#and so now jin ling cannot touch wen ning okay wen ning is *sizhuis* uncle no one elses!

[youaremysunshine-court]

Do you think sizhuis one flex post canon is that wen ning is his uncle and his uncle alone and is in no way related to jin ling and so he's the only one allowed to call him uncle

[a-very-fond-farewell]

The forbidden crack! Untamed prompts: 10/?

Single Dad AU (not the one you expect): “Water my Bones”

[Pushing Daisies meets florist!au]

*

First it was the beekeeper suit. Then the astronaut one. THEN the Darth Vader costume. Every time a different attire. Lan Zhan is starting to think he better be changing grocery shop soon if he wants to fill his cart in peace without stumbling upon that weirdo during his weekly visit at the store.

Things he knows about said man: 1) he is competitive af, 2) he seems around his age, thirty five at most, 3) he has a flower shop in town, 4) he has a son.

The last thing, he knows because the child is always perched on the man’s cart when they shop. The third thing, he knows because his brother Lan Huan is the owner of the building where said man works. The second, he noticed once in passing, as they both waited in line to pay at the express line. And the first, he got to realize since day fucking one, when they entered the shop together and noticed they were following a similar path and unconsciously started rushing their way through their respective lists as fast as possible to win over the other.

It’s been four weeks already and Lan Zhan regrets moving to that part of town big time. The day he discovers something new, however, is when the florist decides to wear a simple black mask over the lower half of his face instead a full on costume. So even the usual lady clients cannot flirt with him asking if it’s yet another laundry day. The lot of them surprised to see him dressed normally for once. If wearing a black mask, black latex gloves and a black turtleneck in August can even be considered normal to begin with. The fact that he also looks unbelievably hot dressed in such a manner goes without saying. Not that Lan Zhan’s looking, of course.

Yet, it’s one thing to dress to impress and another to be affectionate towards your own child without taking your mask and gloves off not even to kiss him on the cheek or to check if one of his baby teeth is really falling off or not. So, when one of the ladies jokes about it, nobody expects the child to plainly say what Lan Zhan ends up hearing that day.

“If Dad touches my skin I’m going to die.”

The fact that said dad also conveniently runs away and forgets to take most of their bagged groceries with him right afterwards is also telling. But for the life of his Lan Zhan doesn’t know what such a dramatic exit can possibly mean.

[under the cut for details]

initially I thought to let Mo XuanYu be the baby, but then I kept A-Yuan/SiZhui. Also he is not Wei Ying’s actual son, but more on that later. ALSO he’s a savage child with snark for ages and channels every ounce of his adoptive father’s mischievous spirit.

Just like in “Pushing Daisies”, Wei Ying can revive the dead for a minute or two just by touching them [from Wikipedia: “If something is revived for more than one minute, a similar "life value" in the vicinity drops dead as a form of balance. If he touches the revived person or thing a second time, they die permanently.”]

But in this AU, ever since he was young, Wei Ying has revived a bunch of people, in the beginning without worrying too much of the consequences, not knowing someone of the same value (someone close to the revived dead person) must die if not given back to the realm of death after those two minutes.

His family used to take care of the needs of mourning families by running a funeral home. As a child he would simply touch the dead and go his merry way, happy to make others happy. But the dead would always run away, fearing their families would never take them back or not believe them to have been actually revived. Unaware of this, with bodies disappearing left and right, Wei Ying’s parents are accused of smuggling organs and corpses and are taken to prison before being put in house arrest for the rest of their sentence.

(In the meantime Wei Ying has been looked after by a new family, but after coming of age he decided to wait until the end of his parents’ sentence and buy them a house where they could live together again. In fact, he lives with them and his son) -> a perfectly rational choice bc I wanted to give them a chance to look after each other, okay? Also because a family trying to keep a common secret is fun and fresh and the exact opposite of the movie “Keeping Mum”, which is highly recommend btw.

He never experimented with the double-touch until (at fifteen) accidentally reviving a corpse of a dog, getting scared of it, and consequently smacking its tail in a (hilarious) fit of frustration bc “oh damn it... not again/go back to sleep I cannot deal with you/dogs are scary” and so on. The poor guy plopped down as if nothing had happened afterwards.

After that he learned his lesson and knew he could never touch a revived person again. Also dogs, especially dogs. They bite >:(

The first time Wei Ying actually understood something was wrong was when he was 21 and revived his stepsister YanLi, but her mother died as a consequence. He has brought his stepbrother Jiang Cheng back to life, but his own father was taken in his place. Before that time he had never considered the damage he had caused, because the consequences never involved his close ones but mere strangers up until then. So he vowed to never use his powers again afterwards.

The only exception being A-Yuan/SiZhui: the child was found in a dumpster, abandoned at three months old. Wei Ying revived him and didn’t want to wonder who might have died in the baby’s place... nor did he care. So he asked his parents to help. They’ve been raising the child together for five years, but Wei Ying has never directly touched him, always wearing gloves and masks around him.

He has also never hugged his step-siblings either since reviving them from their car accident from fourteen years back, but neither YanLi or Jiang Cheng knows the reason why. The only thing they know is that at the time, right after seeing them waking up from their “coma” and attending their parents’ funeral, Wei Ying has distanced himself from them, never to return.

(Insert shenanigans with Wei Ying trying his best not to run into his siblings, before they actually discover the truth along the way and bundle him up in quilts and coats just to be able to hug the hell out of him)

Lan Zhan is a detective and thanks to Wei Ying’s powers they solve crimes together. THEY REVIVE THE DEAD FOR TWO MINUTES and ask them what they remember before dying (which is basically the whole point of “Inquiry”, right?) and then Wei Ying touches them back and they drop dead for good.

Wei Ying knows his limits now and doesn’t play with empathy (got it? got it??)

Jin Ling has BOTH of his parents (can you imagine??) and he’s best friend with Lan Zhan and Lan Huan’s younge cousin, JingYi. And they SNOOP like nobody’s business bc they know there’s something fishy about “Uncle Wei”. But also they love to play with the other baby even if they pretend to be tough. They’re also friends with Wen Ning, who will teache them archery for their after-school activities as soon as they start elementary school and they are thrilled.

Wen Ning was actually one of the few corpses Wei Ying has revived in childhood that made it back home and was believed by others. (Wen Ning was still a child himself when he died, so he went straight back home and nobody questioned it, too happy to care......... which is basically canon)

His sister Wen Qing is the only friend Wei Ying has that knows about his secret and she’s the one suggesting Lan Zhan to..........wait a minute or two before leaving the morgue where she works at.

“You might never know what the dead could be able to say after you switch off the lights. You get me?”

He doesn’t get it. Not at first.

But! He grows interested in Wei Ying and the fact that he cannot touch his own child. Is it an allergy? Is it an illness? Lan Zhan has questions and he needs to find out the truth by himself.

Wei Ying’s child needs to be properly held by a parent at least once in his life tho... and Lan Zhan is made by very fine, very expensive husband material.

(I wanted him to meet Wei Ying’s parents. Sue me.)

Also I thought Wei Ying would like to make things grow (hence the florist!au you never asked for) bc he might feel guilty about the things he has done + his trust issues about getting attached to someone and then seeing them die AND THEN HAVING TO ACTUALLY LET THEM GO FOR REAL.

I’m sad now.