More superheroes prequel. Pete and Patrick meet and it's a little bit of a disaster, if one with a future. About 3,800 words.
“Where’s Shizun?” He can’t help but ask aloud, hoping that just by saying his name he’ll appear and explain what the hell is going on.
One of the many women stirs, rubbing at her eyes before blinking them open to look at him. Luo Binghe immediately shuts his eyes.
“If there is anything else that can be said of Qinghe Nie,” Lan Xichen recites, helplessly faint, “it is that we take our weddings and our burials very seriously—”
“—For they are, to us, one and the same,” Nie Huaisang finishes for him. “You do remember.”
In a world with timers, counting down to when you meet your soulmate, a lot of different things can happen. Some people choose not to get timers. Some people have gotten more than one, or more than one kind. But Cisco's never heard of one person's going off, while no one else's does. // updates yearly!
Andrew might not be able to play any more, but of course, there are alternatives.
Luke's intentions toward his nephew have been misinterpreted, and maybe this is a mercy.
Andrew makes for a bad date, even when he's not the one paying. Fletcher is determined to drag him all over New York or die trying.
Eve has always been older and wiser.
They haven't really talked about what's going on between them, except this morning while Jiang Cheng was eating breakfast and Wei Wuxian was lying on the sofa with his arm over his eyes, Wei Wuxian said, "Are you going to be weird about it if I hold your hand in front of our friends?"
Jiang Cheng chewed his youtiao.
"Just let me know," Wei Wuxian said. "It's chill."
Oh, Jiang Cheng knew very well that it was not chill. But he wasn't like Wei Wuxian; he couldn't just do<…
They haven't really talked about what's going on between them, except this morning while Jiang Cheng was eating breakfast and Wei Wuxian was lying on the sofa with his arm over his eyes, Wei Wuxian said, "Are you going to be weird about it if I hold your hand in front of our friends?"
Jiang Cheng chewed his youtiao.
"Just let me know," Wei Wuxian said. "It's chill."
Oh, Jiang Cheng knew very well that it was not chill. But he wasn't like Wei Wuxian; he couldn't just do things like that, like it was nothing. Wei Wuxian could name his sword—gleaming now on the rack above his head—Suibian, he could do whatever he wanted. He got all the curses and the blessings of being always inside and outside the Jiangs, and Jiang Cheng got everything else.
"You can hold my hand," Jiang Cheng said after he swallowed, feeling like he'd just walked over a bed of hot coals.
His secrets were collateral. They were a contract, a promise that he would not go back on his word. Her flesh, his soul: when she knew things that not even the King knew, things that could ruin him, they became equal.