So, I live in a two story apartment building, and one of units above me had a small fire that triggered the sprinkler system.
So far no water in my unit, which is great, but most relevant to why I'm hitting you up is that I was doing my civic duty and being nosy about the activities of firefighters and building maintenance hereabouts, and so half-heard a conversation that my gay heart took to be a real life meet-cute.
I'm not in the 911 fandom, enough so that I'm actually not sure that's the name of the show and I'm only 90% sure one of the OTP is named Tommy. However, I do have faith in your ability to make the appropriate connections, and so I shall continue.
I will set the scene - it's evening in later winter, the sun is already set and the sky is a deepening purple-blue. The fire alarms of the apartment building are quiet, now. People are back in their homes. Outside, the emergency vehicles have all left. Only a scattering of trained individuals remain, taking care of the last few details before they, too, will leave.
A man in gear that reads "Fire Rescue" stands at the corner of the unit on the end of the row, leaning on the porch post, scanning the figures still milling out front from the water logged unit. He's looking for someone, even as he brings his radio closer, listening to reports squawking over the line.
Someone breaks away from a huddle near a service truck - the building's on-site and on-call superintendents convening to get tasks sorted and next steps planned. The man with Fire Rescue perks up on seeing him and flags him down. Confused, but willing the on-call superintendent walks over.
They shake hands in introduction, and the man with Fire Rescue says, "I'm [name] do you remember me?"
The on-call superintendent stares for a moment, hand still gripped in the other's - then pleased recognition lights his face. "You're [name]? I didn't recognize you! What happened to your hair?"
They both throw their heads, laughing.
From here, alas, they moved away and I only caught a few tidbits -
"How's your dad?"
"Great! He just retired."
"Really? That's great."
"What's your number? Email?" and the on-call super gave it to the man from Fire Rescue. I'm pretty sure Fire Rescue give his to the super too.
It sounded like they'd known each other before (same school? training of some kind? co-workers?) but one of them moved and they lost touch. I think Fire Rescue guy had seen him earlier and been waiting for the opportunity to speak with the on-call super.
The crowning moment was when the on-call super asked "Hey, what's the best number to get you at?" and the other answered "911." And it was such a clean set up with the both of them obviously knowing the joke.
I thought of you at once and had to share immediately - may you do with this as you choose, Trill!
Oh my goddddddd. That's so fucking cute. Also this completely made my day when you sent it to me, thank you so much for thinking of me I was genuinely having a shitty day and then I read this and it made me so happy. Sorry my depression has been eating my brain so hard lately and I didn't respond till now.
This absolutely deserves a fic, a little Buck/Tommy alternate meeting I'm just gonna ramble about what I would write if my muses weren't brumating something like -
Maybe Tommy found himself a little earlier, either just wanting to be himself openly or he got unwillingly outed at work or something and he decided it wasn't worth the risk of being a firefighter under his bigoted Captain Gerard who could fully just put him in a situation that could get him killed and nobody would even realize it was because he's gay. Maybe he quit being a firefighter and became a part time helicopter mechanic instead since he has the specialized skills - Maybe Tommy never became a firefighter after he left the army and just went that route in the first place! Either way, somehow just out of a weird chain of events or to make ends meet, he ends up in that building maintenance supervisor position too - maybe so he could get an apartment at a good rate where he's the resident supervisor and then on-call to a few other buildings since the work they have him doing is not quite a full time job.
Maybe he sort of knows Buck from when Buck first got to LA he lived in the building Tommy lived/worked in - the "frathouse" apartment crew would surely have ended up with a few shenanigans that ended up requiring the super's attention. Buck's the one with the weird firefighter schedule of off days that let him be at the apartment more so he ends up being the main point of contact to be present and let Tommy in to fix things so he ends up very earnestly following Tommy around while he fixes their plumbing problem (normal building issue not even their fault) or the replacement for the door knob and lock (definitely their fault after one of the roommates drunkenly insisted he could pick the lock, "how hard can it be they do it in movies all the time!" and ruined it completely) and so on. Rom-com levels of shenanigans that keep them bumping into each other.
Season 1 Buck who is very much bi but doesn't know it is fascinated by this built, handsome guy who radiates competence and cool, whose dry sense of humor has him laughing helplessly and who's just so <i>interesting</i> when Buck asks him questions and Tommy takes him seriously and explains the maintenance stuff or tells him about helicopters or being an LA native.
Tommy is charmed, of course, and flattered the way Evan's attention is so intense. This is early days so maybe he's a lot less confident yet in being out, still getting the hang of actually flirting with guys and not defaulting to performative heterosexual masculinity standards. But he likes him a lot so he cautiously drops a few feelers trying to figure out if he's queer. Unfortunately the hints go completely over Buck's head at that point, so Tommy just relegates his crush to wishful thinking over another straight boy he shouldn't let himself get hung up on, though he admittedly has more than a few fantasies for a while there, and makes a few excuses to pay him another visit (Hey, one of your neighbors had a plumbing problem, so while I'm around I should check that no leaks came through to your place, if you have time).
Of course the "frathouse" setup was always meant to be temporary and Buck moves on to another living situation. They're not quite real friends, Buck doesn't catch Tommy when he tries to stop by to say goodbye, and life's busy and they slip apart. Tommy doesn't see him for a while and only belatedly finds out the crew of bros have moved out when he gets called to the apartment and there's a nice young couple living there now. Soon he forgets all about him too, years go by. They both live their lives, date some people, move places.
But the thing is Buck never really forgot Tommy - there's supposedly a little side effect of ADHD time-blindness that for some people sort of puts relationships in stasis when they're out of sight out of mind for ADHD people, and to Buck, that's where Tommy is in the back of his head. So the 118 gets called to go out to deal with the small apartment fire like you described and Tommy gets called to come deal with it too because it's one of his buildings - and Buck would see him and instantly just be like - oh there's Tommy! I've been meaning to stop by (even though it's been like eight years lol).
So Buck volunteers to stay back on the scene to wait for the arson investigator or whatever the finishing up stuff is after a fire he needs to be around for and lingers there hoping to catch Tommy, just like you described, and when he gets a chance flags him down all happy. "Bet I look totally different in turnouts, you didn't recognize me!" Buck says with a laugh when Tommy's a little confused and then embarrassed that he didn't in fact recognize him until Buck had explained "I used to live in your building, you helped fix our lock that one time after my roommate tried to pick it like an idiot" and Tommy does remember after all of course it was just so unexpected - and now that he does he definitely remembers that he'd had some very explicit fantasies about this guy who, yeah, he'd been hot eight years ago but he looks like a man now and he looks all competent and confident in his gear - but still looking at Tommy like he's so happy to see him. His crush is very quickly back in full force just looking at that brilliant smile Evan's directing at him.
And Tommy by now is more comfortable in his own skin, more confident in his ability to read attraction from guys and act on it properly. Buck (still doesn't realize he's bi) is definitely flirting. Tommy starts flirting back. They swap emails and numbers or sm handles or whatever. They do that adorable little:
"So what's the best way to reach you?"
"Call 911!"
joke you saw and some playful little shoulder shove while they laugh and smile at each other that from the outside is way too much for how little they really know each other - but then they have to both go do their jobs and stuff, *sigh*.
But the connection is made! Maybe the "accidental" fire was a little less than accidental so Tommy uses that as an excuse to ask Buck for advice about how things get classified as arson (though tbh it's the rental managers that have to deal with all that and the leases and whatever not Tommy but hey it's an in). And then oh, hm, does Evan maybe have some resources Tommy could share with tenants about fire safety? And after that - well, maybe Tommy could use some expert advice on the latest standards while doing some checks on the fire-suppression and warning systems in all his buildings and would Evan maybe mind doing him a favor? He could always trade him a helicopter tour, after all - and of course Buck doesn't hesitate at all to say yes every time - he loves being helpful, and Tommy's so cool and funny and like, he definitely won't turn down the helicopter thing but he'd do it without any quid pro quo, the way Tommy's eyes crinkle when he smiles at him is like, plenty already.
Tommy uses up all his plausible pretenses to meet up with him, but soon he doesn't need any more (thank fuck, because in his lower moments he'd started fantasizing about committing some arson of his own in order to have Evan come to his rescue somehow) because they start just texting after that. Tommy finally works up the nerve to just ask him out to dinner, and Buck says yes.
Of course, he doesn't actually realize it's a date before he meets Tommy at the restaurant, but he very quickly puts it together when Tommy greets him with the whole not-broish-slightly-intimate light hug and kiss to the cheek, and the way his shirt is so open at the throat and the freshly-shaved jaw and styled hair - the sexy cologne. The way his voice is all low and warm and flirtatious when he tells Buck he looks nice and Buck stammers his way through a "So do you". They go inside and the restaurant is very definitely not a casual bro hang restaurant. Tommy puts a hand on the small of his back as they scoot through narrow isles of tables they're both a little too big for as they follow the hostess to be seated and the touch makes his belly turn over with what he definitely recognizes as arousal, even though that's confusing to him.
He's fidgeting fit to burst as they get seated and Tommy starts to notice so he excuses himself to the bathroom to freak out a minute and speedrun his bisexual awakening - probably calls Hen in a panic as his closest openly queer friend and blurts out everything at her in a rush and she's like - okay. So. I'm not sure I caught ALL of that but details aside, it sounds like you're on a date with someone you like, who happens to be a guy. It's just a date, you know how to do that. You can worry about the rest of it some other time, we'll bust out the tequila and talk about bisexuality if you want, but for now maybe just go enjoy your date. If it turns out not to be for you, then hey, just say thanks but no thanks to a second date like you normally would. Don't complicate it.
Since Buck has always trusted Hen's calm and wisdom deeply it just sort of clicks something over for him. She's right, it's just a date with someone he likes. He can do that. So he goes back out and does exactly that - and it's a great date. Tommy's just as interesting and sharp-witted and cool as he remembered, and it's thrilling to realize he definitely enjoys looking at him like that. And Tommy's looking at him back, and it's giving him butterflies like crazy.
They make it to the movie and Buck spends the whole time incredibly aware of Tommy next to him - the way the seats are too narrow for guys their size to sit comfortably shoulder to shoulder but Tommy had just - put his arm over the back of Buck's seat so they could fit, and he can feel him pressed against him all down his side - and then bit by bit Tommy's trailing the hand from the arm from around his shoulders up his arm, and then the side of his neck - so light and easy it could almost be absentminded or casual except the way it makes Buck feel like his body should be glowing in the wake of his touch. And he doesn't even mean to do it quite - he's just a little overwhelmed and he'd meant to grab for the arm rest but they hadn't put it down in the first place while trying to squeeze into their seats so he ends up grabbing Tommy's thigh, and he flinches a little and would apologize except Tommy's emboldened by the touch and turns his face in towards Buck's cheek and splays his hand out on his neck in ways that tingle in his scalp and shut down his brain and he forgets to take his hand off Tommy's thigh and instead is kneading it because he can feel Tommy's breath on his skin and then - Tommy nuzzles in behind his ear, and Buck's whole body just is curling around the way his whole focus is on that touch. He's turning his face towards it and Tommy's right there in the dark and Buck kisses him because he needs to and-
Well they spend the whole rest of the movie making out at a luxuriously glacial pace and Buck is so crazy horny but also more than a little overwhelmed by it all. He looks it when they come back out into the bright lights of the movie theater lobby and Tommy knows they could definitely keep going, but he also wants to savor this because he's pretty sure dating Evan is going to be life-changing. He's pretty sure he's in for the ride of his life (literally and metaphorically) in bed if Evan looks like that after some relatively chaste making-out. (And like, he's not wrong but it's also a little bit Buck is overwhelmed by directly experiencing his queerness for the first time. Of course he's going to be a different kind of devastating once he's flying confident and cocky in it later on).
Anyway Tommy gives him a really sweet kiss goodnight and suggests a second date that Buck doesn't even remember considering turning down just a couple of hours ago he's in such a daze. And IDK they go from there and build themselves a happy life together after their little re-meet-cute over an apartment fire. Yay :3
Here's part one of our fandom's beloved authors showing off their wonderful stories they published this year. Make sure to give them all the love they deserve and thank you for your hard work!
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A sweet and comfy little fic in which, to quote one of the comments, "Lan Wangji has had a Morning. A good one, but a Morning nonetheless." He also has an Evening first, but that, unfortunately, was claimed by the Emperor's Smile ;)
Thanks for assembling this list can't wait to see it ❤️🖤🩵🤍
Fair's Fair
by KingdomFlameVIII (@peebls)
E, 11k, Wangxian
Summary: "Are you ever going to kiss me?" Wei Ying demanded.
or
Wei Wuxian has had quite enough. Lan Wangji is all too happy to adapt.
~*~
I want to submit this for the 2025 rewind to give it a little boost - one of the themes through the comments I've been getting has been that readers don't usually read a work like this, but were glad they did!
When Plums are Ripe (There Must Be a Road)
by somevariationofgay (@somevariationofgay)
E, 105k, Sangxian
Summary: When his army is defeated at the border, Wei Ying - a former General of Dazhi - is taken as a prize by the victor nation Beicui. He's resigned to a life of hard labor and an early death when a chance encounter alters his fate - he ends up in the manor of Prince Qing as a concubine instead.
Wanting nothing to do with the fights of an inner courtyard, he takes pains to avoid the attention of the prince's legal wife and the other concubines. But all his efforts go to waste as the petty struggles for favor that consume the inner courtyard overflow, leaving death in their wake.
Throwing himself headfirst into treacherous water, Wei Ying struggles against the current to create a future where he belongs and thrives, survive a present where danger hides in beauty, and tear down the powerful to get justice for the dead.
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This is the fourth and final fic in a series I started ages ago, but the final fic was written this year and features a WangXian wedding!
dive in the sea and you can seek the pearl
by RoseThorne (@rosethornewrites)
T, 3k, Wangxian
Summary: Wei Wuxian prepares for his wedding.
Spanish translation available!
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I have written a story about an alternate outcome at the Xuanwu slaughter cave. It's still not completed but I am already pretty proud of what I have written :)
Thrown inside the Burial Mounds- Through thick and thin
by Suga_btsswap (@sugabtsswap)
Not rated, WIP, 23k, Wangxian
Summary: What happens if Jiang Cheng and Jin Zixuan weren’t fast enough to save Lan Zhan and Wei Ying inside the Xuanwu of slaughter cave? What if Wen Chao went back and captured them? What if not only Wei Ying but also Lan Zhan gets thrown inside the Burial Mounds? How would that change their fate?
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I just posted a fic titled, in which Qin Su finds out that she and Jin Guangyao are siblings before their wedding and goes to Lan Xichen for help.
A Resolute Pine
by stiltonbasket (@stiltonbasket)
T, 2k, Nielan & Wangxian
Summary: “This is what you heard?”
Qin Su has never seen Lan Xichen lose his composure before. The corners of his eyes are scarlet, and his face is whiter than the snowy collar of his gown; and if the two of them were not seated, Qin Su suspects that he would have collapsed on the spot.
She takes another sip of tea. “That is what he said.”
Lan Xichen looks at her in desperation. “But—”
“Do you think I would mistake the voice of my intended?” she asks quietly. “I heard him speaking with one of your former disciples—Su Minshan, I think. My child will be allowed only two or three years; though A-Yao said that he would reconsider if it learns to talk before its first birthday, as he did.”
At the other end of the table, Zewu-jun makes another sound of anguish.
(In which Lan Xichen hosts a hundred-day feast and a wedding, and Qin Su and Jin Rusong are spared by a timely stroke of luck.)
~*~
(Please REBLOG as a signal boost for these hard-working authors if you like – or think others might like – these stories.)
Hi! Are you planning on hosting an MDZS Big Bang 2025?
The current mod team does not plan to do it again next year, but we are more than happy to do a ‘hand over’ if anyone else wants to run the Big Bang next year!
If you - or anyone else - is interested in running the Big Bang next year, feel free to shoot us a message. And we can start talking.
Here's the second and final part of our fandom's beloved authors showing off their wonderful stories published in 2025! Make sure to give them all the love they deserve and thank you for your hard work!
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This fic is a love letter to wangxian, C-pop, and Chinese variety shows (Our Song in particular). Come for the Redditors shipping it, stay for the music recs!
Their Song
by PorcupineGirl (@porcupine-girl)
E, 59k, Wangxian & Songxiao
Summary: Wei Wuxian's music career started at the age of 16, when he debuted with the K-pop band Junior League. Now, at 35, he's a well-established artist, mostly releasing upbeat dance tunes. Seven years ago, he went on the first season of the variety show Our Song as a junior to be mentored; now in season 8 he's back to do the mentoring.
Lan Wangji is an opera singer who happened to have one pop hit. His brother convinced him to do this show to broaden his horizons and explore possible career paths. His preferred musical styles would appear to be nothing like Wei Wuxian's, but he finds himself assigned the pop star as his mentor.
Artistically, everyone (including them) expects it to be a trainwreck. But as they learn more about each other and find common ground, they find themselves unexpectedly connecting onstage—and off.
...And Reddit notices!
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It is a short fic set in the muxi mountain, after LWJ and WWx have slaughtered the Xuanwu. I dive deeper into the question how WWX's perfume satchet ended up in Lan Wangji's possession. (There are soft soft Wangxian feeling, a get-together and also in the end some heartbreak.)
Wuji, or How Lan Wangji Got Wei Wuxian's Perfume Satchet
by erdbeerfrosch26 (@erdbeerfrosch26)
G, 1k, Wangxian
Summary: Wei Wuxian weighs heavily on Lan Wangji's back, both of them soaked to the skin as torrential rain continues to pour down from the sky. But that's okay. Lan Wangji flies faster than most of their pursuers, but the rain gives them another advantage as they flee back to Cloud Recesses. How many times have Wei Ying and he found themselves in extremely dangerous situations? Lan Wangji has lost count. Some things never seem to change, while others... Wei Wuxian has revealed his feelings to Lan Wangji. It's already the second time in their long history, and hopefully he won't change his mind again. Lan Wangji's thoughts wander back to that time and place...
Missing scene, stand-alone, POV Lan Wangji. Enjoy!
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A surprisingly tender kinky rare pair fic!
For the Night
by somevariationofgay (@somevariationofgay)
E, 9k, Lan Qiren/Wei Wuxan
Summary: “Ha. Aha.” Lips tight and eyes hard, Wei Wuxian begins to pull away. “No, thank you. I’m not interested in your pity money.”
“Did I say anything about pity? I thought you were selling a service, and I was offering to buy it.”
Wei Wuxian freezes, just for a second, then turns back. “You’re going to pay me for sex?” He fixes Lan Qiren with an incredulous look.
“I want you for the whole night.”
Or Five years after the end of a brief acquaintance through his youngest nephew, Lan Qiren crosses paths with Wei Wuxian again. Having somehow gone from a university student with a promising future to a hard-up prostitute working the streets, Wei Wuxian’s sudden and provocative appearance leaves Lan Qiren disoriented – and hard pressed to remember all the reasons he shouldn’t be thinking about getting his hands on that lithe body.
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(Please REBLOG as a signal boost for these hard-working authors if you like – or think others might like – these stories.)
