An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Leverage
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer, Peggy/Quinn
Characters: Alec Hardison, Parker, Eliot Spencer, Quinn, Peggy, OFC, Nate Ford, Sophie Devereaux (Leverage)
Additional Tags: outsider pov, Pining, Getting Together, Christmas, Peggy being badass, Cats, Bit of a mishmash of things I think you like?, assassination attempt, Eliot Spencer Whump, Hurt/Comfort, mostly cute, light on the hurt/comfort, Eliot is getting in his own way
Summary: Parker sends Eliot undercover to work in a shop in the run up to Christmas. He's to keep the woman who owns it safe, a woman who happens to be Peggy's sister, and who is determined to help Eliot sort out his crushes on a couple of people...
For @humanformdragon. I loved writing this for you, I hope you enjoy this little slice of hurt/comfort as much as I enjoyed writing it! <3 Happy Solstice!!
Read on AO3
*****
On the Edge of the Cold Winter
Wei Wuxian is in Qinghe when he hears the news: the great Hanguang-Jun, has fallen! The words are whispered in horror through the people with all the subtlety of a blade through the throat. Hanguang-Jun has fallen, he fell defending his son.. He whirls on the spot, dropping the food between his chopsticks and the meat falls into the broth splattering the tablecloth, stains spreading outwards like blood on snow. The cultivators that he turns on are surprised to see him, and though his name has been cleared - through the same kind of rumours that had contributed to smearing it in the first place - it's never something that anyone's prepared for: the Yiling Patriarch in a small tea house in Qinghe, looking wild-eyed and worried at the news that Hanguang-Jun has fallen.
They don't tell him much of use, or in fact anything at all. But he rushes away anyway, out into the biting winter outside and it's only after he's left and running towards the stable to grab Apple that he realises that the reason he's here is the blizzard that's blowing along the border and stopping anyone from travelling that isn't able to fly above the worst of the weather, or with a strong core to prevent them from freezing to death. His own core is hardly strong enough, and he presses his lips together, recklessness warring with the promise he'd made to Lan Wangji that he would be safe.
***
"I'll be back, Lan Zhan," he says softly, brushing his fingers over Lan Wangji's cheek. The other man looks crestfallen in so much as he ever looks anything. The lines of his face are unhappy and still but his eyes are sad. Wei Wuxian knows that leaving is the only option available to him, in a world that moved on without him and spent nearly two decades cursing his name he can't do anything else until he's reconciled with his past.
"I know," Lan Wangji says, his hand lifting to curl around Wei Wuxian's wrist. He holds it gently, keeping Wei Wuxian's hand against his face. It looks like he wants to say more, but he doesn't.
Wei Wuxian says it for him. "I'll miss you," he says. Lan Wangji's face softens and he nods his head.
"I will miss you, too," he replies.
"You could come with me?" He's asked it a number of times over the last few days, trying to convince Lan Wangji to come with him, to leave and travel the world, they could fight evil together and protect the weak, the way they'd always promised.
Lan Wangji lets out a breath and his lips quirk up sadly in the corner. "Wei Ying," he starts, "you know I can't."
"Well," Wei Wuxian pats Lan Wangji's cheek and it's enough to make the other man let go of him. He offers a smile that's not as bright as normal and he knows but there's not much else he can do in the face of the truth, "it was worth a final try."
He hauls his pack over his shoulder. "I'll be back before the snows fall," he promises. It's spring now, the harshness of the previous winter having faded away and melted into the blossomming of new life and he wants to see the world and experience how it's changed for himself, to settle his mind before he starts anew.
They walk to the bottom of the steps, where Apple's waiting for him. He places his pack on her back and she brays at him, contrarily, lifting her head for a fuss from Lan Wangji who, as an enormously indulgent pushover, rubs his fingers through her rough mane twice and then pats her neck.
"Be safe," Lan Wangji says. He's looking deep into Wei Wuxian's eyes as he speaks, "be safe. Come home."
Wei Wuxian just nods and lifts three fingers. "I promise," he grins and takes Apple's reigns. "I'll write."
"I'll be waiting," Lan Wangji tells him and Wei Wuxian thinks he imagines the heartbreak on Lan Wangji's face as he turns and heads away from Cloud Recesses.
***
Promises aside, there's no way he can be away from Cloud Recesses - away from Lan Wangji - at a time like this. If Lan Wangji had fallen-
He can't think about it. It makes his chest hurt. The idea that something has happened to Lan Wangji throws him into a turmoil he hasn't felt for a long time, as though the ground beneath his feet is unsteady. The air rings in his ears, a loud bell that tells him he hasn't travelled back fast enough, and that if he had only been quicker perhaps this would not have happened. He might have been there, together there's no evil they can't face.
He thinks about their lunches in the back hill before he left, the way they'd sat together and he'd talked about nothing and everything and Lan Wangji had been indulgent and smiled at him and looked at him like he made the very plants grow, or the sun rise. He thinks about the way that Lan Wangji had stood beside him at Koi Tower and said to the leaders of the Cultivation world that the single log bridge was not too bad to walk.
And Sizhui- Hanguang-Jun fell protecting his son, they said. What had happened to Sizhui? He'd gone travelling with Wen Ning: what had happened to them?
Wei Wuxian can't breathe and the daughter of the tea house's owner finds him in the stables on his hands and knees, sucking in great gasps of air, vision black and spotting at the edges and it's only when her hands settle around him and he nearly lashes out at her with coiled energy that he's pulled out of his panic into the present.
"I have to go to Gusu," he says.
"You can't. The storm- it's impossible."
Wei Wuxian's lips quirk up into a little smile, then, the panic ebbing and giving way to the same sense that has carried him his entire life. He may no longer be part of the Yunmeng Jiangs, but he has always lived by their motto. Do nothing until you can achieve something. Do the impossible.
He looks her in the eye and puts a large silver nugget into her hand. "Will you send someone to Gusu with my donkey when the weather clears?"
She takes the money and frowns as she watches him rub behind Apple's ears and kiss her head, tells her to be good.
"But, young master, the storm."
Wei Wuxian squares his shoulders.
"I'm the Yiling Patriarch," he tells her, ignorign the sharp inward breath she takes at the realisation. "The Burial Mounds couldn't stop me. Compared to them, a storm is nothing."
***
A storm is not nothing. Wei Wuxian's new body is still wake, the golden core still too weak to do a whole lot to protect him from the cold but the cloak that had 'appeared' in his room a few weeks ago - a gift from Nie Huaisang, he was sure, to apologise for everything that had happened - was warm and fur-lined and did its job at keeping the worst at bay. Still, his fingers were numb more often than not and he trudges through shin-deep snow for two days, resting wherever he can find shelter until he realised this is untenable.
He has to try something else.
He lifts his head and scowls at the blizzard outside that’s thrown the world into whiteness, as though it’s gravely offended him. It has, it’s keeping him from Lan Wangji - who might be already dead if not dying and Wei Wuxian feels like a wild thing.
The great Hanguang-Jun has fallen!
It haunts him, the echo of those words bounce around the emptiness of his mind, void of evertything but the worry that he might not be fast enough, that he might not get back in time. He'd promised to be back before the snows fell but here he was, snow falling around him and the world having made him a liar.
He thinks that perhaps if he'd been less distracted he would have had a better grasp of how much time had passed. He wouldn't have missed the chance to travel before the worst of the weather hit. He would have been able to make it back to Cloud Recesses - to his home - before it was too difficult to travel. He's been writing steadily, a stream of letters that haven't been responded but he's never expected an answer. After all, Lan Wangji is a busy man and Wei Wuxian has been travelling between towns and villages, never in one place long enough for a letter to make its way back.
But he'd always intended on going back, always intended on making sure that he kept to his promise.
The blizzard whites out the world in front of him and he feels a low fury at the injustice of the early snow fall. He's not a liar, not about the things that mattered and though he's not got a great track record of keeping his promises - just ask his brother, he thinks ruefully with a stabbing ache in his chest - he's always tried and he's never broken a promise to Lan Wangji.
What if he's too late and the last thing Lan Wangji thought was that he's an oathbreaker?
He can't keep going like this, but he can't stop. Gusu is two weeks away on foot, and he still can't fly, he's not strong enough. Suibian, resting beside him, hums to him in an attempt to reassure him that she's there and she'd try. He knows she would, he would try too but the core inside of him might cause them to collapse and fall out of the sky. He's had more than his fair share of falling and there's no amount of resentment that would reach out and catch him now, not without the seal.
As the sun goes down and throws the cave into even more darkness, shadows dancing on the wall in sharp relief, Wei Wuxian decides he needs to travel faster, and decides in the morning that he'll take a detour. He throws up a hundred silent apologies to his ancestors, to Lan Wangji and the Lan elders who would likely just know what he's going to have to do, and then lays down to sleep.
He has a plan.
***
His plan is terrible. It takes him the better part of the morning, feeling out tendrils of resentment to find a battlefield from the Sunshot Campaign and when he finds it, the energy crawls over his skin like a particularly odious lover, running along his meridians and over the small core inside of him like it knows that something is sitting in the place it belongs. He greets it like a viper, Chenqing in his hand as he shrills and whistles, piercing and commanding.
There aren't many bodies, many were taken back to their home lands but the anger they died with has soaked into the land. Qinghe is soaked in resentment, not as strongly as Qishan, or even Lanling which has generations of backstabbing and nearly twenty years under the thumb of someone who had a habit of letting his murder puppet loose whenever he didn't like that someone had called him the son of a whore.
Still, he finds what he needs.
Wei Wuxian digs until he unearths the large bones of a horse. It's long since dead and decayed and for that he's thankful, but it animates at his command, shaking itself whole and giving a huge shudder as though it still has a mane to shake. With dirt under his fingernails, he wraps it in resentment and slaps a talisman on along its neck to give it a shadowy form that he can ride and one to generate warmth to stop him from freezing, and when it drops to one knee so he can climb on and starts to move faster than any steed known to man, it's easy for Wei Wuxian to forget why he stopped doing this.
***
Though the steed doesn't tire, he does, and he feels the bite of the cold against his fingers and face where he's not touching the horse. When he rides through a town, he hears shrieks and screams and for a moment is confused until he remembers he's riding an undead steed, cloaked in black smoke and darkness, the snows melting even as they touch its mane, fizzling with a steam that has been doing a good job of keeping him at least a little warm.
He wants to stop, but he's made good time, and so pushes on through the night, rides until he physically can't anymore and they break through the blizzard, and he slumps off the horse, collapsing onto a damp grassy bank, eyes rolling back in his head as exhaustion claims him.
He sees his horse rear up on its hind legs, and then the world goes blank.
***
"This is really him?"
"Yes. I think I'd know Senior Wei when I saw him."
"I mean no disrespect, Jingyi but-"
"But? You know following something with ‘but’ immediately makes everything before it totally irrelevant, right? You know how you can say ‘not to be rude but you’re an idiot’?”
“That’s not-“
“This is Senior Wei. Come on, if we let him freeze to death out here, Zewu-Jun will have our hides.”
***
When he blinks awake there are three things he realises: one, he is indoors; two, he's surrounded by young men wearing white; three, his horse is nowhere to be found. Of these three things, only one of them really bothers him and he sits up, rubbing at his head (which aches) and looks around to find a familiar face largely to check that he hasn't just been randomly kidnapped by people dressed in the white outfits of the Gusu Lans.
He was in luck as his eyes fell on a familiar profile.
"Ah, Lan Jingyi," he says, which makes the young Lan jump and turn around. He looks like an annoyed tiger cub, it's not hard to imagin a tail flicking around his legs. "What are you frowning at me for? You're the one that kidnapped me."
"We haven't kidnapped you," Jingyi retorts hotly, "don't be so dramatic, Senior Wei."
"So you do remember your manners!" Wei Wuxiasn teases, "remember, little Lan, you should respect your elders."
Jingyi just rolls his eyes and throws Wei Wuxian's heavy cloak at him as though it weighs nothing.
"I would if you deserved it," he fires back and Wei Wuxian's heart grows three sizes in his chest. He sees the flush of Jingyi's ears and the way he struggles to hide his smile. "Put this on, we'll eat and leave."
It's then that awareness properly filters into Wei Wuxian's mind and he straightens, bolting out of the bed quickly enough to make him feel dizzy.
"Lan Jingyi," he says urgently, "what happened to Hanguang-Jun? And Sizhui? I heard- I heard-"
Jingyi presses his lips together and reaches out, touching Wei Wuxian's arm. Wei Wuxian does not like it when people don't tell him things, he's so used to keeping secrets of his own but that doesn't mean he likes being on the other side of it.
Secrets are, objectively, the worst.
"It'll be easier for you to just come with us, Senior Wei. We've been looking for you for a week."
"You could say thank you," one of the other Lan discples says and Wei Wuxian turns to look at her with an arched eyebrow. She flushes and mumbles an apology, but Wei Wuxian chuckles. He likes this generation of little Lans, they have a fire to them that makes his chest feel warm.
"Thank you," he drawls and winks at her, which makes her flush all over again and she heads outside. "Jingyi, tell me what happened. And how you intend on us travelling back as I cannot fly and-"
"And?"
"What happened to my horse?"
***
Jingyi tells him as they're flying through the air, skating over the trees, his arms firmly around Wei Wuxian, that there had been no sign of his horse when they'd found him which, in Jingyi's mind was a very good thing, at least he said that after he found out that the horse had been a spiritual one.
"Ghost horses," he says, shouting to be heard above the wind, "honestly, Senior Wei would a normal horse not be good enough for you?"
"You try riding a living horse through a blizzard," Wei Wuxian retorts, fingers clutching tightly at Jingyi's waist. He's only flown once since he came back, and that was in Lan Wangji's arms as they fled Koi Tower after Jin Ling had stabbed him. He hasn't been in the air since then, and before that had been when he'd been dropped into the Burial Mounds. "You might be cruel enough to make an animal ride through that but I-"
"I am not cruel," Jingyi barks, offence rippling through the lines of his body, "I'll drop you if you keep saying such things."
He's only joking, and they both know it, but Wei Wuxian's grip tightens nevertheless. Jingyi, who doesn't understand the source of his fear, just frowns.
"Senior Wei," he says reproachfully, a few hours later when they land so everyone can take a break and replenish their spiritual energy, "I wouldn't really have dropped you."
He looks so wounded that Wei Wuxian just reaches out and pats his head.
"I know, little Lan, but you'll have to forgive this senior for his fear of heights. Heights and I, historically, do not get along very well."
Jingyi doesn't say anything else, but Wei Wuxian knows he's thinking about all the stories he's heard and wonders which one he's deciding is the reason for Wei Wuxian's fear of heights.
***
They arrive at the stairs that lead up to Cloud Recesses very late that same night. Jingyi is staggering a little in exhaustion at having demanded that he be the only one to carry Senior Wei - I promised, Lan Hua, you know that, besides he's my friend - all the way back. Wei Wuxian hooks an arm underneath his shoulders and secure his own around Jingyi's waist as he supports the young disciple up the thousand stairs as quickly as they're able to as a group of exhausted and cold travellers.
Halfway up they reach the main entrance and are greeted by a couple of very enthusiastic young disciples who hesitate a little to collapse the wards.
"It's after curfew," one of them says, shifting from foot to foot and from the ripple of breath behind him, Wei Wuxian realises just how late it is.
"No wonder you little Lans are so tired."
"Stop calling us that," Jingyi protests, but he does sound sleepy and every bit in his young twenties.
"But you are," Wei Wuxian coos, tightening his arm around Jingyi's waist. This body is so weak, his old one wouldn't have had any problem supporting the cultivator.
"I'm older than you were when you first died," Jingyi presents as a trump card. "You and Hanguang-Jun had already fought in the Sunshot Campaign and had gone through so much by the time you were our age. Well," he yawns, "when Hanguang-Jun was our age. You didn't actually end up this old."
"Don't let your Hanguang-Jun hear you say that," Wei Wuxian teases, "he'd be most upset to be reminded of my untimely demise."
It's meant to be a joke, but Jingyi just nods and says, quite seriously, "He would."
"We can't let you in."
"You can," Wei Wuxian says, and the other guard on duty sets his jaw.
"They know the rules too," he says, "you can't come in past curfew. We won't take the barrier down."
"Don't worry about being punished," Wei Wuxian says, lifting his hand and and drawing a talisman in the air, pushing it into the barrier that makes the archway portion dissolve. Everyone except Jingyi looks on in horror at the blatant dissolution of their security barrier. "Oh stop your gawking. I'll put it back. Anyone of this group who wants to sleep in their own bed tonight come with me. You won't get punished for coming back in after curfew, it'll all be on me. That includes you two for letting us in."
"We didn't!"
Wei Wuxian winks and saunters in with Jingyi, and the other Lans who have been flying in the snow for three days and definitely want their beds. "I know," he shoots over his shoulder and when he clicks his fingers, the barrier repairs itself, shimmering blue as though it hadn't been broken at all.
They're halfway up the last of the stairs when Jingyi says, confused, "You could have just used your token, Senior Wei."
Wei Wuxian almost stops walking in his surprise and then hums, as though he'd completely forgotten he had a jade token of his own. "Oh," he says, "I suppose I could have done."
When they reach the main part of Cloud Recesses, he hands Jingyi off to a disciple who had introduced herself as Lan Hua, trusting her to get him into bed and somewhere safe so that he could sleep off his tiredness.
He has somewhere else to be.
***
He doesn't immediately run to the Healer's Pavilion, instead he heads to the Jingshi. He's been there a few times: he stayed there each time he's been in Cloud Recesses since his resurrection. and he knows the path there as well as he knows his own heart (that is, not very well: he gets lost twice along the winding paths and ends up outside the Hanshi once, then realises what he'd done wrong and back tracks to get to the correct place).
The Jingshi is quiet when he gets there. The light isn't on above the porch and there's no soft candle light inside. He can't hear the sounds of a qin echoing through the air and he can't feel the warm welcome presence of Lan Wangji that's always permeated the air around this place.
He hadn't forgotten the words that spurred his movements -
the great Hanguang-Jun has fallen! He fell protecting his son
-but suddenly they feel so much more real and terrifying. Suddenly it feels like this might be truth that Lan Wangji fell. The Jingshi looks snow-dusted and empty, like a place in mourning. Wei Wuxian walks up the small path like a man heading to the gallows. His mouth is drier than the desert, sand and gravedirt in his throat as his feet move without his permission taking him closer to the doors.
The building is just a building, a house is not a home without a person inside to love and Wei Wuxian suddenly is struck with the inexorable knowledge that he is too late. The Jingshi - Lan Wangji's home with only one bed that he had always thought would be his home too when he returned - is in front of him silent as the grave and just as full of memories, good and bad, but not nearly enough great. He wants to stand in the porch in the snow listening to Lan Wangji playing their song again with a jar of Emperor's Smile in his hand.
How long has the building been empty for, he wonders, how long has it stood empty, missing Lan Wangji? How much longer will it stand without its heart? He reaches the sliding door and pushes it open and realises his hands are trembling.
Inside is immaculate, too. It always has been, but for the few times Wei Wuxian himself had been staying there and had thrown half of the Jingshi into an organised kind of chaos, the likes of which he had been consistently chastised for in the most affectionate of ways. Lan Wangji had just smiled and said pick up after yourself, Wei Ying but never actually done anything about the chaos he left behind.
His breath catches and he looks around, trying to find something, some evidence that Lan Wangji has been here that day and is just out but Wangji is on the low table, her strings sitting still and unplayed and Wei Wuxian knows that Lan Wangji takes his qin wiht him everywhere. The bed is empty, the sheets unrumpled and unslept in and it's after curfew so there's no reason for Lan Wangji to be anywhere than here. Even injured, this is his home and he would not rest anywhere else.
Grief clutches at him, wild and desperate and for a moment Wei Wuxian wants to call out for whatever resentment he could pull from the very earth and use it to find Lan Wangji, to bring him back. Chenqing is in his hand, being lifted to his lips, heart hammering crazed and terrified, when the lamps in the Jingshi flare on and he feels a hand clamp around his wrist.
"Wei Ying," Lan Wangji says, voice soft and concerned as he uses the touch to lower Chenqing from Wei Wuxian's lips. Wei Wuxian thinks he might be hallucinating, in all honesty, he just swallows and turns his head. He hasn't played anything, so how is Lan Wangji here?
Lan Wangji looks tired, there are dark bruises smudged underneath his eyes and his cheeks are a little hollow, like he's lost some weight and hasn't been eating. He doesn't have dark spiderweb veins running up his neck of the hollowness in his eyes of a corpse without its spiritual cognition and his fingers are warm against Wei Wuxian's wrist. Wei Wuxian knows he's staring but he can't help it.
"Wei Ying," Lan Wangji repeats softly, patiently, "what are you doing?"
Wei Wuxian obediently lowers Chenqing and swallows. A second later, the first class spiritual flute falls to the floor (he'll apologise to her later) and spins on his heel.
"What am I doing? What are you doing? You're supposed to be dead!"
Lan Wangji just blinks at him, like he's waiting for Wei Wuxian to make sense. Honestly, Wei Wuxian would like for Wei Wuxian to make sense, too. It's been a long few days and he has no idea how much of that he's spent sleeping versus travelling like a lunatic to get back to someone who was dead or dying only to find them on their feet, perfectly capable of snarking at them.
"Am I?" Lan Wangji asks, looking down at himself, as though checking that he isn't a ghost. Wei Wuxian pokes his chest, firmly, and it makes him hiss in a breath, slapping at the offending finger. "My apologies," he says, in a perfect deadpan, "I was not made aware of this."
Wei Wuxian wails, somewhere between a laugh and a cry something else too big to name. He reaches out with both hands and grasps Lan Wangji's face, which makes startled hands come to settle at his waist and he shakes his head.
"Now is not the time to be funny, Lan Zhan," he chastises, relief surging through him so powerfully he thinks he knees might give out. He's so glad that he's got hands at his sides, holding onto his hips and making sure he doesn't actually swoon or faint and crack his head on the floor and end up being the dead one. "Now is- I heard you'd died. Jingyi didn't tell me you were alive, he just-"
"Jingji left to get you on Sizuhi's request," Lan Wangji says, clicking his tongue. "I found out after he had left. It's after curfew. Really, you should have stayed in town tonight."
"Ah, yes, well, about that- it- I sort of let us in."
"I felt you break the ward, though since you were working under an incorrect assumption and surrounded by exhausted disciples, I'll overlook your infraction this time," Lan Wangji says, his lips lifted into something like a lopsided smile. Wei Wuxian wants to punch him.
Wei Wuxian doesn't punch him.
Wei Wuxian instead looks at Lan Wangji for a long moment, his perfect - funny - Lan Wangji who is smiling softly at him, thumbs rubbing circles into his hips over the fabric of his robes, who is right there and beautiful and alive - if not tired and possibly injured if the hissed breath is any indication.
He's taken by another irrational feeling this time, and it involves him standing on his toes, fingers sinking into the silky strands of Lan Wangji's hair and pulling him down until their lips pressed together in a kiss. Lan Wangji doesn't respond immediately, and when Wei Wuxian realises he may have made a very impulsive, terrible mistake, he goes to lean back and apologise when Lan Wangji growls against his lips and spins them around, pushes Wei Wuxian against the wall of the Jingshi and kisses him again.
"Ah," Wei Wuxian says when the kiss breaks, the sting of Lan Wangji's teeth still against his skin, "ai, Lan Zhan, my Lan Zhan I missed you."
Lan Wangji's lips slide along his jaw, sucking a mark underneath his ear which makes him keen, those hands firm at his hips, so firm they'll leave a mark.
"You're late, Wei Ying," Lan Wangji says with another bite. Wei Wuxian rewards him for his bitey curiosity with cry. "You said you would be back before the snow fell."
"The snows fell early," Wei Wuxian tries, around a moan, "ah- ah! Lan Zhan please, have mercy on this poor man."
"Mercy," Lan Wangji purrs, licking over the first of many bite marks, "belongs to those that are on time."
Wei Wuxian lets out a sound that's borderline hysterical, fingers catching the back of Lan Wangji's neck and whining, breath hitching. "Please- ah- ah Lan Zhan, look at me."
Lan Wangji does, and Wei Wuxian immediately regrets drawing those lips away from his throat.
"I missed you," he repeats, trying to tell Lan Wangji that he had been so afraid he was too late, that he was glad to be home, that he wanted to stay, that he loved. His hands cradle Lan Wangji's face again, thumbs smoothing over Lan Wangji's cheeks gently.
Lan Wangji just looks at him and for a moment, Wei Wuxian sees the entire world in those eyes. He sees it all, the floodgate of emotion in the most minute of movements from Lan Wangji's expression and he realises that not only does Lan Wangji know, but when Lan Wangji says, "You were also missed, Wei Ying," he means I'm glad you're here and Don't leave again and You are loved, too.
This time when their lips meet, the heat is still there in each touch, in the broad sweep of Lan Wangji's tongue but there is a sweetness underneath it, a tenderness that makes a shudder run the length of his spine.
When their chests are heaving from kisses and Wei Wuxian realises that there's blood blossoming underneath Lan Wangji's robes from a torn wound, Wei Wuxian tenderly changes his bandages and brushes his fingers over the lines of Lan Wangji's chest, over the scar that mirrored one that he once had brandished on his own chest.
"I'm sorry I'm late, Lan Zhan," he whispers, kissing the clean bandages and climbing into the bed beside his beloved companion and accepting the offer to lie on his chest. "I'll never be late again."
"Does that mean you're planning on leaving?" Lan Wangji asks, a tentative resignation in his voice, but Wei Wuxian can hear the underlying request, the request to stay.
"Not unless you're coming with me," he says, whispering the promise of forever into another kiss.
@humanformdragon replied to your post “@jenwryn replied to your post “okay but also...”
Oh gods -the first few times it happens, just imagine the grin on Chatty Man's face and the dawning horror on so many other faces...
HE’S SO HAPPY THIS IS HIS BEST DAY EVER!!
the first reporter asks a dumb question and huang shaotian starts talking about why he chose the name troubling rain (not what the reporter asked, but huang shaotian isn’t going to dignify “captain yu do you have a girlfriend” with an answer....maaaaybe if they’d asked “captain yu do you have a boyfriend,” it would have been a different story).
anyway, he KEEPS TALKING and after the first fifteen miutes he thinks that yu wenzhou is going to put a hand on his shoulder to tell him to stop but HE DOESN’T. so huang shaotian talks faster and faster and his smile gets wider and wider and the dawning looks of horror in the audience only spur him on. he had SO MUCH TO SAY and he finally gets to say it!
with each passing word, the glow on yu wenzhou’s face gets brighter and happier. this is his BEST PLAN YET. the reporters have all fallen into line AND he got to hear huang shaotian speak a lot.
#9: Deck
Author: @humanformdragon
Artist: @entirelythewrongsort
Rating: General Audiences
Pairing/s: Dean/Castiel implied
Word Count: 6k
Warnings: N/A
Summary: Months after Castiel took on another angel’s Grace, he gets a message from Nora asking if he’ll visit to help her with some home repairs. He takes a break from persuading the angels to return to Heaven and takes Hannah to visit his friend.
Link to Fic: http://archiveofourown.org/works/10623258
Link to Art: http://entirely-the-wrong-sort.tumblr.com/post/159560513460/my-artwork-for-humanformdragons-beautiful-fic
2 - things that motivate youPeople liking the stuff I do - I like to make stuff, but I’m far more motivated to make things for other people than for myself. So I sew, knit, cross stitch, and now write(?!) generally with the idea that it’s aimed at someone. It can be someone specific or just a vague fog of people, but I’m much more likely to finish things that I start for others.
3 - name three favorite writersJasper Fforde - I love puns, literary references, and women who take no shit. So Thursday Next is AMAZING. I have an entropy detector signed by him (it’s a jar of lentils and rice.)
Ann Leckie - the subtlety in the way she worldbuilds and crafts characters is incredible. (I am not subtle, but I want to be). also, she surprises laughs at the strangest moments.
Okay, trying to choose a third is REALLY hard, so I’m going to go with one I’ve just discovered: Paolo Bacigalupi. I heard him speak at a book festival last year and just read his book The Water Knife, which was an incredible, believable dystopian future at the southwestern US in a water crisis. It mostly takes place in Phoenix, where I live, (not a lot of people have Phoenix as a setting) and it freaked me out, but I loved it.
Honorable Mentions to my perennial favorites: Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Nancy FRICKIN Farmer, Val McDermid, ooh and Jane Lindskold.
4 - name three authors that were influential to your work and tell whyMatt Fraction - (I was going to put him up above, but this works too) He’s obviously influential in the fact that I went and wrote a novel length story because I fell in love with his characters - or his depictions of characters, anyway - but moreso because he’s got a great grasp on balancing character emotions and doing it in not a lot of room. And he keeps doing new, weird shit? I’m not at that point with writing yet, but I definitely have a tendency to look at something new and go “I wanna try that” (which is how I’ve ended up sewing cosplay, playing roller derby, and writing fanfic). Between Casanova (a james bondish spy stories that takes place on multiple planes of existence), Sex Criminals (about a librarian and her boyfriend who stop time with their orgasms in order to rob banks), and ody-c (uhhh a genderflipped, psychedelic retelling of the Odyssey in space all written in a dummy dactylic hexameter until we hit the fall of the house of atreus when we switch to LIMERICKS?!?!) i never know what to expect and i love it.
Cornelia Funke - damn she’s incredible. The way she talks and writes about books makes me fall in love with them all over again. I love how much fun she clearly has with her characters and her worlds - they have both a tangible and magical feel to them that’s difficult to describe, but i relish reading. I heard her speak at sdcc one year, and I’m still not over how articulate she was. I only wish I could speak that well (nevermind in a second language).
Tamora Pierce - I kinda mentioned this in a previous ask, but I spent many, many years telling myself fanfic before I wrote anything down. It didn’t start with Pierce’s books, but trying to attribute an author to robin hood is laughable, and I think I spent the most time using Pierce’s worlds as a backdrop and tossing in anyone who I thought would fit. It was a good escape and taught me more about dialog and character dynamics than I ever realized until I started writing things down.
14 - 13 hardest easiest character to write(I already answered 13, dammit Eliot, so I’ll do 14!) It depends on my mood, but Natasha and Bobbi are both freakishly easy. Especially Natasha - she’s cool and collected, and a bit of a dork, and writing her scenes is like remembering I have spreadable butter in the fridge. When I get back to that cross-over I’m going to have a good bit with her and Eliot working together and I’m looking forward to having the two of them interact more. In Leverage, Hardison. He’s got a clear voice and he’s a big nerd, so he’s fun to write.
