#3zun raise Jingyi au

[guqin-and-flute]

A-Fu: But Blue-die does

JGY: Who wants to listen to baby shark again?

[wangxianficfinder]

In the mood for...

Apr 4th

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1. Hello! ITMF multiple WWX's? Like he clones himself or if maybe time travel causes there to be multiple WWX's running around. Can be chaste or naughty, but bonus points for LWJ getting flustered having some many WWX's around! Thank you!

Wei Wuxian’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good First Meeting With His Future by Enigmatree (T, 3k, wangxian, Time Travel, Cloud Recesses, YLLZ WWX, POV Outsider)

How to Deal with the Conundrum of Your Past Self: A Case Study by anatheme (E, 16k, wangxian, A/B/O, YLLZ WWX, Established Relationship, Pining, Sexual Tension, alpha YLLZ WWX/alpha LWJ/omega MXY!WWX: the fic, ft. soft married wangxian, Threesome - M/M/M, yes LWJ gets the knot after xx years, Bottom LWJ, Switch WangXian, Knotting, time travel of sorts, a thesis on making peace with and loving yourself, Happy Ending, welcome to my LWJ has 2 hands for 2 WWX agenda)

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2. itmf fics where ljy is lxc's son! whether bio or not is fine, just looking for some scenes where lxc is like a father to ljy. tyvm!

🔒how to make your dad fall in love with your high school teacher in five steps; the complete and bulletproof guide by ravenditefairylights (T, 90k, WangXian, Modern AU, Coffee shop AU, NB LSZ, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Angst, Genderfluid WWX, Nonbinary LSZ, Trauma, Past Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, Healing, Hurt WWX, Found Family, Hospitalization, Therapy, Single Parent WWX, Mutual Pining, Teacher LWJ, Unreliable Narrator, Teenager LSZ, Yúnmèng Siblings Dynamics, Chronic Pain, Autistic LWJ) although their relationship is not the focus of the story

3zun Raise Jingyi AU series by Deriliarch (T, 94k, 3Zun, Accidental Baby Acquisition, Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Established Relationship, Fluff, Angst, Happy Ending, Kid fic, Hurt/Comfort)

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3. Do you have idol aus? I want idol Wei Ying. A) Specifically, the idol life, can be before/during/after debut. B) Idol survival show participant wwx

3A)

Bodyguard king by 74243 (E, 8k, wangxian, F/F WangXian, Modern, Idol WWX, Bodyguard LWJ, Female NHS, Platonic D/s, Loss of Virginity, Not NOT inspired by KUWTK s05e04, When u do what u love u never work a day in ur life)

shooting straight into your heart by tangerinechar (T, 13k, wangxian, JC & WWX, Modern, Multimedia, Humor, idol WWX, cameraman LWJ, and a very Done(tm) manager JC)

Amidst the Crowd by GusuBunnie (G, 5k, wangxian, Romance, Friends to Lovers, Idol WWX, Supportive LXC, JC Needs a Hug, Background Xicheng, Angst, Fluff, Light Angst with a Happy Ending, WangXian Get a Happy Ending, Drama & Romance, LXC being the best brother, Modern, Idol/Fan AU, LWJ is Bad at Communicating)

3B)

🧡 I Don’t Want to Debut! by countingcr0ws (G, 56k, wangxian, Modern, Reality Show, Idols, Celebrity, Social Media, Epistolary, Romance, Fluff, Footnotes, Kissing, Poetry, Podfic Available)

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4. Hi , idk how to ask about fanfics properly. I am very new to Tumblr . But can you please recommend some fics on Wangxian's parent's generation. Like lan Qiren, Wei Changze, Cangse Sanren, Jiang Fengmian, etc, being teenagers @kwalitymxtxpow7

Cursed Couple by shorimochi (M, 121k, LQR/WRH, CSSR/WCZ, Time Travel, Canon Divergence, Out of Character)

The Other Mountain by nirejseki (T, 287k, LQR/WRH, Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, Mentions of Suicide, Hurt/Comfort, Trauma, Domestic Violence, Torture, Sadism, Asexual Character, sex-positive asexual, Past Relationship(s), An Exercise in Gender Roles, Non-Egalitarian Views on Marriage, World Domination, Pedagogical Theory, Ethics, comedy of manners, Implied Harm to Children, Mental Health Issues, Undernegotiated Kink, Canon-Typical Violence, Close POV Narrator, Donghua Imagery) i recommend "the other mountain" by nirejseki, and all her other lan qirenx wen ruohan works

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5. thank you for your hardwork admins! itmf for rich lwj who is head over heels for wwx? and i mean like he is a massive simp for wwx, worship the ground he walks on kind of way ^^

LWJ’s Big Dick Agenda Series by raitala (E, 146k, WangXian, Modern AU, College AU, Porn with Feelings, Light Dom/sub, Under-negotiated Kink, Public Blow Jobs, Anal Sex, Cock Warming, Angst, Feels, Domestic fluff, Misgendering, Slut Shaming, Crossdressing, Rimming, Roleplay) try LWJ's big dick agenda!

CEO Billionaire Lan Zhan by detention_notes (T, 2k, WangXian, Modern AU, Parody, Pining Bunnies, Wealth, Crack)

For Safekeeping Purposes by ChilianXianzi (M, 3k, wangxian, Modern, Gangsters, Crime Boss LWJ, Sugar Daddy LWJ, WWX Has Self-Esteem Issues, And LWJ's going to take care of that, thoroughly, Domestic fluff but everyone's in a crime syndicate, Found Family, Age Difference, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Canon-typical Abusive Jiangs)

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6. For INTMF could you rec some pretty heavy angst with happy and/or hopeful ending? Like Working Title: Everyone Lives (With Knives) series. @dragonfairies

Love Song In Reverse by timetoboldlygo (T, 237k, WangXian, Amnesia, Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Falling In Love, Slow Burn, agressively mixing and matching novel and cql canon, No Homophobia, Mentions of Starvation, Parental WWX) maybe? do they want canon era stories? I have heavy angst /whump stories but they're not in the canon era

Shameless self rec because angst with happy ending is like my signature at this point.

New Perspective Series by mrcformoso (T, 35k, WangXian, Angst, Hopeful Ending, Fatherhood, Regrets, Flashbacks, POV LWJ, LWJ-centric, Canonical Character Death - WWX, Pining LWJ, LWJ Has Feelings Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī Needs a Hug, Character Development, Dead WWX, Introspection, LWJ is Bad at Feelings, Character Study, Regretful, LWJ Breaking Toxic Cycles, Canon Compliant, LWJ in Seclusion, Post-LWJ in Seclusion, Child LSZ)

Window of the Waking Mind by mrcformoso (M, 8k, wangxian, LSZ & WWX, JC & WWX, Graphic depictions of violence, Major Character Death, Heavy Angst with a Happy Ending, Sad with a Happy Ending, Post-Canon, Torture, Golden Core Transfer, WWX Has Self-Esteem Issues, Hurt WWX, WWX Needs a Hug, WWX Needs a Break, Flashbacks, Curses, Night Hunts, Suicide, Starvation, Canonical Child Abuse, Canonical Character Death, Cannibalism, Although it was forced by the situation to survive, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, lots of comfort, Soft LQR, Learning To Communicate, Zidian Spiritual Tool, JC Tries, Reaction)

When the Words Stop Coming by mrcformoso (T, 7k, WangXian, Canon Compliant, POV WWX, POV LWJ, Cloud Recesses Study Arc, Pre-Sunshot Campaign, Burial Mounds Settlement Days, Canonical Character Death, Love Confessions, Rejection, LWJ is a Panicked Gay, Temporarily Unrequited Love, Trauma, WangXian Get a Happy Ending, Angst with a Happy Ending, Sad with a Happy Ending)

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7. hi, itmf wangxian in a hunger games setting that is not "The Hanging Tree" series by chatonnerie (just read that, it's so good and has me hungering for more!). thx so much!

our lives, never ours by glitteringmoonlight (T, 7k, WangXian, Hunger Games Setting, Angst, Minor Violence, Blood, hunger games typical references to violence, implied happy ending, but it's a bit ambiguous, this exists mostly for angst purposes tbh)

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8. hey admins! itmf longer post canon fics like 'wind rose in the clouds'? thank you ❤️

For 8, what about that fic did the requester like? What specifically are they looking for other than length and post-canon setting? Or are those the only criteria?

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9. IITMF ask; Give me your favorite ‘Wei Wuxian in Wei Wuxian’s body or keeps his body or doesn’t actually die’ fics. I’m in the mood to read more of our favorite boy as his og self. (He doesn’t have to start in his body, but I want my boy looking like himself by the end)

Saw My Life in a Stranger's Face by timetoboldlygo (T, 27k, WangXian, Post-Canon, Established Relationship, Married Life, Domestic Fluff, Light Angst, wwx's face changes post-canon to look like his original face, Slight Panic Attack, because lwj doesn't recognize his husband, the mortifying ordeal of not knowing your own body, the terrifying inevitability of change, taller!wwx theory)

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10. fics in which wwx comes back (from the dead/from the burial mounds/from hiding, whatever really) specifically for lwj!! (can be modern too if there r any)

🧡 Ghosts Shouldn’t by ShanaStoryteller (Not Rated, 15k, WangXian, Grief/Mourning, Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending)

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11. itmf fics where wangxian time travel to modern times - not reincarnation, but straight time travel. Preferably (mostly) canon typical before the time travel, but the point in canon when it happens does not matter

🧡 The Shade of Old Trees by Kryal (T, 266k, WIP, WangXian, Ridiculously Long Notes, History, Canon Divergence, Modern AU, Slow Burn, Worldbuilding, Slow Life, Action/Adventure, Magic Returns, BAMF WWX) could technically count if you don't mind it being just wwx who ends up in the future?

take me back to a time by DizziDreams (T, 143k, WangXian, Modern AU, College/University, Modern with Magic, Time Travel, Sharing a Bed, Angst with a Happy Ending, Student!WWX, Time-Traveling Wizard!LWJ, Slow Burn, Character Death, Angst, reference to abuse, Canonical Character Death, Canonical Abuse, Canon!LWJ, Canon-Typical Violence, Mutual Pining, Chronic Illness, Not A Fix-It, Case Fic, implied 3zun, Transmigration, America, [Podfic of] take me back to a time by dreamhazer) not sure if this can work

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12. ITMF for fics where wwx is abused sexually by the jiangs (JFM/JC) or an adult male figure he trusts. (Like the "between a rock and a hard place" series by Mydla but the truth is revealed and it's properly dealt with/ he gets his justice) @linossock

🔒 a choice to call our own by renhui (E, 93k, wangxian, JFM/WWX, WIP, Rape/Non-Con, Underage, Angst with a Happy Ending, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Sexual Assault, Forced Bonding, Homelessness, Dubious Consent, Self-Esteem Issues, Soulmates, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining while fucking, Misunderstandings, Miscommunication, Breaking Up & Making Up, Hurt/Comfort, Recovery, Good Uncle LQR, No Sunshot Campaign, Asexuality Spectrum) mostly fits the bill, although the requester should be warned that it's a WIP that ends before JFM gets his comeuppance, although it ends with the beginnings of a setup for that, so it's clearly on the way.

clean from the war (your heart fits like a key) by sysrae (E, 28k, WangXian, Modern AU Reunions, past xy/wwx, xy is fucked up but not evil because it's a modern AU and I said so, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, past wwx/jfm, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Abuse, Rape Recovery, transphobic violence, Victim Blaming, Past wei Wuxian/others, allusions to past self-harm) I think this might fit- note the tags

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13. thank you for this blog!! for the next itmf - any stories that take off like RoseThorne's wonderful ' a grain of millet drifting' - untamed canon-ish where WY is left on his own after the temple scene. angst appreciated - thank you !

tell some storm by qurbat (G, 31k, wangxian, JC & WWX, LSZ & WWX, NHS & WWX, Post-Canon, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, liberal amounts of outsider POV, the legend of wangxian, how to create a romance epic for dummies)

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14. Hey can plz anyone tell if there is a fic where wei ying is an omega and wangji is an alpha and we ying is an op omega but no one knows about it like everyone thinks that he is an alpha or something.

backfire by spookykingdomstarlight (E, 115k, wangxian, LWJ/MXY, One-Sided MXY/WWX, MXY/NMJ, Modern, BDSM AU, Biologically Determined Dom/sub Roles, BDSM, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Sadism, Masochism, Past Sexual Abuse, Sexual Slavery, Self-Harm, BDSM as a Form of Self-Harm, Minor Character Death(s), Arson, Shades of Black Widow WWX, Extremely Dubious Consent, Rape/Non-con Elements, Normalized Homosexuality and Bisexuality, Normalized Polyamory, nonsexual bdsm, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Pining WWX, jealous WWX, Touch-Starved WWX, Professional Dominant WWX, Sex Worker WWX, gentle dom LWJ, Mean Dom LWJ, oblivious LWJ, Past WC/WWX, Minor JGY/WWX, Mentioned WWX/Others, Emotional Infidelity, Angst with a Happy Ending, endgame wangxian, MXY Also Gets a Happy Ending, the tags are scary but i promise there's some lightheartedness too, wangxian love one another so much, WWX is healed by the power of nonsexual bdsm and friendship, and then gets bdsm'd quite sexually and happily by the love of his life, Additional Warnings In Author's Note)

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15. helloooo do you know of any fics that are canon events (mdzsverse preferred but cql still fine) narrated from lwj's pov where he's just horrifically pining for wwx? looking for peak canon-compliant lwj pining <3 @nutellacats

🔒 The Price of Old Wishes by SoManyJacks (E, 67k, WangXian, Minor canon divergence, Angst, POV LWJ, Depression, Suicidal Thoughts, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Smut, Slow Burn, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, semi-verbal!LWJ, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicide) Novel events from LWJ's pov

The Choice is His to Believe in Me by mrcformoso (T, 11k, WangXian, POV LWJ, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canon Divergence, but only the ending, WangXian Get a Happy Ending, LWJ regaining WWX's Trust, Golden Core Reveal, Good Kid LSZ, Snippets, Post-Time Skip, Love Confessions, Requited Love, Trust Issues, WWX Has a Fear of Dogs, WWX Has No Golden Core, Light Jealousy, Fierce Corpse WN, Protective LWJ) CQL compliant but with some novel elements, and with a canon divergence ending. Might want to read New Perspective (link in #6) first for context

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16. Hello! For the next itmf, fics that place heavy emphasis on how what wwx practices is guidao (ghost cultivation) as opposed to modao (demonic cultivation)? Ideally canon dynamics, but no smut is also definitely ok! @lovelyiknow

The Young, the Horny, the Jaded and the Jade: Partners in Time by Admiranda (T, 55k, wangxian, established couple, Crossover, road trip with your older selves, teasing your younger selves about their obvious crushes, yin iron does yin iron things, mdzs/cql crossover, adult wangxian, Teenage Wangxian, genius WWX, LWJ adores his husband, we’re all in this disaster together, xue yang causes problems, WIP)

Ad Oblivione by Baph, HikariNoHimeWriter (M, 70k, WangXian, Time Travel Fix-It, Temporary Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, POV Multiple, Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Identity Reveal, Golden Core Reveal, Cultivation World Critical, Not JC Friendly, Abusive YZY, Angst with a Happy Ending) Been a while since I last read this one but I recall WWX working & interacting with ghosts & corpses & explaining to other characters how that works

🔒 the thread may stretch or tangle but it will never break by RoseThorne (E, 91k, WIP, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Soulmates, Self-Esteem Issues, Fix-It, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, PTSD, Handfasting, Panic Attacks, Getting Together, First Time, Aftercare, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, /Referenced Torture, Scars, Chronic Pain, Golden Core Reveal, First Time, Switching, sex-related injury, LWJ Stays at the Burial Mounds, LSZ is a Wèi, Good Sibling JC, Dissociation, Burial Mounds Settlement Days) in later chapters

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17. For itmf, what are you guys’ favorite fics that are novel or audio drama canon only fics? No CQL compliant fics please!

two guys r in love thats literally it by victortor (M, 11k, wangxian, Time Travel, the fluffiest thing ive ever written)

🧡 a stone to break your soul, a song to save it by rikke ( M, 180k, WangXian, Arranged marriage, Canon Divergence, Hurt/comfort, Light angst, Canon typical violence)

SanRen by Kyogre (T, 87k, wangxian, Canon Divergence, Different First Meeting, Romantic Fluff, Action & Romance, Eventual Happy Ending)

the field meets the wood by astronicht (T, 7k, WangXian, BAMF WWX, slight whump, Ritualistic Self Harm, Canon Era, Tang Dynasty style, Blood Loss, Blood and Injury, salt economics, Post-Canon)

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If you didn’t get an answer to your ask here, don’t forget to make use of @mdzs-kinkmeme and MDZS KINK MEME on Dreamwidth. Authors actually do use them for ideas. You may get what you order!***Your prompt doesn’t have to be kink! Fluff, crack, whatever - it’s all good!***

[thisisallthehattersfault]

Thoughts on the Sect Leader Wen Sizhui AU

The Sunshot campaign fails. Meng Yao and Wen Qing together manage to convince Wen Ruohan not to kill the various sect leaders and instead to subjugate them. Some are allowed to keep leading their sects as vassal sects to the Wen. Others are completely absorbed into the Wen. All are forced to share any secret knowledge or techniques they may have.

Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan marry, but are kept in Qishan to be used as hostages to ensure to good behavior of Jiang Cheng, Wei Wuxian, and Jin Guangshan.

(Jin Guangshan thinks he has Wen Ruohan’s good graces because he barely took part in the war and immediately surrendered, but actually Wen Ruohan is fond of Meng Yao and, as a result, thinks Jin Guangshan is trash.)

Nie Huiasang is kept to ensure the good behavior of Nie Mingjue. Lan Wangji is kept to ensure the good behavior of Lan Xichen.

With both Wen Chao and Wen Xu dead, Wen Ruohan has only one living heir: His grandson, Wen Xu’s only child, Wen Yuan.

Once again Meng Yao and Wen Qing manage to convince Wen Ruohan that the hostages could be valuable as teachers -- they’re all members of the gentry who are either skilled cultivators or (in Jiang Yangli’s case) talented administrators, and all of them have knowledge that will be useful for the heir of... basically the entire world.

They’re all always being watched by Wen disciples, but nonetheless a-Yuan becomes close to his various teachers. As he grows older, he starts to notice their fear and the way they’re all treated, and decides he doesn’t like that.

It takes years of careful maneuvering, but eventually basically all of the guards around Wen Yuan and the sect leaders are the ones who follow Wen Ning and Wen Qing, which allows everybody to have a little bit more freedom of movement.

When Wen Yuan gets a little bit older, Wen Ruohan demands all of the sect heirs his age be sent to Qishan to be raised as his personal attendants.

Junior Quartet are the main squad obviously but there are other kids too.

Sizhui is still named Sizhui but this time it’s in honor of his father and uncle, since I stan Family Man Wen Ruohan

Sizhui does not want to kill his grandfather! Wen Ruohan is good to him! But.

Wen Sizhui, his teachers, his servants, and the Wen disciples under Wen Ning, all ultimately collaborate to stage a coup. In the process, Wangxian get together, Yunmeng siblings reconcile, Jin brothers become besties, and the Junior Quartet go full poly.

Sizhui works to help the other sects re-establish themselves, but by now there’s so much weirdness that a lot of them just... kind of merge. Lan Wangji is the second young master of the Lan Sect but he’s also an honored teacher and the defacto father figure of the Wen Sect Leader so his Lan robes have little gold fire decals alongside the silver clouds. Wei Wuxian is Jiang but he’s also kind of Wen. The Jin and Ouyang remain vassal sects to the Wen so that Jin Ling and Zizhen can marry Sizhui. Lan Xichen ends up having his own kid (3zun endgame?) so Jingyi isn’t the heir anymore and he can also live with his husbands.

Wen Qing opens an all-sect medical school.

Wen Ning marries Qin Su and they have half a dozen little doe-eyed babies that have their Wei-Shushu and their Lan-Shushu wrapped around their little fingers.

[littlesmartart]

from this post by @guqin-and-flute

poor modern AU Jingyi is s u f f e r i n g because he lives in a 3 DILF household and his peers won’t let him forget it 😔

Jingyi: DILFs??? are you kidding me??? but they’re all so weird! grey-die has cried over every single disney movie we’ve ever watched together! if yellow-die doesn’t drink an entire mug of coffee before breakfast he can’t tell the difference between toast and a coaster! and blue-die unironically collects Live Laugh Love signs!!!!

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

Writing Masterpost

 [Ao3 profile]

Active searchable tags: WIP Wednesday / Random Idea Junk Drawer / Phantom of the Opera AU (3zun) / Brokeback Mountain AU (Nielan)

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3Zun-centric:

Time Travel Fix-It AU Series - Masterpost

Modern Sunshot AU Series - Masterpost

*Pacific Rim AU ‘Cancelling the Apocalypse’ Series - Masterpost

*Happy Gay Cowboys (OPCU) Series (with little-smartass) - Masterpost

*The Waves Are Rising and Rising Series (with little-smartass) - Masterpost

*The Man From Y.I.L.I.N.G. Series (with little-smartass) - Masterpost

One-shots - Masterpost

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Wangxian-centric:

Legend of Zelda: BOTW AU series - Masterpost

1970′s Artist AU Series (inspired by art by ceru-draws) - Masterpost

*Lan Qiren raises Wangxian AU Series - Masterpost

One-shots - Masterpost

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Assorted (including ships and gen)

Lan Qiren raises Lan Jingyi AU - Masterpost

Ensemble-centric 90′s Strip Mall AU Series (inspired by a post by lansplaining) - Masterpost

One-shots - Masterpost

Canon-compliant LWJ raising LSZ (abandoned WIP) : [1] [2] [3] [4]

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Non-CQL/MDZS Works - Masterpost

[restingdomface]

Since I’m just as obsessed with yarn craft (making it and dyeing it and using it) as I am with fandom, I just feel that y’all should know, in every modern AU I make where Lan Wangji has bunnies, they’re all angora and he raises them for not only being precious, but also he steals their wool. I’m making an AU where it’s a 3zun sorta fic (they all technically live separately with their houses next to each other in a triangle and knocked down their fences so they would have one massive garden) and LWJ was obsessed with bunnies when he was little but Lan Xichen really liked to knit so he was all ‘hey, let’s get angora rabbits’ and now Lan Qiren spins their fiber into yarn and when LWJ is like 9, Wei Wuxian shows up cause the Jiang’s bought the lakehouse across the street from them and so now they show up for holidays and school breaks and LWJ got an instant crush on him and crocheted him a beanie because WWX has never seen snow before (y’all this bitch out here while it’s snowing in shorts and a tee shirt LWJ is afraid he’s gonna DIE) and WWX falls in love instantly and it’s cute. Also WWX is trans. And Meng Yao raises Mo Xuanyu and later on Rusong (not his kid, Qin Su showed up saying she couldn’t handle getting rid of it but she couldn’t keep it either so MY was all ‘okay, I’ll take it’ and that’s that) and later on after WWX gives birth to A-Yuan (yeah I went there, deal with it, it was an accident tho, WWX is told he should get rid of it cause he’s too young for being pregnant but he’s all ‘nope, going through with it, then I’m getting those parts removed’ cause oooof) LXC suddenly gets surprise custody of their little cousin 6month old Lan Jingyi and he’s all ‘Ahh shit’ and so there’s like. So many toddlers running around the garden at all times. Jin Zixuan meets Jiang Yanli when he’s visiting one day and she’s over having tea with LXC while they watch the kids roll around like a bunch of idiots in the garden and it’s cute. They like each other. Jiang Cheng gets sick when he’s around sixteen and ends up getting an organ transplant (or maybe bone marrow? I was looking up transplant stuff but apparently if you get a donated kidney you’re only expected to live another 20 years at most before you need another transplant??? IF you can get another??? And liver would be much more rare I guess for a 16 year old. But if he had some sort of cancer or a disease involving bone marrow transplant as a treatment, it could work) and WWX is the one that gives the transplant. Why??? Because you need some angst in somewhere and tbh I kinda want 16 year olds JC and WWX to spend a while in the lakehouse doing homeschooling (with LWJ because LQR homeschools him cause of his fear of crowds and Jiang Fengmian was all ‘hey, can you just... teach them for a year?? They’re too tired to cause much trouble anyways and they can’t go to school and hanging out with LWJ night cheer them up) and Nie Huaisang takes that as permission to get homeschooled for a year (Nie Mingjue originally refused him because he was a little shit and wouldn’t stop bothering him when he didn’t have people to chat with all day but now he’ll have JC and WWX to chat with) and now LQR is stuck with them all for a year before JC and WWX go back to their hometown school. It’s long enough for LWJ and WWX to start a budding romance and for JC to realize that he thinks relationships are nasty and kissing is gross. Actually, they probably just stay there till they’re all graduated because why the heck not. Yanli is dating JZX and uses that as an excuse to visit him often (well, she’s also spoiling baby bro’s, but if she can get some flirting in while it’s happening, why not) and YZY and JFM tend to travel a lot so they don’t see an issue with them all staying there while they can. It’s been helpful to WWX cause there’s still some issues with bullying back in their hometown (and in a town where not everyone sees him as the ‘weird tomboy girl who thinks she’s a boy’ here, he gets into less fights) and this has been really helpful.

I wanted to make the worlds longest paragraph ever but tumblr said no. So anyways. JC is still in recovery for a while so it’s best at the Lakehouse instead of a city, and he can chill out on the porch in the warmer months and get cozy inside next to the fireplace with a million blankets and hot cocoa when it’s cold out. He’s. So. Cozy. Also JFM got him a service cat because WWX still can’t be near dogs. He wishes his bro could get a dog and feels bad about it, but tbh they keep forgetting that for all JC would like a dog, he’s basically a slut for any cute animal ever. He hangs out in the 3zun garden across the street a lot. NHS has like 15 birds and NMJ has like four cats (who are Not allowed in the atrium lol) and LWJ has all those rabbits and MY has like a million kids and those are basically wild animals so they count. (Seriously tho family members keep dropping kids off with 3zun and not coming back for them but??? It’s okay??? Cause they’re all ‘single’ -not living together- gay men and so none of them can get on an adoption list for shit anyways. Lol so many kiddos running around.) LQR is ready to murder WWX by the time the kiddos all graduate and he’s all ‘oh thank god now I don’t have to see him all the time’ but then WWX shows up at the house one day (him and LWJ have been dating for like a year and a half now) and he’s all ‘hey. I’m. Pregnant.’ And LQR is all ‘...ahhhh shit now I gotta deal with him even more’ and it’s. Amazing.

WWX pretty much moves in with them after that (WWX is all ‘we can get an apartment or something’ and 3zun is all ‘sure, okay’ but then always find a way to distract them cause they’re all ‘yeah, we like our space’ but then they’re all ‘if a single sibling/child of ours moves out we’ll get instant empty-nest syndrome and die’ and so they’re like. Really possessive over their kiddos. LQR is mostly there cause he’s the only adult that bothered to stay in LXC and LWJ’s lives when they were growing up and he’s great.

A year after A-Yuan is born, they get Lan Jingyi (he gets dropped off with LXC and just never picked up again wild) and then Jin Ling is born (and he gets dropped on Meng Yao a lot cause JZX has watched him with kids before and knows his brother genuinely loves babies) and then Qin Su (their half sibling) shows up one day all ‘hey, so, I’m pregnant and I’m not keeping it but it’s too late to get rid of, you like kids, you want one?’ And MY is all ‘...yes...’ and she stays with them till little Rusong is born and then heads off to live her life and MY gets the joy of taking care of an infant that he hasn’t gotten to experience since MXY was little which was like 13 years ago. Lol MXY isn’t all that enthused with his new baby bro but Baba says he’ll get less ugly when he’s older and stops looking like a potato. MXY does NOT agree that he once looked like a potato himself, how dare you, Baba!

They have a greenhouse and LXC is definitely growing pot in it.

[omgkatsudonplease]

恭喜发财!!! 3zun please😊

dark!lwj au has some fun 3zun dynamics, so

“Xiaodi,” says Lan Xichen, nodding as Jin Guangyao enters his chambers. “What brings you here today?”

“Am I not allowed to visit my dear brother for no reason?” wonders Jin Guangyao, as Lan Xichen watches him take his seat across from him with the wariness of stalked prey. “Of course, I had context. I brought Jingyi a birthday present.”

“I saw,” says Lan Xichen. “He thanks you for the calligraphy tools. They are exquisite.” 

“The least I could do,” replies Jin Guangyao, stretching cat-like in his seat before pulling out a book from the folds of his robes. “I also brought something for you, too. Some old texts I found in the archives of Koi Tower. Thought they might be of interest to you, since...”

It’s an unspoken but practically carved rule to not mention the name of Lan Wangji in Lan Xichen’s presence. Sure enough, as he reads the title of the book, Lan Xichen’s eyes narrow considerably. 

“What use do I have for this?” he wonders.

“Demonic inquiry,” says Jin Guangyao. “It helps you seek out concentrated amounts of demonic energy. You know, if you happen to be looking for that sort of thing.”

Lan Xichen hums, his lips thinning into a line. “Thank you,” he says after a moment. “I appreciate your kind present, xiaodi.”

“Xichen, it has been too long since your last visit,” says Nie Mingjue. “Pardon the mess; my good-for-nothing brother is rearranging the house again.” 

“As long as he is occupied,” reasons Lan Xichen. “He is a good kid; he has the potential to form a core if he just focused.”

“He will not,” says Nie Mingjue, the eyeroll evident in his voice. “Perhaps Gusu Lan should take him back for remedial classes.”

Lan Xichen laughs at that. “It will come with time,” he says. “He has the potential, the drive, the passion for greatness. It just may not lie where the Nie Sect has traditionally prided itself.”

“He fishes and paints paper fans,” retorts Nie Mingjue, nearly tripping over a stool as they stride down the hallways. “But I did not invite you here to discuss my hopeless brother. You were not present at our last predetermined meeting with xiaodi. Is something the issue?”

Lan Xichen blinks, and then smiles, shaking his head. “I lost track of time on a hunt,” he replies. 

Nie Mingjue raises an eyebrow. The jade of Lan, losing track of time. Likely story. “Did you catch the quarry?”

A shadow passes over Lan Xichen’s face. “No,” he states flatly. “But I have every reason to believe it will eventually tire of this game, and I will capture it.”

Hunting is not always about skill -- it is also about endurance and outlasting the prey. Nie Mingjue has some idea of what Lan Xichen may be talking about, but mentioning it may only sour his sworn brother’s mood. As it is, the scowl tugging at his lips is already quite unsettling. He sighs.

“I cannot believe I am the person to tell you this, Xichen, but too much resentful energy can result in a qi deviation.”  

Lan Xichen’s eyes only narrow further. “It is not resentful energy that drives me, Mingjue-xiong,” he says calmly. “It is justice, cold and bright. For the crimes committed by my kin, I must seek justice.” 

Nie Mingjue shakes his head. “The pursuit of justice can easily turn into festering resentment, when results are not swift,” he says. “Your head is too far in, Xichen, please. Consider this advice from someone who carries this same ailment in his blood: step back.”

Lan Xichen whirls around to face him, his hand flying to the hilt of his sword. “You dare tell me how I should best protect the interests of my sect?”

“No!” The anger boils deep inside Nie Mingjue, but for him it is old and familiar, and at this point he can calm it if necessary. Lan Xichen has never been so stymied before in his pursuit of what he thinks is right, and it is withering him from the inside. “I am telling you this for the sake of your qi, Xichen -- for your health!”

Lan Xichen takes a couple steps back, smoothing his brows, unclenching his hands. The saber at Nie Mingjue’s side twitches nonetheless, as Lan Xichen’s cold anger simmers at them from just below the surface. 

“I find suddenly that I have urgent matters to attend to in Gusu,” says Lan Xichen stiffly, heading back towards the door. “I shall show myself out, Sect Leader Nie. I wish you a very good day.”

“Xichen --” begins Nie Mingjue, but Lan Xichen has already turned away.

“Er-ge isn’t here, again,” remarks Jin Guangyao, shaking his head. “What a pity. I even had the cooks prepare foods from Gusu.”

“Pity,” agrees Nie Mingjue, idly tracing the shapes of painted dragons along the rim of his teacup. “Any news of your brother?” 

“Brother this, brother that.” Jin Guangyao sighs, putting his head in his hands. “I am looking. Everyone is looking. We are leaving no stone unturned.”

“And yet you appear to have even less success than the Lans in looking for their fallen jade,” snips Nie Mingjue. Jin Guangyao bristles at that, but he makes no further comment. 

“Perhaps we should find lighter avenues of discussion,” he suggests. “Madam Jin, for one, is planning a magnificent party for the return of her shidi. The Twin Heroes of Yunmeng are back again. Hooray.”

“You don’t seem very happy about it,” says Nie Mingjue, his eyes narrowing. 

“I’m tired, Da-ge, give me a break,” sniffs Jin Guangyao. “Madam Jin, bless her heart, has sent me running to all corners of the earth trying to find the right spices for her shidi’s feast. I have personally inspected five thousand lotus pods for the cauldron of lotus and rib soup that she is preparing for him. My fingers will fall off at the sight of the next lotus, mark my words.” 

“It is good to see her in good spirits again,” replies Nie Mingjue. “She has suffered so ever since Sect Leader Jin vanished.”

“We’re all praying for his safe return,” replies Jin Guangyao, but there’s something too casual in his words, something too calm in his expression. Nie Mingjue is not as astute as either of his brothers, but he can trust his gut when he needs to. 

And right now, his gut is telling him there is something rotten in the state of Lanling.

“Of course,” he says, a rough smile on his face as he finishes his tea. Across the table, Jin Guangyao fiddles at his own cup with a bored expression. “I have no doubt he will come home soon.”

Jin Guangyao says nothing, only drinks his tea, and Nie Mingjue thinks to the sight of two unfamiliar legs buried amid the bodies of his ancestor’s saber halls, wondering.

[guqin-and-flute]

Happy Birthday, A-Yao; Part One

[Ao3] [3zun Raise Jingyi AU]

This is the spiritual successor to Your best kept secrets yet to be discovered; a little bit later, a little bit longer, and a little bit worse! :D This whole fic was inspired by madtomedgar (more on that later). This is set a little after what I plan for Chapter 7 in the main fic, so A-Fu is about 6.5. -Explicit- CW: minor self harm ideation, canon typical violence, vague mentions of flashbacks to sexual violence, vague mentions of nonspecific past child abuse, canon typical opinions of sex workers, sex as a grounding technique--as in, he’s probably not in a great place to be doing this but it’s what he wants so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There are exactly 75 steps leading up to the Pageantry Hall at Koi Tower. 

And for the most part, he doesn’t dwell on this. He is able to put enough versions of himself between the Jin Guangyao of now and what happened to Meng Yao there when he had first seen his father’s home. They are merely stairs, like any of the other countless sets in the whole of Koi Tower--for it is a tower. A tall, grand city reaching for Heaven itself, just as bright, just as golden; a Heaven enough for his mother and him, attainable if you had patience. 

(To climb the steps to Heaven, and be cast back down….)

 He has used the entrance steps plenty of times since that day 13 years ago; he has greeted guests at their peak, even sat upon them patiently when a younger A-Fu had explored what happened when a ball was rolled down. It bounces, as it turns out, a fact that only a child could find delight in. Jin Guangyao had smiled at his awe of simple, predictable rules the adults took for granted. What goes up must come down unless a force acts to keep it aloft, a force like will or wind or magic or birthright.

(It had gained momentum, landing harder and arcing farther, higher. It had rolled to a stop at the bottom. Eventually. Dented. Motionless.)

And so, day to day, the stairs don’t linger on his mind. He is quite practiced at sweeping the heavy brocade curtain of decorum in front of anything unsavory--it's in his blood. Jin excel at presentation. It even works within himself, when he is useful, when he is effective and focused, when he hardly has time to think at all.

But there are times he catches the sharp edge of his father’s temper. When he irritably tosses missives into his face, shoulders him aside, or shouts him from the room.  Slants him a suspicious glance. Bars his gaze from his nieces and nephews. Ignores his presence entirely.

Times when Madam Jin breaks her icy contemptuous disregard of him to insult or seize or slap. Or worse.

(Everything had become worse after Xuanyu was accepted. So much worse.)

Times when the courtiers and guests and even servants hide sneers and snickers when they see this. When the word ‘whoreson’ is whispered just quietly enough to prevent him from reacting. 

But not quiet enough to ignore. 

(Weakness is dangerous, whorehouse or palace. Prey.)

These times, that luxurious curtain, the glittering walls close in like the thickness of summer in his lungs--breathing too wet air, drowning on dry land. When memories stick, raw, unchewed in his throat.

These times, the stairs are more than just stairs. Passing them takes effort. Takes turning his head away or closing his eyes to stave off the creeping vertigo of that drop. 

(His head, his hips, ribs, and shoulder always ache this time of year, every year. He tells himself it’s the colder weather.)

He avoids going near them when this happens, if at all possible. It is not, this time. He must greet guests there as they arrive for his and Zixuan's birthday party. 

Well. Zixuan’s birthday. 

The fact he had the audacity to slide into the world on the same day is an unhappy coincidence, here. It would probably be ignored completely if not for Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli’s determination to include him. Every year, he has smiled and accepted their attention with demonstrably flawless grace. Every year, he feels the stitches he has so painstakingly gouged between himself and this Clan creak with strain. He is held here with blood, that watered down portion his veins hold, the very same that has been spilled on those steps, staining the edges of finery crusted shoes and plateware. 

Sometimes, he wonders if Madam Jin means to drain him of the percentage of blood that makes him their problem. If enough is let from him, maybe that portion of him that is Jin will seep out, too, leaving him unable to embarrass them all any longer with his claim. Then, they will be able to send him away to die as nothing and nobody of consequence. 

But even if they bled him dry, they could not take back the name he had wrested from their grip. Desiccated and bloodless, he could go on, a walking corpse--but the name would be his. The promised birthright. It is what he had worked for, fought for his whole life.

(“Trust me, Yaoyao, he’ll be here.”)

Could he somehow indelibly brand himself Jin enough, in their eyes? If it was carved into his flesh, his bones, they could no longer deny it. It would be an inescapable fact.

Is that what it will take? He would do it. No knife is too sharp.

(Strands snapping from his scalp in bright ‘tinks’ of pain, neck aching at the strain against her grip on his hair. “Muqin, please, I’ve--”

A dizzying flash--a second blow against his temple. Something hard, not her hand. He doesn’t know what. “You let that brat run wild and do whatever he wants! Do you mean to make Koi Tower some common inn?! And he still calls you ‘die’! What whore’s trick are you playing on Zewu-jun, now, of all people?! Fucking trash! You’re a stain on this household! An embarrassment!”)

A-Fu.

“Tell your diedie how excited you are,” Er-ge’s amused voice had emanated from the returned messenger butterfly glowing in his palm.

“Diedie, did you know I’m gonna see you for a whooole month this time?! And we’re gonna go and see Lanling and-and go swimming and you promised you’d let me stay up and watch the falling stars next time and--is it time for them, again? And--!” The voice had devolved into a barrage of gleeful clamor. The butterfly sedately fluttered its wings at the memory of his energy.

His son wants to be with him. His son loves him. He is A-Fu's father and A-Fu wants to be with him. This thought should bring him warmth, just like every time A-Ling lights up at his entrance, or A-Qiang fusses to clamber on him when he visits, or Jiang Yanli presses one of the twins into his arms, or Zixuan squeezes his shoulder should.

But lately, there is no warmth inside of him. There is nothing soft. It has been weeks since anything has felt real at all. It's all a play he is at once attending and acting in. 

(He has not visited Zixuan and Yanli’s home in 13 days. He is not sure if it’s on purpose--or whose purpose it would be, his own or theirs. The twins have been teething and fussy. He has been busy, days tumbling by with hardly a minute to sip water. A-Ling waves to him frantically from afar when they catch sight of each other, jumping on tiptoe. “Shushu!” he calls. Because Xuanyu is xiao-shu, now.)

Guests have been arriving for the festivities for days--those of consequence as well as nobodies that were lucky enough to cage an invitation. It’s the Jin heir’s party, after all, highly coveted and planned meticulously for months with Jin Guangyao himself at the helm; organizing all of the accounting and deliveries, the menu, flowers, timing, guest list, entertainment, the room preparations. Everything has been triple checked with redundancies in place; streamlined precision. Flawless and triumphant. It will be perfect. His brother will have the best celebration the cultivation world has ever seen if it kills him.

Huaisang blows in late the night before the banquet officially begins with a gaggle of burly Nie disciples, servants burdened with the luggage and a dozen sturdy Qinghe horses.

And no Mingjue.

…Good. 

(Jin Guangyao finds his fists balled up in his sleeves behind his back.)

This is good. He is pleased that Mingjue is not here. His bullheaded lack of tact and ever burning temper is becoming harder and harder to manage. He is now entirely incapable of keeping his lips shut around his disgust and loathing for all things Jin--particularly Jin Guangyao. 

Everything about him seems to enrage Mingjue. Whenever they meet, the man will demand and criticize and needle and sneer and shout and rage and scoff and condescend about everything from his appearance to his parenting choices to Jin Guangshan’s decisions until Jin Guangyao has to excuse himself--courteously, of course, he must always be courteous, lest he ruin everything, lest he overstay his welcome, provoke him, lest he asks for it, lest it’s his fault, always his fault, he’s brought this on himself (why did you do that, what were you thinking, how dare you, “You conniving little bitch, get back here! When I catch you, it will be twice as bad--!”)

This rarely works and Mingjue often follows him out into the hall, harassing and pressing. 

Inescapable. 

(“He’s becoming a bigger thorn in my side than anticipated.” His father’s eyes are far away, narrowed, his fingers drumming in irritation on the arms of his impeccably carved chair. “I’m tired of it. I’m thinking his didi will be far easier to deal with--and it will certainly stop him barking about the watchtowers every chance he gets.”

His stomach drops, tightens. Jin Guangyao is silent. A moment too long. 

“Something the matter? Speak. I would have thought you would leap at the chance to pay him back for your humiliation!” Suspicion under that jovial tone. Warning. “Do you disagree?”

He smiles. “I'm merely considering the options. He is…a challenge, sure enough, fuqin.”

“You’re good at those, aren’t you, Guangyao?”)

Yes, he is relieved Mingjue isn't attending. It is not a disappointment, nor a surprise; he had known he wouldn’t, even before his invitation remained unanswered. He had only sent it out of politeness and politics' sake in the first place. 

(“Happy birthday, A-Yao,” he murmured against his mouth, moustache tickling his top lip.

They were loose and warm together in bed, breathing, calming. Then, Da-ge rolled over to retrieve something from the side table, muscles rippling under his shining skin. Musk, sex, and warmth tickled Meng Yao’s nose. When he returned, he pressed a slender, wickedly beautiful dagger, sheath and all, into his hands. He had to swallow down a strangely elated laugh at the prospect of a man gifting him a knife while naked. The heft of it fit into his palm just as satisfyingly as Mingjue himself had just minutes ago. It didn’t seem to have even occurred to the man that his vulnerable belly and cock lay bare, mere inches away from a blade quickly unsheathed. Trust. 

“Chifeng-zun has the most interesting pillowtalk,” he chuckled to mask his delight. “It’s beautiful.”

“Well, weapons often fit their owners.”) 

 Jin Guangyao can name nearly all of the Nie men from his time in the Unclean Realm--and he only fails to name the rest because they are new. But every one of them eye him as if he’s some manure stuck on the bottom of their shoes. He distantly wonders what tales about him circulate still in the training halls of the Unclean Realm. He can too easily guess.

His smile to all of them is cordial and absolutely faultless. “Welcome to Koi Tower. A valet will be along shortly to show you to your suite and escort you to greet fuqin.”

Huaisang drapes himself over his shoulders like a bereft shawl as he is ushered toward the carpeted stairs. Seeming oblivious to the discontent of his entourage, he complains, “San-geeee, you won’t believe the trip down the mountains in this carriage. Not only does it take forever, but the bumps! My poor--ah, ahem, well, you know. I keep telling Da-ge to invest in smoother roads and stabilization talismans--but you know him. He just harps about using my saber to fly instead.” He squeezes him, jostles. “Hey, you’ve lost more weight! Don’t they feed you, here? Or have you been too busy with the party to--Oh!” Stopping short, he pulls them both to a halt with his grip, marveling. “Would you look at this place!” 

It really is a grand sight. Lanterns line the stairs, bathing them in light, crowning the golden roofs as far as the eye can see, rivaling the stars; bright banners furl with water-like grace through the delicately perfumed air; talisman-encouraged, out-of-season flowers froth over the edges of their polished containers. Everything is spotless and brilliantly gold. 

 “The Jin sure know how to throw a party. This was all you, right? Ahh, of course, it is, I recognized the style! Our festivals really have been lackluster, ever since you stopped organizing them! I miss it!” He sighs, then suddenly clutches his arm with renewed strength. “San-ge, tell me there will be plenty of drinks. Oh, what about that special wine you had? The fruity, sweet one you served last time?” 

Jin Guangyao has to smile. “But of course. I’ll have 2 jugs loaded for your departure as well.”

“Ahhh, how could I have doubted you? You're the best!” Huaisang grins mischievously and tapped his closed fan--one Jin Guangyao had gifted him--against the peony embroidered on his chest, then waggled it in his face. “But you never visit me anymore! You only write and stop by when you're with xiao-Fu!” He looks genuinely put out, even as he pouts outrageously to hide how much he means it. “Makes a body feel unloved!”

Unloved. Jin Guangyao keeps smiling. "I've had so much on my plate. Forgive my neglect, didi. Next time, I'll come up and stay a while with Fufu.”

Huaisang’s answering smile gets shifty, awkward; he’s about to lie, Jin Guangyao recognizes the expression instantly. “Oh! Ah, uh, Da-ge says ‘happy birthday’!” He offers, clearly just having thought to mention his absence.

No, he doesn’t. “Thank you! You may tell him it is much appreciated.” 

A lie for a lie.

(He will send back a letter, thanking Clan Leader Nie--no; Da-ge-- for his birthday well wishes for the Twin Treasures, saying that his presence was sadly missed but, of course, graciously understood. It would drive him mad, his insult ignored, the idea he would wish any Jin well. Maybe it would even enrage him enough to write something back.)

In the gray of pre-dawn, his birthday begins on the rim of a nightmare that only his body remembers, cold terror-sweat standing out on his skin. The days where he wakes with a knife already in his hand are never good ones--(your door is locked and you are alone, your door is locked)--but he will see his son today and that will make it good. It will make him happy.

(When was the last time he had felt anything resembling ‘happy’?)

Bathing takes twice as long as normal to feel truly clean. Aching and bruises cannot be washed away but if every inch of him burns from scrubbing, it feels less immediate. A typical, bearable amount of pain. He is ruthlessly thorough with every crevice--he is going to see Er-ge today. Jin Guangyao will be prepared for whatever he may need of him.

He dresses, layers on impeccable layers of delicately embroidered gold, cream, and green, cinched tight and crisp. Proper, worthy of Jin propriety, but not overly ostentatious. It is a careful game, making sure that he is perceived as staying a step below his brother in all ways. He must not cross the line of making it seem as though he is trying to draw attention away from the heir. The true son.

It's as he turns to pick up his hat that his eye catches on the person in the mirror. While his mind was absent, calculating lists of arrivals, his hands have braided his hair in the Nie style of vice general. 

The face in the mirror is unreadable. 

He rakes his fingers through, unraveling them, then he secures his hair properly before donning his hat.

Image complete, he kneels before his mother’s altar. He straightens the flowers, shines her memorial tablet, and lights 3 new joss sticks. He sits quietly, mind an empty hum as they burn. 

Every birthday, no matter what, she would always manage to buy him something new--a rare treat. He remembered every one, all twelve gifts she had given him, from a tiny wooden toy to an armful of cultivation manuals to new boots. She had always gotten them a warm, fresh dessert. And she would gather him in under her cheek, and tell him how lucky she was to have him. When he had to leave the room for her to work, she would kiss his forehead, her hands holding his cheeks as if he were something precious.

(On his 13th birthday, she was too sick to get out of bed. They argued--as much as they ever argued--as her shaking hands had pushed the meager silver at him. “Go and get yourself something, Yaoyao, I mean it,” she insisted. “I was going to anyway.”

He folded his hands around her thin wrist, staying them. “A-niang, this should be used for medicine--”

“No, I saved this for your birthday especially! Don’t you dare go and spend it on that! I’ll-I’ll be so upset with you!”

There were tears in her round eyes, huge in her gaunt, beloved face.

Reluctantly, he relented, for her sake more than anything. He shoved it deep into his pockets with sweaty hands clenched around them, so they didn’t clink together, so no one heard. The Madam was so angry with his mother’s performance lately that she took every last scrap of her money--he had to dash to the apothecary immediately after payment to have any for medicine. 

This was a furtive birthday outing, not a triumphant one, just down the road to the first food cart he saw, desperate to fulfill his mission so he could get back to her. The prize was a handful of little red bean cakes--and the change he had hidden away in his boot; medicine money. She didn't even bother to scold him for not taking more time. 

Together, curled up on her bed, they savored them together. “Next year,” she whispered from where she lay her head on his shoulder, exhausted just from having to sit up to eat. “Next year…we’ll celebrate…with your father. In Lanling.” 

She died 7 months later, during the rains of autumn.)

When there is nothing left but the ends of the smoldering sticks in the sand, he stands. 

Forcing down breakfast that clumps like glue in his throat, he reviews again and again the list of final things to check and recheck for Zixuan’s party. Part of him knows exactly when he must be here, what he must do there. The exact moments of beginning a task, then the ending, then moving on to the next. It is all arrayed in perfect formation in his head. He knows it must be, because he remembers arranging it, sees himself executing them calmly from afar. But details are blurry from here. Words flow from his throat, his lips and teeth moving in perfect synchrony; servants thrum like a hive of bees at his orders; the machinery of the day turns perfectly. 

If one were to hold a knife to his throat, demanding to know the specifics of what was said, surely some part of him would be able to provide them. Surely. 

Standing before his father in his glittering office, he bows, explaining what is ready and what still needs doing.

“I don’t have time for these things today, Guangyao,” his father waves an impatient hand without looking up from the letter he reads, frowning. “Just make it done.”

Jin Guangyao bows, promising that it will be. Leaves. 

It’s nearly time for Er-ge and A-Fu to arrive. Outside, it is chill and pearly beneath the clouds. He clasps his hands behind his back, worrying at his captured thumb. The lip of the stairs is far enough away that he cannot see the bottom of them.

When Jiang Yanli’s voice calls his name from behind him and he turns his head, pain shoots from his shoulder up to his jaw (stupid, nonsensical.) He ignores it. She’s wafting across the courtyard in a cloud of shimmering gold-peach fabric and children; A-Qiang hefted onto her ample hip, chubby and bundled against the cold; A-Ling swinging from one hand, and Mo Xuanyu clinging close to her other side. They are all grinning at him and he can feel his face smiling back--automatic, unconscious.

Xuanyu breaks from his place beside Yanli. He bounds up to him with the clumsy eagerness of a puppy not quite grown into its own feet, face shining. “Happy birthday, gege!” 

Jin Guangyao thanks him. The boy seems to have grown another inch in all directions since he last saw him mere weeks ago, before he had engulfed himself in the throes of banquet planning. Jiang Yanli and the kitchens must be feeding him well. This is good, considering how emaciated and bruised he had been when he had come to them. 

Seeing him is like swallowing acid. 

He is a kind boy, timid and sweet. He glows at any hint of praise, clearly starving for affection. He calls him 'gege', follows him like a lost duckling when he sees him. 

And there is still a part of him that hates him. 

Hates what he means, today of all days, because Mo Xuanyu is an insult. A punishment. A reminder that Jin Guangyao is one in a crowd of potential bastards that were clearly never meant to set foot in these halls at all.

Xuanyu came to Koi Tower late last summer, when Fufu had just turned 6, a terrified ghost of a child. The day was warm. Zixuan and Jin Guangyao were about to part ways outside the Pageantry Hall, each to his own plans when a servant hurried up. There was a boy at the front gate making outrageous claims, he said. He would have sent him away, he said, but he knew that Young Master Jin and Young Mistress Jin have a soft spot for helping urchin children--Jin Guangyao suspects that they remind Jiang Yanli of her dead and disgraced shidi.

At their shared request, he was brought to them. As he climbed those stairs, each one bringing closer the familiar nose, the undeniably Jin set of his eyes into sharper focus. Jin Guangyao stood frozen, unable to speak as the boy’s explanation was stammered out. 

His mother dead, his living situation untenable; he was beaten, tortured by his mother’s family. And yet, a ray of hope; his mother had left him with a token from his father, proof of what she had told him, all those years….

A pearl, woven onto a tassel.

(How many does his father have made? Does he give them out, still? Perhaps that’s why he never seems to remember who exactly has them.)

And Zixuan stepped forward, took Xuanyu’s shoulders, spoke to him so warmly. Accepting him instantly. Xuanyu welled up with tears of relief, joy.

(Had Jin Guangyao been that pathetically obvious?)

Are you still?

Zixuan had turned and looked to him, eyes searching, face so transparently hopeful for praise--and so Jin Guangyao nodded, agreed, of course he should be here, of course he belonged--a Jin, like them. Naturally.

Privately, later,  Zixuan had confided in him, admitted to worrying about convincing their father, and even more dubiously, his mother. But he had done it, somehow. He had settled Mo Xuanyu among this opulent garden of peonies without much more than a petal-rustle of disapproval. (In the boy's direction, that is.)

 And Jin Guangyao had never hated his elder brother more in his life. 

The golden boy, heir apparent to the mighty Jin Clan. Anything, anything he wanted and he would have it, without hesitation, without question, no matter the consequence. And Jin Guangyao was beaten by the golden boy's mother for daring to be a half-blood whoreson and want. 

Surely they make amusing pets, these bastards of his father. Strays Zixuan and Young Madam Jin can collect and charitably dote on until they grow bored. 

Oh, Jin Guangyao is ready for it. He knows it is coming. This is why he is anchoring himself so deeply, embedding into the cold, golden infrastructure of this place that they will have to tear him out organ by organ if they want him gone.

At the top of the stairs, the rest of the Jin-Jiang cadre crashes in on him in a wave of sound, the same well wishing as Xuanyu. He is enveloped as Yanli folds him into a one armed hug and A-Ling clings to his arm. A-Qiang leans from her hip to plaster himself to Jin Guangyao’s other side, shouting, “Shushu a birfday!” into his ear.

“Happy birthday, A-Yao! A-Xuan says happy birthday as well, but fuqin called him in to talk about something. We should see him later, though!”

Ah. Yes, that makes sense; of course his father didn’t have time to talk--he needed to speak to Zixuan, the son that matters.

(There are days when Zixuan's clumsy kindness and Jiang Yanli’s smile and Xuanyu's adoration burn and he wishes for the most vile things to befall them, because they have befallen him and it's not fair.)

(How dare you want to matter.)

Jin Guangyao draws back, thanks them all warmly with a wide smile. Maybe Zixuan even had sent along such well wishes. Jiang Yanli would have said as much either way, lying for tact’s sake, as Huaisang had. He wishes they wouldn’t.

He lets her clasp his hand, beaming. “I feel like we’ve hardly seen you for weeks, now, A-Yao! Everything’s been so bus.! Remember; lunch with just us before the party!”

“I helped cook!” Xuanyu announces shyly, gaze hopeful, and A-Ling pipes up with a, “I helped, too!” 

Jiang Yanli gently bops each of their noses in turn with her finger, and agrees, fondly, “Yes, you were both wonderful peelers and choppers!” 

Jin Guangyao makes sure that he is properly impressed and appreciative, and both boys glow with a smug pride, trading looks. 

A-Qiang squirms and whines to be held by Jin Guangyao, arms outstretched, and so he takes him when Yanli offers. He is bigger, heavier than he remembers--children grow so fast. Then, Yanli cranes her neck around, making the yellow stones of her dangling earrings sway and spin. “Aren’t they arriving by boat this time? We can’t see them from back here!” She links the arm not holding A-Qiang through hers. “Let’s move up.”

Needle-tingles crawl up his neck and through his scalp as he obliges. The world yawns out before them. He doesn’t want to see the bottom and he must fight the urge to automatically dig in his heels. (Absurd.)

He stands and waits and smiles and nods and chats. He plays and coos dutifully. A-Qiang wriggles with joy. Dizziness swirls at the base of his skull. He gives the toddler back. A-Ling swings from his hand and A-Yu hovers close at his other elbow--both chatter to and over each other. They are excited to see Fufu, excited that there is a party, excited that the older brother’s are having such a fancy birthday.

His entire back prickles with the knowledge that they are close enough to knock him off balance.

“Are you alright?”

He assures Yanli that he is.

“You’re very quiet.”

He is simply tired.

“Poor A-Yao, all this planning! You’ve done such an amazing job. A-Xuan has been so grateful for your work.”

He is glad.

“Don’t worry; soon, you will be able to rest.”

Of course. That will be good.

“They’re here!” A-Ling shouts, voice rising in excitement.

 Figures, far below, in white and blue, are entering through the huge golden gates. The Lan. The shortest by far darts forward, mounting the stairs at a run. Jin Guangyao’s palms are clammy inside his fists as the Jin around him move forward in a wave, swaying him. A-Ling and A-Yu begin leaping down to meet him as Yanli laughs, reminding them to go slowly. She follows them, picking her way down the steps carefully, hem lifted. A-Qiang is balanced on her hip, wriggling again.

The thready voice finally drifts up, a shout from far away; “A-Liiiiing! Yu-shuuu!”

Move. Move. 

You fucking coward, move.

He steps forward. Again. 

…Again.

His foot hovers out over open air and his stomach plummets, as if he were not stepping onto the next stair, but instead suspended far, far above the ground with nothing to stop him. Nothing to catch his weight but emptiness. 

A pressure is squeezing up his back, spreading through his ribs to his shoulder. It might be pain, but he is too far away to feel it.

He takes another step down. And another. And another. Something creeps at the edges of his awareness, a distorted half-memory--the nightmare from last night. Here, on this stair, but it had been Mingjue at the top, snarling, and Baxia swinging, biting into--

The landing is flat, solid under his feet (15). A-Ling and A-Yu continue to thunder down further. Yanli says something, laughing, and he agrees automatically with a smile. His ribs, head, elbow, and shoulder are pulsing with that not-quite pain.

Fufu has made it to the first landing from the bottom (15) with Er-ge not far behind. A noisy, senseless reunion he can’t parse occurs. Er-ge allows the jumble of happy children to tug on his sleeves and chatter happily up at him as he smiles benignly. Then, he looks up to JIn Guangyao, smile turning quizzical, wondering.

Jin Guangyao smiles back and cannot move forward. It seems to be enough, however, because he continues up, his gentle face the focus, an anchor.

(15. 15. 5, 4, 3, 2--)

He bows. Er-ge completes their ritual, catching his arms, staying him. (Unless a force acts against it to keep it aloft…) It’s a choice. A proof of belonging. 

 “Happy birthday, A-Yao,” he murmurs into the brief circle of their arms, the nearly safe space they create together. 

Yes, the ground is solid beneath his feet.

And it’s a good thing because FuFu canons directly into him not one moment later, shouting, “Diedie!” at the top of his lungs. 

(Don’t. That jolt of unease, of distant panic seizes him--the other Lan are at the bottom of the stairs, they can hear, they are right there, I begged you not to-- ) A-Fu attempts to climb him, pulling, hopping. When he kneels down, his son wraps his arms too tight around his neck, shoving his cheek too hard against his own, knocking his hat off kilter. Even as Er-ge warns him to be gentler, Jin Guangyao holds him back just as hard. Allows himself to be his Yellow-Father, in that huddled hug.

It very nearly makes him real for the first time that day.

Foremost is etiquette, however. Er-ge must lead the rest of the Lan disciples that have accompanied him to go and greet Jin Guangshan. Going back up is somewhat easier. (Er-ge steadies him with a covert hand at his elbow, especially as FuFu has the other hand held hostage.) After all the children funnel excitedly after Yanli to prepare for their lunch, and the rest of the Lan are being led to their suite, there is a moment alone. In a quiet, unseen side room in a back hall, behind a closed and locked door, they dare to greet each other properly.

 Jin Guangyao buries his face in Er-ge’s collar, his fingers tangling up into his hair and the tails of his headband behind his back. It is not an accident. The length of silk is smooth and cool. Er-ge surrounds him in return, warm and firm.

"You feel like you’ve lost weight, my love," Er-ge murmurs into the crown of his head, breath warming the gauze of his hat.

He makes some noise of acknowledgement without truly answering, squeezing just that much tighter.

Er-ge doesn’t ask if he’s alright. He doesn’t ask how his day is going. Soft lips find his temple, his ear. He tilts his head and lets Er-ge love him. Let’s someone in this whole empty world love him right where he is, gentle and full and warm and real and--

He pulls back and smiles as if he hadn’t just clung to him like a drowning man. Er-ge sees and knows, because that’s what Er-ge does. He lifts his hands to Jin Guangyao’s face, tracing light, invisible lines with the edges of his thumbs under his eyes, watching him with an expression of aware apology. Like it’s somehow Er-ge’s doing, to fix or break the unfortunate mistake of his birth.

No matter. He will not let anything ruin this visit--especially not himself. Blinking slowly, he purposefully lets the tension out of his shoulders and reminds them both that they have matters to attend to.

“Mn,” Er-ge agrees, easily, the way he does. “I will see you again at lunch. Later….” he leaves it open, hanging in the air.

(Falling.) 

Jin Guangyao agrees. Later. Now, he must greet more guests from his place at the top of the stairs. 

That drop has something of a physical pull, fastened somewhere in his gut.

Numb fog swallows him back up more fully. He is a complacent passenger to his own talents and the laws that govern reason--action to reaction; order from chaos. He is good at what he does. Nothing is out of place. No one could take issue. He stays at the top of the stairs. 

He stays.

Cultivators parade past, glittering.

Minshan approaches with his small, yet respectable entourage, beaming at him as they bow. Jin Guangyao has no idea the pleasantries they exchange after Minshan wishes him a happy birthday. It seems to be enough.

It is time to attend lunch.

The meal goes well enough, he thinks. It’s a whirl of chaos and noise that washes over him, familiar and jarring at once. There is joyful shouting, joyful scolding, a few tears that are not so joyful. After the time away, all the children are practically overwhelming. Surely he keeps afloat well enough, smiling, talking, being enough. Though Er-ge keeps glancing sideways at him. Underneath the table, he folds his hand around Jin Guangyao’s wrist and squeezes, gently.

Zixuan arrives late, apologizing. He looks every inch a festive Jin; gold and silver robes rich with half a dozen fine and shining layers, hair threaded with thin chains. His belt glitters with a new jade ornament he can’t recall ever having seen him wear before. Ah. Gifts.

The Jin heir settles into the seat across from Jin Guangyao, beside his wife and kisses her cheek. “Happy birthday, didi,” Zixuan adds, smile frustratingly, stupidly earnest. 

He, of course, returns the pleasantry.

It is all warm, though from a distance. A hearth fire on the horizon. Too far away.

(This should make him happy. The children’s antics, the closeness. But there’s nothing. He is hollow. Why can’t he just be happy?)

When they rise, the servants spiriting away dishes and the nannies rounding up children, Zixuan appears beside him and squeezes his arm. His expression is serious. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around much lately.”

Jin Guangyao graciously points out that he has also been absent.

“I know, but…I try to make time for family. We need to have you by more. The children miss you.” 

Jin Guangyao…agrees. He misses them too. (And he does. Achingly so. He knows it. Where has it gone?)

Zixuan frowns, peering closer. “A-Yao, are you alright?”

Of course he is. 

His brother does not look convinced in the least. “Didi, I know you, something’s not--”

Yanli appears in the doorway, asking something. Zixuan pulls himself away, still frowning back at him. Jin Guangyao smiles in reassurance.

As he returns to his room, servants swarm anxiously, peppering him with questions; When? Where? Who? Shall I? Should I? Will you? Later, there, him, yes, no, of course. 

Er-ge finds him poring over the latest seating chart--2 petty lords have feuded since last he wrote this and they are too near each other; he will not have drunken brawls mar his brother’s celebration. 

“I must speak to Lianfang-zun,” Er-ge cuts in, exquisitely timed between the breath and question of the harried maidservant. “Please excuse us and inquire about this later.”

They do not look assured, but obediently part before him; a shoal of bright fish, fleeing. Er-ge sedately follows them to the door, one hand tucked behind his back. Then, when they have all filed out, he locks it and activates the silencing talismans with a hum of promise.

Alone together at last.

(Here is where relief should seep in. Here is where anticipatory arousal should begin tingling pleasantly in his center, heat pooling in his groin. Here is where he should rise and smile and reach and want. There is a frustration mounting, somewhere. Can he feel? Is he still here, somewhere, buried, corpse-cold, corpse-still, unresponsive?)

Jin Guangyao finds his head in his hands, elbows on his desk. Er-ge’s light footsteps tread around, then a hand soothes down his back, warm and spanning wide. When Jin Guangyao sits back, closer to him, arms slide around him from behind and he rests their temples together. “A-Yao. Are you well?”

He is.

“You seem…very distant. And you hardly ate. I’m worried about you.”

There is no answer for that. His mouth is empty of words and so he remains silent. His birthday is never easy, but this time, it is some strange, unending hell. And he doesn’t know why.

He squeezes tighter and asks, quieter, "Have I upset you?"

What? Of course not, he could never be upset with Er-ge. 

“Is there something I can do? What do you need from me? I am yours alone until the banquet at nightfall. We have time.”

Yes. They have time. 

A hand against his cheek, turning him, meeting his gaze. Er-ge’s eyebrows are pinched, mouth grim. But his eyes are so soft--sweet and warm and beautiful. 

(Father never seemed to meet his eyes. Madam Jin hated them; whore’s eyes, she called them.)

“What do you need, A-Yao?” he murmurs. “What can I do? Anything.”

The kindest, most gentle man.

("It's your birthday, Yaoyao, if you could have anything in the world, what would it be?")

Er-ge is ready to be tender and slow, he can tell; to massage or play music or simply hold him, love him, soothe him. But it’s all still so maddeningly far away. He can’t. He will not feel it. A desperate frustration is rising beneath the weight of numb detachment. He wants to claw out of his skin. He needs without knowing what he needs. 

He needs everything to stop. He needs more. He needs to cut out this blankness, dig up the unhelpful corpse that’s piloting him and burn it, banish it.

Usually he’s careful about having sex with Xichen when he has obvious bruises, but it’s his birthday. It’s his birthday and he wants.

 It’s his birthday and he needs. 

When Er-ge visits, he is always attentive and flexible, asking Er-ge whether he wants his hands or his mouth or his body, whether he wants to take or be taken. But now, he needs the warmth of him against and inside of him as desperately as air.

All at once, twisting around in Er-ge’s hold, he curls his fists into the crisp front of his spotless Lan robes and yanks him down against his mouth. It surprises a hungry groan out of him, and Er-ge braces against the desk as Jin Guangyao devours his mouth, kisses him like a starving dog stripping a bone. He can almost feel it. Something is stirring in his gut. Er-ge moves with him, against him, effortlessly, breathlessly, but it’s too gentle, too nice. 

(Make me feel something. Love me. Hurt me.) Jin Guangyao needs him to fuck him.

Hard.

And he does. 

After the whirl of clothing and groping it takes to be naked, Er-ge bears him down into the bed on his hands and knees, fucking into him hard and fast, almost brutal as he snaps his hips. Yes, yes, yes. Jin Guangyao hadn’t let him wait for him to adjust. He rocks back, increasing the impact, filling the room and himself. He can hear himself praising, urging, begging for him not to stop, even though Er-ge shows no sign of slowing. The friction, the burn pounds through him, only tangentially related to pleasure, and therefore so much more bearable. He is going to ache for days. Good. 

(“You won't be able to sit rig ht for a week,” Da-ge would purr into his ear with a grin when he asked him to move faster, go harder. He had shuddered with the wanting. He had been rewarded for his daring with the fulfillment of that promise. )

His throat locks. The words die. He curls away from this mem ory, shrinking down until his face is buried into his arms, chest nearly touching the mattress. The only thing that escapes his throat is the breath punching out with each thrust. What is the matter with you? Why are you ruining this now, with Er-ge, of all people?

The thought clamps his teeth shut. No. No, he will do this right. Raising his eyes, he locks onto the graceful filigree on his headboard, tries to separate this deadening in his mind so his body can arch and writhe and be good again, the way Er-ge deserves. He knows how to do this.

Sudden emptiness chokes a yelp out of him as Er-ge pulls back, pulls out. The hands on his hips drag him further down the bed, (good, yes, no tenderness here), rolling him over. Above him, Er-ge’s flushed face is intent, his gaze focused on him, gauging as he presses back into him. Searching. They both hiss at the raw pressure of it, the new, closer depth. The intimacy of eyes on him is unbearable. Jin Guangyao pulls him down, clutches him close, leaving no space whatsoever as he urges him on with his heels; he can’t bear those warm eyes seeing the hollowness in him. 

 Heat stings his back against the bed, his thighs and ass where Er-ge’s hips meet him, promising bruises (new, clean, given from wanting, he cares enough to leave something of himself behind, to give him what he wants.) The pleasure is there, sneaking, swelling. Yes. He buries his face in the fall of Er-ge’s hair, loose from their haste to fall into his bed. When he mouths at his neck, his skin tastes of salt, smells of hot sandalwood and musky arousal. When he goes to Er-ge’s collarbone and bites along it, rakes his tongue over the flesh caught between his teeth, sucks hard and squeezes himself around Er-ge’s cock at the same time, it earns him a shocked, guttural moan that rattles through his lips. He is good at this, too. Good for something. (“Good for one thing--”)

He wants Er-ge to remember him long after he's left. He wants him to feel it when his clothes brush against the marks, when he bathes. It will leave a bruise Mingjue will see if they have sex in the next few days--unless Xichen heals it.

 Jin Guangyao knows he won't. 

(You won't be rid of me that easily. You cannot forget me, you cannot throw me out if I'm buried in him. If he’s buried in me. I will haunt the both of you.)

He wishes he could leave love bruises where everyone could see, along that perfect jaw, down his neck. Wishes he mattered that much, that what they were when they were alone together could ever matter that much. 

(“What whore’s trick are you trying on Zewu-jun, now, of all people?!”)

Breath stutters, catches. 

( Of all people.)

His eyes lock on the trail of red blooming ovals, the indents of his teeth. ( Of all people. ) Stained. Tainted. One of the pure Jades of the Lan. A Clan Leader.

( You greedy whore. )

He swallows, hard.

“A-Yao?” Er-ge pants, hips slowing, starting to pull back, to try to look down at him.

He’s ruining it. He promised he wouldn’t. He won’t. ( Please don't leave me. ) He’s alright. Nothing is wrong. Er-ge is so good to him. Please. 

He wants this. He can feel it all, now; his body. Pounding, blood heavy and eager. Hot--not frozen, not numb. Alive and aroused. His cock is stiff between them, aching. He needs this.

(Selfish. )

Please. Please. He’s sure.

Er-ge’s implacable thrusts stop altogether and he pushes himself up onto his arms above him, leaving--Er-ge, please-- “Shhh, A-Yao, I’m not going anywhere, I promise,”--he hooks Jin Guangyao’s knees over his arms and comes close again, folding him in half, curling him up tight to drive deeper still.

Stars explode, shooting up his spine, electric as Er-ge nails that knot of pleasure dead on again and again and, oh , it was good before but now it’s too deep, too fast, too good, too much; perfect. His hands fly up to brace against the headboard, that filigree biting into his palm, forcing him back down into the deep, heavy, punching thrusts that have his eyes rolling. Er-ge fills him all the way up to his throat, snakes a hand down to take Jin Guangyao’s cock in hand and jerk him roughly, timed with his thrusts.

And he doesn’t stop. His hips and hand are fluid and fast and unrelenting and Jin Guangyao loves him because he doesn’t stop, and he doesn’t stop, and he doesn’t--

“Yes, A-Yao,” Er-ge croons breathlessly against his temple, the strain squeezing his voice, “so good for me,” as a flood, a swell, a crash tears through him and he comes, hard, with a gasping shudder ripped from deep in his gut, raking out of his throat. Helpless. Er-ge moans raggedly against his skin, slows his breakneck thrusts, but does not stop, working him mercilessly through his orgasm, the way he knows he loves.

But he doesn’t follow him over that edge. 

His head is reeling as he pants, tiny black stars dancing across his vision in time to his racing pulse. No, no, I’m not good. Dizzy, drowning, and so, so raw, he despairs. He’s failed. He’s failed to do well, failed to please him, to make him come, failed-- 

Er-ge kisses at his ear, gasping, “Do you need to stop? Take a breath?”

Automatically, all his limbs clamp back like iron around him, pinning him close. ( He could break free so easily. Break you.) He needs more, needs the too much, needs it to ache. He will fall off the earth if Er-ge stops fucking him, now. Drowning in sensation is the only way to take him out of his head entirely and he needs to be all raw nerve, to keep feeling . But...if Er-ge needs to--

“Do you want me to?”

The breath tickling over his ear makes him shudder. It’s alright if he needs--

“Yes? No? Love, I’m not--” 

He’s slowing, pulling back again . The red singing of his movement is abating and he can’t, he can’t, he can’t --

“No,” A-Yao grates. “More. Please. Please keep going.”

Every eloquence is gone. Decorum, civility. Bare. Flayed. 

Disgusting.

“Oh,” Er-ge breathes reverently, settling back onto him, into him. “ Good, A-Yao. You’ve been so good, telling me what you need. Letting me take care of you. Pleasure you.”

The praise melts him, bleeds into the zaps and tingles and it aches like he's been beaten. 

( How dare you love me like it’s easy? Something in him screams. Do you know how much simpler this would be if I were just unloveable? How much more sense it would all make, how much easier to swallow and bear?)

Instead of returning to fucking him hard once more, Er-ge unfolds him. His palms sliding down his thighs to cradle his ribs, now, weighing him down, A-Yao’s legs locked over his back. Now, he rolls his hips in slow, lush circles as he kisses down his throat with the warmth and lavish sweetness of dripping honey. “Can I make love to you now?” he asks softly, lips-breath-words hot in the hollow under his ear. “Slowly?”

( How dare you love me like I’m not disgusting and wrong? How dare you love me like I deserve it?)

The swell of sore pleasure--and fear --breaks from him in a weak, pitiful sound he doesn’t mean to make. It cracks him open in intestine vulnerability so ugly he isn’t sure how Er-ge can stand to keep touching him.

(Don’t do this to me. Don’t make it seem easy.)

“A-Yao?”

Defeated, because his Er-ge is so honest, so gentle and earnest and kind, A-Yao closes his eyes and nods. Because he does want that. (He wants to not want that. It would make everything so much easier.) 

There is a brief moment where Er-ge peels away, sits back on his heels, tugged from A-Yao’s body (which makes him want to cry and it’s so, so stupid) and deftly ties back his fall of sex-mussed hair to the nape of his neck. When he leans over to the side table, the shadows slide over the lantern-bronzed planes and valleys of his form like art, like a miracle.

 He returns, hand glistening from fingers to palm to massage more oil into their joining. It stings from the earlier roughness, especially where the head of him presses back against his entrance, blunt, searingly hot, and anticipatory. But when Er-ge slowly slides back into him, the ragged burn from before is eased somewhat. He is still raw and painfully sensitive inside and the entire back side of him, knees to shoulders, throbs in time with his heartbeat; the sweet promise of bruises. 

But now, together, their movement is deep and slow and smooth. Complete and unending. Filled so utterly and completely with each rock, his spent cock pressed between their bellies. The friction on it between them is almost unbearable, even slick with his spend. 

( You’re disgusting. ) 

It's almost perfect. Almost quiet. It’s almost just this. Together.

He wishes he felt guilty for being so selfish, but right now, all he wants is for Er-ge to fuck him forever, like this. To feel this wanted, always. To just be this. 

( Like a whore? )

Er-ge is murmuring into his skin, wherever he can reach; “A-Yao is so kind. So good. So attentive.” He’s kissing between sentences, gentle, slow presses against his cheeks, his throat, his lips--a complimentary counterpoint to the roll of his hips. “I'm so glad you came into this world today. I’m so lucky to have you. Everyone is.”

Heat--grief--prickles in A-Yao’s throat, more real than anything he's felt today and he's too tired to stop tears from seeping from under his eyelids and down his temples. Er-ge kisses them away--because he knows, because he can take care of it, just for now. His breath shudders.

(How does he know? How does he always know what he needs?)

Softer, warmer, less electric pleasure blooms slower, higher, edged in aching and too muchness. It makes ragged scraps of sound start escaping his lips, unauthorized. Moaning, breathless grunts, gasping….

( Idiot. You know how to be quiet, to be good--)

“Yes, sweetheart--oh. There you go,” Er-ge purrs into the shell of his ear. “I want to hear you.” 

They shouldn’t feel so good, these words. Shouldn’t make him feel so warm. 

All of it--the murmurs and tiny hitched moans of Er-ge in his ear, the searing tears, the way his weight anchors him to here and now, warm and sweating, skin sticking and feeling --edges him closer and closer to a second, deeper fall. And it strikes him, muzzily, that Er-ge’s trying to make him come again. Before him.

He tries to slur; “Er-ge, y’don’t have to--”

“Shhh-shhh, A-Yao--come for me.”

And because no part of him has ever been able to deny this man anything, it boils through him, a licking flame deep in his pelvis, up through his gut, curling his toes and squeezing the whole of him in the inescapable fist of pleasure. His throat fights to breathe, to swallow, to scream, to be silent all at once. The sound that escapes him instead is thin and gulping--a faint ringing drowns it out. 

It ebbs, surges, ebbs. His fingers tingle (he can feel them), his eartips burning (he can feel them), his cheeks prickle with tear tracks. He’s buzzing and thrumming and zinging when he turns his face, presses it into Er-ge’s damp temple, breathes hot over his ear and rasps, “I want you. To come. Inside me.”

He doesn't always, sometimes can't stand the feeling or the clean up, but today….

(Mine.)

A harsh, broken sound-- want, yes, mine --breaks from Er-ge and he groans, “Oh gods, oh-- ah-- !” He’s curled tight as a bow over him, face buried in his neck, speeding up, driving deeper.

A-Yao wishes he could see his face but can’t bear to pull him back.

Er-ge comes with a choked moan stifled in A-Yao’s neck and heavy, jerky thrusts,shivering. Perfect. Then, he slumps, melts down onto him. Hot and heavy and right as they gasp against each other, the only noise in the ringing silence of the room. When A-Yao opens his eyes again (when had he closed them?), he sees that, at some point, he had sunk his nails into Er-ge’s back, raking skinned lines over his shoulder blades. A few prickle with bright blood. He soothes the skin next to them with a shaky palm, panting, “I’m sorry, I--”

“Shhh, it's alright, it's good,” Er-ge whispers back into the joining of his neck and shoulder, heart thundering against A-Yao’s ribs.

Then, he shoulders up onto one elbow above him, hand coming up to thumb away the tears that just won’t stop leaking from the corners of A-Yao’s eyes and back into his hairline. “Shhh,” he murmurs again, gaze soft, cheeks and lips deeply flushed and gleaming. “Shhh, my good boy.”

A-Yao’s eyes close again under this heavy, sweet weight, like being buried in carmel, warm and smooth and lovely. Lovely. A love almost like sleep. Restful. 

Golden and right. Velvet. 

He startles back awake from his doze, blinking. He is empty and the grounding weight of Er-ge is gone, leaving him with the feeling of floating inches above the bed, comfortable, buttery, and stinging. Just beside him, still gloriously naked and radiating warmth, Er-ge smiles down at him, folding a damp cloth. A breath of cool left on Jin Guangyao’s belly, temples, and groin means he has not missed too much time if it's still drying. 

“A-Yao?”

“Mnn.” At this muzzy, contented noise, Er-ge’s eyes crinkle further.

He stretches like a cat and sidles over to half-drape over Jin Guangyao’s hips, chin resting on his belly as his hands nestle under the small of his back like soft, warm burrowing things. After shifting around until all their curves fit together comfortably, every ridge of them right, Er-ge asks, “Was it good?” 

Jin Guangyao trails the backs of his fingers over his forehead as he drinks him in; naked and glowing with his hair in sweaty disarray, head tilted and eyes hopeful, Er-ge is the most gorgeous thing he has ever seen. “Perfect.”

“What you needed?”

“Mm, exactly that.”

Er-ge’s smile goes broader, pleased with the praise, and he nuzzles into his bare stomach heaving a contented sigh. “Do you feel better, love?” he murmurs into his skin, quieter, his thumb shifting beneath them in a soothing rhythm.

Jin Guangyao’s hand slides up to stroke his hair, now, trailing gentle nails over his scalp. “I do.” And he does. He’s made of something, now. He’s real again. 

“Good. I was worried. You got so quiet all of a sudden.”

Damn. ( Selfish. Obvious. Stupid.) “I'm sorry--”

Er-ge shakes his head then raises it, resting his chin on him once more to meet his gaze. “Don't be. You don't need to pretend with me, A-Yao. I was…I was worried it was too much. Or that I had hurt you. Or that you had…gone away.”

“It….” The stupor of sex and his own inability to understand what precisely is wrong with him stoppers his words. “It wasn’t you. It’s alright. I’m alright.”

Silence as Er-ge’s dark eyes search him. Shrewd but polite, that gaze. He can see through so much more than he should, straight through to the viscera of him. No one can see him like Xichen can. Before him, no one noticed when he was just his skin and smile and words. No one noticed when a husk stood in his place. Er-ge always saw when there was a crack in what he needed to be. “ Had you gone away?”

Jin Guangyao sighs, jostling Er-ge’s head up and down, still stroking his hair, his cheeks, his brow. “I don’t know. Not by the end. I’m…I’ve felt….It’s nothing. Truly. I’m sorry I worried you.” 

He has not convinced him, he knows--can see the doubt in his expression--but he lets him free of his gaze. The pull of truth released, disquiet and shameful shortcomings released to sink back down into invisibility. A kindness. He is always kind, his Er-ge. Instead, he now pulls a hand free from beneath them and circles the border of a purple-browning bruise shadowing Jin Guangyao’s ribs with a gentle fingertip. A silent question, a gentle sympathy for pain now passed.

( “Get out of my sight, you vile little pissant.”)

He ignores the jolt (he knew he might see it) and offers him the lie of a sleepy smile. “Nighthunting.” 

Er-ge tilts his head and kisses around it with soft, lingering lips and Jin Guangyao lets him, hand cradling the back of his head. He can feel himself fully, from the tips of his toes to the roots of his scalp. Er-ge travels, kissing around on his belly and chest, dragging his lips, slower and slower. Trails of love over his skin. It’s hypnotic; the press, the puffs of his breath, the warmth, the whisper of chill when he moves on, and on…and on….

Then, dimly, Jin Guangyao realizes he's stopped. A charming, purr-like-snore is emanating from near his navel and it makes a smile stretch his lips, real and unorchestrated. He can't fall asleep, not with the banquet so soon…but maybe he can close his eyes for just this moment….

[guqin-and-flute]

Holding Me Holding You–Ch. 7 [3zun Raise Jingyi Prequel]

[Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4] [Chapter 5] [Chapter 6]

[Ao3 Link]

[Holy shit, how has it been 2 years since I last updated this fic?? ANYWAY HELLO HI I MISSED YOU. We're keeping the baby, guys. CW: Disjointed, slightly nonlinear narration; negative self talk; more talk of battle aftermath, bodies (gross but no more graphic than prev chapters), and death; focus on lots of trauma to do with death and grief; general Twin Jade parental trauma; vaguest mention of child death, in that he repeatedly tells himself there isn't one and remembers part of his nightmare about Wangji/A-Fu dying]

Who are you?

‘Wen Baiqi.’

What must be done for you to rest?

‘Say goodbye. Tell her goodbye.’

It’s raining in Qishan. It’s nothing like the rain in Gusu.

Who are you?

‘Hei Xuecen.’

What must be done for you to rest?

‘All my fault all my fault ALL MY FAULT--’

This rain isn’t crisp, but disconcertingly warm. It doesn't bring life. It soaks into the ground, milling the dirt back into the blood and gore bloated mud of that night, sucking at their feet. Reeking of putrefaction. It coats Xichen’s tongue and throat.

Who are you?

Each time, there is a chance he will receive a reply from the Yiling Patriarch himself. 

‘Ye Qian.’

He never does.

What must be done for you to rest?

‘Never apologized--’

What would he do if he did?

Who are you?

What would Zewu-jun do? Clan Leader Lan?

What must be done?

Would he soothe his spirit?

Who are you?

Ghostly fingers pluck at his sleeves constantly. 

Who are you?

‘Nie Zixing. Never knew him, tell them--’

When he had first arrived, the bodies of Wei Wuxian’s Wen contingent still hung from the gate to the battleground. Or what remained of them. After scavengers, time, and the elements had had their turn. Swaying in the warm, wet breeze along with carrion birds’ cries and the distant tunes of the guqin language. Grisly pendulums. Dripping.

There is no small boy among them. He had hoped against hope, but now he knew for sure. This secret is tucked deep, deep down beneath his heart.

Who are you?

The corpses on the ground are Wen. They are Lan. They are strangers. They are Da-ge, lying bloody on the floor of the Scorching Sun Palace. They are A-Zhan.

"We should burn them like they did to our people. Scatter their ashes, so they will never rest." A venomous whisper from his own disciples, a young man, face twisted in rage.

(“They’re killing everyone,” he had choked his sobs into A-Yao’s arms. “My people--my family are all dead and I did nothing.”)

A-Yuan had been so, so pale against the sheets. So tiny compared to the infirmary bed.

“These people?" Xichen’s voice is quiet. "These cultivators that studied healing? Miles and miles from Qishan?”

Silence.

“Did they destroy our home? Did we fight them in Sunshot?”

Too little, far too late.

There is no small boy among them. There isn’t.

A-Zhan, gray and slack, eyes glassy, head lolling--

He pushes the dream-memory away.

Who are you?

‘Jin Mingni. 

My father--’

"We will bury them and hold the proper rites, as we have the rest of the fallen. And I will ask you to swear yourselves to secrecy regarding their exact resting place. In case anyone later shares your thinking.”

‘Zhou Sanniang. Never wanted to come. Save me.’

“Help me bring them down.”

There may be no small boy among the Wen, but he sees corpses all day, every day. They're in his dreams. He cannot stop seeing them. And he cannot stop seeing a boy (Afuyuanzhan) among them, from the corner of his eye.

He can never quite catch the face before he realizes there is no one actually there.

A skeletal hand is unearthed when they lift a body--a remnant of the Sunshot Campaign, years before. There were plenty of partial skeletons from that time that the Yiling Patriarch had raised to fight them. It seems some didn't have the strength to fight their way out from the mud. The death here has layers. A slow growing mountain of violence and dead and blood instead of stone. The building of the Burial Mounds’ successor.

Do the Burial Mounds have as many crows? Is it a feasting ground, as this has become?

They carry the quiescent dead, cover them with cloth, lay them in rows. Those whose spirits have passed on easily. They lie with their Sect members--when they are able to discern who they are. Still, fields of undyed cloth mounds, waiting to be retrieved by their loved ones, if they still live. Somewhere out there, there must be people still alive, families whole and happy, living in the sunshine. Somewhere.

Who are you?

His fingertips bleed from days playing Linhai and Liebing.

What must be done for you to rest?

Even those here that are living shamble like the dead--the rogue cultivators, his Lan disciples, the handful cultivators from other Sects, all here for the same goal, all hollow eyed and pale. He is supposed to be here for morale. 

They work deep into the night, far from familiar, ingrained rules about schedule and tidiness, here. Adrift.

What must be done--?

The fierce corpse is not a powerful one, merely tenacious. Shuoyue snakes out. It crumples immediately with a muted splurch into the muck, halved.

‘Tell her I loved--’

The top half of the corpse writhes, still scrabbling for him. The sound it makes from its ruined face is horrid. It's a wonder it can sense his yang qi at all; no eyes, no nose. Its robes are a splotchy black and rusty brown-red, but the Lan ribbon around its forehead manages to show a ragged white through it, here and there.

The talisman sears, blinding. It is enough. The body slumps for the last time. He can settle into that mud, summon Linhai from his qiankun bag for the Songs of Rest.

Who are you?

‘Lan Ruicai.

Show them all--’

The blood of the walking dead is no longer life-hot, but the same, unnerving lukewarm as the rain. He cannot feel it. He can’t tell where it’s stained him until he reaches his tent each night. 

He is efficient. He is in control.

The rain here doesn't cleanse anything. It hasn’t stopped for days.

Everything is the same color; the sludge, the thick haze of lingering resentful energy, palms, boots, the hems and knees of robes. That old clotted wound color. Dirt repelling talismans can only do so much before they are overpowered by the sheer weight of yin energy permeating everything. Stained.

There's no use cleaning. He tries anyway.

‘I was so scared, so scared--’

Who are you?

Sometimes, the spirits do not answer. Sometimes, they speak first, before he can even start the questions, raking the strings repeatedly in their anguish. Sometimes, they try to tear the guqin from him, try to rend his clothes, squeeze his throat. Sometimes, banishment is the only way. 

The sudden shrieks and roars at night startle everyone from sleep. If Wangji was well, he would be here. He is known for going where the chaos is.

Is that what had led him to this? To Wei Wuxian? An affinity for soothing chaos? For chaos itself?

Who are you?

‘Don’t know. Want to go home--’

"I can't anymore, zongzhu, I-I--"

"It's alright. Return to the Cloud Recesses. You’ve done enough."

Sometimes, he wakes in the night to find that he is in the middle of dressing, having no memory of doing so, a clump of cleansing talismans clutched in his numb hands. He has cut down so many fierce corpses, he’s lost count.

Who are you?

Food is tasteless glue in his mouth.

Who are you?

Every night, he is sure to take the medicine that gives him no dreams.

‘Oh gods oh gods ohgodsohgods--’

Every night, he prays that he has not left Uncle overwhelmed, that his people are being cleansed and healed back home, that Wangji has stopped bleeding, that A-Yuan is healing, that A-Fu is….

Who are you?

(What right do you have?)

What must be done?

He has been here for days that run into one, long, dark, meaningless drain. 

‘Son. Baby. Where is he?'

Who are you?

‘Pan Liu.’

His raw fingers pause on Linhai’s strings, still humming. Rain patters quietly on the hat that shields his face from it.

He knows that name. How does he know that name.

There have been plenty of others he had recognized among the dead, from different Sects and his own, from childhood, from Cultivation Conferences, from class. But each time, he must pull himself back to that life to remember, away from the rain and the red and the dead.

He can’t place it.

What must be done for you to rest?

‘My baby. Safe.’

The spirit is a thin wisp of light, playing about the strings, shining on the dark wood. Focused. Waiting.  

Who is your son?

‘Lan Fu.’

His mouth is dry.

("A-niang?" A hopeful little voice. The memory of a crumpled form in the blood-churned muck, a shoe print between shoulder blades….) 

It is cruel, endlessly cruel that he is the one alive. That he is the one sitting in the mud across from this poor young mother’s spirit. That he is the one with blood enough in his hands to leave rain blotted stains on the strings as he tells A-Fu’s mother; He is safe.

(Shrieks of raw sound as they carry him away. Echoing off the trees. Reaching back for him.)

A hesitation. Then, ‘Who are you?’

Lan Xichen. Zewu-jun.

‘Zongzhu.’

He will be safe. I swear. 

‘...Safe.’

Rest, now.

‘...Rest….’ The notes are quiet, exhausted. Longing.

Then, silence. That pale light is gone. 

She is gone.

He sits, still and silent as the soft caverns in the clotted mud continue to patter around him. His face is wet--mist and rain and blood. He almost wishes it was tears. 

He aches in a new, terrible way, now.

Oh, little one. You were so loved.

He has been witness to both sides, now, of this small, destroyed family reaching for each other through the dark. And how useless he has been in the task of bringing either of them lasting peace. 

To bring anyone lasting peace. 

(Useless.)

And do you serve anything so fiercely that it would be your last thought, taken across into death? 

It is irrelevant. The soul quieting ceremony had been performed on them as children, with all the other inner disciples. He will not linger as a ghost, even if he were to be struck down by a fierce corpse this instant.

He finds himself trying to remember if his mother had ever mentioned having had such a ritual performed on her….

Selfish. You would have your own mother suffer and linger as an unquiet ghost for some sort of twisted confirmation that you were loved? 

Xichen remembers childhood before the death of his parents. The infinity of all of it. It probably never crossed A-Fu’s mind to beg her to stay with him. (“No, no go! P’ease!”) She had always returned before. 

The memory of A-Fu clinging to his hands so tightly he had drawn blood with his nails is inescapable. 

During that final farewell at the Jingshi, A-Huan too had had no idea it would be the last time he would ever see his mother’s face. He didn’t know what creeping death looked like, then. She was simply her, smiling, twinkling at them.  He had kissed her cheek and taken Wangji’s hand and waved to her through her ornately carved window screen as Uncle led them away. Wangji had always been the one to pull back, to fuss over leaving. Uncle had always made sure that Xichen set a good example for him.

The snowy day she had left this world, cold and dry, so far from the warm wet muck he was in now, something in him hadn’t believed it. Hadn’t believed that someone could just…no longer exist, just as suddenly as a storm might blow over the mountain summit with no warning. 

He saw her so sparingly, it seemed impossible that she wasn't just simply waiting in her front room for them to visit with a smile and open arms.

How? he had asked. When? Why?

Uncle had said that it was not for children to know. This pulled it even farther into the unreal, stretching his comprehension. It felt like a dream, a lie. A story. But if he could just see her…if he could just prove that this was some sort of…misunderstanding--

(Xichen had never asked again after that first refusal sat in his gut like a chilly stone. He suspected that Wangji had not either. Even now, decades later, he still did not know how his mother had actually died. 

He suspected enough, however. 

He knew it was sudden. He knew it was unexpected. He knew no one spoke of it. He knew it had broken his father beyond any hope of repair. Uncle had not volunteered the information, even now, when they were both grown. And Xichen will not allow useless rumination. Rule 60.)

 He remembered he hadn’t been able to stop crying. A-Huan had always hated crying--he always tried to hide away and not bother anyone with it, but this had been constant. 

Uncle had squeezed his shoulder and spoken softly, and reminded him after hours of stopping and starting that he must not grieve in excess, that he would make himself sick, that he was agitating Wangji, that he needed to calm himself, death was a natural passing, like the moon or a river, one must not let their emotions control them.

But still, that something in him that just knew it wasn't true waited until it was dark, until curfew set in and the snow lit the night full-moon-bright, reflecting the stars and lanterns. He had pulled on his boots and slipped from his window, cautiously darting across the paths of the Cloud Recesses in just his pajamas and his blanket wrapped tight around his shoulders, shivering from more than the cold. 

This had to be a trick that he didn’t understand; a joke or a punishment for something he had done wrong. When he figured out what to apologize for, he would be able to see her again. 

The fear of being caught breaking the rules was washed away when he crossed beneath the familiar bower wound with skeletal winter vines. His mother’s house stood dark. All around it, snow was churned and broken, as if many people had been there. In all his memory, no one else had ever visited the Jingshi. The door was unlocked. 

It opened onto emptiness and moonlight. 

Everything was gone.  Her plants. The blue cushioned couch. Her desk and papers. Her dragon incense burner. Her tall candlesticks. Her big, thick, round rug they laid on and played games. The pictures he had painted for her.

He had drifted, stunned, through the shell of his mother’s home. The only proof that she had ever even been there were the scratches on the floor from where furniture had been dragged. That, and the scent of her that still lingered underneath the smell of whatever they had scrubbed the floor and walls with. They had erased her completely. Like she was never there in the first place.

Then it had settled on him like a cloak of lead, dropping him to his knees; the understanding, the true deepness of what this meant.

She was really gone. Forever. 

The ‘always’ was gone. The ‘next time’ and promises. That warm, constant presence on the rim of the Cloud Recesses, the visit that marked his days as cyclically and surely as the sun had simply...vanished. In just one moment, the world was made completely lightless. Incomprehensible. It had a hole ripped in its center, cold and inescapable.

She would never brush back his hair and kiss his forehead. She would never pout when she lost a game. She would never squinch up her nose and do an accidental snort-laugh.

If he had only known that it could happen so fast…if he had only known that people could leave so quickly and completely, he would have taken something. A set of her dark, weighty chopsticks, one of her bracelets, a letter; anything. But there was nothing.

Somehow, he had found himself in front of the Hanshi, his feet numb, his face and hands frozen. Thinking back on it, he couldn’t remember what his 6 year old self had planned. He wasn’t sure that there had been a plan. Maybe he had just wanted a parent. Maybe he had been seeking out the one adult that might have cared as much as he did that his mother was gone. Uncle didn’t understand--A-Huan and A-Zhan had always known that he didn’t like her. He was always polite, because that was important, it was in the rules--but he was always stiff and short. He frowned the whole time--every time--picking them up. He hated talking about her.

But the father he had hardly met, that distant, hidden figure--he had married her. He had loved her.

He would care.

The Hanshi, too, had been dark--and he panicked. Had his father left--or died like his mother and no one had told him? He had yanked the door handle--and to his shock, it slid open. He had been expecting a lock like the one that he saw being done up behind them when he and A-Zhan left the Jingshi. (A choice, not a prison, he had realized as he got older. Not in the same way, at least. Other things kept Qingheng-jun bound.) 

It was dark inside, curtains drawn, vague shapes of things illuminated by the light creeping in behind him. He stood in that doorway, frozen in body and mind, unable to trespass that much farther. It smelled unfamiliar and sharp. He had never been in his father’s home before. 

It was so dark.

He had called into that darkness, choked and quiet; “Fuqin?“ 

Silence. 

“...Diedie?”

(“They made choices. These are consequences,” is all Uncle had told him when, younger, he had asked why both of his parents were locked away from him and refused to say more.

Afterward, A-Huan had always been afraid that he might accidentally make those same choices, that he would be kept from his brother and his Uncle and nannies for it. Because no one would tell him what those choices were, he studied the rules obsessively so he could be sure to follow every single one. So he would never be locked up.)

There was a rustle, a clink. A shape had formed in the shadows, someone sitting up from being slumped on a table. A pale hand swayed into the pool of silver moonlight, pointing. The voice that followed had been rough, slurred like a mouthful of rocks. “You are not supposed to be here. Go.”

A-Huan had fled as fast as his numbed legs could go. Stumbling, breaking through the crust of snow, falling and rising and falling, back up through his window to collapse on the floor. His breath had burned in his lungs as he coughed and sobbed as quietly as he could, hot tears stinging his frozen cheeks.

Not quietly enough, though. A-Zhan had eventually crept into his room and curled up next to him on the floor without a word, arm wrapped around his middle.  When A-Huan had rolled over and held him more tightly than he had ever held anything before, he realized that A-Zhan was the only part of his mother he had left in the entire world.

And now, what did A-Fu have left of his parents, of a life he knew? 

A story, at the very least. A reason. A goodbye. The truth. It was all he could offer. It was all he had left for the boy. These other spirits and their wishes can only be passed along to others, if they were attainable at all. But this, this he can do; this, he can set right. To make absolutely sure that her will is found and executed, that the family who cares for her son is told the story of her last farewell, so he will know, too, in time. 

So a son will never have to wonder.

This much peace, he can provide. With those who can bear this place no more and an endless caravan of cloth draped bodies, he returns to Gusu, leaving behind Qishan’s bleeding sky.

-

The quiet of home stuns him. There are no screams, no groans echoing down the mountain. The trees don’t muffle sounds of sword or talisman sizzle, merely birdsong and wind. There is beauty here, something he hadn't known his soul craved like water in a drought until he saw it in rich blues, blooming whites, lush greens. The coolness, the clarity of the water and the touch of leaves. Nothing here is red-brown. All that bleeds is hidden away behind pale bandages and pale walls.

It's almost too much. 

(His hands feel filthy, no matter how many times he scrubs them. Discontent among such blessings is an insult to those that can no longer come home to them. He will kowtow in the shrine for this disrespect later.)

Time has meaning once more. In theory. There are places to eat, to rest. 

(It hardly makes sense to him anymore, despite the schedule being as familiar as the stone beneath his feet.)

Home, in the Hanshi, surrounded by familiarity and comfort, sitting at his desk as the incense burner next to him delicately permeates the air with sandalwood and the trees outside rustle and no one screams at all, he holds Pan Liu’s will in his hands. It is a brief, frail little thing in the face of such sorrow. It must have been hastily written after her husband’s death, as she willed A-Fu and her remaining possessions to the care of her younger sister. Who upon brief investigation of his ever growing list of the dead was found to have been killed in the battle against Wei Wuxian as well. The sister, yet unmarried, had no will of her own--probably too young to have begun to even consider death as a real possibility before life and Wen and war swept their way in. Their house had been one destroyed in the Wen’s sacking of the Cloud Recesses, their personal possessions few. No one else remained of their immediate family.

Pan Liu clearly had not expected to die before she could update it.

In his heart, somewhere, he had known that something like this was the case; that A-Fu was truly alone. Xichen had carried him for days and no one had come looking? No one had wondered where he was, wanted him home safe, with them? 

He had not wanted to look directly at this, at the time, knowing he would have to give A-Fu back to that loneliness, that uncertainty. Even though A-Fu is not the only child in the Cultivation World or even the Cloud Recesses with the same fate, it had been…different. He couldn’t have said why--still can’t--but it had felt like a betrayal to the boy. A loss, savage and personal. Even when he knew any other choice came nowhere close to making sense.

Still. Even he and Wangji had had their uncle and the small, rotating cadre of minders that were familiar to them. He saw his mother once a month and knew his father was there, somewhere, out of sight. There had been a thread connecting them to their parents and the life they could have had with them. 

A-Fu has none of this. 

And yet he still cries, still calls out, because he trusts that someone he knows will come. Of everything in these last few days, this is what is almost too much to bear, a knife stuck in his ribs that gouges with every breath. He does not feel sadness or regret; only pain. Everything else has been out of reach for a while now.

The rattle of his door opening onto seeping sunshine and fresh, bloodless air has him looking up. His Uncle steps over the threshold. “You’re back,” he says warmly by way of greeting as Xichen rises.

“Shufu.” He bows, then offers him his customary seat, more out of habit than necessity; this teatime visit was a familiar ritual in a life not too long ago.

 They take their places at opposite ends of the low, square table at the center of his sitting room as Xichen opens his tea cupboard. “It’s been a while since we have been able to simply sit and have tea together,” Uncle observes, easily.

Yes; nothing has been right or normal for a long time. “Mn.”

When he continues to set out the cool porcelain cups and the dark pot with no further elaboration, Uncle watches him work, expression a thoughtful blur in his periphery.  “...The library is not where I expected your first stop to be.” 

He sounds only mildly curious, but Xichen knows that it is unspoken approval that he had not gone straight to Wangji.

He hesitates, then continues his methodical ritual of movement. “There was a time-sensitive matter that I wanted to attend to.”

In truth, after the bath he had taken upon his return--where he had had to call for 3 rounds of water (Do not be wasteful, Rule 23; broken) before it was no longer clouded dark with dried blood and mud and rot--Xichen had stood on the Hanshi’s front porch, staring down at the blindingly white path before him, forking off through the trees. 

His heart had tugged him one way and his cowardice in the face of pain another. The thought of seeing more bodies just lying there, of seeing those dear to him--Wangji, A-Yuan, those in the infirmary--suffering while he could do nothing to prevent it was….

It was not something he was capable of, at present. Just for now. Just for these first few hours. It was selfish, but true. And so, he had gone to their records room in the library to request Pan Liu’s will. Pain had won. His heart was weak, choosing the easier duty.

Unable to stop himself, though he knows it will cloud his uncle’s relaxed and pleasant demeanor, he asks; “Is Wangji…?” He trails off. 

Awake? Improving? Well? …Alive? A sharp internal rebuke at this last. Do not exaggerate. Rule 671. Uncle would not be so calm if things were dire. He is angry, not cruel. He would have been told.

(A heavy hand on his shoulder. An empty house. Churned snow.)

He would have been told.

Uncle’s face does, indeed, darken. “Hmph.” A mirthless, scornful snort. “He wakes on occasion. He refuses to speak, refuses to acknowledge anyone. He is simply lengthening his own punishment.” Uncle eyes him, adding, “You should be able to talk some sense into him. He always has listened to you best.” 

‘And so how could you have let this happen? How could you have let him do this?’ 

(When will you stop being angry and start being afraid for him?)

Xichen lowers his gaze to the dark wood of the table and scoops the tiny, furled up leaves of the tea into the pot, the smokey green scent tickling his nose

It’s true. Of everyone--their caregivers, teachers, and relatives, Wangji has always responded to him best. He would not always necessarily disobey outright, but he might frown or hesitate before complying or pretend not to hear--especially if he were called to come away from Xichen’s side. “Your class is this way, xiao-gongzi,” the minder would call and A-Zhan would continue his resolute little stride beside him, hand squeezing tighter around Xichen’s fingers the only indication he had heard anything at all. 

It was when Xichen squeezed back and knelt down to straighten his robes, smiling up into his serious face, saying, “It’s alright, ZhanZhan; I’ll ask if I can come out early to pick you up, mn? Go on, be good,” that he would allow himself to be led away with no further fuss.

 He had been the only one who could finally convince him that kneeling in the rocky ground every month when they should have been visiting their mother would not force anyone to bring her out to them. The first time, he had asked him to come in, come home. But knew his brother. He was not surprised when he silently refused to even show he had heard him. 

And so he hadn’t asked again, never having the stomach to fully destroy the hope that he would be let back into the Jingshi if he just waited long enough. 

But Uncle had become frustrated, their teachers and nannies muttering. They were impatient with his refusal, seeing it as disobedience. They didn’t see his mourning, only his stubbornness. So A-Huan had had to protect his brother's soft heart from those that didn’t understand. “We can kneel together, back at home,” he had whispered, his fingers screwed tight around A-Zhan’s cold hand. “I’ll wait with you as long as you want. But niang would--” his throat had caught and he had wrestled his tears from his voice. “Niang would hate if you got sick, sitting out here in the cold all day.”

A-Zhan’s dark eyes had bored into him, thinking. Reason and punishment and demands from adults had not moved his stubborn frame one inch, month after month after winter-to-spring month. 

Then, finally, this second and last time, A-Zhan had listened to him. Whatever it was about him was what finally got his little brother slowly, stiffly to his feet to hobble back home with him. Xichen remembered that he hadn’t felt relieved at all. He just felt like he had taken their mother from him all over again.

“I will speak with him, shufu.”

 Uncle nods, then heaves a sigh. “What news is there from Qishan?”

Mechanically, as if operating his own mouth from across the room, Xichen relays numbers, movements, and times. He almost reflexively scolds himself for lying; the mundane description of dry duty and the lived horror so far from one another that they were entirely irreconcilable. Just words passed across a shining table over fragrant tea, cool wind brushing the sun-pale windows serenely with tree shadows

When he reaches the final fate of Wei Wuxian’s executed Wen contingent, Uncle approves. “It was wise to swear the disciples to secrecy. This has all gotten so inhumane. Denying them burial was an unnecessary cruelty,” he says heavily as he shakes his head, eyes closed in weariness. “I pray that we are done with this madness at last, with that Wei Ying finally taken care of. What a mess.”

There is silence. Xichen cannot fathom what his response to that could possibly be. Should possibly be--as Wangji’s brother, as the Lan Clan Leader, as his uncle's nephew. As Wei Wuxian’s…what. Friend? 

…As one who cannot delight in his death, in any case. 

Despite the period of kneeling before the Jingshi, Wangji had never been a troublemaker growing up. He was always the Jade who grasped the Lan way of life more easily, molded himself to the rigidity of the rules with that same stubborn tenacity. 

It was Xichen who failed in that, who smudged the black and white lines to gray, bent them so they were slightly more comfortable around him; bearable--once he discovered that they could be. 

He was the one who accidentally got drunk trying to see if he could filter out alcohol with his core, he was the one to kiss Mingjue first in the Jin Gardens during a Cultivation Conference. The one to urge his brother to befriend a talented teenager who was gleefully and repeatedly stomping all over their Clan’s ancestral rules.

He was the one who had told Wangji to step outside his rigid view of the world, to see people for their hearts. And then Wangji's own heart had been torn out. As his uncle said; Wangji had always listened to him best. This much would never have happened without Xichen's deliberate meddling. 

All those years ago, when Wei Wuxian had first cannonballed into their lives, Xichen had just wanted Wangji to be happy. To have friends. Alone didn’t always mean lonely, but he knew he saw it in his brother. Saw Wangji with peers who were merely in awe of his talent, who respected but did not like him, love him, know him, want to spend time with him. He knew the difference, no matter what Wangji showed the rest of the world. The older he got, the less he smiled--the soft, secret ones that so many others failed to see. Xichen had missed them, dearly. And so he had pushed.

Everything that has happened sense feels as if it’s unshakably all his fault.

As the tea is poured, they speak; it passes over him like clouds. Which elder is still in which stage of recovery. The smith they called to repair swords and assess the spirits of those now without a handler. 

Something touches him.

 “Xichen!” 

His hand burns. He is on his feet. Shuoyue’s naked blade buzzes, ready in his hand. He does not remember moving. Every fiber of cloth on his skin feels alive and writhing. Blood courses. Scalding tea is cooling, dripping from his knuckles.

The touch had been spiritual, not physical. From the corner of his awareness and the Cloud Recesses boundary wards at once; a warning, tasting of wild metal (close to blood, so close). 

The Western Wards, crossed.

“Do not unsheathe your blade in a residence!” Uncle’s face crinkles from shock to a wince. “And contain yourself, this is not a battlefield.”

It takes a moment. His killing intent is up, streaming from his core like a river of blades, of blood. 

Sucking in a breath, he takes the torrent in internal hand and yanks it back, firmly, like the reins of a horse, winding the silk rope of it over again and again in the palm of his concentration, until the thrum of it eases. The pressure that had filled the room with the promise of death ebbs. Shuoyue hums warm, expectant. When he does finally sheathe her, the connection between them flickers, confused. 

Above his hammering heart, he hears Uncle continue, frowning, “I felt it, too. Was it someone passing outward or inward?”

His tongue, his mind is mud-stuck slow.

Focus. There is no battle here. You are home. Get a hold of yourself.

“...Outward. Less resistance. Nothing powerful.”

Oddly, at this Uncle’s frown deepens, shadows of concern replacing mere puzzlement. “Hmm. Those were in the West…far….” After a moment of thought, he rises.

As he steps out the door and calls for a servant from the Hanshi’s porch, Xichen continues to try to pull in slow, deep breaths.

Have you regressed to being such a novice that you cannot control your own qi? Your own battle intent? Are you a child? Though his uncle's voice is low and his attention is divided, the words ‘searchers’ makes it through the pounding blood in his ears. Strange.

When Uncle slides the door back open, Xichen asks, “Searchers?”

His silhouetted form hesitates, framed by the sunlight that pours in behind him and dazzles Xichen’s eyes, leaving his expression briefly in shadow. “...Yesterday evening, a child managed to wander into the woods alone.” A spike of cold worry threatens to heighten the wild surge of energy within him once more as his uncle continues, stepping inside and closing the door behind him. “We have had several teams scouring the backhill and the whole of our land since then. They are young enough that their spiritual signature isn’t strong enough to register on normal tracking talismans.”

“Why was I not told?!” 

It burst from him, harsher from shock than he had meant and Uncle blinks, pausing in settling himself back onto his seat, brow furrowed.

But he cannot bring himself to care about disrespect, just now. Any child alone and lost is terrifying, awful. There is something, though…something about his tone, his expression that has breath caught in Xichen’s throat as slow, glacial horror creeps up from the depth of his gut. He is avoiding specifics. 

Why.

 “It is being handled already; why would I distract you from your duties? You’ve only just returned and you must--”

“Who. Which child.”

He huffs in irritation, brow furrowing further. And he shuts his mouth, lips compressing.

Xichen no longer needs an answer.

Behind him, he can hear Uncle’s voice raised in startled alarm, but he is already out the door, already leaping from the porch onto Shuoyue. The wind howls in his ears as shoots upward, speeding west to where he had felt the wards ring within him. To where A-Fu has just crossed beyond their safety.

He knows. He doesn’t know how, but he knows.

Xichen can barely breathe around the air battering his face and his own terror. The shrieking sky threatens to rip him from Shuoyue’s blade. Everything at once feels heightened, his awareness expanding to notice how chilly it is despite the sun, how the damp of the wind tearing at his hair and clothes tells of rain in the past day, how dark the woods look beneath the thick canopy blurring by below his feet. He had been alone and cold and terrified, out all night. Had the boy been trying to find his mother? Xichen? The thought made his gut writhe within him.

(They peel his little fingers from Xichen’s sleeve as he clutches and screams…)

Please please please please please

How could this happen? How could he have ever allowed this to happen? There were rivers, cliffs, steep slopes of scree, ponds, caves, animals--gods, animals alone would--

He is well enough to move, to cross the wards.

If it was him. If it were not a strong enough spiritual animal to trigger the alarm. 

There is no boy hanging among them THERE IS NO--

The invisible boundary rears up in his senses, mere seconds full tilt sword ride from the Hanshi but so, so far for a tiny child, wandering in the night. Beneath the canopy, before Shuoyue even manages to drop to a reasonable height and speed, he has already leapt off, landing at a sprint. Internally, the memory of the disruption in the web of the spell warps around his spiritual awareness like a broken arch as he crosses in that exact place. The ground is not suddenly more treacherous, the trees no more menacing, but beyond the relative safety of the Cloud Recesses, his hammering heart sees the whole world is a death trap for this little child.

(He cannot bear to see a tiny body, he can’t, he can’t--)

Skidding to a stop, he wheels in place, eyes scouring everything at knee level and below. “A-Fu!” his throat is pinched, his mouth bone dry. “A-Fu?!”

The ground cover is thick with bushes, shrubs, trees both young and fallen. The sun shines spots into his eyes through the swaying leaf cover above, dappling the floor with shadow and light, dancing, blurring. Silence. Even the birdsong had stopped when this strange being had suddenly crashed into their peaceful little clearing. He sucks in a breath to call again--and then he hears it.

There is a small child crying somewhere nearby. 

Quiet and hoarse but unmistakable.

He isn't slow, gentle, or cautious or anything that a terrified child might need right now; something else has a hold of him, now. He blindly crashes through the brush towards the sound, half skidding down a slope until--until! There! 

A blur of white amongst tree roots halfway down, a curled shape and-- “A-Fu!”--a little face, smudged and red cheeked and tear stained raises and his little eyes light with recognition and he scrabbles, fumbling and crawling out as Xichen tears back up the slope--slips, rights himself--and reaches and the boy throws himself off the lip of the hollow and into his arms, colliding hard with his chest like his heart coming home. 

He staggers, momentum and sudden weakness buckling his knees. A gnarled tree catches his side and he slides them down into the huddle of its roots, curled around him. Against his chest, wrapped in his arms, A-Fu is damp and chilly. He is covered in muck and sticks and burrs but he’s alive--alive--safe and hiccuping and piteously hoarse, tangling his hands through Xichen’s hair as he clutches him back, gasping.

He can breathe. He can finally breathe again.

Some unnameable agony, like some wild beast, is thrashing, welling up, bursting from his chest. It shakes him, tearing at his throat, his heart, his lungs, burning. It’s not relief. It's not fear. It’s…

Heedless of stitches cracking and bursting, he yanks his thicker outer robes open and over the child, tucking him deep into the pocket of warmth. He can feel him shivering, his tiny heart speeding.

He had forgotten that his head is so warm, that his hands are so tiny, just how real his weight is in his arms. When he buries his nose in the baby fluff of his hair, under the dirt and musty forest chill is that wild-sweet child smell he remembers from carrying him for days beneath his chin--and long ago from when Wangji was young. 

He tries to pull back to check him for injuries, for bruising, but he latches onto his neck and sobs. Mere minutes before, Xichen had never wanted to hear another scream again--but now he wishes A-Fu’s cries were as loud as the first day he held him, deafening and demanding, sure and strong in their conviction. These sobs are private, weak, exhausted little things. Not calling for attention. No longer certain of a trusted adult’s return.

“P’ease,” he croaks and that pain, that pressure bears down on Xichen and it feels like drowning; it feels like dying.

“I know. I know. I’m sorry. I’m here,” he whispers back, thick and choked (that thing inside him that aches, that wails, that loves is strangling him), and he draws up his knees, he wraps his robes tighter and rocks and rocks them both as it breaks--all of it, calving and crashing and surging and molten and ugly and broken--and he wants to beg ‘scream, little love, scream your heart out; someone is coming, someone will always come,’ but he doesn't have enough breath as it tears from his locked throat in silent sobs, because with unworthy hands and heart, he holds this blameless little life that has wandered through the halls of his heart leaving muddy fingerprints, and does the cruelest, most selfish thing he can ever recall doing. 

He realizes that he cannot let him go again. 

[guqin-and-flute]

Mawwaige.

[guqin-and-flute]

WIP...Thriday (aka proof I'm not dead and still writing)

An And A-Fu Makes 4 Chpt. 7 exerpt in which A-Fu and Wangji are equally bemused by each other

__

It turned out that his uncle was actually pretty funny. Not totally, like, ‘haha’ funny, but ‘different from what A-Fu was used to’ funny.  A-Fu had always thought that his face was blank most of the time, but he found out that wasn't true--he smiled and frowned and looked worried and annoyed just like everyone else. His expressions were just super tiny compared to other people, so you had to study his face as hard as school, but A-Fu was getting the hang of it. If he didn’t get something, A-Yuan could usually interperate for him pretty good, ‘cause he was an expert Hanguang-jun interperatator. He knew what all the different tones of ‘A-Yuan’ meant when apparently it was supposed to be a whole sentence that meant ‘time for bed' or ‘too loud’ or ‘not that way’ or ‘did you finish your homework?’ or ‘do you want to play guqin with me?’

Uncle Wangji sorta reminded A-Fu of Gray-Father and how sometimes he looked so serious and scary to other people, but you just had to know what they meant to say on the inside. Except unlike Gray-Father, Uncle Wangji had never laughed in front of A-Fu; but when he and A-Yuan did something silly together, he sometimes had a little bit of Laughing Eyes, just like Blue-Father did. Maybe A-Fu was a gray, blue, and yellow father interperatator? Maybe after staying at the Jingshi, he could become an Uncle Wangji one, too! 

Sometimes his uncle was ‘haha’ funny, usually by accident and usually because he didn’t really get A-Fu--a lot of the things he did seemed to confuse him; like how he liked mud and salamanders and toads, and how he hated wearing socks to bed, and how he got an idea to do things but then didn’t really think about how it might end up and then he fell over or broke something, sometimes. Then, Uncle Wangji would get a little wrinkle, right in between his eyebrows, like he was trying to figure out a hard math problem and his mouth would get all small and he would blink reaaaal slow. Sometimes, he even looked over at A-Yuan like he needed his help as an A-Fu Interpretator--which he kinda was, since he was A-Fu’s bestest friend in the whole entire world and knew him better than anyone.  

Uncle Wangji definitely didn’t get Sneaking-and-Snooping, and when A-Fu actually really did surprise him a couple times, his uncle said all serious that he knew A-Fu was there, he just didn’t expect him to jump out and yell at him and A-Fu said uh-huh sure he did, suuure, and Uncle Wangji would just coolly say ‘good’ that A-Fu was sure--but he would say it like he knew that A-Fu was being sarcasms and was agreeing just to make him annoyed, which it did ‘cause that’s not how sarcasms worked, Uncle Wangji! And his uncle would say, without any hint of a smile, that he would try to remember that, which A-Fu figured was sort of like a joke and it made him laugh. 

One day, when A-Fu got in trouble with his teacher because he had colored his whole tongue black with his paintbrush during class just because, he had been really anxious about when his uncle came to pick them up from school. After talking to the teacher for a bit at the desk, he came over and stood all tall in front of A-Fu. When he looked all the way up at him, he  saw that scrunchy-confused wrinkle on his face but all he said was, “...Why?”

“Uh. I dunno.”

“....” Uncle Wangji said things with his silences best of anyone A-Fu knew, and this silence was like a whole bunch of question marks, like A-Fu was some sort of mystery. When he looked over at A-Yuan, who was waiting patiently by the door with his stuff all packed up, A-Yuan just shook his head and shrugged. 

 Uncle Wangji just looked back at him for another second, then just turned and walked right out the door, hand behind his back, not even waiting.

A-Fu assumed that that meant something like ‘let’s go home, you’re not in trouble, but what the heck’, so he just happily trotted out after him into the sunshine with A-Yuan next to him. He must have been getting better at understanding his uncle’s silences, because all that happened when they got back to the Jingshi was that he was handed a cool, damp cloth from the fancy wash basin in the corner and told, “Do not eat paint.”

He tried to explain around sticking out his tongue and scrubbing, “I wa’n’t ea’ing i’, I wath theeing if I coul’ color i’ all in,” but Uncle Wangji didn’t say anything else about it and just sat down at his table play his guqin.

[guqin-and-flute]

You know, Qiren, sometimes not telling people things that are relevant and important to them doesn't come across as a love language, bud, and may, in fact, make things worse

[guqin-and-flute]

ALRIGHT. I've decided. I have officially moved Holding Me Holding You to my finished 3zun AU documents! 🌈✨🎉

Narratively, I'm too pleased with the full circleness of this last chapter to have this be anything but the end of this particular fic. The comfort--THE IMMEDIATE, NOT REALLY TIME SKIPPED COMFORT, I PROMISE YOU I'M FIXING IT--will now be in the next fic because it will structurally be different and serve a different narrative purpose in the overarching story.

I hope no one feels bait and switched by me having labeled this as hurt/comfort initially as the comfort doesn't really balance it, but I'll try to rectify the tags on Ao3 to reflect the journey the fic took!

I'm SO fucking happy and proud that I finished my first long form, multi chapter fic. It's a goal I've struggled to achieve my whole writing life (which started in like 2nd grade). I have honestly never officially finished a long term writing project. I wasn't sure I could do it (mostly for ADHD reasons but also others, as well). So closing this off here is proof to myself that I CAN. It took uhhh several years but I can!

I may look back and be less than happy with pacing or structure, sooner or later, but what's important to me right now is the proof that I did it.

The comfort and Nieyao meeting A-Fu fic will be set at most a week later (as A-Yao and Da-ge will get moving pretty quick once they hear the news that oops they have a son) and will be a multi perspective, h/c, what-happens-next fic. It will have some angst because it's 3zun (and middays 3zun, at that) but nowhere NEAR the level of Holding Me Holding You. I mean for it to be a softer recovery, where are we at now fic.(Also probably much shorter but I know better than to promise THAT anymore 😭)

Thank you so much for all of your continued support and love of this AU! Your tags, your comments, your asks, your theories, art, and ideas are all huge boosts to keeping me going. The fact that you read and like it at all is still so, so awesome to me.

I intend to finish my streak of finishing long form chapter docs and this is the first step of doing it, which is oddly healing from past internal narratives I've assumed about myself and my abilities. I'm gonna finish what I have planned in these AUs, damnit!!

So thank you for coming along with me this far and I hope to see you at the finish line! ❤️

[guqin-and-flute]

3zun with e3 lan xichen @ duo who just made up,

Its perfection, but i cant draw...

Pls help me get this out of my systeeeeem

AT LAST. MANY MOONS LATER.

Though they are wearing wedding clothes and so didn't just make up but LET ME MAKE THEM FANCY

[guqin-and-flute]

And A-Fu Makes 4–Chpt. 6 [3zun Raise Jingyi Au]

[EDIT: DANGIT, I forgot to add credit to this one too!! THANK you madtomedgar for the 'call me xiaoshushu' convo idea!!]

[Ao3 Link] [Series] [More 3zun Raise Jingyi AU]

A-Yuan opened his mouth--probably to say this was a bad idea again --but it was Jin Ling who shushed him this time. Outside the door, beyond the sitting room, they could hear muffled voices coming down the hallway. So, A-Yuan went quiet automatically (totally already in sneaking mode, even if he pretended he wasn’t.)

“--even awake yet?”

“Oh, undoubtedly. They vowed to stay up later but were out within minutes.”

Both A-Ling and A-Fu pointed to each other at the same time, mouths open in a triumphant, silent yell. 2 fathers at once! How lucky! Uncle Zixuan was coming back with Yellow-Father and they were going to get them both so good. A-Yuan, though, just looked even more uncomfortable with this extra grownup in the mix, but A-Fu wasn’t too worried; A-Yuan didn’t snitch, he just sorta squirmed, then did it anyway.

All 3 of them had been plastered around the door to A-Fu’s Jin room in their pajamas for a thousand hours with the hot sunlight coming through the window onto their feet, waiting. Back when they had woken up and found Yellow-Father’s bed already made and him gone, A-Fu knew that this was a perfect opportunity for Sneaking-and-Spooking they couldn’t miss. (He had decided to change the name of the game to Sneaking-and-Spooking, so he could win it easier--if he didn’t manage to sneak on someone, he could at least jump out and spook them! Jin Ling said that was cheating, but he just didn’t like how often he lost.)

A-Ling had kept whining about having to go to the bathroom and A-Yuan had kept saying that he was nervous about this and A-Fu had to be A-Voice-Or-Reason and calm them down to be ready--and now it was time! 

The lock on the front door clicked and the voices got less muffled as it rolled back and the fathers came in. “Boys?” Yellow-Father called, and A-Fu made the fiercest shushing face at his cousins. When no one answered, the fathers started talking quieter, something about rooms being bigger--A-Fu was paying too close attention to the sound of their footsteps. One went to the set of drawers and one started walking around slowly. 

Then, something terrible happened. Or, at least, terrible for the Sneaking-and-Spooking plan.

The smell of Aunt Yanli’s rib and lotus root soup wafted into their noses like a nice breeze. Yellow-Father and Uncle Zixuan had brought back special soup! A-Fu’s tummy grumbled all of a sudden, and A-Ling started sniffing all interested. A-Yuan looked at A-Fu with an ‘I told you so!’ in his eyebrows.

  ‘Told me so what?’ A-Fu scowled back with his own.

‘They have soup!’ A-Yuan’s chin point said. ‘ It could spill! Bad idea!’

‘You don’t know that! ’ said A-Fu’s nose scrunch.

“A-Ling?” said Uncle Zixuan from close by the door--he was the one walking around.

‘I want soup,’ said the pleading look Jin Ling shot at A-Fu. 

‘You follow too many rules,’ said A-Fu’s headshake at A-Yuan.

‘What?’ said A-Yuan’s confused eye squint. (Okay, so maybe A-Fu was making up words for him and his face, so what? He knew what his best cousin-friend would say out loud, if he could.)

“Boys?” Uncle Zixuan’s voice was softer now, like he thought they were maybe all still asleep--even closer to the door.

‘I want soup !’ said Jin Ling’s frown, but, like, louder this time.

A-Fu waved his hands at them frantically to stay where they were. Then, he held up one hand and started counting down with it.

3,

Jin Ling crouched down to be ready. A-Yuan nervously balled up his fists but did the same thing.

2.

A-Fu bent his knees and took in a huge breath to shout--

“I know we’re not going to thank your bofu for bringing us soup by trying to startle him,” came Yellow-Father’s pleasant voice from right outside the door.

A-Fu blew out a huge breath with an, “Uuuuuuugh- uh! ” 

He hadn’t even heard him walk up! Yellow-Father had won Sneaking-and-Spooking again. When he threw open the door, Yellow-Father smiled down at him from next to a surprised looking Uncle Zixuan. “Diedie, how do you know all of the times! ?”

Jin Ling and A-Yuan charged out together. A-Ling jumped up into Uncle Zixuan’s arms, kicking his feet and shrieking when they spun around together and A-Yuan hugged tight onto Yellow-Father’s leg. Yellow-Father looked all twinkly down at him and patted his head, then said to A-Fu, so totally unhelpful, “ Diedie’s are magic that way. Good morning, little ones. Did you sleep well?”

A-Fu’s annoyed didn’t stay for long, though, because then, it was Super Special Soup Time! It wasn’t a normal breakfast food they ate, but apparently, Clan Leader Jiang was coming to visit and meet the new twin babies for the first time in the next few days, and so Aunt Yanli had been cooking a lot. Since A-Fu loved the taste of it and he was leaving soon, she had sent some over with Uncle Zixuan. He was halfway through his second bowl, happily chewing on a big chunk of ginger when he remembered something. 

Uh oh. He had super promised Gray-Father really serious he wouldn’t eat meat anymore. And Gray-Father had specificity mentioned this soup.

Yellow-Father spied his Thinking Look from next to him and asked, “What’s wrong, Fufu? Did you find a bone?”

“We’w…” Pointing his spoon at his steaming soup, he asked, “I’th got meat i’ i’, righ’?”

“Oh, Fufu, please don’t talk with your mouth full. Meat? Yes, it has meat.”

He swallowed. “What animal?”

“A pig!” Jin Ling announced triumphantly, banging the table in his excitement to be right, and Uncle Zixuan quieted him down with shushes, scrubbing his soupy mouth with a napkin.

Oh. Well, he hadn’t ever met a pig or even seen too many, and when he did, they were pretty big and loud and bristly, not like cute, soft bunnies. Plus, it didn't look anything like a pig. 

Yellow-Father’s gave him a confusion look when he stayed quiet. “What's the matter? You like the soup, don’t you?”

“Well…yeah….”

Yellow-Father reached over and rubbed his back all soothing, smiling. “Then what’s wrong? Your Blue- die doesn’t mind if you choose to eat meat outside the Cloud Recesses when we make it for you.”

A-Fu glanced over at his cousins, who were looking at him curiously, chewing. Jin Ling had a little soup drip wobbling on his chin again and A-Yuan was munching on his mung bean pancake. He didn’t have trouble eating no meat--he liked the food at the Cloud Recesses and didn’t take breaks from it when he left like A-Fu did. But meat tasted so good and he was already eating it. “Well, Gray- die said it’s not convictioning….”

At this, Yellow-Father scooted over and scooped A-Fu into his lap. “Your gray die is not in charge of what you eat. Here--” He plucked A-Fu’s spoon from his hand and scooped up a good chunk of stringy strips of fall-apart meat. “Open?”

Maybe it wasn’t such a big deal after all. Now that he was really-for-real thinking about it, he didn’t want to have to just eat the lame Cloud Recesses food for his whole life. Plus, Yellow-Father didn’t seem to think that it was a big deal! So he happily let his yellow father feed him, wiggling around and dancing just like all the spices and yumminess were dancing around in his mouth.

Jin Ling shoved his spoon over at Uncle Zixuan, exclaiming, “Feed me too, diedie! ”

“Weren’t you just telling me yesterday that you were a big kid, now, and didn’t need help doing anything?” 

“Puh- leaaaase ?”

With a shake of his head and a chuckle, Uncle Zixuan scooped up some of A-Ling’s soup into his mouth. So that he wasn’t lonely, A-Fu leaned over and grabbed at A-Yuan’s pancake so it tore into a little strip that he wiggled in his face. “Here, A-Yuan! Like a worm! Cheep cheep!”

“Ew!” A-Yuan laughed, scrunching up his nose, but he opened up his mouth to eat it.

Excited, now, A-Fu grabbed Yellow-Father’s chopsticks and scooped up rice--a bunch spilled all over both of them when he held it up over his head for Yellow-Father to eat. 

“Fufu, you’re getting it in your hair!”

“You gotta eat it!!”

While Yellow-Father was picking the rice grains off A-Fu’s head,  Jin Ling grabbed a chunk of pork from his soup and fed it to Uncle Zixuan, who looked like he wasn’t so sure about maybe dripping stuff on his robes. A-Fu knew that A-Ling just did it to be a copycat, so he got huffy and tried to crawl across the table to feed Uncle Zixuan, too. But then Yellow-Father pulled him back into his lap and said maybe only the grownups would do the feeding, thank you, though. For the rest of the meal, Uncle Zixuan fed A-Ling and Yellow-Father fed A-Fu and A-Yuan. Yellow-Father had a pleased smile as he wiped the corner of A-Yuan’s mouth with a dark blue napkin, saying, “No one should ever keep you from your food, boys. You should eat as much as you like when you like.”

At least it wasn’t all so serious as A-Fu had been afraid of! He had been a little worried he would get in trouble if he brought it up, since Gray-Father had made it sound like he couldn’t change his mind about it.

“I’m just real sorry, pigs,” he made sure to tell the next spoonful before it reached his mouth. “Maybe try not being so yummy.”

After breakfast, the fathers rounded up all the kids and gave them baths and got them dressed. (A-Fu tried to start a splash war with A-Ling that Uncle Zixuan stopped, but not before he got wet.) When they all trooped out to the garden, the Jin nannies were already there with the twins and A-Qiang. Apparently, all the for Sect Leader Jiang cooking made Aunt Yanli really tired, so Uncle Zixuan wanted to make the house all quiet so she could take a nap for the day. And so the big kids got stuck with the babies again . All A-Fu had to say was A-Qiang better not belly flop on his face again, or A-Fu was gonna lose it . His nose was still sore from yesterday!

He scowled at A-Qiang when he ran up to them, so Jin Ling scowled back at him. But A-Fu just wanted to play , not argue, so like, whatever. It wasn’t so bad, once they started running around together. A-Qiang was getting a lot better at walking and running, so they could at least play chase--plus he didn’t know how to be quiet, so when they played hide and seek, he would giggle and A-Fu would always find him first. A-Fu would usually be mad that he wasn’t playing the game right…but he really liked winning, so it didn’t bother him too much. It was even fun to hold him upside down to train him to do headstands until Uncle Zixuan told him to stop! (He didn’t get why he should stop, A-Qiang was laughing the whole time anyway.)

The roofs around them were so bright when the sun bounced off them that they hurt A-Fu’s eyes. Green spots blinked on his eyelids after he looked at the giant puffy white flowers Yellow-Father called peonies. They were the only flowers in the whole garden that he actually knew, and only because they were the Jin Clan flower--Sparks Amid Snow, his Lan teachers made them remember. The other flowers nodded in the breeze all around them, pink and orange and red and purple, buzzing with bees. A-Fu had gotten stung, like 10 times before, when he went trampling through the Jin gardens. He sometimes just forgot that they were there! They were such grumpy bugs and should just mind their own business.

 Uncle Zixuan and Yellow-Father sat next to each other in the shade with their robes all spread out around them while kids played. Each of them held one of the twins, talking about boring adult things--probably about babies, because he could sometimes hear Uncle Zixuan coo at A-Zan in that embarrassing way that grownups got around babies where they acted all stupid, making weird faces and talked in high, silly voices. A-Fu really liked Uncle Zixuan, but that guy was way too okay with babies--he kept looking over at Yellow-Father holding A-Mei with a very pleased expression.

 At least Yellow-Father was just smiling down at A-Mei sleeping, rocking a little and not making embarrassing noises. He would kiss her forehead and pet her hair, sometimes, but that was about it. Whatever. As long as he didn’t get any baby ideas like Blue-Father or make too much of a fuss, A-Fu was happy to leave him to deal with the boring babies. 

It wasn’t until A-Fu ran past him, determined to show A-Ling he could cartwheel the best that he heard his father humming--and he screeched to a stop, almost falling over his feet. What. The. Heck! 

That was his lullaby, the one about a little lotus flower in a pond who made friends with the moon! He stomped back to them, fists all balled up. “You can’t sing that!”

Yellow-Father squinted up at him against the sunlight twinkling through the leaves in surprise. "Shhh, Fufu. What’s the matter?”

He didn’t want to quiet down! Yellow-Father always sang to him to go to sleep, and that song was A-Fu’s favorite! Yellow-Father was his father, not anyone else's! No one else got to have him! The Jin kids got to see him a hundred thousand times more than A-Fu did because they all lived in Koi Tower together and it wasn’t fair! 

He scowled ferociously down at the Jin baby--she just smacked her weird chubby lips in her sleep. “You can’t sing that to them! It’s mine!”

Yellow-Father’s eyebrows stopped squinching and he glanced over at Uncle Zixuan, saying, “Ooh,” all gentle, like A-Fu was so small and so special--specialler even than the baby. “I see. You’re right, it is your song, Fufu. My mistake, I'm sorry.”

Finally he got it. A-Fu sighed a huffy breath and crossed his arms. "Good.…You can sing something else to her, though. If you want. I guess," he allowed grudgingly after thinking about it for a second

Uncle Zixuan made a funny noise like a snort--but when A-Fu eyed him suspiciously, he was just letting A-Zan chew on his finger, not looking at them. 

 Yellow-Father's eyes crinkled up farther into a smile. "That's very thoughtful of you, Fufu,” he said. “What song should be A-Mei’s, then?” 

“I’unno. But not the flower and the moon one,” he warned.

“Of course, of course.”

He sort of snugged her in closer in his arms when he said it, though, and shot a laughing sort of look over at Uncle Zixuan, who shook his head with a grin. That Uncle Zixuan was such a bad influence on Yellow-Father, giving him babies to hold and pay attention to, so A-Fu added, just in case he got any ideas, “And you’re not allowed to have babies.”

This made Uncle Zixuan and Yellow-Father laugh --loud enough that A-Mei squirmed, and they quickly quieted down. A-Fu didn’t know why they were laughing at him, and it made him scowl, but then Yellow-Father opened his free arm to invite A-Fu closer and even though he didn’t want to hang out with the babies and he didn’t get what was so funny, he snuggled in next to him. “Alright, Fufu; on one condition.”

“What?”

Leaning down, he kissed the side of A-Fu’s forehead and said, quietly, “That you’ll always be my baby.”

“I can’t stay a baby, die! I’m growing pains already! I’m so much bigger than a baby!”

“Ah, you’re right. What if you promise to be my xiao -Fufu forever, then?”

Well, he wouldn’t really be able to be anything else , so that seemed like a pretty easy promise to make, so he nodded. “Deal.”

He stayed next to Yellow-Father for a while, pressed right up against his side and chewed on his thumbnail as the grownups watched A-Yuan and A-Ling to cartwheel competitions and talked. (He wasn’t supposed to chew on his nails, Great-Uncle Qiren scolded him about manners, but he just kept finding his fingers in his mouth sometimes and he had no idea how they even got there.)

After a bit of them talking, Yellow-Father pet his head and murmured all soft down to him, “Do you think you’re a little grumpy because you miss Blue- die ?” 

And A-Fu didn’t like that question because it made a bunch of tears rear up and clog his throat like they had been waiting to pounce, so he just shrugged and sniffled a bit. His yellow father squeezed him closer and kept stroking his hair back from his face, which helped them sorta fade away without coming out. “He’ll be alright, Fufu. Everything is under control.”

Uncle Zixuan reached over and squeezed his knee. “Zewu-jun is a very strong cultivator, A-Fu, and he’s in good hands.”

A-Fu didn’t like this conversation, so he just said, “Do you wanna see me cartwheel? I can totally do two in a row!”

While they were saying yes, they did, all the other kids came over panting and dizzy to collapse by the grownups for a bit of a break, so A-Fu got to be the star and show off all the the new tumblings he had learned in class, so that was pretty cool!  He fell over a couple times and kept hitting his head. “Don’t help me, don’t help me, I can do it!” he yelled every time Yellow-Father looked like he was worrying-- Uncle Zixuan kept having to pat him on the shoulder to keep him from getting up and coming over. 

Finally, he managed to do 3 cartwheels in a row and then one of the ones he forgot the name of where you landed with both feet together--and he only stumbled, like, the tiniest bit--and he felt like he was the king of the world when everyone clapped for him. 

That feeling didn’t last super long, though. Because right after that, A-Fu saw his and Jin Ling’s nemesises .

Both Uncle Zixuan and Yellow-Father got ‘Jin-gongzi’-ed and ‘Jin-er-gongzi’-ed away to do some Important Business by some guy who poked his head into the courtyard. A-Qiang cried and cried to see his father leaving; so the big kids acted very grown up about it and didn’t make any fusses at all, to show him how it was done (even though A-Fu did feel a little grumpy about it.) The babies got given back to the 2 nannies that appeared to take them back home for feeding time. But then, the nanny that was left had to hurry A-Qiang off to go to the bathroom or something, telling the 3 big kids to ‘stay put.’ They were just about to practice handstands again when they heard a voice saying, “Oh look who it is. ” 

It was Jin Chan and his gang.

Jin Chan was the worst. Whenever he showed up, it was a bad day, because he had a stupid face and a stupid way of talking and he never, ever had anything nice to say and he picked on everyone.  He was just a little older than A-Fu, but he pretended like he was 10 times smarter and he was always followed around by a group of boys that were just as nasty as him. They weren’t always the same kids whenever A-Fu saw them, but they always followed whatever Jin Chan said, like he was a Sect Leader or something. A-Fu had run into him a few times in Koi Tower and at a few Cultivation Conferences, but he had heard even more about him from A-Ling, who had to live with him. He would trip people and say he didn’t, he would steal things or break them on purpose, he would make fun of things you were eating, or your clothes, or whatever.  One time, they saw him push a kid into the Lotus Pier Lake. Last time they ran into him, Jin Chan said that even though his name was Lan Fu, which meant luck, he was an unlucky jinx that made his birth parents die. 

He was totally Evil, and Lan rules said not to association with Evil--and A-Fu had no problem not associationing with Jin Chan and his gang, if he could help it. 

Today, he was smirking and strutting around all slow. “It’s LingLing and the Lan babies in our courtyard.” His friends all laughed, even though he hadn’t said anything funny at all. There weren’t a ton of them this time, but they were all kinda tall, even taller than A-Yuan who was just, like, a couple inches bigger than A-Fu. 

But A-Yuan was looking nervously around for a grownup, not like he wanted to use his tallness to help beat up stupid bullies. And A-Fu didn’t need an adult’s help telling someone to shut their stupid face. “Shut your stupid face, Jin Chan. We’re not babies,” he announced back, just as loud.

Next to him, Jin Ling puffed up, hands on his hips and said, “Yeah! And this isn’t your courtyard, it’s ours ; we were here first.”

The breeze that had been nice and perfume-y now seemed like an ominous wind on a battlefield in a legend. Jin Chan rolled his eyes, elbowing his friends, like they  had said something funny, which made A-Fu’s mad go all boily in his stomach and he clenched his fists. “Aww, what are you gonna do, LingLing? Tell your parents? What’s your die gonna do? He’s just a son-of-a, and you’re just a son-of-a-son-of-a. You’re not special. You’re stupid. And plus your niang is totally useless.” 

Jin Ling’s face and ears turned all bright red and he stomped over to Jin Chan, getting up in his face on his tiptoes. “You shut up about my a-niang!” he shouted. “Or I’ll--!”

A-Yuan hurried over and pulled Jin Ling back away from him by his arm--but he did exclaim, “You can’t say things like that!” back at the group of laughing older boys. “You’re being mean on purpose! I’m going to tell!”

“Oh, shut up!” One of the other bullies piped up. “Lan’s can’t tell us what to do in Lanling!”

Another one with mean eyebrows said, all smug, “Yeah. Plus, my yiyi said they’re both bastards.”

“Well, your yiyi is a stupid piece of crap!” A-Fu snapped back. ‘Bastard’ was a forbidden word in his family--he didn’t know exactly what it meant, but whatever it was, he knew it was supposed to be bad.

“And so are you!” A-Ling added, kicking a rock toward that guy with a scuff.

“Guys! Let’s just go!” A-Yuan begged, expression all worried, then turned and told Jin Chan and his gang, “It’s against the rules to fight! You’re all gonna get everyone in trouble, stop it!”

“Ooooh, I’m so scared!” Jin Chan pretended to shiver, and then straightened up and  laughed like an evil villain. “You’re such a coward, A-Yuan. Hanguang-jun should be so embarrassed to have a coward-son.”

A-Yuan’s chin got crinkly like he was going to cry and it made every bit of A-Fu start shaking like a mountain with a thousand boulders crashing down the sides. His boily stomach was red hot with fury. A-Fu was more used to scuffling than A-Ling was, but A-Yuan hadn't been in any fights at all ever because he stayed in the Cloud Recesses so much. He didn't know that bullies like this didn't care about rules or grownups or being mean. 

It was up to A-Fu to protect all of them.

“You better leave them alone! I’m gonna pop you so hard that your face’ll turn inside out!” he yelled, raising up his fists in front of him to show he meant business. “Plus, my die’ s could totally beat you up, for your information, so you better watch out!" 

The other boys stuck out their tongues and jeered while Jin Chan shook his head, saying, “You’re so stupid. We’re not scared. And you’re not even a son-of-a. Your die is fake. You’re an orphan. You’re bad luck.”

He heard A-Ling say something, but it was like there was a loud river in his ears and he couldn’t pay attention at all. “I told you, I am not bad luck! They’re not fake!”

“Uh, yeah he is and yeah, you are. You’re an orphan. Your real parents died and Zewu-jun can’t find a wife because of you. ”

A-Fu’s tummy swirled around like slimy angry snakes even more, and he shoved Jin Chan back, shouting, “I don’t! I’m not! He doesn’t need a wife! He’s got Gray- die and Yellow- die !!”

Jin Chan stumbled back, then scowled. He stomped up and shoved A-Fu back, harder, and he crashed back into A-Yuan. Right away, A-Yuan wrapped his arms around A-Fu to hold him back, pinning his arms down, keeping him there. The Jin Chan gang all made scoffy noises and laughed, repeating A-Fu in high pitched voices while Jin Chan said, “What are you even talking about? Yellow-who?”

A-Fu wriggled hard, trying to break free, but A-Yuan was really strong and hanging on tight. “Chifeng-zun and Lianfang-zun!”

“PFF!” Jin Chan blew out a raspberry. “Those are his sworn brothers, you moron, not a wife. And anyway, my die says that Lianfang-zun’s not even a son-of-a anything but a whore .” 

That was it. He may not know what that word meant either, but he knew that Jin Chan was being a son-of-a alright! It was a special word that he learned from the Nie, and he roared it like a tiger as he finally ripped out of A-Yuan’s arms and pounced on the bullies.

It took the Jin nanny and A-Yuan and A-Ling to pull them all apart. The Jin Chan gang were all cowards, because they all scrambled up and ran right away so they didn’t get in trouble with the grownup . A-Fu shouted so after them and the nanny shushed him really hard and scolded them all nonstop. Apparently, A-Yuan had sent Jin Ling to go get a grownup when he figured out that A-Fu was gonna fight no matter what and A-Fu just hadn’t noticed. 

Now, him and A-Yuan were shut inside Yellow-Father’s office, waiting for him to come back. They were alone and it was quiet ‘cause the Jin nanny had taken A-Qiang and A-Ling away. “We’re gonna get in so much trouble,” A-Yuan moaned from where he was balled up tight on his own floor cushion next to A-Fu’s, face buried in his hands. “A-Fu, why’d you do that?! We aren’t s’posed to fight or do ‘vulgar language’!”

A-Fu poked at his bleeding and puffy lip with his tongue. “Th’o? We aren’t in the Cloud Rethetheth. And they were mean to you! You heard what he said, they deserved it! I’m not sorry.” 

And he wasn’t. Even though his head and hands and knees and face and right eye hurt and felt like someone was pounding a drum inside his skin, he would totally do it all over again. He would defend his family all over again, no problem--except he would probably punch Jin Chan sooner, this time. So what if his eye was all swelly and his lip was bleeding? That’s what warriors did--they got hurt protecting things on purpose, just like Gray-Father said. Pride puffed up in his chest and he sat up straight. His fathers would be proud of him for doing the right thing, he was totally sure. This time, he wasn’t even just fighting because someone was annoying him; he was being noble and honorable! There were lots of rules about defending and not talking bad and not insulting people.

…There were also rules about not fighting, but, like, how did wars happen, then? Great-Uncle Qiren couldn’t scold war heroes, right? He was like the hero of the Koi Tower Courtyard Battle!

A-Yuan uncurled to look over to see him wiggling at his tooth with his fingers. “Why can’t you just calm down?! Look how beat up you got!”

A-Fu shrugged. “I’m okay. Are you okay?” He had seen A-Yuan fall over a few times when he was trying to stop them fighting before the Jin nanny came back. 

Instead of answering, his cousin reached out a hand and patted all worried at his face. It hurt a lot, but A-Fu was being super brave about it so he just sat there and let him. “I think you’re gonna get a black eye. It’s all poofy.”

“Really? Cool!”

A-Yuan looked like he really didn’t think that was cool at all, but A-Yuan sometimes didn’t understand stuff like that. He was too stuck on rules and not getting in trouble. Together, they waited and waited for Yellow-Father to appear. A-Yuan stayed all curled up and rocking nervously on his cushion, but A-Fu eventually got bored. Sitting and sucking on his lip was making his tummy feel yucky. When he started wandering around, A-Yuan hissed that he should come sit down, but he was way more interested in exploring. He didn’t get to go in Yellow-Father’s office much! 

It turned out to be pretty boring though, because everything was locked up tight and the only things on his desk were papers, an ink grinding station and brush, those weird blocky paperweights, and a swirly looking incense burner that looked like ones Blue-Father had at the Cloud Recesses. He peered at the sheets of paper, but only recognized a couple of the characters and even then, he couldn’t really remember what they meant. 

When he started grinding ink, he caught A-Yuan watching him with his face screwed up in upsettedness, so he smiled all reassuring. It didn’t seem to help. Oh well. Blue-Father and Yellow-Father always let him paint when he felt like it, so A-Yuan had nothing to worry about, here. He maybe added a little too much water to the ink and it splashed on the desk, but after he hastily scrubbed at it with his sleeves, you could hardly tell there had been an accident at all. A-Yuan eventually came over to see what he was doing and seemed relieved when A-Fu pointed out that he was being careful to draw around all the words on the papers, so it wasn’t a problem. “Okay.” he said, but didn’t say anything else.

Pleased that he wasn’t whining about how they were gonna get in trouble anymore, A-Fu invited him to sit next to him on Yellow-Father’s chair-cushion and draw with him. “Yellow-Father always gets super happy when I give him paintings,” A-Fu added, which seemed to help him make up his mind.

Together, they took turns adding little faces and animals on the tops and sides of the pages. Some of A-Fu’s bunnies looked like turds and some of the ink got runny and made the paper wet, but it helped to cheer them both up after a tough day. Plus, it would cheer up Yellow-Father too, when he saw it when he got back to work! A-Fu was in the middle of carefully painting himself backflipping a million times and slicing off Jin Chan’s head with his super cool sword when Yellow-Father came in. 

“Boys!”

The first thing he did was come over and kneel down and worry over both of them being hurt, making upset faces over A-Fu’s puffy lip and eye. He wasn’t at all excited when A-Fu showed him his first loose tooth, for some reason. “Are you both alright? Your poor face. Does it hurt very badly? A-Yuan, are you hurt? Thank goodness. Fufu, what have we told you about fighting? What happened?”

Immediately, A-Fu and A-Yuan started babbling over each other about what happened, pointing and waving and hopping;

 “I tried to stop them--!”

“--was doing handstands--!”

“--wouldn’t listen!”

“--Jin Chan and his stupid gang came in--!”

“--was so mean, saying son-of-a’s--!”

“--said I was a jinx and I was like ‘shut up’--!”

“--and I told A-Ling to run and get someone--!”

“Boys--”

“--he was like ‘he needs a wife’ and I was like ‘no he doesn’t’--!”

“--so I grabbed him--!”

“--being evil and we don’t asso-associoning with--!”

“--didn’t wanna do it--!”

“Shh, one at a time--”

“--and so I called him a son-of-a-bitch and kicked his nards off--!”

Yellow-Father closed his eyes for a second. “A-Fu--”

“--and that’s a vulgar language--!”

“--and bit him and what’s ‘whore’?”

Yellow-Father had been grimacing back and forth between the two of them, his hands held up to calm them down, but now his eyes snapped over to stare at A-Fu. His eyes were wide.

After a second of silence, he said, voice very quiet and tight, “What did you say?”

A-Fu blinked. “Uh…what’s a ‘whore’? Jin Chan said it. ‘Son-of-a whore’? Is it like son-of-a-bitch?”

Drawing in a sharp breath through his nose, his father stood up, turning away. “Go sit down, boys,” he told them, still just as quiet--he didn’t sound angry, but A-Fu didn’t get it. 

“What? Are you mad? I was just--”

“A-Fu, stop. Please. Go sit down.” 

Grumpily, he let A-Yuan drag him back over to the cushions in front of the desk as Yellow-Father went over to a set of drawers in the corner. But then, without doing anything to them, he turned and went to look out the window, his hands behind his back. A-Fu opened his mouth to keep asking questions, but A-Yuan shushed him with his hands waving in his face.

After a few more moments of silence, Yellow-Father took in a deep breath, and turned back slowly to the desk. “I’m--what’s this?” he interrupted himself though as he looked down, right at the art that he and A-Yuan had left him.

“Paintings!”

Without saying anything, he picked it up. A-Fu was waiting for him to smile and compliment his art like he usually did, but his face didn’t get happier, he just closed his eyes. Then, he took a deep breath as he set it back down. Then, eyes still closed he said. “Fufu, you cannot fight like this in Koi Tower.”

“But I--!”

“This is not how we solve problems. When you are the son of a zongzhu , you must be careful of your actions and your words.”

All of the proud in A-Fu was mushing into shock and angry. Why was he getting in trouble for doing the right thing? “Are you mad? Are you mad at me? Why are you yelling at me? That’s not fair!” Next to him, A-Yuan tugged at his sleeve, trying to shush him again quietly.

“I’m not yelling, Fufu and I’m not angry. There are just particular rules we must abide by as cultivators--”

“He was saying bad things about our family! I was defending you!”

Yellow-Father opened his eyes and smiled; it was a lying smile, because his eyebrows still looked frustrated or worried. A Fake Jin Smile. “It is not your job as a child to--”

“I was right! We protect people!”

“Stop yelling!” A-Yuan hissed in his ear, but he didn’t even care about that right now.

“Fufu, we cannot hit people when you have a conflict. You should leave the area and tell me and I will take care of it.”

“I’m not afraid of Jin Chan!”

“That’s not what I’m worried about--”

“I’m a warrior, like you and Blue- die and Gray- die! ”

His father’s lips pressed together before he forced another not-true-smile and said in a calm, convincing sort of voice, “Fufu, you’re old enough now that you can’t talk about your Gray- die or me like that anymore. It is not something that other people are going to understand. From now on, you need to call me your xiao-shushu , like A-Ling and A-Qiang.”

A-Fu couldn’t believe his ears. His tummy squinched up all sick and angry and shocked and scared, like shock dumped cold water all over him. Because he thought A-Fu messed up, he wasn’t his father anymore? How could he do that?

“You have to understand--”

“You’re going away ?!”

“No, no, of course--”

All the emotions in A-Fu’s tummy were zinging around through all of him, shaking him, and he had to stand up, peeling off A-Yuan’s hand. “You’re--Why’re you being so mean ?! I didn’t do anything bad! You can’t leave me!”

Yellow-Father all of a sudden looked as shocked as A-Fu felt and he came around his desk, kneeling down in front of him again, taking his shoulders. “No, no, no, Fufu, you're misunderstanding. I’m not leaving, I’m not going anywhere, I’m simply saying you cannot call me Yellow- die in public anymore.”

“Just ‘cause I punched Jin Chan!? I did the right thing! I was protecting!” Furious, scared tears were hot in his eyes, stinging the one that got kicked. “That’s our job!” All his fathers had said so!

“No, this is not a punishment--”

“You are!”

Yellow-Father shook his head and dabbed the back of his knuckle at the corner of A-Fu’s eyes. “You can’t say all the things you want to just anyone anymore, Fufu, it’s part of growing up. You have to have discretion , you have to be careful-- ”

He twisted his head away from his gentle hand. “It’s lying! It’s--It’s against the rules, the rules in Cloud Recesses!” he blurted out when he all of a sudden thought of it--grownups always cared more about rules.

Yellow-Father let his hand fall back to his shoulder, shaking his head. “Shh, this is different. It’s simply not safe to talk about this with other people, and you’re at an age, now, that you must start being more careful about how you speak and who you tell what. Not everyone is allowed to know everything about you.”

The tears finally spilled over as A-Fu stared at his worried face, smile nowhere to be seen--not even a lying one. This was just like when Great-Uncle Qiren said he couldn’t have 3 fathers, but ten thousand times worse because it was coming from Yellow-Father himself. He most of the time remembered not to say things around Madam Jin, and he tried to remember all the rules about who acted weird about his fathers, but now, he had to not tell anyone at all ? Ever ? “That’s not fair! I don’t tell everyone! Gray- die and Blue- die don’t make me lie about them!”

“At Koi Tower--”

With a huge wrench, he pulled himself out of Yellow-Father’s grip, just like he had with A-Yuan earlier, and backed away. “Why do Jin’s always gotta try to take away my family?! Why are you letting them, die ?! I don’t gotta lie to the Nie!” 

A-Yuan stayed curled up on his cushion with his hands covering his ears, watching both of them all scared. Yellow-Father stood up and came forward, reaching out to him.  “Fufu, please; take a deep breath and lower your voice. They are different circumstances, Chifeng- zun …has a very different--”

A-Fu didn’t want to take a deep breath or calm down! He wanted to throw all the stuff on Yellow-Father’s desk on the floor. He wanted Yellow-Father to know just how mad this made him because he wasn’t listening! He yelled louder, “That’s not convicting! You gotta do it, even when it’s hard or not fun!”

“Lan Fu--” his voice had a little bit of warning and that just made A-Fu madder, more tears clogging up inside his face, making his injuries throb and ache. 

How come A-Fu always got in trouble?! How come it was just rules rules rules and doing everything wrong? And now, his father didn’t even want to be his father anymore! “You’re the worst die ! You’re so mean! I hate you! I don’t wanna be here anymore! I wanna go home!” he shouted as loud as his lungs could take, his throat burning.

His father went pale, hand still outstretched, frozen. When the door all of a sudden opened, he flinched. It was Uncle Zixuan and Uncle Wangji, both with frowns, one big and one small. A-Yuan ran to Uncle Wangji as soon as he saw him, clinging to his thigh and hiding his face in his robes as the door shut quick behind them. 

“Lan Fu, you cannot speak to your die that way,” Uncle Zixuan said all stern and hushed as he turned away from it, “Lower your voice right now.”

Everyone was being awful! If grownups got to be terrible, he got to be terrible right back! He was already in trouble for something that wasn’t his fault , so he didn’t care anymore! All the angry and hurt and scared burst out of A-Fu in one loud, wordless scream as he stomped his feet and balled up his fists.

“Stop.” Uncle Wangji’s voice wasn't loud, but it cut over A-Fu’s yell and made everyone look over at him. 

A-Fu did, but he still glared around at them all. His breaths were sobbing in and out like he had just run a thousand miles.

"What would your Blue- die say about your behavior?" Uncle Zixuan demanded, going over to Yellow-Father who was still standing silently, smiling a weird little smile at the floor without seeming to see it. 

Probably to be empathy or something, but A-Fu didn't care. "I don't care! I don't wanna be here ever again! I hate it! No one here loves me! And I hate them!”

“Stop,” Uncle Wangji said again--still not loud, but sharper this time. “Do not use words that you do not mean and cannot take back. Apologize to Lianfang-zun.”

“It’s alright. He doesn’t need to. He’s just upset.” Yellow-Father said quietly. 

“ Didi, ” Uncle Zixuan argued in a quiet voice, putting a hand on Yellow-Father’s shoulder, frowning deeper. “He shouldn’t be allowed to be so disrespectful towards you. This sort of behavior--”

A-Fu just couldn’t take it anymore. No one ever listened to him! No one was ever on his side! All they wanted to see was him just messing up, they didn’t care that he had defended all of them against Jin Chan and his gang! 

Before anyone could say anything else, he ducked around Uncle Wangji and A-Yuan by the door and ran out as fast as he could. Behind him, down the hall, he heard a grownup calling his name, but he didn’t even slow down. A couple servants gave him weird looks and one or two court ladies talked behind their delicate circle fans as he pelted past, but he didn’t stop for them either. He was totally out of breath from running and crying by the time ran past all the stupid Jin’s stupid statues and stupid tapestries and stupid Jin everything and flung himself onto his stupid Jin bed, face down. He wasn’t sorry! He would never be sorry! Yellow-Father was being unfair and horrible and trying to pretend A-Fu wasn’t his son anymore! 

He would show them--he would run away and hide where they couldn’t find him and wouldn’t come out for days and days until they were all sorry. He wouldn’t come out until they called for him 500 million times. They would be so worried and never be mean to him again. Maybe he would even run away for real. Maybe…maybe….

A-Fu woke up with a snort. The birds were twittling outside his window that was shining super hot sun right down into his eyeballs. His whole mouth tasted like yucky metal. Scrunching up his aching face, he rolled up onto his knees, wiping away drool and sweat with his sleeve--then yelped when it swiped his puffy eye. He barely could even see out of it, now. He poked at it a little, swinging his legs off the bed. Then gulped.

Through his open door, he could see Uncle Wangji sitting at the table of the sitting room with a cup of tea. Even though he was looking at the wall, A-Fu knew that he knew that A-Fu was awake. And now A-Fu remembered everything that had happened. Uh oh.

Maybe he could just stay in here and fall back asleep. He thought about it a second, looking at his pillow and jostled up blue blankets. Uncle Wangji probably wouldn’t let him, though. Some of his mad puddled back as muddy grumpiness and he scowled. “I’m--”

Without looking over, Uncle Wangji held up a hand. A-Fu fell sullenly silent. When his uncle nodded his head at the seat across from him, he slowly got up and dragged his feet in and flumped down onto the pretty gold-green seat, crossing his arms and glaring at the table. But he tried to get a peek at his face--to see how mad he was. 

His eyes were on A-Fu, now, and he just looked like he always did, but no sneaky small secret smiles hid in his mouth. How did A-Yuan deal with getting in trouble when his father always had a ‘you just got in trouble’ face? Well…A-Yuan didn’t really hardly ever get in trouble. So he guessed that was his answer. 

“You are going to apologize to your die . And then we are leaving.” He sounded serious, but that wasn’t new.

A-Fu hunched farther into his seat. “I don’t want to. I’m mad. I’m mad at him. I’m not sorry.”

“You were unfair and unfilial. You will apologize because it is respectful, whether or not you are still angry.”

“But he wanted me to lie! He wanted me to say he wasn’t my die ! It’s not fair!”

Uncle Wangji was quiet for so long that A-Fu snuck another look up at him. There wasn’t a big change in his expression, but he was looking down at his teacup. “I spoke with him. The matter is complex. There are things that are rejected, even when they are not wrong.”

“That’s dumb.”

“Nevertheless. When you choose to stand by things others eschew, you must be ready to accept the consequences. You are too young to fully understand those consequences.”

“I’m not afraid!”

“It is not about fear. It is about responsibility.” 

“...Huh?”

Uncle Wangji looked straight into his eyes, a tightness appearing in little lines next to his nose.  “Without understanding, there is fear. Fear…can have terrible repercussions. It is a weapon.”

“...Okay…?”

“Your actions do not just affect yourself. Do you remember what this represents?” He reached up, touched the silver cloud pendant in the middle of his forehead.

Automatically, A-Fu’s hand went up to feel his own, a small white triangle on the white cloth instead. “It’s the headband. It’s sacred. Only families touch it.” What did that have to do with anything?

“It is a symbol of restraint and discipline. When you wear this, you represent your Sect, your Clan, and your family. It is important to know your own responsibility. Your consequences don’t just befall you. Do you understand?”

“Uh-huh,” A-Fu said, automatically, even though he only sorta got it.

Kinda. …Maybe. Maybe he would ask Blue-Father about it when he got back, just to make sure. Either way, it sure sounded like ‘consequences’ was Uncle Wangji’s pocket word.

“Come,” Uncle Wangji stood, tucking one hand behind his back like always, Bichen glittering in his other one. “A-Yuan and Lianfang-zun are waiting. When we return, I will speak with xiongzhang to decide your discipline.”

Aw, farts. At least he wasn’t really getting yelled at, though all his mad felt kind of slimy and guilty, now. He did feel bad for yelling mean things at Yellow-Father. But he also felt just so frustrated at the whole thing, y’know?! The grownups really needed to work on listening.

When he and Uncle Wangji got back to the office and he mumbled a ‘sorry’ to Yellow-Father, it was like nothing had even happened. Yellow-Father was his normal sunny, smiley self and didn’t even mention the fighting again, he just asked about what hurt where, and then dabbed on some cream that smelled like something sharp and like flowers onto all his bruises. It was nice enough that A-Fu was tired of holding onto all his mad and climbed up into his lap when he held out his arms. Keeping arguments in his head made his tummy hurt. And he was just happy to be cuddled and not be yelled at anymore. He was so ready to go pet some bunnies with A-Yuan when they got back to the Cloud Recesses.

What a stressful visit!

Just to make sure, before they left, he craned his neck back to look up at his father, and asked, seriously, “You’re still always my die , though, right? Even…even if I gotta lie?”

Yellow-Father blinked, then smiled back down at him. “Of course.”

“Forever?”

“Well, will you always be my xiao-Fufu?”

“Yeah.”

His smile got a little softer at the edges as he smoothed A-Fu’s hair back from his forehead, then tucked a tail of his headband back over his shoulder. “Then it’s a deal.”