fruitjuicer

It is not at all something terrible that must be endured for a greater good’s sake.

Tang Fan is susceptible to long jaunts into his own self-preoccupation at the very best of times, as is needless to say, but waiting brings out the worst of his whiling.

Sui Zhou knows he has lost the latest ambush of attrition when he finds Tang Fan watching a playlist of rotating sandwiches he's screen shared to their television.

There are many things that Nie Huaisang and Nie Mingjue do not talk about.

“Oh,” Qingming breathes out, his shoulders sinking deep with it, “how fortunate.”

Yes, Boya thinks, foolish and giddy and wrecked with affirmation, how fortunate.

Sui Zhou is the first of them to wake, as he so often is.

For hours, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji have walked with little words and less hurry, and the peace rakes itself down Wei Wuxian’s back like an itch baiting a scratch.

"I can’t even take you home," he says, with coolly enforced casualness. "You know that, don’t you? Even if I ripped up every threshold in The Unclean Realm, the bagua will stop you. The Stone Castles can’t shelter you, either, nor can the Sabre Halls."

Longing makes the world bright and the yearner blind, he knows, but even without his want soaking through and staining it, he thinks— he would be sure.

He may not always be the most patient man, but Sui Zhou has come to be good at waiting. He has taken well to the lessons Tang Fan has taught him.