#she's got broken horns filled in with amber and one of the amber pieces has a spider in it (cool)

[fray]

made a new alt for a butch oc kinda recently.

been playing/queuing as dps again with her so here's some stuff of him + she/they (y)urianger :3

[solangelover]

A Glowing Future

Submission by @satans-little-helper33

This piece takes place right after Nico’s final chapter at the end of Blood of Olympus.

Main Characters: Will Solace and Nico DiAngelo

Solangelo fluff

Nico’s encounter with Eros had cracked him wide open and left him feeling vulnerable and broken, forced to face his own reality and feelings, exposed in front of Jason; he was forced to share his darkest secret for a god’s amusement. Nico now knew he could trust Jason to keep it to himself, though, and he was beginning to realize that in order to crawl out of his self-constructed prison, his barriers first had to be torn down.

The feelings that had haunted him for so long—the shame, the fear, the denial—caused by the mentality of the 1940s he’d grown up in began to fade away. 

He was no longer that scared little boy who had been enraptured by the presence of a powerful demigod, and now that he had finally confessed his past feelings to Percy, Nico felt that he could finally move forward. 

Hades’s son made his way back down the hill to where Will was waiting for him, wearing scrubs,  jeans, and a crooked smile that made his heart skip a beat.

--------

“Sorry I didn’t come visit you in the infirmary,” Nico said, wearing the hint of a smile.

“It’s alright, I forgive you,” Will Solace said, his mouth set tight but laughter in his eyes, like he was trying to stay mad at Nico and failing.

“You wanted me to stay there--”

“For at least three days. Doctor’s orders.” Will started to lead Nico back toward the infirmary.

“Really, I’m Fine,” Nico began, but then his knees buckled and Will hoisted him back up.

“Uh huh. Right. Let’s get you to a bed.”

--------

Even after Coach Hedge’s nature magic/sports drink concoction, which had sustained Nico for a while, the arduous task of shadow-travelling the Athena Parthenos across the world had caught up with him again.

When Nico opened his eyes again, he was in the infirmary half sitting, half lying on a piece of furniture that was somewhere between a bed and a stretcher. 

“Welcome back to the world of the living,” a familiar voice intoned, “have some ambrosia.”

Will sat on a chair beside the bed; the room of the infirmary he was in was long and lined with similar bed-stretchers, separated by white curtains that shimmered in different colors when they were moved.

Several other beds were occupied with demigods sporting now-relatively-minor injuries left over from the battle with Gaia and the monster army: a daughter of Hecate 2 beds over was glaring at her leg in a cast as if she was insulted by the inconvenience.

Nico turned back to Will, and noticed that beside the bed there was a small table with a baggie of ambrosia squares on it. Nico reached out to pick one up but encountered a familiar problem: his fingers passed right through the baggie and ambrosia, as if he was becoming one with the shadows permanently. His hand appeared fuzzy around the edges, as if he was dissolving.

“Uhh, maybe if I try again--”

Will frowned, then sighed. “This is what happens when you overextend yourself. Here, let me help you.” He picked up a square and held it out to feed Nico.

Nico leaned back. “What are you doing?”

“No arguing. Open up.” Solace said, his tone making it clear that he wasn’t taking no for an answer.

Will took none of Nico’s shit. That was one of the things Nico found most endearing and annoying about him; no matter how hard the son of Hades tried to push him away, Will simply refused to let him.

Nico took the ambrosia, and after a few moments they looked back at his hand, which seemed to be coming back into sharper focus.

“You had me worried there, diAngelo,” Will said, smiling, and briefly gripped his hand to check if it was now solid. Day of the Dead skeletons tapped out a jig in Nico’s chest.

“You were worried...about me?” Nico said, still wrapping his mind around the fact that Will had wanted a death demigod to visit him in the infirmary.

“Get some sleep.” he said, closing the ziplock bag.

“I’m not tired.” 

“Well you will be in a second. CLOVIS,” he called out. The calf-like son of Morpheus appeared around the corner and Will told him “we’ve got another stubborn one,” throwing a teasing smile Nico’s way.

Clovis yawned. “I’m all over it,” he said, and--despite Nico’s protests--touched his forehead. The son of Hades drifted off into a deep sleep.

----------------------------------

Nico awoke feeling more rested than he had in weeks. 

He quickly sat up, suddenly worried, because the last time he’d felt this rested, he’d been asleep for three days.

Nico stopped a passing Apollo healer. 

“How long have I been out??”

The healer scratched his chin, trying to estimate. “About 6 hours?” He walked off.

Will walked into the infirmary, arguing with a Demeter camper; something about herbs and supplies? He turned and spotted Nico.

“Well, good evening, sleepyhead! How was your nap? Feeling better?”

“I think 6 hours is slightly more than a nap.” Nico retorted.

“Well, count yourself lucky that Clovis has learned to control his powers better. A while ago he put a camper out for a week by accident.” Will made his way toward him. “Can you stand?”

“Um, let’s find out.” Nico swung his legs over the bed and got up. Aside from stumbling a little, he was feeling much better. Nico marvelled at the healing powers of sleep.

As if he read his mind, Will said, “Oh yeah, sleep has endless benefits.”

Nico twisted his skull ring. “Hey, I came in here at about noon, which means--”

 The conch horn signalling the dinner feast echoed across the valley. Will grinned. “I think that’s our cue.”

--------

The Half Blood campfire that night still carried with it an aura of elation spurred from disbelief, that they had won the battle against Gaia and made allies with the Romans, and a sort of desperation to feel alive brought about by all of those who had died in the process. Nico felt a pang for Leo, though he had a strange feeling that his death wasn’t as straightforward as it seemed.

Will sat by him at the bonfire, the Apollo cabin on his left and Nico on his right, leaving Nico unsure as to whether Will had sat next to him or his cabin. He chastised himself for hoping that it was the former.

The enchanted flames in the brazier blazed brightly with the energy of the campers, and Nico felt the warmth flare in his heart as he cast a glance at the son of Apollo, the light from the fire reflecting off of his blonde hair. 

--------

Nico lay in his bunk that night after the campfire, staring up at the ceiling of the Hades cabin that was inset with precious stones. He quickly realized that there was no way he was falling asleep any time soon, and he climbed out of bed. The whole room was drenched in liquid shadows, and despite his exhaustion after the journey shadow travelling with the Athena Parthenos, Nico stepped forward and became one with the darkness with ease.

  He melted from the shadow of a tree, finding himself by the lakeside at the edge of Camp Half-Blood. A full moon cast a pale glow on the night. Nico walked down to the sand and sat down; the silence was intoxicating, and Nico closed his eyes and listened to the gentle lapping of small waves against the shore. Suddenly he felt something nearby, heard the brush rustle, and wondered whether the cleaning harpies had come to eat him for being out past curfew. Nico drew his Stygian sword, which seemed to pull at the darkness like a magnet, and got ready to defend himself. What actually emerged from the brush was Will, who abruptly spotted Nico’s sword and laughed quietly. 

“Expecting a fight?”

Nico quickly sheathed his sword. “What are you doing out here?” He noticed for the first time that Will had something in his hands.

He held up two goblets. “Mind if I join you?”

Will was the only one at camp who was not blatantly wary of him; after several years as an outcast, the effect felt foreign.

Will sat down next to the son of Hades and spoke to one of the goblets--“Pomegranate juice”--and handed it to Nico as the cup filled with garnet liquid. 

“Are these--” Nico began.

“Glasses from the dining pavilion? Yeah. I snuck a couple out before dinner ended.” He wore his trademark mischievous smile. “I noticed you asked for pomegranate juice at dinner.” Nico felt his face grow warm as Will turned to his own cup and requested ginger beer. Soon the glass was filled with amber.

“It...reminds me of my mom.” Nico said quietly. “Not Persephone, ironically. When Bianca, my mom, and I...” his voice caught on Bianca’s name “when we lived in New Orleans, I was little, but I remember her giving us pomegranate juice on special occasions. It was a tough thing to find where we lived, so she would only have it on celebrations or...when my dad came to visit. I was just a baby when she was murdered.”

He stared down in silence at his drink.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know. Bianca, your mom, none of it,” Will said gently.

“I know,” Nico muttered, his voice nonetheless doubtful.

Will placed his hand on Nico’s, and he tensed, ready to pull away, but then instead turned his palm up to hold Will’s. 

Nico turned his head to look up at Will, his pale blue eyes shining in the moonlight, almost periwinkle, an indiscernible expression on his face.

“You’re amazing, you know that?” Will murmured, his gaze taking Nico in. Will looked into his dark eyes as if he could perceive all of him, good and bad, and was still enraptured by what he saw. 

Will reached out hesitantly, as if to touch Nico’s face, but stopped before, gaging his reaction, and when the son of Hades didn’t pull away, he brushed the ink-black hair out of his face.

Involuntarily, Nico’s eyes closed and his heart began to race. His life had, for years, been spent more with the dead than the living. No one had touched him tenderly for what felt like eons, not since Bianca, and only now did he realize how starved for physical affection he had been. Not just starved, he thought to himself, afraid of it… 

And in that moment he decided that he was not going to be afraid anymore.

  Will’s gaze moved from Nico’s eyes to his lips, and he leaned in carefully as if approaching a wild animal. Nico closed the distance, and as their lips met, his life bloomed before him like a chrysanthemum opening layer by layer. Suddenly Nico could see a future before him that wasn’t ruled by death and solitude. 

Unnoticed by either of them, a dead mouse at the edge of the forest was brought back to life and scampered off into the trees.

 - Alya

@satans-little-helper33

My writing blog: @from-story-to-screen

[satans-little-helper33]

Solangelo Fanfiction

This piece takes place starting at the end of Nico’s scene at the end of Blood of Olympus.

Main Characters: Will Solace and Nico DiAngelo

Nico’s encounter with Eros had cracked him wide open and left him feeling vulnerable and broken, forced to face his own reality and feelings, exposed in front of Jason; he was forced to share his darkest secret for a god’s amusement. Nico now knew he could trust Jason to keep it to himself, though, and he was beginning to realize that in order to crawl out of his self-constructed prison, his barriers first had to be torn down.

The feelings that had haunted him for so long—the shame, the fear, the denial—caused by the mentality of the 1940s he’d grown up in began to fade away. 

He was no longer that scared little boy who had been enraptured by the presence of a powerful demigod, and now that he had finally confessed his past feelings to Percy, Nico felt that he could finally move forward. 

Hades’s son made his way back down the hill to where Will was waiting for him, wearing scrubs,  jeans, and a mischievous/crooked smile that made his heart skip a beat.

“Sorry I didn’t come visit you in the infirmary,” Nico said, wearing the hint of a smile.

“It’s alright, I forgive you,” Will Solace said, his mouth set tight but laughter in his eyes, like he was trying to stay mad at Nico and failing.

“You wanted me to stay there--”

“For at least three days. Doctor’s orders.” Will started to lead Nico back toward the infirmary.

“Really, I’m Fine,” Nico began, but then his knees buckled and Will hoisted him back up.

“Uh huh. Right. Let’s get you to a bed.”

Even after Coach Hedge’s nature magic/sports drink concoction, which had sustained Nico for a while, the arduous task of shadow-travelling the Athena Parthenos across the world had caught up with him again.

When Nico opened his eyes again, he was in the infirmary half sitting, half lying on a piece of furniture that was somewhere between a bed and a stretcher. 

“Welcome back to the world of the living,” a familiar voice intoned, “have some ambrosia.”

Will sat on a chair beside the bed; the room of the infirmary he was in was long and lined with similar bed-stretchers, separated by white curtains that shimmered in different colors when they were moved.

Several other beds were occupied with demigods sporting now-relatively-minor injuries left over from the battle with Gaia and the monster army: a daughter of Hecate 2 beds over was glaring at her leg in a cast as if she was insulted by the inconvenience.

Nico turned back to Will, and noticed that beside the bed there was a small table with a baggie of ambrosia squares on it. Nico reached out to pick one up but encountered a familiar problem: his fingers passed right through the baggie and ambrosia, as if he was becoming one with the shadows permanently. His hand appeared fuzzy around the edges, as if he was dissolving.

“Uhh, maybe if I try again--”

Will frowned, then sighed. “This is what happens when you overextend yourself. Here, let me help you.” He picked up a square and held it out to feed Nico.

Nico leaned back. “What are you doing?”

“No arguing. Open up.” Solace said, his tone making it clear that he wasn’t taking no for an answer.

Will took none of Nico’s shit. That was one of the things Nico found most endearing and annoying about him; no matter how hard the son of Hades tried to push him away, Will simply refused to let him.

Nico took the ambrosia, and after a few moments they looked back at his hand, which seemed to be coming back into sharper focus.

“You had me worried there, diAngelo,” Will said, smiling, and briefly gripped his hand to check if it was now solid. Day of the Dead skeletons tapped out a jig in Nico’s chest.

“You were worried...about me?” Nico said, still wrapping his mind around the fact that Will had wanted a death demigod to visit him in the infirmary.

“Get some sleep.” he said, closing the ziplock bag

“I’m not tired.” 

“Well you will be in a second. CLOVIS,” he called out. The calf-like son of Morpheus appeared around the corner and Will told him “we’ve got another stubborn one,” throwing a teasing smile Nico’s way.

Clovis yawned. “I’m all over it,” he said, and--despite Nico’s protests--touched his forehead. The son of Hades drifted off into a deep sleep.

----------------------------------

Nico awoke feeling more rested than he had in weeks. 

He quickly sat up, suddenly worried, because the last time he’d felt this rested, he’d been asleep for three days.

Nico stopped a passing Apollo healer. 

“How long have I been out??”

The healer scratched his chin, trying to estimate. “About 6 hours?” He walked off.

Will walked into the infirmary, arguing with a Demeter camper; something about herbs and supplies? He turned and spotted Nico.

“Well, good evening, sleepyhead! How was your nap? Feeling better?”

“I think 6 hours is slightly more than a nap.” Nico retorted.

“Well, count yourself lucky that Clovis has learned to control his powers better. A while ago he put a camper out for a week by accident.” Will made his way toward him. “Can you stand?”

“Um, let’s find out.” Nico swung his legs over the bed and got up. Aside from stumbling a little, he was feeling much better. Nico marvelled at the healing powers of sleep.

As if he read his mind, Will said, “Oh yeah, sleep has endless benefits.”

Nico twisted his skull ring. “Hey, I came in here at about noon, which means--”

 The conch horn signalling the dinner feast echoed across the valley. Will grinned. “I think that’s our cue.”

The Half Blood campfire that night still carried with it an aura of elation spurred from disbelief, that they had won the battle against Gaia and made allies with the Romans, and a sort of desperation to feel alive brought about by all of those who had died in the process. Nico felt a pang for Leo, though he had a strange feeling that his death wasn’t as straightforward as it seemed.

Will sat by him at the bonfire, the Apollo cabin on his left and Nico on his right, leaving Nico unsure as to whether Will had sat next to him or his cabin. He chastised himself for hoping that it was the former.

The enchanted flames in the brazier blazed brightly with the energy of the campers, and Nico felt the warmth flare in his heart as he cast a glance at the son of Apollo, the light from the fire reflecting off of his blonde hair. 

Nico lay in his bunk that night after the campfire, staring up at the ceiling of the Hades cabin that was inset with precious stones. He quickly realized that there was no way he was falling asleep any time soon, and he climbed out of bed. The whole room was drenched in liquid shadows, and despite his exhaustion after the journey shadow travelling with the Athena Parthenos, Nico stepped forward and became one with the darkness with ease.

He melted from the shadow of a tree, finding himself by the lakeside at the edge of Camp Half-Blood. A full moon cast a pale glow on the night. Nico walked down to the sand and sat down; the silence was intoxicating, and Nico closed his eyes and listened to the gentle lapping of small waves against the shore. Suddenly he felt something nearby, heard the brush rustle, and wondered whether the cleaning harpies had come to eat him for being out past curfew. Nico drew his Stygian sword, which seemed to pull at the darkness like a magnet, and got ready to defend himself. What actually emerged from the brush was Will, who abruptly spotted Nico’s sword and laughed quietly. 

“Expecting a fight?”

Nico quickly sheathed his sword. “What are you doing out here?” He noticed for the first time that Will had something in his hands.

He held up two goblets. “Mind if I join you?”

Will was the only one at camp who was not blatantly wary of him; after several years as an outcast, the effect felt foreign.

Will sat down next to the son of Hades and spoke to one of the goblets--“Pomegranate juice”--and handed it to Nico as the cup filled with garnet liquid. 

“Are these--” Nico began.

“Glasses from the dining pavilion? Yeah. I snuck a couple out before dinner ended.” He wore his trademark mischievous smile. “I noticed you asked for pomegranate juice at dinner.” Nico felt his face grow warm as Will turned to his own cup and requested ginger beer. Soon the glass was filled with amber.

“It...reminds me of my mom.” Nico said quietly. “Not Persephone, ironically. When Bianca, my mom, and I...” his voice caught on Bianca’s name “when we lived in New Orleans, I was little, but I remember her giving us pomegranate juice on special occasions. It was a tough thing to find where we lived, so she would only have it on celebrations or...when my dad came to visit. I was just a baby when she was murdered.”

He stared down in silence at his drink.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know. Bianca, your mom, none of it,” Will said gently.

“I know,” Nico muttered, his voice nonetheless doubtful.

Will placed his hand on Nico’s, and he tensed, ready to pull away, but then instead turned his palm up to hold Will’s. 

Nico turned his head to look up at Will, his pale blue eyes shining in the moonlight, almost periwinkle, an indiscernible expression on his face.

“You’re amazing, you know that?” Will murmured, his gaze taking Nico in. Will looked into his dark eyes as if he could perceive all of him, good and bad, and was still enraptured by what he saw. 

Will reached out hesitantly, as if to touch Nico’s face, but stopped before, gaging his reaction, and when the son of Hades didn’t pull away, he brushed the ink-black hair out of his face.

Involuntarily, Nico’s eyes closed and his heart began to race. His life had, for years, been spent more with the dead than the living. No one had touched him tenderly for what felt like eons, not since Bianca, and only now did he realize how starved for physical affection he had been.

Will’s gaze moved from Nico’s eyes to his lips, and he leaned in carefully as if approaching a wild animal. Nico closed the distance, and as their lips met, his life bloomed before him like a chrysanthemum opening layer by layer. Suddenly Nico could see a future before him that wasn’t ruled by death and solitude. Unnoticed by either of them, a dead mouse at the edge of the forest was brought back to life and scampered off into the trees.

[merakiaes]

Queen Of Ashes - Daenerys Targaryen

Pairing: Daenerys Targaryen x sister!reader

Requested: No

Warnings/notes: Spoilers. I don’t know what this is even, I just wanted her dead.

Wordcount: 1179

Summary: You’re Dany’s older sister and watch her destroy King’s Landing.

Once upon a time, in a land long before burned to ash, there was two young princesses who loved their kingdom above all. 

Their names, were (Y/N) and Daenerys Targaryen. 

People say that madness and greatness are two sides of the same coin, that every time a new Targaryen is born, the gods toss the coin the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land.

And the two of you were great. 

In the cold lands of winter, you had fought together in the war to defeat the Night King, burning the snow with fire. 

But before you became fire, you had been water, quenching the thirst of every dying creature. 

The both of you gave and gave until you turned from sea to desert, but instead of dying of the heat, the sadness, the heartache; you took all of you pain and from your own ashes became fire.

While some women got lost in the flames, you were re-born from them, rising from the ashes of what you used to be, to what you would become.

As you gathered your armies, allies and raised your five dragons together, the people of Westeros slowly started to hope. Hope for a better ruler, a better life, and a better kingdom. 

But as you for the first time since mere children crossed the seas and stood on the shores of Westeros, you found that it wasn’t all that you had thought it to be. 

You lost and you lost and you lost. People, friends, lovers, allies. You only kept losing, the pain eating away at the two of you. 

But Daenerys had lost more than you ever had, this much everyone knew. And because of this, the people feared her instead of loving her, terrified that she would walk in the footsteps of your father. 

But you didn’t listen. You never listened, as you had still felt the love for the people deep in your heart. 

And you thought Dany did too. 

“I’m not here to be the queen of ashes.”  She had said. 

Yet here you were, in the land of summer, tiny pecks of snow falling down over the fire that burned, snowflakes swirling around in the air. Only it wasn’t snow.

The pride of what you hade become died in you when you saw them crying. Screaming. Reaching out their arms in one last desperate attempt to grip onto the hope that was fading away. And thus humanity died, when innocent souls paid the price.

The city blazed amber, but it wasn’t the brightness that made you look away. It was the knowledge that it was your sister who had done this.

For so long, people had talked about how you would walk in your father’s footsteps, spoken of how madness was like gravity; all it took was a little push. 

But had you listened? No. 

Everyone had called your sister dangerous when she started using her dragons to execute the people who wronged her, but she had always been your safe, despite being younger than you by five years.

You never seen it the way they did, they tried to tell you that damaged women were the most dangerous kind, because they already knew they could survive. They knew how to make hell feel like home, they didn’t depend on anyone.

But the way you saw it, pain changed people. It made them trust less, overthink more and shut people out. You were damaged, too. But you weren’t crazy. 

You had been to the darkness of hell, endured the most desolate times, and has been made strong through endurance. You learned how to walk with the fearlessness of a wolf, the bravery of a lion, and the fierceness of a dragon. 

And that was your strength. 

But while you had pieced your broken halo back together, Dany had taken her two halves and carved them into horns. 

The more she lost, the more she lost herself.

Yet, she remained beautiful. She was madness, sanity. She was hell and paradise all at the same time. 

She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was; she was a mess of gorgeous chaos, and finally, you could see it in her eyes.

And you tried. You tried so hard to keep her standing on the ground with her sanity intact, but the coin had already been tossed.

It had two sides, as promised. But as it turned out, you didn’t get a coin each, instead ending up one a side each on the same coin.  

And you were the one who got to keep that little smudge of water from back when you had still been innocent. And you had tried to use it for good, to be the anchor of the two of you. But not even the chilly breeze of your waves could calm Daenerys’s fire. 

All your life people had fashioned you into maimed princesses who needed saving from a dragon, but Daenerys had become the dragon.

After years of fighting against the very likes of your father to become Queens of the people, she was now breathing fire to send everyone through the hell she had been living in her whole life. 

She spilled every inch of the people’s hearts into the palms of her hands and you watched her paint the city with the colors of their pain. burning it to the ground. 

“I will take what is mine, with fire and blood.”.  She had always promised.

But you had also promised. Promised to make the world a better place, to fight only in the favor of the people and destroy anything coming in your way of full filling that mission. 

The breeze and smoke was pulling at your hair as you hovered in the air on dragonback, and for the first time since the first shock of fire had hit the city, you finally allowed yourself to look up from the screaming people to look at your sister. 

And what you saw, was something else entirely. 

She was smiling, just like your father had done when about to burn the city with wildfire. You remember the look in his eyes, the very same look now sparkling in your little sister’s eyes, visible as clear as day. 

All your life you had protected her. Defended her. It had always been the two of you. But as you looked at her, you realized that she was just flesh and blood. 

She wasn’t human anymore, she wasn’t your family. Not your sister. She was alone in this. And a Targaryen alone in the world was a terrible thing. 

“I’m not here to be the queen of ashes.” She had said. And you had believed her. 

But pain changed people, and it was up to every man and woman themselves to decide what to do with that. You could either wear it like armor, or you could let it consume you. 

You had done everything in your power to save her, tried to steer her on another path. But she was gone. She had taken everything from you. And now you wanted her dead. 

This was the fate she had sealed for herself.

Let her be the queen of ashes.

“Dracarys!”

[theredeclipse]

Spite, just a headcanon about Adam Taurus in the upcoming Vol 7 of RWBY and Adam’s backstory (trigger warning, it gets dark)

Btw, I just wrote this over the past like, 30 min and this probably does not have good grammar. I literally just came up with this out of the blue so if anything doesn’t make any sense, please tell me and I’ll go back and edit, this is just a rough draft

-Adam’s mother lives in a house outside mantle

-Adam sends her money and a letter monthly

-The gang shows up in atlas and Adam’s mom hears about Blake and goes to ask if she’s heard from Adam because last month he said he was coming to visit finally and just had one more “thing to finish”

-Mama asks if he came with Blake because it’s been a month and she was getting worried, she’s heard about Blake in his letters and even tho she heard they had a “disagreement”, it couldn’t possibly be anything worse than an argument

-We get Adam’s backstory through the eyes of the mother, whose just finally happy to meet the wonderful girl that Adam talked so much about

-she takes Blake to her house and there’s an old picture of Adam’s mother and father on wedding day

-Adam’s father is tall, brown hair, blue eyes, bull horns that stretch far backwards off his head(“was a real pain when he would turn in bed” she’d say)

-Adam’s mother has black hair, Amber eyes, and cow ears on the top of her head

-both were forced into the Schnee dust mines when Adam’s mother was pregnant( money was tight and it couldn’t have been as bad as some people said right? The advertisements seemed nice enough) (Schnee dust managers saw two able bodies and a future worker)

-Adam was born into the dust mines

-crayon pictures of Adam with his parents framed because they wouldn’t have cameras in the Schnee dust mine

-Adam’s father was a proud and passionate man, no unlike his son

-Adam’s father saw some Faunus being abused and stepped in, accidentally killing the abusers

-Schnee employers decide to make an example of Adam’s father and have a public execution (public only to the Faunus workers that is)

-Adam and his mother are in the crowd, Adam is twelve and too young to be a worker yet( they usually wait until they’re fifteen to mark their investments and put them to work)

-Adam sees his father about to die and tries to get the other Faunus to help save his fathers life. They’re all too scared and don’t want to die, even Adam’s mother is too afraid of losing Adam as well and tries to stop him

-Adam rushes to the hastily built execution platform alone and tries to fight back but a twelve year old doesn’t stand a chance against eight full grown men

-Adam just gets front row seats the his father getting hung

-Adam’s father tries to say something but the rope is too tight, all he can do is look on as his son is dragged away crying as the world grows darker

-Adam’s mother rushes after her son, the last thing she has in this hell of a world and is captured and brought along with him

-They put both of them in cages and the Schnee guards try to come up with some way to punish them

-one of the senior guards looks up to see Adam glaring at him from his mother’s lap, tears long since dried even tho his mother clings to him and silently cries to not upset the guards

-the guard looks into those blue eyes filled with so much fire and spite... and he comes up with an idea

-he puts one of the branders in the fire and explains his plans to the guards

-Adam and his mother can’t hear what they’re saying but they both get a feeling of trepidation and Adam’s mother clings him tighter to her chest

-he gets two of the guards to drag the child out and gets two more to hold the mother so she can watch

-they put Adam on the ground and three more guards come forward to hold his arms, legs, and head still

-the head guard brings the brand out of the fire and Adam sees the three letters that have damned him for all his life

-Adam starts struggling harder while his mother screams and begs them to stop, all the while the monster creeps ever closer, his eyes reflecting glee in what he-it’s about to do

-the monster reaches Adam and holds the brand over his face, the smoking, terrible red contrasting from the blue of the overhead sky that looks so much like his father’s eyes

-the monster says “look at the passion in this one, an animal this wild needs to be broken in sooner than others or else they would have to be put down. You should be happy boy, I’m saving your life” it laughs and the monsters unsteady hands bring the brand that Adam hadn’t taken his eyes off gets slightly closer to his face, causes Adam to start to hyperventilate

-the monster steadies itself and looks up at the mother whose gone deathly silent, the whites of her eyes visible and a deranged desperation glinting in them

-the monster demands that she be grateful to have only lost one precious thing in her life, that this was mercy

-she doesn’t take her eyes off her precious boy, who would look up at the sky with innocence only a child could have, as he shook and his breathes came out to fast for him to actually be getting any air

-the monster, upset that the mother didn’t even acknowledge his presence, scowls and looks back at the boy whose eyes haven’t left the glowing brand that hovers before his face

-it pushes the brand into the skin

-At first, Adam felt intense heat and let out a choked gasp, sounding to all the unfair world like the scream that was supposed to come out was swallowed by the pain as well

-Adam’s shaking became more spasmodic and harsh as more choked gasps came flying past his lips

-Adam’s right eye was squeezed shut, blackness enveloping that side of his vision

-Adam’s left eye did not have the option of blackness, the bright crimson red that enveloped it’s sight blinding and disintegrating every tear that his soon to be destroyed tear duct could provide

-more choked gasps came out of Adams throat at much faster intervals

-Adam opened his right eye, saw the monster smiling down at him but looked past him, at the bright blue sky that was so much like his father’s eyes, the man that went after his goals and did whatever necessary to do the right thing

-the monster noticed his open eye and put it’s head in the way

-the choked noise that had been trying to break free finally did, an all-powerful scream that even made the monster pause

-the world got dark again and Adam tried to open his eye again, to see the blue sky that filled him with comfort

-but then the blackness of his right eye was filled with red

-Adam grew terrified, not wanting the pain that had begun to fade to start with again on the other side

-But then the heavy metal that Adam had almost let become used to left his face and the sky became blue again

-he looked up, his left eye all but useless, but that did not lessen the shock that overrun his his already diminished soul

-the bodies of the six monsters were laying in pieces, scattered around the room

-Adam looked behind himself, searching for his mother who held him and comforted him whenever the guards would beat him or he’d cry because of the hunger in his stomach

-she sat kneeling beside the bars where the guards had let her slump down, staring wide eyed, not a damaged part on her but two monsters laying bisected at the naval behind her

-Adam stares into his mother’s eyes, one eye expressing fear and the other trying to express itself however it could

-Adam’s mother ran with her unconscious baby in her arms as fast as she could before any of the guards could come investigate

-they snuck out and took refuge in the wilderness, where, not 2 days later, they found a little organization known as the white fang camping in the woods

-Adam was given medical attention by the horrified Faunus, his mother never leaving his side as he tossed and turned in his sleep

-A young woman named Sienna Kahn was in charge of this branch of a relatively new organization that was pro Faunus and Faunus rights

-she visited the family almost everyday to make sure they were okay

-when Adam woke up, he was cautious that these White Fang members were like the other Faunus in the mines, pathetic and unwilling to help do the right thing

-Sienna assuaged his fears, regaling him of the many victories that the White Fang had accomplished and Adam grew enamored

-Adam’s mother was just happy to see her son smile, however small it was

[aelixandra]

Dreaming On Your Feet: Chapter 32

Read on Ao3!

Summary: Aelin Galathynius is one of the newest company members of the Rifthold Ballet Theatre, and she is eager to make all of her dreams a reality. She has the talent, the ambition, the walls no one can get past, and the thick skin that no one can get under. Except for new principal dancer Rowan Whitethorn. He’s arrogant, talented, and infuriating - and they just might have more in common than they think.

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Chapter 32: Romeo & Juliet - Act Three, Part Two

Act II had been mostly him, but Act III . . .

Act III was all her.

Rowan stood in the wings, watching and wondering what she would do.

Because unlike any moment in Giselle or Nutcracker, she was now completely alone on the stage of the Rifthold Opera House.

It was hers.

He watched as Aelin shifted on the ground. She rose to her knees and reached a hand in the direction of the Capulets’ exit, her expression one of utter hopelessness as she sank back to her knees. She lowered her arm slowly, tension evident in her fingers as she wrung her hands together.

She looked like she was about to cry.

She stood up slowly, running a few steps towards her bedroom door, stopping when she realized that her efforts to plead with her parents would be futile. Her gaze wandered as she hugged herself, the knuckles of her fingers white.

Then she spotted the shawl, crumpled and forgotten on the ground.

His Juliet sank to her knees, picking up the fabric and running it along her cheek, closing her eyes as she remembered Romeo. As she remembered him, he realized. She stood again, letting the shawl fall from her fingers as she made her way to the bed. Turning around the face the audience fully, she sat on its edge.

The music began to grow.

It began like the bedroom pas, but it quickly became a theme all her own.

A melody for Juliet alone.

Rowan watched and listened as the French horns soared above the rest of the music, wrapping their melody around her. He had never seen anything like this; he could see the music filling every muscle in her body, relaxing her face into an expression of steely resolve.

He knew that expression.

It sent a thrill through his heart.

Aelin wasn’t playing Juliet anymore. She never had been.

She was Juliet.

She rose from the bed, the embodiment of the music that surrounded her. She picked up her shawl from the ground, holding it high above her as she arched into a port de bras back, one leg extended in a tendu. She ran in a large, elegant circle around the stage once before exiting into the wings – in fact, he realized, she exited into the wing right behind the one where he stood.

He held his breath as she came into the edge of his view.

Her breaths were quick as she passed him to stand at the wing’s edge for her next entrance. He didn’t dare touch her or make his presence known out of fear of breaking her concentration.

The lights slowly came up onstage to reveal the character of Friar Laurence again, pacing in prayer before going into an onstage archway.

But Rowan wasn’t watching him.

He was looking at the way the onstage lights cast a dim, amber glow around Aelin’s silhouette. The shadows accented the lines of her long, lean frame, the muscles of her back visible above the top of her costume before she tossed that beautiful gold hair back over her shoulder.

It reminded him of that night in the studio when she had told him about Sam, when the warm lamplight glowed like embers around her.

The first night he had gotten a glimpse of her heart of fire.

She went back out onstage, and Rowan watched her every movement. The desperate clutching of her shawl as she pleaded with the Friar for help. The uncertain flickering of her gaze between the Friar and the potion vial he offered to her. The way she held it away from her at arm’s length as though it might bite as the scene shifted back to Juliet’s bedroom.

During especially brilliant performances, Rowan had heard of dancers who couldn’t remember moments or even entire sections from their time onstage – the line between them and their characters was nearly invisible.

He wondered if that was what he was watching. If she would remember any of it.

Then of course, he wasn’t without bias; if he thought back to every time he had seen Aelin dance, he couldn’t recall a single time that wasn’t brilliant.

Now was no different.

She wasn’t even really dancing, and he still couldn’t take his eyes off of her as the Capulets reentered.

Not during her melancholy duet with Chaol, not when everyone else left the stage again. Not as she warred with herself over whether to take the potion or not. Not as she collapsed to the floor as the potion took effect and she struggled to pull herself back onto the bed.

Before he knew it, the stage went black.

Rowan heard the soft whir of the fly system as the crypt set came down in the darkness.

He ran his hands through his hair, watching as the lights came back up to a dim, eerie blue and revealed the Capulets dressed in black cloaks. They stood around Juliet, who laid supposedly dead on  A small contigent of ensemble dancers processed across the stage, dressed in black and carrying electric candles.

It was a dark, tragic scene – and the one he was about to enter.

Rowan fastened his own dark cloak with a clasp at the neck. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

When he opened them again, he slipped onstage into the shadows, joining the scene to mourn the death of the woman he loved more than anything in the world.

----------

Lysandra stood in the wings, watching Rowan slide into the onstage darkness and hide behind a set piece. The moment he disappeared, she pulled her phone out from its hiding spot in the bodice of her costume. Making sure the brightness was at its lowest, she opened the camera app and starting recording.

She had done the same thing for the balcony and bedroom pas de deux. After seeing the way they had reacted to each other in the ballroom scene, she had a feeling that they might want to remember tonight for a long time.

She felt Aedion standing next to her. “Got a good angle?” he whispered.

Lysandra nodded, giving him a sign to hush as Rowan emerged into the light from his hiding place.

Here we go.

His back to Lysandra, Rowan leaned on the stone slab as though it were the only thing holding him up. She could feel the grief rolling off of him in waves as he pushed himself off and away from the set piece.

He took a couple of steps further, shedding his cloak before Chaol noticed him. Chaol rose from his knees and made to attack Rowan, but Rowan was faster – he pulled the prop dagger from his belt and stabbed him.

As Chaol fell to the ground, Rowan dropped the dagger and rushed to Aelin. He clutched one of her hands to his face, but when he let it go, it fell limply back to her side. Then tried both of her arms, but to no avail. Finally, he slung one of her arms over his shoulder, his other arm wrapped around her waist as he dragged her body off of the slab she laid upon.

As he turned and carried her across the stage, Lysandra felt a pricking behind her eyes. She hadn’t known Rowan Whitethorn very long, but she knew he was a fantastic dancer. She also knew that he was usually collected and levelheaded. But now – now, she felt like she was seeing a side of him he rarely showed anyone.

Except for Aelin, she thought quietly as she continued to watch. He attempted to manipulate Aelin into some lifts, but it was no use.

Finally, Aelin’s body fell back to the ground. Grasping one of her hands, Rowan dragged the body of his beloved Juliet across the stage floor. It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t pretty.

But gods above, it was the most vulnerable she had ever seen him. She felt tears slide down her cheeks.

He tried picking Aelin up twice more into some lifts, but both times, she wound up back on the ground. Finally, he cradled her with one arm around her back and the other under her knees.

Rowan tipped his head to the sky, and Lysandra loosed a shuddering breath. His eyes were screwed shut, his mouth open in a silent, anguished, broken cry.

It was a picture of complete, utter, shattering grief.

He was falling apart before her very eyes. She didn’t even know that was possible.

He carried Aelin back to her resting place, setting her back down with heartbreaking gentleness. Then he pulled a vial from his belt – the poison.

Rowan bent over Aelin, pressing his lips to hers in one last kiss as the music seemed to shudder. Then he uncorked the vial, lifted it to his lips, and drank.

Lysandra watched as Rowan’s body seized, the vial clattering to the ground. He caressed Aelin’s hand once more before he slid down the steps. He rolled to his back, his hands outstretched over his head –

Then his eyes closed.

Lysandra exhaled as the music shifted, her focus going to Aelin.

Aelin’s fingers twitched. She ran a hand across her forehead and eyes as she awoke, slowly pushing herself up to a sitting position. She looked around, her gaze finally landing on the two giant angels that loomed above her. Startled, she pushed herself off of the bed and wandered frantically around the stage.

She came across Paris first.

She rolled him onto his back, then drew back with a hand to her chest. She bent over and picked up the dagger, realizing that he was dead. She dropped the dagger in bewilderment, crossing back across the stage. She turned around –

And her gaze landed on Romeo’s lifeless body.

Lysandra held her breath as her best friend slowly approached the man she loved.

Aelin knelt beside him, laying her hands on his chest. She shook him lightly at first, then more and more frantically. She bent forward and kissed him, suddenly recoiling with a hand to her lips. Poison. Realization dawned on her face as she wrapped her arms around him and lifted his upper body into an embrace, clutching him desperately. Her face began to crumple as she set him back down.

She was shaking.

Then as the music built, Aelin opened her mouth in a silent, gut-wrenching scream of agony, her face twisted in grief, tears shining on her cheeks.

Lysandra’s vision blurred, and she suddenly became aware of the steady stream of tears spilling from her own eyes as she continued to record.

Aelin shoved herself up from the ground, searching for the vial. She found it quickly, but when she lifted it to her lips, she realized it was empty.

Then she remembered the dagger.

She lifted it off the floor from beside Paris’s body, brushing her hair away from her face. She grasped the dagger –

And stabbed herself in the stomach.

Her mouth fell open from the pain as she collapsed in a heap, clutching her stomach with one hand as the dagger clattered to the floor. Weakly, she began trying to push herself across the floor with one arm and her legs, trying to get back to where her beloved’s body lay. Lysandra could see her strength fading quickly as she made it to the bed, slowly climbing on top of it.

She crawled to the other side, lying on her stomach as she reached one hand over to Romeo’s body, her fingertips grazing his chest.

The agony in Aelin’s expression brought a fresh wave of tears to Lysandra’s eyes.

Aelin’s body seized once more before she rolled onto her back, arms outstretched over her head as she closed her eyes.

Lysandra swiped the tears away with one hand, whispering the words to herself as the lights dimmed and the curtains began to close.

“There never was a story of more woe

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

[agapaic]

[fic] rising upside down: end [3/3]

he tian x mo guan shan

tags/notes: angst, swearing, allusions to sex, inspired by this song, artwork i commissioned by robnemmon, and a recent conversation with @19daysruinedmylife. thank you and love to franki @uneballe-unmort for lending me her mind with this one.

synopsis: jian yi disappears on the second day of high school. how does he tian tell guan shan that he’s going too?

links: part one | part two | read on ao3

Guan Shan’s footprints stain the floorboards as he steps through his bedroom, towel loose around his hips, steam curling behind him, and he cracks open a window. City lights glare back at him, engines and car horns a discordant blare into his room. His skin is shower-warm and slightly damp to the touch, and the humidity pushes back at him hot and close.

He swipes the beads from his skin with his towel and pulls on a pair of briefs. A sniff at a balled-up t-shirt on the floor, a check for stains, and he shrugs that over too, neckline dampening from the water that clings to his hair and slides down his neck, the air hot and humid enough that he never quite feels dry.

On his bed, his phone screen is lit up with a stream of notifications, and he plucks it from the sheets and swipes to his most recent messages.

Got a free ticket for the game tonight. You in?

He glances at the sender—a group chat with a bunch of guys he knows but isn’t friends with; acquaintances of circumstance. How many people does he know but isn’t friends with? How many social circles does he swim through like a trembling shadow, never finding its place, gone when the sun goes down and swallowed whole by the night?

He thinks about this, and takes in the room: bed (too small, unmade), second-hand bureau (clothes spilling out of broken drawers and onto the floor), a desk (worn, scratched with the idle slices of a pen knife, and smothered under magazines and wrappers and loose change). A bottle of days-old beer sits half-drunk and stale on his bedside table, glowing amber under the lamplight. He knows, under the mattress of his bed, springs broken, that he’ll find a crumpled carton of cigarettes and a zippo lighter empty of fluid.

The truth is laid out bare and barren, a sour taste in his mouth, stale as old beer and broken cigarettes: there’s nothing here for him. There hasn’t been since he moved in when he was eighteen, since he bought out the apartment lease a couple of weeks ago when he turned nineteen. Money wasted and with nothing else to be spent on. There was nothing here for him then, and there’s nothing here for him now. Not tonight. Not ever.

He’s stopped looking for somewhere where there’s something. He knows where that could have been. Maybe. Probably not. But days and weeks and months have passed, and slowly all somethings turn to nothing, too.

His thumb hovers over the keyboard. They didn’t have to ask him. He couldn’t have afforded the ticket anyway. But he knows how they would have gotten it. The immorality of it brushes the inside of his skull, a featherlight touch across the ridges of his spine, and then it’s gone.

Sure, he types back. See u there.

The stadium is packed and too hot and he remembers it’s summer again. Basketball shoes screech against the floor, bodies darting fast and sweat-soaked across the court. Guan Shan tugs at the neckline of his vest, the material sticking to his back, sweat beading the clipped strands of his hair where it touches his nape.

The home team is winning by a mile, a sharp electricity running through the stands with the glow of near-victory. Guan Shan lets a smile tug at the corner of his mouth as he takes a swig of beer, a two-point field goal scored.

A quarter of the game left to go, and the guys have already left, powder in their back pockets. They’ll be wired when he finds them later in one of the city bars. When he shifts in his seat, he’s more aware of his movements, now-empty seats around him and the press of a switchblade against his waistband.

‘Sneaky fucker,’ Chueng Min muttered in his ear earlier. ‘Bringing that through security?’

‘Stupid fucker,’ said Sung Tao, a shoulder knocked against Guan Shan’s as they moved away from the police officers loitering at the metal detectors. It was too forceful to be friendly; too boisterous to be playful. Guan Shan shrugged it off. It was always like that with Sung Tao.

‘Crazy fucker,’ Liu Bo corrected. His eyebrow piercing glinted under stadium lights as they headed through the stands, and Guan Shan’s gaze fishhooked on Liu Bo’s spinal tattoo, the lurid red ink of a dragon’s scales creeping out the neckline of his t-shirt. ‘You think She Li’d back you up if you got caught?’

Guan Shan glanced at him as they found their seats. ‘You think they don’t know She Li?’ he asked. ‘You thought it’d take anything more than a look at your shitty tattoo to know who we are?’

‘Watch your fucking mouth,’ Sung Tao glowered.

Guan Shan shrugged at him as they sat, shut in with a woman at his left, Liu Bo on his right, leaning in close enough for Guan Shan to smell the cigarettes on his breath, see the dark dilation of his pupils.

He said, low, ‘The thing about cops, Red, is once they start sniffing for the money, you’re never guaranteed that they’ll be a loyal dog to you.’

‘Cops are fucking irrelevant in all this,’ said Chueng Min, cracking open the tab on his beer. Frothy liquid foamed out of the top, and he swore as he licked at the spilled beer from his hand, shrugged. ‘All that matters is how much he sucks She Li’s dick.’

Guan Shan gritted his teeth. ‘You and you mother can go fuck yourselves.’

Chueng Min grinned around spit-slick knuckles, feral and lascivious. ‘Only if you bring yours.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘You’re too touchy, friend,’ Liu Bo remarked evenly.

Guan Shan said, ‘I’m exactly what I fucking need to be.’

‘And what’s that? Who’s that?’ His eyes, deep set in his skull, flashed across Guan Shan’s face like he could see the underneath. Guan Shan made himself sit there, and weather it, and stare back. He knew how to stand his ground; he knew what it was to be scrutinised and looked at.

It was two-fold.

The first way was snake-like, set in the shadows and the cracks in the walls, something waiting for him to fuck up in the inevitable way that he fucked up everything—something opportunistic that could cash in on his own self-made failures. The second was different, and Guan Shan didn’t remember being looked at like that for a long time. Something like want, something like a gaze reaching out to try and meet his own. Something he hadn’t ever, really, been able to quantify.

He’d hated it then. Stop fucking looking at me. He wondered what he’d do now to be in the eye of a beholder. And it was that question that brought him up short every time: the eye of anyone, or the eye of him? Was it about wanting He Tian to love him, or was it about wanting to be loved? How many transgressions had Guan Shan ignored while they grew up—while they were still stupid kids—because he hadn’t wanted He Tian’s affection, but because he’d wanted affection at all?

Who’s that?

Guan Shan was drawn back to the question, to Liu Bo’s sunken face and flashes of metal in his skin. The dragon peered out from beneath his shirt. Guan Shan met his gaze.

There were things Guan Shan could have said then, and maybe all of them and none of them were true. How could he answer a question he’d never had an answer to?

He said, ‘None of your fucking business, asshole.’

Liu Bo smirked, leaned back in his chair, plastic creaking. He jerked his chin towards the court. ‘Game’s starting. Asshole.’

He forgets how easy it is—to forget that he could be a nineteen-year-old kid watching a basketball game on a Friday night with a group of not-quite-but-the-closest-thing-he’s-got-to friends. Reminders slip back to him in pieces like the bruising press of a headache behind his eyes.  

It takes him a while—three baskets, a yellow card—to realise that he isn’t alone. That the person two seats to his right, filling Sung Tao’s vacated seat, isn’t watching the game.

They’re watching him.

A flash of irritation surges: Guan Shan hadn’t noticed sooner; he can’t watch a fucking game without some fuck pushing pin pricks into the back of his neck with a stare.

He shifts closer to the edge of the seat, hard plastic digging into the backs of his thighs, fingers biting into the underside of the chair. He’s ready. Ignores the voice in his head that tells him not to make a scene again—as if he can help the way anger rolls through him like a hurricane. As if he can protect himself from it, wrecking and ravaging everyone but mostly—always—himself.

It takes him a few seconds, breathing steady while he watches the away team basket a free throw, and then he’s turning.

‘If I’m so fucking interesting, then why don’t you… take a fucking—picture, you…’

It’s a mess of words that trip and shape themselves awkwardly on his tongue, stumbling over glass shards and trees petrified by lightning. And if He Tian is the lightning, Guan Shan is the tree, charred and scorched with its roots unearthed and blackened.

‘It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to look at you,’ says He Tian, watching him. He has a leg crossed over at the knee, an arm slung over the back of the vacant chair between them.

The stadium is silent.

There’s static, and darkness curling in at the edges of Guan Shan’s vision.

He can hear himself breathing. He can feel himself unable to move.

He’s going to throw up.

Too quickly, too sudden, the heat is nauseating, spotlights blinding and prickling his skin with sweat; the sound of the game is a horn blaring into his skull, the screeching of the court like nails running down the marrow of his bones. He hasn’t had time to defend himself against this. He’d had no walls up. And He Tian has walked straight through.

He knows, frozen and ashen in his seat, that if he’d had any kind of guard up, some portcullis over his heart, and iron over the joints of his bones, something molten and silver left to harden over the strings of muscle—He Tian would have walked through anyway.

Or broken his way through.

It’s that thought that gets him out of his seat, leaves him stumbling across the stands to the nearest exit. He shoulders his way past vendors and spectators milling in the aisles, lets his fingertips graze the rough cold brick of the tunnels that lead out into the empty entry foyer.

He feels drunk, head woollen, limbs separate entities he doesn’t have enough control over. All he needs is out.

The group of officers look up as he heads to the doors, nudging each other. He doesn’t stop when the metal detector goes off as he passes through, or when the turnstile jabs into his hip bone enough to leave a hilt-shaped bruise in the morning.  

Behind, one of the officers shouts out to him.

Maybe under different circumstances he might have stopped, but nothing’s going to make him halt or report to anyone now.

‘I’ve got it covered,’ he hears, and the sound of that voice, twice in ten minutes, leaves him tripping through the automatic doors.

He realises it’s dark outside with an absent kind of observation, thoughts detached and dissociated, chest tight, heart caught in the vice-grip of a closed fist, and when the touch falls on his shoulder he’s crouched against the wall of some backstreet alley with his head in his hands.

‘Don’t fucking touch me.’

It comes out in a growl, snappish and guttural. He won’t apologise for it.

He Tian’s hand withdraws, slow. Not, Guan Shan thinks, like it had been sparked by a hot stove, but like He Tian didn’t want the touch to end.

‘You’re angry,’ He Tian says. And he sounds—pleased. Like he’s missed this. Asshole.

‘The fuck do you think?’ Guan Shan spits. He works his tongue around his teeth, locks his fingers tight in his hair. He tastes blood from bitten flesh in his mouth; he doesn’t remember when that happened, in the same way he wakes up too often with bruises on his skin that he can’t recall puncturing.

‘It’s boring without you,’ He Tian remarks. Quieter, muttered, said to the floor: ‘You have no idea what it’s like without you.’

Guan Shan squints up at him, lamplights beaming down bright on his retinas. He Tian’s propped his shoulder against the brick, smiling down. He looks… situational. As always. As he used to. Like the surroundings have been built and crafted around him—for him. Not an awkward puzzle piece that only fit with a push.

‘No idea,’ Guan Shan echoes. ‘What the fuck d’you want from me? You want me to feel sorry for you? Is that it?’

‘I thought you’d be happy to see me.’

‘Happy,’ Guan Shan echoes flatly. He can’t work out He Tian’s tone. ‘You thought I’d be… Fuck. You… you haven’t changed a bit, have you?’

‘Neither have you.’

Guan Shan pushes to his feet. He’s done crouching and hiding himself away and letting himself be looked at like this—this wounded, and vulnerable. Like all of this has affected him far more than it has any right to.

He Tian’s taller than he used to be—six-three? Six-four?—but then so is Guan Shan. There’s that same difference between them—that same imbalance. It doesn’t mean He Tian has the upperhand; it’s not that simple. But there’s an unevenness about the both of them that seems eternal. Like they’re passing at crossroads and missing each other by inches every time—a brush of cloth, the lingering curl of aftershave, cigarette smoke.

Passing? Guan Shan thinks. Because they haven’t passed—they’ve caught each other around the waist or the neck, grabbed on and held, thrashing, until the other gave in, subdued. A wrestle. A spar. Call it what it is: a fight with two winners and two losers.

‘Yeah?’ Guan Shan says. ‘How’s that? You’ve talked to me for a minute. A minute in three years and you—you think you know me? You think you get to make that kind of judgment about who I am? Are you fucking kidding me? Who are you?’

He Tian watches him with that same fucking steadiness he used to. There’s an added weight to it, something aged, a dark heaviness that Guan Shan doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want to know what He Tian has seen or done or learnt. He doesn’t want to know how it’s changed He Tian from the thing he once knew. He doesn’t want to have to relearn how to be around him and near him.

He can already feel himself waiting to brace.

Growing up, he’d caught glimpses of the creature that liked to stare out. Monster or demon? he’d wonder. Would wonder when it would show itself next. Would wonder if maybe He Tian was neither. That maybe it was the real thing, and the person Guan Shan knew was just wearing its skin, some imitator that didn’t throw its punches as hard as it could. That didn’t wreak and reap like it could.

‘I think I knew you,’ He Tian tells Guan Shan eventually, correcting him. ‘And I could tell what sort of person you’d be. And ten minutes is enough for some things. It’s enough for me.’

‘Ten?’ Guan Shan says. He can’t help himself: ‘Please. Some nights you barely lasted five.’

He Tian chokes out laughter, shocked pleasure brimming. It’s strange to hear it. Guan Shan used to wonder what caused it, that bright spark of humour that He Tian kept so tightly locked. Used to wonder how he brought it out of him. Use to feel some burgeoning well of happiness inside himself that he had brought it out of He Tian. Still, apparently, could.

Used to, used to, used to. His head is wrapping around the reality that He Tian is here, now, standing in front of you and looking at you.

Guan Shan glares back at him. ‘You left me. You owe me an explanation.’

‘I had no choice, and I can’t give you anything, owed or not.’

Guan Shan sets himself. ‘If you don’t tell me anything, then I swear you’ll never fucking see me again. I promise you that.’

He Tian gives him a steady look. Assessing. Cool. Like he’s measuring the distance between buildings and wondering if he could make the jump. Guan Shan thinks he could, and he wants him to jump even if He Tian thinks he can’t. Isn’t he worth that much? A few bruises, grazed knuckles. A broken neck.

‘Fine,’ says He Tian. He holds a hand out, palm up. ‘Let’s go.’

Guan Shan stares at it. Ignores it. Brushes past him. ‘Let’s go.’

They find an all-night café to sit in. It takes a silent five-minute walk, and other than a tired-looking server thumbing through a book on Hong Kong law with her hip propped against an espresso machine, they’re the only ones there. The light is cleanly, clinically bright, at odds with the close-to-midnight darkness. Guan Shan’s attention flits between He Tian’s slow stirring of his coffee—milk, no sugar—and the bruise he’s just noticed on He Tian’s jaw line. The hatched white lines across his knuckles. He’s missing a molar.

‘Was there anyone else?’ Guan Shan asks.

He Tian puts the spoon on the table. He sips his coffee with one hand; the other is wrested on the edge of the table at his wrist, and his forefinger spins the ring on his thumb.

‘Anyone else that I fell in love with? No.’

‘But you fucked other people.’

He Tian gives him an odd look, sets the to-go cup down. ‘You didn’t?’

Guan Shan grits his teeth. ‘Did you? Because I—’

‘Yes.’

‘—didn’t.’

They stare at each other.

Oh, Guan Shan thinks. Right.

Silence passes.

‘It’s been three years,’ says He Tian. He’s disbelieving. Alarmed. There’s a glimmer of something in his eyes that Guan Shan can’t place.

‘It has,’ Guan Shan agrees, quiet.

He Tian sits leans back in his seat. He runs his fingers through his hair, mutters something under his breath that Guan Shan can’t quite catch. Music runs through the café speakers, a mix of soft indie Western tracks that Guan Shan’s unfamiliar with. He tries to make out the lyrics while he waits, brow furrowed.

Every so often, his eyes, magnetised, flick to He Tian—to the fit of his dark clothes on a body still tall and lithe and iron-strong, to the loss of any softness that might once have lingered on the edge of his jaw or the fullness of his cheeks, carved out by hard bone lines and shadows. There is no mistaking, in any sense, that he is now a man.

He Tian’s gathered his thoughts at last: ‘There wasn’t—you didn’t find anyone you—not even a one-night stand? A hook-up?’

Guan Shan looks back at him and ignored the chill that runs its way down his spine. ‘You’re asking why I didn’t have a fuckbuddy? Serious?’

‘I wasn’t cheating,’ says He Tian. ‘It wasn’t the same.’

‘Because you didn’t tell me to wait, I know. You got yourself out of that mess, didn’t you?’

He Tian glowers at him. ‘Don’t be fucking ridiculous. I never asked you to wait because I didn’t want to put that in your head. Because it wouldn’t be fair. Not because I wanted a free-pass to go out and get my dick wet.’

‘And yet that’s exactly what it seems like—’

‘I was fucking sixteen, Mo Guan Shan! I didn’t know what the fuck I was going to be doing or where I was going or who I was going with! You really think being told that I had to leave somewhere I’d found a home and someone I’d found a home with made me think—straight off the fucking bat—that I should figure out the fucking technicalities of what I said to you so I’d be free to fuck people?’

The barista looks up, eyes dancing between the two of them. A look at He Tian’s clenched fists on the table and her attention turns back down to her book. She flips a page with a careful fwick. Their voices aren’t low, and she’ll hear if she really wants to. Guan Shan can’t actually bring himself to give a fuck.

He takes a moment to understand what He Tian’s saying, mouth slightly parted, a persistent ridge between his brows. He shakes his head. It does nothing to clear it. He runs his fingers through the condensation on the cup of water, fingertips cold and wet. He trails characters into the wooden table surface, stained with coffee rings and pastry crumbs, watery syllables that dry too quickly and won’t leave a mark.

‘Guan Shan, I—’ He Tian laughs to himself. Derisory and dark. ‘I thought about you every day. I kept thinking I’d get over it. I kept thinking, one day I’ll wake up and I won’t think about him. One day I won’t feel like this. One day I’ll… I’ll go a day and realise I didn’t think about you once.’

Guan Shan ignores the wrenching feeling of familiarity in his stomach. He wipes his hands in a napkin, says, ‘You thought about me while you were fucking someone else?’

He Tian stares at him. ‘You really want to know?’

Guan Shan sets his jaw. This will hurt either way. The skin’s already flayed—he’s going to scar. Does he choose to heal with the slow ache of time or the quick, bone-deep burn of cauterisation?  

He throws the balled-up napkin onto the table. Jerks his chin in He Tian’s direction. Tell me.

He Tian breathes out through his mouth. ‘Do you know,’ he says, slow, ‘how hard it is to find a guy with red hair in this part of the world?’

Guan Shan grips the edge of the table.

‘Do you know how hard it is to find someone who—wears anger like you do? Someone who swears at you while you’re fucking them, and can still somehow make it sound like I love you?’

‘I get it.’

‘They’re expensive, Guan Shan. Those sorts of people. They’re rare, and hard to come by, and they make you work for it—’

‘Fuck, stop it.’

‘—and there’s only one of them,’ he finishes. Guan Shan realises he’s holding his breath. ‘There’s only one guy I’ve ever met like that, and I knew I wouldn’t find someone like him again again. And to find someone else who was even the slightest bit like that—it would never be enough. No one would ever be enough, and they weren’t.’

His fingers go to the chain around his neck, a flash of silver. Guan Shan isn’t sure what makes his heart ache more: the ring around the chain that Guan Shan gave He Tian when they were fifteen in return for an earring, or the gesture of nervousness that He Tian would have never once given away. Guan Shan wonders helplessly if it’s on purpose. After all, he knows him.

He Tian says, ‘I didn’t want them to be anything like you. I wanted to think of only them, and how they felt, and how a couple hours with them would be. Nothing before. Nothing after. Because—because all the rest of that time was only ever spent thinking about you.’

Guan Shan closes his eyes briefly. ‘You could’ve just said no.’

When he opens them, He Tian’s smiling, Cheshire-wide, dark eyes glittering. ‘But where’s the fun in that?’

‘I hate you.’

‘You don’t.’

‘I should.’

He Tian opens his mouth. Closes it. He says, soft, ‘Maybe you should. Maybe I should hate you.’

Guan Shan frowns at him. ‘What the fuck did I do?’

He Tian shrugs. His shifts the cardboard coffee holder up and down over the cup. Different circumstances, a different tone, and the motion might have been suggestive. Guan Shan might have tracked the movement with his eyes. Let a smirk toy at the edge of his lips. He’s too tired for that now.

‘You said you didn’t,’ He Tian says. ‘With anyone. That’s the truth?’

Guan Shan narrows his eyes. ‘Are you calling me a liar.’

He Tian takes a swig of coffee. He clears his throat. Guan Shan doesn’t smoke, but he almost wants a cigarette, watching He Tian’s fidgeting. With anyone else, it would have gone unnoticed. But He Tian was always stiller than this. He made every move—every expense of energy—count. Nothing was wasted unless it need to be. Unless he wanted someone to think it was.

He Tian asks, ‘What’s between you and She Li?’

Guan Shan chokes on his water until his eyes stream and his throat burns. The cigarette would have done the same. He swallows another mouthful, careful this time.

‘The fuck are you talking about?’ he manages eventually, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand.

He Tian just watches. ‘I’m talking about you and him. Kissing.’

‘What. The fuck. Are you talking about.’

‘You’re saying it didn’t happen?’

‘He fucking attacked me,’ Guan Shan outrages. ‘If you knew anything you’d know how much I fucking hate being touched like that.’

He Tian looks away. They both know what Guan Shan’s talking about; it’s etched into their minds, a hot day on the skirting edge of a basketball court. How young they’d been; how fucking stupid. How cruelly unforgiving.

Guan Shan’s mind catches up with itself. ‘How do you know?’

‘What?’

‘How do you know what he did?’

He Tian sits there, and Guan Shan wants the music to stop. He wants the girl behind the counter to fuck off. Honesty, he’d asked for. Three years ago. Has he had anything like that tonight? Did He Tian ever stop being so fucking subversive? Where did the differences between He Tian and She Li really lie? The lines were blurring, and Guan Shan didn’t know who was sitting across from him.

‘You’ve been back a while,’ Guan Shan says. ‘That was you. Speaking to She Li. You just—walked straight fucking past. You went to him before you went to me.’

‘Guan Shan—’

‘Fuck, don’t even try and talk your way out of this one. After everything he did to me—did to you—and—’

He runs out of things to say. Nothing quite sums up the static in his head. He sits back in his seat, arms limp at his sides, and he wants to laugh. How much of this, as someone younger and blinder, had he forgiven for the affection it carried with it? How many raw-throat arguments and bruising grips had he glanced away from just to be watched and looked at? To know that someone wanted to kiss him and would if he let them?

He wants to laugh because he can see it now. Because he’s tireder and his anger has taken on a more permanent, slow-burning quality; he’s not blinded by that kind of irascible, youthful rage so much anymore. He wants to laugh because he doesn’t have to sit here and listen to this anymore if he doesn’t want to. He has agency.

Still, a fear creeps up on him: what if he only thinks he does?

‘I’m going home,’ he says. ‘I’m not dealing with this bullshit anymore.’

When he gets up, He Tian doesn’t move. He has his arms folded and his brow drawn low, mouth set, immovable. It’s only when Guan Shan swipes his wallet from the table and downs the rest of his water that He Tian jerks in his seat.

Halfway to the door, He Tian’s fingers grip his elbow, the hot press of his body at Guan Shan’s back, crowding him in. It makes him close his eyes, and still, and breathe in slow.

You’re not the same anymore, he tells himself. You don’t need him like you did. You’re better than whatever the fuck he was offering.

Through the mantra, he knows that trying to convince himself of something doesn’t necessarily make it true. He knows that repeating it like a metronome doesn’t make it any easier to believe.

‘Get off me.’

‘You’re not even going to hear me out?’ He Tian asks lowly. ‘Don’t I get that at least?’

Guan Shan stares ahead. It’s light in the café, soft modernism settled around them in a way that’s almost empty. Outside, tower lights blink down at them; car lights glide past on the roads in the slow night heat. It looks less edged out there than it feels in here. The city looks like it would hide him well, wrap him gently in the darkness, let him slink by invisible and unbothered.

But He Tian always saw better in the dark. He became something more, and Guan Shan was rendered useless. Was.

Is?

‘I went to him because of business. If I’d known you’d be there I wouldn’t have gone at all. I wanted—You were supposed to be the first one I saw.’

‘But you had no choice,’ Guan Shan finishes for him, dull. He registers what He Tian’s saying—that She Li’s business is now He Tian’s. That they’re both wrapped up in the same bullshit. Could they have ever had anything different?

Has he been in contact with She Li this whole time? Guan Shan thinks. How much pleasure She Li must have derived from the whole thing: seeing Guan Shan torn down, placating him, with He Tian at his ear. His fucking kiss must have been filled with so much spoiled pleasure.

‘Do you really think there’s something here for me?’ He Tian says. His fingers press hard into the juncture of Guan Shan’s elbow. ‘You think I would come back here because I wanted to go back to an empty apartment and a city with no family and friends who’ve all moved on and forgotten me?’

‘Then why’d you even come back?’

He Tian lets go like he’s been burned. Absently, Guan Shan rubs at his skin, and glances back. He Tian has his eyes dark and shadowed, and his hands have fallen limp at his sides, claws pulled out of bloodied fingertips. He looks wounded in a way Guan Shan isn’t familiar with. Wasn’t he supposed to have come back stronger?

What the fuck happened to you? And then: Maybe I need to be asking what the fuck happened to me?

He stalks outside, and He Tian’s hounding him before the door can even close behind them. The sidewalks are quiet, not enough for a group to watch their domestic spectacle—their, what was it, unit of volatile predictability? Their imperfect duo. Two broken pieces that didn’t and still can’t, almost heartbreakingly, fit together.

‘Did you feel anything for me?’ He Tian asks, pulling them over against the window of a closed-down furniture store, glass replaced with plywood and crowded in flyers. ‘Before I left. Was it so fucking negligible to you that you can’t even give a shit about me now? That you can’t look at me. That you won’t even face the fact that I came back for you.’

Guan Shan faces him and sets his stance. He shoves his hands in his pockets, scowls. His face is heated; his shoulders are aching and tense. ‘The fuck are you talking about?’

‘Why the fuck did you think so little of me?’ He Tian demands of him. ‘Why—That whole time we were together. What did you think that was? Did you even understand how hard that was? For me? How new that was?’

Anger spills over Guan Shan’s insides, something hot and spiteful running through his veins and burning out his blood. He’s astounded; he’s made it so easy for He Tian to wreck his way back through like a storm that’s never left, air still charged, boughs of trees still flickering in a hot breeze, roots torn up, tormented sea trembling. Where are his barricades? Where are his three-year defences? Has he even tried?

‘You thought it would be this easy?’ Guan Shan says. ‘You thought you’d just punch your way back through and I’d say okay?’

‘You said all or nothing, Mo Guan Shan. And I’m offering you fucking everything.’

Guan Shan seethes. ‘You’re offering me jack shit, He Tian,’ he spits, fingernails embedding sharp in his palms. ‘And what you gave me was maybe we will, maybe we won’t.’

‘Did you want me to lie and—’

‘Oh, fuck off,’ Guan Shan cuts through. ‘You think I knew what the fuck I was doing? You think I had any clue? All I knew was how I felt. Who the fuck could ever know what you’re really thinking—’

‘You could!’ He Tian shouts over him. ‘You were supposed to know me, Guan Shan!’

‘I’m not a fucking mind-reader, He Tian! You kissed me and said good luck and goodbye and that was it. What more am I supposed to think from that!’

He Tian pinches his brow between forefinger and thumb. His other hand bites into his hip. He wears frustration like a storm: a curl of dark cloud, still air, the electric charge that whispers of waiting.

How fucking dare he, Guan Shan thinks. How the fuck could he expect me to know him when he didn’t even know himself?

A quivering, tremulous moment, and He Tian starts off slowly. ‘I think I get why you thought I wouldn’t care. And I don’t think it’s about me.’

‘I think you’re about to say something that’s gonna make me want to punch you.’

He Tian ignores him. ‘It’s about you,’ he says. ‘It’s about you thinking you’re not someone who someone will care for. And wait for.’

Guan Shan bites the inside of his cheek. ‘Are you… telling me I have a shit sense of self-worth? Is that what this is? You think I don’t fucking know that already? That I’m not exactly fucking aware of what I am and who I am and how other people should look at me?’

He Tian’s gaze is even. ‘You knew how I felt about you. I told you that. How you made things for me. How you turned my head inside out.’

‘Yeah, when we were practically kids,’ Guan Shan challenges. ‘You’re telling me I was supposed to assume that would stay the same? When every year passed? When you’d be eighteen? Nineteen?’

‘Did you think my feelings had changed because your own feelings changed? Have changed?’

‘I just told you—’

‘Told me what?’ He Tian says. ‘You’ve told me to fuck off. That you’re angry with me. That you’re not happy I’m back. What was it you said? I’m not a mind-reader. Well, guess what, Guan Shan? Neither am I. And, frankly, everything you’ve said points to one thing only.’ He shakes his head, lets out a choked breath. ‘I’m not delusional. I’m practical, and I don’t waste my time, and I’m not going to try and fight for something if it ended a long time ago.’

Guan Shan tries to listen. He tries to figure out what He Tian’s saying—to strip it down to the bones. Is he giving up? Is he saying that three years was enough? That this has made him realise he waited futilely—never wanted Guan Shan at all—imagined him to be something different? Maybe too much time has passed. And Guan Shan knows how easily memory distorts.

What comes out is: ‘But you just came back to me.’

He Tian backs up until he hits the window. ‘What… do you think I’ve just been saying to you, Guan Shan?’

‘You’re messing with my fucking head. You left me, and this is all suddenly my fault?’

‘Fault? What the fuck are you talking about—fault? This is no one’s fault, Guan Shan. No one’s right or wrong here. I just—I want to—Fuck.’ He steps away, has his hands clasped together, like he’s about to drop to his knees and start to pray. ‘Just tell me: do you love me?’

‘I—’

‘Wait, no,’ He Tian says. ‘Can you love me again if you don’t? If you—if you did. Ever.’

‘What are you talking—’

He Tian snaps. ‘Answer the fucking question for once without trying to start a fight, Guan Shan.’

He uses the same voice he used to, the one where he pushed Guan Shan up against a wall and ran a finger across his mouth. Told him to keep it shut. The night Guan Shan had seen He Tian’s brother and seen something in He Tian’s eyes that he hadn’t understood. Something darker than it should have been, something more dangerous than He Tian could have been. It pushed goosebumps across his skin, made his tongue slow and thick in his mouth. Pulled his eyes down until he could only feel He Tian’s gaze and not try to match it.

It doesn’t scare him anymore, just makes him pause. Pulls him back into the reality of the situation. Makes him reassess, recentre, like a bucket of cold water or a sharp slap across the face.

Does he love him? Did he ever? Can he now?

He takes him in, the same way he took in the city that night, tried to commit it to memory: He Tian’s clasped hands, white-knuckled, like he’s waiting for repentance. The warm night, billboards and passing cars and a low breeze. If he closes his eyes there’s the half-imagined sound of the commentators in the stadium, and a raucous, echoing cheer. But he opens them to see the sharp jaw, pressed mouth, the dark gaze he’s pinned with so severe it’s heart-breaking. It’s too heavy. Too solemn. Too honest and nothing close to truthful. Guan Shan used to watch He Tian smile, used to watch the way he laughed so easily with the backdrop of school and not-quite-friends.

Fake, he’d called him. Had thought, and never said, You’re too sad to pretend to be so happy.

Only honest when he wanted something—needed something—couldn’t help himself. And isn’t that it? That he can’t help himself around Guan Shan. That maybe he wants to pretend to be happy around him. They can’t both be happy. Not yet.

And it’s that thought that brings Guan Shan up short: Not yet. Like he’s considering the future where they’re happy together. Where the pretences don’t exist.

Yes, he thinks, and yes, and yes.

But something new has nestled in him in three years. An amber warning light. He knows what red means. They’ve had time. Time that feels like Guan Shan’s wounds have had stitches; like they’ve settled. They don’t itch anymore. He’ll still scar.

He says, ‘I think we need time.’

He Tian says, ‘We’ve had three years of it.’

‘Then we can both wait more.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Yeah, neither do I,’ Guan Shan says.

He Tian shifts. His eyes are tight at the corners. Guan Shan feels that tightness in his chest, a fist around his lungs, something squeezing his heart to slow its pulse. It’s not unbearable, but he can’t ignore the pressure. He doesn’t want to.

‘I think… What we had. What we were. You think we were good like that that?’

He Tian smiles, fond and oddly reminiscent. Guan Shan wonders, and doesn’t ask, what memory he’s recalling. ‘No. That’s why we liked it. Both kinda fucked up. We kept each other floating.’

‘Why did we need to float?’ Guan Shan asks. ‘You think we were pulling each other down?’

‘No. I think everything else was.’ After a moment, He Tian pulls out a cigarette pack from the back pocket of his jeans, lights up with a zippo that is familiar and not at all. Guan Shan thinks of the one under his mattress as smoke seeps from He Tian’s mouth. It seems to placate him, and he scratches at a small scar above his eyebrow Guan Shan had noticed in the café light. He shrugs, continues. ‘Our families. The people we knew. Know. The way—the way we’d been brought up. Just who we were.’

He’s careful not to say I. Like he can’t bring himself to take all the blame. Guan Shan thinks that’s fair: they were as bad as each other. Both kinda fucked up. It was accurate.

It was an understatement.

‘Not gonna force me into changing my mind?’ Guan Shan asks sourly. ‘Tell me I’m making a mistake?’

‘You’re making a mistake,’ He Tian says. He looks like he’s biting down on his tongue, like he’s repressing something bigger than he’s showing Guan Shan. Maybe it’s like the rage Guan Shan used to desperately try to cool, with holes in the buckets of water he’d toss at the fire, smoke stinging his eyes, embers that never went fully out. But He Tian has always been colder than that; granite and charcoal. The fossilised carcasses of trees and earth that Guan Shan still sets alight.

‘That’s it?’ Guan Shan says.

‘I’m not She Li. I know my limits.’

Guan Shan wants to press at the bruises under his clothing so he can feel something that’s real, and something that will remind him of how his body used to feel to the touch after He Tian would leave his mark. He settles for picking at the hangnail on his thumb, sucking at the skin when blood wells. ‘Since when d’you know anything about limits? D’you even get what you did?’

‘Three years is a long time.’

The words list slightly, and Guan Shan crooks his head. He nods at him. ‘Where did you go?’

A mirthless smile. ‘You don’t want to know.’

‘What did you do?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

Guan Shan rocks back on his heels. ‘Don’t trust me now?’

‘That’s—No,’ says He Tian. His grin is a strange, secretive thing. Something is hanging strangely between them. A new, fresh uncertainty. A beginning that is starting years later. Guan Shan doesn’t know what to call this.

Questions swim turbulently in his head: is this friendship? Will their past repeat itself? Could they even bear to be together or were their differences a disparate ocean they couldn’t swim across before they made each other drown?

‘This is me trying, isn’t it?’ He Tian asks. ‘I’m trying to make a good second impression.’

‘There’ll be a third?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ll leave again. Just like before. No choice. And you want to try.’

He Tian grinds the burned-down cigarette beneath his shoe. ‘Don’t you?’ he asks, not looking up. His hair falls across his eyes, and Guan Shan can’t see his expression. He can just see the shadowed press of his mouth—stares at it like it could tell him something.

Guan Shan looks away. ‘Like I’m supposed to know what the fuck I want. Like any of this is normal.’

‘Any of this?’ He Tian presses.

‘You. Just turning back up. Looking like that. Me feeling… Fuck, feeling like this.’

‘Like this?’

Guan Shan presses fingertips into his eyes. On his eyelids, he sees constellations and blurry flashes of passing headlights. ‘Like—like I want you to kiss me ‘cause I’ve missed it and I know how much it’ll fucking hurt.’

He Tian says, ‘I won’t hurt you. Not anymore.’

Maybe there’s some truth in the words, because He Tian says them without moving, without trying to get closer. He keeps the distance between them even. But that’s now. Guan Shan knows—he knows—it won’t stay like that forever. Three years isn’t that long. People can’t change what’s in their core.

‘We’ll go slow,’ He Tian says. ‘I promise.’

You wanted affection, and love, and to feel safe. How much of that can he ever give you? Why does it have to be him?

He knows the answer already, and it flays at his skin like a whipcrack to acknowledge: Who else could bear to look at someone like me and try and love me?

Guan Shan drops his hands. He wants to close that space between them, and grab a fistful of He Tian’s t-shirt, the dark strands of his hair, the waistband of his jeans. Wants to relearn the body of his that is older and bigger and stronger, teenage wire turned into something hardened and corded like rope. He wants shoulders flexing under his fingertips, dark eyes tracking the way the canvas of his own body has since been crafted and built upon. He wants to peel back He Tian’s surface and see if it’s easier to get to the underneath, if it’s still a brick and mortar barrier, or if there’s flesh and hot blood and a beating heart.

His wants are fears twisted and coiled up with past and unknown present; He Tian isn’t the tall dark stranger he was warned about. He’s familiar in a way that’s edged and painful. Guan Shan knows exactly the damage he can reap. He knows exactly what becomes of himself when he lets him. He wants to taste the bitter coffee on He Tian’s tongue.

People don’t change, people don’t change.

‘I’m different,’ He Tian says. His hand is around Guan Shan’s wrist, and his thumb, neat nails, calloused skin, brushes over the pulse. And again, ‘I promise.’

Cars stream past them, slower not because they are but because the night makes everything seem slower. It doesn’t, however, make Guan Shan’s heart beat less, or settle the carnival rush of blood in his veins, or calm the sea-storm rolling in his stomach that prefaces the beginnings of regret.

He sets himself, lets the night unfold around him. In the darkness somewhere, a hand is reaching out, hoping another is reaching back. When Guan Shan looks at He Tian again, body loose in a way that feels like something has left him, he blinks, and nods. A muscle in his jaw jumps. He can feel his shoulders curve inwards. The warm, even stroke of He Tian’s thumb is a metronome he’s struggling to keep up with.

Inside him, a war wages. He’s different, a part of him thinks. And the other: And how many promises of those can he keep?

Two things he knows for sure: they can fight a hundred battles together, against one another, until they break themselves bloodied and bruised on each other’s stalwart hearts. Both winners and losers.

But Guan Shan knows, too—taking in the slope of He Tian’s shoulders, the reflection of a city in He Tian’s eyes, the hands that once touched him so cruel and sweet, the lips that knew how to sell eternities—that he could never win the war.

end.

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[hellosweetie-17]

Until the Ink Runs Dry Chapter 1

Title: Until the Ink Runs Dry

Author: hellosweetie17

Rating: Explicit

Status: In Progress [1/?]

Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga

Pairing(s): Edward Elric/Roy Mustang, Alphonse Elric/Winry Rockbell, Jean Havoc/There’s always hope, Riza Hawkeye/Kain Fuery

Characters: Edward Elric, Alphonse Elric, Winry Rockbell, Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye, Jean Havoc, and many more.

Tags: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Graphic Depictions of Violence, Soulmate Legends, Ink Pens, Slow Burn, Love, Explicit Sexual Content, Adults!EdwardAlphonseWinry, and many more.

Summary: According to legend, everyone has a soulmate.

Using a pen passed on from generation to generation, the seeker must voluntarily write on the back of their hand in order to make contact with their person on the other end of the Red String of Fate. Once initial contact has been established, an unbreakable connection is formed between the two soulmates. They are each able to feel the other’s love, pain, pleasure, and even hunger if a good piece of pie is nearby.

Winry and Alphonse are in love with the idea and believe it to be true. In fact, neither can wait for the chance to use their pens. Edward, on the other hand, thinks it’s a load of bullshit and one shouldn’t rely on stories to determine who they can love. As for Roy, he refuses to even so much as touch the pen left to him by Maes Hughes, believing no one would want a man as broken as he.

Whether it be out of hopeless romanticism or the kind of curiosity that killed the cat, what would happen if one were to write on their hand?

And when an investigation ensues over a string of murders spread throughout Central, will those bonds last or change under the pressure to catch the culprit?

Excerpt Chapter 1:

Go home, Fullmetal,” ordered General Mustang. “You’ve done enough.” He picked up a pen and began filling out the report on his desk.

“Oh c’mon, General! I got the job done, didn’t I?” countered Ed. “And stop calling me ‘Fullmetal’.”

Sighing, Roy pushed aside his paperwork and looked up at the seething blond, his onyx eyes connecting with molten gold.

“Yet you still managed to cause havoc,” he pointed out. “I had hoped you’d keep the damage to a minimum. How shortsighted of me.” He smiled and picked up his pen, silently dismissing the young man as he turned his attention back to the forms.

Ed could feel steam hissing out of his ears.

——————

Leaning his head against the window, Edward recounted snippets of the annoyingly frustrating argument he had had with Mustang hours before he and Alphonse boarded a train back to Resembool. A scowl appeared when he thought of the bastard’s smug smile and the look in his dark eye, telling him that he knew how to royally tick him off—which Roy did, of course. Fucker. If Ed had had a nice, tall glass of ice cold milk at that moment, he would’ve thrown the gross stuff in the General’s face. In the blond’s biased opinion, the old man would have deserved it. Ed let out a huff. “Asshole,” he grumbled under his breath. He crossed his arms and sank down in the brown, leather bench seat. “Total bullshit.”

Next to Ed sat Alphonse, who was currently trying to read the book about medicinal plants in his lap. But it was no use. The only thing the poor boy managed to do—while his older brother continued to piss himself off—was read the same paragraph over and over again. Upon hearing Edward’s string of whispered expletives, Al snapped the book shut and shifted in the seat to face his sibling.

“Are you going to mope the entire ride home, brother?” sighed Al.

“Huh? What are ya talking about? I’m just sitting here looking out the window,” Ed scoffed, waving an arm in the direction of the suddenly interesting blur of trees.

Narrowing his amber gaze at the stubborn older boy, Alphonse opened the book and flopped back against the seat, his blond fringe falling in his eyes. “It’s your fault, you know,” he remarked, flipping the pages in search of the place where he left off.

Ed whipped his head to the side and stared at Al. A slight grimace graced his features when his long, sunny-colored ponytail snagged in its hair tie. “Um…Say that again?” he requested, quirking an eyebrow.

“You blew up part of your lab,” the younger Elric nonchalantly stated, turning a page.

“It blew up because one of those bombs Mustang will never use—but asked me to make anyway—exploded,” excused Ed. He crossed his arms and slumped in his spot on the seat.

“I know you finished those bombs weeks ago. Your lab blew up because you were bored,” insisted Alphonse. “You started experimenting with different chemicals to entertain yourself.” He glared over at Ed, who was intently staring out the window. In its reflection, their golden eyes connected. “I know you know how dangerous it is to mess around because you have nothing else to do. General Mustang has the right to be mad. I wouldn’t be surprised if he fires you. Then you won’t have a lab to blow up and you won’t have access to the library.”

Ed’s jaw dropped and he blinked at the scolding tone in his brother’s voice. Whose side was the little twerp on?

“And you know what, brother?” continued Al. “I’m mad. After everything we’ve been through, I thought you would calm down a bit. You can’t just keep blowing stuff up because you feel like it.”

At the rate Edward was going, Alphonse was positive he would have a heart attack worrying over him—or worse, get gray hair. How did he end up with such a stubborn brother? Sure, he loved him. But holy moly! Al finally had his body back. He would like to keep it alive, thank you very much.

“Anyway, you better cheer up before we arrive in Resembool. It’s Winry’s birthday tomorrow and she’ll smack you with her wrench if you show up with a sour attitude,” he added, turning his attention back to the book.

“Yeah, yeah. I know,” muttered the older Elric, leaning his head against the window. He let out a huff of air, fogging up the window before drawing stick figures—particularly ones with Roy Mustang wearing devil horns.

“You’re not excited?” questioned Alphonse, his eyebrows lifting in surprise.

“No. I am,” answered Ed. “It’s just—”

“The pen.”

“—that stupid pen. She keeps talking about it. She think it���s gonna work and if it doesn’t, I’m gonna get the life beaten out of me. It almost happened the last time Winry smacked me with her wrench,” he paused to huff more warm air against the cool glass. “Plus, her pen’s supposedly been ‘working’ for three years now. Ya think she woulda tried it when she turned seventeen.”

“Between traveling and doing odd jobs for the General, we’ve been gone. Maybe she’s waiting for us to return home before trying it out.”

“Yeah, except nothing’s gonna happen.”

“Oh, come on, brother. It could work! Just imagine: you and Winry, soulmates,” mused Al, his tone whimsical. Sparkles shined in his golden eyes. He found the idea romantic and deep down, he hoped the legend was true.

Edward finished his mural in which The Ol’ Bastard died in the fiery pits of hell before turning to glance at Alphonse with raised eyebrows. “You actually believe in that lame superstition, legend thing?”

{…Read More…}

{…Until the Ink Runs Dry Masterpost List…}

Also listed on fanfiction.net under hellosweetie17.