Oh this is the oldest and least-close-to-finishing fic of them all! In short, it's the angsty post-canon I started writing like 2 days after finishing the show. The original premise is that meeting at the beach, difang find Li Lianhua's white cape around a stranger's corpse washed up on the beach. They set off along the coast looking for Li Lianhua, and Fang Duobing is the one who's actually searching for a living man. Di Feisheng is already mourning Li Xiangyi, but he can't bring himself to dissuade Fang Duobing from looking. So instead he's going to make sure Fang Duobing doesn't run himself any more ragged than he already has. But then they do end up finding Li Lianhua, miraculously alive yet awfully close to death, and do everything they can to heal him. Things get very very sad before they get a bit better.
The point of it was to be a sort of character introspection of all three of them, especially of Li Lianhua, and see how they deal with the inevitable and painful emotional conflict of Li Lianhua's decision to leave vs. Difang's stubbornness about saving him. It needs some massive editing because my understanding of each character has changed a lot from those first few weeks, and I keep hopping between a whole bunch of endings for it ;-;
A (long) difang snippet from it:
By the fifth day of their journey, Fang Duobing figured out that Di Feisheng was no longer searching for Li Lianhua, but mourning him.
That stung too, at first. Every day they searched for Li Lianhua, and Fang Duobing wanted to ask why he was still looking if he was already mourning. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He watched Di Feisheng search thoroughly, even if he was no longer expecting anything to come of it. He watched him put just as much effort into looking after the two of them.
That night, like the ones before, Fang Duobing couldn’t sleep. He wasn’t alone; Di Feisheng always simply lay in bed all night, meditating, sleeping fitfully, or just awake. Fang Duobing couldn’t stomach it. He would sit outside till dawn instead, and breathe in as much air as he could so it wouldn’t feel so awfully suffocating.
That night, unlike any other night before, Di Feisheng stopped him before he could step out.
“We should rest well,” he said.
“It’s pointless to try,” Fang Duobing answered.
“We should try anyway.”
Cruelty rose easily to Fang Duobing’s tongue when he was stretched thin. Easy for you to say, he wanted to tell him. You’ve given up and left me alone. Instead, he walked over to Di Feisheng’s bed and said, “Alright.”
He looked up for only a moment before shifting further in, lifting a corner of his blanket. Fang Duobing got in. They lay facing each other, and he was determined to show Di Feisheng how useless it was to try. He didn’t bother hiding any of the listlessness or the despair that crept into his heart stronger every night.
It was incredible, how alone he suddenly felt once more, even with Di Feisheng right there. An accusation rose to his lips again, and stalled, again. Wasn’t Di Feisheng closer to Li Lianhua? Hadn’t they known each other longer? Weren’t they excellent at leaving him out and scheming and gossipping together? Why would he give up so easily, then?
“Tell me about him.” The words stumbled out of Fang Duobing without much thought. “The Li Xiangyi you knew.”
Di Feisheng stared for a moment, then closed his eyes. His throat bobbed on a swallow. “It’s late.”
“Tell me. What was it like a decade ago?” In answer, Di Feisheng shifted, making to turn over, turn his back to him. How dare he. Fang Duobing grabbed his shoulder and yanked him back around. “Tell me.”
“It’s pointless,” Di Feisheng snapped, glaring properly for the first time in days. “Do you think I knew him any better? If you want more of him to miss, I have nothing.” It pricked him sharp and hard, for some reason. That wasn’t it at all, though. He hadn’t asked about Li Lianhua. He had plenty to miss anyways. What he wanted…
“I’m asking about you,” Fang Duobing said, and watched the anger switch to nonplussed silence. “We’re here together, aren’t we? Don’t I have the right to ask you who you’re here for?”
For a long time, neither spoke. Fang Duobing wanted to give up on it, he was so exhausted. But somehow it was even more exhausting to wonder why Di Feisheng was like this. To wonder how he was hurt. It was hard to do this, hard to find comfort with and care for someone he didn’t yet understand.
“Tell me something,” Fang Duobing breathed. “Anything.”
Di Feisheng looked away and down, lashes long and dark against his face. Slowly, he turned onto his back and stared at the ceiling instead. “Before the battle at Donghai, I lost to him. Twice. It was a close match each time, but he won.”
“Donghai wasn’t your first battle?”
The corner of Di Feisheng’s mouth turned up, almost a smile. “Nobody else knew. It would’ve made a mess of things, with us being the heads of opposing sects.”
“But you had to have your battle, didn’t you?” Fang Duobing almost smiled too, at the thought of it these two legendary men, as young as him and sneaking out for clandestine battles with the one who was supposed to be their biggest foe. “You haven’t changed one bit.”
“No,” he said, and Fang Duobing wasn’t sure if that was an agreement or not. Di Feisheng turned his head and looked at him properly again. It wasn’t a look Fang Duobing was used to seeing, even if it felt familiar. Suspicion? Curiosity?
“What do you want?” Di Feisheng asked him in a low voice, and Fang Duobing immediately knew. This was the sort of look A-Fei wore while they’d searched for Li Lianhua. Nothing as distant as suspicion or curiosity, it was just that he was worried for Fang Duobing.
For the first time in days, Fang Duobing felt the sting of tears behind his eyes. He shut them and curled into himself. A few seconds later, an arm slipped slowly and steadily around his shoulders. It was embarrassingly easy to give in. He shuffled closer and clung back, hiding his face in his collar and taking comfort in the steady beat of his heart. He was not alone. He was not alone. Li Lianhua had left them to each other, after all.
Neither of them slept. But they stayed like that, together, till the break of dawn. It was easier to breathe here too, easier than it was alone in the open night. It didn’t matter if Di Feisheng had no hope left; Fang Duobing could have enough of it for both of them. And if he ever ran out… he had someone to go back to, now.
By the end of the first week, he forgave Di Feisheng for mourning so soon.
*SHRIEK* LMAO this is one of the more embarrassing ones. It's Venom/Eddie and on the one hand it's about the exploration of overwhelming desire between two very different beings.
On the other hand, it's about Venom withdrawing almost it's entire mass from Eddie, leaving just enough behind to hold down his ankles and wrists and manipulate some nerves and hormones. It's about Venom merging Eddie's sexual desire with literal hunger...and feeding itself to Eddie to satisfy all the cravings they both have.
This excerpt is not safe for work.
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But still Eddie wanted to love, and be loved, and be more than human.
And Venom wanted to love, and be loved, and be more than a symbiote.
And now they were.
Eddie stroked the tendril in his mouth with his tongue, warm, slick, gentle; inhaling sharply through his nose as Venom’s joy in the touch sent shivers of electric heat through his thighs and swiftly filled his cock. Their endocrine and pseudo-endocrine systems were so deeply entwined by now that even Venom wasn’t sure, with all the knowledge he’d gained about Eddie, that he could safely disentangle them.
It didn’t worry about that. They were one, and it was very good. Venom knew how to keep them alive, Venom knew how to make them thrive, and Venom knew how to heighten the pleasure they took in each other. That was enough. That was more than enough.
It could change them. Could make their flesh shift and melt into a new human shape to walk among other humans with. Eddie had thought about it. But that wasn’t exactly what Eddie wanted. What Eddie wanted had been impossible until it wasn’t. Until Venom had come and redefined the possible for him. It loved that it could do that for him; that in the satisfaction of its deep craving it had been able to satisfy another’s. Eddie’s. Its Eddie’s.
Eddie sucked at the tendril in his mouth, instinct to satisfy hunger, thirst, the desire for closeness. Venom rippled, tiny sinusoids over its surface, trembling with the effort of keeping this form. It wanted to be this monster for Eddie, the overwhelming, restraining being, but, oh, how it longed to melt and flow and cover, to rest not just in Eddie’s mouth but all through him, to touch his living warmth with every pseudonerve and pump him from inside his skin until they came. It has done this many times, other times, and will do so again. But now it will resist that particular desire, for it knows other desires, too. It knows other cravings. It knows how to make Eddie crave it even more than he already does. It knows the bliss Eddie feels when it satisfies all those cravings, all those desires that are held separate (or almost separate) in an ordinary human mind.
Venom pulsed to think of it, and when the tendril in Eddie’s mouth followed the shift, Eddie moaned and gagged even without a reflex to tell him to do so.
Eddie liked this, too, shifting his breathing to his nose with long habit, sucking and swallowing around Venom to regain his composure, to build his arousal, to prove that he wasn’t afraid.
Eddie. Oh, Venom hadn’t known what it could be like, to be so confident that what it craved would join with it again after separation, that craving could be used as a—as a toy.
He felt a question from Eddie: are you going to do it? Have you already done it? I want you I want you I want you so so much.
Not yet. Not yet. It wasn’t telling Eddie to wait, though. It was time, time to play the game of wanting. It was now a matter of manipulating a few tiny amounts of leptin, ghrelin, a couple others that Eddie and so Venom didn’t know the names of, and then—then Eddie didn’t just want Venom—he craved it.
Eddie groaned even as his stomach gave a low but undeniable rumble. It was madness for a human being to crave like this, to be so sexually aroused but also starving, and to have all this directed toward the same being. But it was the closest Eddie could experience of the all-consuming longing Venom felt toward Eddie, toward their shared existence.
Helplessly, Eddie sucked and swallowed around the tendril in his mouth, no conscious thought present. He wanted the satisfaction of having Venom filling him, in any way possible.
And Venom wanted to sate him.
Still, that wasn’t the full game. Eddie gave a particularly hard, desperate suck and Venom decided it was time to ease both their cravings, just a little bit. Venom let a little piece of the tendril in Eddie’s mouth separate from the rest (though the separation was of course an illusion), and with a smooth, wriggling slide, it let itself make its way down Eddie’s throat, let itself be swallowed, consumed, and yet not remotely destroyed. It was consumed to become joined with Eddie once more. It let its consciousness drift to the small piece of itself, luxuriating in the feeling of Eddie’s throat muscles working around it, shaping it. Eddie was so solid, such a contrast to Venom, and it loved that, loved it loved it loved it. It loved that it was malleable enough to be shaped by Eddie. The piece of itself that Eddie had swallowed didn’t settle in his stomach—the stimulus of the acid was an unwelcome distraction, even if it wasn’t dangerous. Instead, it slipped into Eddie’s bloodstream and joined with the rest of itself, changing a few molecules here and there to ease just a little bit of Eddie’s hunger.
The relief was both shocking and merely a taunt in the face of Eddie’s great craving. He whimpered, a sound that tickled, backed by a host of intoxicating chemicals and surrounded by all those murky thoughts of desire in Eddie that tinged this pleasure with shame and somehow made him feel even more pleasure.
tejoxys replied to your post “pretty sure my garden is literally the only thing keeping me sane...”
same, my orchids doing something neat is basically all the fuel I've got. what did you plant tho??
ahhhh I would love to hear all about the neat things your orchids do! im sorry you’re feeling the same but im glad you also have something to find joy in <3
I went out back before work this morning to snap this pic and realized my little garden looks downright ethereal in that sweet 6am light
ive got two juliet tomato plants, those are the ones on the far left there, ive also got red robin, bloody butcher, and something else I can’t recall but they are very small still because i planted them from very old seeds just to see if they were still viable and they are growing so that’s something.
i have two zucchini and a yellow squash which you can see i have planted without near enough spacing between them and the rest of the garden, so ive been doing some occasional pruning which is helping and i will remember to leave proper spacing for next time.
I have a mini eggplant that’s covered in tiny eggplant babies at the moment and a hot pepper plant that just started blooming.
I have rosemary, lemon thyme, dill, garden sage, and a little okra plant all in the middle there. and then on the left is my russet potatoes (three plants) and a mini pumpkin plant which I am 100% going to use to decorate things with come fall.
this little patch was all weeds and i cleared it and water it every day because the colorado sun is brutal and for a while I had a shade cloth that @genderqueerbadger helped me put up over it because the baby plants were getting too wilty over the course of the day but they’re strong enough to withstand it now and i love all of my vegetable children dearly <3
Author’s note: I recently stocked up on thinner socks that fit better with my new orthotics, and found a bundle of twelve pairs of cat socks for six dollars. One of the pairs spurred my dormant writing muse, and thus I present a sequel to a future!StageFright Nightmare Dork University story by @bowlingforgerbils, based on a prompt by @tejoxys, and including a cameo of a character created by @gretchensinister.
Read this first: http://bowlingforgerbils.tumblr.com/post/69754576173/so-i-just-read-that-drabble-about-protos-ferret
Then read the 12/24/2004 entry in the epilogue to The Doors of Perception.
Yes, I’m crossing the streams DAMN HARD.
====================
Emily insisted on carrying the bag with the dishes for her new pet all by herself, since she had paid for them with her own birthday money. Jack held her other hand in one of his while he juggled the box containing the new cat bed in the other, and silently congratulated himself on pointing his daughter towards the melamine bowls rather than the china ones that had first caught her eye.
They climbed the stairs to the brownstone together, Jack matching his longer strides to Emily’s shorter ones. He put the box down on the stoop to wrangle the front door keys, and Emily ran inside as soon as the door was open, calling “Papa, we’re home!”
Jack followed her into the big communal kitchen, where he found Piki and Tasha, their third-floor housemate this year, sitting at the table drinking coffee and watching a rotund orange tabby rubbing noses with an elderly Siamese.
“See, Daddy, I told you they’d like each other!”
The older cat seemed slightly alarmed at the enthusiasm of the younger cat, who had yet to “find his name”, according to Emily. However, she didn’t hiss or swat, but resignedly submitted to the nuzzling. Jack imagined he could hear Brunhilde sighing to herself. She’d put up with visits from Proto and Mister Pickles in years past, after all. Jack had to think that a live cat would be a definite improvement over a stuffed ferret.
Piki said dryly, “I expect they’ll have a difference of opinion over who gets the sunny spot in the living room.”
“Oh no, Papa, they won’t! They’ll be best friends, I know it!”
Tasha interjected, “Well, since your fathers told me about how much you like kitties, Emily, I thought you might like these.” She held out a wrapped present to the little girl, who pounced on it with glee. Tearing the coloured paper open revealed a package of socks, each decorated with a different cat design.
“Thank you, Tasha! I love them! So pretty!”
The mindfulness instructor replied, “You’re very welcome, kiddo. My students agree with me that it’s easier to study with happy feet. And learning never stops being fun, even for grown-ups.” She stuck out an ankle from under the table so that Emily could see Tasha’s horse socks.
Jack said, “Put them carefully in your dresser drawer, Emily, and you can wear them to school.”
Piki shot him a look which meant, in old-married-couple parlance, We’d better run them through the washer before she wears them!
Jack wondered how they were going to sneak them out of her room to wash them without their daughter noticing, when inspiration hit him. “Let’s work on getting your friend set up with his new bed, and then we can have cake.”
“CAKE! Yay!”
Later, Jack and Piki furtively looked in on a sleeping Emily, exhausted from her busy day and her sugar crash, her fat orange furfriend snuggled up besides her on the coverlet. Piki very quietly opened the top bureau drawer in the dark and did his best not to crinkle the cellophane as he handed the package of socks to Jack. It wasn’t until they had closed her bedroom door and turned on the hallway light that they realized that the package was open and one of the pairs of socks was missing.
“Minx!” Piki whisper-hissed. “I’d wager they’re under her pillow.”
“Or they’re in the cat bed,” Jack replied. “Don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll turn up. It’s her present, let her have fun in her own way.”
Piki sighed fondly, “You’re right, of course. But if she goes to school with green or purple dye on her toes, well...”
Jack thrust the full basket of laundry into his husband’s arms. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
They were both nonplussed at breakfast the next morning when they each found a small package, rewrapped clumsily but thoroughly, in yesterday’s wrapping paper, at their usual places on the kitchen table. Emily giggled all the way through her cornflakes until she finally couldn’t stand it anymore. “Aren’t you gonna open’em?”
Mystified, Jack and Piki started unwrapping, the dark head and the silver one bent over their presents, treating the situation with utter seriousness.
The small bundles each contained a single sock. Each showed a white cat and a black cat, tails entwined, sitting on a fence under a golden moon.
Piki started to say something about not being able to wear just one sock when Jack kicked him hard under the table. He sputteringly changed it to, “That’s so thoughtful, sweetheart. Thank you.”
Jack added, “Yes, sweetie, I love it.”
Emily grinned widely. “See? It’s you and Papa!”
Piki said gently, “Indeed. You have a wonderful eye for design, darling. I will definitely treasure this.” He picked up Jack’s hand and kissed it.
“Oooooh, mush! Mushy alert!”
Years later, those socks still had a place of honour, hanging on either side of their bureau mirror.
tejoxys replied to your post: hey remember when I was Firmly Convinced that...
it is still a deep regret of mine that I wasn’t fully immersed in this fandom at the time when you were most active in it
I appreciate this sentiment, but no words can ever express how grateful I am that you didn’t bear the full brunt of my incredibly embarrassing meltdown over Sandman and the War of Dreams.
