you draw back to look at him and he stares blankly across the room, breath heavy. You watch as he bends to look through his desk, pulling out a tissue and wiping his cum from your core softly, eyes focused on anything but your face before he's shoving it into his pocket to dispose of outside the office.

What shocks you most is when he takes your peach panties that were once discarded on the floor and tucks them into his desk, under files, for safe keeping. But Spencer still won't meet your eyes.

You hoist your hips up, sliding off the surface of the wooden desk to spread out your skirt, now wrinkled, and to sweep your hair out of your face, that to your surprise, he does himself to catch your attention.

"Look, I just..." He begins, and you bite your lip, the realization of what you've done setting in.

In the back of your mind, you know what makes you actually feel bad. It’s the fact that you don't feel much remorse, if at all, and it causes the high tides of your mind to drown, shame swallowing you from the inside out. The lingering touches, the stares— the everything, they happened before Spencer and JJ. You reminisce, afraid to blink, scared that you’d see the memories of Spencer telling you about her would come flashing behind your eyelids, replaying like they always did at night.

Before he was JJ's, he was yours. Part of you begged to say he still was, even though you watched who he walked into the office with each day when they exited the same car, hand in hand. You tilted your head, as if to encourage him to go on, to finish telling you he regretted it, even if his eyes showed the opposite. There was not a single chance in the world that he could utter what he really wanted to, not after he had been pining after her for years. Not one of you were stupid enough to do that and you knew it.

His Bonnie on the side, his Bonnie on the side, makes me a sad, sad girl...

"I just wanted to tell you that I know we shouldn't have done this but—"

He glances down as the phone in his left pocket begins to ring, and before he even pulls it out, both of you are eerily aware of exactly who it is, the ironical energy of it all lingers in the air as Spencer gives you a sad look, picking up the phone.

"Hello? Oh— no. I was just getting ready to leave. Just finishing up the night." He looks right at you, contemplating, before cleaning off the rest of your wetness on his chin with the sleeve of his jumper. He’s just fucked you silly, only to go home to her.

You find yourself shoving your heels on and collecting your things off your desk across the room, his eyes following you and doing the same.

I'm a sad girl, I'm a sad girl, I'm a sad girl...

Spencer walks beside you to the doors of the BAU, knowing that hours from now, in the morning, you’d both come to work. You'd act like it never happened, avoid and ignore each other, until wondering hands wondered again. Until then, Spencer would deny himself of the woman he spent his time thinking about. He’d act as if he didn't need you.

He placed his hand on your lower back as he opened the doors ahead of you, slinging his messenger bag strap higher up his shoulders, and let his fingers dawdle there for just a second more than needed, the signal not unbeknownst to you. With just the two of you here, he loiters on the idea that that cannot ever be, you and him. And on his lips he tastes spite, mixed with wishful thinking.

I'm a sad girl, I'm a sad girl, I'm a mad girl.

part 2

masterlist

#spencerscoven #spencer reid #criminal minds fic #spencer reid angst #spencer reid smut #mgg #matthew gray gubler #spencer reid x reader #angst #bau #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid fan fiction #spencer reid fanfic #requests #bau fanfic

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birdship · 3 years

Text

(DISCO ELYSIUM SPOILERS)

Wrote this... thing? to sort of explore potentially writing an actual bit of fanfic for Disco Elysium. It's just a short scene set during the time Harry's drifting in and out of consciousness and Kim is taking care of him.

Anyway, here. Self-indulgent gay longing bullshit, but maybe someone else out there will enjoy it?

Very short teaser, since the whole thing is only like 1600 words:

PERCEPTION: The pressure intensifies slightly, and you recognize it is in the shape of a human hand. YOU: Her hand…? PERCEPTION: No. Not hers. VOLITION: Never hers. LOGIC: His, genius. ESPRIT DE CORPS: It’s Kim. Of course it is. You knew it from the moment you saw him, somehow, that this man would take a bullet for you. He almost did. But right now, he’s kneeling beside you, tending to your wound. Gently, so gently reaching into the war zone of your body to peel back the old bandages, soaked in blood and pus, and press clean ones down in their place.

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: Well, well! Look what the cat dragged in. You keep slipping away, Harry-boy. Back into that beautiful, dark sea. Where you came from. Where you belong. Even now it presses around you, pale and cold. You’re struggling so hard to keep your head above the water for these precious few seconds of aching consciousness. It would be easier to just… relax.

YOU: Hold on, what was that about a cat?

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN: There is no cat, you stupid fuck. Pay attention when I’m waxing poetic about the sweet embrace of death.

It’s hard to pay attention. Then again, it’s hard to do anything. Your breathing is shallow and ragged and you’re so, so tired. God are you tired.

PERCEPTION: You become gradually aware that there is a light pressure on your hip. PAIN THRESHOLD: The first small jolt of pain ripples through you, branching like lightning. PERCEPTION: The pressure intensifies slightly, and you recognize it is in the shape of a human hand.

YOU: Her hand…?

PERCEPTION: No. Not hers. VOLITION: Never hers. LOGIC: His, genius. ESPRIT DE CORPS: It’s Kim. Of course it is. You knew it from the moment you saw him, somehow, that this man would take a bullet for you. He almost did. But right now, he’s kneeling beside you, tending to your wound. Gently, so gently reaching into the war zone of your body to peel back the old bandages, soaked in blood and pus, and press clean ones down in their place.

YOU: His hand…

ELECTROCHEMISTRY: It’s warm, electric, somehow both familiar and new all at once. You ache to lean into it and ask for more, more. How long has it been since anyone touched you like this? INLAND EMPIRE: Has anyone ever touched you like this, really? Right down to the core of you? Feeling the wreckage of you, the sharp edges of your heart? Running their fingers so lightly along the cracks of your horrible little brain? ELECTROCHEMISTRY: I meant literally. His hand is on your thigh. PAIN THRESHOLD: Because there’s a fucking gunshot wound there. LOGIC: Come on, don’t make it weird. ELECTROCHEMISTRY: I’m not making it weird. VOLITION: You’re definitely making it weird. ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Look, all I’m saying is it feels pretty nice, doesn’t it? Being close to him like this. His hands on your body.

YOU: Yeah. It does.

CONCEPTUALIZATION: In the haze of painkillers and recent trauma, your sight becomes clear. Ironic. You’re finally allowing yourself to see something that’s been quietly blossoming inside you over the years. It’s been so hard to ignore, but the alternative is so much worse. You couldn’t look right at it. Didn’t want to. Didn’t think you deserved to. But now, in this moment, lying on a lumpy mattress in the dark, trying not to lose consciousness yet again, with him pressing his hands to your rotting body, desperately staunching the bleeding that never seems to completely stop… Now the world has finally wrung everything out of you. Whatever it was that you had left. And you can do nothing but take the path of least resistance. HALF-LIGHT: You’re keenly aware that you will soon make an absolute goddamn fool of yourself, but are powerless to stop it. The forces are already in motion. PAIN THRESHOLD: Another lightning bolt of pain, worse this time. Agony. You cannot help but gurgle a quiet “fuck.”

The lieutenant glances up at your face with calm concern, thoroughly unsurprised by your outburst. “I know it hurts,” he breathes. “You’ll get through it.”

“Yeah,” you mumble, only half-processing his words.

PERCEPTION: His hand lingers ever so slightly, then suddenly it’s gone. The warm, comforting pressure of his company, gone. SUGGESTION: No! You’re going to be alone again! He needs to stay. You need him to be here. Next to you. For as long as possible.

You concentrate every ounce of willpower you have left on sending your right hand out to fish desperately for his before it’s gone.

HAND/EYE COORDINATION: Your hand slaps awkwardly against the sleeve of his jacket. You can’t quite get a grip on it, but your pathetic flailing is hard to ignore, and he stops to give you a quizzical look. VISUAL CALCULUS: That’s the best we could do. I don’t know what you expected from us. Your eyes are still closed.

“Detective?” he says to you. “Just relax. You’re going to be fine, but you need to get some rest.”

“Wait,” you mumble, “please stay.”

DRAMA: This is quite the sad display you’re putting on here, sire. It’s a crowded field, but this new late entry is a strong contender for the gold in the hotly contested “most uncomfortable moment” event at the Sad Old Sack of Shit Olympics.

VOLITION: Come on, you’re stronger than this. HALF-LIGHT: Don’t drag him down with you, you irrepressible fuck-up. What are you even trying to do? INLAND EMPIRE: He’s drowning. Desperate. Reaching for something, anything, to stay afloat. COMPOSURE: It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Not anymore. There’s nothing to hold onto. SUGGESTION: Wrong. You have exactly one thing to hold onto right now, and that thing is Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi’s fucking hand.

Kim looks at you with a sort of detached concern for a moment, then gives you a small smile and sits back down next to you without another word. There’s nothing to say, and that’s fine.

EMPATHY: He looks exhausted. His eyes are ringed by dark circles and his shoulders have begun to sag with the weight of the case. The weight of death. The weight of you. He’s carrying so much. ESPRIT DE CORPS: He doesn’t want recognition or pity for it. He knows you’re bearing the same load. Don’t you dare apologize for any of it - this weight is shared. You’re in it together. SUGGESTION: Then why do you feel so guilty, watching him stare silently out the window into the impenetrable night, looking at nothing? You have to say something. Acknowledge his efforts to keep your sorry flesh sack shambling forward another day. VOLITION: No, stop. This is a bad idea. You don’t have to be the sorry cop anymore. In fact, please actively try to stop being that.

“Kim,” you say weakly.

“Yes?” he says, his gaze snapping back to you immediately.

“Thanks.”

“No need for that,” he says quickly.

VOLITION: Grateful cop, huh. Well, I guess that’s a step up. Very slightly less pitiful.

“Yeah,” you mumble, “alright. Sorry.”

VOLITION: Goddammit.

Kim doesn’t say anything. Just watches you with tired, searching eyes.

PERCEPTION: He’s sitting on the very edge of the bed, far away from you, his limbs tucked close to his body except for one hand, which rests lightly on the blanket. VISUAL CALCULUS: It’s still close enough that you could reach out and touch it without too much effort. ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Get that sweet dopamine hit, baby! Human contact, the most dangerous drug!

Your fingers brush his hand. He jerks it away immediately, but it seems like an unconscious, automatic reaction.

“Ah,” he says, scooting over a bit. “I’ll give you some space.”

VOLITION: If your goal was to feel like a complete idiot in front of the one person in this shithole that you respect, well, pat yourself on the back. DRAMA: Congratulations, sire, you’ve done it! And what hill might thou plan to die on next? VOLITION: A much steeper one, hopefully. SUGGESTION: Ignore them, try again! PERCEPTION: Finally, your fingers manage to close around his wrist. You can’t see his reaction. Your eyes are closed. You can’t stand to look at the situation you’ve created. VOLITION: Coward. PERCEPTION: His hand is moving, changing position, but not withdrawing. It simply contorts in such a way that your grip relaxes and now it’s his hand that’s resting on top of yours. He is silent, but he’s there. Not moving away. You smell stale cigarette smoke and dry blood lingering in the space between his body and yours. ELECTROCHEMISTRY: It’s too much. This hit, it’s stronger than you expected. It’s fucking devastating, a cold knife twisting its way through your broken body. It hurts. Why does it hurt? EMPATHY: Your eyes are still closed, but you sense that he too is looking elsewhere, similarly unable to look directly at the source of the overwhelming awkward - and quite frankly rather homo-sexual - energy you have brought down upon the room. CONCEPTUALIZATION: Every other human interaction happening inside the Whirling-in-Rags must be going very smoothly right now, because you’ve created a fucking singularity of awkwardness. There’s no more awkwardness left within a 2km radius, you’ve gathered it all right here.

Then, as quickly as the moment began, it’s over. He moves his hand and clears his throat. Probably cleans his glasses. It’s a nervous habit of his that you’ve noticed this past week.

A few minutes pass in silence. Then: “Harry?” he whispers quietly.

You don’t answer. You have nothing to say.

CONCEPTUALIZATION: Maybe you were wrong. Maybe this is the harder option. Maybe you’re not ready to look at it. Maybe you’re not ready to look at anything.

“Get some rest,” he says softly. “I need to get back to work.”

EMPATHY: He’s not going to mention this incident. Not now. Not later. Not ever. Not just out of concern for you, but himself. He has no idea how to begin to process it, so he won’t. He’ll tell himself it doesn’t matter, you were just lost in a cloud of drouamine and pain and grief. That you were so out of it that you thought you were reaching for someone else. That vulnerable moment of tenderness could not have been meant for him. But you know the truth. And maybe he does too, somewhere deep down. LOGIC: You are okay with this. You have to be. And so does he. CONCEPTUALIZATION: You’ve glimpsed it now, that radiant thing within you. That bright, unbearable light. It’s so beautiful, so heart-breaking that you can hardly stand it. Maybe a glimpse is enough.

#disco elysium #disco elysium spoilers #fan fic #harry du bois #kim kitsuragi #this scene brought to you by gay longing and touch starvation

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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years

Note

My third and final prompt I promise: Wen Zhuliu. WEN ZHULIU. What if instead of being Wen Chao's babysitter/bodyguard he was a different young master's? Picturing him heaving a long suffering sigh at Huisang or Zixuan's antics is hilarious to me. I just want to see all the different interactions with the Core Melting Hand!

I apologize in advance for writing a fic that technically fulfils your prompt but also is...not quite about what you asked for

That Bitter Draught (ao3)

It wasn’t that Su She was entirely unaware of what he was like.

He was a man almost entirely consumed by bitterness and envy, his eyes so firmly fixed on what his neighbors had that he couldn’t appreciate the blessings in his own life. He was selfish and ungrateful, and hated the ones he admired the most, hated all of the ones who were better off than him, even the ones who pretended to be fair and equitable about it.

Especially those.

He’d been born to an ordinary family, not cultivators at all – a feeder family doing agriculture for the sake of the great Lan sect, who never much thought nor cared about where their vegetables came from. He waded knee-deep through the muck and the mire for the first six years of his life before some passing Lan cultivator had discovered he had a bit of potential, and next thing he knew his parents had handed him off to be someone’s servant, taking him away from everyone he’d ever known – from his parents and his animals and his siblings and his brother – and he was supposed to be grateful for it.

There wasn’t anything wrong with being a servant, Su She supposed. It was a livelihood like anyone else’s, and maybe he wouldn’t be so bitter about it if he’d stayed that way, the way he was supposed to, as a servant with just enough skill at cultivating to not disturb the tranquil and thoughtful atmosphere of the Cloud Recesses as he rushed around doing all the things that were necessary.

(The Cloud Recesses – so pretty and clean and pure, except there was muck here, too, and no amount of pretending by the sect disciples that their shit didn’t stink the way everyone else’s did would change that.)

Maybe Su She would have been fine with being a servant, though he suspected he wouldn’t – in the darkness of the middle of the night he sometimes thought that his ability to be content had been taken away when he had, that the black gaping hole in his heart that had once held his family would always be a yawning pit that always wanted more than he had, forever incapable of getting the one thing that would fill it up again – but he didn’t stay that way.

No, see, Su She was good at cultivating. He was really good - not quite a genius, but his hard work paid off and he got better and better at what he was doing even though they barely gave him any time to do it in.

After all, someone had to make sure that everything was ready for the sect disciples when they woke up at the start of the mao hour, and that meant he had to be hard at work by yin, and of course the fact that they went to sleep at the end of the xu hour only meant that his work stretched well into hai, but despite all the disadvantages they loaded him down with he cultivated like a madman at every free hour, squeezing it in between work and even more degrading work. He got better and better and better, and eventually, finally, someone noticed him again.

This time they made him a disciple.

They expected him to be grateful for that, too. As if he hadn’t bought the chance with his own sweat and tears and blood, and all to be one of the blessed ones, one of the lucky ones, one of the ones who could – if they were meritorious enough – get a pass to leave the sect to go where they liked.

(Moling was too far to reach by foot, not even for the New Year, and he didn’t make enough money to buy a horse. But once he had a sword, gifted to him from the sect, once he could fly – once he was old enough – once he was trusted enough –)

Being a disciple meant that he woke up at mao hour and went to sleep at xu, that his chamber-pot disappeared in the morning as if by magic, that his food was brought to his table instead of being stuffed into his mouth in the crowded staff room right off the kitchen in the brief reprieves he had between duties…all things he had to adjust to, things that were strange and felt almost unnatural.

Now that he was a disciple, he had all the same rights as all the others, the ones who had been born to it instead of raised up from a lower level for it.

It was supposed to mean that they were all equal, all Lan disciples the same, except that all the arrogant young masters looked down their noses at the former servant who’d stepped above his station. They ridiculed him for it: for being ambitious, for being envious, for thinking too highly of himself, for not knowing the things they’d had a chance to learn and he hadn’t, for smelling like the shit no matter how clean he kept his clothing or how much he washed.

Equal – hah!

The worst, though…the worst was the Twin Jades.

Lan Xichen was powerful, yet kind and generous to the point of selflessness, a proper gentleman; Lan Wangji, equally gifted, always did the right thing, no matter the circumstances, his expression solemn and serious, his reputation famous for his righteousness.

Su She hated them. He wanted to be them, wanted to be Lan Wangji so bad it made his blood boil, but he also hated them – hated him.

The Twin Jades. They didn’t deserve to be called that, not with the three year age difference between them and at least four points of difference on their face, if you were looking; not when Su She’s brother had been born so soon before him that he’d been born clutching his ankle as they left the womb together. Not when the only difference, the only difference, between them was that fucking Lan cultivator’s comment that he only had enough room in his cart to take one of them with him.

A servant, even with cultivation potential, was worth less than a bag of bok choy meant to serve as a side dish on a trueborn Lan disciple’s plate, and so his brother was stuck in the muck back at home while Su She fought his way through the muck that was the Lan sect’s glorious principles and discipline.

He didn’t even know for sure if his brother was still alive.

Oh, Su She had the sect’s permission to write them letters, but what would it help? No one in his village could read, he certainly hadn’t been able to before he’d been forcefully taught so that Lan sect elders could pass him notes instead of condescending enough to speak to him, and the cost of paying a scholar to read it to them would be a waste of the money he faithfully sent them out of his wages every month.

So yes, Su She was bitter. Su She hated. Su She envied, and envied Lan Wangji most of all. After all, he was handsome, but not as handsome; he was talented, but not as talented; he was smart, but not as smart; he was powerful, but not as powerful; he was a twin, but no one cared about him and his brother the way they cared about Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen – Lan Wangji, who got to have his older brother with him any time he liked, but spent the entire time standing there stone-faced and driving him away.

And, of course, Lan Wangji also had – him.

Yu Zhuliu was the sort of guest disciple that was really a servant and not a proper Lan disciple, although his cultivation was high enough to rank alongside some of the shining stars of the Lan sect – even more so than most, given his cultivation of the unique ability that had made him renowned throughout the cultivation world as the Core Melting Hand. It was only that he had been too old, at the time the Lan sect had rescued him from some misfortune that Su She had never heard specified, to learn their ways properly, and for some reason the elders resisted allowing him into the sect properly.

Perhaps it was because he was what was termed an ‘inconvenient child’ of Meishan Yu, the bastard child of a daughter of the clan; a liability that could neither be killed nor kept.

Perhaps it was because his ability was truly too terrifying, attacking as it did the golden core that all cultivators strove so hard and so long to form.

Or perhaps it was simply that he made a very convenient servant.

Yu Zhuliu was, to put a point on it, Lan Wangji’s servant, acting as both bodyguard and attendant.

He was a deputy to help Lan Wangji with whatever he needed, big or small. The Lan sect prided itself on discipline and humility, but only to a certain extent – only to the extent it looked good or was pure – and of course they were desperate to keep their precious young jade safe from the growing predations of Qishan Wen; it was not so strange that they assigned him a bodyguard, and of course if he was already doing that he might as well do the rest.

After all, who could expect a proper young gentleman to care for himself?

Su She hadn’t taken much notice of Yu Zhuliu at first, other than a brief stabbing feeling of pity when he heard of the man’s circumstances. But then one day he’d noticed him rolling his eyes as Lan Wangji stiffly recited the rules in advance of yet another punishment he was inflicting over something minor – no one loved the rules as much as Lan Wangji did. There was a reason nobody talked to him, perfect disciple that he was, and of course unlike the lowly Su She who, despite himself, longed for the company and recognition of his peers, Lan Wangji rose above it all, was above it all. And while no one could claim that his distribution of punishments wasn’t as fair and equitable as might be asked, it was evident to Su She that he only did it that way because it was the subject of yet another rule.

But no one ever seem to notice or care, no one ever thought it as stupid as Su She did, right up until that moment when he’d seen Yu Zhuliu making a long-suffering face like that where Lan Wangji couldn’t see, and Su She couldn’t help but smile a little, heart suddenly warm with a feeling of fellowship.

Yu Zhuliu had seen him smiling, caught his eyes, and rolled his eyes again, this time more pointedly – a gesture aimed just at him, a shared joke – and that was it; Su She was lost.

Su She was in Lan Wangji’s age group, even if they weren’t close (no one was close to Lan Wangji), so it wasn’t hard to find time to go over and talk to Yu Zhuliu.

The conversations were mostly one-sided to start with, which Su She had expected. Yu Zhuliu was a reserved man, and of course there was always that master-servant divide lying between them like a gulf. Still, Su She had been a servant once, which Yu Zhuliu knew – everyone knew – and in time Su She got him to ease up a little, talk back, commiserate.

Su She told him about his family, the little he remembered of them after all these years; in return, Yu Zhuliu unbent enough to tell him a little about his own background: the mother that hated him as the living sign of her disgrace, the constant accusations that he didn’t deserve to bear the Yu surname.

“Have you ever considered changing it?” Su She asked, helping him fold Lan Wangji’s laundry. It wasn’t something he’d ever have permitted himself to do under other circumstances, knowing how important it was to distance himself from all things relating to servants, but he was willing to make some compromises if it meant getting to spend a little more time with Yu Zhuliu. “Obviously if you want to keep it, it’s yours; they can’t deprive you of your birthright like that. But it doesn’t seem like you particularly want it.”

Yu Zhuliu was quiet for a long moment. “Once,” he said, his eyes distant. “I considered it once, before I joined the Lan sect. I wasn’t yet sure who had been the one to – well. Suffice it to say that I was seriously considering an offer I had received to join a different sect, and they offered to allow me to adopt the main clan’s surname as my own if I performed well.”

Su She shuddered in automatic revulsion at the thought.

Yu Zhuliu saw it, of course, and chuckled. “It would have been a great honor,” he reminded him. “Especially for someone like me – to be able to shed my old name would have been enough, but to replace it with a name that was even more powerful..?”

“Gratifying,” Su She agreed, a little begrudgingly. The idea of giving away his identity like that, giving in to the arrogant young masters’ lies that they were better than him just because they had a fancier surname, revolted him, but he could, he supposed, see a little of the spiteful appeal of it. “Like – stamping on their faces with it, showing them what they’ve lost.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you take that offer, then?” They both knew the Lan sect would never in a million years extend a similar offer, even though there were plenty of branch families surnamed Lan and another one more or less wouldn’t much matter. It wasn’t proper, though, and no one cared more about propriety than the Lan sect. “With the clan surname, they would have had to make you a proper disciple.”

Su She would never agree to such an offer himself. He might want, in the darkest parts of his heart, to be Lan Wangjii, to be something better than he was, might occasionally daydream of what his life might have been life if they’d been born swapped in place, but he didn’t – he wouldn’t sell his surname for it.

(He wouldn’t sell his brother for it, even if all he had of his brother was a surname and some swiftly fading memories.)

But Yu Zhuliu hated his surname and all it represented. He wasn’t like Su She, always thinking of the past and the might-have-beens and growing fat on all his resentment and grievances; if Yu Zhuliu could shed his skin like a cicada, emerge somewhere else a brand-new person, he would do it in a heartbeat.

“It was the Lan sect that saved me,” he said simply. “And so I owed it to them to come here, no matter what the Wen sect offered me.”

The Wen sect. Wow. That was sure some offer to turn down; they commanded the loyalty of over a third of the smaller sects, maybe even close to half, and Yu Zhuliu could have gotten their surname.

Of course, the Wen sect offered that out much more readily than other sects did, but still.

On the other hand, if Yu Zhuliu had accepted, if he’d become Wen Zhuliu, then Su She would never have had the chance to meet him, or would have only met him under bad circumstances.

Maybe he wouldn’t have liked Wen Zhuliu that much at all.

“Your loyalty is admirable,” he finally said, after wracking his brain for something appropriately neutral to say.

That got him another chuckle. “Did you know that lies make you look like you’ve tasted something sour?”

“I,” Su She said with dignity, “am a great liar. You just haven’t noticed it yet.”

Yu Zhuliu was silent for a moment, maybe reviewing things he knew about Su She. “I suppose you probably are,” he said thoughtfully. “Which means it’s the Lan sect that you don’t like.”

Su She shrugged. “I don’t think I’d like any sect,” he confessed, even though he knew he shouldn’t.

Yu Zhuliu’s overwhelming trait was his loyalty, after all – he’d sell Su She out in a heartbeat if he thought the Lan sect deemed it necessary. Su She was mostly just counting on being so pointless and insignificant that Yu Zhuliu wouldn’t think it was worth telling anyone about him.

It probably wasn’t, either. Why would the Lan sect care about someone like Su She one way or another? He wasn’t anything to them, not really; even as a disciple, his only purpose was to act as an adornment, to bring honor and glory that would reflect upwards onto the great clan surnamed Lan.

“Why?” Yu Zhuliu asked. He sounded honestly curious – honestly interested, interested in Su She for something other than being an extra body in a formation or another cannon fodder to throw to the dogs when a night-hunt went badly.

Su She wanted to tell him everything.

But Yu Zhuliu was loyal, always loyal, and Su She may not be as smart as Lan Wangji but he wasn’t stupid.

“They’re all the same in the end, full of arrogant young masters,” he said breezily. “I mean, did you see the group of disasters at Teacher Lan’s lectures?”

Perhaps that was a harsh assessment, but he’d humiliated himself in front of them all on that night-hunt that went wrong against the Waterborne Abyss, with his still-shaky control over his sword, trying as always to live up to Lan Wangji’s example the way they kept always telling him he should and then being looked down upon as an idiot for even trying – why would he do something so stupid obviously he can never match Lan Wangji always aiming above his station and thinks too highly of himself still a servant after all obviously he’ll never be good enough – and the mere thought of them tasted like bile and hatred in his mouth.

“The head disciple from the Jiang sect seemed fairly smart,” Yu Zhuliu said, and Su She scoffed.

“He’s very smart, very smart indeed,” he said scathingly. “So smart that he’s forgotten who he is and where he came from. Eventually someone’s going to remember that he’s a servant’s son, not a proper young master at all, and he’ll pay for it in blood and tears – if he’s lucky.”

“Do you think so?”

“The Jiang heir has an inferiority complex as deep as the ocean –” Su She knew what one looked like; after all, he saw one every day in the mirror. “– and eventually the time will come when he has to be sect leader in his father’s place. On that day, all those pretty words about how wonderful Wei Wuxian is, how smart, how talented, what a credit to his sect, they’ll all fall onto Jiang Wanyin’s ears like a lash on his back. And when the time comes that he has to sacrifice something, well, we’ll see how much being smart helps Wei Wuxian then.”

“An interesting perspective,” Yu Zhuliu remarked.

“An accurate one,” Su She retorted. “He was raised as a proper young master, not a servant, and so he won’t even know to see the danger when it comes. None of them would.”

“No, I suppose not. It’s always the things you don’t know you don’t know that can harm you the most.” Yu Zhuliu straightened up – the laundry was done; they’d finished it ages ago. “We will have to continue this discussion another time, Su-gongzi –”

“Su She, please. Su Minshan, if you must.”

“Su Minshan, then. I look forward to speaking with you again.”

When Yu Zhuliu let, Su She hugged himself in glee, allowing himself a moment of triumph at a successful conversation with the person he liked, then went to wash himself clean again. He wasn’t dirty, and it was the middle of the day, but he wanted to make sure no one could smell the bleaching herbs they put in the laundry on him. He didn’t want to risk any more mockery, and anyway, it had gotten to be a habit.

As he went to the baths, he saw Lan Wangji standing on a nearby pathway, looking up at the sky as if deep in thought. He must be on his rounds again, even though it wasn’t his day for it, or even the right time; he’d taken to haunting the routine work of it as if it were the only thing keeping him grounded.

Whatever. It wasn’t Su She’s business.

Except maybe it was, because Lan Wangji kept – looking at him, over the next few days. Which was weird, because Lan Wangji never looked at anybody, his nose firmly stuck up in the sky where mortals dared not tread, and it was starting to make Su She nervous.

Surely Lan Wangji couldn’t tell – about him. He’d never been able to before, why would he start now?

And yet…what if he could?

What if Lan Wangji had figured him out? Figured out Su She’s rebellious heart, how he wasn’t grateful at all not matter nice a face he put on, how he hated the stupid Lan sect rules and the stupid Lan sect disciples and the stupid Lan sect arrogance, how he secretly schemed to learn everything he could and transcribe everything he couldn’t memorize so that he could take it back home to Moling one day and show his brother everything he’d learned, how he despised them all for their arrogance –

“Will you be attending the archery competition?” Lan Wangji asked stiffly. He did everything stiffy, like he was actually a statute carved out of jade and only just pretending to be human. “At the Nightless City?”

“Naturally,” Su She said, not bothering to look up from the verses he was copying. Not the most polite, not as kiss-ass as he ought to be when faced with the glory that was the second jade of the Lan sect, but he’d found that as long as he kept his tone as formal and humble as possible, he could get away with a little. “It may be nothing like yours, Lan-er-gongzi, but I do have some skill at it, you know.”

Not that most people thought so. They would be travelling to Qishan in three groups, for easier and more secure travel – one for the adults, one led by the Twin Jades to represent the shining hope of their sect, and the last of everyone else making up the numbers. He was in the last group, of course, even though his talent for musical cultivation was one of the strongest in the junior generation and his swordplay good enough to only lose to Lan Wangji three times out of every five – better results than a good half of the group of well-born Lan clansman being sent out as the representatives of their sect.

Was he bitter about it? Yes.

Lan Wangji hesitated for a long moment, and even shifted from one leg to the other – a sign of nervousness in most people, maybe. In Lan Wangji? Who even knew.

After a while, he said, “My group has an extra place,” sounding almost like it was an offer, and the entire thing was so bizarre that Su She immediately became suspicious.

“What do you want?” he asked.

Lan Wangji blinked at him.

“He who is unaccountably solicitous is hiding bad intentions, Lan-er-gongzi,” Su She clarified, glaring up at him and unable to keep his mouth from twisting as though he’d bitten something sour. He knew he often looked like that, and it made the female cultivators downrate his handsomeness, but he’d been the subject of too many jokes to stop himself from being so bitterly defensive. “You don’t know me, you don’t like me, and you don’t go out of your way to offer a better place to anyone, even if there’s no official rule against it. So what is it you want?”

Lan Wangji shook his head.

“If you don’t want anything, why offer?” Su She sneered. It would be just like Lan Wangji to have decided to recognize a promising disciple that deserve a chance to shine – he was perfect like that, after all, always thinking of others, always a true gentleman. Well, Su She had endured a lifetime of being seen as promising by gentlemen, being recognized as a talent without once being thought of as a person, having to humiliate himself in front of them like a dancing monkey and worst of all of having to be grateful to them for allowing him to do it, and he was sick and tired of swallowing down that bitter draught.

He didn’t need the better spot, not this time – he would be going one way or the other – and he wasn’t willing to give Lan Wangji of all people the satisfaction of doing him a favor he didn’t even want.

Lan Wangji shifted from one side to the other again, waiting a long time before he spoke again. Maybe it was nervousness.

“Yu Zhuliu is in my party,” he finally said.

At first Su She didn’t understand the point Lan Wangji was making, terse and oblique as the other man habitually was, and then he understood it far too well.

He saw red.

“What business is that of yours?” he shouted, dropping his brush and jumping to his feet, forgetting all of his good intentions to try to keep his head down and his tone at least plausibly polite. “So what if I spend some time with him when he’s free? Not every waking hour of his is yours!”

Lan Wangji’s eyes darted from side to side. “No,” he said. “I didn’t mean –”

“You didn’t mean what?!”

“You like him.” A meaningful pause. “Very much.”

“Yes, I do,” Su She said, his cheeks flushed red. “So what? So I cut my sleeve sometimes, big deal. It’s not against any of your stupid rules – every attempt to introduce such a restriction formally has been rejected, I checked. This isn’t something you can punish me for!”

He could, of course. No one would question Lan Wangji issuing yet another punishment – he could say it was due to Su She’s noise, no shouting in the Cloud Recesses – and of course not every type of punishment was the sort that got meted out in the Punishment Hall. There were other types, more insidious – isolation, ostracization, missing out on opportunities for advancement, resources…even merely sentencing him to write lines could be used to deny him his coveted spot at the Nightless City.

Lan Wangji wouldn’t do that, though.

Somehow that just made Su She angrier. Who told Lan Wangji to be so fucking perfect?

“You can add it to your list of achievements,” he adds bitterly. “Everyone knows you’re better than me - better at manners, better at cultivation, better at everything, and now better in this way, too, because I’m a cutsleeve and you’re not –”

Lan Wangji flinched.

Su She’s jaw dropped in shock. “You are?”

Lan Wangji’s features weren’t exactly easy to ready for anyone except Lan Xichen, but at the moment it was plain enough that even Su She could figure out that he was miserable.

“For who?!” A terrible thought slipped into his mind. “It had better not be Yu Zhuliu!”

“No!” Lan Wangji said hastily. “No – no. Not at all.”

“Good,” Su She said fiercely. “Because he’s mine. Or, well, not mine, we haven’t agreed on anything, I haven’t even said anything, but I’m trying and – well, it doesn’t matter. You know what I mean.”

He wasn’t actually sure Lan Wangji did. He wasn’t sure he knew what he meant.

But Lan Wangji nodded, as if his confused rambling had been as clear as a Lan sect rule.

“I thought you might like to spend more time with him,” he said, and – oh. His offer. The Nightless City.

“…I would,” Su She said begrudgingly. “Thanks.”

For Yu Zhuliu, he’d even put up Lan Wangji’s charity.

“Who is it for you, anyway?” he asked, unable to resist and wanting to take advantage of this strange intimacy, this momentary breach of etiquette undoubtedly never to be repeated, but Lan Wangji shook his head, refusing to share. “Fine. Have it your way.”

It wasn’t that he cared, anyway.

Not about Lan Wangji’s mysterious lover, and not about Lan Wangji himself – this wasn’t a charming little flaw that made the whole seem more relatable, wasn’t something that generated fellow feeling, the way Yu Zhuliu’s gentle mockery had. So what if both of them were secretly cutsleeves in a sect that most assuredly did not approve of such things? That didn’t mean anything. It didn’t give them anything in common. They still weren’t the same, not at all, not with Lan Wangji was nobly bearing the burden of it while Su She had given in to temptation almost at once…

No, this was just more of the same.

More of Lan Wangji being, despite all of Su She’s efforts to the contrary, Su She’s idol, his ideal. The person who he hated most because he envied him the most, the person who made him hate himself as being nothing but the lesser copy, the person he despised for making him sometimes feel as if maybe Lan Wangji’s better birth really did entitle him to be better.

So no. He didn’t care.

(It wasn’t that Lan Wangji had seen him, recognized him as something the same. As a person, worthy of recognition, even if not of respect. It wasn’t.)

Maybe he cared a little bit.

He must have cared, or else he would have just run away when the Wen sect descended on the Lan sect with flame and sword instead of being a stupid idiot and going to look for him.

(He told himself it was because Yu Zhuliu would undoubtedly be wherever Lan Wangji was, and it was a pretty decent lie, except that he went to the Library Pavilion and Yu Zhuliu wasn’t there. So he told himself that Yu Zhuliu would have wanted him to protect Lan Wangji, and that lie worked better.)

Of course, once he got there, the stupid noble gentlemanly fucker wouldn’t even listen to him and run.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the important one?” Su She bellowed. This was clearly not the time for manners, and anyway Lan Wangji had already seen beneath his mask once; another time wouldn’t hurt. “Yu Zhuliu’s out there fighting to keep you alive and you’re wasting all his efforts, you’re just standing here, waiting for them to come get you –”

“It is necessary,” Lan Wangji said, solemn as ever. “Someone must keep their attention here, instead of following my brother.”

“Oh fuck you,” Su She said, and took out his sword. Lan Wangji just had to play the fucking brother card, didn’t he?

Yu Zhuliu would want me to do this, he told himself as he tried to fight. He was pretty decent, but he was just a disciple, not a soldier, and as a Lan sect disciple he’d never killed anything before. After a while, he ended up shouting for Lan Wangji to throw him his guqin – the one Su She favored was rented from the sect, lacking as he did the money to purchase her in full, and so he didn’t have it with him – and he attacked with that instead for a while, being better at music than he was at the sword.

The lash of his music was less powerful than Lan Wangji’s single-note waves of power, but Su She was also sneakier about it, and a few unexpected distractions during a battle were much more helpful to Lan Wangji’s defense than any amount of getting himself killed waving a sword around would have.

In the end, unsurprisingly, they were defeated. Su She ended up surrendering in fairly dramatic manner, knowing that the Wen sect might preserve Lan Wangji’s life as a useful hostage but that they couldn’t give a damn about his own and, as always, humiliation was the path to survival; he bet Lan Wangji was already judging him for it, for his weakness, for how pathetic he was when he was sniveling at Wen Xu’s feet as they beat him black and blue to make a point to Lan Wangji, but he didn’t care because he bowed his head and lived while the disciple next to him that didn’t died.

Lan Wangji didn’t bow his head either, but they just broke his leg before throwing them both in a carriage headed to the Nightless City.

The worst of it was, he didn’t even have Yu Zhuliu around to comfort him.

“I ordered him to go with my brother,” Lan Wangji said in belated explanation. “To protect him.”

“You could have said,” Su She said, curled up in the corner of the carriage and feeling sick to his stomach. He should have just run away. He could be in Moling right now if he’d just run away, and who would have known? Of course, then he would have to have left behind all the things he’d prepared, and Yu Zhuliu, too… “Maybe I’d rather have been on that team. Why’d he run, anyway? I bet he had a great reason.”

“He took the key books of our sect –”

Su She rolled his eyes. Of course there was a good nice selfless noble reason for Lan Xichen having fled, leaving his younger brother behind as a sacrifice to cover his tracks – proper young masters never did anything without one of those. It was like they thought that admitting that they were afraid for their lives would be worse than actually dying.

“He took what he could,” Lan Wangji said, his eyes cast down. He wasn’t really talking to Su She. “But so much was still lost.”

Su She thought about all the copies of the books he’d been making, all the knowledge he’d been slowly siphoning away over the course of years, and how they were hidden far away from the main buildings of the Lan sect. He’d probably have more than they did, when this was all said and done, assuming he survived. Wouldn’t that just drive them all up the wall? All those stiff smug elders who thought they were better than him would have to come and beg him to give them the books –

Lan Wangji would, too. Those books were probably his only friends, just as they were Su She’s.

“…maybe not all lost,” he said begrudgingly, and curled up tighter, cursing himself as an idiot.

He might be feeling all warm and fuzzy towards Lan Wangji over something as stupid as a single moment of shared misery, but just because he had feelings about it didn’t mean Lan Wangji did. More than likely, when it came down to it, Lan Wangji would put aside all his noble manners and sell Su She out in a heartbeat, and probably not even count it as a betrayal. After all, in the end, Su She was still just a servant that had temporarily made good, still just cannon fodder, meant to be used and sacrificed for the sake of his better-born master.

At least Lan Wangji had probably given up on expecting him to be grateful about it, given the despicable personality he’d already seen Su She display.

It irritated him how much that mattered.

“There’s always copies, after all,” he added. “And before you say anything, I know it’s not the same as having the original, but it’s worth something, isn’t it?”

He was worth something, even if he was only Lan Wangji’s copy.

“That’s true,” Lan Wangji said. He was quiet for a long while after that, long enough that Su She started seriously considering going to sleep because unconsciousness was preferable to worrying about what was going to happen to them once they got to the Nightless City, and then he said, “You are unhappy.”

Su She turned to goggle at him. “Of course I’m unhappy! The Cloud Recesses was lit on fire, we’re prisoners, we’re probably going to die painfully –”

“Not now. Before.” A pause. “With the sect.”

Su She shut his mouth and glared suspiciously.

“I won’t say anything,” Lan Wangji promised. “I only want to know.”

Su She shook his head stubbornly. “You won’t understand,” he said, a little helplessly, when Lan Wangji continued to look at him, wanting an explanation. “It’s not – something you would understand. You’ve always had everything, all your life.”

Lan Wangji frowned a little, clearly thinking it over, clearly taking it seriously, and for a moment there Su She kind of hated Yu Zhuliu for making him actually like Lan Wangji a little bit. “Not – everything,” he finally said. “My family…”

He trailed off, probably thinking about where they were now. A father locked away in seclusion was different from one on the verge of death; a missing brother, an injured uncle…

Su She huffed and turned his head away, refusing to feel sympathetic. “At least you had them,” he said bitterly. “I haven’t seen my family since they sold me to your sect, and at this point I’m too scared to go visit them.”

“…the Lan sect does not keep slaves.”

“No, of course not,” Su She said. “You just offer people more money than they’ve ever seen in their lives if they’ll hand over their six-year-old son to be properly trained as a servant, because it’s better to get them while they’re young – teach them to be quiet and inobtrusive and grateful for how much better it is to spend their life cleaning up the shit that sticks to your boots. And the worst part is, you are grateful for it, no matter how bad it is, no matter how much you miss your home or your family or your brother, because the buyer could have picked him instead of you and then you’d be the one stuck on some farm somewhere doing nothing with your life, just waiting to see if he’ll come back one day.”

The difference with Su She was that he’d figured out pretty quick that going back wasn’t enough.

When he’d realized how important it was to cultivate a golden core at a young age, he’d saved up every bit of money he could on top of what he sent his family every month, volunteered for every job that paid and even bit his tongue and took out extravagant loans from the sect that he would be paying off for years to come, and he’d hired a rogue cultivator to go teach his brother the basics of cultivation.

He hoped that was enough to make up for all the years he’d been gone, even though he doubted it; he wouldn’t think it was enough, himself, and surely his brother was like him. He was still too young to go outside the sect by himself – he would have to apply for a token, and agree to take someone with him, and he didn’t want to take anyone with him except maybe Yu Zhuliu, who wasn’t an option.

He didn’t want anyone to know if his return home went as badly as he feared it would. If his brother turned out to be as bitter as he was, and turned that bitterness against him –

“You have a brother?” Lan Wangji asked, because of course he’d noticed the important part.

“A twin,” Su She whispered, and turned his face away.

They did not speak again until the Nightless City, and even then it was limited to necessary things, neither of them wanting to risk the fury of their Wen sect guards. After a while, it was announced that the Wen sect would be holding a camp for all young masters, meant to indoctrinate them into righteous conduct, and that they would be attending whether they wanted to or not. They had probably assumed that Su She was well-born because of the fine clothing and fancy hairpiece he wore, and never knew that they were loaned to him by a sect that liked to surround itself with pretty things even if it had to pay for the clothing itself, and Su She had never been happier to be counted among his supposed peers.

Still, when the indoctrination camp began, and Wen Chao – accompanied by three bodyguards at all times, because he was even more of an arrogant snot than even Su She had previously imagined an arrogant young master could be – began lording it over them all, Su She drifted over to Lan Wangji’s side again.

Mostly because no one else would, other than maybe that troublemaker from Yunmeng, Wei Wuxian.

“I know some curses,” he told Lan Wangji, pretending to be casual about it as if he hadn’t accused Lan Wangji’s sect of various awful things. “Really nasty ones. Want me to try one on Wen Chao? I can be subtle.”

“He’d figure out it was you when he checked us all for the inevitable backlash marks,” Wei Wuxian put in. “Then he’d just kill you to get rid of it. Stupid idea.”

“Depends on how quick-acting the curse was,” Su She said peevishly. He hadn’t even been talking to Wei Wuxian, and he hadn’t forgotten who it was that had charged in like a hero from a play to rescue him when he’d overreached himself fighting the Waterborne Abyss even if he doubted Wei Wuxian remembered him in return. “Also, why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be off somewhere drawing fire onto the Jiang sect?”

“What? No,” Wei Wuxian said. “I’m not –”

“I mean, I certainly can’t think of any other reasons for your actions, Wei-gongzi,” Su She said, his voice set at its most simpering. It wasn’t like there were any Lan sect elders here to punish him for being disrespectful, after all, and he figured that helping defend the Library Pavilion with Lan Wangji probably earned him a little space to be himself for once. “Aggravating Wen-gonzi, making light of everything, galivanting around flirting with girls – one might almost feel as if you’re on vacation. Surely your Jiang sect will not have to pay for any of that, politically speaking; it’s not as if the Wen sect thinks of them as one of their greatest rivals and is looking for any chance to cut them down…but no, surely it’s my misunderstanding. I’m sure Wei-gongzi has a thoughtful plan, being such a good servant to his sect.”

Wei Wuxian frowned at him. “But that’s not what I’m doing,” he said, but his voice came out a little weaker this time. “That’s not it at all, I was just…hm. Hey, Jiang Cheng! Jiang Cheng, I have a question for you…”

Su She watched him leave with satisfaction, then turned back to Lan Wangji, who was looking at him again.

“Why do you dislike him?” he asked before Su She could change the subject.

“I don’t dislike him,” Su She said. “I envy him, sometimes. The rest of the time, I pity him.”

“You think Jiang Wanyin will cast him aside, one day,” Lan Wangji said, and Su She thought back to that conversation he’d had with Yu Zhuliu. Lan Wangji had clearly heard more of it than he’d let on.

“Well, yes,” he conceded, because he did. He’d seen how close they were, which was only going to make it worse for them both when it inevitably happened.

“Would you tell me why? In your own words?”

Su She frowned at Lan Wangji, who raised his hands as if in surrender. “Please.”

Well, if he was going to ask nicely…

Su She decided to pretend that he was talking to Yu Zhuliu.

“Fine. You want my opinion? Whoever raised Wei Wuxian ruined him,” he said bluntly. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but he doesn’t act like a servant – he doesn’t even act like a second son. He acts like a master. He acts like he’s the next heir to the Jiang sect, not Jiang Wanyin; you’ve seen how he’s always bossing him around and refusing to listen to him even when he tells him to behave.”

“He’s his shixiong,” Lan Wangji objected, but mildly.

“For now. Do you really think Wei Wuxian’s going to suddenly learn how to be obedient the second Jiang Wanyin gets instated as sect leader? Or do you think he’ll continue to run rampant, doing just as he likes the way he always has, with Jiang Wanyin bending to his every whim the way he always has? What do you think the cultivation world will think of that?”

Lan Wangji was frowning deeper now, thoughtful.

“The cultivation world isn’t kind to servants who forget their place. If he keeps acting the way he has been, the time will come when he does something so outrages that Jiang Wanyin will have no choice but to throw him away,” Su She concluded. “A servant’s son, however precious, is nothing when weighed against the duty owed to the sect inherited by your ancestors. I mean, even your brother put that first and foremost, and he’s your blood.”

“…I agreed with Brother’s decision.”

“Sure. But did he ask you first?”

Lan Wangji remained quiet.

“If it makes you feel better, there’s always a chance that it won’t become an issue,” Su She continued, mostly to avoid having to listen to Lan Wangji’s injured sort of silence. “Maybe they’ll luck out and instead something will happen to remind Wei Wuxian that he’s a servant and that his job is to throw himself into the abyss to save Jiang Wanyin, probably without even getting thanked for it.”

Lan Wangji looked at him sidelong. After a long few moments of contemplation – Su She really couldn’t stand the way Lan Wangji looked at him, as if he was trying to figure out an interesting puzzle, but he also couldn’t get enough of it, it was horrible – he said, “It will not be that way, with Yu Zhuliu.”

Caught, Su She glared at him.

“How would you solve it?” Lan Wangji asked.

“What?”

“You were a servant, once,” Lan Wangji pointed out. “You are no Yu Zhuliu, no Wei Wuxian, to sacrifice yourself for the Lan sect, and it pains you to pretend to humble yourself before us. What is your solution? You are too clever not to have one.”

Su She wrapped his arms around himself, wishing he didn’t enjoy being called clever as much as he did. It didn’t sound condescending when Lan Wangji said it, the way it did when the Lan sect’s teachers did – like praising a well-performing pet that they’d raised themselves, patting themselves on the back for doing such a good job in training him. He sounded almost as if he resented Su She for being smart enough to see the messy contradiction that was Wei Wuxian’s life, and for being the only person he could ask to shed some light on the subject.

Su She didn’t mind resentment, not even aimed at him. On the contrary, it made it feel real.

Why wouldn’t Lan Wangji resent having to respect someone like him?

“I’m leaving, eventually,” he confessed. “I’m going to start my own sect, or try, anyway, if I can get the money for it from somewhere. Back at home in Moling. Maybe, if I’m very lucky, I’ll be able to convince Yu Zhuliu to come with me, notwithstanding the stupid debt of loyalty he feels he owes your sect.”

Lan Wangji looked contemplative again, surprised but not displeased, as if Su She had suggested something he’d never even considered possible. “What cultivation style will you use?”

“Yours, of course,” Su She said, rolling his eyes at him. “What am I supposed to do, come up with a new one of my own? In what free time, exactly?”

“People will say you’re copying the Lan sect.”

“People have said I’m a copy all my life,” Su She pointed out. “Let the cultivation world sneer and the Lan sect break its rule against gossiping to look down their noses at me – I’ll still be sitting by myself as a sect leader in my own right while they’re just disciples. I’ll make my own rules, admit anyone into the sect that I want, and that’ll be worth all of their disdain.”

He hoped it would be, anyway. He suspected he’d end up being bitter about it, but then again he was always bitter, and anyway, what could he do about it?

If life had taught him one thing, it was that there was no way to make people stop talking, stop mocking, because no matter if he took three baths a day and scrubbed until the blood ran red he would still underneath it all be a servant, a farmer’s son. But he was more than that, he knew he was more than that, and the only alternative – to stay in the Lan sect as a second-class barely-better-than-a-servant for the rest of his life – just wasn’t tolerable.

He’d do what he could and figure out the rest when he came to it.

“You think Wei Wuxian will do the same?”

“Probably?” Su She said and shrugged. “I mean, he has the reputation for being an unorthodox genius, so maybe he’ll come up with his own cultivation style to go with it – you can do things like that when you’re rich and have the time – but as for whether he will form a new sect…how would I know? Maybe he’ll go be a rogue cultivator instead, the way his father did when he got tired of being stuck in the Jiang sect’s shadow. Depends on how many people go with him.”

Lan Wangji hummed thoughtfully. “A rogue cultivator has only to concern himself with his own wellbeing,” he said slowly, as if feeling something out. “A sect – with others.”

“I mean, you could try to take a family around as a rogue cultivator, but I think Wei Wuxian is a walking illustration of why you don’t do that.”

A small flinch. Why were all these well-born sons of the nobility so delicate? It was only loss.

“But you are certain he will go.”

“Well, yes. Either he figures out that he needs to shut up and listen to someone else for once or he leaves, and I don’t think he knows how to listen.” Su She shrugged again. “Why do you care, anyway? He’s Jiang sect. It’s not any of our business.”

Lan Wangji was silent, but somehow it came across as a meaningful silence. An almost pointed silence.

An embarrassed silence.

“…him, really?” Su She said, twisting around to gawk a little at where Wei Wuxian was having a furious whispered conversation with Jiang Cheng that involved a lot of gestures and even more suspicious looks from the nearby Wen sect guards. “I mean, sure, he’s attractive, no one’s going to deny that – he’s not rated fourth for nothing – but…really? Him? He’s not exactly the quiet-and-thoughtful Lan sect type I thought you’d go for, you know?”

Lan Wangji, with all the great grace and dignity and pomp of a proper young master of high birth and proper breeding, buried his face into his hands.

Su She covered his mouth with his sleeve to keep from laughing at him. It wasn’t exactly nice to laugh at someone who was clearly all too aware of their evidently terrible taste in men.

From the way Lan Wangji glared through his fingers, he wasn’t doing a very good job of muffling his snickers.

It was a good laugh, which was nice because it was the last thing Su She had to laugh about for long while.

The “indoctrination camp” was frankly awful. It wasn’t that he thought being forced to do servant’s work like tilling fields or doing laundry was the worst thing in the world (although he did resent that they didn’t bother paying them for it), and memorizing useless maxims was more or less what the Lan sect excelled at the most, but the constant air of vicious supervision, the threat of punishment, of having the swords they had all worked so hard to obtain taken away from them…

And that was all before they were forced to act as bait in Wen Chao’s night hunt.

“I’m serious,” Su She muttered to Lan Wangji. “I know so many good curses.”

Lan Wangji condescended to elbow him in the side to get him to shut up.

“I miss Yu Zhuliu,” Su She complained instead. “He’s much better company than you are.”

“No one is better company than Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian piped up. He was hanging out by them – not quite with them, but nearby – again.

“I thought the Core-Melting Hand was terrifying,” Jiang Cheng opined. He was following Wei Wuxian, as always, and sticking as close as his shadow, as if he was afraid of losing him. Maybe he was. “All silent and stoic and looming.”

“He doesn’t loom. He’s just tall.”

“All tall people loom. Look at Chifeng-zun, he looms even when he’s sitting down.”

Chifeng-zun, who was the leader of the Nie sect, was, in fact, unreasonably tall and, yes, loomed quite a bit.

“Well, Yu Zhuliu doesn’t,” Sue She said. And then, because he didn’t actually like either of the Jiang sect’s young masters no matter what Lan Wangji might think of them, he added, “Not that you of all people have the place to say anything, Jiang-gongzi. Family shame should not be spread in public.”

He thought that would make an impact, remind them of their manners, but instead all three of them – Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and even Lan Wangji – looked at him in confusion.

“What?” he said, staring at them back. “I know Jiang-gongzi’s maternal family is Meishan Yu…isn’t it?”

“It is,” Wei Wuxian said, sounding baffled. “But what does…wait. Yu Zhuliu – his Yu is Meishan Yu?”

“Yes?” Su She said, looking between them. Yu Zhuliu had said it was no secret, but the junior generation was treating this as if the information had hit them like a sudden landslide: Jiang Cheng had gone white, Wei Wuxian’s jaw was hanging open, and even Lan Wangji’s eyes were as wide and round as the moon. “You didn’t know?”

“I assumed it was another Yu,” Jiang Cheng croaked.

“Meishan Yu probably doesn’t want to admit that one of their own went to work as a servant for another sect after they kicked him out,” Su She concluded. It seemed relatively reasonable to him, but somehow that made all of them look even more upset. “What’s the matter?”

They all just shook their heads and made their way away, looking stunned to a man, and Su She was left to roll his eyes and wonder what in the world made young masters act like that. Something in the water, maybe?

He would curse himself later for making the joke, because there was something in the water of the cave they went to, and that something was, apparently, a corrupted Xuanwu.

(Lan Wangji was still glaring at him for trying to pull the girl out when Wen Chao’s whore demanded it, but it wasn’t his life on the line if the Wen sect went through with their threat to start slaughtering disciples left and right if they couldn’t get to her. Anyway, it wasn’t like he wouldn’t be able to cut her in a way that let out a bit of blood but left her the mobility she might need to escape – she was a cultivator, too! What did it matter that she was a woman?)

Wei Wuxian was holding the Xuanwu’s attention with a fire talisman, and Jiang Cheng was leading the disciples to the pool with the water, which Lan Wangji had identified as containing an exit…as usual, all the young masters were showing their stuff. In a burst of resentful fury, the sort he hadn’t had in weeks, Su She leaned down and grabbed a bow and some arrows. If he shot the Xuanwu’s eye, he might be able to –

A hand fell on his shoulder, and Su She turned to look.

Lan Wangji shook his head. He didn’t seem angry about the girl anymore.

“Keep them,” he said, nodding at the arrows. “There will be Wen sect soldiers waiting for us outside.”

“You don’t think I can make the shot,” Su She accused, feeling obscurely betrayed. “You scored so high in the archery competition – I bet you think you could do better, is that it? You want –”

“If you miss, you may anger it further,” Lan Wangji said. “And I have promised Yu Zhuliu that I would see you safe.”

Su She’s anger was extinguished as quickly as a candle blowing out. “You – did? He asked about me?”

“Before he left with my brother.”

“You should’ve said something,” Su She grumbled, but he let himself be lured into allowing Lan Wangji to use him as a crutch as they waded into the water. At the last moment, Wei Wuxian threw the fire talisman into the air and ran after them, causing the Xuanwu to go crazy and chase, and then there was a bit of frantic swimming – it felt more like drowning, even with Wei Wuxian leading the way for them both – before they got to the other side.

“I’m going to be sick,” Su She groaned, spitting up water, and then he still had to sit up and shoot an arrow back at one of the Wen sect guards that, as Lan Wangji had predicted, were out there.

Of course, a few seconds later the Xuanwu came bursting out of the side of cave, so they all had a whole different set of problems to deal with.

At least the Wen sect mostly ran away.

(Not all of them. A few of them stuck around to shoot some arrows at them – every bad thing Su She had ever thought about any young master, he thought twice for the Wen sect.)

“Next time we deal with this inside the cave,” Su She shouted, running for cover. He was able to get the arrow into the Xuanwu’s eye the way he had planned to in the cave when he finally had a little time to stand and aim – admittedly, he might’ve missed in the cave, he never shot half as well when he was angry – and in the end Lan Wangji shouted something about Chord Assassination and Wei Wuxian had a brilliant-stupid idea about using it like a spider web to make a net and Jiang Cheng swam like a fish to lure it through the right spot and all together with a bunch of the others they ended up chopping the Xuawnu’s head off.

Well, chopping was the wrong word. More like a shichen or more or wretched sawing using Chord Assassination as a garotte, relying mostly on Lan Wangji’s arm strength – Su She and the few other Lan disciples that knew the trick were holding the strings down with burning bleeding fingers, an essential part of the process but ultimately only a prop to help Lan Wangji do what he needed – and by the time it was done their robes were more red and crusted brown than white no matter how many bleaching herbs and special arrays had been used.

“All right, the threat is gone,” Su She said, feeling bitter again as he scanned the treeline. He didn’t even know what the bitterness was about this time. “Can we go already?”

“You can come to Yunmeng,” Jiang Cheng said. “It’s closest.”

No one disagreed.

More or less the second after they arrived, just as soon as they’d had baths and a change of clothing, Lan Wangji wanted to go back to the Cloud Recesses or to travel around looking for Lan Xichen. He looked strange in borrowed Yunmeng purple, even if they’d politely given him the lightest and bluest shade they had – really it was at best a pale lavender at best – but that sure didn’t seem to bother Wei Wuxian from the way he kept gawking at Lan Wangji when he thought Lan Wangji wasn’t looking.

“If you don’t trust your brother, trust Yu Zhuliu,” Su She told Lan Wangji irritably after yet another request that was swiftly denied. He’d made a half-hearted effort to remember his manners after the stress of the moment had passed, but Lan Wangji seemed unhappy any time he did so now he was back at being a bit more of his awful actual self. Of course, Lan Wangji liked Wei Wuxian so maybe he just had a kink for rude people? “Do you really think he’d take him anywhere you could find him?”

“Then I should be at the Cloud Recesses,” Lan Wangji said firmly. “To help rebuild –”

“To help make them a target again, you mean?” Su She said scathingly. “Did you forget, somehow, that you’re still a valuable hostage? That they’ll be expecting you to go back? Or is it just that all that nobility is starting to make your brain rot, you stupid fucker?”

Lan Wangji glared at him, tight-lipped, and stalked away, which meant that Su She’s point had probably been taken and they could have at least a little rest before having to start running again.

Before the war started. War, which terrorized the common people…

He needed to go to Moling to check on his family. Even if his brother rejected him, as he feared, he had to go – better rejected than bereaved, surely..?

Consumed with dark thoughts, Su She didn’t notice that he wasn’t alone until he walked straight into Wei Wuxian’s chest.

(Why were they all so tall?)

Wei Wuxian was glaring at him. “Listen,” he said, sounding angry. “Listen, whatever your name is, you can’t talk to Lan Zhan like that –”

Su She punched him in the face.

Wei Wuxian stared up at him in shock from where he’d fallen on his ass on the ground, but Su She didn’t care; he turned on his heel and stormed off, his face hot with rage and shame and bitterness.

“On second thought, we can leave right now,” he spat at a shocked-looking Lan Wangji. “I’m not staying here one more fucking second.”

Whatever your name is.

Like they hadn’t just gone through life and death together, hadn’t fought side by side, like he hadn’t risked his life on Wei Wuxian’s stupid plan, none of that mattered; he wasn’t important enough for Wei Wuxian to remember his name. People like him really were nothing but side characters to people like Wei Wuxian, weren’t they? Their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their bitterness – all irrelevant. An aside at best, mere marginalia, a splash of color to liven up the background.

Su She would bet money that Wei Wuxian knew the names of all the rich young masters that had attended classes with them, whether he liked them or he didn’t. He even knew the name of that little Wen clan member that he’d so bravely stood up for during the archery competition. But not Su She’s name, no, even though he’d been so graciously suffering all of the stupid back-and-forth pining Wei Wuxian had been doing with Lan Wangji, even though he’d let himself foolishly believe that because he and Lan Wangji had something in common that they might be something like friends or at least companions, that he might be treated as an equal –

No, these stupid rich young masters were all the same. He’d been right the first time.

Actually, now that he thought about it, why was he even here? Did he really think Lan Wangji would take his side over Wei Wuxian, who wasn’t only his peer in every sense of the word but also his beloved?

What a waste of time.

Su She left again. He wasn’t stupid enough to try to walk away just as he was, no matter how furious; how far would he get with no money, no food, and even his sword back in Wen custody? Instead he made his way down to the kitchens to ask for travel rations that could last for a while, and planned to visit the armory to borrow a sword after that. He’d need to pack lightly, but comprehensively: who knew how far the Wen sect’s influence spread? He might not be able to risk going into the cities and towns on the way to get supplies, not even wearing borrowed Yunmeng robes – even if he hid the incredibly obvious white forehead ribbon with a hat, he still walked like someone from the Lan sect, something he’d only really noticed once he was surrounded by people who slouched and bent and took large ground-eating steps instead of the sedate pace that he couldn’t quite break the habit of using.

“Su She,” Lan Wangji said from the door to the room they’d been given. Su She didn’t look at him or stop stuffing the travel rations and the spare robes he’d obtained into a qiangkun pouch.

“If you’re coming here to scold me about hitting Wei-gongzi, spare me,” Su She said stiffly. “We’re not in the Cloud Recesses; you don’t have any role over discipline here –”

“The silencing spell would have been more effective.”

Su She blinked, surprised by the apparent non-sequitur, and turned to look at him. “What?”

“To silence him,” Lan Wangji clarified, meaning Wei Wuxian.

As if that was the problem with what Su She had done.

“Yeah,” Jiang Cheng piped up – Su She hadn’t seen him standing by Lan Wangji’s side. “Hitting doesn’t work, he just pops right back up again. Please ignore him in the future; he’s an idiot.”

Well, Su She couldn’t disagree with that.

“You have a guest,” Jiang Cheng added. He looked almost – nervous? “Could – would you introduce us? Properly, this time.”

Su She couldn’t think of anyone he knew that Lan Wangji didn’t also know. Why would they ask him? The only person –

He stiffened abruptly, hope welling in his stomach. “Yu Zhuliu? He’s here?”

“Brother sent him to check on me,” Lan Wangji said. “And to tell me to stay where I am. You were right.”

It was – immensely gratifying to hear that.

“He and Mother are having tea,” Jiang Cheng added, looking impressed. “She insisted. It’s so weird.”

Yu Zhuliu looked the same as he always did, when Su She finally got to see him: tall and broad-shouldered, steady as a mountain, untroubled by wind or rain. There were a few points of similarity between his face and Madame Yu’s, if you looked for them, and he seemed pleased by her surprisingly gracious reception – when they spoke about it later, it turned out that he greatly admired her, the famous (or infamous) Violet Spider who had made a name for herself as a fierce warrior and top-grade cultivator, and who had never looked down at him for his birth when they’d both been younger.

Wei Wuxian didn’t apologize at any point, though he also didn’t call Su She out as the cause for his black eye. Instead, he opted to act as though their earlier confrontation had never happened, bounding into the room Su She shared with Lan Wangji – no one else rose at the same hour they did – and insisting on taking them around to see the sights of the Lotus Pier, to spend a day on a boat, another picking lotus seeds, and yet another shooting down kites.

Su She refused to go shoot down kites, not wanting to risk humiliation at something he was actually pretty decent at by competing at archery against Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and Lan Wangji, and spent the day with Yu Zhuliu instead.

“I missed you,” he blurted out instead of saying something reasonable. “I mean – not that I wanted you to be there and suffering, it was pretty awful, and who knows what the Wen sect might have tried to get you to do, it’s just – you know – ”

Yu Zhuliu was a reserved man who did not speak much. He put his hand on Su She’s and said only, “I know.”

Su She swallowed, and stared down at the hand that rested on him. It was a good hand, to his mind: broad in the palm, with short fingers that were the exact opposite of the long graceful ones favored by the Lan sect, but it did its vicious work well enough that the whole cultivation world knew about it – the whole cultivation world feared it.

Su She had never once worried about it. That probably made him a fool.

“Yu Zhuliu,” he said, very cautiously, even though he knew he shouldn’t speak; it was him being a fool again, except only this time he was a fool a hundred times over. “I know – I know that the Lan sect is very important to you. They rescued you at a bad moment in your life, and you owe them your loyalty; I understand that. But…do you think...maybe – one day in the future…”

Yu Zhuliu was looking at him steadily. He didn’t pull back his hand.

Su She gathered up his courage. “I’m going to go home to Moling, someday. Maybe even someday soon. And when I do, I’m not – I’m not going to go back to the Lan sect afterwards. I’m going to start my own sect, if I can manage it. When I do, would you – consider coming with me?”

He waited for Yu Zhuliu’s response with bated breath.

Yu Zhuliu looked serious and thoughtful, and he opened his mouth to respond –

There was a giant clatter from outside their door. “Wen sect!” someone shouted. “They’re here!”

Su She and Yu Zhuliu looked at each other, alarmed, and rushed out.

Unfortunately, that just meant they got a front row seat to the travesty that happened next.

Su She felt sick to his stomach: he’d predicted long ago that Wei Wuxian would one day rediscover that the Jiang sect saw him as only a servant, as something that could be sacrificed for the good of the sect, but each sizzle and snap of Zidian on Wei Wuxian’s back made him feel worse and worse. Su She’d been beaten plenty of times before, even whipped on occasion, but then again he’d never really taken the Lan sect to heart as his family – it wasn’t Wei Wuxian’s fault that he’d been so badly raised, tricked into thinking that they loved him like one of their own, into acting like a proud and arrogant young master who had a family that would hold up the world for him no matter what he did.

“She’s pulling the blows,” Yu Zhuliu murmured in his ear, too low for anyone else to hear, and that helped, a little. But not that much, since it was clear that Jiang Cheng, horrified, couldn’t tell, when it wasn’t clear if Wei Wuxian could, and then in the end it turned out to be all for nothing because Wang Lingjiao still demanded his hand.

Worse: he wasn’t sure if it was that, or the casual mention of a supervisory office, that was the step too far for Madame Yu.

Su She did not especially appreciate Madame Yu’s comments about Wang Lingjiao’s status as a servant, unsurprising and almost expected though they might be – although in a moment of horror-stricken hysteria he noticed that her words made Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and Lan Wangji simultaneously flinch and glance over at him in concern, apparently all to a one forgetting the circumstances they were all in out of fear of his sharp tongue – but seeing her beat up the disgusting Wang Lingjiao was oddly gratifying.

Right up until the Wen sect guards she had brought with her started attacking from the inside, while from outside the sound of bombardment began – Wen sect’s armies had been lying in wait.

“Kill them!” Wang Lingjiao screeched the second she was free to do so, lunging forward with claws extended at Madame Yu’s face. “Kill them all –”

She never got that far.

Yu Zhuliu’s palm caught her dead in the belly, the force of it throwing her backwards into the arms of one of her guards, who quickly scurried away with her.

“A waste,” Madame Yu said, straightening her clothing. “Of your abilities, primarily. Did she even have enough of a golden core to justify melting?”

Yu Zhuliu didn’t bother responding, drawing his sword, and the next thing Su She knew they were all being given swords from dead Wen sect guards and heading out into the battlefield.

“Oh, I really hate this,” Su She said, looking down at the one he was given. As a Wen sect blade, it wouldn’t have any pity on him, and he didn’t think he was good enough to avoid getting skewered the first second he got angry and stopped paying attention to all of his weak spots. “Doesn’t anyone have a spare guqin I can use instead? I know some really good attack songs.”

“I think I have one in my room, actually,” Wei Wuxian said, and led him away from the others, limping only a little. Madame Yu really must have been pulling her strikes – not that Su She hadn’t believe Yu Zhuliu, of course, but still.

“You play?” Su She asked as they hurried through the hallways. “I thought you used a dizi.”

“I – considered picking it up. Briefly.”

“Just kiss him already,” Su She advised, deciding to try to be nice for once. “It’ll be faster, and your reception will be warm.”

“Kiss…who?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be some sort of genius?” Su She growled, and took the never-used guqin. It had been impossible to use anything more than the most straightforward sound attacks when they’d been fighting at the Cloud Recesses, given how many Lan sect disciples and even servants cultivated with music, but here at the Jiang sect where just about everyone was a swordsman first, musician later, and only Lan Wangji to compete with, Su She had a bit more freedom to go find a nice safe spot near the walls to play.

He wasn’t a guqin player on Lan Wangji’s standard – it still burned to admit it even if he maybe didn’t hate him as much as he used to – but he’d spent an awful lot of time in the library looking for things he could use when he was building his own sect and, well, he’d always liked the weird stuff.

“Wait, are you playing ‘Banish Evil’?” Jiang Cheng asked at one point, hopping over a wall to get near enough to ask.

“What? No. Are you deaf? They barely sound alike,” Su She said. “Now get out of range already before it you’re affected.”

Not long after, the effect started to show, with Wen sect cultivators falling left and right out of the sky above his head once their qi started locking up in response to his music.

Had he looked up a method to lock someone’s qi through music just because it reminded him of Yu Zhuliu? No, but it sure did help motivate him in learning the abstruse and needlessly complicated finger-work for something that, yes, okay, maybe sounded a little bit like ‘Banish Evil’, but not enough for people not to immediately call him out on what would otherwise sound like an incredibly bad rendition of that song.

“Once formed, your sect will be immensely unpopular,” Lan Wangji informed him as he flew by on his sword, his own musical cultivation acting as a shield to allow him to fight unaffected by Su She’s music.

Su She grinned down at the guqin and thought to himself that he’d be keeping this one. They could consider it payment for having made him have to put up with Wei Wuxian.

At some point in the battle, Sect Leader Jiang returned and ended up fighting back to back with his wife, which – once the battle was over – turned into a shouting match.

Yu Zhuliu, when he arrived, took one look and his eyebrows went up. “Perhaps we should assist with clean-up on the pier,” he said, delicately enough that Su She immediately figured out what he was implying.

“Yeah,” he said, covering up his smirk with his sleeve. “Let’s go quickly.”

“Don’t you two worry about our feelings getting hurt by it,” Wei Wuxian said, sounding amused, as Jiang Cheng nodded along. “We’re more than used to them fighting.”

“Is that what you call it in the Jiang sect?” Su She sniggered, unable to resist, and both of them paled.

“How would you even know about that?” Jiang Cheng eventually recovered enough to volley back. “Being from the Lan sect and all – I’m amazed it isn’t against one of your rules.”

“Su She is starting his own sect,” Lan Wangji, appearing from who-knows-where, interjected. “With fewer rules.”

“Wait, really?” Jiang Cheng asked, looking – he looked impressed, actually. “A sect of your own? That’s amazing!”

Su She flushed, his face hot and red at once. No one had ever said anything positive about his idea before. “Not anytime soon,” he demurred. “I mean, even a small cultivation sect has to have money enough to buy a house – pay for swords, musical instruments, things like that – and I’m broke.”

“Oh, money,” Wei Wuxian said, in a tone of someone who’d never had to do without, and Su She was already starting to secretly plan his murder – yes, he was aware that Wei Wuxian had reputedly spent some time on the streets as an orphaned child and no, he did not care – when he added, carelessly, “You helped save our home, the least we can do is give you something to help start yours.”

Su She stopped dead. “Are you serious?”

“Certainly,” Jiang Cheng said, and fuck, they were being serious. That was the Jiang sect heir saying he would give him money, not a servant, someone whose words could plausibly be held to be binding on the rest of his sect. “Do you have a plan for what cultivation style you’ll teach new disciples?”

“Uh,” Su She said. His mind was blank. “I was just planning on using the Lan sect techniques.”

Wei Wuxian looped an arm over his shoulder. “With some innovations, thought, right? That qi-locking music was pretty nice, and I’ve never seen it used before.”

Su She puffed up a little. It was pretty nice, good of Wei Wuxian to recognize that – and he hadn’t even seen the teleportation talisman Su She had been painstakingly teaching himself how to use!

“Nor I,” Lan Wangji said, and looked pointedly at Su She. “I suspect it comes from the forbidden section of our library.”

“No, it isn’t,” Su She said immediately, holding up his hands. He knew what the punishment was for going in there without permission. “Not the forbidden, but the forgotten – I was one of the people assigned to sort through old inheritances. Books from abroad, obscure books no one ever bothered categorizing, that sort of thing. The big jumble in the basement of the secondary library…you know, the fire hazard. The one that blew up in the Wen sect’s faces when they tried to light it.”

“You remember enough of them to make it work?” Jiang Cheng asked, now looking even more impressed.

“Well, no,” Su She admitted. “But I made copies of everything that looked interesting and hid them in an abandoned root cellar halfway down the road to Caiyi Town, so they should still be intact.”

Lan Wangji lit up, which for him was a slight bit of color to his cheeks, a slight arch to his eyebrows, a faint curve to his eyes – in other words, he was positively glowing. “Would you permit copies to be made of your copies? We would gladly pay for the privilege.”

“And if you put that together with our money, and you should definitely have enough to fund a sect,” Wei Wuxian said enthusiastically. “And we can come visit!”

“Sooner rather than later, actually,” Jiang Cheng said, rubbing the back of his head. “Before the yelling started, Mother and Father agreed that we younger generation should lie low somewhere for a few weeks somewhere obscure to avoid any immediate reprisals from the Wen sect – and once they’ve lost the trail, we go out to recruit new sects to join the war.”

“That would be in line with what Brother requested that I do,” Lan Wangji observed, voice carefully neutral as always. “I would not object to spending some time in Moling, courting a newly formed sect.”

Su She didn’t know what to say, his mouth moving open and closed. It was almost everything he’d ever wanted, and he only need to reach out and grasp it – his own sect, his brother, the respect of the arrogant young masters…

Nothing could be better.

A hand fell on his shoulder, the warmth of it lighting him up inside.

“Our sect would be happy to host you,” Yu Zhuliu said.

Su She was wrong.

Now

it was perfect.

#mdzs #su she #wen zhuliu #lan wangji #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #my fic #my fics #VERY LONG #rainbowrites

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eleanorfenyxwrites · 3 years

Text

Where We've Been (Ao3)

My friend @megachewbecca requested something set post-canon between Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng in which they talk about "why they have decided to channel all their disappointments with themselves into each other". I don't think it came out exactly like that but they do still have a conversation about Stuff!

[Masterpost]

“Oh great,” Jiang Cheng snaps with as much venom as he can muster - the type that typically sends his intended target scrambling for cover, and/or has his disciples watching on in undisguised glee for whatever verbal flaying is about to begin.

However, said venom is only occasionally directed at his current target (though it’s happening increasingly often simply through an increase in exposure to each other due to certain Wei Wuxian-shaped influences). In all the times that it has been, however, he’s only ever received the same style of response.

“.....Mn.”

Jiang Cheng’s eye twitches and he refuses to acknowledge the headache already starting in his left temple.

“Don’t fucking start with that. I know you talk.”

Of all the people to be magically trapped in a cave with, Lan Wangji is absolutely without a doubt at the very bottom of his list. Below a fierce corpse, even, because then at least he’d have something to take his frustration out on. But no, he’s stuck with Lan fucking Wangji, because the universe is cruel like that. And this mere days after he had promised Wei Wuxian he would do his best to be more civil to Lan Wangji even though it was the so-great, so-wonderful, so-righteous Hanguang-jun who had a problem with him.

At the risk of sounding childish - he started it!

He walks a quick perimeter around the cave, trailing his hand along the wall to feel for any openings he could possibly miss in the uncertain light of the fire talisman in Lan Wangji’s hand. He’s nearly back to where he began when he feels a breath of moving air and he quickly moves towards it only for his entire arm to sink into what looks like solid rock. He yelps and jerks his arm back from whatever emptiness is on the other side of the illusion and then starts again when Lan Wangji is suddenly at his side between one breath and the next, utterly silent.

Jiang Cheng shifts away from both him and the wall as Lan Wangji steps closer to raise his free hand, pressing it forward until his hand sinks into the ‘rock’ just as Jiang Cheng’s had. He glances at Lan Wangji only to find his expression as impassive as ever from what he can tell, and he’s just opening his mouth to ask what he’s thinking when he suddenly just. Steps forward. Straight into the wall.

“Hey!”

Before he can think better of it, Jiang Cheng stumbles after him, disoriented in the sudden dark and then again by the sensation of pressure and cold closing in on him on all sides. The claustrophobia hits hard and fast as he takes another stumbling step forward - to be caught by a shockingly sturdy grip at his elbow.

“Careful,” Lan Wangji intones, holding the talisman a little higher as he looks around and Jiang Cheng shoves his hand away to straighten himself out, cheeks burning.

“Is it really such a good idea to go wandering around strange magic caves?” he grouses to the unmoving pillar of Lan Wangji’s back. His stupidly tall guan is poking up above his head and Jiang Cheng is seized suddenly with the childish urge to throw something at it - nothing big, just a pebble or something. Just to see if he can hit the point of it from behind. Just to see if he can make the perfect Lan Wangji do something besides walk around looking all...stately.

He absolutely refuses to acknowledge that it was similar desires that had motivated Wei Wuxian to tease and taunt his future husband in their teenage years - this is extremely different.

“We have wandered dangerous places before,” Lan Wangji replies smoothly and the full sentence is genuinely shocking. Jiang Cheng tries to remember the last time Lan Wangji had said a full sentence to him and he comes up blank. For years it’s been nothing but monosyllabic words, one of his plethora of hums, or one of his little duckling-esque juniors covering his ass and talking for him (as if Jiang Cheng can’t understand when he’s being snubbed with or without their ‘translating’).

In the surprise of being spoken to at all, it takes Jiang Cheng an extra beat or two to realize what he’d actually said, and when he does it brings him up short. He knows precisely what he’s referring to, of course, but his mouth quicker than his brain and all he can manage to do is croak a hoarse,

“What?”

Lan Wangji turns back to look at him, face inscrutable in the flicker of the fire talisman, though his eyes are, as always, sharp and keen.

“It was once our common goal to find Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji replies smoothly. “We faced dangers during our search, including Wei Ying himself when we found him.”

“He wasn’t -”

“Dangerous? Hm.” Jiang Cheng can’t help but scowl at the obvious skepticism in that fucking hum. He’ll never understand how Wei Wuxian finds Lan Wangji’s hums endearing (which he has said on far too many occasions) rather than absolutely infuriating.

“He wouldn’t have hurt us!”

“Debatable. He was barely himself, and he did not know we were present at first. It was possible we would be harmed.”

Jiang Cheng doesn’t have a good reply to that so he doesn’t bother trying to find one, he simply starts walking and tries not to hate that Lan Wangji doesn’t even miss a beat as he falls into step beside him, still obnoxiously perfect.

“Alright fine,” he says when the silence becomes unbearable, roughly ten steps later. “So we worked together for a little while two decades ago. So what?”

“Your skills were admirable then, I know they have only improved over the years. I doubt we are in much danger in a cave in a well-populated region. It will not hurt to learn what is here.”

Fuck Lan Wangji, Jiang Cheng thinks with as much vitriol as possible. He can’t say why it irritates him down to his core to be complimented by him, even obliquely, but honestly he’s pretty sure he’d prefer the stony, angry silences he’s been subjected to for so many years instead.

They walk in silence for a little while then, both on alert for something out of the ordinary. It’s Jiang Cheng who feels it first again and he stops in his tracks, holding one hand out and following a thready, barely-there stream of cooler air to a wall, utterly indistinguishable from the rest of the space around them.

“We should mark where we’ve been, just in case,” he says as his hand sinks into the rock like it’s made of pudding. The mental image adds an odd layer of unpleasantness to the cool pressure of it, the idea of it...congealing around his hand making him wrinkle his nose a bit in distaste.

“Mn.”

Jiang Cheng loses the battle against rolling his eyes but he says nothing only because Lan Wangji follows it up with a gesture that leaves a signature on the solid part of the wall next to the illusion, the characters glowing a gentle blue.

“Any way you could do one of those back at the beginning in case someone needs to come hunting for our bodies?” he asks as dryly as he can manage to try to get a rise out of his companion, but all it earns him is a flat look that Lan Wangji doesn’t break as he repeats the gesture only to send the talisman darting back up the path the way they had come.

He’s pretty sure it would be physically impossible for him to scowl any deeper than he does when Lan Wangji waves him ahead towards the false wall, the silent ‘after you’ somehow full of so much sarcasm it’s very much toeing the line of insulting, at least in Jiang Cheng’s book.

This time he’s prepared for the discomfort of the illusion and he walks smoothly through it. He turns to watch Lan Wangji join him and he’s startled to realize he doesn’t even seem to walk through the wall. One moment Jiang Cheng is alone on the path in the pitch black and the next Lan Wangji is beside him looking as unruffled as ever, fire talisman still glowing between his extended fingers held at shoulder-height.

“Do you have more of those?” Jiang Cheng asks begrudgingly with a nod at the light. He knows it’s Wei Wuxian’s invention, and that he of all people has no business asking to use it when he’s spent so long hunting down any trace of his brother’s work to destroy it utterly. He also knows that Lan Wangji is equally aware of this, and yet he simply reaches into the front of his robes to withdraw another talisman between his fingertips and hold it out for him to take. He studies it for a long few moments once it’s in his hands, but he can find nothing suspicious in it at all. It should be a good thing. It is. But it also only serves to make him feel foolish, as he has many times since Wei Wuxian’s return.

“It will not harm you,” Lan Wangji just has to break his silence to supply, because of course he fucking does, the asshole.

“I know that!” Jiang Cheng snaps. He leaves off investigating the talisman any further to stuff it in the front of his own robes, just in case they should get separated. “You think I don’t understand Wei Wuxian’s inventions? I know them better than anyone.”

“Debatable.”

“Fucking debate it then!” he challenges as he storms off, Lan Wangji somehow seeming to walk sedately even as he keeps pace with him.

“Wei Ying is a prolific inventor. He uses our home as a workspace. He describes each of his new inventions to me in detail, and I offer assistance when necessary to refine his processes.”

“Fine, you know his inventions better now, but I’m the one who spent 13 years chasing down all his notes and the morons trying to use them for themselves!”

“Recognition of the work for the purpose of destruction does not in itself lead to understanding that which you are destroying.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?!”

“I assist him with all of his techniques, old and new, demonic and orthodox. I do not, nor have I ever, attempted to ruin his work - unlike you.”

Jiang Cheng stops in his tracks and whirls around to face Lan Wangji who finally has a different expression on his face, though how he managed to make himself look even colder than before Jiang Cheng has no idea.

“ ‘Unlike me’,” he repeats, his voice utterly flat in another way that usually has people scrambling for cover, though of course Lan Wangji seems completely unmoved.

“We are fundamentally different, Jiang Wanyin.”

“Yeah no shit,” he mutters as he turns around again to continue forward at an angry, too-quick clip that Lan Wangji effortlessly keeps stride with, the fucker. “Those people who tried to follow in his footsteps were murderers.”

“Mn. They were irresponsible. Wei Ying has expressed regrets that his notes found unworthy hands to wield them.��

“And yet not one other person ever tried to stop them! It was just me this whole fucking time! What else was I supposed to do, just let them run rampant?!”

“No.”

Jiang Cheng grinds his teeth and tightens his grip on Sandu as he’s forced to acknowledge that he understands what Lan Wangji was really conveying even through a single syllable - that he recognizes that he had done what he felt he had needed to do to protect the innocents that were his responsibility, and yet there’s still a note of judgement in his voice that puts Jiang Cheng’s hackles up.

“But?” he prompts through his teeth.

“Disposing of Wei Ying’s notes out of anger that they were being misused by others was unnecessary and self-serving.”

“Well they’re gone anyway and all your disapproval of my methods isn’t going to bring them back.”

Lan Wangji stops all at once and Jiang Cheng walks on a few steps ahead before he realizes and stops as well, turning back to face him with a scowl.

“What?”

“Illusion.” Lan Wangji turns to run his fingertips along the wall to his left, moving slowly until the wall swallows them up. He withdraws to sketch another marking talisman and leaves it on the wall before stepping forward into the illusion, leaving Jiang Cheng to scramble after him in the dark, guided only by the blue talisman.

“Stop doing that!” he blusters as soon as he gets through. “It’s fucking dark in here and you have the light!”

“Mn.”

“And stop doing that!!” he outright shouts at Lan Wangji and his stupid fucking nothingness. He’s as blank and icy as ever and Jiang Cheng suddenly realizes that he has officially had it. “What is your fucking problem?! You said it yourself that we’ve worked together before, we fought together during the Sunshot Campaign, what’s so different now?!”

Jiang Cheng finally goes quiet as Lan Wangji’s expression..shifts. Outwardly, he doesn’t really seem to change that much, especially not in the uncertain light of the talisman. But there’s something about his bearing, his presence that changes and it’s only then that Jiang Cheng realizes that what he’s been faced with so far is Lan Wangji’s distant disapproval. What he’s looking at now is..anger. The sort of anger that has given Lan Wangji as fearsome of a reputation in some circles as Jiang Cheng has earned for himself.

He refuses to back down as Lan Wangji practically stalks closer, each step precise and deliberate until he’s right in front of him, glaring from under furrowed brows and looking down his nose at him in a way Jiang Cheng viscerally hates.

“You killed Wei Ying.”

It’s delivered utterly flat, cutting and sharp at the edges. Through his teeth, through the proper Lan version of a snarl. It leaves Jiang Cheng speechless, floundering for a moment through the slice of it in his heart. It hurts as much as it has any time someone has dared to point it out to him - he thinks back to that day of Wei Wuxian’s reappearance in the mountains and the Lan kid who had reminded him he’d killed Wei Wuxian himself and he wonders suddenly just who it was who had taught the Lan juniors that part of the story. It had been common knowledge in the aftermath of the battle, but he realizes now that Lan Wangji, extremely influential and vital to the education of the next generation, has been holding that grudge close to his heart for twenty years. Who knows what else he’s taught them about that awful day.

“What?”

Now Lan Wangji really does snarl, lips pulled back over his teeth and nose wrinkled in disgust as he steps forward and Jiang Cheng takes an automatic step back only to be crowded back against the wall.

Lan Wangji was right - they’re more dangerous than anything in this cave could be, and Jiang Cheng very much doesn’t like getting that reminder when he’s apparently the prey.

“You killed my Wei Ying. You failed him.”

“ ‘Your Wei Ying’?!” he retorts as he finds his metaphorical footing again. “That was news to me when he suddenly popped back up, you know! You sure as fuck didn’t bother making that clear back when it could have helped him.”

It’s instantly clear that he struck a nerve and he presses the advantage as something shutters in Lan Wangji’s furious glare.

“You want to talk about who failed him? You didn’t manage to protect him either! You hid in your mountain and you Lan thought you were above the whole world, and by the time you realized what was happening it was too late to protect him!”

“I know.”

The admission draws Jiang Cheng up short and at least some of his anger bleeds out of him as Lan Wangji’s glare fades a little further and he drops his eyes down somewhere around his shoulder, though he’s still got him crowded up against the wall and a glance down shows that Bichen is half out of her sheath.

“You know?”

“I have discussed it with Wei Ying in detail. He has forgiven me.”

“He’s forgiven me too!”

Lan Wangji’s gaze darts up to meet his again, ice cold but no longer distant - this cold judgement is now very personal. Jiang Cheng is chagrined to realize he already misses the detached, uncaring attitude of mere minutes ago.

“He has forgiven you. I will never.”

Jiang Cheng takes a deep breath in when Lan Wangji steps back to give him his space again, and if it shakes a little then that’s his business alone.

He heard the rumors back then. That Lan Wangji had killed to protect the Burial Mounds. Their paths had crossed many times over the years in their dual pursuit of hints and rumors of demonic cultivation, of whispers of the Yiling Laozu returned as a vengeful spirit, or reincarnated, or miraculously alive and gathering disciples. He had assumed then that their goal had been the same, but now he wonders if when he had been seeking to squash any evidence of his brother’s work, Lan Wangji had been chasing it in the hopes of finding more. Finding truth in the rumors. Finding Wei Wuxian.

He can admit to himself, deep down in the private spaces left inside of him that no one is allowed to see, that he had been disappointed each time the rumors had proven to be fake, or each time a new demonic cultivator was nothing but a cheap knockoff of Wei Wuxian using scraps of his notes to try to chase the full scope of the power he had developed. He had been angry with himself - furious, even - for that disappointment, but that didn’t make it any less real. All those years of searching, hunting, and in the end it had gotten him..nothing.

It was Lan Wangji who had won in the end. Wei Wuxian lives with him in Cloud Recesses. He visits Lotus Pier now that they’ve repaired at least the bulk of the damage to their relationship over the years since Wei Wuxian’s and Lan Wangji’s wedding following the revelation of Jin Guangyao’s plotting. Sometimes he stays for months on end, treating Lotus Pier as his home and returning to Cloud Recesses for short visits. But in the end he always returns to Gusu. To his husband.

He always leaves Lotus Pier - and her master - behind.

“Well, you won in the end anyway,” he says now into the loaded silence around them. He refuses to look at Lan Wangji as he steps away from the wall and continues along the path, lost in thought. “He chose you and Cloud Recesses over coming home when everything was over. Congratulations.”

Lan Wangji is silent at his side for quite some time as they walk, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t bother trying to break the quiet this time. They continue this way for a while, communicating with gestures when they find another illusion, and then yet another. It’s as they’re walking through the tunnel behind this fifth false wall of the night that Lan Wangji finally speaks.

“He longs for Lotus Pier.”

Jiang Cheng scoffs and tightens his grip around Sandu. “Well no one’s stopping him from coming home.”

“You misunderstand.”

“Speak plainly then, who can know what you mean when you hardly say anything?”

The judgemental silence that follows makes him grind his teeth even though he doesn’t know quite what he’s being judged for.

“He longs for the Lotus Pier that no longer exists but for in his heart and his memory.”

Jiang Cheng has to stop in his tracks at that and take a deep breath in, hold it, let it out slowly. His grip on Sandu doesn’t loosen, but some of the tension in his shoulders does as they slump ever so slightly under the weight of his heavy silk robes - robes befitting his status. He hardly notices that weight anymore, he’s had far too many years of carrying it, but sometimes it feels like he’ll be crushed under the burden of them.

“We rebuilt it using the old builders’ plans. It’s nearly identical to what it was before.”

“You are aware that is not the point.”

“Enlighten me then, oh great Hanguang-jun.”

The next silence feels..considering, and Jiang Cheng spares a thought to be dismayed that he’s learning how to read Lan Wangji’s many silences, whether he wants to or not (he doesn’t). He hates it when Wei Wuxian is right, and in this moment he’s forcefully reminded of how many times his brother has asserted that it’s possible to read Lan Wangji as easily as anyone else if one only knows what to look for. Jiang Cheng has never been interested in learning what to look for himself, but it seems he’s going to anyway.

“Wei Ying lives life in each moment. It is unusual for him to dwell in the past unless forced to. He is my opposite. I understand well the pain in his eyes when he returns from Lotus Pier. He is unsettled by the lack of familiar faces, the easy happiness of the past, and by the reminders that time has been cruel in its passing.”

Jiang Cheng’s mouth drops open but he hastily shuts it again when Lan Wangji looks at him, eyes once again unreadable.

“I believe if he could somehow find a way to travel through time and return to when the Lotus Pier of your childhood was the only home he knew, he would. If he could return to when you and Jiang Yanli were his world, he would. The knowledge that this version of Lotus Pier is lost to him for good is not an easy burden to bear, and each visit is a reminder of his aches.”

“Stop.” Jiang Cheng turns his head in an attempt to hide that his eyes are suddenly stinging and his throat tight. It’s useless to hide, he knows, but his pride won’t allow him to cry in front of Lan Wangji, not like this. “You think he’s the only one who feels that way? I live there. I live it every single fucking day.”

“Then you understand.” Jiang Cheng says nothing in reply. It’s not really a question - they both know that he does. He wouldn’t have been so determined to remake Lotus Pier so exactly if he didn’t. “Do you begrudge him his attempt to live without this pain?”

“Yes!”

“Then you are hurting him further.”

Jiang Cheng musters up a glare through the sting of his sorrow, but he’s not sure how effective it is considering his eyes are still fighting desperately to shed their tears. Either way, Lan Wangji meets his glare with something that looks frustratingly like understanding. He doesn’t want Lan Wangji to understand him. He wants to argue with him, fight with him, force him to admit that for all their opposites they’re also fundamentally similar in one way that matters more than anything else -

They love Wei Wuxian.

It takes on different flavors, different appearances, but the fact remains that they love him down to their bones.

“Do you know why Wen Zhuliu was able to destroy my core?” he suddenly asks. If Lan Wangji is surprised by the change in subject he doesn’t show it. He simply shakes his head after a moment of consideration. “We were running, we were hiding, but Wei Wuxian left to get medicine for jie, she had gotten a fever after our parents...after everything. He told me to stay put in our room at the inn, but I didn’t. I saw Wen soldiers out in the street, they were looking for us and they spotted him, they were going to drag him away as soon as they realized who he was. I couldn’t...I let them catch me instead. They took me instead.”

His deepest secret. Something he hasn’t even told Wei Wuxian in all their talks over the last few years, and he, for some reason, has decided to tell fucking Lan Wangji, of all people. It is, he supposes, the last defense he feels he has. He loves his brother. He sacrificed his life for him. It’s not his fault that it didn’t stick, that Wei Wuxian would rip his very soul apart with his own two hands if he thought it would protect the people he cares about.

“He was never supposed to lose his. None of this was ever supposed to happen,” he finishes, unable to raise his voice above a crackling whisper. “I never meant to hurt him.”

Silence falls again, but for the first time tonight it feels...almost comfortable. Not quite companionable, but it’s not anything else really either. It simply is, the weight of the moment and his admission too heavy to cheapen with words.

He starts walking again when he feels capable of putting one foot in front of the other and Lan Wangji walks beside him. They go on through another tunnel of the cave that looks much the same as the others, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t even care if they’re lost, if they’re going in circles, if they’re not doing much of anything at all. It’s nice to just walk, to move, to not be alone with his thoughts in the dark as he has been far too many times over the years.

“You know Sizhui,” Lan Wangji says after a while of this, and Jiang Cheng snorts without much amusement.

“The polite kid who always talks for you like I don’t know you well enough to know you’re telling me to go fuck myself in your head? Yeah.”

“Mn. He is my son.”

That brings Jiang Cheng up short again and though he doesn’t stop walking he does stumble a bit and turn a shocked glare on Lan Wangji, still walking blithely along.

“Your son?!”

“Mn. His existence was kept quiet outside of Cloud Recesses. It is my understanding that outside of the Sect he is now known as an inner family disciple, but it is suspected he is a cousin.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“That is intentional, for his safety.”

“Why for his safety? Is being your kid that dangerous? When did you even...have a kid? With who?”

The glare Lan Wangji gives him out of the corner of his eye can only be described as ‘scathing’ and Jiang Cheng will admit that he kind of admires it. Envies it, really. It’s a pretty good glare.

“I adopted him. He was Wei Ying’s before he was mine.”

Jiang Cheng stares blankly ahead again as he tries to reconcile that, come to terms with it. All at once, he thinks back to the single time he had been to the Burial Mounds when it had still been a safe haven for the Wens. When a bright-eyed child had clung to his leg, and Wei Wuxian had swooped in to pick him up, to hold him and talk to him like a parent, to scold him with a smile on his lips and offer him gentle affection before sending him on his way.

He thinks about Lan Wangji defending the Burial Mounds from the cultivators who had wanted to sack the place after Wei Wuxian’s death, and he thinks about the Wens who had sacrificed themselves at Jinlintai.

He thinks about Jin Guangshan bragging about wiping out the remaining Wens in one fell swoop, and how if he was drunk enough, if the right person asked him to tell the story, he would boast that he had made sure that every last person had accounted for the crimes of their family. In his accounts, though, there had never been mention of a child - and his retellings had been painfully detailed.

“He’s that kid from the Burial Mounds. A-Yuan,” he whispers with dawning horror. “He’s Wen Yuan?!”

“Mn. Should you reveal his identity, no one will find your body to put it to rest.”

That makes Jiang Cheng snort again and this time he actually is a little amused. “Threats, Hanguang-jun? Not terribly righteous of you.”

“Without Wei Ying, A-Yuan was the only reason I could find to continue living. I would kill without hesitation for him, for Wei Ying.”

“You already have,” Jiang Cheng points out - everyone knows what had happened when Lan Wangji had defended the Burial Mounds, and Jiang Cheng at least is aware that Lan Wangji had also killed at Nightless City. He had seen him protecting Wei Wuxian, killing any cultivators who tried to get near enough to stop Wei Wuxian from playing that damned flute of his, to stop him from killing more and more of their own. He wonders how many people now, if any, know that some of the deaths from that night that have been laid at Wei Wuxian’s feet rightfully belong at Lan Wangji’s.

“Mn. I have.”

“And you know if Wei Wuxian could hear us talking about...all of this, he’d tell us both that he didn’t ask us to, that he doesn’t deserve all of this.”

“Yes.”

Jiang Cheng sighs and shakes his head, irritated with his brother and his self-sacrificing tendencies even now, all these years later because he just never fucking learns.

“Does it really hurt him to come to Lotus Pier?”

“It saddens him, but there is happiness as well. He was afraid of losing you as well even though you both live. He is relieved he has not. It is..complicated.”

“That’s an understatement,” Jiang Cheng mutters under his breath, but he knows Lan Wangji hears him anyway. They continue in another silence, and a few minutes later Jiang Cheng finds another illusion. “What the hell is going on in this cave?” he finally asks, exasperated once they’re on the other side of it in yet another identical tunnel.

Lan Wangji doesn’t answer, he merely keeps walking forward and Jiang Cheng is forced to follow him with a scowl firmly fixed on his face.

“I will never forgive you for killing Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says into the quiet. “However, it saddens him to feel that he must consistently choose between us. I will not make him choose any longer.”

“You were complicit in it too, you can’t keep pinning this just on me you know!”

“I will do what I will. However, you are my brother-in-law, and you have given Wei Ying happiness in this life.”

“Yeah well I hate you too, but I guess there’s not much I can do about it either since the idiot married you.”

“Indeed. A truce, then.”

“Fine. Truce.”

Jiang Cheng glances sideways at Lan Wangji to find him looking at him similarly out of the corner of his eye, and after a moment the corner of his mouth twitches into the barest hint of a smirk.

“What?”

“You should hunt with Wei Ying more often,” he replies and before Jiang Cheng asks him what he means, he stops to sketch another talisman in the air, this one a bright blood-red, and when he releases it there’s the sensation of a pressure he hadn’t even noticed in the air releasing and he works his jaw to pop his ears as he looks around only to realize that they’re back in the room they had started in. And on the wall where he had spotted the first illusion there are a series of marks glowing blue, all in a line one right after the other - the markers for each false wall they had passed through.

“What the fuck?”

“Awwww Lan Zhan! No fun, he would’ve kept going for hours,” Wei Wuxian suddenly pouts and Jiang Cheng whirls around to find his brother leaning insolently against the wall where the entrance to the cave had been sealed - and is sealed no longer. He looks past his brother’s shoulder to find that the entrance is once again open to the air beyond it, the smell of their campfire at the entrance filtering into the space along with the sound of the juniors from their sects laughing and chatting, relaxing after their hunt earlier in the evening.

“Mn.”

“Wei Wuxian!”

The man in question dances away from his lunge with a laugh that rings off the stone around them.

“A-Cheng!!!” he sing-songs, drawing the sound out as he darts over to hide behind his husband standing still in the center of the room. “Did you like my illusion? I’ve been practicing. Lan Zhan didn’t you tell him it was an experiment?”

“He did not ask.”

“Yes I fucking did!!!” Jiang Cheng shouts and he makes another grab for Wei Wuxian, fully intending to yank him into a headlock at least, but he’s stopped by Bichen held across his path and Lan Wangji raising an admonishing eyebrow at him.

“You asked what was happening. The answer was ‘illusions’, too obvious to bother with. You did not ask whose, or for what purpose.”

“I hate you both,” Jiang Cheng snaps because that’s a Wei Wuxian-style answer if he’s ever heard one, just..Lan-ified. He refuses to think about the possibility that those two are more suited to each other than anyone might suspect and instead he turns to stomp over to the entrance with the intention to go pilfer alcohol from Wei Wuxian’s stash. He deserves it after being forced to have an emotional conversation with Lan Wangji, of all people.

The acoustics of the cave mean that the voices behind him reach his ears even as he walks up the tunnel that leads to the forest outside.

“Did you have a good talk with him, Lan Zhan?”

“Mn.”

“Thank you.”

“No need.”

“Aiyah I know, but thank you anyway. The two people I love most in the world should get along.”

“A-Yuan and I get along very well.”

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian laughs and thankfully Jiang Cheng steps free of the tunnel into the clearing just beyond it before he has to hear any more, his ears and heart burning with the knowledge that Wei Wuxian loves him. That he finally has his brother back, even if it’s in a way he would have never chosen for them.

“Jiang-zhongzhu?” a mild voice asks, too gentle to startle, and he turns his head to find Lan Sizhui waiting nearby, a nervous expression on his sweet features, still just a little round with boyhood though it will likely only be another year or two before he loses all trace of baby fat whatsoever and matures into the man he’s quickly becoming along with the rest of his generation.

He meets the boy’s wide, earnest eyes and finds his defenses crumbling as he sees in him the boy who had hugged his leg and looked up at him with a curious little smile right in the middle of the misery of the Burial Mounds. He sighs heavily and turns his whole body to face him properly, his hands on his hips as he stares him down. To his credit, Lan Sizhui doesn’t cower or fall back at all, he simply waits patiently for Jiang Cheng to speak his mind.

“You might as well call me Jiujiu,” he harrumphs and Lan Sizhui’s expression falls open in surprise (and seriously, this kid was raised by Lan Wangji? He doesn’t see it.) “What? My stupid brother is your diedie isn’t he? You don’t have to, but..You can. If you’d like to.”

“Alright. Jiujiu,” Lan Sizhui replies, smiling and clearly pleased. The quiet moment is broken almost immediately by - who else - Wei Wuxian.

“DIDI!!!” he shouts, startling a nearby flock of birds, and it’s all the warning he gets before Wei Wuxian practically throws himself at him to cling to his side. “I knew you cared! Now you have to buy him presents for all his important occasions and we’ll bring him to Lotus Pier for New Year’s and -”

“Get off me!” Jiang Cheng growls as he shoves at Wei Wuxian without much success.

In the midst of their tousle, neither of them notice Lan Wangji drifting to Lan Sizhui’s side to press a comforting hand to his shoulder and gently guide him back in the direction of the camp, a rare, pleased little smile on his lips.

#The untamed fanfic #Lan Wangji & Jiang Cheng #Wangxian #Lan Wangji #Jiang Cheng #Wei Wuxian #Lan Sizhui #<- very briefly #post-canon #reconciliation

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blackmissfrizzle · 4 years

Text

The Barbershop (Miguel Edition)

Angel’s Edition

Characters: Miguel Galindo x black!reader

Summary: Miguel calls the reader to come trim his beard.

Warnings: Smut

A/N: This is my first time writing for Miguel! I hope y’all enjoy. Angel’s edition is linked above and y’all let me know if you want me to do more Mayans. I wanna spread my wings a bit.

The plane literally just landed when you got the call. There was nothing you wanted more than a hot shower and your bed, but when Miguel Galindo calls, you come. Anything for the king. At least you didn’t have to drive over there. Nestor was there at the airport waiting to take you to Miguel’s.

Thankfully, the ride was a little long, giving you enough time to rest and mentally prepare yourself to be around Miguel. There was an unspoken attraction between the two of you. Lingering gazes, blazing accidental touches, and little flirtatious remarks. None of which could be acted on because 1) he was married and 2) you didn’t date clients; it was bad for business (but you were more than willing to make an exception for Miguel.)

When you got to the house, Nestor took all your bags out the car. You told him it was unnecessary, but he just smiled and said, “Just in case.”

Miguel sat out by the pool, waiting for you. He enjoyed being out there because he loved how your skin glistened under the sun.

“Hola, Senor Galindo.” You greeted him tiredly. You wanted him to feel bad for making you come over right after your trip.

Miguel knew he should feel a bit of guilt, but he couldn’t as he watched you take off your jacket revealing how snug your tank top was and how it accentuated your curves. “Hermosa,” he got up from his seat to greet you properly. He wrapped you in his arms and had to resist the urge to bury his nose in your hair. It was so intoxicating that Miguel found himself buying the same hair products you used to comfort him during the lonely nights.

His arms around you were beginning to be a little too much, so you backed out of them and gently pushed him into his seat. “Couldn’t wait one more day, could you?”

Miguel unashamedly shrugged his shoulders. “One more day and I’ll look like a Duck Dynasty reject.”

“Aw, we couldn’t have that.” You teased, wrapping the apron around him.

The conversation with Miguel was kept light and amusing as you worked on his beard. For a busy cartel boss, he was surprisingly up to date with all the small town gossip. You probably had Dita to thank for that.

“How was Los Angeles? I got scared for a bit and thought you would get caught up in the glitz and glamour and not come back to Santo Padre.” Miguel was right, you were fascinated with LA, but only for a moment. Two days there and you were already homesick. It was crowded, there was too much traffic, and they didn’t even have real Mexican food.

“No, never. I love Santo Padre too much. But Chris Evans came dangerously close to making me change my mind.” The reason for your trip was because your work as a barber was getting more recognition. So much so that THE Christopher Jamal Evans dm’d you to shape up his hairline and beard. It was unbelievable. You cut hair of up and coming artists in surrounding areas, but you never thought you would cut hair for one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

“Is that so?” Miguel asked clearly bothered, but you didn’t notice because you were too busy rambling about Chris.

Chris smelled so good. Chris was so much bigger in person. You felt like Peggy when Steve stepped out the pod. Chris was the sweetest. Chris had the softest touch. Chris was so funny. Chris’ dog was the cutest. Chris, Chris, Chris. If Miguel heard about Chris anymore, he would lose his mind.

“Oh, and he took me to dinner with Sebastian Stan and Anthony Mackie! Can anybody say choo-choo?” You were laughing at your own joke until you felt fingers in your core. To keep your balance, you had to grab onto Miguel’s shoulders.

“Emily,” you mumbled the wife’s name of the client who currently had their fingers deep in your pussy.

“That wasn’t the name I was expecting. Sure, it wasn’t supposed to be mines? Or better yet Chris’?” Was that jealousy you heard? Did he even have the right to be jealous? He was a married man with a child.

“We can’t, you’re- Fuck!” His fingers massaging your walls made it difficult for you to form coherent sentences.

Miguel was enjoying this. With a touch he was making you fall apart. “Hmm, what was that?” He continued to finger you while he massaged your inner thigh with his free hand.

“We can’t do this, Miguel. You’re married!” In between whimpers you managed to get that out.

Taking his fingers out of you, he made a dramatic showing of licking his fingers clean. “Sabrosa. (Tasty).” Miguel pulled you onto his, thigh, his face gentle now as he held your chin in his hand. “I’m separated. I gave Emily the divorce papers the day you left.”

His words took a while to settle in, but when they did Miguel almost laughed at you shocked little face. “You better not be playing with me, Miguel Galindo!” You slapped him across the chest.

Miguel took the offending hand and pressed a kiss to it. “I promise. I’m giving her a couple of days to get over the shock and read over the papers. She’ll sign them, trust me.”

His reassurance was all you needed. Squealing, you wrapped your arms around Miguel’s neck and smashed your lips against his. It wasn’t long before Miguel slipped his tongue inside of your mouth, taking control of the kiss.

“Finish your job, mi cielo.” Miguel ordered. You tried to get up, but Miguel slammed you back down on his thigh, insisting you finish the job there. Miguel’s hands roaming all over your body made it hard to focus. You let him know that he wasn’t playing fair and his response was, “You’ll learn that I never play fair.”

Soon enough, you finished cleaning up his beard, but Miguel didn’t let you linger and admire your work. “I think I need some moisturizer for my beard.”

“What?! I just applied some.”

Miguel wrapped his arms around your waist and carried you to the couch. He laid down on it while he kept you on top of him. “Yeah, but you’re going to ride my face until your pussy juices soak my beard, mami.”

You still had you smock on with all of your tools in it. Miguel untied it but not before grabbing your blade and slicing your skirt and panties apart. “Such a pretty pussy and its all mine.” Miguel ran his fingers along your slit, making you shiver.

Gripping your hips, Miguel settled you over his lips. His tongue softly made love to your folds. You held onto his hair and called out his name. The devil had a silver tongue and knew how to use it. Instinctively, you rolled your hips against his mouth, riding him like he told you.

“There you go, sweetheart. Ride me just like that. Use me to get yourself off and ready for my cock.”

You followed his orders, but not without a little fun. Never being a selfish lover, you decided to dish out some pleasure of your own. Reaching behind you, you unbuckled Miguel’s belt and pants. His dick practically fumbled out his boxers. The way it slapped against his stomach, told you it was a monster. You got your confirmation when you placed your hand around it. How he would fit was beyond you, but y’all would make it work.

As you stroke him Miguel’s moans turned you on so much that you could see your juices dripping down his beard. Turns out your wetness was a good moisturizer after all. However, you didn’t allow yourself to appreciate it for long. Your attention was needed elsewhere.

Miguel was about to complain about his new favorite meal being taken away from him when he felt you lift up from his mouth.

“What? You’re the only one who can get a taste?” You asked mischievously, pressing a soft kiss to his engorged head.

Miguel smacked your ass. “Nobody likes a tease. Suck this dick, mami.” He thrusted his hips upwards and you welcomed his dick with an open warm mouth.

You prided yourself on being a good dick sucker, but with Miguel sucking on your clit and his fingers carving his name out in your pussy, you were beginning to doubt yourself. So many moans were coming out of your mouth that you barely sucked his dick. But when you did manage to get your mouth around it, you decided Miguel was the best thing you tasted. He was more addictive than the drugs he sold. And the smell of him…god he even smelled expensive down there.

You were so caught up in admiring his dick, that you didn’t notice your orgasm sneaking up on you, almost making you choke on his dick. “Imma have to train you how to properly take my cock, cariña. But that’ll have to wait til later.”

Miguel place you on the couch and took off the rest of his clothes. His eyes remained on you as you shed your top and bra. He couldn’t help but be amazed by your beauty. No matter how long he would be with you, he would never get over you.

“Querida, I promise to give you the world.”

“I’ll just settle for your heart.” Miguel’s soft smile warmed you throughout your body and you promised yourself you’ll do whatever you could to keep that smile on his face. “And your dick as well.” You began to stroke him again.

His growl and how quickly he jumped on you surprised you. “That’s why you deserve everything. You’re the sweetest, dirtiest little thing.”

Running your hands up and down Miguel’s chest and trailing kisses up his neck, you nipped at his ear. “Miguel, if you don’t put your dick in me right now, I swe- FUCK!”

Your cartel daddy filled you up to the brink, bringing a pinch of pain with overwhelming pleasure. Nothing could describe how good he was making you feel. All you knew was that Miguel ruined other men for you.

The moans and expletives coming out of your mouth was a boost to Miguel’s ego. Earlier he was scared that your feelings for him disappeared. Enclosing his hand around your throat, Miguel leaned down to just barely hover over your lips. “I bet Christopher Evans couldn’t have you creaming like this. Could he?”

“No, he couldn’t,” you whimpered. Miguel began to thrust into you harder causing your legs to shake uncontrollably.

“Then, I bet not ever hear another word about him or his little friends using you as a cumdump. You’re mine little cumdump and no one else. Entiendes?”

Tears were running down your face from how good Miguel was giving it to you. “Yes, I understand, daddy.”

“Good. Now cum all over this dick, mi reina.” Miguel kissed the edge of your mouth and intertwined his fingers with yours. The soft gesture had you falling over the edge. Miguel soon followed after you.

The two of you spent a few minutes in silence basking in each other’s glory. When Miguel noticed you drifiting off to sleep, he decided to carry you to his room for a more comfortable rest. The next morning when you woke up, you were grateful that Nestor brought your bags in after all.

Tags: @starrynite7114 @ifoundmyhappythought @sadeyesgf @woahitslucyylu @marvelmaree @angrythingstarlight @teakturn @marvelmaree @thickemadame @dearsamcrobae @strawberrywritings

#miguel galindo #miguel #miguel galindo x reader #miguel galindo x black!reader #miguel x reader #miguel x black!reader #mayans mc #mayans #black!reader #frizzlefic #frizzlesfic

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ziracona · 3 years

Text

[Very excited for the next bit & hopefully life quits kicking my butt soon so I can get it done. Anyway, an update.]

The Kid (pt: 1, … 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, ?) [Fate Grand Order AU]

Adrenaline pumping so fast I think I might puke, my hand is already up and I’m halfway to shouting Billy’s name to summon him when the door opens again.

I stop, unused command seal on my lips, and stare as it shuts again and locks, then opens quick. It. OH.

I feel my face on fire as it clicks. I am so glad no one was here to see this. It must automatically lock—must have been locking every time it shut. The pattern is just repeating again, and I couldn’t see the lock from the other side.

Okay. Okay… I make myself take a long, deep breath. You’re okay.

It’s…funny. I wasn’t scared at all until I was alone, and now I’m…completely freaked, I think. …Maybe I was scared before, too, but not like this. It’s okay. You can call for help if you need it. You know they’re all depending on you, so you have to do a good job. You can do this, Ritsuka. Come on1

Right. So. I’m okay. Whoever opened the door is not trying to lock me in, as far as I know anyway. Why did they call me?

Remembering I haven’t, I turn and look at the room behind me. It’s lit, but only dimly. It…kind of looks like a hospital room? But. An old one, and not a very nice one. Like they do in movies from earlier times. There’s almost…a replica of a room? Built into the middle of this one. It’s…like in Mission Impossible movies, when they finish tricking someone and pull down the walls and it wasn’t really a hotel room at all. There’s two windows, and I can’t exactly see what’s in the room from where I am, but I can tell that whoever is in there is seeing little medical set pieces left outside them. This is weird.

It's…way more elaborate than any of the others have been. That seems really strange. Are they actually trying to trick whoever is in there?

I can’t think of another reason to do this.

And there is someone in there, right? There’s gotta be. Or, why would I be getting a call for help? So, a heroic spirit, in a really weird death trap? One that is tricking them into thinking they’re somewhere else. That’s…meaner, somehow, I think. I feel a pang in my chest at the guesses I’m making in my head. I hate this—I hate all of this. I just can’t understand why they’re doing it at all. It’s all been bad since that moment I first saw Billy from across a room, but I really can’t get the way the Lancer looked out of my head. I keep wondering how it would feel to be alive and see your guts hanging out on the ground, and I hate that thought—it makes me sick imagining it, but I can’t stop. And he did—he lived that for real! Minutes ago. Minutes ago, he was hanging there with his guts on the ground and a pole through his stomach. He felt all of that, all of it. For he said two and a half days. I…I can’t even…begin to imagine…

And. ...The other thing is, I also keep thinking that none of the spirits liked it, when they saw him like that, but, none of them seemed really…surprised. I wonder. …I wonder if that means this isn’t so different from other things that happen to them. I. I really hope it is—I hope this is nothing like what normally happens, and I’m just making a big deal of nothing in my head. I hope the worst of it is being bossed around and made to fight, because that’s bad enough. But.

I…might not be experienced, but. I’m not stupid. And…I know it’s more than that…

I know it’s worse…

Okay. Come on. Time for this later. Get moving! It’s about them and you want to help them, so let’s go—let’s help! You got this.

Shaking myself internally, I give the stuff around me a quick glance. First thing, better let the person opening the door know they can stop—that’ll eventually draw attention. Whoever it is can’t see me, in Robin’s cloak, and I’m a little afraid to take it off, so…

Settling on a nearby medical cabinet prop, I walk over and open one of the drawers a few times. It works. Whoever it is might not see me, but they can sure see the ghost cabinet, and they take the hint. The door closes and stays shut, which…is unsettling, but. I pretty much just asked for them to do that, so. It’s probably okay. And if anything seems off, I can call for backup. Whoever is out there asked for my help, though, so I’m gonna believe that was sincere until I have proof otherwise, and I’m gonna try.

Turning, I go slowly towards the little mock room ahead, and hesitate at the door. It doesn’t have a window, but it has an old-fashioned keyhole, so I stoop and peer inside. It’s not a good angle, but I can make out a hospital bed in there, with a body on it. I think their eyes are open, but they’re perfectly still. There’s something unsettling about the sight, even after everything I’ve seen today. And there’s…something else. A weird…heaviness, to the room. Some kind of mana, I think, but I don’t know enough about magic to tell what it is. I do know enough to be able to tell whatever it is, isn’t good.

I consider my options. I can still hear fighting faintly above me, so I shouldn’t call for help unless I need it—I might mess them up. I could wait, but now that they know we’re here, they might start killing the spirits they have. So…I should go ahead and go in alone. It’s not like I haven’t done that before. And…it should be fine. If I explain who I am, I think I’ll be safe, and if anything starts to go wrong, I’ll call for help.

My heart’s thudding in my chest so much I feel like throwing up, but I clench my fist and bring it in tight against my chest, then reach my hands up and pull off the hood of Robin’s cloak. I’m not totally sure how it works, and if it’s the action, or the fact I want to stop being invisible, but I see myself again as I do it. No going back I guess. If I’m on camera, I’m on camera. I pause to take a deep breath, and turn the knob.

It isn’t locked.

The door swings open, and before me, I can clearly make out now what looks like a pretty convincing old-fashioned hospital room. Not…in a good way. There are bars over the windows, and straps on the bed, for holding patients down, and here’s a man on the bed, held in place by them.

It…it feels so unnecessary. He looks ill, like he probably would have trouble getting up off the bed no matter what, and a little old. White hair, but a face not as old as I expect with it. I have a hard time telling how old adult people are when they’re between 40 and 70, and he seems not at the older end of that spectrum, but at first glance I thought for a moment he was older. His face is haggard, worn out like he’s on the verge of death. Huge bags under his eyes, gaunt features, and his eyes themselves are milky and vacant. There’s…something really wrong with him. He’s got a bandage on his head too, and one around his throat, both blead-through a little. What…happened to you?

He doesn’t seem to see me at first. Just keeps staring blankly towards one of the fake windows, then slowly turns his head and his empty eyes towards me.

Something changes. The haze drops, if just a little, and I can see life deep beneath the clouds in his eyes.

“A child?” he asks me. His voice is damaged, from whatever happened to his throat, and he sounds weak, but the thing that stands out isn’t that, it’s how his voice itself sounds. There’s an air I’ve only ever heard from teachers, the good ones—a kind of sophisticated and educated and understanding way of talking that makes them sound smart and kind and good to be around all at the same time. “What are you doing here?”

He tries to smile at me. He looks so weak, it’s pitiful.

“…” I can’t find my voice. I swallow, take a step closer, and try again. “I’m. Ritsuka, Fujimaru—I came here to try to help.”

“Help?” he echoes, confused. There’s…so much pain in his voice too. Like being sad is a part of who he is.

“To—get you out of here,” I manage, taking another step.

His brows knit in weak confusion. “Do I know you?”

“No, but I’m here to help everyone trapped in here anyway,” I answer.

He smiles a little, sadly, and shuts his eyes for a moment, breathing taking immense effort. “That’s very kind of you. It’s not the most comforting place to end a life.” He speaks and his voice has that same tone, gentle, and overflowing with pain. “But I don’t think there’s a lot more you can do for any of us. Than come to visit.” He opens his eyes again and turns his head weakly to look at me. “Which is always nice. It can get lonely in a place like this.”

I don’t. Understand? He.

“You want to get out, right?” I ask, taken aback.

“Of course,” he answers simply, shutting his eyes again, voice and breaths raspy, “But it’s not that simple. I have to be here now, and it won’t be much longer.” He smiles to himself again. “You’re kind to worry for us.”

He sounds like he really means that. I’m so confused—unless—?

Thoughts racing, I take in the room again, the attention to detail. I try hard to focus on the heaviness in the room; I’ve never been good at sensing magic, but I give it everything I’ve got, and I can tell something is not just in the room, it’s on him. A curse? A spell? Maybe…If I can find it, I can…

Taking a step to try and see him up close, he hears me moving and opens his eyes and turns to look. Seeing me, he looks surprised.

“Hello there, little one. What are you doing in a place like this?”

I stop and stare.

“Are you alright?” he asks, concerned.

“We…just talked—do you not remember me?” I ask. My voice sounds so small it surprises me. I see his face fall. He looks…some kind of very deep sad, like that question cut to his core.

“I’m sorry,” he says, eyes moving to look at something that isn’t me, “My memory isn’t what it was.” He tries to smile at me and looks back again. “What brings someone like you to a place like this?”

“I came…to help you,” I reply meekly. There’s no recognition in his eyes. Just mild surprise again.

What did they. …Why did they...

“Sir,” I say, taking another step, “Do you know that you’re a heroic spirit?”

I think he almost laughs, and I can see in his face he has no idea not only what he is, but what a heroic spirit is at all. “I appreciate the compliment, but there’s really nothing heroic about me,” he says like he’s found my question very sweet.

Oh boy. What do I do? I don’t know complex magic. I can’t…I can’t fix this on my own, unless, if I can get him to contract, I could with a command spell, but. If he doesn’t even know what heroic spirits are, he’ll never agree! He won’t even be able to. And, if I try to explain, and he thinks what I’m doing is super weird, he might freak out, and- …Okay, okay, come on, think. Stay cool.

“What happened?” I ask, indicating his injuries as I move closer. I’m almost at the bedside now, and there’s a little metal chair there. I move it beside him and sit down, like I really am someone who came to visit a hospital room.

No. Not hospital. Asylum.

His face loses the little color it had.

“I’m sorry—I—maybe that’s too personal,” I say quickly, feeling very bad, “I shouldn’t have asked.”

He gives me a kindly smile. “Fell,” he answers, and he tries to indicate I think the head wound, but can’t because he’s strapped down, and I see surprise and then pain and shame with it register on his face as he looks down at himself. You forgot. That too…

“What’s your name?” I ask, hoping to distract him.

It sort of works. He glances back at me, surprised again. “You don’t know me? Are you just visiting everyone here today?”

“Yes,” I answer, because in a way that’s true.

He smiles. There’s barely anything but skin and bones on his face. He looks so ill I believe what he said earlier, about how it wouldn’t be much longer. “That’s kind of you,” he says again, “I’m sure it will cheer all of us up. It can get a little boring around here, the days long.”

The thought of how true that must be is agonizing. It makes me want to cry. Whoever he was, this must have been how he died, a long time ago. Alone, hurt, and with a broken memory, in an asylum. I can’t think of many lonelier ways to go.

“My name is Antonio,” he says. He must have been some kind of teacher, the way he sounds proud and welcoming at once saying his own name.

“I’m Ritsuka,” I introduce myself again, “Fujimaru.”

“Ritsuka,” he echoes, curious, “Where are you from?”

“Japan,” I answer.

“Your Italian is perfect—even the accent,” he says.

“We aren’t speaking Italian,” I say before I can think not to.

Something cracks in his face. He winces, almost like a full-body tick. His eyes get vacant, and then very, very alive for just a moment, and there’s horror in them.

“I,” he says, faltering. Listening. “Sto…parlando Italiano…No.”

Crap. Crap crap crap.

He looks at me, terrified. Right on the edge of understanding something, and unable to make it.

“What am I?” he begs me in his broken voice. It’s not what I thought he’d say, and I am completely lost in how to answer him. “Who?” He tries to move his hands again, and can’t and in despair tries to rip them free. Failing again, he turns back to me, desperate. “Please!”

“It’s okay—it’s okay--I’m here to help you!” I promise. I can’t stand the way he’s looking at me like I’m doing this and he’s begging me to stop. I would never. “I know this is confusing—I don’t know what they did to you, but they messed with your head.”

“My?” He tries to move a hand again, already having forgotten, and looks down in despair at the restraints, then me.

“Here,” I say quickly, and I unthread the ones around his wrists, then chest. Still unbelievably weak, he raises a shaking hand to his head and feels it, wincing, then brings it down to his neck and leaves it there.

Staring into space, confused and horrified, and out of it.

“Antonio?” I try.

He glances at me again, distracted, but more awake than he was.

“I can help you, but I need you to trust me to do it.” I look at my hand, then hold it out to him, palm-up. “You’re still you, whoever you were before. You’re still Antonio. But it’s later than you think, and you’re a little different too. I can explain, but I think if you trust me, I can fix what they did to you, and you’ll be able to remember on your own. That way will make a lot more sense.”

“Trust you,” he echoes, and I see the fog starting to settle back over his eyes, his previously terrified posture starting to go slack.

“No-no-no-no, hey!” I say, reaching over and putting a hand on his shoulder.

That does something, and he blinks and looks at my hand. I’m so afraid he’s going to ask me who I am again, but instead he says, “What?” in a kind of out of it voice.

Crap crap I’m gonna lose him.

“Listen to me. I’m speaking Japanese right now, and so are you. This place?” I say, letting go and hopping up, idea formed, “It’s not real—You’re not where you think!” I run at the nearest wall and slam into it, and it topples back like the set piece it is, and he watches in horror and jerks when it thuds against the floor, then stares at the room past it in alarm. “You’re being kept here against your will, and the people who did this are messing with your head! I can help you—I came here to help, but you have to trust me.”

Face ashy, he focuses back on me.

“If you form a pact with me, I can help you,” I say more calmly, going to sit back down.

“I don’t-“ he starts, and then he winces again, that full-body kind of jerk, like something has cracked inside him, and when he looks at me again, the fog has receded a little. “I’m…you said, ‘heroic spirit.’ I’m…dead. …I’m…I’m not…Antoino… I am…I’m…I…”

I’m losing him again and he’s staring at the wall. I reach over and put my hands on his and that snaps him out and he looks at me again. “You are. You’re Antonio. You’re Antonio…?”

“Salieri,” he says almost vacantly, but his eyes are still alive, and holding mine. I can see him deep in there past whatever Ur-shanabi’s done to him, fighting.

“You’re Antonio Salieri,” I echo, “And you’re a heroic spirit. If you form a contract with me, I can help you. I’ll try to anyway, if you don’t want to, but I’m not very good at magic. I’ll do my best, but I swear, if you are willing to form a contract, I won’t do anything to hurt you—I’m only here to try—”

There’s a loud sound between a thud and a hum, and we both look up towards the source of it. Something in the ceiling?

Huh.

I was so used to the sound of it, I hadn’t even realized the bedframe itself was making a low-pitched humming as well, but it shuts off and I am immediately aware of the absence of it. We both look in unison again, down at the bedframe, and I see Antonio’s brow furrow in confusion, and then he holds up a hand, and I realize it’s not completely opaque.

It's already not completely opaque.

No. No!

“They pulled the plug!” I say desperately, and he turns his head to look at me again. Whatever they did to make him like this, it must not have been connected to his power source, because he’s just as out of it as before. This is all wrong and he’ll be dead in a few seconds, as fast as he’s starting to vanish! I have to—“Please—hurry—if you vanish they’ll summon you back! I can ground-“

His expression changes entirely.

In an instant, the fog is gone and the welcoming calmness and kindness is gone and his expression is hard and volatile.

I was wrong—whatever curse was on him was connected to his power source, because it is gone now, and it’s like he’s not even the same person he was a moment before. He looks into my face and I’m scared of him. No, I think…I think I’m terrified of this person. He looks like death—he looks like hate—looks like them in a way I had no idea person could look. Like they’re not what he’s feeling, they’re what he is. Meeting his gaze makes me scared he’s going to snap me between his fingers, and not even for any personal reason, just because it’s his nature. But then I’m past that in his eyes, and behind it is the same thing I saw before. The same person, deep beneath it. Kind and intelligent and composed. Like he’s wearing a terrifying Halloween costume over who he really is.

And I’m okay.

I think he sees that, sees all of it, and he looks…hurt and touched and a little surprised, all at the same time. He glances down at me, and then holds out a transparent hand, palm-up.

“I am not much of a servant,” he warns me, and he sounds harder than before, colder, and sharp, but the teacher tone is still there. The one that says ‘I will show you how to do it right even if it takes a long time, don’t worry. Come take a seat,’ all patient, and kind, and knowledgeable. Layered beneath the new tone, the same way the look in his eyes was. “I’ll warn you ahead of time that I’m dangerous to be around, and I haven’t much power to offer you, but if you still want a contract with a servant like me, I will accept your offer.”

“Of course I do,” I say without hesitation, and I take his hand, “But I don’t want a servant. I want a partner.”

He tilts his head like this is unexpected, but somehow his face doesn’t look too surprised, and he closes his vanishing fingertips around mine.

“My soul becomes your will, your spirit becomes my destiny. If you hear me and accept my call, then bind to me-“ I realize I have no idea what his class is and look to him.

“Avenger,” he says in that broken, sad voice, but he has a weak smile on his face.

‘Avenger’? “-Avenger,” I finish.

“I accept,” he replies, and I feel a tug on my chest and flood of mana, and I thought I’d be fine because I’m getting used to this, but I forgot I’m kind of beat right now, and I think I pass out—only for a second, but I’m upright, and then I’m face-first on the bed, no idea how I got there, the Avenger gently helping me back up.

I feel awful, but he’s solid again, mostly, and looking better. I mentally check to make sure everyone I have a contract with is still alive, and I feel all the connections going strong.

“Great,” I say weakly, grinning at him, “We did it.”

“Are you alright?” he asks.

“Mmm…hh..” I slump forward and pass out.

#fate go fic #fate go #fate grand order fic #fate grand order au #fate go au #fgo #fate grand order #Ritsuka Fujimaru #Antonio Salieri #the kid #the kid (fic)

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gffa · 4 years

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I’M GONNA HAVE TO BREAK THIS UP BECAUSE IT’S KIND OF A LOT. So, @alabasterswriting and I were having a fantastic conversation about Anakin and how much he intellectually-versus-emotionally knows that he can leave the Jedi Order at any time, that he’s not a slave to them and it was already getting really long, so I’m going to put this in a new post because this is going to be even longer, but IT’S A SUBJECT NEAR AND DEAR TO MY HEART BECAUSE I HAVE MANY FEELINGS ABOUT ANAKIN SKYWALKER. For context, there are some other posts that’ll be referenced so this is only, like, the length of two monster posts instead of five. ^_~ - The original ask about whether or not Anakin was a slave to the Jedi, which sets up how the Jedi make it extremely clear that it’s fine to leave - A follow-up ask from alabasterswriting + their very thoughtful, love response, which this post is largely a response to! Now that I’ve gotten some sleep, I think I can be more coherent on why I think there’s a lot of really good stuff to explore with Anakin’s emotional misunderstanding (versus intellectually knowing that he can leave) and why I do think it’s an important element, but not necessarily at the core of why Anakin stayed. Why does Anakin stay as a Jedi? I think the Obi-Wan & Anakin comic covers this really well--he plans to leave, he’s not upset about it, he’s excited and has nothing but respect for the Jedi Order, he even says that he may come back. Anakin knows that he has options, he believes that he’s capable of taking off into the wider galaxy, he acknowledges that part of the reason he may have joined was, despite Qui-Gon’s warnings, all he saw was a magic man and a way out of slavery, what was he going to do, say no? The overarching plot of the comic is: Obi-Wan wants him to be absolutely sure of this, so he asks Anakin for one last mission together, but makes it clear that he’ll accept whatever choice Anakin makes in the end. Obi-Wan’s point is, when they call for reinforcements at the end to deal with Carnelion IV’s civil war, they get those reinforcements, becasue they did this as Jedi. That the Jedi are part of the Republic and thus they have the backing of the Republic. (This is, interestingly enough, also a major theme in Master & Apprentice, that the day is saved precisely because Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon were part of the Republic and had the backing of the Republic.) Anakin realizes that he can accomplish more as a Jedi than he can setting off on his own, so he happily agrees to stay. This fits with how Anakin genuinely seems to like being a Jedi. The problems he expresses with it, is that he wants more than what they can do, he wants to be able to tell people want to do, to make them do the right thing. He expresses this to Padme in Attack of the Clones, he follows it up with that conversation with Tarkin during The Citadel arc, where they both feel the Jedi Code does not allow Jedi to go “far enough” to win the war. Further, he teaches on the beliefs of the Jedi. After the brain invader worms, Anakin teaches Ahsoka about how to balance letting go of their attachments versus caring about other people and wanting to save them, how the two work together. While she’s on Onderon and having confusing feelings for Lux, he teaches her again about how duty must come before her feelings, he seems to agree with this, because he’s not shy about subverting the Jedi teachings when he wants to. And very clearly, he teaches the same things to Rex in the Bad Batch arc:

That’s exactly what the Jedi teach (and is ironic because this is just a few months before Revenge of the Sith and I think it’s actually a really perfect illustration of exactly what was at the heart of Anakin, that he genuinely believes in the Jedi teachings, until they apply to him and his fears eat him up and he makes himself the exception) and Anakin also seems to genuinely believe it. In Revenge of the Sith, Anakin doesn’t express any desire to not be a Jedi until after he’s helped kill Mace and the younglings and then, frankly, he’s repeating Palpatine’s words, not his own, he doesn’t really believe what he’s saying, imo. When he talks to Padme about feeling lost, it isn’t expressed in terms of him feeling trapped, but instead that he feels he isn’t the Jedi he should be, that he wants more. Anakin never seems to feel trapped or obligated--there’s almost nothing in the movies or TV show that actually lean towards the idea that Anakin felt any pressure of being the Chosen One. He doesn’t seem to believe it himself--he tells the Father that it’s a myth. And the other Jedi (aside from Qui-Gon) never talk about it in front of him, it’s almost never even mentioned, I think it comes up all of two or three times in the movies? And each time there are people expressing doubt about it being true and it’s never discussed at Anakin’s face. Even in TCW, aside from the Mortis arc, it never really seems to come up pretty much at all. Does he feel an obligation to Shmi’s memory to stay as a Jedi? Possibly! It would certainly be an easy conclusion to come to! He never expresses it directly anywhere that I can recall, though. At the end of The Wrong Jedi, when Ahsoka says she’s going to leave, he says, “I understand. More than you realize, I understand wanting to walk away from the Order.“ which is the most he ever expresses about actually wanting to leave in any canon that I’ve seen. We’re given no other context for this--is it because he’s angry at the Jedi, is it that he feels they’re not doing enough and he could do more as a free agent, is it that he wants to leave to be with Padme, is it that he doesn’t like being a Jedi, is it that he feels a wanderlust for the stars? We’re given no further context in that scene, so we have to put it together with the other things we have. That Anakin, when he was younger, said he felt a calling to the starts, that in ROTS he wants more, that in the conversations with Padme and Tarkin, he feels the Jedi aren’t going far enough and someone should make people do things. Put together with the end of the Obi-Wan & Anakin comic, where he stays because he feels he can do more with the Jedi than without them, I think that’s at the heart of why Anakin stays. He wants more more more more. This is further evidenced by what George Lucas says about how the dark side works, which is something I think Anakin is clearly sliding into at this point: “What happens when you go to the dark side is it goes out of balance and you get really selfish and you forget about everybody … because when you get selfish you get stuff, or you want stuff, and when you want stuff and you get stuff then you are afraid somebody is going to take it away from you, whether it’s a person or a thing or a particular pleasure or experience.” --George Lucas That’s what I see it as, because the story of Anakin Skywalker is one that is sliding towards the dark side, and Anakin’s problem is that he wants more and more and more. He wants to be a Jedi, he wants to be married to Padme, he wants to be able to murder people to win the war, he wants to be made a Master (despite having just taken a bribe from Palpatine and clearly isn’t ready for it yet in emotional mastery), he wants all these people, things, and experiences. He wants more. The point @alabasterswriting makes here: “To me, (and it’s totally an opinion, and I’m open to disagreement), it’s always seemed like Anakin was on his way to being able to being able to handle himself emotionally before his perceptions of his sense of self were messed with. And I think (as I’m sure many do) a large part of that was Palpatine feeding his ego/preying on his fears and insecurities. Like we see in the bar with Palpatine that he uses a whole bunch of trigger words meant to make Anakin equate the Jedi to his time as a slave.“ is a really good one, because I absolutely agree that Palpatine completely muddied the waters on this, that Anakin was on his way to a much healthier understanding of himself and ability to understand himself, but then Palpatine started dripping poison into his hear and telling Anakin the things he wanted to hear, rather than the truth that he needed to hear. So, eventually, Vader rationalizes what he’s doing by looping back around to what Palpatine told him, which George Lucas makes clear in his directions to Hayden Christensen (that he’s rationalizing and justifying the things he’s doing, that he doesn’t actually believe them, that is), that that’s at the heart of how Anakin handles things. He does feel powerless to help people--despite that he’s not and there are plenty of moments where he knows otherwise, like in the Age of Republic comic, when he helps the people of Kudo out of the sticky situation they’re in, they have a chance to make their own choice about whether they want to join the Separatists or the Republic, Obi-Wan specifically points out that it was him who helped them:

There are actually a ton of instances in The Clone Wars of this as well, like he helps the rebels on Onderon, he helps save Naboo from the Blue Shadow Virus, he helps free the people of Mon Calamari, he helps free the people of Kiros, etc., but it was easier to grab the above cap as an example (even if I do absolutely agree that Anakin Skywalker is a bucket with a whole in the bottom--it doesn’t matter that he helps people almost every day, it’s never enough, he still wants more, he still feels powerless to help as many people as he wants, and he does feel like he’s often taking things apart, rather than fixing things, as he tells Padme in the Malevolence arc) as well as it’s a good segue into his relationship with Obi-Wan in the next part. Ultimately, I think it comes back to the dark side--it lies, it twists things, it tells Anakin that he wants more and more and more, that nothing else around him is ever enough. He’s not helping enough people, he’s not doing enough stuff, he’s not getting enough recognition, he’s not getting enough personal loyalty over loyalty to things that are bigger than him. But he can’t face that truth about himself, that the dark side has twisted him, so instead the dark side must be right, Palpatine must be right. The dark side always wins, Obi-Wan, Vader says in the Star Wars comic, and so everything else must be shuffled around to fit that. Everything else must be rationalized to fit the way he feels, so he leans into whatever justification he can find, despite that he actually really wanted to be a Jedi and believed in their teachings. (Part 2 in a reblog coming soon because I can only do one monster post at a time. ^_~)

#anakin skywalker #jedi order #meta #long post

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azurevi · 4 years

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Hey could you maybe do a headcanons about Azul's s/o being the grandchild of the king of the Coral Sea. And like their tails is a beautiful gradient of colors like blue to purple or pink to red, etc. And like they just adore Azul a lot like they're Azul's #1 fan and just adore him to the core and fluffy stuff idk how to explain it.

Last request! Thank you for this idea. I hope I didn't take too long and this is what you're looking for. This is also very different from the canon plotline ^^

Azul x s/o who's the grandchild of the king of the Coral Sea

Azul knew your identity, of course. How could he not? You were the renowned child of the king of the Coral Sea. Even as a child, you were bathed in compliments and affection from people who didn't even know you.

Which was the complete contrary to how people'd treated him. Even people who'd known him as who he was left him eventually.

That's exactly why he should despise you - you had everything that he'd ever wanted. Adulation and position, respect and glory. You even had a long slender tail painted in a rich gradient of blue, pink and purple that seemed to twinkle in the dark.

It would only be fair if you traded lives. Or tails, at least. Maybe if you'd understood his pain of being inferior…

And his wish came true.

He hadn't expected knocking on his door. Jade and Leech had gone out, and no one in their right mind would look for him. So when he saw it was you banging at his door, his bemusement was doubled.

"I'm sorry- excuse- your highness?"

And you knew his name. The name of someone as small as him.

You'd come here as an admirer, not a member of the royal family. Azul couldn't understand at first, so you told him that you'd come after hearing rumors about him flying around.

And he thought he was going to be arrested. Perhaps for practicing strong and hazardous magic. Or maybe even for his widely detested tentacles. At this thought he instinctively hid them behind the door.

"Of course I'm not here to arrest you. It's not my job anyways. I'm here because people have been passing around the rumor that you're practicing some ancient magic--"

There it was. Azul was ready to bid farewell to his freedom.

"-- and that sounds so cool! Can you tell me how to do it?"

Wait- what?

You could've been there as a spy, digging into his secrets and finding an excuse to lock him away. You could've been everything bad, but something about your sprinkling eyes reassured him of all his doubts.

And so, stupidly and spontaneously he let you into his house.

You were in awe? That's strange. You had a whole palace to inherit, surely the crappy home of one lowly sea creature wouldn't captivate you.

"This is- so much magic!" you swam around, hands stretching out but retreating in respect. "Grandfather doesn't let too much magic linger in the palace. He's way too sensitive about that stuff. That's why I'm coming to you for help. I want to learn magic, and I can't think of a better mentor,"

Surely there were magicians way more powerful and established than him, but he was so flushed with embarrassment and just a little touch of pride at the moment that he didn't think to accept your request.

And so every week you'd show up at his door with the same admiration on your face, flapping your iridescent tail and seemingly leaving a trail of fairydust in its wake.

You were a fast learner. He only needed to remind you a little about the basics and you could already learn the spell. Over time he let slip of the fact that he practiced ancient and probably forbidden magic. Not only did you not recoil, but you also became more eager.

At some point, you'd started calling yourself his '#1 fan'. It took him an excruciatingly long time to get used to it. Of course it would, he'd never been called anything close to nice.

He would never say it out loud, but he also looked up to you -- your ability to see past all your status and wealth, your unprejudiced aesthetic and unwavering strength…

It didn't take him long to realize that he'd fallen for his '#1 fan'

And he was scared. Who was he to even have a relationship with you in the first place? He shouldn't cross the line and hope for too much, lest he lost everything in an instance.

You didn't seem to notice the flush on his cheeks as you got closer. Azul was completely comfortable with you now, and he'd dropped the need to address you formally. Jade and Leech also loved you very much, and you were just like a family.

Unbeknownst to him but obvious to the Leech brothers, you'd also grown fond of him. His incompressible boldness, tender observations and pearl-like eyes behind his square glasses…

You'd always loved your colorful tail, but there seemed to be something more precious and sadly hidden from others. A hidden gem.

But you knew about his insecurities and doubts, so you didn't want to pursue anything further. That was, until the Leech brothers convinced you to tell him the truth after weeks of nagging and jumpscares.

Azul was … as still as a statue. Who could blame him? The love of his life - his #1 fan - and the grandchild of the king of the Coral Sea, no less - just confessed their undying love for him! He was so happy he could soar right above the water and into that azure, blinding sky.

And so you began going out with him. Nothing much changed. You were already comfortable (too comfortable, Azul'd say) with him, and he'd already let you in into most of his secrets.

One thing that never failed to amaze him was the way you looked at him, with the same anticipation and recognition as the day you first knocked on his door. Even after you'd started dating, you always brought up how you were his #1 fan. You weren't shy when it came to expressing love, and perhaps open and blunt confessions were exactly what Azul needed.

You still practiced magic together, and he would bring you into the deeper, less known water to explore. He could always find delicate treasures hidden in the sand. Other times, you would get cozy with him indoors, reading books or just conversing.

"I really love your tail, Y/N," was all he could say at the moment, and he was still trying hard not to stutter in between, but give him time. Sooner or later, he would be able to embrace himself for who he was.

#twst x reader #twst headcanons #twisted wonderland #azul ashengrotto x reader #azul ashengrotto #sie writes

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ohmygodtheywereparabatai · 3 years

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please god let me overanalyze this literal five second bit for christmas

Zhao’s Demise but Actually I Talk About Why He’s a Viable Candidate for a Redemption Arc

—

So, Zuko offers his hand, Zhao refuses, his pride becomes his own downfall. Done deal, no need to read further into it.

Most people arrive at the conclusion that his arrogance is cause for that ultimate look of ‘eat piss’ on his face... I’m most people. I’m not arguing that. What I didn’t notice the first time around was the penultimate expression, one I believe is meant to convey something slightly more human. People have made note of this too, called it a moment of recognition or humility, anagnorisis. I’ll throw up the screencaps, second for second, and walk you through. The reason I do this is, considering how much time and effort goes into animation, I will be treating each and every frame as if it has earned its place in the episode’s run time, 100%. Bryke are the masters. I am but a humble consumer.

Two parts encapsulate Zhao’s final moments. The first, before cutting away to Zuko’s outstretched hand, has nothing to do with vanity or hatred. Rather, it’s the farthest emotion from both, and more importantly, it’s genuine.

He turns to look at him, at the banished prince he’s hunted and ridiculed relentlessly. Zhao doesn’t sour on the onset, at the mere thought of being rescued by someone he regards as a failure and disgrace. Instead it conveys surprise, expected of Zuko’s offer in spite of the heated rivalry they share. It’s everything he doesn’t understand, a merciless man shown mercy, a poster child for rage and grudge given a chance to live by a scarred boy with every right to hate the world around him, and get rid of his competition to achieve the only ends that will restore him. It cuts away after this look, face buried in the ocean spirit’s massive hand:

Looks almost repentant, if the context were switched up a little. Doesn’t it? ;p

The next part is, maybe, even harder to digest in its entirety without really slowing it down. Instead of the dramatically retracting his arm and delivering that lasting, withering look designed to ring with absolute contempt and self-absorption... Zhao reaches back.

His hand moves closer to the lower lefthand corner of the screen. His fingers curl inward, and for a terrifying instant it looks as though he intends to grab Zuko and drag him down with him. The anger fades again, however, and with no reason or motive to not maintain that facade, I assume the next few shots are also authentic, human.

Zhao’s hand falters. It moves back, and the slant of his eyebrows is not so severe. This doesn’t quite come off as the beginning stages of a royal ‘fuck you’... so what’s up?

And there you have it. The most baffling expression to witness on one Admiral Zhao, personally speaking.

It’s as if his hand has gone limp. His eyes are grave, and his anger has dissolved. Into what, is up to interpretation - easily the core of Bryke genius. I see it as mercy. Something Zhao only learns in his last moments, from an adversary, no less, and returns by refusing Zuko’s hand. Either Zhao believed himself worthy of more than damsel-esque rescue from the treacherous enemy of his nation... or he believed in the exact opposite. It’s that kind of realization, which, in my opinion, renders the expression above.

And so, he ends on a characteristically haughty note of dismissal, superiority. His iconic, scathing features return, and like most soldiers, choosing death is in and of itself an act of defiance, and at the same time a display of servile, unimaginable loyalty. Dying for honor or a cause is no light topic... if anything, this scene reveals the extent of Fire Nation nationalism. And we know how it’s repaid, how his story finally ends in a maddening, eternal fog.

So, Redemption Arc?

Yeesh, grim portrait of such a scoff-able moment. But bear with me. Redeeming Zhao deserves an entire post of its own, but I’ll lay down the bare bones of such a hypothetical.

Consider any other ATLA villain that shows such drastic change in their character - a brief, shining moment of humanity, vulnerability, or conflict. Zuko aside, and the crazed Azula, there’s little to nothing to work with. Long Feng, Combustion Man, Firelord Ozai - stagnant, little backstory. There’s a moment in Zuko Alone where we see Ozai standing over the turtle duck pond, regarded as an attempt at processing Ursa’s loss. It’s even said that the royal family was truly happy once. Scant, but plenty to expand on, right? Except Ozai remains the worst father in the history of fathers, and status as a genocidal maniac is generally seen as a hard pass.

Take Zhao, then. Complicit, or a pawn? Arrogant ass, or a brainwashed soldier, raised on the wrong ideals? We’ve seen Fire Nation schools. We know our own history. In both occasions where he’s on the verge of killing a minor, something that immediately lands a ticket to Irredeemable Land - he fails, embarrassingly so. Are his hands clean? Certainly not. Show-wise, however, he’s depicted as a laughable fool, his shot at greatness reduced to insignificance... just like Uncle Iroh’s heart of gold takes precedence over a history of warmongering. It’s framing, and it’s deliberate.

In the end, I leave anyone still reading with this.

If Zhao could learn mercy and return it in the last split-second before his defeat, if he genuinely saw Zuko, for the first and only time, and made a radical choice in light of it... what’s to say he couldn’t learn - or unlearn - more? That he couldn’t make another good choice, and another, if his mind wasn’t being rotted out by fog? *suspicious shrug emoji*

At the foundation of his character is a soldier. Someone hungry for glory, sworn to serve. He hunts the Avatar, he attacks the Blue Spirit, he besieges the Northern Kingdom and yes, takes the moon out of duty - a distorted notion of honor and destiny, and a destructive root to firebending influenced by a century of war. Seems to carry the faintest hint of PTSD. Any chance the show might contain such a hint?

Ah...

#LONG post #atla #avatar the last airbender #atla theory #atla meta #admiral zhao #zhao #zuko #firelord ozai #azula #merry chrysler everyone!! 🎄

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flutteringdreams-matw · 3 years

Text

Out of Time (5)

First/Last

Read on AO3

Word Count: 4347

Previously: Danny and Dan clashed above Amity.

Now: "When you faced Dan in the alternate future, he fused a time medallion within you and then took your place within your time. That created the first paradox. What he didn't realize is the ramifications of that action." Clockwork's expression softened slightly, observing Danny carefully. "Time Medallions are exempt from my powers of controlling time, but not time itself."

As always - please let me know what you think!

---

"I want a damage report on the attack from earlier, any footage from that attack and for goodness sake… will someone deal with the media!"

"Yes Mayor Masters!" a chorus of aides and officials replied, scurrying out of the room.

Vlad sighed, rubbing his temples as he leaned back in his office. Dealing with Daniel's heroic exploits were one thing… but this was taking it to a whole different level! The blasted dome had been up for days and now a ghost that even he felt the presence of from inside his office shows up with the same power as the boy?

Vlad frowned as he looked up at the dome overhead, remembering the events from previous summer. Daniel had certainly grown since then, but to keep a shield this powerful up for this long? Could he truly be this powerful?

A ring brought him out of his musing, feeling the vibrations of his phone from his left breast pocket. With a slight scowl, he absently grabbed the phone and glanced at the number. His eyes widened in recognition before answering. "I was wondering when you would call," he said into his cell phone, annoyed and exasperated.

"It's Maddie," the voice answered curtly. Vlad's eyes furrowed as he scrambled more upright into his seat.

"M-Maddie!" he exclaimed nervously, flattening out his hair to make it look more presentable. He briefly berated his silliness as he settled his nerves. "What a pleasant surprise!" He stiffened slightly, confused. "Wait… why are you calling from Daniel's phone?"

"Why were you expecting him to call you?" she rebutted dangerously. Before Vlad could even think of a reply, he heard her sigh on the other line. "What do you know about heat cores?"

Vlad frowned, slightly surprised at the question. "It's one of the types of cores for ghosts. There are a few different ones – ice, fire, electricity. Surely Daniel must have mentioned them?"

"Not about heat cores specifically," she replied. Vlad still noticed the tartness in her voice; she really didn't want to talk to him.

Vlad got up from the chair, pacing as he thought of how to continue the conversation. This was Maddie! She barely spoke to him anymore; he needed to keep her talking. "Heat cores are fire based," he explained. "Depending on the ghost, it could have direct correlations to their powers like warm ectoblasts, from their appearances etc."

"What would happen if a heat core came in contact with an ice core?"

Vlad stopped pacing, looking at the phone curiously. "That would only happen if two ghosts merged somehow or if someone striped a ghost down to their core levels and combined them forcefully."

"But what would happen?" she pressed.

Vlad stayed silent for a moment, pondering her question as he searched for an answer. "I would assume… that it would behave quite like ice when exposed to heat. It'd melt – either absorbing the ice core or drying up anything the core left behind." Maddie went quiet, making an uneasy feeling creep up within the man. "Maddie," he said quietly. "Daniel has an ice core."

"He's fine," she replied quickly, but he caught the small worry in her voice. "He's resting in the infirmary." Vlad's frown deepened, waiting for the woman to explain some more. "That fight took a lot out of him."

Vlad scoffed. "Of course it did!" he replied, annoyed. "He's held a powerful shield that reflects attacks over the entire town for days. Even if he was Phantom all the time this would take a lot out of him. He's still half human! It's reckless and I can't believe you are entertaining this idiocy."

Maddie was quiet for a long time, the weight of Vlad's words hanging in the air. "This is more complicated that you even know," she said finally, the tartness coming back in full force.

"Then tell me!" Vlad exclaimed angrily. "Believe me to be the bad guy all you want Maddie, but I know Daniel! We're the same!"

"You are not the same!" Maddie exclaimed, cutting across the man's tirade. "Do you think I like seeing him do this? He's fifteen years old Vlad, and I can't do anything to protect him!" The line was quiet for a few moments before she sighed tiredly. "Look, I trust Danny's judgement. Whatever that ghost is will be a force to be reckoned with, and while I hate to say this, we may need all hands on deck. Keep the media off our backs and I'll be in contact."

"Maddie wait-" Vlad started, but it was too late. Maddie was gone, the beeping of the disconnected line entertaining his ear. Vlad brought his phone down slowly, staring at Daniel's number with a concerned frown. "What on earth is going on," he murmured, confused.

:-=-:

Maddie frowned as she hung up the phone, staring at the device in her hand like it was a foreign object. With a sigh, she opened her son's phone again, scrolling through the call log until she saw the most recent one. She stared at the four letter name, slightly surprised that her son didn't label it "Plasmius" or "Fruitloop," before finally pressing the delete button.

She didn't want to admit it, but the man was right; Danny wasn't acting logically. Danny was acting on instinct and fear, with no regard for his own safety. And here she was, powerless and unable to stop him. Her hand curled around the phone determinedly, before setting it back on Danny's nightstand and walked out of his room. As she went down the stairs, her mind wandered back to her conversation with Vlad.

If Vlad thinks that mixing Ghost cores is a bad idea, then it might have truly been an accident. She mused. But if this alternate future has a heat core… how did it change? Which core absorbed which? Our Danny has an ice core… but what if the alternate Danny didn't start with one?

"Maddie?"

The sound of her husband's voice brought her out of her thoughts. Maddie looked to meet Jack's worried gaze, confused at her current state. He and the two ghosts were at the kitchen table, apparently in conversation while she walked into the room in a daze.

Maddie shook her head and smiled apologetically. "Sorry, just thinking through something." Her smile quickly disappeared, guilt creeping up in her chest. "How's Danny?"

"Still out," Jack told her with a frown. He turned towards the large wolf ghost sitting across from him. "Ethelwulf was just filling me in."

"It's more exhaustion than anything else," Ethelwulf continued sombrely. "Most of the bruises and burns he acquired from that fight have all but healed; the only reason why he's still unconscious is because he fixed that shield."

Clockwork said nothing, regarding the humans and ghosts expressionlessly before moving away from the table. Maddie was a little unnerved by the purple clad ghost, but Danny had once said he was a friend, and Ethelwulf seemed to trust him. Maddie sighed sadly, taking a seat at the table.

"He hasn't been sleeping well," she told the healing ghost. "Not since he put up the shield."

Ethelwulf frowned, glancing back toward the time master before regarding the mother. "Let's let him rest then," he said, changing the subject slightly. "Best fill everyone in together."

"Maybe you can help us out then," Jack said, scratching his chin in thought. "Most of our inventions have a failsafe for Danny's ecto-signature, but if Dan's ecto-signature is similar…"

Clockwork moved slightly from the corner of the kitchen. His red eyes found Maddie's, staring straight at her as Jack and Ethelwulf discussed possible ecto-signatures. Maddie held his gaze, awestruck at the power this ghost seemed to hold in that stare. The world disappeared around her, the faint sound of clocks in the distance drowning out the world.

As suddenly as it happened, the gaze disappeared and Clockwork floated slowly toward the entrance to the lab. Maddie watched as he made his way away from Jack and Ethelwulf, down the stairs; Maddie followed quickly.

"Clockwork?" she called, making the ghost stop in the middle of the lab. "Danny told us you took Dan in the Fenton Thermos the first time he faced him. Is there some way-"

"You cannot stop him," Clockwork cut across bluntly.

Flustered, Maddie stopped, looking at the back of the ghost with wide eyes. "What?"

"Any parent wants to shelter their children from harm," Clockwork told her sagely. "You mean well Maddie Fenton, but you cannot stop Daniel from growing up; from facing his fears. There are only so many things you can still protect him from."

Maddie frowned. "I don't understand."

Clockwork sighed, glancing back at the woman over his shoulder. "I know what you're planning – but we're running out of time. If you cannot figure how to separate their ecto-signatures, even with Plasmius' help, then you must be prepared to accept what Danny decides to do. Along with the consequences that come with it."

Maddie's mind reeled with the weight of Clockwork's words. She swallowed nervously, her response coming out in a whisper. "He's my son; how can I just watch as he throws himself into danger?"

Clockwork turned back, continuing towards the infirmary. "You don't," he replied sadly. The ghost turned invisible then, leaving the stricken mother in the middle of the lab.

:-=-:

... "Vlad?" His voice felt hoarse to his own ears.

"Daniel, there's no time!" the man yelled frantically as he freed the boy from the operating table. He heard the screams from further away. "It went wrong. You need to run, get out of here. I'll hold them – it – off to buy you time." The smell of ectoplasm and blood made him sick. "Quickly before –"

Vlad was tackled from behind from a white and black blur. Not wasting a second, he ran toward the exit of the lab. Suddenly, he felt something hit him from behind. With a shout, he crashed into the wall hard.

"Did you think you could run away from me?"

He looked up at the voice. It was his voice – except it was distorted somehow, more evil. His ghost half was different, hair on fire and skin blue. Phantom looked like those ghosts he fought over the last year – before everything. His body was shaking.

"Did you think you could throw me away Danny? After everything?" Phantom said, in the same strange voice. "Let me show you which half is disposable."

He met the blood red eyes of Phantom before he saw green.

Danny gasped as he awoke, startled from his most recent dream. Eyes shooting open, he immediately groaned at the too bright lights bombarded his senses. He brought a hand to his face, blocking out the light briefly, hissing slightly at his soreness as he did so. Danny stayed like that for a few minutes, taking in the smell of antiseptic and ectoplasm as he tried to shake the dream from his thoughts.

"What's wrong with me?" Danny asked, distraught. "Why now?"

"Both excellent questions."

Danny shot upright, wincing heavily, at the voice. "Clockwork?!" he exclaimed, confused. He looked around widely before he saw him, sitting in the chair beside the bed. The Time Master's face was hidden beneath his long silvery beard. His hands were folded neatly under his chin, eyes sparkling in small amusement as he watched Danny's slacked jawed response.

"Hello Danny," he said. Clockwork shifted the chair closer, letting it rise above the ground slightly as he did so. "Good to see you awake."

Danny blinked at the words before his brow furrowed in anger. "Where have you been?" he asked angrily, gesturing wildly. "Dan escaped days ago and you show up here now to do what? We could have-" Danny broke off, grimacing as a set of sparks went through his frame. He doubled over with a groan and closed his eyes as he breathed through the pain. The sparks subsided after a few minutes, but Danny sat hunched, breathing deeply.

"Easy now," Clockwork soothed, his tranquil voice made Danny's body relax slightly. "There's a lot to explain and best to do it all at once with your team present." Danny nodded, pushing himself back into a sitting position. Clockwork sighed, rising from the chair and drifted over to Danny's bedside. Once he was in front of the teen, he placed one of his hands on Danny's shoulder. "How are you feeling?"

Danny scoffed. "Like I was run over by a truck while I relived my worst nightmare over and over again."

Clockwork rolled his eyes at the response. "Fifteen year olds and sarcasm; I meant your energy levels. Apart from battling a powerful enemy, you also put more energy back into the shield. You've been out for a few hours."

Finally opening his eyes, Danny looked around the room. Mildly surprised, he realized that he was in the lab – more specifically the infirmary. Stark white walls lined with shelves full of first aid supplies surrounded them in the large room. There were tons of medical equipment all adorned with the Fenton logo. "What happened?" he asked in response. "I remember the shield being cracked, but everything else is a little hazy."

Clockwork sighed again, crossing his arms. "You insisted on fixing the shield and managed to do so by putting more of yourself into it. Unfortunately, you were also low on energy and passed out. Which brings us full circle to: How are you feeling? I know it's a question you tend to deflect, but humour me this once."

Danny cringed slightly, frowning in thought as he assessed himself. "I… don't feel as drained," he said after a moment, confused. Danny looked up at the Time Ghost. "If I put more energy into the shield, shouldn't I be feeling worse?"

"That's a question for Ethelwulf I'm afraid," Clockwork replied with a sly smile. "However, that probably means you can chance the stairs. Your friends will be here shortly and it's best to get everything out in the open." Clockwork picked up his staff, which Danny only noticed was at the foot of his bed, and gestured toward the door. "Shall we?"

Danny watched as Clockwork floated to the door, turning the knob. He sat up slowly, carefully standing before staring back to the Time Master. "Clockwork?" Clockwork hummed as he turned back to Danny expectantly. "You haven't shifted forms."

Clockwork raised his eyebrows slightly, smiling. "Perhaps you aren't as clueless as you seem." Danny ignored the jab and stared at his friend. Sighing, Clockwork gestured again towards the door. "Everything is as it should be – for now at least. I'll explain more upstairs."

:-=-:

"Danny! You're okay!"

Danny managed to turn from his spot on the couch before he was tackled by his friends and sister. He waved them off with a smile. "I'm fine." All three teens stood back and gave Danny an exasperated look. "Really!"

Sam let out a small breath. "Good," she said with a small smile. Before Danny could react, she hit him hard on the arm repeatedly. "What. Were. You. Thinking!"

"Ow!" Danny exclaimed, scowling as he rubbed his arm. He looked at Jazz and Tucker for any assistance, but neither seemed to want to get in the middle of whatever tirade Sam had planned. "Seriously?"

"Danny you passed out," she gritted out, violet eyes blazing. "In the middle of class, then decided to go off and face an evil version of yourself when he attacked." She crossed her arms and sent the boy a withering glare.

"I think Sam's trying to say you scared us," Jazz said, frowning disapprovingly. "Thankfully Tucker managed to get to me in time to sign you out of school before we went into lockdown. It took ages to get through to Mom and Dad."

Danny sighed guiltily. "Yeah, if it wasn't for Ethelwulf and Clockwork, I don't think I would have gotten out of there."

As if on cue, Ethelwulf walked in the Fenton's living room, quickly followed by his parents and Clockwork.

"Hi kids!" Jack boomed as he sat down across from the teens. "Perfect timing."

"I thought you couldn't find Ethelwulf?" Tucker asked, confused. "Or Clockwork for that matter."

"Apparently, it's a long story," Danny said, eying both ghosts warily. "Now that we're all here, can you just tell us what's going on?"

Ethelwulf chuckled, sitting on the couch and faced Clockwork with amused eyes. "I told you he'd be all business."

Clockwork said nothing, waiting until the humans settled before he floated toward them. He inspected his staff, frowning slightly, then at the wall clock across from him. His old frame hunched further, floating down toward the ground and put his staff out in front of him, using it as a cane. "What would you like to know?"

Danny frowned, realizing now how frail Clockwork looked. "Are you okay?" he asked worriedly.

Clockwork smiled sadly. "Have you ever heard of a paradox?" he retorted. Danny shook his head, while Sam, Tucker and Jazz all nodded. "A paradox, in regards to time, is when a situation contradicts the natural order of time. It can be an event, a person or thing that doesn't belong. I see time like a parade, from above; whenever I sense a paradox – I intervene to move time away."

"Why?" Maddie asked.

"I control time," Clockwork said simply, turning towards her. "Except time is not a simple concept for any being, especially humans. It moves in all directions. When a paradox occurs, it stops the parade; time gets backed into fewer and fewer pathways until it's forced to go in one direction." Clockwork turned toward Danny, looking at the boy's face to see if he understood yet. "Paradoxes, unfortunately, are my weakness. As the timelines dwindle, so does my grip on time and my powers. My form stops shifting, I lose the ability to see all the possible pathways; It is increasingly harder for me to start, stop and manipulate the timeline."

Danny's eyes widened, finally connecting the dots. "You're not shifting because of me," he said, guilt and regret in his voice. "You're losing your powers because of my future self and the alternate timeline."

Clockwork chuckled. "I wish it was so simple." When Danny shot him a confused look, he continued. "When I saved you and your family, I created another paradox by removing Dan Phantom from the time stream."

"Wait – another paradox?" Jazz asked incredulously. "What was the first paradox?"

Sam gasped. "We created the first one," she exclaimed, looking at Tucker with wide eyes. "Remember? We jumped straight into a future where we didn't belong."

"No," Clockwork answered. "Dan Phantom created the first one by interacting with you, Danny. Unfortunately, this many paradoxes have limited my view on time as it unfolds. One paradox I can deal with – two have sadly created more dead ends. Which reminds me; The dreams you've been having."

"Frostbite told us," Ethelwulf explained, when all humans looked at him confused. "Though, Clockwork suspected as much after you faced Nocturn."

"Nocturn?" Danny asked, confused. "What does he have to do with anything?"

"I asked Nocturn to investigate a hunch," Clockwork told the wide eyed teen. "When you faced Dan in the alternate future, he fused a time medallion within you and then took your place within your time. That created the first paradox. What he didn't realize is the ramifications of that action." His expression softened slightly, observing Danny carefully. "Time Medallions are exempt from my powers of controlling time, but not time itself. By fusing one with your core and leaving you ten years in the future, it started to solidify your place within a new time stream. Those dreams you've been having? Glimpses of the future you erased as well as possible outcomes of what's to come. Nocturn confirmed it when you two clashed earlier this year.

"However, while that timeline has been erased from the main time stream, a piece of it still exists within Dan. I removed him from time, meaning that my powers no longer affect him -just like they no long affect you since a part of your core assimilated to a different timeline. One that no longer exists."

"What…" Danny said breathlessly. He put his head in hands; it was too much to take in.

"Since that battle, how many times have you moved through time without one of my medallions?" Clockwork asked sympathetically. "How many times did I have to forcibly manipulate time around you?"

Danny stayed silent; mind reeling as he went through the questions Clockwork was asking. He didn't dare look at his friends or family.

"The time medallion, even though it's now out, is a relic of time Danny," Clockwork continued. "It doesn't follow a linear path. Its power shows itself unpredictably. It's why I was able to stop time around you on Fear Island, transport you to and from the past into multiple timelines without needing to use the medallion, and yet still was able to stop time during your fight with Dan last year. It's also why you did not see any of these glimpses until the paradox was upon us. You can see parts of it in random orders, sense wounds before they happen. You and your future self are the centre of this paradox Danny – time cannot move forward until you face each other."

"Hold on," Maddie said slowly. "You said you couldn't see past this paradox – how do you know Danny has to face the evil Phantom?"

Clockwork regarded her for a moment, red eyes scanning her before turning back to Danny, head still in his hands. "The last thing I'm able to see clearly is Danny and Dan facing off – but I'm not the only one who can see possible outcomes right now. In fact, I don't believe that my account for the future is as far we can see."

All eyes turned to the teen with the weight of the world on his shoulders. Finally looking up at the Master of Time, Danny sighed. "I've seen it too," he confessed reluctantly. "Multiple different times where we fight – Actually, I think we just lived through one." Danny shuddered slightly in remembrance. "I saw his creation. I've seen him escape multiple times…" Danny swallowed, silent again.

"Which prompted you to put up that shield," Ethelwulf said pointedly. Danny nodded. "Danny, you're powerful enough to keep that shield up without using your core energy. If what Clockwork said about the Time Medallion is true, your core might be feeling the effects of these dreams or these phantom injuries."

Danny hummed, agreeing with his mentor. "Wait – Clockwork said I put more energy into the shield. How come I feel okay?"

Ethelwulf frowned disapprovingly. "The fight between you and your future self drained quite a lot of your base powers, which helped balance your extensive use of your core powers from the past few days. Now that you've regained some energy, your base powers unconsciously switched with your core powers in that shield as a way to help you recover your energy. It's probably wise to continue to use your base powers with the shield unless there's a larger threat upon us." The wolf ghost turned to Clockwork before back to Danny. "You said you've seen multiple visions of Dan escaping?"

"Had another one this morning," Tucker supplied worriedly. "In the middle of class."

Danny felt his parents' eyes move to him in concern and possibly exasperation. "Yeah," he said softly.

Ethelwulf moved to the boy, trained yellow eyes scanning carefully for any injuries he could have missed. "When did he actually escape Clockwork?"

"This morning," the time master replied with a frown.

"And how many times have you seen him escape?"

Danny sighed. "About six or seven. I lost count."

Ethelwulf frowned in thought, looking between Clockwork and Danny expectantly. "Were there any indications that last vision was the one from this future?"

The boy in question frowned, his eyebrows furrowing as he thought back. "I was awake with this one?" he supplied.

"There weren't any sparks this morning," Sam said, frowning slightly. "He just … fell over."

Danny hummed in agreement. "That's true; most of the other visions I had affected my core powers. That one just… happened."

Ethelwulf stared at the halfa in front of him, before looking toward Clockwork. Clockwork gave a slight nod, indicating his acceptance and Ethelwulf continued. "Danny, you need to take it easy for a bit; you're going to need your powers at full strength before you can face Dan again."

Danny nodded, not trusting his own voice. The world felt like it was taunting him, showing him these glimpses of time. Suddenly feeling overwhelmed, he stood, feeling all eyes move toward him. "I'm going upstairs," he said quietly.

"Danny –" Jazz called out to him, but he shook his head, cutting her off.

"Just a little tired," he said with a small smile. It didn't reach his eyes. "Let me know if there's any trouble." He walked out of the living room, still feeling the concerned gazes of his friends and family as he made his way up the stairs. Finally reaching his room, Danny entered it hastily, leaning against the back of the door as he closed it with a soft click. He let out a shuttering breath, as the conversation that just happened washed over him again. Clockwork losing his powers? Seeing the future? Timelines? Dan?

Dan.

Danny frowned at the memory of his evil future came to mind once more. Going into that fight this morning was stupid, sure, but it made him realize something- Dan wasn't holding back. When Danny faced him after he returned from the future, Dan was reserved, calculating to make his plan move forward. Now? It was like the evil spectre was playing with him. Danny sighed, staring out into his room.

"What are you after?"

:-=-:

Power flooded his veins as he ripped through another Ectopus, absorbing their energy with fervour. As the poor ghost disappeared, lost to the mass of the ghost zone, Dan's aura shone brighter, relishing in the excitement.

He floated toward the edge of the floating rock nearest to him, hearing in the distance the vague screams of terror from a distance. He smiled cruelly – it truly was great to be out of that thermos. Brow furrowing, he turned quickly, ecto-blast at the ready before he dropped the attack. A mirror image of himself floated above him – a little worse for wear- echoing the power hungry demeanour. He smiled, feeling the duplicate rejoin him and giving him the memories it carried with it.

"Well now," he said quietly, chuckling darkly. "Seems like the old me has some new tricks – and allies." He paced up and down, thinking about his next move. "If he's able to keep that shield while fighting, then his power levels must have improved somewhat…" he stopped, staring out to the Zone in thought. "Perhaps I should divide his attention." He smiled again as a plan formulated in his mind. "I can't wait to watch as his world falls apart."

:-=-:

Valerie slipped the blaster's core back into her main bazooka with a grin. Flipping the switch, her smile widened as it hummed in response. Switching it back off, she threw it over to her already large pile of weapons on the table as she grabbed another smaller ecto-gun from the pile beside her. She needed everything in tip-top shape to face off against whatever attacked Amity today.

With a frown, she turned back to the TV as it ran a repeat of the ghost attack from earlier. Phantom 'saved' the town from a ghost attack by putting a giant shield around the city. That he put up. "Probably more of his dirty tricks," she muttered, cleaning some ectoplasmic build up from the gun she was working on. An image of the Ghost Boy falling and hitting the shield graced the screen as Lance Thunder speculated some sort of hair-brained theory.

She winced as it was shown again; that was probably fifteen feet, twenty tops. For the Ghost kid to drop out of the air like that – his opponent certainly packed a punch. Usually he was flying off with some stupid smile or quip on his lips after battles. This? This was different.

Valerie inspected the gun, making sure there was nothing out of the ordinary before she hunched forward and studied the footage. Everything about this fight was opposite from what she's seen from the spook. Even from afar, she can tell there was no banter – every move he made was calculated. He never fought with a team unless he needed to and whoever those two ghosts were, well, it was testament to their strength to see them just disappear like that. Valerie had only seen Phantom fight like that on two occasions: The Ghost King and last month… when they faced the mayor.

The dark skinned sighed as that thought crossed her mind. When she said knowledge was power, she didn't mean the knowledge that the mayor was a ghost. And possibly a criminal mastermind who almost murdered a young girl. Definitely a manipulative son of a –

Ding Dong

Startled, Valerie looked up from her spot on the sofa to the piles of weapons across the small apartment. She cringed, scrambling upright and grabbed the blanket on the armrest, throwing it over the couch. "Just a second!" she called, looking around frantically for something to cover the table as the doorbell rang again.

Seeing the pile of lab clothes at the foot of her father's room, Valerie tossed it onto the table, jumped over one of the table chairs and stood in front of her door. She took a deep breath to centre herself before opening the door slowly.

Valerie gasped; in front of her stood a girl, no more than 12 in a baggy sweatshirt, red shorts looked up at her through giant blue eyes. Her long jet black hair was covered by the red beanie, poking out a bit in the front.

"Dani?" Valerie asked, dumbfounded at the young half ghost girl in front of her. "When – how?"

Dani smiled shyly. "Hey Valerie," she said with a wave. "Mind if I stay with you for a while?"

Link to Ecto-Storm Series

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