月小说

[yuexiaoshuo]

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please block #dark content if needed - it'll cover yandere, sexual abuse, noncon, incest

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[farewell-itoshisoup]

MEMORY TRACE | summary & preview

The Gun Fiend finds these sensations peculiar: the soft press of your fingers on its cheek, the contour of your heart line against its skin. You give it—give its meatsuit, the dead thing which used to be Hayakawa Aki—a strange expression. It looks like something close to pain, like you have an open wound even though you are unharmed. 

“Do you know,” you ask quietly, “if he loved me at all?”

Canon divergence fic in which Makima decides that the Gun Fiend would be useful to the Public Safety Bureau, and you’re assigned to be its handler. Gun Fiend/Reader, past Aki/Reader. Tags/Warnings: Gender neutral AFAB reader, angst with a bittersweet ending, lots of grief but there’s love in there too, eventual sex with the Gun Fiend.

900w preview (SFW) below:

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[farewell-itoshisoup]

ART OF THE BEDCHAMBER | part 1

"Dual cultivation with you wouldn't be very useful. You might have extraordinary qi as a Vidyadhara, but it's sealed when you're in your human form."  Dan Heng stares at your fingers, deliberates as you trace the invisible paths of his meridians.  "Then," he says, "what about my dragon form?"  (Or: Dan Heng dreads the thought of outliving you and will do anything to help you achieve immortality. If that means fucking you in his dragon form, then so be it.)

6.5k words. smut, fluff, established relationship, xianxia elements. semi-explicit sexual content (only with dan heng in his human form in this chapter, sorry). reader is gender neutral, afab — they have breasts and bomb pussy game. cultural notes: "yinyue jun" is the chinese equivalent for "imbibitor lunae". please see the end notes for information on cultivation. other notes: this is set pre-1.2. 风月 was based on this fic so some things may feel very familiar! network: @trailblazernet. MDNI.

When Dan Heng—in a rather unexpected move—fell in love with you, he didn’t foresee all the agony that would come with it.

Shockingly, you aren’t the direct cause of this agony: a remarkable fact, given your routine of pestering him for as many hours as the day will allow. Dan Heng often complains about your many inconvenient behaviours (e.g., trying to cuddle with him in the archives, trying to kiss him in the archives, trying to have sex with him in the archives), but to the amazement of his fellow trailblazers, he never actually does anything about it. After getting over his initial embarrassment at such public displays of affection (this took quite some time), he’s come to tolerate it.

You often like to tease him for his leniency, all playful smiles and lilting tones: You don’t have to act so shy, Dan Heng—I know you enjoy the attention. My Heng'er likes to be spoiled, huh?

He always rolls his eyes in response. Consider it a miracle that I haven’t kicked you out yet, he’ll usually say, flicking you on the forehead. He never tells you if he means kicking you out of the archives or if he means throwing you out of the Astral Express itself, right into the vacuum of space. (Most bystanders are astonished that the latter hasn’t happened yet. So are you.)

He also doesn’t tell you how wrong it feels when he isn’t listening to the background noise of your shameless flirting. Or how wrong it feels when he doesn’t get to humour you with a kiss every once in a while.

Which brings him to the root of the problem: the wrongness that he’s feeling right now. The emptiness of the archives without your laughter, the tasteless quality of his food when you’re not there to dine with him, the restlessness of trying to sleep without you—it’s all wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong enough for it to be a little agonizing, now that he’s nearing one hundred and twenty days of this.

You often have to leave the Express for many months in a row, so Dan Heng is no stranger to these unsettling feelings. Neither are you. If I could spend more time with you, I would, you’d said before leaving last time—and the time before that, and the time before that, and the time before that. But I can’t avoid going into seclusion. It’s part of the whole Cultivator gig, y'know—gotta go to a mountain somewhere and meditate for a few months. That’s just the price of immortality if you’re a measly human. Then you’d given him a little smile, pecked him on the lips. Most people do it for years at a time, but I wouldn’t be able to leave you alone for so long.

The first time you’d pointed this out, Dan Heng was startled by the relief that flooded him. Vidyadharas have an intuitively different sense of time compared to human beings, and two or three years should feel like nothing to him: relative to the centuries he’d lived as his previous incarnation—or the decades as his current one—it would be only a fleeting moment.

But in your absence, it would feel like an eternity.

It surprises him how much he hates the crawl of time without you. Dan Heng had never before been a needy person: solitude and isolation had always been the norm for him, in a lifetime absent of human touch—first imprisoned from birth, then exiled from the first moment he got to see the sun. Even after leaving the Alliance, he hadn’t allowed himself to become particularly close with anyone: it would have been too complicated because of the sensitive matter of his past, and he simply didn’t feel deserving of it anyway. Nor was he in need of it.

Then he met you.

And then the afterglow. He hadn’t only grown used to that: he’d become addicted to it. Warmer and headier than huangjiu, something that he’d have never been able to imagine while growing up in the night-dark prison of his childhood.

Then he met you, and he became accustomed to the sound of your laughter, and then your offhanded, warm touches, and then your smile as you sat in the blue glow of the archive floor and poured baijiu into everyone’s cups. (Scalding, bitter; you had laughed as he made a face and warmed up huangjiu specifically for him next time, and it was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted.) And then he became accustomed to talking to you—to letting you unearth things he’d buried for decades, to revealing his suffering and receiving your compassion, to the gentle feeling of your hand on his shoulder. Then the tender, nervous look in your eyes, then the silky press of your lips, then the closeness of your unclothed body, and then the breathless warble of your voice—Dan Heng, I’m close, I’m so close, please—and then the euphoria of having you arch and fall apart so beautifully in his arms.

He isn’t exactly deserving of your companionship. He knows that.

Even the memory of his first taste of sunlight aboard the Luofu pales in comparison to the feeling of having you in his arms. The first time he’d had the privilege of holding you, he caught himself thinking: If paradise is but a dream, then I wish to sleep forever.

And now, each time he lies awake on his futon, alone except for the glow of artificial stars, Dan Heng becomes acutely aware of the emptiness left by your missing form.

But he is in need of it.

After one hundred and twenty one days of seclusion, you are ready to return to the Astral Express.

Time moves differently when you cultivate behind closed doors. The act of such intense meditation and training distorts the flow of the world for you, makes entire months feel like days. Emerging from seclusion always comes with a certain anxiety: Are your friends well? Have they forgotten you? Has the Express continued its journey across the galactic railroad, or has some terrible event happened to your home—a supernova, a meteor shower, the destructive force of a stellaron?

And, most importantly: Did anyone murder your boyfriend while you were away?

There is at least one intergalactically wanted criminal who's tried to kill Dan Heng a number of times, and an entire alliance consisting solely of his haters. Half the reason you take your cultivation so seriously is to prepare for the inevitable day that someone is going to seriously attempt to murder him in front of you (probably the aforementioned criminal). You want to be strong enough to one-hit KO Arbiter-General Jing Yuan himself, if it ever comes down to it.

Of course, the downside is that the murder attempt might happen while you're off training, but you're hoping that March 7th and Caelus can cover for you in that case.

Still—while you have nothing in confidence in Caelus’ abilities (you adore March, but will not comment on hers), you sigh in relief when your phone begins to buzz.

> Are you out yet? We're on our way. > Get something to eat if you haven't yet. I'll make sure something is ready for you on the Express too. > I know you can practice inedia, but you're still a human at the end of the day. Please get something to eat as soon as possible.

No hello, no I missed yous, just plain, practical concern—as always.

You are not a practical person.

> GEGE! > GEGE GEGE GEGE > DAN HENG GEGE > come fast i want to kiss u > i'll die if u don't kiss me soon > i missed you!!!!!! > did you miss me??????

You can more or less imagine the expression on your (hopefully unharmed) boyfriend's face: deadpan exasperation. The first time you came out of seclusion during your relationship, you texted him no less than twenty times in a row from a new number, and he reflexively flagged it all as spam. He's since told you to tone down the double texting (and triple texting, and quintuple texting, and dectuple texting…), but always replies anyway.

> The Express is about to warp. We'll be there soon. > I'll do whatever you like, please just eat.

You watch as an ellipsis appears at the bottom of your chat window, then disappears, then appears again. When he finally sends his text, a smile stretches wide across your face.

> And yes, I thought of you the whole time you were gone.

With your return to the Express, you make Dan Heng engage in all your usual couple activities. Which is to say: you act disgustingly sweet with him and the other passengers experience varying degrees of shock and entertainment at his complacent behaviour.

You surprise him as he works in the archives, looping your arms around his waist and pressing against his back so you can whisper things into his ear: Gege, pay attention to me! or Dan Heng, can't you take a break now? or Heng'er, are you really going to ignore your lover like this? So cruel!

Dan Heng doesn't react during these moments, but he also doesn't push you away. Sometimes he'll shove a stack of books into your hands and say, If you have time to mess around like this, then you can work on digitizing these for me. You always agree, but wheedle a kiss out of him in exchange for your hard labour.

(Welt Yang walks in on one such kiss, coughs loudly, and walks back out. Dan Heng pulls away from your lips to stare at the door in abject horror.)

You give Dan Heng a number of books and films from your travels, and keep him company as he dives into them. He always gravitates toward the latest Xianzhou novels first, especially the ones that give mention to everyday life on the Luofu. You suppose that he's never been able to rid himself of his curiosity about the life that he'd been denied, enthralled by visions of night markets and starskiffs, teahouses and cross-talkers. You can see his longing in the crease of his brow, the softening of his eyes as he reads.

Seeing his wistful expressions, it is impossible to stop yourself from keeping him company. You press into his side, resting your head on his shoulder—something that will comfort him, you hope—and read alongside him. Sometimes the two of you fall asleep like that, wrapped up in each other on the archive floor.

(March 7th stumbles into one of these moments and can't help but snap a picture of the two of you. Dan Heng later pales when he sees your lock screen, where your slumbering, entwined forms are clearly visible.)

You often convince Dan Heng to have a proper, sit-down dinner with you in the dining car. He won't ever do it for food from the kitchens, preferring to eat in the archives instead, but he'll do it for food you cook together. The two of you enjoy your meals while watching the interstellar scenery roll by outside, stargazing at distant galaxies. Sometimes you savour the tangy-sweetness of tomato-egg stir fry (your handiwork); sometimes you enjoy the rich broth of delicately steamed xiaolongbao (your boyfriend's handiwork); sometimes the both of you sweat over the punishing numbing-spice of malaxiangguo (a combined effort and favoured couple's activity—right up there with building furniture).

The other passengers wave whenever they see you, impressed that Dan Heng has emerged from the archives. They joke as they greet you: I guess you're the only one that can pull him out of his cave!

(The older ones—Himeko especially—laugh and talk fondly about young love when they spot you. Dan Heng's expression stays as stoic as ever, but the tips of his ears go red and he accidentally burns his tongue trying to eat his own bao.)

You address Dan Heng with an astonishing number of pet names at an alarming frequency; your excuse is that you need to make up for the four months you couldn't call him anything. Mostly you call him 'Gege' in public, which he usually doesn't mind as it saves him considerable face relative to all the alternatives, but this changes when Caelus starts teasing him about it.

Morning, Gege, he starts saying at breakfast, drawing a long stare from Dan Heng. Gege, can you help me with finding these records? he asks whenever he strolls into the archives. Before expeditions, he starts turning to Dan Heng and using his most sugary voice: You'll protect me, right, Gege? And Dan Heng turns to Himeko to flatly state, I will not be held responsible if he dies.

Eventually, Caelus grows bold enough to join you both for dinner: Gege, he asks, do you want me to hand-feed you these noodles too?

Dan Heng replies by rising from his seat and walking straight out of the dining car.

(Your long-suffering boyfriend eventually says, during one of your reading sessions, that Caelus is quickly becoming unbearable with this new habit of his.

Well, you muse, since he’s just teasing you about the way I talk to you, I could stop calling you ‘Gege’.

Dan Heng stops. He looks almost hesitant, like he wants to protest, but his expression flattens into a deadpan when you continue: I could always call you 'baobei' instead. What, you don't like that? But Heng'er, you're my baobei, my xingan baobei, my little little apple and beloved husb—whoa!

You laugh hysterically as you dodge the book he chucks at you.)

Sometimes you do get him to reciprocate your actions. Shockingly—despite his reserved and conscientious disposition—you have the greatest success with this whenever you tease him while he's working. You find it works best to crawl into his lap and kiss at his jawline, whispering into his ear while he tries to focus on his screen.

I’m so pent up, Gege, you often start with. I've been trying to take care of myself, but my fingers aren't enough. You like to straddle his hips as you talk, grind a little if you think you can get away with it. You whine if you do, pressing your face into his neck—right beneath his clenched jaw. Won't you give me some attention? Just ten minutes on this desk is all we need.

Dan Heng can only ever endure about fifteen minutes of this before throwing you over his shoulder. You inevitably find yourself being flipped over in a fireman's carry, being lectured in a flat tone. I don't know where you get off lying like that, he usually comments as he makes his way to your room, ignoring your yelping and kicking. 'Ten minutes'? Every time you act like this, you end up taking up my whole evening.

(He does, in fact, spend the rest of his night in bed with you, making it clear that there is no need for you to ‘take care of yourself’ so long as he’s around.)

But despite all the grief you give Dan Heng with your public, grand displays of affection, your favourite moments with him are the private ones. The ones where you sit next to him on his futon, sharing a pair of earbuds and listening to the latest hits from the various worlds to which you’ve travelled. The ones where you make dumpling skins together during the quiet hours of the kitchen, flour dusting your fingers as you roll out the dough that Dan Heng has kneaded. The ones where you spend lazy mornings in bed together, Dan Heng holding you as you talk at length about nothing at all.

The ones where you pause in your long-winded ramble to find him staring at you, his gaze fond and fully attentive. Met with such tenderness, you have no choice but to lean in and kiss him, long and deep and smiling—and in the privacy of your room, your boyfriend is more than happy to return it.

Some weeks after you return to the Express, Dan Heng gives you a long look after one such moment and says, "You should spend more time with me."

You raise a brow. "Eh? I already spend plenty of time with you, Heng'er. I've been bothering you 24/7 now that I'm back on the Express… It's a wonder you aren't sick of me yet."

"Of course I'm not sick of you," he replies plainly. "I could never be."

The admission makes you blink. Heat prickles the back of your neck. It's not often that Dan Heng is so straightforward with his feelings.

"And I mean"—he looks away, the red paint along his waterline hidden by his lashes—"that it'd be nice if you didn't have to leave the Express so often. If you could stay here all year round."

You can't stop yourself from frowning. "You know I don't like leaving you, but I really don't want to compromise my training." Your fingers sweep gently at his brow, brushing away his hair. "I wanna be strong enough to protect you, Gege. After I get to that level, I promise I'll be around more often." Then you smile a little. "And if I'm lucky, I might even get a long life out of it!"

Dan Heng's brow dips. "A 'long life'? The whole point of cultivation is to achieve immortality, isn't it?"

"Sure, in theory. In practice, almost no human ever becomes immortal by these means. If cultivation were so easy, then people wouldn't turn to shortcuts like magical elixirs or blessings from Aeon Yaoshi." You purse your lips, voice starting to colour with derision. "Not that I'd ever be shortsighted enough to chase either of those things, mind you. I'd rather work hard, have a long and healthy life, and die and reincarnate properly if it comes to that. Immortality isn't worth the strife caused by any other method."

Dan Heng studies you closely, his eyes steadfast on yours. "Then… what do you consider a 'long life'?"

You hum, thinking. "If I don't slack off with my training, I have maybe eighty to a hundred years of youth before I kick the bucket."

"Eighty years?" Dan Heng's eyes go a little wide. You aren't used to seeing it.

"Yes?" You shift, fidgeting with his eyeliner brush. "But that's only if I'm lucky. Pushing for anything more would be tough. I could undergo a qi deviation and die… or I might just not be talented enough to reach that stage of cultivation and pass away from natural causes… someone could also just kill me at any time, given my lifestyle. I've got a lot of options for dying, you know."

Dan Heng doesn't reply, nor does he look at you. It occurs to you that this whole conversation might be unsettling for him, given everything that's happened with the Xianzhou Alliance, with the matter of his past life and that vengeful monster he seems unable to kill. The mere thought of immortality must be painful for Dan Heng.

"I'm sorry, Gege," you say. "It's insensitive of me to talk about these things with you. Anyway—I'm not seriously trying to become an immortal, so you don't have to worry about me. I'm not looking to break any taboos."

Your lover gives you a long, unreadable stare before replying, "Right. Of course. Nothing good can come from the pursuit of immortality." Cinnabar paint flickers as he looks away. "Human life should be as morning dew—fleeting and ephemeral."

Dan Heng starts to behave strangely, after that. Quieter and withdrawn. Not just subdued in his affection, but absent in it.

When you bother him in the archives, he no longer scolds you or distracts you with any work—merely continuing with his tasks, completely immersed in them. When March 7th and Caelus tease him about his many pet names, he doesn't get flustered—only rolls his eyes and ignores them. When the other passengers catch sight of the two of you dining together and fondly comment on your relationship, he hardly reacts. He only continues eating, staring absently at his dish—usually something you've made, because he seems uninterested in eating anything else these days.

(Are you sure you don't want actual food from the kitchens instead? you ask once, studying what's supposed to be dough for fried breakfast buns. For whatever reason, you can't get the consistency right. The Express chefs are way better than me, you know.

No, he insists. You made it, so I want to eat it.

You don't need to be so polite!

I'm not being polite. He looks down at your fingers, dusted snow-white with flour. It's just what I want.)

You wrongly assume, for a little bit, that he's somehow lost interest in everything but your cooking. It only feels like the logical conclusion, especially when Dan Heng gets into the habit of ignoring you for most of the day despite your use of every trick in your arsenal—from kissing him to teasing him to begging him for sex. He simply tells you that he'll entertain you later, and is otherwise too deeply absorbed in his work to pay attention to you.

"Is something wrong, Dan Heng?" you eventually ask, voice small. "Is it that you don't feel the same way about me anymore? Do you want to break up?"

Dan Heng goes stock still when he hears this. Without saying a word, he puts down his tablet, locks the door, and kisses you long and hard. And then—for the first time in your relationship—he proceeds to actually fuck you in the archives. He rails you next to the terminal for the better part of an hour, forces an earth-shattering orgasm out of you that ruins the carbon-fibre surface you're laid out on, and then he fills you up to the point that his spend starts trickling down your thigh.

Hazy and fucked out, you wonder idly if it's dripping down onto the phosphorescent tiles below. Dan Heng will probably make a fuss about it, especially since this is technically a public space, and the terminal is its most high-traffic area. He'd have a stroke if anyone ever saw this mess.

When he stands up, you assume that he's getting right to cleaning, like usual. The guy can hardly ever relax.

You don't expect it when he gets onto his knees and puts his head between your thighs.

"Gege?" you say, solidly confused, but before you can ask him what he's doing, you feel the press of his tongue against your dripping entrance and then all you can do is moan.

By the time Dan Heng is done with you, the two of you are messy and breathless, collapsed and tangled up in each other on his makeshift bed.

You stare at the ceiling, mind whirring even in your exhaustion. It had been hard to process the situation while your boyfriend was railing every thought imaginable out of you—but now that he’s finally done, the shock is settling in.

Holy shit, you think, Dan Heng never gets this nasty. Something really is wrong!

You think of broaching the matter, but Dan Heng beats you to it. He turns to you, says, "I don't want to break up," and then gets back on top of you for another round.

You decide to put your foot down.

The next night, you invite Dan Heng into your bedroom. You're all business this time. There's no whining, no teasing, no Heng'er, you don't want to touch me? There are no desperate and indirect plays to get his attention while you simmer in anxiety about what he's hiding from you. (This change is not because of your own strength of mind—of which you have none, when it comes to your boyfriend—but because you're now sure you won't break up, whatever happens.) Instead, you seat him at your table and regard him with a firm expression.

You're careful to keep your voice gentle, but you still don't hesitate: "I know something's been bothering you, Dan Heng. Can we please talk about it?"

Dan Heng is prepared for the question. "I'm sorry I've been neglecting you," he says instantly. "It won't happen anymore. I'm very serious about our relationship, and I have no wish for it to end."

You know he's being earnest. After spending the rest of his night fucking you—slow and sweet in your bed, rather than the desperate way he'd done it in the archives—he'd woken up this morning and gone back to normal. Paid attention to you, paid attention to others, humoured your public displays of affection and initiated his own in private. Acted like the past two weeks never happened, and that nothing’s been weighing on his mind.

Were he anyone else, you'd assume that you're simply being strung along for sex, or perhaps being distracted by it. But Dan Heng isn't anyone else: he has absolutely no interest in physical intimacy without the emotional kind. He'd slept with you as an affirmation of his feelings for you. (He probably also did it because you kept begging to be fucked, but that's neither here nor there.)

Still, as much as you liked having your back blown out in the archives, semi-public sex isn't exactly a healthy way to deal with relationship problems.

"I know you'll be more mindful of my feelings now," you reply, "but I'd still like you to tell me what's been bothering you. I won't force it out of you, but if you did tell me, we could maybe fix it?"

"It is unfixable," he replies, "and not a problem to begin with. Simply the nature of things that I must accept."

His tone is neutral. Factual. Certain of the insignificance of whatever the issue is, even though you know that he's not the type to be bothered by insignificant things.

You frown, confused. "If it's the nature of things, then it won't hurt for me to know."

Dan Heng isn't looking at you anymore, instead fixated on the view beyond your window. Peering at the many moons of this galaxy, he finally relents: "'The night-blooming cereus flowers only once.' This is how Vidyadharas describe human life."

You consider his words, contemplating the bittersweet air of the idiom.

"Because human life feels ephemeral to you?" you discern.

"Yes. The lifespan of a human is but a fraction of ours. It's never bothered me before, but"—he's finally looking at you now, and his expression guts you—"four months without you feels unbearable. I can't imagine four centuries."

You go quiet.

Dan Heng is right: this is the nature of things. Skilled as you might be, you aren't likely to be one of those rare few humans who can ascend to immortality without Yaoshi's fruit. He’ll likely need to spend the better part of his life without you, and then every lifetime thereafter. Such is the reality for a Vidyadhara choosing to love a short-life species.

“...I’m sorry, Dan Heng,” is all you can bring yourself to say, but he shakes his head.

“There is no need for you to apologize," he says plainly. "I should have prepared myself for this eventuality when I chose to commit myself to you. It cannot be helped."

Dan Heng loves this phrase, you think to yourself. It cannot be helped that I had to live alone for so many years. It cannot be helped that I was exiled from my home. It cannot be helped that I was punished for the sins of Yinyue Jun.

It cannot be helped that you will someday leave me.

A splinter digs into your heart. You reach out, squeeze his hand, and wish that you could do more.

"It cannot be helped," you agree, "but that doesn't make it any less painful."

Dan Heng does not speak, but the way that he closes his eyes is enough of a reply. No matter how unfeeling he makes his voice, his pain is evident.

You wait for him to collect himself. Listen to his breaths—deeper than usual, meditative, reflective. There is hesitation in his eyes when he finally looks at you. A weakness that he only ever shows at night, after waking from a terrible dream.

"...I know it's a cruel thing to ask of you," Dan Heng eventually says, and the bitter edge to his words surprises you, "and perhaps a sign that this soul of mine will never change in its sins, no matter how many times it is reborn—but is there no way for us to spend a life together?"

You forget how to breathe.

What he's asking you is not just heretical for him—it's traumatic. An echo of the crime he'd committed in his past life, the tragedy that marked him for suffering in this one. He must be desperate for an answer if he's voicing the question at all.

You struggle as you think through your options.

"Seeking out the Peaches of Immortality is out of the question," you start. "And Sanctus Medicus is just a bunch of nutjobs—no way could they make me immortal. Demonic cultivation is another Path, but I don't think you'd like the thing I'd become by the end of it."

A brilliant river of stars streams past the window, like the one in that ancient folktale about the bridge of magpies. You can see the reflection of your lover's face in the window: muted, sorrowful, already mourning you. And of course he's mourning you long before your death, with how much he'd lost long before his birth.

Oh, Heng'er, you think, even if I drank from Meng Po's bowl and lost every memory of you, I'd still find my way back to you in my next life.

It would be too cruel to say aloud, so you remain quiet—merely staring at the galaxy before you, hoping quietly to see some kind of bridge.

Then a nearby sun flickers, and you remember something.

"...I guess there is another option," you say slowly, "but I can't imagine you being happy with it."

He straightens up. "What is it?"

"Well…" You take a deep breath. "Sometimes people practice dual cultivation as a way to extend their life. It's quite safe, but would be difficult given our relationship."

Dan Heng stares. "What exactly does it entail?"

"Well… it's basically cultivating by having sex. If I slept regularly with an immortal being with highly refined qi, I could probably exchange energy with them and achieve longevity that way." You make a face at the thought. "But it's not exactly easy to find an immortal who'd want a lifelong friend with benefits… and I'd really rather not have sex with anyone other than you, anyway."

It would probably make him miserable.

You're surprised when Dan Heng looks thoughtful, rather than disturbed. He studies you for a long moment, considering.

"Vidyadharas are immortal," he says, "and the qi of a High Elder is much more powerful than that of any other species. Is it not helping that we're already coupling so often?"

"Not really." You reach out across the table, hold out your palm, and he knows to give you his hand. You turn it over, tracing a finger along the length of his wrist. "Dual cultivation with you wouldn't be very useful. You might have extraordinary qi as a Vidyadhara, but it's sealed when you're in your human form."

You feel for the warm glow of his meridians, even though you already know what you'll find—an ordinary, unremarkable life force coursing through his body.

Dan Heng doesn't seem discouraged, though, when you look back up at him. Only curious.

"Then," he says, "what about my dragon form?"

It doesn't end up being very straightforward.

For a full ninety minutes, Dan Heng sits in your room and listens to you discuss the mechanics of dual cultivation, also known traditionally as the 'art of the bedchamber'. As its name would suggest, there are quite a few nuances and technical considerations involved: different positions enhance your qi in different ways; certain acts are more useful than others; mutual pleasure must be attained for the greatest possible benefit.

It isn't just a lecture that you give him. You take out one of your cultivation manuals and show him various diagrams and poses. You whip out your tablet and visit "questionable websites" for "video demonstrations". You quiz him intensively at the end of each unit.

At around the seventy-minute mark, you catalogue Dan Heng's expression—thousand yard stare, stiff posture, red ears—and decide that you're overwhelming him. So you tell him the most important takeaway, which is that one thing he must absolutely do is—

"—finish inside you?"

"Mhm." You sound completely unbothered. "As much as possible. And as many times as possible."

He gives you a long, blank stare, and then crosses his arms. "...all of this is just a ploy to get me to do one of your favourite things in bed, isn't it."

"What? No! I wouldn't lie to you about something like this, Gege!" You're being truthful. Though your sex drive can sometimes drive you to try insane things, it never drives you to be cruel. "I'm being dead serious right now. This really will extend my life. Those cultivation manuals were proof!"

Dan Heng considers you. "You're right. You wouldn't lie about something like this."

"Thank you."

"You're already so shameless about begging for it—I don't think you'd see the need to come up with an excuse."

Wow.

"...okay, yes, but you're also pretty shameless about giving in."

Dan Heng clears his throat, and you try not to laugh. "Well, I've never had a reason not to, since we don't need to worry about pregnancy…" He tries very, very hard to assume some semblance of dignity as he deflects: "Anyway. I think I understand the gist of it. You more or less want me to do the usual things."

"Yes—but while you're in your original form, of course."

"Right." His eyes narrow, and his expression becomes uncertain: something you've only seen a handful of times. "...I do need you to know that taking that shape… complicates things. There is a reason why my powers are usually sealed."

You nod. You've known for a while now that Dan Heng hates invoking his Vidyadhara powers—he considers it as taboo as much as a Xianzhou native would. Truthfully, it did occur to you some time ago that exchanging qi with a dragon would make your cultivation progress leaps and bounds (and speaking even more truthfully, it's why you'd taken an interest in Dan Heng in the first place…), but after learning about how much he despises that form of his, you'd scrapped the whole idea and put it out of mind.

You're surprised that he's even consenting to this, all things considered.

Noticing the tension in his body, you leave your teaching set-up (tablet, an annotated cultivation manual, and smartboard with various stick figures you've drawn) to rest a hand on his shoulder.

"I don't know if we have to worry about that. The Alliance only sealed Vidyadhara powers due to historical reasons relating to the Sedition, right?" you try to console him. "Rather than anything to do with your nature in this lifetime, I mean. You aren't inherently dangerous."

You can see the conflict in his eyes; your words run exactly counter to everything he must have heard while imprisoned on the Luofu.

"I don't know," Dan Heng finally says, "but for better or worse, things are still different when I take my true shape. I'm no longer used to it." He frowns a little. "The amount of power feels overwhelming to me now. It's fine in normal circumstances, but—" He struggles for a moment. "...I don't know how I'll behave in… these circumstances with you."

"Ah, I see. You're worried that you won't be able to control yourself while fucking you're me, huh?"

He gives you a disgruntled look. "Do you have to use such crass language?"

"Sorry, Gege. I'll try to speak eloquently like you: Yinyue Jun may fall to his base instincts once he's crossed the threshold of the chrysanthemum gate, right?"

His expression turns from disgruntled to disdainful. Evidently, he's not a fan of your erotica novel slang.

"Please be serious for once. We need to be careful if we do this. I might behave impulsively—do something rash. Accidentally hurt you."

You hum, considering his words. "That's surprising. I thought dragons were generally supposed to be pretty calm and wise…" Then you think about how you couldn't walk this morning. "Though I guess you weren't particularly calm yesterday."

He snorts. "Well, I usually am. Unfortunately, I find it exceptionally hard to control myself around you, with how much you like to provoke me," he says plainly. "It'll just get worse if I switch forms."

You try not to stare at him, shocked at how unbothered he is by these admissions. You suppose that multiple rounds of semi-public sex might have forced him to cross an event horizon of shame, and now his face is finally getting thicker.

"It isn't just my behaviour I'm worried about," he continues. His arms cross again, and his brow furrows. "You might find my form… unattractive. You probably won't like it."

You frown. "I can't imagine that. I bet the real Cold Dragon Young is super handsome."

It's a testament to his anxiety that he hardly reacts to your stupid comment. He just studies you carefully, uncertain. Apprehensive.

"I guess we'll find out."

END PART 1

notes: for those unfamiliar, this fic is set in the same universe as fengyue. fengyue was actually based on this fic, but due to my inability to manage deadlines, it came out way ahead of this LOL

i'm sorry there was no dragonfucking in this part when i have been promising dragonfucking for ages on this blog. but i am 12.5k words into part 2 and i can assure you that there is an excessive amount of incredibly nasty dragonfucking in it, so please look forward to that

this was written way before 1.2 came out (and in fact, before I had even caught up to 1.1 content). hopefully the characterization still holds up ok!

big, big thank you to @petrichorium for helping me navigate canon lore and riffing w me on this piece. please go check out their works, they have banger star rail content!

cultural notes:

cultivation is the practice of using martial and spiritual arts to cultivate one’s qi, gain spiritual powers, and attain immortality

dual cultivation is the act of refining your qi through having sex

I will be honest. I cannot remember the other cultural refs I dropped because I just kind of blindly write them in so please let me know if you have any questions about things LOL

translation notes:

gege is a term meaning "older brother", though it is often used for non-familial relationships that are very close; it can come off as either flirty or childish. heng'er is a diminutive of dan heng's name.

“If paradise is but a dream, then I wish to sleep forever” - this was a reference to the chinese version of dan heng’s ult line. in english, he says “this sanctuary is but a vision”. however, in chinese, he says “洞天幻化，长梦一觉” which is closer to something like “paradise is an illusion, reveals itself to be a long dream”

"The night-blooming cereus flowers only once" - this is how I rendered the idiom "曇花一現", which describes thing that are short-lived

"Human life should be as morning dew" - this is how I rendered the idiom "人生如朝露", which describes the ephemeral nature of human life

yes I really made dan-gege break out the chengyu and poetic speech... I'm not sure how he sounds in english but my man has his super literary moments in chinese haha

[farewell-itoshisoup]

IMPRINT | dan heng x gn!reader

They say that moles are spots where your lover liked to kiss you in your past life. As Dan Heng is your lover in your current life, you can't help but suggest that the previous Yinyue Jun might be responsible for the mole on your inner thigh. (Or: You learn that Dan Heng hates the idea that he might have known you in his past life.)

3k words of fluff, comedy, some nsft. features an established relationship and imbibitor lunae cuddles. past renfeng is mentioned (dh is not a fan of df's choice in spouses). cultural/TL/lore notes at the end. nsft tags: monsterfucking (mostly offscreen), afab reader, onscreen explicit foreplay. dividers by @/cafekitsune. thank you to yyj anon for the hilarious idea!

Dan Heng has, in his true form, a small beauty mark on his throat.

You can see it now, pressed up against him in bed—your head resting on his shoulder, your bare legs tangled up with his, your whole body wrapped up in the furnace-like heat of his form. Azure scales glide along your skin as his tail curls around your waist, settling lazily against your thigh. You can feel a strange vibration coming from his vocal chords, from his chest—quiet, rhythmic, a sign of his complete ease. Whenever you reach over and run your fingers through his hair, he closes his eyes and the thrum from his throat grows stronger.

(Yes—it turns out that the great Imbibitor Lunae can purr. Dan Heng was mortified when the two of you first discovered this fact, but you've since reassured him that it is objectively the best part of his transformation.)

Ordinarily, Dan Heng isn't so clingy. It's only when he decides to couple with you in this form—something he generally avoids, given the… complications relating to his anatomy and stamina—that he ends up entwining himself with you afterwards. His expression always remains as neutral and unbothered as ever, so you think it must not be a conscious behaviour. (In fact, Dan Heng's face is so thin that he'd probably disintegrate if he ever noticed himself doing this.) Possibly it's an instinct that comes with his draconic features, just like his habit of nipping at your throat during intimate moments, or flicking his tail when agitated.

Normally, you'd be happy to bask quietly in his affections, but you're too distracted today. You keep staring at that tiny mole on the smooth, white-jade slope of his neck. It's placed right on the spot where you most like to kiss him, impossible to miss.

It isn't there when he wears his human disguise. You're very sure of this fact, because you're an avid fan of leaving marks on his neck, no matter which form he's in. (This behaviour is much to his chagrin. It's not like anyone will notice, you always need to reassure him. You always wear turtlenecks or high collars. Be careful about that chest window, though…) It's only natural that you'd notice such a detail.

You reason to yourself that there's no significance to this beauty mark. Plenty of Dan Heng's features arbitrarily change between forms—including his height, and even his makeup—but it gets you thinking about what it could mean. Particularly, you keep thinking about that myth claiming that moles mark the spots where your lovers kissed you in your past life.

You wonder about who'd have been kissing him, in his past life as Dan Feng—or who'd have been kissing you, whoever you were in your past life.

Of course, you were probably a total random in your previous lives. You definitely weren't getting kissed up on by any High Elders of the Luofu, nor were you leaving any hickies on their necks—or at least, you weren't doing that to Dan Feng, given that the intergalactic criminal trying to kill your boyfriend is actually the ex-husband of the previous Yinyue Jun. (Ever since this revelation, you have promised Dan Heng that you will never attempt to murder him, no matter how badly your relationship might someday implode.) But you'll take any opportunity to tease Dan Heng, and the perfect opportunity is before you now.

"Gege," you say, trying and failing to hide the mischief in your voice. He opens his eyes. His expression is still calm, but the slight arch to his brow betrays his wariness.

"Hm?"

"I'm curious about something."

"I can tell," he says. "What are you thinking about?"

You hum in a pondering tone. "Well, I know you don't like to think about your past," you begin, and you can feel his tail curling, "but I wonder if we knew each other at all in your previous life?"

Dan Heng studies you carefully. "I don't know. I try not to remember too much of Dan Feng's life, and it's hard to understand what I do recall. But you already know that." He tilts his head. "You've never asked about him before. Why are you suddenly so curious?"

"Well… you know what they say about moles?"

He gives you a blank stare. "That you should monitor them carefully for changes, in case of skin cancer?"

You snort. "No, not that! Or, I mean, that's true, and I hope you're doing that—but it's not what I'm thinking of!"

The corner of his mouth lifts very, very subtly. "Then what are you thinking of?"

"How they say that moles exist wherever your lover kissed you most in your past life. You've heard that, right?"

"Yes—it's an old wives' tale," he dismisses. "My species would have noticed it if there were any truth to that myth."

You frown. "You sure? Because"—you pull back just so you can tap gently at the mark on his neck—"you've got a mole right here when you're in this form. And I love to kiss your neck, Heng'er."

"I've noticed," he says dryly, with a distinctly long-suffering tone, making you grin.

"Then don't you think I could have given this to you?" you try again, but he shakes his head.

"It's not uncommon for Vidyadharas to mate across lifetimes, and in those cases, it's not unusual to record details about their lovers' various incarnations," he explains evenly. "Someone would have noticed it if this saying about moles were true. So I can guarantee that this was not left by any of Dan Feng's lovers."

A sour expression flits across Dan Heng's face. You recognize it as the exact look he wore when he pelted his jade belt piece into the vacuum of space—something he'd done as soon as he realised its origins. (Would you keep a wedding band from a divorced spouse? he'd asked flatly, when you bemoaned its loss. No? Well, it's the same idea with the jade token. If you also happen to have an ex-husband trying to kill you, please be sure to get rid of your ring as well—you are not allowed to wear it.)

Trying not to laugh, you sit up and kiss his temple in an attempt to distract him.

"Okay," you concede. "So the beauty mark thing doesn't apply to Vidyadharas. But what about humans?"

Dan Heng falters. "...I don't know. There's no way for us to tell. Humans on the Luofu far outlive the length of the average Vidyadhara's rebirth cycle. And it is very difficult to identify a human's reincarnation, as your species will change faces and birthplaces between lifetimes." He gives you a long look, strangely unreadable. "...why do you ask?"

"Well," you say smartly, "if you wouldn't recognize me across lifetimes anyway—isn't it true that I could have been one of your past lovers?"

"...the chances are slim, but"—his tail flicks—"yes, I suppose you could have been one of Dan Feng's lovers. In theory."

You pull away from him, careful to let him get a good look at your body laid out on the bed. You catch Dan Heng's eyes wandering, his gaze all over your bare skin. Maybe studying the moles scattered across your body, or maybe he's focusing on the ones on your chest, or maybe he's thinking about the one on your inner thigh.

You point at the one that rests right above your heart.

"Then—if it's possible that I was one of Dan Feng's lovers, and if it's possible that the beauty mark thing is true for humans—isn't it also possible that Dan Feng gave some of these to me?"

"..."

Dan Heng studies you with a complicated expression. You can hear his jaw click before he points out, "That's a lot of ifs."

"I'd believe it," you say. "I mean—you've seen the one on my thigh, right? It makes sense that you'd have given that to me. I'm sure that Gege loved eating pussy in every single li—mmph!"

Dan Heng's thrown his hand over your mouth. 'Tired' doesn't even begin to describe his expression.

"I do not want to think about what Dan Feng's preferences were in bed."

You wrestle his hand away from your face for the express purpose of saying, "Why not? Aren't you curious? Like, do you think Yinyue Jun got as nasty as you do when you're in this form? What do you think he liked to do with his second—"

You lose your speaking privileges again.

Dan Heng ignores your muffled whining as he rolls his eyes. You don't even know why he's so bothered by this joke—he's the one who spent the entire day fucking you in ways you simply didn't even think were possible before you met him! (All thanks to the unique anatomy and stamina of his original form, for which you'll always be grateful to Aeon Long.) You try to convey all this through an indignant stare, but he doesn't relent. Eventually, you give up on struggling.

Curiously, Dan Heng takes this opportunity (i.e., a moment in which you are finally quiet) to study you. His hair curtains around your face as he leans over you, his gleaming eyes heavy with contemplation. Noticing the intensity of his gaze, you give him a questioning look.

When he finally pulls his hand away, you ask, "Is something wrong, Heng'er?"

"Not exactly." He's still watching you. "I only realised—I don't think we knew each other.

You stare blankly. "What?"

"I don't think we knew each other in our past lives."

You raise a brow, giving him a funny look.

"So unromantic," you complain. "What, Gege—you don't think our love is fated?"

Another eyeroll. But this time, rather than putting a palm over your mouth, Dan Heng rests his hand against your cheek instead. You blink at the feeling of his thumb running over your cheekbone.

"It's not that," he says. His voice is gentler now. "I just don't think Dan Feng would have had such a sad ending to his life, had you been in it."

"...oh." You open your mouth, but for once, you have no witty remark. Your face feels a little warm when you ask, "Really?"

"Yes, really." You think you catch a hint of fondness in his otherwise plain, unaffected voice. "And anyway—fate has nothing to do with my feelings for you. I chose you in this lifetime of my own accord, and I will spend this lifetime with you of my own accord. Destiny will never have any bearing on the path I wish to walk with you."

You swallow, staring at his eyes. They're painfully earnest. It's making it hard for you to think, though you can't bring yourself to look away.

"...how can you be so sure?" is all you can ask.

"Because my life until now has been controlled by Dan Feng's sins," he says simply, "but I refuse to let the stain of his karma touch my future with you."

You go quiet at that.

Dan Heng is never one to talk about his own suffering. Even when describing the cruelest of punishments he'd inherited from the former Yinyue Jun, he uses unfeeling terms, not ones of complaint. Control, stain, touch—you've never heard such painful language before.

You wonder, for a second, if you went a little too far with your teasing about his past incarnation, for him to speak in such a way. But by the time you've found the words to apologise, Dan Heng's expression has become wry.

"So please," he adds dryly, "don't make me think of what Dan Feng could or couldn't have been doing in bed with you. I already resent him enough."

"...wait," you realise, "are you jealous when you think about me having sex with Dan Feng?"

He clears his throat, looking away. "Not exactly jealous"—he's definitely jealous—"but I personally feel that he would not have deserved to kiss any part of your body, let alone leave his mark on it." He frowns. "And in any case, I just don't like the idea that he has anything to do with our relationship."

"But…" Your mouth opens and closes. "But why? He was technically just you."

"In theory, perhaps. But in practice, we are still different people." His tail settles down again, wrapping around your thigh. "I intend to be born in my next life holding a jade token I chose with you. Not one chosen by Dan Feng."

You are rendered speechless.

Your reserved boyfriend, who can't even hold your hand in public without feeling embarrassed, is casually professing his intent to love you across lifetimes with lines that sound plagiarized from a Xianzhou period drama. You don't know what to say, and you don't know what to do. Maybe you want to scream. Maybe you want to kiss him. Definitely you want to blow all your credits on a pair of luxury jade tokens tomorrow morning, one for each of you. You'll vow to never throw yours out, even if for some reason his next incarnation should try to murder you. You'll make it work somehow.

But—you also find it insanely funny that he can't stand the idea of Dan Feng fucking you. You definitely want to tease him a little more before running out to get any jewellery for him.

"That's very sweet, Heng'er," you start, "but has it occurred to you that if Dan Feng didn't kiss me in these places, then someone else did?"

Dan Heng freezes.

"Someone else would have kissed me here"—you tap the mole over your heart again—"and also here"—closer to the peak of your breast, now—"and here"—further down, on your waist—"and also…"

Before you can spread your thighs and brush your fingers against the mark there, Dan Heng grabs your wrist. His slit pupils are dilated, his tail is flicking, and his purrs have turned into a sharp huff—one accompanied by an expression of deep annoyance.

"I guess you don't like thinking about that either?" you ask, smiling, and Dan Heng chooses not to respond. He simply narrows his eyes—and lowers his head.

You smile when you feel his fangs on your neck. Too easy, you think. He lingers on your pulse, lips brushing it as much as his teeth are, before moving further down.

He places a kiss over your heart, first. Then a trail of them, his breath tickling the skin of your chest. You blink when you feel his hands running along your sides and lingering on your curves, making you acutely aware of his intentions.

"Wait—are we starting another round because of what I said?" you ask, trying not to laugh. "I had no idea you had such a jealous streak in you, Heng'er."

Dan Heng still doesn't reply. He merely replaces his lips with his tongue—and then your smile fades.

The heat of his mouth on you is distracting. Makes your brows knot as his tongue swirls around a nipple, as his breath fans across it. His teeth graze it, too—teasing and a little mean, with how he doesn't give you a break. You're squirming beneath him soon, tugging at his hair, grasping his horns—Wait, wait, I'm too sensitive—but from the way he inhales sharply at your touch, you know you're only encouraging him.

He moves down to your navel. Presses his lips to your skin—peppers your waist with butterfly kisses. His hands slip to your thighs as his mouth trails its way down, parting your legs as he settles between them. Your breath hitches as his fingers touch your entrance, spreading you open. You're still sensitive from all the things he did to you earlier—from how he had you stretched out and panting underneath him, stuffed so full that you could hardly think as you came. From how he fucked you like that again, and again, and again, until you were on the verge of tears from how many times you'd cum—because Dan Heng finds it impossible to stop whenever he's in this form.

But even as sore as you are, you can feel yourself clenching around nothing right now, eager to have him inside you again. You shiver as his breath blows over your aching clit.

"Don't tease me," you whine.

"After all the teasing you put me through?" He sounds unimpressed. "No, I think I'll take my time. It's only fair."

"Gege, I was only joking. You said it yourself: it's only an old wives' tale! I'm sure no one was kissing me on the—ah…"

Your voice clips off into a whimper. Dan Heng is running a finger along your slit, and you feel yourself his spend from earlier leaking out from you. It's hot and it's thick, a mess running all the way down to the sheets beneath you, and there's so much of it. He just spent the whole day filling you up, after all—and you have no doubt that he wants to spend his night the same way.

(Really, you owe so much to the Aeon of Permanence. You'd worship Long if he were still around—may he rest in peace.)

You watch as he studies you, his eyes keen and pupils blown. His gaze lingers on a particular spot on your thigh—and it suddenly occurs to you that he's been kissing all your moles.

"Dan Heng," you breathe, halfway to a laugh, "what exactly are you trying to do?"

He glances up at you, arching a brow.

"Isn't it obvious? I'm making sure that any marks you have in the future will be from no one but me."

Dan Heng's gleaming eyes are set on your beauty mark. He places a soft kiss on it, and he almost sounds amused when he speaks again:

"I'll especially like looking at this one again in your next life."

END

lost my mind from stress this week so I cranked this out rip I hope you all enjoyed!! please leave a note if you did!!

some notes about lore details:

not sure if everyone is caught up to 1.2 content (I'm not lol), so I'll note here that the "jade tokens" being mentioned = Vidyadhara practice of taking matching jade tokens into their hatching rebirth, so they can find each other in their next lives

the relic lore for the passerby of wandering cloud bracer in chinese heavily implies that yingxing and dan feng were either engaged or married. it makes sense when you consider that dan heng and blade wear matching jade buckles. people theorize that these are jade tokens from their lifetime as lovers – hence that whole bit in this fic about dan heng throwing out his jade token 😭

cultural/TL notes:

gege is a term meaning "older brother", though it is often used for non-familial relationships that are very close; it can come off as either flirty or childish. heng'er is a diminutive of dan heng's name.

chinese language has a few different concepts/words for the idea of fate/destiny. the one that dh and mc discuss in this fic is the notion that your relationship with someone in this lifetime will go on to determine the nature of your relationship with them in the next one (缘分, this idea applies to all relationships but includes romantic ones). I tried my best to convey this idea in the dialogue for those reading without that cultural context, but quite honestly I feel like I failed LMAO and thus... you are getting this note.

I also want to clarify that 缘分 is not affected by karma in the Buddhist sense, even though I used the term "karma" within the discussion about fate/destiny; 缘分 is not a Buddhist concept. (the reason that I had dan heng refer to dan feng's "karma" is simply a play on the chinese term for "sins" used to describe dan feng's crimes, 罪业，which can have Buddhist connotations.)

other notes:

while I left the reader's backstory vague (so that you may interpret them however you want), I wrote this with tanghulu mc in mind, because that's who the original anon ask discussed!

yyj peg anon if you are reading this: I apologize for how deeply I botched your idea LMAOAOA this got heavily derailed from the basic prompt of teasing dan heng 😭 what 1.2 will do to a mf…

thank you to the 80% of people who agreed that danheng IL should purr in this fic. i truly do not think that he would exhibit particularly animalistic behaviours in his original form, but, listen........ I wasn't writing this with my brain.

I'm sorry that there was no tonal cohesion in this fic. we really went from dragon cuddles to bullying danheng to existential discussions of fate to monsterfucking foreplay. as I said above........ I wasn't writing this with my brain

[itoshis-after-dark]

itoshi rin x f!reader

Sae treasured you in a way that you’d never experienced before, and then he tossed you aside. Opened you up and took all the love you had to give—the sad scraps of it left after the orphanage gutted it from you—leaving you with nothing but rot.

Sometimes Rin wonders if that’s why you don’t love him the way you’ve always loved Sae.

— written for @/killsaki’s family ties collab. please go check it out!

7.6k words. Tags: Hurt/comfort, explicit sexual content, codependent relationships, romance, character exploration, angst with a happy ending (sort of—see end notes). Warnings: Inc*st (adoptive half-siblings); implied childhood trauma (off-screen, no details, not involving Rin); intimate partner violence and implied sexual abuse (off-screen, no details, not involving Rin). Reader: Cisfem, at least half-Japanese on her father’s side but otherwise ethnically undefined. All sexual content will be in Part III.

Thank you endlessly to @theloveinc​​ and @lorelune​​ for being my alpha readers!

DEAD DOVE DON’T EAT + MINORS DON’T INTERACT.

It is 5:52AM, and Rin has been standing in typhoon rainfall for roughly fifteen minutes.

He’s lucky that this house sits on the crest of a hill: unlike other parts of Kamakura, it’s protected from the threat of flood. Rin had grown up close to the Namerigawa himself, and the river had once swollen up with this sort of storm when he was a kid. He’d been convinced that the water would overtake the house and sweep the whole thing into Sagami Bay, and by the time the power went out, his paranoia had seeped its way into your heart. Sae had to deal with the both of you trembling in his bed that night, telling you that things would be just fine.

Keep reading

[farewell-itoshisoup]

Masterlist [under construction]

i recently changed urls so some things may be broken! please be patient with me!! 

Keep reading

[farewell-itoshisoup]

higher than the mountain, deeper than the sea | pt. 5

dabi x f!reader, shouto x f!reader

“I’m so sorry, Shouto.” Your eyes are so hot, but you do not cry. You wept so often in front of Touya, but it is different with Shouto, who is younger than you and more fragile and completely motherless. “You can always come to me. I promise I’ll always help you.” The ruin of Sekoto Peak flashes before your eyes, all that charcoal and death and flowers turned to ash. You recall the jawbone that Todoroki Rei had cradled in her arms, the lone remnant of her son that she had to place into his urn, crossing chopsticks with his killer. You cannot let Shouto become another jar full of ashes.

notes: 12.7k+ words of childhood friends to stockholm syndrome! warnings for childhood abuse (pertaining to Shouto), implied feelings from Shouto despite a 5-year age gap, discussions of disordered eating and body image in relation to hero society, non-explicit flashes to the noncon events of the previous chapters, and Buddhist themes. please try to read chapters 4 and 5 together—they are meant to be experienced as one segment.

YOU

xiii. riverside

(Dabi will hold you.

After half a lifetime of grief and an eternity without sunlight, you will wake up in an ice-cold room and Dabi will be holding you. Tightly and with tenderness, if a little clumsiness. Every inch of his body will feel stiff with uncertainty when he does it—like it's foreign, like it’s fragile, like it's a dream.

Like it’s a dream, but not one of your usual nightmares. You will no longer be building towers under a blood orange sky, no longer stranded on the shore of some empty river; you will instead be cocooned in someone’s arms, and it will feel all too familiar: salt tracks on your face, traces of wetness. A body that is unbearably warm, midsummer heat coupled with adrenaline. Bones that ache to the core, a throbbing pain in your chest that your quirk cannot touch. You will imagine opening your eyes and finding yourself on a bench outside a convenience store, wrapped up in a redheaded boy with white streaks in his hair.

But then you'll realise that you are wide awake, held by your kidnapper in the pitch darkness of his room. The stench of cigarettes will settle in your lungs. This is Dabi, not Touya, but it's like he’s eleven years old and holding you for the first time all over again.

You'll wonder when was the last time he embraced someone.

I didn't love any of them, you will remember. Only you.

You will open your eyes, and you will find a lost child staring back at you.)

xiv. atonement

After Todoroki Rei is locked away, you resolve to make good on your promise.

You visit the Todoroki household routinely, bearing small gifts and updates on your life and pleasant smiles for a man you will never forgive. You tell Enji that you are visiting Fuyumi and Natsuo, that you’re still friends with the two of them despite Touya’s passing, but really—you are there for Shouto. For Shouto, and for Touya, and for their missing mother.

With each visit, you go to Touya's room without fail, always offering fruit and flowers and incense. The sandalwood smoke stings your eyes, but you stay there a long time, saying your apologies to Touya. You try to explain to him that you are helping Shouto because his mother asked you to, and because you cannot allow his father to inflict Shouto with the same wounds that he gave to Touya. Helping Shouto is the most I can do for you, you tell his spirit. You know, after all, that he’ll never pass peacefully if his father doesn’t change his ways.

Once, Endeavor comes upon you mid-offering. He sits down beside you, studying Touya's photo.

"You were very close to my son," he starts.

You are quiet.

"Touya was so troubled, but he was always smiling around you."

You think he must have talked to Rei about this.

"Where do you think I went wrong?"

Now you are looking at Endeavor, eyes a little wide. And—you don't like it, looking at this large, powerful man who inflicted so many wounds upon his wife and children. You don't like seeing him praying for the son whom he killed. You do not like his regretful expressions, his human grief, his dimensions that make him seem less like a monster and more like a broken man.

He is not as heartless as you thought he was, and you hate it.

(Dabi will not like it, either. He will listen to this with his false jaw clenched, his eyes cold with fury. You can see, in real time, his struggle to reconcile your memories with his delusions. You will wonder if he will push you onto the bed and force himself inside you, as punishment for telling him these things.

But in the end, even as his fist curls and fire burns at his fingertips, he doesn’t lash out. He only burns himself, leaving his wrists blistering and raw. You will want to reach out and touch his wounds, but you think it would just make him angrier.)

"I have an idea of what I did wrong," Endeavor adds, "but I'd like to know your thoughts. Touya must have shared things with you that he didn't share with anyone else."

He did, you want to say. He shared so many things with you. He shared with you his deepest hopes, which included him wanting to be a hero—not because of his father, but because he wanted to protect you. He shared with you his wounds, which he took as a sign of his father's love. And after those wounds scarred over, he shared: My father no longer wants me. I’ll never be good enough for him. I’ll never be good enough for anyone.

Touya told you that he didn't care about anyone more than you, but really, you think that the person he cherished most was actually his father.

(That's why he wants to destroy Endeavor more than anyone else, you will think when he is on top of you, as his fingers dig bruises into your waist. And then when he is inside you, scarring your viscera, you will think: Maybe this means he loved me, after all.)

You organise these thoughts in silence. Endeavor waits.

"I caught a glimpse of Shouto today," you finally say. "He looked like he wanted to play with us."

A pause.

“Is that where I went wrong with Touya? Is that what you're saying?” Endeavor looks down. “I told him so many times to go out and make more friends. To do other things than training.”

You think of Touya's aimless stare atop that rooftop.

“I don't think he knew how.” You never taught him, after all.

During the silence that passes between the two of you, you listen to the ticking from Endeavor's watch. The seconds pass by. Shouto is ageing, but Touya is no longer.

Incense is burning in your lungs, mingling with the stench of Seven Stars and those burning camellias on Sekoto Peak.

"You’re doing well in U.A.," he finally says. "A lot of pros are talking about you because of the sports festival. You're going to be a fine hero." After a pause, Endeavor decides, “You'd be a good influence on Shouto. It would be good for him to talk to you.”

You agree. You will be a good influence, an even better influence than with Touya. You won't make the same mistakes with Shouto. You will protect him, and you will teach him to protect himself, and you will make it known that there is a life beyond his father's vision. You will let him know that there is a life he can make his own.

You will let him know that refuge is within his reach.

xv. redo

You are allowed to properly meet Todoroki Shouto for the first time that spring.

He is just a child, but it is clear that the events of the past year have forced him to grow up far too quickly, obvious from the weary and suspicious look he gives you when he first greets you. You know he has seen you around the house, has waved at you on occasion and ducked away as soon as you sent him back a smile or said hello, but there has been no actual conversation until now. He's been kept so tightly chained to his father that he never got the chance to talk to you. He does not trust the fact that he is suddenly allowed to see you, and it is obvious from the way he talks to you.

“My dad thinks talking to you will help me become a hero,” he says. Chilly tone. No honorifics. You raise a brow.

“Maybe. I’m just supposed to be a good influence.”

“You’re supposed to be my father’s influence,” he replies, and you find yourself staring at this too-old child, floored by the chill in his voice.

You lean down so that you are eye level with him. You hope that Endeavor is not watching from the engawa or through any window, and if he is, you hope that he cannot see your face when you reply, “That’s what your father thinks, but I have other plans for us.” You give him a conspiratorial wink. “You’ll keep them a secret, right?”

Shouto blinks, suspicion giving way to surprise. “Plans?”

“Yup.” You straighten up, smiling at him. “Have you ever been to the arcade, Shouto?”

He stares at you, wide-eyed, off-guard, his eyes fixed upon your smiling face.

(In several years’ time, when Shouto is a grown man and living away from home, he will drink with you while you chatter about your painful first meeting. You weren't a cute kid at all! You were so cold to me! you'll laugh. Pink will dust his cheeks.

“Sorry about that,” he will say. “I shouldn’t have been so rude to you.”

You will smile at him, then put your fingers into his hair, disorganizing his middle part. “All water under the bridge, Shouto.” You'll smile fondly at him, and his eyes will linger on your expression. You'll wonder if there is something on your face, because he seems unable to look away.)

Over the years, you are only allowed to see Shouto every once in a while—his father’s grip on him remains unyielding—but you make the most out of each chance. During your tutoring sessions, you sneak him sweets that his father would never allow him to have. When you are supposed to be helping him train, you instead take him to the arcade and play fighting games with him, smiling fondly each time he declares that he’ll be playing as his idol, All Might. You walk him to that bridge at the edge of your neighbourhood and make him peer over the railing, down at the sunlit river below. You take his hand, like Touya sometimes did with you, and the two of you free-fall into the water.

His expression is usually impassive throughout this all—or sometimes nervous—but you hope he feels the joy that you once did with Touya.

Or the joy that Touya was supposed to feel with you.

“I never thought I’d do things like this,” Shouto eventually blurts out during a diving session at the river, after he comes up to the surface.

“No?”

“Yeah. My father would never approve.” He frowns as he floats on his back, kicking in the water.

“I know.” A long pause. The sun is tinted red, enlarging as it drops toward the horizon. Voice softer, you admit, “Touya and I had to sneak around a lot to do fun things. Stuff like diving off this bridge, and more.”

You hear a splash. Shouto is upright now, looking at you as he wades in the water. His stare on you is intense, and hints at discomfort. It's been a year since Touya’s passing, but you still feel your heart jump with anxiety, wondering if you’ve resurfaced any pain.

“Let’s get out of the river,” you suggest quickly. “The sun is going down. It’ll get cold soon.”

Shouto wades to the shore with you obediently. By the time the two of you are wringing water out of your clothes, the sun is a blood orange, just like in your dreams. The longer the quiet stretch lasts, the more you squirm with nausea. Touya’s memory allows for no easy silences.

Finally, the young boy beside you asks, “Did Touya-nii get to play with you like this? All the time?” He sounds more curious than upset.

You have to hold back a sigh of relief. “Often,” you reply. “We, um, trained a lot together too. With our quirks.”

Shouto nods, expression unchanging. He stares at the grass at his feet, looking thoughtful.

“Why don’t we head back to my place?” you say, after another silence. “I can dry our clothes, and I’ll help you with your English homework. Your father will wonder what we were doing if it’s not done by the time you go back.”

Shouto nods. He remains quiet as you walk back, and your mind wanders to all the times you walked this path from the river back with Touya, sometimes with Rei. Often she'd point at all the flora and talk about their meanings in flower language—something her mother taught her, so naturally she wanted to teach you and Touya as well.

Touya had written it off as a stupid, girly topic—or one for snobby old families like the Himura clan, which he wasn't really part of—but he always ended up asking her questions. You think he liked seeing her smile at his curiosity. You think he liked to make you smile, too, because if he ever caught you staring at a flower, he'd turn to his mother and insist she talk more about it. Sometimes he'd pick one and casually examine it before handing it over to you for no reason—just in case you wanted to look too, that's all! He once fell into a pond trying to grab a lotus blossom you'd been studying.

You are deep in this memory, enough so to smile, when Shouto asks—

“Did Touya-nii make you happy?”

You pause, staring at him.

For a moment, you're lost for words. Everyone always talks about how you made Touya so happy, how you were so special to him, how he opened his heart to you and you alone right before he died. No one has ever asked about your happiness.

“Yes,” you admit aloud for the first time. “He made me happier than anyone else.”

Shouto looks down at his feet. He kicks pebbles as he walks, and they roll across the dirt path. He is silent the rest of the way back, and you wonder if you’ve made him sad. You don’t know if Touya ever made Shouto especially happy, after all. You think Shouto’s existence might have been too much of a sore spot for him to do that.

(You will understand Touya's warpath against Endeavor. You will understand his violence toward you. These are both things you cannot deny him—both things you have no choice but to forgive.

But even if you understand his desire to hurt Shouto, you will not be able to allow it.)

For years after that, you try your hardest not to talk about Touya. Without bringing up his deceased brother, you continue to mentor Shouto, just as Endeavor wants. Sometimes this involves sneaking him out to festivals with Natsuo and Fuyumi; sometimes it involves taking him to the theatre to watch big budget action flicks; sometimes it involves ruffling his hair when you’re teasing him; and sometimes it involves helping him with his math homework. Like Touya, it seems to be his worst subject.

Sometimes it involves cutting little rabbit-apples for him, to which he always gives a distasteful look. “But I’m not a kid anymore,” he always says, annoyed. Still, he always stares quietly at the slices when he thinks you’re not looking, and he always eats them without fail.

Sometimes your mentorship involves actually training with him, like his father wants. You start doing it only because Shouto insists on it—it has nothing to do with his father, he tells you when he starts pressing you about it. It's All Might he wants to be like. And because it's something he wants to do for himself, you nod and humour him.

The first time you tear a trapped foot out of his ice and he sees your torn flesh, he is so horrified that he completely forgets about fighting you.

“Are you okay?” he asks, alarmed. “Do you need first aid? Should I carry you back inside?”

You try not to laugh at the mental image of him—a scrawny kid—struggling to piggyback you, and reassure him, with a straight face: “It’s fine, Shouto. You don’t have to worry so much.” You lift a foot up, and he watches your flesh stitch together on the spot. “My quirk always heals me. I’m already better, see?”

You’re about to start lecturing him on the limits of his quirk, how he shouldn’t rely on it so much in case he runs into something like you, but then his eyebrows furrow and he says, in a tiny voice, “But it still hurts you. And I don’t like seeing you get hurt.”

Well, that’ll make it hard if you want to spar with me, you want to joke, but something about his words sets off a strange sense of déjà vu, and longing, and hollowness.

(In two years' time, Shouto will listen to you describe an upcoming mission: your most dangerous one yet. “This assignment is too dangerous for you to do on your own,” Shouto will protest. Warm tone, worried expression. Still no honorifics, though. “I have my provisional license now—please, let me go with you. I can keep you safe.”

“I’m basically immortal, Shouto. I don’t need protection.” You smile at him, and you hope your expression looks more reassuring than confused. “Anyway, I’m your senior—it’s my job to keep you safe. Not the other way around.”)

Sometimes your mentorship involves sitting down with him in the privacy of his yard, when Endeavor is on patrol, and asking him if he has any injuries that you can heal for him. Even when it’s obvious that he’s in pain, he lies to you for several years in a row. “No, I’m fine,” he’ll say, or “No, there’s nothing wrong,” or, most frequently: “No, there’s nothing you can help me with.” But you gain his trust gradually, and one day, when the pain gets to be too much, he finally opens up.

Shouto is twelve years old when he cries in front of you for the first time, when he lets you examine his broken rib with tears in his eyes. Just like you did for Touya, you put your hands on his body and heal the wounds of his flesh. And then you wrap him up in your arms, trying to do something for the wounds of his mind.

“I’m so sorry, Shouto.” Your eyes are so hot, but you do not cry. You wept so often in front of Touya, but it is different with Shouto, who is younger than you and more fragile and completely motherless. “You can always come to me. I promise I’ll always help you.” The ruin of Sekoto Peak flashes before your eyes, all that charcoal and death and flowers turned to ash. You recall the jawbone that Todoroki Rei had cradled in her arms, the lone remnant of her son that she had to place into his urn, crossing chopsticks with his killer.

You cannot let Shouto become another jar full of ashes.

Your arms tighten around the boy as he cries into your shoulder.

“Come to me if it’s ever too much, okay?” Your eyes burn, and it feels like your heart is self-immolating. “I can protect you from your father.”

“But you shouldn't,” he says quietly.

"Why not?" 

Shouto shakes for a long, quiet time before he finally replies: “Because I don’t want him to hurt you too.”

His voice fractures, and you feel something in you breaking with it.

You try to smile at him, running a hand through his hair. “Don’t worry about that, Shouto. I’m a hero, remember? I can protect myself, and I’ll protect you, alright? Even if it’s from your father.”

Because that's the kind of hero you want to be. The kind who can protect anyone, no matter who is hurting them. Even if you couldn’t be that kind of hero for Touya, maybe you can be that for Shouto.

(In seven years, Touya will rape you after you get into an argument with him about Shouto. It will feel like a knife twisting your insides. He will use his body to dig out all the value from between your legs, leaving nothing but wreckage. You will be damaged goods, worthless, and no one will want you after this, just like your mother said.

But you will continue to beg anyway. Knowing it will mean further violence, you’ll still cry: Please don’t hurt Shouto. He’s innocent in all this. Please don’t hurt him. He's as much a victim as you. You will keep pleading for mercy and offering your body in a futile exchange—at least if Touya is here raping you in here, it means he isn’t out there, hurting Shouto.

You will not mind the pain. Your suffering will be worth any refuge for that boy.

For both of them.)

xvi. repeat

Despite your best efforts, Shouto grows colder over the years, distant in a way that Touya gradually became, but somehow chillier. Your influence is lesser than his father’s, after all. You cannot remove the scars etched into his neurons, and they accumulate until they spill onto his tongue. He grows more and more abrasive, until he one day lashes out at you—for the first time, and the last.

(He will come to you later, his usual impassivity crumbling into shame. “I’m sorry,” he will say quietly. “I’m so sorry. I’ll never hurt you again. I”—His face will twist with pain, and he will sound much too old to be a teenage boy—“I will not be that kind of man. Especially not to you.”)

You stumble upon him training with his mother’s quirk, readying himself for his entrance exams. You notice that he has pushed himself to his very limits, pierced the heavens and his own skin with his ice. The right side of his body is dusted with crystals, discoloured flesh punished by his own rage. He is shivering uncontrollably.

An image creeps into your mind: you are healing burns and blisters on a white-haired boy with watery teal eyes, trying to repair the disfigurement that he inflicted upon himself. You make the mistake of telling him that he is doing the right thing. You make the mistake of telling him that you will always heal him, even though you won't.

You try to push away your memories to yell at Shouto—and maybe those images overlap with the present, but you manage to scold him all the same: “What are you doing?” You run to him, nearly slipping on a path of ice, but you manage to slide until you’re in front of him. “Why aren’t you using your left side?!”

Before he can say anything, you’re cupping his face and the hand on his left cheek is warm with your quirk. You generate heat for his body where he does not, and you create new cells where his old ones have died of frost. He winces at the sensation, but his expression quickly slides into something cold anyway.

“I am not going to use my father’s power,” he says, voice stiff.

“But you'll hurt yourself if you don't!”

“So what?” he retorts. “I’m never going to use the quirk I inherited from that man. I don’t care if it means I’ll get hurt every once in a while.”

“But you should care! You should!” You grip his shoulders. “You have to take care of yourself. I know you’re angry, but you can’t self-destruct like this.” Your voice is choked, and your fingers are digging into him. In your mind, you are still holding onto a boy you once loved, a boy who turned to ash.

Then you’re shoved away, torn off his body. You finally slip on the ice under your feet, bruising as you land. Your eyes are wide with disbelief, because is this really Shouto? Is this really Shouto, whom you’ve cared so deeply for, who held your hand tightly as you dived off that bridge, whom you held as he cried from his bruises?

“Stay out of my way,” he snaps, eyes cold. “This is none of your business.”

He leaves you there, on frozen ground, staring at his retreating back. His shoulders tremble as he walks away, fists clenched at his sides. He does not glance back at you.

Rejection, rejection, rejection. Shouto will not accept refuge. Freezing is easier than healing. Despite the way that your breath is misting, you feel like your heart is burning to ash. When you cry, you pull your knees to your chest, tuck away your face in them, and you try your hardest not to cry. You wish so desperately that Touya were alive to hold you, but he is not here to comfort you because you could not save him.

Maybe you can’t save Shouto, either.

Touya, you think, desperate even for the touch of his ghost. Touya, I wish you were here.

(Dabi will not be happy hearing all this about Shouto, but he does not lash out in the way you expect. He will snarl and say cruel things, and his eyes will be steeped in pain, but he does not rape you when he hears this story. He will understand what you mean to convey.

All the things that I did for Shouto are just the things I wish I had done for you.

I just didn’t want to let him die, too.)

xvii. corruption

Over the same span of years that you try to honour your promise to Rei, you break a long string of vows you made to Touya.

The two of you spent so long on the rooftop of your school, talking about what kind of heroes you would like to be, how the two of you would always stay together, how you’d save more people than anyone else in history. He was supposed to be Number One, and you were supposed to be Number Two. Or we could tie in the rankings, he once said, ‘cause I wouldn’t mind being at the top with you. We're gonna be partners, after all.

We're gonna save so many lives together, you remember replying.

But you do not aim to be at the top. You do not aim to become a hero who can save anyone, no matter what. You only focus on your income and your image and moving out from your home. When you say these goals in an interview with a potential manager, he does not seem the least bit surprised.

You know Nakano through a pro bono consultation he did for your class at U.A. some years back, when you were all trying to figure out how to brand yourselves. His careful polish, achieved by his expensive suit and meticulously styled, pitch-black hair, somehow makes him feel less trustworthy as opposed to more. But he’s reached out to you with the promise of success, and he does not judge you in the least when he hears your priorities.

Nakano pulls a box of cigarettes out of his pocket—Seven Stars, you notice with carefully hidden distaste, of course it is Seven Stars—and lights one up.

“Well,” he says between puffs of smoke, “You wouldn’t have been able to become Number One anyway. Young, pretty girls have trouble topping the charts.”

You blink.

“Do they?”

“Yeah. The only woman who’s breached the Top Ten is Ryukyu, and she’s been in the industry forever. Done way more than most of the guys in the Top Ten.” Another breath of smoke. “People have their eyes on Mirko too, but she’s different from most women heroes. She’s a powerhouse and looks like it, but still manages to have a ton of sex appeal."

“I could be a powerhouse,” you say, straightening up. “Hysterical strength and speed are some of my abilities. As long as I build up my body and eat properly, I can—”

“You won’t,” Nakano cuts off. “You need to eat less if anything. You wanna make money? The easiest thing for you to do is market your face and body. Use that quirk of yours to get skinny. Oh, but make sure you still have some curves.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“Oh, well. Then you’ll have to work out and diet like everyone else. Or we'll find the money for plastic surgery once you're more established.” He spits rancid smoke into the air, then peers at you from over his Gucci frames. “You’re young, you’ve got an”—he pauses—“okay-ish face. We can improve it, but this isn't a bad start.” You try not to bristle, and he does not notice your discomfort. Or maybe he does not care. “And you’ve made a great impression on the media with that fire rescue story, because of that stunning front page shot of you. God bless that photographer. Anyway, your image will be your biggest moneymaker, not your quirk.”

Your jaw tightens. “I didn’t want to become a hero for this.”

Nakano raises a brow. He tilts his head, studying you carefully.

“Then tell me—why did you want to become a hero?”

You have no answer for Nakano. You never wanted to become a hero in the first place, after all. That was Touya’s dream for you, and now you’re simply living out its ghost.

xviii. confession

(“Why did you want to follow me so badly, huh?” Dabi will ask you. You will feel like you are back on that rooftop, with him leaning over you and blocking out the yellow light of his ceiling lamp, which has been your substitute for the sun for the past several weeks. But unlike in your preteen years, you will be lying together in his bed, foreheads nearly touching. He will place a hand on your cheek and brush his thumb against it—a gesture so intimate that he'd have never done it when you were both children.

His voice will be a deep, quiet whisper when he asks, “Why didn’t you just do what you wanted to do? Instead of all that hero bullshit that I tried to drag you into?”

“I think you know why, by now.”

"Maybe." His tone is casual, but his eyes are trained carefully on you, teal irises peering at you over purple ridges. “I wanna hear you say it, though.")

xix. emptiness

You mull over your conversation with Nakano for several weeks, thinking about his proposal as you wrap up your contract with Endeavor’s agency, pondering it as you help Shouto train with his newly accepted fire abilities, and even talking it over with Fuyumi and Natsuo.

“I heard from Fuyumi that you’re in discussions with Nakano Hiroshi right now,” Endeavor mentions to you once, when you’re over for dinner. You are picking out pieces of fish to place onto Shouto’s plate, and you pause at his father’s words. Shouto glances at you curiously when you stop, but you do not make eye contact.

“Yes.” You smile, hoping that it does not look stiff. “Have you heard of him?”

Endeavor’s expression is severe. “Most people in this business have heard of him. He’s well-known for how he manages his female clients.”

“I know.”

A pause. It is quiet enough for you to hear Shouto and Fuyumi chewing.

“You know,” Endeavor says, “you can work at my agency for as long as you want. Or I can refer you to other agencies. You don’t need to rush your debut as an independent hero—you can take your time and find a reliable manager.”

You feel queasy at the suggestion. You have eaten out of Endeavor’s hand for so long, and no number of incense sticks nor flowers feels like enough to make up for the betrayal. Careful not to let the nausea show on your face, you reply, “I think I’ll be fine going solo. Nakano’s got a fine track record—all of his clients all make it into the Top Fifty rankings.”

Before Endeavor can say anything in protest, you turn to Shouto and smile brightly at him. “Why don’t you tell us how school’s going, Shouto? Have you made any friends?”

(Shouto, himself, will end up expressing his own reservations about Nakano’s management. He will watch you with worry as you eat like a bird, saying, Don’t you need huge meals for your quirk? His expressions will be complicated every time he sees a new photoshoot, each of your outfits progressively more revealing. He will never say anything, but you will know that he is judging you for it. Everyone will judge you for it, but at least you will have moved out into your own apartment by then.)

At the age of nineteen, you end up signing a contract with Nakano in agreement with his vision. He gives you a veneered smile and shakes your hand with an iron-tight grip.

“Don’t think of me as your manager,” Nakano advises. “Think of me as your producer.”

(In a year's time, you will search up your name on the internet and read the news coverage, the blog posts, the social media criticism. You will read about how men of all ages celebrated your eighteenth birthday, and you will see the tabloid gossip about your dating life, and you will read comments like, ‘Do you think she slept with Endeavor to intern at his agency? She doesn’t have a fire quirk, after all!’ or ‘She did a collaboration with Midnight—do you think they’ve fooled around? Gone down on each other?’ or ‘Do you think she can even lose her virginity? Maybe her hymen regenerates itself every time she has sex.’ Frequently, this last type of question will be followed by an equally offensive reply, or sometimes just laughter.

You will feel disgusted, but you will think: I am a product now. I am a product for mass consumption. It doesn’t matter what I want.

Dabi will later tell you that your worth is entirely between your legs, and you will think, I know.)

xx. betrayal (II)

If there was any illusion that you might have been following Touya's dream, it is shattered when you are a year into your career as an independent hero.

By this point, Endeavor is no longer your supervisor, but you always keep in mind his advice. (“He’s not good as a person,” you once said to Shouto, when he asked why you’d accepted an internship with his father, “but he’s good as a professional.”) His training—the instruction of every pro—is to stay on high alert for accidents and for villains, intervene before anyone else can. Even better if it is among crowds of people, where news reporters might flock to you at any moment. Your job is to protect the public from any dangerous threats, all your U.A. teachers used to tell you, and that's why it's so important to act fast. They’ve also explained, many times, that the cameras are important because when heroic acts are aired on the news, it serves as a deterrent for future crime. That’s how All Might became the pillar of peace, after all.

But your mother often tells you the truth, learned from her days as a hero: It has nothing to do with saving people. It's all just publicity stunts. When your wins are higher profile, you'll bring in more money, and you'll get higher ratings.

That's how you need to go about it, to earn money.

You don't want to? It doesn't matter what you want, with a job like this one.

You figure out, one day, that she is right.

It is an overcast, miserable afternoon out on the streets of Musutafu, the kind full of scattered showers and hardly any sun. You aren't so bothered by the weather; your hero suit is waterproof, and your quirk allows you to control your body temperature. You drive idly by on the major streets of the city on your agency bike, keeping an eye out for any disturbances.

The streets are empty and the day is relatively peaceful—even villains, you guess, try to avoid bad weather. So on a whim, you turn off the main road and weave through side streets, your eyes scanning the beaten down, back alley roads of Musutafu. All Might's legacy might reduce any grand aspirations of villainy, after all, but not even he can control poverty. You always find some kind of work here on slow days, even if it isn't flashy: mostly healing people—they can hardly access healthcare, after all—and distributing blankets or food. That sort of thing.

Today, you catch sight of a child, or maybe a young teenager—older than nine but younger than thirteen, you guess—shivering violently beneath a bridge. He's managed to find a dry patch of cement, but is otherwise surrounded by filthy rainwater. His clothes are rags, tattered things streaked with mud and grime.

A frown cuts itself across your face, knits into your brows. A child this young, without a parent nearby, who has been outdoors for so long, is almost certainly a runaway.

You don't think twice about braking your motorcycle and hopping off to pick him up. You approach him with the kind of soft voice and slow steps with which Todoroki Rei once reached out to you. Of course, you are not accompanied by anyone like Touya, so it is a long conversation before the child drops his guard.

Once he does, you crouch down and take a closer look at him. He looks down immediately, almost seems to hide behind his unkempt hair—which might be white, or maybe blonde; you can't tell with all the grime and rainwater—but you catch the scales layering his face and his slit-pupil eyes. Mutant-type quirk, you recognize immediately. It isn't hard to guess why he's run away, or why no one's helped him yet.

"Do you have a name?" you ask gently, careful not to let your smile falter as you crouch down.

The boy pauses for a moment, glimpses at you through his bangs. Nakano always directs your various stylists to make you look as pure and innocent as possible, because it's marketable for your age. Emphasise her eyes and give her a no-makeup look. Remember: no hard angles with the contouring.

While you don't love the manipulation of your image, it has the upside of making you appear very non-threatening. The boy's eyes stay wary—almost reminding you of Shouto, you think—but he unfurls a little.

"I'm Shuichi," he says quietly.

"It's nice to meet you, Shuichi." You introduce yourself, and you watch a flicker of recognition pass through his eyes at your hero name, for which you are grateful. It's important for trust-building. "Say, Shuichi-kun, how do you feel about coming by to my agency to warm up and snack on something? And afterwards I can take you to a place with people who can help you."

The child hesitates.

"Is something wrong?" you ask.

He struggles, for a long time, with trying to find an answer. "I just don't know if anyone would want to help me," Shuichi eventually replies, while shivering.

"Well, I want to help you. And I can find other people who'd help you too. Would you like that?"

He stops, for a minute.

"How come you'd want to help me?"

"Because I'm a hero, obviously. It's what heroes do."

"But heroes don't want to help me, either," he says, and his voice isn't filled with dejection or anger—just resignation. His shoulders are weighed and he is far too young to sound this old, and it makes your heart shrink up a bit.

"Well, other people are shitty heroes," you say with hesitation, and he blinks at you in surprise. "But I'm not like them. Will you let me help you, Shuichi-kun?"

You are relieved when Shuichi finally agrees to tag along with you. You give him a helmet—small enough, thank god, for a child his age—and try to distract him by going through all the features of your motorbike. He asks what your quirk is, and his eyes widen in shock when you place your hands on his and he feels himself warming up. He talks to you while you wait at traffic lights, confesses that he is, indeed, a runaway. You glance at him, his light hair masking his face and his thin frame shivering, and something in your heart aches.

When you arrive at your agency, Nakano gives Shuichi a warm smile, directs him to a private room where an assistant can help him with a change of clothes and some refreshments, and asks you to come to his office for a one-on-one meeting.

He yells at you. Cheeks red, brows cut downward, all of his executive polish lost. Tobacco smoke blows out of his mouth with every single criticism, and it makes you feel sick.

"Where the hell were you today?" he snaps. "Do you know what happened while you were on patrol? Do you know what villain attack went on in your jurisdiction?"

You stare blankly. "Of course I do. There was a theft committed by a petty criminal. Mutation-type quirk, with very little combat abilities. The suspect only had an ability to camouflage with certain surfaces." Trying not to frown, you add, "I radioed Hawks about it, and he said he had it covered."

"So you let him take your case?" Nakano balks.

You frown, trying not to look too openly annoyed. "We share jurisdictions, so it was his case too. I had to handle this kid, so I let Hawks handle the thief. He didn't need my help."

Nakano looks furious. Ready to implode. He practically smashes his cigarette into the tray, putting it out beneath his thumb with a violent press. It reminds you of your mother. "How the hell are you so naive?" he snaps. "It doesn't have to do with needing help or not needing help. You shouldn't be wasting your time on saving some homeless kid when there are high profile villain cases in your territory!"

Your mind goes blank.

"Wasting my time?" you repeat, quietly. "It's a waste of time to help a runaway kid?"

"Of course it's a waste of time! Leave that busywork to the police or to non-profits! It's not going to help you with your ratings, so what's the point?"

"But he was out there for months," you reply, almost on autopilot. You feel like you're listening to a recording of yourself, trapped in a futile script that will end poorly, but you can't stop talking. "He was out there for months, and not a single person helped him. So I had to."

"That's not your problem!" Nakano sighs deeply, rubs his temples. "You're young in this business, so you don't get it now, but you will in a few years—your job isn't to help people. It's to entertain."

"Entertain," you repeat flatly. "I wasn't aware."

"Of course you weren’t. It’s because of all that bullshit they teach you all at U.A." Nakano shakes his head. "That school's great at teaching kids to fight with their quirks, but not how to think with their brains."

"What do you mean," you ask stiffly.

He sighs. "Listen—and listen carefully. There's a million government and non-profit jobs that overlap with heroism. SDF, police, EMTs, firefighters, doctors, just to name a few. These are all careers that could use quirks like yours, or Hawks', or even All Might's. Yet we created this subspecialty of heroism, where instead of uniforms you wear designer outfits, and instead of looking at metrics like number of people saved, you're all graded on public opinion about other things—the villains you've taken down, your performance in interviews, your social media presence. Why do you think that is? Why do you think All Might wears a fucking spandex suit that shows off all his muscles, instead of a uniform?"

"Because heroes are given different privileges from police and SDF to intervene where villains are involved…" you parrot from your classes, but your voice trails off weakly.

"Then why the hell aren't you all in the police and SDF, and they just give those organisations those privileges instead?"

You go quiet, which you think placates Nakano, because he exhales deeply and some of the redness leaves his face.

"Take that kid to a shelter," he says, "and don't let this happen again. I know I sound harsh right now, but you'll be thanking me in a few years, when you're about to hit the Top 10 and you're making bank."

(In a few years, you will be wasting away on Touya's bed, listening to him talk about the failures of your society. This world is wrong, he insists—it is cruel and that is why he must burn it to the ground. You're wrong too, and that's why he's burned you. Not as revenge, but as retribution.

"There are no true heroes," he will declare, and you will say nothing, because you will agree.)

When you go to see Shuichi, his hair is free of dirt and practically glows with how white it is. He smiles as he snacks on onigiri and can't stop talking about how grateful he is to be so warm, to be eating, to be saved.

"Heroes are so amazing," he says, beaming at you with his innocent, snake-like eyes. "Do you think I could be one too, someday?"

"I think you can be anything you want," you reply, smiling brightly, and you feel like throwing up.

xxi. closed

(One of the questions that Dabi will ask you, over and over again, is: “How come you never dated anyone else?”)

You rarely see anyone over the years, despite ongoing questions from your family and friends. You are acutely aware of how strange your lack of a romantic life is, since your mother will not let you forget it. She often says that with a quirk and an image like yours, landing a respectable husband should be no trouble. She shows you pictures of men with their names, incomes, and positions listed beside them, and you decline them all.

Fuyumi and Natsuo try as well, constantly asking if you’re still single and if you’re maybe interested in their friends. Natsuo has set you up with several baseball players from his high school and college teams over the years, who you don't see for very long before breaking things off. Fuyumi recurrently shows you pictures of her teacher friends, and while you do linger a bit on a photo of a redhead named Daichi, you decide to pass in the end. Shouto listens to each of these conversations quietly, and only chimes in once:

"What exactly are you looking for in a partner?"

Natsuo perks up. "Yeah, tell us what you want! I don't get your standards."

When you draw a blank, you realize that you do not know your own preferences. So you shrug at both boys and default: "As long as their personality is a good fit for mine, and we can make each other happy, then nothing else really matters."

"That's not helpful at all," Natsuo complains. Shouto doesn't say anything, but his dissatisfaction is obvious from the narrowing of his eyes. "Can't you be more specific? Height, hair colour, body type, career? All I know is that you don't like baseball players."

You laugh. "It's my PR answer for interviews," you admit, "and I'm not allowed to specify any of the traits you're asking for. But I actually don't think it's a bad answer." You pause to sip your drink, which is an expensive shochu you've brought over. "What's more important than happiness?"

A pause.

"Then," Shouto realises, "nobody makes you happy?"

(In your twenties, your therapist will notice that you are pathetically alone: no parents, no partner, and hardly any friends. He will ask about your support systems, who you can open up to, and who you go to when you are upset, and you will say: "I go to therapy. To you. That’s why I pay you."

"That's not what I mean."

"Then what do you mean?"

Your therapist will lean in. Pitying eyes, as if he knows the answer.

"Say you're upset about something. Enough to cry. Who's the first person you think of going to? Who do you know will make you feel better?"

Rather than replying immediately, you will glance at the clock, eyes tracking the unceasing motion of its secondhand. For once, it feels too slow.

"I don't like to cry in front of other people," is your eventual answer.)

Your stylist also often grills you about your love life, showing you pictures of various men and women friends. Often he does it over drinks, while the two of you are sitting in private booths at high end bars, you in plain outfits designed to be inconspicuous, while he stubbornly pops out with his blue hair and richly coloured suit jackets. Today, he's flipping through photos on his phone with impressive speed, now immediately able to clock your disinterest at each person.

After pointing out one blond man with a dazzling smile and impressive set of abs, he says, in a deadpan voice, “I promise he knows what he’s doing in bed, if that’s your problem. He can find the clit.”

You choke on your drink. “Satoshi!”

“I’m serious,” he replies, still straight-faced. “Not that I’d know firsthand, but I’ve heard he’s a good lay. From many people.”

You consider Satoshi’s words, staring at your plum wine. Truthfully, possible issues of sexual chemistry hadn’t even occurred to you. You realise: “You know, I’ve actually never imagined myself in bed with anyone. It's not something I worry about."

It is Satoshi’s turn to choke. “What?”

“I just don’t think about that sort of thing.” You pause. "And I wouldn't know what to think about, anyway. I don't have a lot of experience."

"You mean to say, you've never had sex?"

You blink. "No? And I don't think much about it, either."

He tilts his head. “Are you asexual, then?”

You frown, considering. Sifting through the various dates that you’ve gone on, the many people whom you’ve looked at, you almost feel like the label could fit. But then you think about when you were thirteen and Touya was alive, and you think about how you definitely felt strongly for him, and how you definitely would have kissed him if he hadn’t been so shy about it. Had the two of you grown up together, you have no doubt that you’d have done other things with him as well, if he'd asked.

“I don't know about being asexual," you reply, "but I definitely think I’m hung up on someone."

“Oh. Well, I didn’t expect that.”

Satoshi waves down a server, orders an expensive and strong drink for you and demands that you spill your secrets to him in return. You could easily erase the effects of the whiskey with your quirk, but you choose to let it burn you from the inside-out. Face hot, you tell him everything about Touya. The names are redacted, as are the quirks, and you replace your mother with some schoolyard bullies, but the story is clear: “You had strong feelings for someone when you were a teenager,” Satoshi summarises, “and he was the only person who ever made you happy during a very miserable time in your life. And you never got over him after he passed away.”

“That sounds about right,” you mumble.

“That’s tough,” Satoshi says, voice kind, "and I can't imagine your pain, to be honest.”

You feel something tremble inside you. Staring down at your glass, you think about how much easier it is to talk about this to your therapists—stone cold sober, putting all your acting skills to use. Smile for the camera, kitten. Trying to sound neutral, you reply, “It was a long time ago.”

“It was,” he agrees. After a brief moment of hesitation, “Have you tried to let go of him?”

You make a noncommittal noise. Satoshi gives you a dubious look.

"You're twenty years old now," he points out. "You're not thirteen anymore. It’s time for you to move on, don’t you think?"

You glance at Satoshi's watch. It is an analogue piece with a wooden finish, and its second hand is relentlessly ticking onward.

“You’re right about that,” you admit. You stare into your drink and down the rest, considering Satoshi’s many recommendations. There was that blond whose name you’ve already forgotten. A redheaded girl named Kara. A white-haired boy named Yun. Then countless others. Surely, you will be able to feel something with at least one of them?

(“I’ve only dated a couple of people,” you will tell Dabi, mind hazy as you both lay on the bed. Despite the pain between your legs, you will want to be as close as possible to his warmth, so you will not leave for the washroom or turn away from him. You’ll stay beside him instead, thinking about those times that the two of you sprawled out like this on the school rooftop, watching clouds roll by. “I never got far with any of them,” you’ll say, eyes tracing the outlines of birds and angels and handprints. “I never liked it when people touched me.”)

You start to wonder why you feel nothing for anyone, after all those dates lead to nowhere. You start to wonder if something in you broke when you were thirteen. Was the part of you that is required to love people also the piece of you that died with Touya?

After one day of feeling particularly frustrated, you down half a glass of whiskey, burn through a quarter pack of Seven Stars—this gives you a horrific cough, and you have to repair your throat and lungs with your quirk—and you lie down in your bed. Desperately, you imagine movie stars and pop idols and fictional men. You even try to think of other heroes, from Midnight to Eraserhead to All Might. Your fingers are clumsy between your legs, and you hardly feel a thing besides minor discomfort, a stinging pain that your quirk cannot seem to suppress.

I wonder if she can lose her virginity, you suddenly remember from all those message boards, or if her hymen just heals every time after she has sex. And then you think about those photos of your naked back, the glow of your computer screen when you stumbled across that website hosting your countdown clock, the picture of that serial killer's victim with her legs spread wide in death. You think about your smiling face at the top of his stack of photos.

You don’t touch yourself for weeks after that.

(In three years, Touya will rape you and leave you bleeding onto his sheets. He will spend a long time in the washroom afterward, emerging only to snap at you to stop crying. After he leaves, you will try to get yourself to the bath to clean up, but you'll find that you cannot walk. Every movement will be accompanied by the cut of a knife through your insides. You will still feel him inside you, even when he is long gone. There is no quirk, no healing, no reversal—he simply tore into a piece of your flesh, and then he left.

You end up crawling back into bed.

Much later, while you are halfway passed out, someone enters the room. A wet cloth slides along the inside of your thighs, wiping away your blood. The hands that treat your burn wounds feel so familiar that tears prick at your eyes.

When you glance up at Touya's face, you wonder if he is crying too.)

Once, you come close to something. You’ve given up on looking at pictures of people, both living and fictional. Instead, you try to imagine someone faceless. Faceless, but they are male, you figure out partway. Faceless, but they have red hair. No—white, you change your mind. Faceless, but they have eyes that are your favourite colour. You’re not doing anything besides kissing, his lips rough against yours, his breath running hotter than even the flush of your cheeks. And his hands—you expect his hands to be as harsh as his kiss, but instead they are gentle and careful, like he doesn't want to hurt you. They run up and down your bare skin, hold you close in a way that is familiar—before reaching down between your thighs.

"Oh," you breathe, finally, finally feeling something. Your stomach tightens for the first time in your life, a sweet-sickly heat forming that makes your hips press up against your hand. More, more, more, you think, whine in your throat, as your fingers gradually become slick with need. You clench around nothing, feel unbearably empty. You want someone to fill the lonely space inside you, to complete you, to want you.

You're close. So, so close that you want to cry. You try to fill in the features of the face that is kissing you. Teal eyes, and delicate cheekbones, and, and—

You draw a blank.

The tension recedes.

Then you taste sandalwood and Seven Stars in the back of your throat.

(You will taste it again in the air when you come for the first time, when Touya opens you up and tears such bliss from your body that you feel like you are dying. The unknowns on that face are filled with scar tissue. Your emptiness is filled in by a ghost. The missing part of you has been returned, and it makes you want to throw up.)

xvii. loneliness

("There's really nothing going on between you and Shouto, then?" Dabi will ask.

"Nothing at all."

"Sure could have fooled me." Dabi will look bitter as he says this, skin straining against his staples in an ugly expression. "He looks like he's in love with you."

"I doubt it," you will reply in a tired voice. "I really don't think about him that way. And he knows… He should know…")

You are in your early twenties when you decide to stop drinking. It happens after a night out with some friends and acquaintances, which happens to include Shouto. At eighteen, he is still too young to drink, but is old enough to dutifully chaperone you home whenever Fuyumi or Satoshi have to cut out early for the night.

"What's the point of doing this?" he asks you as he drives. In the seat to his left, you hold your throbbing head in your hands and groan. "This doesn't seem enjoyable."

"When you turn twenty," you slur, "I'll show you how to party and you'll get it then."

"But I know how to party," he insists, completely straight-faced, and you laugh fondly.

"Those hero conference functions don't count. Neither do any of your old school festivals." You smile at him even through your headache and nausea. "I swear I'll get you to loosen up, even if it kills me!"

He gives you a slightly alarmed expression. "I'll be as loose as you want," he replies, completely deadpan. "I don't want to kill you."

You snort loudly at that. The corner of his mouth quirks up, and he looks maybe a little happier as continues driving in silence. When he finally pulls over, he doesn't even wait for you to try exiting the car—he simply comes around to your side and hauls you out on instinct. The world tilts around you, but he holds you up.

"Whoa," you breathe, letting him wrap an arm around you as you lean against his frame, which is firm and noticeably taller than you nowadays. It’s nothing like when he was a kid, and you had to stop yourself from laughing at the mental image of him trying to carry you. He can—and does—very easily pick you up these days.

"Thank you, Shouto,” you say, beaming up at him as he supports your stumbling figure. “You're too good to me."

"It's not a problem." He does not complain even as he walks you up the stairs and into your shitty little apartment—the same one you've been living in ever since you finished high school with a catastrophic amount of debt. You have the dignity to kick off your own shoes, but Shouto has to practically carry you to the couch. It is strange, being cradled like this in someone's arms, and you find yourself closing your eyes and pressing yourself into his body. The heat from his left side feels so familiar.

(You will wake up the next morning, desperately trying to recollect your memories from the night before. When you finally piece together this one, you will want the floor to drop out from underneath you.)

"No one's held me like this," you sigh, "in a really long time."

Shouto pauses as he places you down on the couch, and at your small protest, he sits down with you. You press yourself into him.

"That can't be true," he says. "Your partners must have."

"I've never had a partner."

He stops, for a moment.

"Why not?"

You do not answer, close to drifting off like this. You fell asleep in Touya's arms once, you recall. It was on a bus, and all your classmates teased you for it afterwards. You've never slept so well since.

After another pause, Shouto shifts and you feel his breath sweep your face. He must be looking down at you.

"Was Touya-nii the last person to hold you, then?"

"Mhm." Your eyes flutter open, and you're met with teal and grey eyes. Something strange is in them, but you ignore it. "The first and the last."

Shouto takes a moment to absorb this.

"...you said once that nobody else has ever made you as happy as he did." You feel one of his hands fist into your dress. Satoshi will be annoyed about that, you are sure. It is expensive material and should not be stretched. You make a small noise of protest, but Shouto's grip is tight when he asks, "Is that still true?"

You blink, sifting through all your memories. Free falling off a bridge. The taste of homemade okayu. Frostnip under your fingertips. Dates with a baseball player. Kisses that taste like Asahi. Flashing lights, cameras, now you're live. That recurrent dream of trying to make a tower of pebbles, only for an invisible force to knock it all down.

"It's still true," you decide.

"I see."

Shouto draws a breath, loud enough for you to hear. There is hesitation in his eyes, and you recall his expression as a ten year old when he stared into that river. He seemed so uncertain until you took his hand.

"What's on your mind?" you ask gently.

He looks away.

"Did you love my brother?"

You pause, surprised. And then you laugh in the way that Nakano taught you, laugh like you do with your therapists. "We were just kids, and kids don't know anything about love," you dismiss. "We weren't even in a relationship, you know. We never even kissed."

His stare is intense on you. Cutting. Shouto's gazes are often inexpressive and unyielding, and mostly you don't mind them, but occasionally it unnerves you. Particularly when you want to lie.

"But did you love him," he asks again.

And while you are held by someone for the first time in ten years, feeling on one half of their body a nostalgic summer heat, you find yourself admitting to the deepest wound of your mind.

"I was just a kid, and I didn't know anything about love," you confess, "but I did. I did love him. I don’t think I ever stopped."

(Dabi will hear this admission, and he will not know how to respond. The tension will drain from his body. He will watch you, quiet and you think maybe lost.)

xvi. summoning

A few months later, you see Endeavor tearing through the skies of Kyushu, fighting a pitch-black monster. You see red feathers at the back of a man to whom you owe all your wealth and all your grief. You sigh heavily, closing your eyes when he does not die. Guilt floods you when you realize that you are relieved.

Then a burst of cyan on-screen, violent.

Your heart stops.

Freeze frame, rewind, replay a million times: you study the news footage in every angle you can find, both in slow motion and twice the speed. His figure is thin, lanky—maybe what you’d expect, if he’d had a hard time over the past ten years. Wild hair—and it’s black, but that could just be dye. The colour of his eyes is exactly what you remember. And the scars are an exact match for the burns you once healed upon Sekoto Peak: all along the jawline, right below the eyes.

Your heart pounds, aching and confused. You laid Touya to rest years ago, listening to that priest's chanting. You have lost count of the amount of incense you have burned for him, the number of apples you’ve peeled for his altar, the volume of tears you’ve cried at his grave. His ashes were interred there so long ago—

And then you realize: His ashes.

His ashes.

His ashes from cremation—written as 荼毘, rendered as dabi.

(I like the villain name, you will say when you meet him again. On the nose, but I like it.

There’s a cruel kind of humour in his voice when he replies, I hate your hero name.

So do you, you’ll tell him. Nakano came up with it.)

You must be insane, staring at the dark silhouette of this murderer, imagining Touya’s mannerisms in all of his movements. You must be without conscience, reading about his crimes—thirty-odd petty criminals killed in various alleyways over the past three years; and before that, countless hero fans with second-to-third degree burns—and wondering if there is a way to save him. If there is a way to bring him back.

(You will tell him this, after you have been carried to his bed and treated with his fire. You'll tell him, I want to help you, and he will look at you with sharp, cobalt eyes that make you feel equally unsettled and excited.

You'll tell him this, and he will crouch down and brush his fingers against the gauze he placed onto your side. You should worry about yourself first, Miss Top Twenty, he will say. You would be a Nomu now, if I didn’t stop those bastards. And your heart will jump with painful, stupid hope, and that night, as you fall asleep and watch him exit, you will try not to think about the fact that the room locks on the inside.)

You must be hopeless, seeing your own image on TV and thinking about how much he would hate what you’ve become. Pretty idol on TV, your face more important than your quirk. Who cares about how many people you've saved if you can't even rescue a child from a parent who beats them? And who cares about all the villains you've apprehended when you accept money from someone who beats his wife?

Someone who killed the boy you loved?

If Touya has really become the villain Dabi, then you stand for everything that he now wants to destroy. That he deserves to destroy.

(I’m sorry, Touya. Sometimes you will look at him as you say this, wincing through the feeling of something foreign inside you; sometimes you will say this while staring at the ceiling instead, trying to ignore the nausea crawling in your throat. No matter where your eyes are trained, they are always lined with tears. You have every right to be angry.)

You must be desperate, thinking, Even if he hates me now, I still need to try.

(When Dabi returns from his long absence, you'll notice that his muscles are sluggish and sprawled on his bed, that there is blood running from his staples and onto his shirt. He is exhausted, but he asks if you are okay, and you will think about how he held you after you got ill, about how all the food you got after that tasted just like his mother’s cooking. You will think about that and watch red soak through his shirt, and something will grip you: an absurd fear that he'll die again and you'll once more be a bystander.

You'll ask him, Before you rape me, can I at least clean your wound?)

You must be delusional, wrapping your arms around yourself and trying to remember how warm his touch once felt. Delusional, sitting outside a building that used to be a convenience store and trying to recall the first time he held you. Delusional, wondering if he would still do that for you now.

Fucked up, for thinking that you’d understand if he didn’t. If instead of holding you, he'd now be the one making you bleed.

Pathetic, for still not letting him go.

(Touya will never kill you: of this, you will be certain. He will maim you and rape you and gut you of your worth—but he will never kill you. You will know this from the broken look he wears during each assault; you will know it from his eyelids pressed into the crook of your neck, a hot waterline against your pulse. You will know it from his soft, apologetic touch after each assault, and you’ll want to reach out and say, Don’t cry, Touya. I’ll heal you, silly. Then you’ll remember that you do not have your quirk—and anyway, you’ve never been able to heal wounds of the mind.

You will feel something tremble inside you when he starts being gentle with you, even if it is still rape. He'll linger beside you and smoke and ask questions in a quiet voice, questions about if you have ever been in love. Were you lonely before I came? you will want to reply. Are you still lonely now?

Sometimes the pain will be unbearable. So unbearable that you’ll feel yourself slipping away from your used-up body, listening to yourself cry. So unbearable that you cannot think of healing yourself, let alone him. And then you will think of washing the blood out of your hair and running away, broken glass crushing into your bare feet, cicadas screaming in your ears.

But I’ve only ever wanted to run into your arms, you will then realise, shuddering as Dabi moves inside you, so where would I even go?)

When you resolve to go to Jaku, you feel a selfish elation at the possibility of meeting a ghost. If he has been locked out of the wheel of reincarnation, then at least he can return to you. And even if he is now hungry for vengeance, you still want him back.

"Touya," you murmur once more, just like when you were a child at his grave. "Touya, please come back to me."

(You will abandon your refuge for him.)

end part v

notes: hi happy new year i am So Sorry for not updating in literally 1.5 years it is my greatest source of guilt in 2023. thank you from the bottom of my heart if you commented on the last ones - I wish I could find the energy to reply individually to each review, but life hasn't been so kind to me lately ;_; but thank you from the bottom of my heart - I would not have returned to this fic if it were not for your support!

[farewell-itoshisoup]

higher than the mountain, deeper than the sea | pt. 4

dabi x f!reader, shouto x f!reader

When Todoroki Touya dies, it feels like a part of you goes with him.

(In ten years, you’ll remember this sentiment, so pervasive for nearly half your life, and think, Oh, what a strange thought for a thirteen year old to have. I was so prone to melodrama. You will get your nails done at an expensive salon and file away your tax reports and put on your sunglasses and mask so that you can go to the grocery store unmolested and think, I’m living, aren’t I? I’m living. This is living. I’m okay. Your latest therapist will reassure you that you are indeed alive and well.

You are doing so well.)

notes: 14.2k words of childhood friends to Stockholm syndrome, childhood romance, hurt/comfort, and psychic damage! Cultural notes at the bottom of the chapter. 

warnings/tags (PLEASE READ) for detailed exploration of childhood physical and emotional abuse (both for reader and Touya), survivor’s guilt, grief, flashes to the non-con events of the previous chapters (all non-explicit through reader’s POV), Buddhist themes, and very detailed reader backstory. 

YOU

i. (un)healed

(At the age of twenty-three, you will be trapped in a freezing, windowless room for months on end. You will forget what sunlight feels like, and you will shiver beneath your too-thin sheets, and you will miss that sweater that Rei got for you when she was released from the hospital and you and Shouto took her shopping.

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higher than the mountain, deeper than the sea | pt. 3

dabi x f!reader, shouto x f!reader

Even if you’re ruined for everyone else, you’re now perfect for him. 

chapter notes: 13.7k+ words of childhood friends to stockholm syndrome! warnings for repeated non-con (graphic and eroticized through Dabi’s POV), themes of abuse and trauma, and one conversation that touches upon suicidal thoughts. Please be careful if you choose to read this chapter!

please find the masterlist for this fic on my blog!

DABI

xxii. conviction

Dabi loses count of the number of times he fucks you.

He’ll never forget his first time with you, of course. It was a revelation, a turning point, his first act of justice. He used to think that he wanted to enact vengeance upon you, but your guilt-ridden expression makes him feel otherwise nowadays. What he’s doing isn’t revenge—it’s retribution. It’s your comeuppance, what you get for trying to erase the past, what you deserve for leaving him behind.

You must think so too, because you never get angry with him for doing this to you.

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higher than the mountain, deeper than the sea | pt. 2

dabi x f!reader; shouto x f!reader

Touya watches you stare feebly out the window, your fingers curled around those useless flowers he bought, and he finally understands why his pathetic excuse of a father could never find the words to apologize to his mother.

chapter notes: 12k+ words of childhood romance gone very wrong! Warnings for non-con, themes of misogyny, general distorted perception of reality from Dabi. Please do not read this chapter if these themes will make you uncomfortable. 

please find the masterlist for this fic on my blog!

DABI

x. uncertainty

Dabi doesn’t know what to do with you.

He’s been stuck in a cycle of death and rebirth for the past half hour. He flicks his wrist and the alleyway is swallowed by a burning, violent cyan. The body before him howls and writhes like a worm, so carbonized that its features are unrecognizable beyond the vaguely bipedal quality of its form. The thing in front of him is more charcoal than human at this point, but like magic, it always comes back to life after Dabi switches off the heat. It’s a gruesome process, watching tissue immolate and regenerate spontaneously, and the smell is fucking unbearable. But Dabi’s well-accustomed to creating burn victims at this point, so the death process isn’t what’s upsetting. It’s the recovery: soft tissue rehydrating; muscle fibres spinning from nowhere and knitting together; skin growing like a blanket of mould over raw flesh. 

(Touya was thirteen years old when he saw, for the first time, a burn wound healing itself spontaneously.)

It makes him pick at the stitches on his cheek. Really, this just isn’t fair. He has to pay a fortune to his surgeon to keep his body in working order and this thing can just heal itself without a single cent or even a moment’s delay? Unbelievable. 

Looking at the sight before him, Dabi realizes he doesn’t know what to do with you. 

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higher than the mountain, deeper than the sea | pt. 1

dabi x f!reader; shouto x f!reader

Touya watches you stare feebly out the window, your fingers curled around those useless flowers he bought, and he finally understands why his pathetic excuse of a father could never find the words to apologize to his mother.

chapter warnings: obsessive behaviour, sexual content, childhood friends gone wrong, dabi’s character in general

please find the masterlist on my blog!

TOUYA

i. death

After Todoroki Touya dies, Dabi watches you grow up through broadcasts, newspapers, and magazines.

He’s fifteen when this begins. It’s been two years since he passed away, an entire year before he’ll adopt his new name. He’s nothing but a phantom at this point, a thin ghost wandering the streets and begging for money, scrounging for shelter, stealing when no one gives him either one. Todoroki Touya had thought so long about ending his existence and running away, but he had never figured out the details. Never thought about the gnawing hunger, the cement beds, the burn scars that won’t heal.

Never thought about the loneliness.

So of course when he sees you on the big screen hovering over the crosswalk, a familiar face featured on TV, Touya’s ghost stops.

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scrapbooking (1)

When your apartment floods and your longtime friend offers to let you crash at his place for a couple of months, you gratefully accept and receive: one (1) curse of unresolved sexual tension inflicted upon your best friendship; and two (2) completely insane younger siblings who don’t know how to act around you.

(Or: You become the older sister figure that Denji doesn’t know he needs. Also, he goes insane watching you and Aki do the awkward platonic dance.)

Notes: 2k words. Implied Aki/Reader and pining from his end. Warnings for she/her pronouns, being frequently referred to as a girl, and canon-typical horny thoughts from Denji (eg, he talks a lot about your chest).

When Aki had first announced that you were going to be moving in for a couple of months, he’d looked Denji dead in the eye and said: “Listen. I know you don’t know how to act around girls, but I need you to watch your manners around her. If not for her sake, then for yours." 

Denji thinks it had been a bit of an overreaction, because by the time you move in with the three of them, Denji’s already learned a thing or two about girls. Mostly he’s learned that the taste of vomit is beyond disgusting, and that he finds the idea of kissing Power about as equally revolting—but also, he’s figured out more important things. Things like how it doesn’t really matter if a girl is hot or if she’s got an amazing rack or a face that’s crazy pretty. What’s more important is how well you know someone, yeah? And how well they know you. And if they’ve ever gotten your filthy ass off the streets and wrapped their warm coat around you, and if they’ve ever hand-fed you udon because you weren’t feeling so good, and if they’ve ever held you close even though you were covered in blood and zombie guts. If they’ve ever touched you gently, more gently than anyone else in the world except for your pet devil and possibly your mom—though Denji doesn’t remember her well enough to be sure of that—even though you had a fucking chainsaw for a head and should have been put down, according to the law. 

All that stuff matters more than a girl’s face or body. 

Keep reading

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there’s a bluebird in my heart  | chapter one 

hayakawa aki x f!reader

On November 18th, 1988, the Gun Devil kills 57,912 people in Japan and displaces thousands more.

In a gymnasium full of grieving, starving strangers, you meet a boy who is as alone as you.

He’s the only thing you have, and the only thing you’ll lose.

8k+ words of childhood friends to lovers, hurt/comfort, and codependent relationships. chapter warnings for female reader and childhood trauma. thank you to @kureyuki​ for her incredible beta-reading and support with creative ideation! 

please remember to read the prologue (available on the masterlist)! 

November 30, 1997

If you looked into Aki’s heart, you’d find this:

The dingy, cramped space of an abandoned bomb shelter, filled with decrepit artifacts of life: an old umbrella riddled with holes; two futons laid side-by-side; a thin blanket scarred with a child’s messy needlework. Ants crawling over a watermelon split across a dirt floor, its rind decaying. The little ghost of a girl frolicking on her deathbed, and her older brother tucking her corpse into a basket. A tin of Sakuma drops, filled with ash instead of sweetness. Bass, woodwind, harpsichord, the flames of cremation—all layered over the sound of your quiet sobs.

Grave of the Fireflies comes out in 1988. In June 1989, Aki finds it buried in a pile of VHS tapes in the basement of his foster home and recalls that the title is critically acclaimed. He pops it into the VHS machine and rewinds, replays. The two of you watch the film at night, your bodies curled up against each other on the floor of a dark living room, faces lit only by the glow of amber insects and firebombs. In the last moments of the film, the spirits of two siblings—orphans of the Pacific War—sit atop a hill and study a view of modern Kobe. Its skyscrapers pierce a calm, blue sky, prosperous and indifferent to an audience of ghosts.

As the screen goes black, Aki hears a loud sniff.

“Are you crying?” he asks, and you freeze up.

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there’s a bluebird in my heart  | prologue

hayakawa aki x f!reader

On November 18th, 1988, the Gun Devil kills 57,912 people in Japan and displaces thousands more.

In a gymnasium full of grieving, starving strangers, you meet a boy who is as alone as you.

He’s the only thing you have, and the only thing you’ll lose.

10k+ words of childhood friends to lovers, slow burn, and codependent relationships. Chapter warnings for female reader, childhood trauma and one implied instance of predatory behaviour from an adult toward children. Please see the masterlist for full story warnings, as well as the companion fic. 

The Devil has blue eyes.

The Devil has blue eyes, and handsome features, and full lips that curl in an disarming, honeysweet way. Fear crawls up your spine when you look at it, every nerve ending pulsing with the same electric instinct: run. Some part of you—instinct, animal, buried in the hindbrain—knows that the smile is a deception, a facade of humanity that veers into the uncanny valley: like an android with false skin, or a wax model encased in glass. The Devil has blue eyes, and a forked tongue, and a beautiful, unsettling face, and you know you cannot trust it.

It bends down to look at you, dark pupils fixed on yours, and runs a pale finger along the ground, disturbing lines of white chalk—the same white lines that are sprawling out beneath your bare legs. The moon-white dusts your skin as you shift closer to the creature, your palms and thighs staining with it.

“Will it hurt?” you ask.

“It’ll be worth it,” it deflects. It looks into your eyes, and you feel transparent, all your insides laid bare. Made vulnerable. The Devil has blue eyes and a kind smile, and it knows every inch of your heart: every crevice of its chambers, every earth-shattering pulse. Atrium, ventricle, cortex, medulla—desperation, despair, fear, fear, fear—all in plain sight.

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selfish | aki x f!reader 

It’d be bad. No IUD, no condom, no birth control, no nothing, not to mention that the two of you were supposed to take things slow. This isn’t what you had discussed when you talked to each other about your limits a week ago. But Aki can tell you’re currently out of your mind, helpless with arousal—already fucked stupid even though he’s barely fucked you at all, only giving you the tip. 

You’d let him do anything right now.

(Or: After a lot of persuasion, Aki finally learns to take what he wants.) 

8.5k words of pwp with feelings, cisfem reader, references to an established relationship backstory (this is set loosely in the Bluebird universe, but you do not need to read Bluebird to understand this fic — more details on this in the endnotes, if you’re curious). NSFT tags: vanilla sex, pussy job, ‘just the tip’, oral sex, unprotected sex, creampie. Warnings: While the sex is consensual, please be aware that the reader does beg Aki to ignore some pre-established limits (and he gets horny enough to agree). 18+ ONLY.

When you and Aki decided to take the leap from complicated friendship to even more complicated romance, it had been a hesitant, difficult decision. There were many things that made the idea of a relationship seem futile, with the biggest one being his imminent death sentence from the Curse Devil. Aki knows that you’ve been dreading his passing for a long time now, knows that it’d be cruel to ask for your heart if he can’t give you a life in return. And as much as he’s wanted you for a long time now—hasn’t ever been able to kick the thought, not through cigarettes or work or even other women—there are few things he’d hate more than leaving you alone in two years, left with nothing but wasted time and a pile of ash.

So when you said to him that it’d hurt less to stay friends, Aki agreed. And he was ready to let you go then, because the last thing he’d ever want to do was hurt you. But you’d also been so close to him when you said this, watching him with tender, conflicted eyes as you brushed the hair out of his face.

Aki’s not a selfish man, but it did something to him, seeing you like that: finally in his arms, but so hurt, so hopeless. And he knew it was unfair, knew he had nothing to offer you, but he still couldn’t stop himself from pressing his mouth against yours and kissing you the way he’d been wanting to for years.

And you let him.

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风月 (lit. wind, moon; pronounced "fengyue") — meaning "beautiful scenery" or "romance".

In which you drag Dan Heng halfway across the universe for a candied fruit skewer, and he gets a taste of the life that was once denied to him. (dan heng x gn!reader)

7.5k words of fluff and romance! Features an established relationship and many Chinese cultural elements. Cultural/Translation notes at the end. Note that "Yinyue-jun" is the Chinese for "Imbibitor Lunae". Reader's appearance is undefined, but they were raised on the Luofu and in the Xianzhou culture. Dividers by @/saradika.

Written for the Meet Fruit collab! Prompt: Dan Heng + Hawberry

It is absurdly difficult to find hawberries on this side of the Triangulum Galaxy.

Dan Heng discovers this after you begin a laser-focused mission to acquire some, scouring the grocery stores of three consecutive Astral Express stops for the elusive fruit. Why you're so obsessed with finding them, he doesn't know. He guesses he'd maybe triggered some kind of nostalgia for them when he'd made an offhand comment about tanghulu a few weeks back.

I’ve never actually had them before, was all he’d said. It had been such a brief remark; he's surprised it stuck with you.

He'd mentioned it in the archives, while sitting with you on the futon spread across the glowing floor. You'd been leaning against his shoulder, idly skimming the novella in his hands: a Xianzhou literary piece. Highly introspective, full of complicated relationships, blatantly romantic in its subject matter. The protagonist and his wife had been at a festival for lovers: Qixi Jie. It's a day widely celebrated throughout the Alliance, Dan Heng knows from all his books, and inspired by a myth about an ill-fated love between two immortals.

The couple had decided to share a skewer of tanghulu, and you'd been reading the scene when you sighed, Wish we could have one together. Then you gave him a teasing smile. You know, Heng’er—I didn’t think you'd be into this kind of story. Who knew you were such a romantic!

I’m not actually, he'd replied. But of course, you hadn’t believed him, and you ended up pestering him about his taste in romance novels for the better part of an hour. Apparently you were looking for a new one to read, but he had no trashy webnovel recommendations for you.

It is the truth that Dan Heng does not gravitate toward love stories. This novel is not his usual fare, and he'd likely have little interest in this sort of fiction coming from any other world. But he'd enjoyed the sentimental tone of this particular story, set upon the Luofu: he'd liked the way the text lingered on the golden warmth of its sun, on the frenetic bustle of its street markets, on the calm beauty of its starry nights. Even the smallest of actions, in the voice of this author, carried with them a quiet magic. The wind, the moon, the heavens and the earth—all of it had felt so palpable between those pages.

Of course, Dan Heng has never experienced any of that firsthand. For all he knows, everyday life on the Luofu might be as tiresome as it is on any other world. Certainly you’ve complained about it a great deal during your tales about your childhood spent there with your shifu: the traffic was terrible, the seaside markets were too crowded, and the fishmonger always tried to scam me! Supposedly, the air quality was going downhill by the time you had to leave, too.

Maybe Dan Heng would be equally disenchanted by it all. Maybe he'd hate the rush hour commute, the raucous streets, the ozone in the recycled air. Maybe the sun and the stars would simply feel like a backdrop to the mundanity of daily life. He can’t be certain that the reality of the Luofu is anything like the dream-like world painted within any book.

But he is certain about this: that for the fleeting moment he’d been allowed outside, Dan Heng had, for the first time, gazed upon the world on which he’d been born—

—and it had been beautiful.

Tanghulu Recipe:

Wash and dry 30 hawberries – substitute crabapple? gege allergic. will do strawberries.

Sterilize a bamboo skewer in hot water, and use it to skewer the hawberries

Add 150 grams of rock sugar to 150 grams of hot water; heat until boiling, then keep on high heat until all the sugar has melted

Once large bubbles start to form, turn to low heat and simmer until the mixture turns yellow

Roll the hawthorn skewers along the surface of the mixture until the syrup coats the entire skewer. – SHIJIE SAYS MUST BE QUICK! and not ugly!

Allow the skewers to cool at room temperature. – best to eat fresh, can freeze

“You seem disappointed,” Dan Heng remarks.

On any normal day, you'd give your boyfriend full attention at the mere sound of his voice: eyes set upon his features, diligently noting every microexpression and quirk of his lips. (In general, you pay an awful lot of attention to his lips.) But things are different today, and you hardly look at him.

Your gaze is instead occupied with the candied fruit in your hands: strawberries that Dan Heng had washed and cut a little while ago, strung up on a metal skewer that the Express chefs had donated to you. Each strawberry is glossy with a layer of syrup, a sugary concoction that you’d spent a half hour stirring. It had cooled by the time you sampled the fruit, a hard crunch between your teeth. The aftertaste is still in your mouth, sweet and tart.

It’s—it’s not bad.

“Did I say I was disappointed?” you ask, still studying your handiwork.

“You don’t have to say it. I can tell.”

Without warning, Dan Heng takes the strawberry tanghulu from your hands, and you squawk.

“Gege! There’s, like, ten other skewers!”

“Hm. That’s too bad. I want this one.”

There is not even a single trace of remorse in his eyes as he takes his first bite. He seems only contemplative as he chews, humming as he samples it.

"It's good," he says decisively. He raises a brow when he looks at you. "Why are you unhappy with it?"

"It is good," you admit, "but it isn't… traditional. Strawberry tanghulu is tasty, but, like—I grew up eating the haw ones, you know? That's the classic flavour. Like, when you read a novel and there's a Lantern Festival, the characters are having haw skewers. Not strawberry ones."

"Does it matter if I'm eating what I read about?" Dan Heng asks, and it takes everything not to say yes.

It's always been plain as day to you that Dan Heng is enamoured with the Luofu. He's always working his way through some Xianzhou novel, or trying to acquire an old film set on the Luofu, or labouring in the archives while a Xianzou drama plays in the background. At first you'd assumed that this was all motivated by some kind of nostalgia for his birthplace, a longing for a life that he'd been forced to leave—

—but then you found out that Dan Heng never actually had a life on the Luofu.

He'd been born and raised in a prison, he once confided in you. He didn't see the Luofu sun until he was an adult, and it was only for a moment before he was sent into exile. He hadn't been allowed a home, hadn't been allowed a family, hadn't even been allowed the privilege of breathing fresh air. The rich scent of bao being fried in the crisp morning air, the mad clamour of the streets at night, the act of sitting at a kitchen table and folding hundreds of dumplings with your loved ones: his childhood had been devoid of all those things.

All the things you once took for granted are things that Dan Heng's only ever experienced through books.

You've made it a mission to have him experience some of it now, of course. Taught him how to knead dough and showed him all the different dumpling folds you learned from your Shifu. Forced him to sit down for proper breakfasts and had him try youtiao and soy milk, which have now become comfort foods. Bought mooncakes for his first Mid-Autumn Festival and watched his complicated expressions as he bit into duck egg yolk for the first time (decidedly not a comfort food).

And—on God—you will also watch him have proper tanghulu made from hawberries!

"Eh. I guess it's not that important," you lie. "But I have a craving for it, Gege." You give him a killer pair of puppy eyes, and he visibly pauses. "Can we go to a market that might sell some? Or maybe find a street festival? Actually, you know—I don't even know the last time I went to a festival… Wouldn't it be fun to go?"

"I've actually never been to one," Dan Heng replies casually, and you gawk.

"You've never been to a festival?"

"Not a Xianzhou festival." He pauses, as if thinking. "Not any markets either."

"...how?"

"I've always avoided Alliance ships."

"But—but there's plenty of people with Xianzhou heritage who aren't with the Alliance?! Like—like on Xinghan Space Station! You've never visited?"

"Not aside from that one time we were there for business," he replies. "It's not like I ever go on vacation."

"Why not?!"

"Being constantly hunted for revenge makes it hard," Dan Heng deadpans, and he doesn't seem bothered, but you feel distinctly terrible about it.

"...okay. I'm forcing you to take a vacation on July 7th and 8th."

Dan Heng stares. "Why?"

"Because we're going to Xinghan to get some tanghulu."

He doesn't even blink. "Not a chance."

"Eh? Why not!"

"Because that's a silly reason to go so far out of our way." His eyes flicker, stress lines shifting and disappearing: possibly his most frequent microexpression around you. "And what if I'm recognized? We could be attacked."

"That's fine," you wave off. "If someone tries to kill Gege, I'll just kill them first."

"..."

"What? It'd be self-defense."

"...lethal violence should not be your first response to a threat."

"But it would be an effective one."

He gives you a flat look. Not for the first time, you wonder how a man who fights for a living manages to be such a pacifist.

"...okay, okay. If I promise not to kill anyone—will you go with me?" You latch onto his arm, pulling out all the stops and giving him your most pleading eyes. "I just want to have a romantic night together, Gege. We haven't been on a real date in so long."

It's nearly imperceptible, but Dan Heng falters. There are clearly two wolves inside him: one that wants to be responsible, and one that wants to spoil you.

It's obvious which one is winning.

"Qixi Festival is coming up," you add, a lilt to your voice, "and I bet we could find somewhere to celebrate it. Wouldn't it be nice to spend it together, Heng'er?"

He stares at the candied fruit in his hands: all strawberries that he washed and cut without a word, before you'd even thought to ask. Food that he'd made and tasted—like so many other dishes before it—only because you demanded it, no matter how troublesome it was to do it.

"...I'll go put in my vacation request with Himeko," he decides.

THE QIXI FESTIVAL is traditionally celebrated around the 7th day of the 7th month on the Xianzhou Normalized Calendar, with adjustments made for time dilation effects depending on distance between ships and proximity to large celestial bodies. Elsewhere in the universe, the Qixi Festival is celebrated in locations with significant populations of Xianzhou diaspora, such as the Xinghan Space Station and the Chang’E Moon Settlement. These settlements typically observe the Qixi Festival on July 7th per their local calendar dates. – Double check Xinghan dates; confirm ETA with Pompom. Has July 7th already passed on Xinghan's local calendar? CELEBRATORY PRACTICES vary significantly between different settlements, and even between the Xianzhou Alliance ships themselves. They may include street festivals, temple fairs, sewing competitions, and the worship of certain immortals and Aeons. In some places, people celebrate with a simple date night. Being the lover’s festival, many couples aim to get married on this day. – Search later: What do boyfriends get their partners for Qixi? DESPITE THESE VARIATIONS, all observances are dedicated to celebrating the myth of the Cowherd (personification of the star Altair; Bayer designation: Alpha Aquilae) and the Weaver Girl (personification of the star Vega; Bayer designation: Alpha Lyrae). IN THIS XIANZHOU FOLKTALE, the Cowherd and Weaver Girl were two immortals who fell in love and entered a forbidden relationship. The Jade Aeon tore them apart from one another, and they were shortly after banished to opposite sides of the Heavenly River (otherwise known as the Milky Way, within the Virgo Supercluster of galaxies). From henceforth, they lived separately, only able to watch—

“Wow, Gege,” you say, and Dan Heng nearly drops his book. “This is the most romantic myth in all of Xianzhou history, and you’re reading the driest possible textbook summary to learn about it? Why didn't you just ask me?” You lean over his shoulder, squinting at the page. “What the hell is a ‘Bayer designation’? 'Vega'?! Her name is Zhinü!”

Dan Heng is momentarily too bewildered to feel embarrassed about being caught with this book. "You don't know what a Bayer designation is? Don't you have a pilot's license? How on earth do you navigate in space?"

"Well, I have a tendency of getting lost…"

With significant horror, Dan Heng reflects on every moment he's allowed you to pilot the spacecraft the two of you sometimes use to get away for dates.

"...I am never letting you drive again."

"Fine by me, Gege! I'll rely on you from now on." You beam at him, pressing into his shoulder. Then—again, with significant horror—Dan Heng notices that you're reading his annotations in the book.

He instantly snaps it shut, but the damage is done: you turn to him with a wide, giddy smile, and start pawing at his arm with excitement.

"'What do boyfriends get their partners for Qixi?' Heng'er—were you trying to research this for me?"

Dan Heng considers lying for a moment. There are countless potential explanations as to why he decided to consult a textbook instead of going to you. He could easily say that you'd probably forget details in recounting the myth, and that wouldn't do because he'd wanted a comprehensive explanation (true). Or he was genuinely wanting to check the dates because he knew you wouldn't have accounted for different calendars (also true). He'd doubted that you'd remember that not everyone in the universe operates on Interastral Standard Time—a fair suspicion, given that you don't even know what a Bayer Designation is.

But seeing your radiant, pleasantly surprised smile—Dan Heng decides not just to lose face, but to practically obliterate it.

"Yes," he plainly confesses. "I wanted to know how to celebrate the Qixi Festival properly with you." He tries to ignore the heat prickling the back of his neck. "...and I wanted to surprise you."

You go a little wide-eyed, blinking—probably as surprised about the admission as him—and then peck him on the cheek, smiling. "Heng'er, you don't need to worry about celebrating properly or improperly. As long as you spend both days with me, I'm happy enough."

He hesitates. Truthfully, he's read probably an upward of a thousand novels and poems that mention the Qixi Festival and the associated myth—but nothing about how people on the Luofu celebrate it nowadays.

How you would have celebrated it.

"I just want to make sure you enjoy yourself," he explains. "And that I do all the things I should be doing. I have no experience with this… I didn't even know it was a two-day celebration."

"Huh? It's not."

"...it's not?"

"Well, I guess some places have events that happen over several days—but that's not a traditional thing. Qixi Festival is technically just one day."

He raises a brow. "Then why did you want the 8th off too?"

"Because I want to have a romantic evening with you on the 7th, and then a romantic night with you in the hotel, and then a romantic morning with you on the 8th."

"..."

"I'm talking many, many rounds of romance, Gege. That's the greatest gift you could give me."

"...of course it is."

You beam at him, exceptionally pleased. (Why or how, Dan Heng's not actually certain; it's not like you don't already have as many rounds of sex with him as the day allows.) But it still bothers him: the reality that he's never celebrated this before. That he won't know how to do all the right things, or what the right things even are.

The honey-sweet sesame taste of qiaoguo, which stars to look for in the sky, presents that he should gift you: he's never known any of these things, but will soon know them with you.

Or possibly fuck them all up with you.

"How did you celebrate the Qixi Festival when you were on the Luofu?" Dan Heng asks, somehow remaining expressionless.

You don't seem to catch onto his nerves, only pondering the question.

"Um… well, honestly, I didn't really."

Dan Heng stares. "What?"

"Well, like, Shifu took me to temple fairs and stuff. My friend participated in a sewing competition too, once, and I watched her. But I was a kid when I lived on the Luofu—they drove us out when I was still pretty young. I wasn't exactly going on romantic date nights at that age."

"...I see."

Lacing your fingers through his, you stare at your joined hands. Your voice is a little tender when you say, "The way I see it, Heng'er—I don't think we need to think about celebrating it the right way or the wrong way. We're gonna be lovers at the lovers' festival, which is good enough."

Dan Heng considers your words, his thumbpad running along the curve of your hand. "Is that right?"

"Yes! Like—who cares what lovers on the Luofu do with each other? It's much more important what my lover does with me." You pause, then, seeming thoughtful. "....as long as he tries some tanghulu while we're at it."

Dan Heng feels like he's drunk a nauseating amount of that tanghulu syrup—but also like his chest is going to combust. It's an unusual cross of emotions. He'll never get used to it, even though he experiences it nearly daily when you're around. And he'll never know the words to use, even though he's searched for them so often.

"...is food all that matters to you when you celebrate this?" is all can bring himself to say, voice dry.

"And the romance," you add neatly, not the least bit ashamed.

Dan Heng’s mouth twitches.

"Right, of course. The romance."

Thank you for booking with Xinghan Grand Hotel!

As one of this world’s finest establishments, we are pleased to host you for your stay on July 7th through July 8th.

Xinghan is a vast space station, remarkable for its terrestrial landscape and breathtaking countryside. Founded by Xianzhou natives several centuries ago, the beautiful scenery at the outer regions of the station mimics that of their various home worlds. Xinghan City itself is a vibrant and cosmopolitan metropolis with influences from planets all throughout the Pinwheel Galaxy.

You are encouraged to make full use of our concierge services to help you shape an itinerary for your stay. Our staff are happy to help you navigate the remarkable sights of Xinghan. Whether you are here for business or pleasure, there is something for everyone on the Heavenly River.

We look forward to your stay with us, Dan Heng Xiansheng.

Celebrating the Qixi Festival on Xinghan Station is hell.

The station itself is, of course, nearly idyllic in its beauty. And objectively, your romantic getaway with Dan Heng is lovely from start to finish. The two of you check into a gorgeous—and shockingly expensive—hotel in a quiet corridor of the city, not far from the outskirts of the station. The lobby alone startles you with its high ceilings, crystal chandeliers, and marbled floors. You don't know if you've ever stayed in such a nice place.

(When you ask Dan Heng how much money he blew on this trip, he merely shrugs and says not to worry about it. You’d be terrified if it were anyone else who'd done the booking—certainly, Dan Heng would be terrified if you had—but your boyfriend is too fiscally responsible for you to question it too much.)

The concierge at the hotel provides a sightseeing itinerary that would be “perfect for a honeymoon”, taking advantage of all the Qixi deals at restaurants and theme parks. Dan Heng, though, seems more interested in exploring all the everyday happenings of the station. He asks to go to the morning market (you’ve never seen a man so enthralled by cheap fried dough), talks you into hiking the mountains so that he can take pictures of the rice terraces (you cheat by using your flying sword to carry the both of you up), and asks to stroll around the seaside harbour. You lounge there for a little, sitting on a bench and watching the junks drift by, their sails fluttering in the wind.

You frown as you study the ships.

“Why don’t they just use pneumatic tubes for transporting goods? Or automated starskiffs?” you ponder. “Like—this looks like a planet. But it’s still a space station at the end of the day.”

“The ships are likely more appealing to tourists,” Dan Heng says smartly.

“Huh. Does it appeal to you?”

“It’s—”

Dan Heng’s reply is drowned by the high-pitched trill of a reed, then the thunder of a gong: the unmistakable sound of a wedding.

Laughter and cheering fill the pier as a procession of men file through, bearing a fire-red palanquin. Both of you turn to watch the spectacle, and—even though this is your tenth time hearing the suona since you woke up this morning, which is absolute hell for your ears, and decidedly making Qixi absolute hell for you—you cheer and yell your blessings as they pass.

Through the beaded curtain of the sedan, you think you make out a wave from the bride.

“That textbook wasn’t exaggerating about people wanting to get married on Qixi,” Dan Heng muses as they trail away, their song growing faint. “I’ve never seen a Xianzhou wedding procession before today. Now I’ve seen nine.”

“Ten,” you correct him. “And you’ll probably see ten more before the night starts. Ah, Gege, my eardrums are going to burst at this rate…”

When you lean against him and feign exhaustion, he rolls his eyes. “So dramatic,” he says, though his hand presses against the small of your back, as if to steady you. “You don’t find it nice?”

“It's fine, I guess?" You squint at him. "Why? Do you find it nice? Are you the kind of person that really likes weddings, Gege?”

“I’ve never been to one, so I don’t know,” he says simply. “But it seems like people are enjoying themselves, and that’s never a bad sight.”

You give him a keen look, studying the way he watches the procession disappear around the corner—clearly intrigued by it. For someone who so often says that they don’t enjoy love stories, Dan Heng has been oddly fixated on every celebration of love you've come across today.

How interesting.

“Say, Gege…” Your voice is teasing. “Wanna elope?”

Dan Heng visibly pauses, blinking twice before turning to stare at you.

“What?”

You stifle a laugh. “Many people have proper weddings during Qixi Festival,” you say, smiling, “but tons of people also just decide to elope. All the wedding registry offices are probably crazy busy right now, but I bet we could find one that could squeeze us in and tie the knot for us. What do you say?”

He shoots you down instantly: “No way.”

“Eh? Why?” You look at him all hurt, your lower lip wobbling. “You don’t wanna marry me, Gege?”

“No.”

“Wow! That hurts, Ge!”

Dan Heng snorts. He turns to you, and—in an uncharacteristic move, only made possible because the two of you are alone and on a world where no one from the Astral Express is there to gawk at him—he cups your face with his hands.

His voice gets a little soft when he says, “Not today.”

“...oh.”

Your mind goes a little blank as you stare at him, at the tender glint in his jade-like eyes, and the soft curve to his lips—and fuck, who gave your boyfriend the right to look so fucking handsome?

You breathe deeply. Another suona tremors in the distance, and against the waves of the sea, its echo sounds almost soft.

“Not today?” you ask faintly. “But some other day?”

“Yes. Some other day. And…” He looks away, glances at the now-empty street. “...it would be nice to do it properly. Instead of just eloping.”

“Properly,” you repeat. “Like, um. You wanna wear a suit? Exchange rings? Or…" Your eyes follow his line of sight. "Do you mean like that wedding party?”

His head inclines—so slight that you nearly miss it.

“With a palanquin?” you confirm. “And a tea ceremony? You want us to do our three bows and all of that?”

He watches you carefully. “Would it be strange?”

“Huh? No.” You bite your lip. His eyes flick down. You’re finding it increasingly hard to focus with the way that your blood is rushing in your ears. “Why would it be strange?”

“Well, it is a Xianzhou tradition, and we don’t have any Xianzhou family—or, well. We don’t have any family. So it might be… odd.”

“Who cares?” you say. You’re only half-listening to him, too focused on holding back from kissing him. “I wanna see you in red, Heng'er. I bet it's a good colour on you."

The corner of his mouth twitches. “Alright. But it'll look better on you, I’m sure.”

You blink, feeling as startled as your face is hot. Not a romantic, my ass! you can't help but think.

You also can't help but tease him.

“...Heng’er,” you say slowly, a playful edge growing in your voice, “I knew you had a romantic streak in you. Forget Yinyue-jun—I should start calling you Fengyue-ju—mmmph!”

Before you can start running your mouth, Dan Heng silences you the way he knows best.

IN THIS XIANZHOU FOLKTALE, the Cowherd and Weaver Girl were two immortals who fell in love and entered a forbidden relationship. The Jade Aeon tore them apart from one another, and they were shortly after banished to opposite sides of the Heavenly River (otherwise known as the Milky Way, within the Virgo Supercluster of galaxies). From henceforth, they lived separately, only able to watch each other from opposite sides of the river bank. Seeing their grief, every magpie in the world took pity on them and decided to form a bridge across the Heavenly River, allowing them to cross it. The Jade Aeon, also upon witnessing their heartbreak, decided to let them see one another for a single day. According to myth, the birds have since gathered once a year on the seventh day of the seventh month. On that day, the Cowherd and Weaver Girl meet each other at the cusp of the bridge. IN TRADITIONAL CELEBRATIONS OF THE QIXI FESTIVAL, people would look up at the sky at night and admire the stars of Vega and Altair. They would also search for Deneb (Bayer designation: Alpha Cygni), which represents the Bridge of Magpies.

When the sun falls on Xinghan, you and Dan Heng return to the harbour at which you’d been spending your afternoon. Beneath a foreign night sky—illuminated by two oblong moons and stars rippling in the pattern of mares’ tail clouds—the pier is lit by countless lanterns and smiles. Women dressed in traditional robes weave through the crowd, the flowing silk of their ruqun trailing after delicate steps. The fresh seaside air mingles with the spiced fragrance of lamb skewers, the sweetness of cooking dough, the rich scent of grilling vegetables.

And at the centre of it all: your hand clasped tightly in his, guiding him through the chaos to all the dishes and games you loved most from your childhood. To all the things that he’s longed to taste for weeks now, ever since the two of you made these plans.

Dan Heng finds it almost—almost—perfect.

“Dan Heng," a voice calls out from behind the two of you, "Dan Heng! Wait up! I wanna get some corn!”

“What? Why are you getting corn? You can get corn anywhere… C’mon, those lamb skewers were calling to us… begging to be eaten… I can still hear them...”

“You can what now?”

Dan Heng rubs his temple, looking at you.

“Remind me again why you agreed to let March and Caelus come with us,” he says, and you laugh.

“Because festivals are fun with more people,” you say. Then you tilt your head, studying him. “Don’t tell me you’re not having fun, Gege?”

“I’m enjoying myself,” he says honestly, and not even the incomprehensible word salad coming from Caelus' mouth can ruin the mood, with the smile you give him.

You lean in, bring your lips close to his ear. Your breath tickles him as you ask, “Is it just that you want more time alone with me?”

“Well,” he replies, “watching Caelus go through trash wasn’t exactly the night I had planned for us.”

You chuckle. “Okay, okay. I think I have a way of shaking him off.”

Dan Heng gives you a questioning look, but you only wink and tug at his hand. You lead him through the crowds once more, yelling at Caelus and March to follow.

He has a half a mind to ask you to slow down, with how much the two of you are missing at this pace. You pass by a shadow puppetry show, the silhouettes of Niulang and Zhinü dancing on a luminous screen, and Dan Heng wants nothing more than to see the myth play out before his own eyes—but your pull is unrelenting. You skip past a man crafting sugar sculptures, a group of dancers twirling with water sleeves, a rack of crisp potato skewers, and countless other sights that Dan Heng's eyes trail after.

It’s only then that you slow down—and Dan Heng wishes you hadn’t.

The four of you are assaulted by what must be the most horrific stench in the Pinwheel Galaxy. He presses his sleeve against his nose and tries not to gag.

“Is there no garbage disposal at this festival?” Dan Heng asks with plain disgust, while Caelus perks up and simultaneously says, “Smells like there’s a dumpster nearby.”

March pinches her nose. “Ew—let’s get out of here. I wanna see those sugar animals—they looked so cute!”

“No, no," Caelus replies. "We can go back in a bit, I wanna go take a look first…”

He makes a beeline for wherever that ungodly odour is coming from, and March, with a deep sigh, follows him. “I’ll go keep an eye on him,” she says, voice heavy with resignation. “You two enjoy your date.”

“Make sure he doesn’t eat anything weird again,” Dan Heng says, and that makes you laugh. He narrows his eyes at you, noting your completely unbothered expression, and asks, “What’s so funny?”

“That smell isn’t from garbage, Gege. That’s stinky tofu. Completely safe to eat—and it’s actually pretty good, too.” You tilt your head. “I thought it’d be a good way to distract Caelus—but do you want to try some?”

He thinks he might be going green. “Maybe later,” he says, somehow keeping his voice neutral. “Didn’t you want to find tanghulu?”

Dan Heng tries not to sigh with relief when you say, “Oh, true… let’s go look for some.”

Funnily enough, hawberries seem to be as impossible to find on this side of the Triangulum Galaxy as it was on the other.

The two of you have been walking through the stalls for at least half an hour now, on a focused search for the elusive candied skewers. The two of you find an assortment of qiaoguo, a variety of persimmon cakes, and delicately crafted sugar paintings. (“Look, Gege! Let’s request one of the Azure Dragon,” you suggest, triggering an immense headache in Dan Heng.)

But you don’t come across any tanghulu.

After you finally give up, you retreat to a quiet corner of the pier, biting into a peach-shaped qiaoguo while your legs dangle over the water. Dan Heng, himself, has the dulcet taste of bronze sugar melting on his tongue: part of the dragon you’d requested from the sugar painter, set on a bamboo stick. Despite the sweetness of your snacks, Dan Heng picks out a bitter air from you.

You don't say anything, though. The two of you only peer at an artificial sky as you eat, taking in its strange features. There is but a single, round moon within it, and its stars are unusually bright. They run across the black night in a silver river: a precise copy of the Milky Way, in the Virgo Supercluster of galaxies, as seen from Earth.

Xinghan Space Station is capable of large-scale atmospheric projections, Dan Heng had read in the hotel’s travel brochure. Apparently, they like to recreate Earth’s night sky during the Qixi Festival, as an homage to the original stars that gave birth to the myth. They'd only switched it on fifteen minutes ago, and the both of you had stopped to stargaze.

You squint at the constellations above you.

“I have… no idea where Zhinü and Niulang are," you remark.

“No?”

“No… the Luofu never did these atmospheric projections. And—I guess I should be able to figure it out since I've got a licence, but, well… you know I’m not very good at navigating the stars.”

Dan Heng bites off the last of his sugar dragon, then crouches down next to you. Without a word, he raises the bamboo rod and uses it to gesture at the constellation of Lyra. “Zhinü is the brightest star in that cluster over there—right next to those four stars making a parallelogram.” He then points above it, at the constellation of Aquila; your line of sight follows the bamboo skewer closely. “And the bright one over there—that’s Niulang.”

You rest your head on his shoulder, humming. “Does the Bridge of Magpies represent a bridge of stars?” you ask. “Or is that something people made up?”

“It represents Deneb. You can see it there”—the bamboo in his hands points westward—“forming a triangle with Zhinü and Niulang.”

You hum at the information, but otherwise stay quiet. When Dan Heng chances a look at you, he finds you contemplating the sky, staring intently at the Heavenly River.

Though you no longer seem upset, it bothers him that you aren’t glowing the way you’d been half an hour ago. You’d been so alive running with him beneath all the festival lanterns, looking for tanghulu. To an outsider, it might seem odd, how much it ruined your mood when you couldn’t find any—but Dan Heng knows that this isn’t about a simple craving for a candied fruit skewer.

This is about the Luofu.

This is about the food you'd tasted on the Luofu, the scenery you'd gazed upon on the Luofu, the festivals you'd observed on the Luofu—those are the things after which you’ve been chasing, not tanghulu. The ship was once your home, after all, and not a home that you’d willingly left. It’s obvious how much you long for it, what with the way you always ask to cook Xianzhou dishes and observe Xianzhou holidays.

Dan Heng puts an arm around your waist, pulling you against him.

"I'm sorry we couldn’t find you any tanghulu,” he murmurs. “Maybe Chang’E Moon Settlement will have some? I read that they have night markets regularly.”

“...it’s okay,” you say, in a voice clearly indicating the opposite. “I just thought it’d be nice to have at a festival, specifically… maybe we can head to Chang’E for the Lantern Festival.”

“That’s not a bad plan,” he says. “I’ve never celebrated the Lantern Festival.”

That makes you perk up. “Then I’ll have to make sure that Gege has a good time when February rolls around,” you say quite seriously. “I’ll do the trip planning next time—don’t worry about the hotels, or the travel itinerary, or the route to Chang’E—”

“I will plan the route,” he says decisively. “And I’m driving too.”

That makes you laugh. “Okay. You can do that. Ask for two weeks off from work, too. People on Chang’E take the Lantern Festival quite seriously, so—”

A familiar voice interrupts, calling out your names from a distance. You both look back and are met with the sight of Caelus and March running down the pier, waving at you. Caelus is holding what looks—and smells—like a container full of stinky tofu, while March has, in one of her hands—

“You found tanghulu?!” you exclaim. She nods excitedly as she bounces in front of you, two steps short of crashing into your bodies.

“Yeah! You were talking about wanting some earlier, right? So we grabbed one for you."

“I’ve got tofu too, if you'd like,” Caelus adds. March, shockingly, doesn’t berate him for the suggestion (Dan Heng considers it); she only points to it with a bewildered expression.

“It’s actually really good!” she insists. “You gotta hold your breath, but the flavour is great. You should both try it.”

“...I’ll take the tanghulu first,” Dan Heng says, rising from his seat to pluck the skewer out of March's hands. In a calculated move, he beckons you to stand and leads you away from March and Caelus—or, more specifically, away from the smell. While Dan Heng has no doubt that you’d like some of that tofu for yourself, you are predictably much more interested in a romantic moment with your boyfriend in a public space (your favourite type of situation in which to kiss him), so you happily wave goodbye to the pair.

When Dan Heng finally bites into the candied fruit—first cool and hard against his teeth, then sour and sweet on his tongue—he understands why you’d been disappointed with the strawberry tanghulu. It had been good, but it had also been different.

“How do you find it, Gege?” you ask, practically trembling with excitement. He feels his lip quirk.

“It’s good,” he praises. You smile, and Dan Heng finds himself thinking that none of the festival lanterns could ever compare to your expression. “Do you want some?”

“If you feed me,” you say, and Dan Heng rolls his eyes, but he humours you anyway, tilting the skewer toward you so that you can take a bite. The fruit colours your mouth red, and he watches as you hum and lick the sugar off your lips.

“Is it everything you’d hoped for?” he asks.

“Mhm. This is proper tanghulu.”

You seem content enough. You're eating, you're smiling—but something about your eyes bothers Dan Heng. Something about the muted quality of your voice. Something about the way you're studying the skewer in your hands.

Whatever bitterness was plaguing you earlier is still lingering, weighing down your words.

“I know,” Dan Heng says gently. He repeats himself: “But is it everything you’d hoped for?”

That makes you pause, blinking at him. Were you anyone else, Dan Heng is sure that you’d be mystified by the question—but you’re you, and you’re fairly attuned to the workings of his mind, and he’s reasonably discerning about whatever chaos is going on in yours. You have enough mutual understanding for you to stop and consider his question carefully, peering up at the sky.

Dan Heng waits patiently, watching Vega and Altair with you. Watching two stars longing for one another.

“...if it were up to me, Heng’er,” you eventually say, “I’d take you back to the Luofu, and we’d go sightseeing there. We’d visit the seaside town that I grew up in, and we’d go to the market I liked for breakfast food, and you…” You pause for a moment, struggling. “...and you could have met my Shifu. And you could have seen our home—how beautiful it once was. And I’d have taken you out for the Qixi Festival afterwards, and you could have seen the night sky there. Have I ever told you that it's the only stretch of stars I know how to navigate?"

The breath you let out is quiet, nearly drowned by the sighing tide. Dan Heng only hears it because he’s spent so often listening to the soft rhythm of your lungs.

“I wish I could have shown you all that,” you admit. “I’m sorry I can’t. I know you think about going back as much as I do.”

Dan Heng’s eyes soften. You allow his hands to cup your face, to shift it until he’s looking directly into the melancholy of your gaze.

“I don’t need to be on the Luofu,” he says quietly. “I am content to be here with you, I am content to live on the Express with you, and I am content to accompany you for as long as this lifetime will allow. And if you aren’t content with those things—then tell me what it is you long for, so that I can make you feel at home.”

You stare at him for a long while, bringing a hand to rest over the one on your cheek.

“Heng’er…”

“What is it?”

Dan Heng watches a number of emotions flicker through your eyes. He knows each of your microexpressions, because it is second nature for him to watch you carefully, with full attention to the state of your heart. He knows the way your brows lift when you’re surprised, he recognizes the specific quirk of your mouth when you try to stop it from trembling, and he notices the slow blink that you only do when you try to calm down. He knows, too, your instinctive response when you don’t know what to say:

You kiss him.

You kiss him, and it’s not the playful, fleeting sort of kiss that you use to tease him in public, nor is it the sweet and smiling sort that you drew him into earlier during the day, on this very dock. It’s long and deep, soft and tender against his lips, and he returns it fully.

After you pull back, you smile at him, looking more like yourself.

“That’s your second time kissing me in public today,” you comment. “What’s gotten into you, Heng’er?”

“Must be your bad influence,” he replies without a beat, running a thumb along your jawline.

“Oh?” You hum. “I’m not so sure. I think Fengyue-jun’s always been a little sentimental.”

Dan Heng snorts. “If I’m acting like it, then it’s only because you wanted a romantic evening.”

“I guess I did say that.” You link arms with him, pulling him back toward the festival. “Is our night going to be romantic too?”

“Our morning after as well,” he says. He feels his mouth curling at your excited little smile. “Would you like to spend more time here, or return to the hotel for your Qixi gift?”

“Whatever you feel like, Gege.” You press against him. "Just being by your side is enough to make me happy, no matter where it is you want to be.”

Dan Heng ends up choosing to stay at the harbour. It is partly because you’d seemed so keen on the tofu earlier, and he's a little curious about it himself—but it's mostly because he wants to see you in the glow of the festival for a little longer.

Dan Heng suspects that you feel that this night here, on Xinghan Station, is only a substitute for the life you've imagined having with him on the Luofu. Possibly it's inferior to it in every way. And he supposes that you might be right to think this way—that if ever he were given the chance to properly visit the world in which he was born, then he, too, might decide that Xinghan Station is nothing like it. That the lanterns hanging above the two of you right now pale in comparison to the Luofu stars. He can’t be certain.

But he is certain of this: that right now, Dan Heng has the privilege of hearing your laughter weave into festive song, of tasting sugar and berries on your lips, of seeing your smile awash in the light of the Heavenly River—

—and all of it is beautiful.

End

WE DID IT BOYS!! I am… too tired to do full cultural/translation notes but I'll try to hit the major ones 🫡

Translation Notes:

风月 (pronounced "Fengyue") literally means "wind, moon", but the characters taken together may actually mean "beautiful scenery", "romance", or "love making" depending on the context. When you call Dan Heng "Fengyue-jun 风月君", rather than "Yinyue-jun 饮月君", you're making a pun where you're calling him the Lord of Romance rather than the Lord who Drinks the Moon.

Gege is a term meaning "older brother", though it is often used for non-familial relationships that are very close. It has either a childish or flirty edge to it (Ge and Dage, also meaning older brother, are more common between friends).

Shifu means "Teacher", used in the context of a martial relationship. IIRC, Jing Yuan called Jingliu this.

Xinghan is one of the names for the Milky Way in Chinese, as an alternative to Heavenly River.

Chang'E is the name of an immortal who lives on the moon.

Cultural notes:

Qixi Festival is a real celebration that takes place on the seventh day of the seventh month on the Chinese lunar calendar. It is indeed based on the myth of the Cowherd and Weaver Girl. The version of the myth that I put into the story is a paraphrased version of the one I heard growing up, but there are many others. You may also recognise it as the myth of Orihime and Hikoboshi from the Japanese Tanabata festival.

I was researching different ways that people celebrate Qixi Festival around the world, and funnily enough, I actually found that (1) mostly people don't make a big deal of it anymore, and (2) it varies pretty largely between various diaspora communities. Maocity holds a night market festival where there are many foods that our Asian diaspora don't otherwise have the chance to eat (😔✌️), so that's the inspiration for the festival in this story. If you are Chinese elsewhere in the world, Qixi Festival celebrations may look different for you, and I want to acknowledge this in the notes.

There were some references to traditional Chinese wedding practices in this. Here is one video of a wedding procession and here is another (you can hear the suona in this one). Traditionally the palanquin is a "bridal sedan", but for my nblm and mlm readers, I want to note that usually whoever is marrying into the other person's household will ride it (in novels/fics I've read)—so you can imagine either yourself or Dan Heng in the palanquin

Also I couldn't fit this into the story, but I like to imagine that when you and Dan Heng get hitched, you do the tradition of racing each other to your house—but this is just the archives so you're literally just running down the Astral Express, fighting off Caelus and March and co LMAOO.

Thank you for reading! Please drop a line if you enjoyed this… truly I put my whole writerussy into this fic LMAOAO

tagging in @trailblazernet also!!

[yinyuedijun]

hiii, if you’re okay with it, would u be willing to share your outline for your bluebird fic and how u planned for the story to go? i’m super curious as to where the story goes but j totally understand that you’re not continuing it anymore!! hope u had a lovely day

I would like to continue it in October (Reze movie dropping then!!!) if I'm not dying from my new job but here is the abbreviated outline in case I can't!

WARNINGS for grooming, sa, canon-typical violence, dubcon

Remainder of the Hokkaido arc (picking up from the end of chapter 2 directly)

Aki breaks up with his gf as he mentally commits to becoming a devil hunter

He tells you that he plans to eventually move to Tokyo to join the Public Safety Bureau, which makes you go insane (you run away in the middle of the night to that park again, and he has to go find you); eventually you forgive him after he says that his plan is to somehow get you to move to Tokyo and find work and you can both continue living together codependently (lol)

Just by coincidence, a Tokyo man who lost his wife and daughter to the Gun Devil comes to the Hokkaido orphanage looking to adopt; he's looking for someone who would have been around his daughter's age and he becomes interested in you

Aki encourages you to accept his adoption offer because he seems like a nice guy, and you'll both be in Tokyo this way

Then there is a timeskip to two years later, when Aki is wrapping up post-secondary training in Hokkaido and about to move to Tokyo to join Public Safety - you call him and tell him not to come or you'll kill him (LMAO)

First Tokyo Arc

Aki arrives in Tokyo and you pick him up from the station, quite unhappy with him

He moves in with you in your Tokyo apartment; he asks to meet your adoptive father to catch up, but you're evasive about committing

Aki learns that you've been working for Public Safety under Special Division 4, with a contract to the Heart Devil. The conditions of the Heart Devil's contract necessitates you achieving physical intimacy with your targets (usually sex); in exchange, you have a limited ability to read their minds and can compel them to become infatuated with you to the point of unquestioningly following your orders.

Aki is incredibly disturbed by this, and keeps grilling you on why you joined Public Safety, whether you're really okay with your devil contract, why you agreed to such a contract in the first place, and why your adoptive father is okay with any of this - you evade all these questions

You spend basically the rest of the story trying to get Aki to quit Public Safety because you've realized that he will 10000% die if he stays, which activates severe abandonment trauma in you

Also you exhibit some truly batshit behaviour throughout the course of all this, including but not limited to: you taking up smoking just to piss off Aki, because he took up smoking; you getting annoyed when he doesn't stop and chucking all his cigarettes into the bath; you threatening to drown him in a bathtub at least once; having extremely indiscriminate sex which is making you obviously miserable.

(I know this makes you out to be terribly antagonistic LOL but trust and believe that Aki's also at fault - you're clearly acting out because you don't want him to die, but every time you try to have an honest conversation about it, he shuts down and says you'll "find someone else and move on afterwards"; this obviously makes you feel terrible.)

All this creates a growing rift with Aki that neither of you really know how to handle.

Meanwhile, Makima is basically love bombing you. She shows you heavy favouritism, buying you perfumes and clothing and showering you with attention. You feel increasingly isolated from Aki and also feel like she's the only person you can trust. However, there is this weird tension where you notice Aki developing feelings for her in an unnatural way, somewhat reminiscent of how your targets behave around you. You try to use her powers on her to see if she is hiding something, you find out that she's the Control Devil, she compels you to forget everything.

When Himeno notices that you and Aki are basically in love, she propositions you as an attempt to distract you from him. You accept because you are feeling so lonely (again, isolated from Aki) and you actually get very attached to her because it's your first time having sex with a human. However, you eventually realize that this is a manipulation to distract you from Aki. This semi-permanently damages your ability to have intimate relationships and also your sense of self-worth. Profoundly hurt, you move out and nearly cut off all contact with Aki and Himeno 👍

Second Tokyo Arc

Timeskip to the start of the canon series - just after Denji and Power move in with Aki. It's been a few years so you're outwardly less batshit and can talk with Aki again, although you are both constantly pissed at each other (frustrated with each other's self-destructive habits, and also having difficulty navigating the fact that you are basically still in love but both refuse to admit it and are having sex with other people)

Your apartment floods, and Makima suggests that you move in with Aki. You grudgingly agree and you re-establish a solid friendship with him, which you maintain even after you move out again. The two of you still have some batshit moments however (e.g , after he makes his contract with the Curse Devil, Aki catches you standing on the edge of the balcony looking like you're going to jump - not because you want to actually die but because you spitefully make him want to feel the stress that he makes you feel; after Himeno dies, he tells you to break up with your boyfriend and move back in with him, and you agree without a question; etc.)

After Aki reveals to you that he has 2 years left to live, you have a genuine breakdown and beg him to quit Public Safety, even going as far as to offer to have sex with him however much he wants. You actually find this idea repulsive but because of how Public Safety has groomed you + because of how Aki's treated you for the past several years (i.e., completely neglecting your emotional needs as a friend, ignoring the fact that his unwillingness to live is incredibly painful for you as someone who loves him), you truly have begun to truly believe that he doesn't love you in any capacity and cannot think of any other way to appeal to him other than to offer sex

Aki rejects your offer, and he's so disturbed by it that you get into a massive fight where he grills you about all the things you've never told him - why you joined Public Safety, if you're really okay with the Heart Devil contract, why you agreed to it in the first place, and where your adoptive father is. At this point, he has solid suspicions and wants to talk through things and help you, but you don't answer him, instead running out and going to Makima's

Batshit Interlude chapter from Makima's POV

This reveals what happened after you moved to Tokyo and why you joined Public Safety

Your adoptive father tried to sacrifice you to the Heart Devil in order to make a contract (ie., you're a virgin sacrifice). You don't want to die, so you beg the Heart Devil to make a contract with you instead.

The Heart Devil agrees and says it'll make a contract with you on the condition that it takes your virginity. You have sex with it, gain its powers, and kiss your adoptive father and compel him to commit suicide.

Makima finds you like this, after you've committed this deeply illegal crime of entering a devil contract and killing someone. You're fully aware that Public Safety will try to arrest you, after which you'd face imprisonment and the death penalty

You try to use your devil contract on Makima to escape. Of course, you cannot control the Control Devil so it doesn't work, but Makima finds the feeling of "falling in love" (induced by the Heart Devil's powers) to be very addictive, because she otherwise doesn't experience such human feelings of intimacy. She decides to offer you a deal to work in Public Safety instead of arresting you, so that she can keep you close to her and experience affection from you. This is why she spoils you a lot and also why she suggests that you stay close with Aki; as miserable as the two of you are around each other, you would be more miserable without him.

There is also a reveal that Makima has been having sex with you this whole time and basically wiping it from your memories (genuinely so sorry, this reader is a foil to Denji so she's really getting groomed in every way possible)

Final arc (thank god)

The fic picks up during the International Assassins arc with a focus on the Darkness Devil. You end up dying in Hell 👍 and Aki sees it and gets severely traumatized from it 👍 but interestingly you end up somehow surviving which makes him feel like he's going insane

After surviving this incident, Makima's control over you no longer works (for some mysterious reason) and you regain all your suppressed memories of her - so now you finally figure out that she has been manipulating you and Aki all along, and also that she's the Control Devil

Since you no longer trust Makima, you are highly suspicious of all her movements and are trying to plan around them, with the intention of extricating Aki (+ Denji and Power) from Public Safety.

Meanwhile, Aki is going through an existential crisis from seeing you (and Denji and Power) nearly die. Suddenly aware that he has loved ones for whom he wishes to care, he actually attempts to have an honest conversation with you where he articulates clearly that he loves you and says that he'll no longer neglect your feelings for him. You straight up don't believe him, not just because he's been treating you poorly but also because at this point you just don't believe that anyone could ever love you.

Aki asks you to use the Heart Devil's powers on him in order to prove his feelings for you - upon doing so, you discover that he is telling the truth. (You see the entire story from his POV, that's why there's all those references to you "looking into Aki's heart" throughout the prose in the first two chapters)

You finally get together with Aki and fuck nasty (oh my god). Truthfully though it's really emotional porn where you're "redoing" your first time with someone who loves you

I think you get married like 48 hours later... my man has 2 years left to live so he's in a rush.

Aki has his final conversation with Makima; he becomes the Gun Fiend; you're at home with Denji and Power when he attacks and he shoots you in the chest and SHOULD kill you...

...but you don't die! A weird post-death hallucination occurs where you see the Heart Devil. Turns out it's been spectating on your life this whole time (since it's contracted to you) and, over the years, has come to feel something akin to love for you. Verbatim, it tells you that "you're a very easy person to love".

Rather than letting you die in Hell, it decided to give you its heart and turn you into a Devil-human hybrid. (This is why you are now resistant to Makima's brainwashing)

You wake up while the Gun Fiend is wreaking havoc on the neighbourhood and lock the fuck in. You use the Heart Devil's powers to lead it away from everyone else, then you have sex with it. This has the effect of making the Gun Fiend fall in love with you to the point of listening to your orders.

You beg it to give Aki back to you, which it does. Aki has now become the Gun Fiend, having a system that sort of parallels Asa's circumstances with Yoru, except you have control over the Gun Fiend

It becomes a strange full circle moment where the Gun Devil, although destroying your life, has also brought you together with Aki

With all this, Aki is allowed to live, and you find a way to help Power as well. And the Hayakawa family are reunited!!!!!

Truly so sorry for this plot.