#everything was just sooooo perfectly measured oh my god i need him in ways that i cannot explain nor justify FUCK

[miraclewoozi]

tidal.

but vernon has a point to make, so that’s precisely what he does: “i don’t need a sales pitch. you will never — ever — have to convince me to fuck you.” 

pairing: vernon x afab!reader type: one-shot (fluff n’ smut) au: est. relationship wc: 4.8k rating: 18+ a/n: i didn’t plan this whatsoever, but i felt so weirdly compelled to write it that i avoided eye-contact with all of my wips, and now… here we are, lol. cw: pov switch, reader is afab + on their period, gender identity + pronouns aren’t designated, blood mention (obvi), unprotected p in v penetration (ill-advised!!), wee bit of dry-humping (ig?), a lil massage, pet names (baby, sweetheart), self-indulgent ref to a favorite docu of mine, and lastly — vernon (yes, this is a warning 🧍🏻) 🔞 MINORS WHO INTERACT WITH ME AND/OR MY CONTENT WILL BE BLOCKED, WHETHER OR NOT THE CONTENT IS NSFW. I’M AN ADULT WRITING EXCLUSIVELY FOR OTHER ADULTS.

Vernon isn’t blind. 

He can see you out of the corner of his eye, laying flat on your back, several unexplained centimeters away from his side. With the duvet clenched in your fists, you stare intensely up at the ceiling, like you’re waiting for it to move — or trying to move it yourself, telekinetically. You keep your bottom lip pinched between your teeth, as if you expect it to make a run for it.

So, yes, Vernon can see you. 

He just can’t figure out what’s wrong with you.

For a few minutes, he attempts to pay attention to the documentary lighting up the screen on the wall ahead. You were the one that picked it — some wild tale about mother-daughter recluses in New York — and he finds it hard to give a shit about it without your usual commentary. Your hot takes are his favorite part of any movie night, after all.

He’ll be the first to admit that he’s never been good at keeping his eyes off you. Try as he might, he can’t glue his gaze to the television; each glance in your direction sticks longer than the one before it, testing the waters. Minutes slip away just like this until he completely caves, turns his head fully, and stares at you outright. 

You still don’t seem to notice.

His brow scrunches up as he watches you, caught in the middle between concerned, confused, and amused by how absolutely ridiculous you look right now. When he speaks, he tries to sound stern, like he isn’t fighting the urge to laugh.

“Baby?”

“Hmm?” is all he gets in response. 

You don’t even look his way. If anything, you tense harder now that his attention is on you. 

None of it makes sense. Not the weird gap you’ve left between your body and his, your total refusal to look him in the eye, or the fact that there wasn’t an argument to precipitate any of this distance. It’s a symptom with no apparent cause, and it’s totally baffling. Brain-breaking, even.

Frowning, Vernon scoots himself across the bed to get closer to you. 

You don’t reciprocate. 

He tugs gently at the hem of your sweatshirt in a silent plea for your attention and receives radio silence in response; unless he counts the way you swallow thickly.

Which, for the record, he does not.

This close, Vernon can feel the anxious energy pulsing out of your tensed-up body in waves, so he leans away and props himself up on his elbow. Desperate to know what broke you and how to fix it, he mutters, “What is happening right now?”

Ope. 

It comes out harsher than it was supposed to, reading more like annoyance than worry, so he immediately clears his throat. Gently and with a brush of his knuckles against your hip bone, he tries again: “Are you okay? Did I do something to make you mad at me?”

A fly on the wall might get the wrong impression and think he stroked you with a live wire instead.

“Oh, my god. No!” You sputter with a jolt, shifting gears quickly from vaguely on-edge to horrified. You shake your head so frantically that Vernon fears you’ll detach it. “No, you haven’t done anything. I’m fine, I just —”

He interjects with a laugh, “— I don’t necessarily believe that —”

Visibly cringing with every muscle in your body, you cover your face with your hands. Not long after you take a deep breath does a meek voice slip out through your fingers, sounding beyond embarrassed.

“I’m so incomprehensibly horny right now that I can’t even look at you.”

For a second, it’s dead silent because he can’t quite process how much of a weirdo you are, or how completely and hopelessly enamored he is with you. But then the dam breaks. His laugh comes out so forcefully that you pull your hands away from your face, eyes wide.

“Is that so?” He smirks, nodding his head towards the television. “Grey Gardens really gets your motor running, huh?”

Absolutely aghast, you swat at his bicep. Then, you sling your arm over your eyes and groan, “I got my period. It has turned me into a sex-crazed monster, I fear.”

Vernon nods in understanding, even though you can’t see it, and hums, “Ahh.”

And he leaves it at that, only because you seem to have more that you want to say. Something you want to ask, maybe, or a reason you may want to give for not jumping his bones at the first opportunity. He’s down, he thinks without hesitation, so long as you are.

But you don’t say anything.

Maybe you aren’t actually down after all, and that’s why you won’t look at him. Shit, are you embarrassed? Should I say something? Silence falls overtop like a weighted blanket, smothering the two idiots who can’t tell whose turn it is to talk. 

Do you or do you not want this right now?

You mumble something that he can’t catch, so he nudges your side gently with his knuckles to encourage you. Just as nervous, you repeat yourself without looking at him, “Period sex is supposed to help with cramps, I think.”

He thinks he’s read the exact same article you have. More than that, he wishes you’d look over at him and see for yourself how completely unbothered he is by this concept.

“If you think about it, it’s kind of like a natural lubricant,” you add in a voice that’s even smaller than before.

Your shyness really might kill him, so he reaches over to grab your hand and gently pull your arm away from your eyes. It’s the first time you’ve looked at him since you laid down — since you put your self-imposed no-contact order in place — and he feels his stupid heart swell.

For what it’s worth, he feels his dick twitch, too.

You open your mouth to speak again, likely to continue your unnecessary campaigning; Vernon is having none of it. He tugs your wrist just enough to tilt you inward, then he kisses you hard enough to shut you up. A tiny whimper slips out of your lips when he pulls away, and it almost makes him regret his decision to do so. 

But Vernon has a point to make, so that’s precisely what he does: “I don’t need a sales pitch. You will never — ever —  have to convince me to fuck you.” 

Your eyes crinkle at the corners, like this is somehow news to you. It shouldn’t be. He’s told you a thousand times in as many different ways how thoroughly crazy you drive him just by existing so closely to him, but maybe you didn’t take him seriously then.

To emphasize his point, he slips his hand under the hem of your sweatshirt and finds your bare waist with the pad of his thumb. It spirals slowly against your warm skin, making both of you dizzy. Then, sick of the distance, Vernon dips his head down to press a kiss to your temple. 

“Like, ever,” he murmurs, lips following the curve of your jaw. 

Soft, slow kisses trail behind him as he travels down to your lips. Your head tilts further backwards with every single one, providing him with more and more access. 

He states it matter-of-factly because, to him, it is. “I’m down so bad for you that it might be terminal.”

“Oh?” 

You try to laugh but turn to putty when his palm rests fully on the curve of your waist and pulls you flush against him. The surprised gasp you let loose confirms his suspicion: You can feel how serious he is, affirmation throbbing against your abdomen in time with his heartbeat. 

Vernon smirks to himself, relishing your reaction, and bypasses your mouth entirely. A moan escapes from you, soft like an exhale, as his lips move slowly down the length of your neck. Every so often — just to feel you shiver — he flicks the tip of his tongue along the delicate skin he finds there.

“It might be messy…” 

The rest of your needless warning gets lost in a dreamy sigh as he suckles at the spot where your neck meets your shoulder. Shifting even closer, your desperate fingers reach out and cling to his t-shirt.

Vernon licks a stripe over the galaxy blooming on your skin. He hums, hand traveling upwards from your waist, “Don’t care about a mess.”

And he means it. 

Mindful of any soreness, he smooths his hand over your left breast and massages it tenderly, swearing to himself that he’ll throw the whole fucking mattress out if that’s what it comes down to. For you, he’ll race across town on foot to buy another one, and — fuck it — if the store is closed, he might just break in.

You’re growing impatient; your fingers let go of his shirt and tangle themselves in his hair.

“So needy,” he chuckles low in his chest, teasing. “You know, I think you’re lying. I think it is this bat-shit insane documentary that’s driving you wild, and you’re too embarrassed to admit it.”

“Stop,” you whine, dragging out the vowel sound. 

You don’t, though; you throw your left leg over his right thigh and shimmy forward until your cunt grazes his dick. Involuntarily, he groans at the warmth radiating off your core. Every part of you drives him just the slightest bit insane. You seem to know it, he thinks as he watches your pupils dilate in real time.

But he can play games, too, so he rolls his hips forward and grinds against you. He pushes you further, “Don’t get me wrong, baby. I’m not kink-shaming you —”

“Hansol Vernon Chwe!”

Oh, shit. Government name?

“— I’m just a little surprised, I guess.” He sighs with a shrug. “Think you know somebody…”

Your impatience is scribbled all across your scrunched up face. It seeps into your voice when you crash back against the pillows and huff, “Can you please stop fucking with me and start fucking me?”

“Sex-crazed monster, huh?” Leaning over, Vernon punctuates his question with a quick press of his lips to yours.

You whimper, “I’m so serious. I might explode.”

“Then go take care of whatever you need to take care of.” He kisses you again, smiling so fondly that his eyes may even be twinkling. “And I’ll go get a towel.”

You wait until Vernon clears the threshold before launching yourself out of bed at breakneck speed. Stumbling all the while, you race off to the adjoining bathroom and shut the door forcefully behind you. When it clatters against the frame, you finally admit to yourself that you might be a little bit eager.

Maybe.

Opting to keep your baggy, bleach-stained sweatshirt on, you wiggle out of your shorts and — what he refers to as — your crisis diaper. The high-waisted, frumpy, beige panties are utilized exclusively during your period, and to your surprise, they’ve remained spotless. It’s only ever the pretty and expensive pairs that wind up as collateral damage, isn’t it?

As they pool around your ankles, you can’t help but think that Vernon’s nickname for them is pretty spot on. That’s partly why you figured he might need to be talked into this. Unsated arousal aside, you feel as far from sexy as you can possibly get.

You shake your head to clear your thoughts, kick what you’ve discarded into a pile near the hamper, and let your sweatshirt shift down to cover as much of your ass as it’s capable of managing. You grab a square of toilet paper; then, you go to work excavating the wad of cotton that separates you from everything you want in this life. 

It is within the realm of possibility that you’re a little bit eager and a little bit dramatic. 

Perhaps.

After discarding the evidence in the small trash can under the sink, you wash your hands as if you’re about to step into an operating theater and not the bedroom you spend half your life in. When you finally feel sterile, you lift your head and catch your reflection in the mirror. Instantly, you make eye contact with the painful, hormonal pimple on your chin — the one you’ve been waging a retinoid war against for days.

“Bitch,” you mutter, like calling it names will be the one thing that finally gets it to shrink. Of course, your plan doesn’t work, but you feel a little less powerless. That’s good enough, you think. At least, as good as it’s going to get.

Now half-naked and certifiably unobstructed, you tiptoe back to your bedroom much more carefully than you left it. Vernon enters from the opposite doorway at the same time, jumping slightly the second he notices you. You ignore his frightened eyes and glance down at the crisp, white towel he’s clutching.

You open your mouth to suggest anything otherwise, but he beats you to it. His eyebrows shoot up his forehead as his mouth widens outwards, a self-aware rectangle. Otherwise expressionless, he lets go of an atonal, “Aaaaaaah”, that tells you he’s caught on.

He says nothing else before turning around and walking back the way he came. You have to bite down on your lips to keep from cackling.

That one’s mine, you think, still as infatuated as you were at the start. I chose that one.

While he’s gone, you try not to move, not to breathe too heavily. Vernon said he didn’t care about a mess, but when he said it, he was speaking theoretically with his hand on your tit. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d spoken recklessly with your body melting under his touch.

As far as you know, he hasn’t had any experience with this mess in practice. He could wind up finding you about as sexy as you currently feel — to wit: not at all. So, erring on the side of caution, you turn yourself into a statue and wait for the boy and his towel to find you again.

When he comes back, he plants a drive-by kiss on your unsuspecting mouth before skirting right around you. With shocking finesse, he grabs the corners of the — thankfully — black towel, which unfurls in the seconds before he flicks it upwards. It lands perfectly in the center of the bed, flat without needing to be fussed with.

“Wow,” he mutters to himself, taking in his clean work with raised eyebrows.

The impressed look is still on his face when he turns around, but you don’t have time to comment on his feat because he laughs as soon as he sees you.

“Kinda look like Donald Duck with the whole top-on, bottom-off situation.”

I chose this one?

You pout with an indignant gasp, crossing your arms over your chest. “I’m not wearing a sailor hat, so…. bad analogy. Rude, even.”

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs as he snakes his arms around your waist and pulls you in close. You stumble a little on your way into him; the jury’s still out about whether it’s his hushed tone or the sudden movement that trips you up.

Between his thumb and index finger, he gently captures your chin. You follow along with his unspoken direction, tilt your face up to meet his. This close, you can see your own reflection in his pupils, black dilating against the warmest shade of brown you’ve ever seen.

Vernon takes a moment of silence as he takes in your features, and he studies them so intently that his eyebrows crinkle on their own. He sighs, sounding so completely serious. “You might get prettier every time I look at you.”

It’s unclear if you’re melting, or gushing; and if it’s the latter, you can’t say which biological process is at fault. Thankfully, the hand at the small of your back keeps your weak knees from buckling when his lips brush over yours.

“Even if you’re dressed like Winnie the Pooh.” 

You feel him smirk even before you hear him laugh at his own joke. Then, you feel his hand slide down to cup your bare cheek, squeezing affectionately. You want to tell him that this analogy is still inaccurate because you’re not wearing a crop-top; but he gently instructs you to ditch the sweatshirt and get on the bed, and your body moves automatically. No questions asked.

Carefully, you crawl up onto the mattress, then you center yourself on the towel. Still on your knees, you tilt your head curiously and ask, “Where do you want me?”

“Anywhere,” he breezes, pulling his shirt off and tossing it onto the dresser nearby. He amends, “Everywhere. All the time, and then some.”

“Better be careful,” you tease. “Talking like that might have consequences. You may never be able to get rid of me.”

His joggers are the next to go. Your sanity follows shortly thereafter, hungry eyes lingering on the imprint of his cock underneath his boxer briefs. You have to clamp your mouth shut to keep from drooling.

Brown eyes sparkling, he steps closer to you, kicking his pants aside as he goes. “Be careful,” he echoes, not a hint of cockiness to be found — just softness. “Saying it like a threat doesn’t make me wish it’s not a promise.”

I choose this one.

Crossing all the way to you, Vernon reaches the bed and climbs up with significantly more grace than you did. The mattress dips under his weight as he kneels right in front of you, mirroring your posture and causing your stomach to flip with anticipation.

You can’t help yourself; you lick your lips and look up at him with half-lidded eyes. “Naked, please. Like, right now.”

“Damn, I gotta do this myself?” Incredulous, he holds his hands up while glancing pointedly down at his underwear, then back at you. 

You arch an eyebrow, unfazed. 

“Depends.” You shrug. “Do you want to keep them? Because I really will rip them off of you.”

He concedes quickly; he always does. Sighing, he shakes his head and tuts, “Sex-crazed monster,” before pushing his briefs down his thighs. His length hangs heavy between you, but you swear you can feel its perfect ache inside you already.

You have a one-track mind, so you don’t hesitate to reach out and wrap your hand around him. A groan crawls up from the bottom of your chest when you feel the weighted warmth of his cock in your palm. You don’t hold that back, either.

“Fuck,” he sighs, head tilting as far backwards as it’ll go. Unexpectedly, he laughs. He doesn’t catch the quizzical look you shoot him, though he explains himself anyway, “Your hands are so fucking cold, but it feels so good.”

Swiping your thumb over his tip, you spread the pre-cum you find there down his shaft and stroke him slowly. He grows harder with every gentle squeeze, every pass of your fist. 

“We’re learning a lot of new shit about each other today.” You lean forward to pepper kisses across his collarbones. The hum of your mouth against his skin when you talk makes his cock twitch in your hand. “You might have a temperature kink and a thing for Winnie the Pooh.”

He snorts, nowhere near serious, “Shut the fuck up.”

“Make me,” you counter smugly, and you do mean it.

Vernon tilts his head forward to stare back at you. You’re already turning into a puddle, but if the look he gives you says anything, it’s that your melting isn’t enough for him. His voice is low and velvet-lined when he responds, “How about I just make you cum instead?”

“That could work, yeah.” You shrug.

He runs the pads of his fingers down each side of your waist to your hips, then back again; and each time he does it, you shiver. Reflexively, your back arches, chest pressing against his.

At this, he smirks, “It could? Maybe?”

“We can workshop it.”

“Or,” Vernon so generously offers, “You can turn around and lay down on your stomach. You know, if that’s sufficient.”

It’s not until you whip around and flop down onto the towel that you realize you never responded with words. Oh well. You figure he gets the point, judging by the quiet laughter you hear as he settles with his knees on either side of your upper thighs.

You don’t know what his next move will be — you don’t care, either, as long as he moves in your direction — so you don’t anticipate his palms flattening against your bare back, applying perfect pressure with his thumbs while he rubs away the soreness at the very base of your torso.

“Oh, shit,” you moan, eyes fluttering shut as the heels of his hands work out the tension in your muscles. “Have you always been good at this?”

You feel his chest brush against your shoulder blades when he hovers over you. Against the nape of your neck, he murmurs, “Nope.”

He kisses down your spine, mouth trailing after his hands as they work their way back down your body.

“Lemme guess — you read an article? Studied up?”

You get a snicker, then an affirmative hum, then another kiss. This time, it’s at the curve of your spine, just above your ass. Seconds later, he’s kneading the doughy flesh of your cheeks until your whole fucking body tingles.

That’s when it hits you:

Under normal circumstances, Vernon would be face-first in your pussy by now. Devouring you in earnest, like he’s starving. He can’t do that now — and you don’t blame him — so he’s making up for what you both view as a loss.

God, you want him.

One hand disappears from you, but you don’t have to guess where it went. You can hear the barely-there hiss of breath through his teeth when he takes his cock in that hand; as well as the very faint shift of his palm while he pumps himself.

“You’re gonna have to navigate, baby. I dunno how sensitive you are like this, what’s too much — any of that, so you need to tell me how you want me to move.”

Suddenly dizzy over how badly you need him, all you can muster is a nod. Vernon must want a verbal acknowledgment, though, because he leans back over you with one hand bearing his weight beside your head.

He kisses your shoulder and urges you, “Please say so if you need to stop or switch it up. Don’t wanna hurt you, sweetheart.”

“I will,” you breathe. “But I can’t even articulate how much I need you inside of me right now, so please — pretty please — fuck me.”

The tip of his nose bumps your temple affectionately. Right beside your ear, he teases, “With a cherry on top?” And it vibrates down your whole goddamn spine.

“Vernon!” You whine, burying your face in the comforter. It’s muffled, but you warn him nonetheless, “Don’t make me come back there.”

“Aish. Calm down, sex monster.”

The instinct to twist around and glare at him over your shoulder is strong, but every feral urge you feel is stronger. So, when he tells you to spread yourself open for him and tilt your hips back, you do so without even a hint of complaining.

With the crown of his cock slipping through your folds, inching towards your entrance, you hear him curse under his breath. Suddenly self-conscious, you finally crane your neck to the side and glance back at him. 

“We don’t have to,” you whisper. “If it’s gross and you don’t want to anymore, I get it —”

He balks at your suggestion without letting so much as a beat pass. “None of that, sweetheart; no spiraling. I’m just trying to figure out the logistics of, like… how to survive how good this already feels.”

Struck dumb, all you can muster is a peep, “Oh?”

“Shit, yeah.” His response comes in a low groan. “Can you take a deep breath for me?”

It’s a good call on his part, a suggestion you’re glad to have taken, because the pressure of him entering you is intense enough to knock the wind out of you. Empty lungs likely would’ve led to your untimely demise.

You whimper, already overwhelmed with the combination of pain and pleasure; the best kind of ache. The little, breathy moans must freak him out, however, because his fingertips caress your waist as he checks in: “This okay?”

Your limp arm lifts off the mattress, which you’ve melted fully into, and you form a circle with your index finger and thumb to indicate that you’re okay. The light is bright fucking green; you’ve just maxed out your capacity for speech.

Vernon continues his slow thrust forward, giving you ample time to adjust to his size.

“Oh my god,” he grunts, “This is — shit, I can’t believe we haven’t done this before. If I knew how good you’d feel like this, I wouldn’t have waited around for you to ask me.”

That hits like a truck.

He was waiting on you. 

You spent months convincing yourself that he’d need to be convinced, and chickening out before you could raise the idea. Months, and months, and months, of craving him during your werewolf transformation; wasting away over a shitty assumption that Vernon is anything like the people you’ve been with before. 

Christ. 

His credit for putting up with you is long overdue.

Too tongue-tied to speak any of that out loud, you settle for a summary that you hope conveys the message: “I love you so fucking much.”

Mindful of how deep it will push him into your cunt, he leans down over you carefully. Weight balanced on his knees and forearms, he envelopes you in his body heat, trails kisses across your shoulder, and echoes your words back at you between each one.

“Is this too much?” He whispers, rolling his hips slowly.

You feel him everywhere, with every drag of his cock along your walls; and you can’t tell where that throbbing sensation is coming from, him or you. 

You shake your head and sigh, “‘s perfect. You’re perfect.”

Like he knows it’ll unravel you, his large hand comes to rest over the back of yours. His fingers slip through the spaces between and squeeze you much more gently than the vice grip you hold on the bedding below you. He keeps holding you — just like this — through every movement.

The sensation of being this surrounded, this loved, this whole crashes over you like a wave and knocks you off balance.

“I’m so close,” you pant, voice as ragged as your breathing. There’s nothing that he isn’t already giving you with every deep, deliberate thrust into your heat; but you beg nonetheless, “Please, please, please —”

His speed doesn’t increase, but the intensity does. The smack of his hips colliding with your ass does, too, and you feel it reverberating in your bones. Buried as far inside of you as he can be, cock tip kissing your cervix with every high tide, length rolling across your g-spot with every low.

You cum so hard — so completely, invoking every single muscle you have — that you forget how to breathe. With a choked-out gasp, you squeeze your eyes shut and let your orgasm devastate you. 

“Fuck!”

Vernon gets caught up in the current, too, grinding desperately against you until he’s swept up in your wake. You feel him twitch inside you as his release floods, leaving you so lost in his warmth that you feel boneless underneath him.

His face winds up hidden in the crook of your neck, somewhere amidst the baby hairs that cling to the sheen of your sweat. You feel his lips fluttering against your skin when he laughs, “Oh…my god.”

“Mmphf.” You nod weakly in agreement. Beyond blissed, your body still tingles too much to move.

Slurring, you add, “‘s good. ‘s really…”

The rest of that thought dissolves into something between a moan and a yawn.

Just as tired, Vernon pats your ass cheek affectionately and mumbles, “Well said. No notes.”

You tilt your head far enough to free your face from the sheets. When you do, you find your boyfriend fighting a losing battle to keep his eyes open. In the rare seconds he can, he looks back at you in a daze that seems even more adoring than it does fuck-drunk.

“I think I need to hibernate now,” you announce. “Think you just fucked me so well that I need to take a sabbatical.”

He counter-offers, “Shower first, then sabbatical?”

You wiggle so that you can pull your joint hands to your mouth. You can’t kiss him properly while he’s laid out on top of you, but you can press your lips to the back of his hand and hope he feels how much of you that you pour into it.

“Okay, but, like…. who’s carrying who?”

[chalkrevelations]

And finally, here we are, Episode 36 of Word of Honor, and I have some FEELINGS. Let me show you them.

There also will be Episode 37 here, btw, because I’m not gonna do a separate reaction for a three-minute episode, no matter how grateful I am that we got it.

(Spoilers, so if that’s not what you want right now, scroll on by and come back after you’ve watched it. Them.)

Let’s get to the meat of the episode right away: THE HAIRPIN. And Wen Kexing knowing Zhou Zishu would have it, because he’d definitely take it with him if he was going on a suicide mission! Y’all. I really have to yell about this for a minute: That’s how secure WKX has become in his knowledge of what he means to ZZS! After all that time angsting and hiding the truth of his identity and worrying that he’s not worthy of ZZS and that he’d be rejected if ZZS knew the truth about him! But now, WKX has finally reached a point where he understands and knows (zhiji, the one I know) he’s so important to ZZS that ZZS would never ever go off to die without taking his most precious possession, the hairpin that his husband gave him! I can’t. My heart. This is like a declaration, after all that time saying they were zhiji, that WKX finally is able to truly see ZZS as that, to know him in his bones, and all of this is also delivered in the middle of WKX in a strop, irritably chastising his husband as an evil brat for running away from home to get himself killed, with Gong Jun’s little  >:(  face in full effect, and I am so filled with love for this show and this couple at this point that I have to pause Youtube just so I can roll around on the sofa, clutching at my chest and scaring the cats with my inarticulate noises. This is so good, y’all. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted. Also, now you know how it feels, WKX, you asshole. Which I suppose is why you even confess that it will would be more painful for the one who survives when if the other dies. And you were prepared to do that to him a second time? I cannot believe you, you asshole. You get to sleep on the ice couch for a month.

And then there’s some Six Cultivation Power mind-melding and what looks to be an INCREDIBLY STUPID and HEARTBREAKING ending that would leave us Burying One of Our Gays, so it’s a good thing Episode 37 (all three minutes of it) exists. It would be nice, though, if the connective tissue from 36 to 37 made any sense. Or existed whatsoever. Just, like, throw me a bone, here, show. Some kind of explicit hand-waviness that actually gets mentioned for why Ye Baiyi apparently was not as smart as he thought he was and didn’t really know what he was talking about when he was doomsaying about how one of the pair will surely, oh surely perish. None of this “Sooooo, they managed to figure out the technique and master it?” from some random shidi who never actually gets an answer. I mean, the door was left open for fanwankery on this one, with what looks to be a very last-minute conceit of all this being a story told by grown-up Chengling to his disciples, which begs the question of how much of what he’s telling them is totally accurate, given any number of issues, including the spottiness of human recall, the possibility (based on the fact they’re still on the mountain in Ep 37) that Chengling never actually saw either of them again to get the full story, and the way Gao Xiaolian basically calls bs on the whole thing. But this is still a gossamer-thin thread on which to hang Ep 37. Ep 37 basically functions as reassurance because of the mere fact of its existence, because they’re clearly both alive, right there in front of your face, regardless of the other fact that it doesn’t actually make any sense, based on Ep 36. It ultimately doesn’t matter if there is no Step 2, because Step 3: Profit! is … right there. In evidence. Happening. On your screen. No matter how vaguely unsatisfying the lack of Step 2 may be.

I do feel like there’s an interesting meta thing going on here, in that the entire show has been about – let’s be honest, it was never really about the plot - queer-coding this couple in ways that supposedly fly just enough under the radar that people can handwave them as Just Good Friends and Brothers (I mean, I guess) with a Bury Your Gays tragic ending (ugh) for good measure. And Chengling is telling a story in-universe that seems to conform to some of this same formula. And yet, we all know well and good that these guys were husbands. (I mean, barring anything else, they’re a couple in the original source material, so checkmate, censorship.) So, are we supposed to carry the same assurance out of the show, on a meta level, that what appears to be happening at the end of Ep 36 - what we discover we’re learning through Chengling’s story-telling - isn’t really the truth? Just, look: While we’re getting the Good Friends and Brothers push, there’s stuff like obvious voice-over work that doesn’t match the much more queer version of what the actors actually said, which is apparently blazingly clear to any viewers who know Mandarin and can manage to lip-read. The show has literally put de-queered words into these characters’ mouths. You can’t trust what you hear. But apparently the show has also made this obvious enough that, if you’re a good enough speaker of the language the show is being told in, and you have a good enough eye, you can see what is actually going on. Are we being taught to trust our eyes more than our ears, are we being told that what we’re being told - by the end of Ep 36 on a meta level, by Ye Baiyi-through-Chengling’s-story on an in-universe level, and by what we learn about what happened from Chengling’s story, itself, also on an in-universe level - is inherently untrustworthy, but that if we “speak the language” of this show well enough, and have a good enough eye, we can decode it and see what “actually” happened and is later made explicit in Ep 37? Is Ep 37 canon? Does it matter, when “what is canon” is already so slippery on this show, where you can apparently lip-read something that’s different than what you’re hearing, and it functions as canon because of the mere fact of its existence, because it’s clearly … right there. In evidence. Happening. On your screen.

Anyway, just some thoughts on all that, which I guess is my own fanwankery work to join up the end of Ep 36 with Ep 37, which was, of course, delightful. No matter how much I might bemoan the lack of Step 2, I had a stupid, dopey grin on my face all the way through Ep 37 and might have even teared up a tiny bit at the very end. You can’t prove anything. Lemme tell you, though, it’s a good idea to have 37 on hand when you run into the brick wall of the end of 36, because while WKX’s willingness to sacrifice himself for love is theoretically great, it is not something I actually want to see come to fruition, given the pall it would cast over the entire joyous experience that the ZZS/WKX relationship is throughout the rest of the show. Sure, there’s always fic, but there’s a heaviness that hangs over the Bury Your Gays trope, and it’s retroactively ruined shows for me before. So THANK YOU, to those of you who hooked me up so I could immediately move on to Ep 37.

What else? Other things:

OK, so, first, I have to get this out of the way: Did we actually already see all of those “flashbacks” we get in the first part of the ep, during the conversation between Zhou Zishu and Jing Beiyuan, when all the political stuff is supposed to be finally falling together to give us the big picture? I would have to go back and scrummage through those eps to be sure, and I’m not going to spend time doing that (yet) when I still need to do some keysmashing about Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing OH MY GOD, but I do feel like some of this was new information, not just stuff that I’d glossed over because it didn’t seem important at the time? If so, not on, show. I will be keeping an eye out for that on re-watch. I am, however, perfectly willing to accept – if it turns out to be true – that you utterly distracted me with the failboats-in-love storyline, to the detriment of my focus on, you know, plot or whatever. It’s happened before. (It’s one of the reasons I need to go back and watch The Untamed again, at some point.)

OMG FAKE KEY! And as ZZS points out, this has been foreshadowed for us from early on, with WKX’s fake Glazed Armors plot. :bangs table with fist: YES. This show is going to reward re-watching SO MUCH.

Duan Pengju, oh my god, this asshole. The look on his face when the Armory didn’t open was so gratifying. Also, ha. I wondered when ZZS was finally going to be done with his shit. In fact, so much gratification in this whole scene. Xie Wang’s face when he realizes WKX double-crossed him – what, did you think you were the only tricksy one in that little alliance, Xie’er? And, holy shit – I cannot believe that Xie’er actually words this as WKX failing him, taking us back around to this theme one more time again. I would maybe feel a little worse for you if you hadn’t been a hairsbreadth away from killing him before ZZS stopped you in the last ep, Xie’er. Also if you hadn’t helped get A-Xiang killed. So I think the fail in this relationship is going both ways. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like you’re going to get the time WKX had to start untangling yourself from the ways your abuser has fucked you up and over.

It once again becomes blindingly clear why ZZS has been my ride-or-die during this whole thing: Under the grumpy, irritable, day-drinking yet somehow eminently practical exterior, he’s actually an idealistic do-gooder who just wants to make the world a better place for people and sacrifice himself for great justice. Never let it be said that I don’t have a type. Also, I mean. Zhang Zhehan’s FACE. Let’s don’t discount the power of that.

Final word: Don’t miss Ep 37. All three minutes of it. They are perhaps the most important three minutes of the entire show.

(I mean, not FINAL final word. I expect to be going back for a re-watch and posting more things, particularly on eps from before I started typing up 1000K-word reactions this first time around.)