#ghost and hollow are named after one simple word that describes them somewhat

[lyss-butterscotch]

Do you have lost kin gijinkas?

I do and they get to live <- delusional everyone gets to live AU maker

[moxfirefly]

This comes as result of an idea and going through some hard times as of late. The reader here has their issues but hey we aren’t inherently perfect and I like getting into that mindset and seeing what comes up. So consider this somewhat introspective piece when a ‘relationship’ maybe isn’t the best.

Mikey x Fem!Reader

Rated Mature/Angst/Feels (18+ Only)

“I am human and I need to be loved”

A lifespan isn’t enough to understand that love is a complicated emotion. It’s addicting caress can remain in ones soul for ages. Love is kind they say, but what of those moments where it’s not? When the heart strangles itself and you choke on desperation?

Love isn’t perfect, that very imperfection glued us to those we worship. That hurt can be addicting as well.

He’s aware of it, he knows that his innocence only hides a questioning.

Because Mikey has gotten so good at hiding those dark parts that linger like shadows in his brain. There’s pain behind that smile, there’s sadness hidden beneath the foundation he’s lain.

You see it, you’re aware of it.

You can’t help but feel ashamed you’re the cause of it.

You want to take ownership of it but every time your mouth opens that tightness in your jaw increases. Before the words can be processed you’re doing most of the speaking with your hands.

And your lips.

Mikey’s never denied you, the thought of rejection paralyzes him so profoundly he aches. But it would be unwise to state there isn’t any trace of doubt. He’s mindful of your distaste for love, that you aren’t a believer. He’s mindful of what cracks inside of him when you flirt your way through the day. He’s at the forefront but he isn’t unwise to the way you linger a hand on Leo’s arm or how your eyes light up when April walks into a room.

Your eyes have that same bright hue when he’s the target. When it’s the two of you and your fingers map out a path on his thigh. It’s so palpable in the air that surrounds the two of you when you suddenly crash into him and swallow his soul whole.

You’re greedy.

The first time you had kissed him he swore there was no way he could verbally describe what erupted inside of him. He remembers it clearly like a fond dream, the way you had pushed him into a darken corner. Your hands on his waist, pink tongue tasting orange crush and sweets.

He had been so shy it had melted you. His hands tentatively resting on hips. Lips merely following your lead. When you had stopped with your lips lingering so closely to his, you had simply giggled and asked him where the night could take you both.

Mikey knows what whiplash feels like, but emotionally this was his first time. He let it go, slowly watched whatever this had meant leave his grasp.

He lets you lead.

You’re so greedy.

He can’t blame you as much as he can blame himself. This isn’t the only time naturally, he could switch the memories like tv stations, often settling on his favorite ones.

He tries to avoid the ones that hurt.

You want to blame life, blame all past events that led you to develop a thick skin. It’s so impenetrable, but the dents are here and there scattered across two decades. Mikey sees the road map of damage, it hides behind your smile and your nonchalant attitude towards the tomorrow. He kinda likes it though, that you can build up a wall for whatever tries to infiltrate your barrier.

He’s addicted to the fact that you allow him in, that your guard goes down when he’s there. Mikey just wishes he had a clearer read, that whatever is happening could have a description a fucking name tag maybe. But soon enough you’re jumping into his open and awaiting arms, pressing yourself so flush against him and whispering how much you just missed him.

Mikey doesn’t miss how you stick like glue to him one particular night. The gangs there, everyone watching some horror flick that Casey had brought over. He can’t keep his eyes straight when you’re so warm next to him, tracing lazy circles on his palm before gripping it like it was some habit.

You were a habit basically, a tick that comforted him and somehow kept him grounded into this plain of existence. It’s a rush of blood to the head. Something that swims inside of his soul, wraps around him like ivy.

You wish it could be simple, to face up and just accept the cards laid out. But you were never one to just take it at face value. Easy just wasn’t in your vocabulary and well, it’s obvious that it’s not in Mikey’s wether by proxy or his own doing.

So when you quietly excuse yourself and feel Mikey’s blue orbs follow you, you obviously text him to come with after a minute or so.

The minute he follows into his and Raph’s room and finds you sitting on his bed with your legs crossed looking pleased as punch, he knows he’s so utterly screwed. Cause he’d do anything to have that image frozen in time and place, just you and that beautiful smile that robs him of thought and oxygen. Even as you beckon him closer with a gleam in your eye that means trouble and a hundred more questions for Mikey to stay up all day and night over.

He follows.

He comes to the foot of his bed and almost overloads when the tip of that beckoning finger runs a path over what would be his navel. Mikey swallows hard, breathing through his nostrils.

It guts you how he reaches out to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. Mikey honest to god admires you like living breathing art. He takes a sharp inhale when you press your face to his clothed crotch and moan at the sensation that greets you. Mikey can’t erase the image of you, looking up at him as you push down his shorts, lust and what he registers might be love in your e/c orbs.

Much less when you take him into your mouth and the heat rushes down your body to your core. Your red cheeks hollowing in and creating such a tightness that Mikey whimpers, one hand gripping the back of your head and the other somehow interlocking with yours. It’s the intimacy of it, with your eyes fluttering closed as you take him as deeply as you possibly can. How his fingers play with yours.

Mikey tries to mumble something coherent out, he wants to tell you that he’s close and he knows it’s proper etiquete to tell you. It’s actually sweet and you almost giggle with a mouthful of him even when you feel nails dig into the back of your head as Mikey tries to not moan too loudly.

The way your throat bobs, lips swollen with a sticky sheen to them. He’s punch drunk, loves struck when he cups your cheeks and kisses you, tasting himself and falling further down into the rabbit hole that’s become the two of you not questioning this.

And god he should question it before his mind keeps running every possible scenario that’s caused this to be so unidentifiable. Because after that night he’s got radio silence from you for four days. He feels like a ghost floating around his brothers, going from motion to motion until he decides to take that step.

He shows up at your apartment, contemplates knocking on that window for fifteen minutes but what can he say? What does he want to ask? What if it drives you and whatever this is away?

He caves, eyes not so bright when you pull apart the curtains and he’s met with the same look he’s been sporting these past few days. You do smile though, that smile that digs nails into his soul. You let him come in, already putting on a mask that fits too perfectly.

“What’s wrong...Are you mad at me?” Mikey asks tentatively like peeling a hangnail. You freeze on your way to the kitchen, looking down at your bare feet like the answer might sprout from beneath them. “Nothings wrong, was just busy is all” It’s a pathetic excuse and not entirely truthful because you’ve been stewing in your apartment knowing full well that the boy behind you has planted roots in your heart.

And it scares the shit out of you.

So you turn, that shield up so high that Mikey notices and the whiplash is hard when you close the distance and wrap your arms around his neck. “What? Miss me that much?” Your scent hits him like a fresh hit to an addict. Four days without the warmth of your skin burning him. Mikey wants to test that shield, destroy it with his bare hands and find the real you in there, he pulls back far enough to look into your eyes and drown in them.

He quietly accepts his fate right then and there, ready to hand over his heart into your hands and watch you squeeze. And you see it all, your chest tight and jaw set, you run a finger across his cheek in such soothing slow motion. You want to tell him that this isn’t worth the heartache and headache, that you won’t come around any time soon.

Instead, you start to strip off his gear, bit by bit, each carefully taken apart. You untie his sweater from around his waist, hands lingering and maping out every detail you want forever engraved in your brain. You grab his hand and put them on you, a silent agreement for him to do the same. Mikey strips you out of your hoodie, finding a sports bra beneath it, eyes glued to new skin as he kneels and hooks his fingers in your shorts and slides them down slowly.

You walk him to your room, hand tightly clasped around his and there’s no hesitation in your steps because you want this and he wants this but every question that’ll come from this will just have to wait. You truly do go about things the wrong way.

The innocent touching makes your heart twist, the way his blue eyes run over you like you’re stolen art and he’s got dibs on it. It’s so sweet, asking his permission with a look to strip you of your bra, to run his hands towards the newly exposed flesh. It guts you so deeply when he pulls you close against him and just holds you, cause it dawns on you that Mikey has never held somebody this intimately. You shiver with the way he circles your back in ghostly touches, just basking in what it feels to feel your skin so close to his.

“We don’t have to do this” ‘I don’t want to hurt you’

“It’s okay, I just...Don’t disappear on me like that please” Mikey feels you tighten your grip on him and it takes every inch of his resolve to not crumble and just say that he loves you, that he’s loved you from the moment you rested your head on his shoulder, from the moments you’ve kissed him and made his head so clouded with questions of ‘If’ and ‘maybe’ but he knows he won’t be met with the same words.

Maybe not now, or simply not at all.

So he holds you close, even as you start to tremble, feeling tears on his shoulder. You can’t say anything, you can’t say a single damn thing.

See I've already waited too long

And all my hope is gone

[forlorninquiry]

@weiwuxiian:

He led Lan Wangji out of the party once most of them had gone home. Xichen was drunk, and there was no one stopping them as they went down the hill to a secluded corner of the Cloud Recesses. Even Wei Wuxian had only been here once, a few months ago. Now, it looked even more abandoned as it had been, even more forlorn than ever. Xichen mentioned before that no one ever trepassed this area anymore, because of the memory it holds, and Lan Wangji, even more so.

Short, fine dew grass spreads across the valley as Wei Wuxian led a blindfolded Lan Wangji neart a little hut. He knew that the other man knew this route too well, too familiar, that he might have second thoughts whether to come with him. But Wei Wuxian was never one to sit still or allowed something like that to stop what he wanted to do. So a blindfold fixed it, added with his coaxing of wanting to give him a surprise.

Lan Wangji never liked materialistic gifts. The fact that with his status, there isn’t anything he wouldn’t get if he wanted, didn’t help. So that was out of the question. But he knew—oh, Lan Wangj is as transparent as a transluscent glass. There were knots, bitter memory stuck in the hollow of his chest, suffocating him for years that even the Gusu Lan Sect Leader wasn’t fully aware. Wei Wuxian wanted to untie those knots for him, or attempt trying.

A shadow darkens the smile of his face as he pushed the door ajar with one hand, while slipping the blindfold off Lan Wangji’s eyes with the other. There, in the center of the single room of the hut, lied the guqin Wangji. Next to it was Chenqing. These were the only set of new items in the room. Everything else was untouched, including the desk where his mother had used to display the calligraphy and drawings gifted to her by her sons.

❝Lan Zhan, lets stay here tonight, alright?❞ He took his hands with both hands now, pulling the hesitant man into the room, ❝You can tell me all about your mother. I always wanted to know what sort of person was Mrs. Lan. I wanted to know the person who raised you, who also made you shut yourself from the world. Tell me everything. Keep nothing from me, even if it’s sad. Promise me, can you?❞

Lan Wangji intentionally did not share in the drink that Lan Xichen and a few others seemed to partake in. He wanted to experience the evening and the night with clarity and with the full presence of mind, no matter what the evening held in store. By the time the attendees had begun to leave for the night, Wei Wuxian called him over. In his mind, he wondered and suspected what happened now that they were leaving, but he didn’t dare to assume. The blindfold confused him somewhat, because where would they go that he would need to be blinded? Lan Wangji didn’t want to remind Wei Wuxian that he spent over thirty years in the Cloud Recesses and could walk the paths expertly and unaided with the blindfold on. But being urged to follow him in that voice - Lan Wangji was willing to let himself be blindfolded, and follow him while he was weak at the knees for that coaxing voice of his. 

The journey is not terribly long, and he knows when they near the end of the destination. They turn and step onto a landing, and he hears a door. But, it wasn’t the door to his own room. As he feels the fabric at his eyes slip away, Lan Wangji’s eyes round in surprise. All thought of what he thought he was being led to vanish, because he didn’t expect this. 

The sight before him comes into full view, and the taller man freezes. He even stops breathing for a moment as he looks around the single-room space that hasn’t held a living soul in decades. It was exactly as he remembered it from the vague memories of childhood blurred now by time, and exactly how he had left it when he visited last. Voices, sounds, and the smells of this room from his memories surge suddenly, and Lan Wangji actively keeps his mind above the sea of visions that press in on him. The smell of his mother’s perfume lingering on his own clothing and hair from where he pressed his head into her shoulder… the sound of his name on her voice, and the way she would play silly, meaningless games with him and Lan Huan. How different he was, then. How different everything was, back then. 

Being here is suffocating. The bindings that he tied himself to keep his own feelings of sorrow and heartbreak hidden away from the world strained in a way that hadn’t hurt in so many years. It feels like a sharp, splitting feeling that rises in his throat and makes his teeth ache. 

But his hearing his name brings the numb silence back. His eyes dart to Wei Wuxian suddenly, almost too fast. How alien he must look to his husband… this vulnerability wasn’t a side of him that he wished to reveal or expose to anyone that didn’t already know: Lan Huan, and Lan Qiren - but even then he expended quite a bit of effort to hide that part of himself from them. How fragile he must appear, now. 

If it wasn’t for Wei Wuxian being here and taking his hands, Lan Wangji was certain that he would have turned away and fled to the comfort and safety of his own room. He likely would have avoided all mention of the situation for some time. But Lan Wangji curls his fingers around Wei Wuxian’s, looking deep into his darkened grey eyes and knowing that he truly saw him now for what he was. It was when he holds the other man’s warm hands in his cool grip that he unexpectedly feels a sense of calm take him over. Even the slight shiver in his fingers is stilled as he follows Wei Wuxian guiding him into the room. This had not happened before. Was this what Wei Ying felt every time he assured him it was going to be alright, that he didn’t need to explain himself? What had before been an insurmountable grief that the memories of this room brought him now felt manageable. Lan Wangji feels more calm than he did when the room was revealed as he is led to where his guqin rested. 

There is a pause before he answers Wei Ying. He truly wants to know him, and he requested the privilege. He didn’t demand it of him. He didn’t cite some uncaring obligation to know simply because he was his husband now. And it was because of the manner of his request, and his desire to understand the most formative part of his youth, that he dips his chin in a nonverbal agreement to his promise. “Sit with me.” His voice is solemn as he lets his hands slip from his husband’s and sits with proper form in front of Wangji. 

There is a long silence where Lan Zhan looks down at his guqin as he formulates where to begin. His hands even rise to take their place at the strings with their ever-present grace, but he does not yet play. 

“She doted on us. Lan Xichen preferred our father’s presence, and I preferred hers. She was everything I desired to be. She was gentle, and affectionate, and playful, and sentimental. She retained everything that we produced for her. Childish art, calligraphy, flowers.” There are pauses in between his sentences as he thinks on what to say next. The simple words he chooses are noticeably stilted - he has difficulty saying such personal feelings even with simplicity. Such personal thoughts did not need to be dressed in alliteration or poetic imagery. “Her circumstances kept her locked in this very house. She could not leave these walls. Visits were permitted only once a month. It was a time I looked forward to, and she did as well. I remember happiness, laughter, and smiling… when I was with her. Even my brother knew how I was back then.” In his mind, he makes the decision to show him the simple paintings of her he had done periodically when he worried that his memory of her face would fade from memory. They are not here, however, and so he doesn’t immediately bring them up.

A thin ghost of a smile lifts the corners of his lips as he recalls those times - but the smile vanishes so quickly it would be easy to doubt that it was ever there. A finger curls, and a carefully-manicured nail plucks a note from Wangji. His other hand slides on the vibrating string, and the note transforms. Then another followed it after a long silence, not unlike his slow recollection of thoughts: the silence between the notes often held more meaning simply from the absence of sound, much like how his memories seemed all the more poignant from the absence of explicit description. What wasn’t said was often more powerful than what was.

“I refused to understand that she passed away.” Even though his eyes sting and his vision wavers from the simple recollection of this event, he continues talking though he closes his eyes to hide the reddening tinge around his eyes from Wei Wuxian. The number of times he had seen tears on his face could be counted on one hand. “Every month, for two seasons, I waited for her to appear. Lan Xichen had to collect me from the threshold we stepped over not moments ago when I fell asleep while waiting. I refused to leave otherwise.” He doesn’t describe the utter loneliness that muted him and turned his visage into stone. He doesn’t describe how foreign the hurt in his chest was and how empty he felt. The transformation could be implied from the way he described himself as a child to how he was when Wei Wuxian met him so long ago in the Cloud Recesses.

The heartbreak comes again, and Lan Wangji clenches his jaw tight as his fingers press down flat on the strings of his guqin to quiet them abruptly with a dissonant sound. How jarring the sudden silencing of these strings is, he thinks to himself, isn’t this what happened to me back then? 

“The passing of my mother marked the end of my childhood.” It feels strange to claim ownership of this ancient grief that carved its presence into his soul simply by saying ‘my mother’. It feels oddly liberating, and he feels as though he can breathe again as the crushing ache in his chest eases. Letting out a slow breath, Lan Zhan opens his eyes and looks up at Wei Ying. 

The night is kind to his face. He is beautiful at all times, but the play of moonlight on his features bring an elegance that makes Lan Wangji in awe of just how lucky he is that he had a second chance with him. Unlike the times before he met Wei Wuxian, he didn’t have to be alone again. 

The self-imposed bindings over this old hurt eased, and Lan Zhan felt like a weight was ever-so-slowly lifting from him. 

The look on his face softens in a way no one else but his husband got to see, and his lips part to speak again even as he begins to play again. “Wei Ying… what do you want to know about her?”