On the off chance some of you are here for my fics, update on Weight of Promises chapter 3:
I have another very important project I'm working on right now (my novel), but once I'm done with the chapter there, I'll tackle chapter 3. Maomao will be moving in with Lakan for the next few months of the story and I really want to pay special attention to the tension of unrepentant hatred vs unconditional love between them. I'll likely split their time together up into several chapters so that I can update much quicker than usual. I'm aiming for 3 chapters, to complement the 3-ish months Maomao will be living with Lakan. There will be lots of drama and jinmao times, so please look forward to it!
My ask box is always open, if you want to ask any questions about my projects, current and past. I may not use this blog as much as my main one, but I still love it.
need to share this cute thought... modern au, jinmao happily married. Maomao outwardly being "idc about my husband he's whatever" but everytime a coworker catches her on a break, she's on the phone with her husband or looking at photos of her husband or just outright admiring her wedding ring. Someone takes a picture so they can show her what she's like next time she pulls her nonsense. Maomao doesn't talk to that coworker for a WEEK
thinking about jinmao modern au and picture-taking habits... jinshi only taking pics for stuff he needs to remember + a million pictures of maomao, only a few of which she's actually aware of. maomao exclusively taking pictures of cool plants and finished projects, maybe some pictures of her friends that said friends had to tell her to take. and one (1) picture of jinshi that she took when he wasn't looking. she doesn't know why she took the picture, but sometimes she stares at it and loses track of time. can't bring herself to delete it. maybe one late night even makes it her phone background, only to change it back in the morning. she's in denial, you see.
if jinshi ever discovers the picture, he'll ask her to take more. she'll refuse, so he'll take her phone and take a selfie. but here's the thing. jinshi is horrible at selfies. so now maomao has to teach him. and now she has so many photos of herself and jinshi. and you know what she does with them? that's right. Stare At Them.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Summary: Jinshi was having a bad day. After a morning of hassle, all he wanted was to go home and rest. But then Rikuson walked into his private office, fully intending to mess with him, and things took a turn from there.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Summary: At one fateful feast, Jinshi ended up with a bullet in his chest. After a month after surgeries, sickness, and poisoning, Jinshi is returned to the public eye, Maomao at his side to watch over his health. For the tail end of his first day back as the Moon Prince, the two of them attend the Emperor's public address to all those involved in saving the Moon Prince's life. There, Maomao does the last thing Jinshi could ever expect her to do.
She asks to be married to him.
This is the story of the aftermath, told in Jinshi's POV.
First chapter is SFW and leads into the second chapter, which is just shameless smut.
i think, if given the time, hinako and rinko would've eventually come to blows, broken apart, then after a period of time apart, come back together as proper friends. i don't think their friendship was truly entirely based on rinko's "alturism". hinako cares for her, to some true degree. and the same goes for rinko.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Summary: One day, a man blithely offered to buy out a courtesan's contract. Desperate, that courtesan challenged him, and he proved his word to be true. But before they could be man and wife, there are trials still for them to face.
One should be more careful with such things like promises.
Or, the story of how two broken individuals found peace with one another.
original novel: 14/? chapters written, 3 have been converted from present tense to past tense, need to do more
epilogue to On Death and Marriage: still in the early stages, but planned out
sequel to On Death and Marriage: Plotted out, will begin once I've finished the epilogue
3rd installment of Princess of the Poppies: Prologue is completed, chapter 1 is nearly complete. When ch 1 is finished, it'll go through two beta reads (one of which is by me) and will finally be posted
etc.: I have a few oneshots and wips that may or may not see the light of day. one of them is a smut threesome for rikujinmao. muses please, return to this one.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Summary: In the aftermath of the invasion of the Shi stronghold, Jinshi has returned to his role as the Moon Prince. As he settles in, he receives a strange, and very interesting, missive. Loulan is still alive. Intrigued, and hoping to meet with the once-in-a-lifetime villainness, Jinshi goes to investigate. In a few months time, Shisui comes home.
I've been needing to put something out, but since nothing's ready yet, please accept this:
Preview to the On Death and Marriage Epilogue!
In all his life, Jinshi has never thought very highly of himself.
This has been the truth for almost as long as he can remember. As a child, he failed to understand why only he could eat, while all his servants had his leftovers. When he began military training, he couldn’t make sense of his separate barracks or private meals – the leering stares of his fellow soldiers notwithstanding. Even when he was disguised as a eunuch, Jinshi learned of the many ways he did not measure up as a man. In comparison to the Emperor’s women, he was a dullard with no particular aptitude, a lout with nothing to aim for.
No, in his opinion, the only things that made him special were the incidence of his birth and his beauty. Yet both of these are inherently tied to the previous emperor, a spineless pedophile, the very thought of whom leaves a horrid taste in Jinshi’s mouth.
So with no accomplishments that he could truly call his own, no abilities that made him worthy of his high status, Jinshi had no choice but to soldier on and hope that, one day, the Emperor would realize how inadequate his brother truly is, and would release him from the imperial line. At least as a peasant, Jinshi believed he could find some semblance of happiness.
And then he fell in love.
It was a quiet thing, at first. A persistent nudging in his chest that only occurred around the one person. Then, before he knew it, his every thought was filled with her. The more he came to know Maomao, the more he couldn’t bear to be away from her. When he couldn’t see her for long, his concentration on work would wane, his mind wandering around the aspect of her health. As he longed for her, he realized that she had conquered every fiber of his being. Yet he didn’t care. If Maomao could continue to inspire this overwhelming joy inside him, then he would take any slight, withstand any injury, and brave the worst that life had to offer him. So long as Maomao was there, Jinshi knew he would be okay.
Things weren’t so easy, of course. Even with his beauty, his one and only weapon, Jinshi was no match for Maomao. She dismissed him at every turn, mocked him for his ineptitude, and squandered his pride. That was the cycle they found themselves in – Jinshi pursuing, Maomao denying. But just as he would begin to believe that she truly hated him, she would reach out her hand and tell him he wasn’t so bad, after all.
In their many interactions, she never pushed him away, not fully. For a time, he worried she only entertained him because of his status. In truth, as sad as the idea made him, he was indeed pathetic enough to allow such a thing to be his one connection to Maomao. But she surprised him, time and again, with her small smiles and her direct words. It was as though, when it was just the two of them, status didn’t matter a bit. When it was just the two of them, they could be Jinshi and Maomao, two people who could be called friends, in another world.
As desperately as he wanted to make her his wife, he learned the hard way that he couldn’t force her to do anything she doesn’t want to do. He realized all too late how foolish it would be to compel her to marry when she doesn’t love him the way he loves her. But still, he couldn’t leave her alone. He was grateful when she allowed him back into her world – he could finally breath again, even if he had to do so with a self-imposed muzzle. After his horrible mistake, he swore to himself that he would never hurt her again, never force himself upon her, would never so much as kiss her without her consent.
On the return trip from their second trip to the Western Capital, it finally seemed like Jinshi’s patience would be rewarded. On the crow’s nest of the ship, she kissed him in return. It was progress – minuscule progress, but progress nonetheless.
That was all turned on its head with a single bullet. One day, a little more than a month after their return from the Western Capital, Jinshi attended a banquet for a departing minister. It was a lively affair, and to Jinshi’s surprise, Lakan was there, with Maomao in tow. Beyond ecstatic to see his intended wife where he had expected to be woefully alone, Jinshi had done his best to keep her in his sights, regardless of Lakan and Lahan’s needling. He otherwise was kept busy with the usual politicking and propriety that accompanied these events. At one point, he had Ou Zing from the Treasury and Sun Zhong from the Ministry of Personnel on either side of him, flirting under the guise of diplomacy. He kept his nymph-like smile on, giving them what they wanted without leaving himself vulnerable.
And then he heard someone crying. When he looked towards the sound, he saw a feifa. Without second thought, he pushed the ministers away, desperate to keep his people safe. But he was too late to save himself. In the blink of an eye, his chest was on fire and his body was on the ground, aching and confused. He tried to move, tried to run, but not even a single toe responded to his demands. He was paralyzed by the pain and doomed to die.
What followed was not his death, although it was a near thing. Maomao came to his rescue, her voice strained and scratchy, her eyes wide and terrified. When she was pulled off him, the court physicians soon replaced her. They rolled him onto a stretcher and carried him to surgery. Due to the severity of his wound, there was no time for anesthetics. They stripped him of the top half of his robes, Dr. Luomen thankfully keeping Jinshi’s flank covered. Then they placed wood between his teeth, held him down by the arms and legs, and began surgery. Jinshi knows he blacked out at one point, the pain too intense for even him to handle, but he’s certain that the event, in total, took at least five hours. This knowledge comes from when the doctors finished sewing him up, because one of them thought to bring his bed closer to the windows, so that he could look up at the night sky as congratulations.
The following morning, he was returned to his palace to recuperate. He barely remembers the hustle and bustle of that day, as he had powerful painkillers coursing through his system by then. He can only recall waking up that night, when his chest screamed at him for relief.
Maomao was there, in his bed and dressed for sleeping. He thought it a dream, a figment of the many wishes he had had for her over the years. But the taste of goji berries on his tongue was real, as was her warmth and the softness of her skin. She was still there in the morning, as well, the very picture of beauty and safety. He couldn’t resist any longer, after that. In the aftermath of a horrible injury, all Jinshi wanted was to be with Maomao, to hold her and kiss her and love her.
To his astonishment, she responded eagerly to his every request. She was there to comfort him when the pain was enough to make him cry; she was there to hold him and be held in the night; she was there to kiss him when he wanted to be kissed, and she objected not to him advancing their affections towards bolder, more physical displays.
He even witnessed her crying, something which he had never seen before, nor wanted to ever see again. Yet she did it multiple times, mostly when she thought he wasn’t awake to hear it. While he slowly, gradually made his way towards a full recovery, the love of his life began to deteriorate. He saw her as he thought he would never would – broken down and desperate for the winds to change. He hated himself all the more for ever allowing her to look so helpless.
So when she pleaded for him to stay with her, it was an easy thing to promise her that he would. It is all he has ever wanted, for almost as long as he has known her. If he was granted the right to live, then he would do so with a vow to never let her be so sad again. He would do anything in his power to ensure that every moment of her life was a happy one.
And with his promise to stay with her until the very end, Maomao gave him the one thing he feared she would never relent on – herself. With her permission finally given, the two of them became one in a night Jinshi wouldn’t soon forget. The taste of her, the feel of her – they were imprinted inside his body and mind, tying him all the closer to her, the only thing he could ever truly want.
writing lakan's perspective is fun because the only things he cares about are naps, juice, and his family, and that's IT. and if you want to give him a problem, he'll solve it in 5 seconds flat.
random headcanon: Maomao in modern au would have short hair. She'd let it grow out to the point that it annoys her, then cut it all off herself. Her loved ones are sick and tired of fixing her terrible haircuts for her, but they do it anyway
