Under the stress of dealing with Muramasa, Senbonzakura could do with some reassurance. So could Byakuya. Written for the Prompt Battle prompt: Byakuya/Senbonzakura, behind closed doors.
As they returned to Muramasa’s suspiciously ill-concealed hiding hole, Byakuya turned away from the mindless chatter of the swords. He could only stand to listen to their foolishness for so long, and today had been more than enough.
Four linked scenes of intimacy, during Frau and Teito’s journeys. Teito is stubborn, Frau knows he’s doomed, Mikhail snarks briefly. Mild spoilers through issue 61.
It hadn’t been Frau’s idea, the first time he wound up in bed with Teito Klein. It hadn’t been his idea to start sharing a bed, whether they did anything more interesting with it than sleep or not. It had been his idea to teach the kid how to use his hands and mouth, but only in self defense.
Hinata has long been inspired by Naruto, and watching his determination helps her find her own. Seeking a way to help her clan and herself, she turns to Hyuuga’s history and finds old strength and new thoughts there, courage and hope. In the end, she even finds her way back to an older love.
When Hinata was fourteen, she gathered all her courage in her hands and walked into the training hall while Neji-niisan was working, and asked to train with him. Quietly, face shadowed by the wooden slats of the window, he agreed.
That was the year she began to wonder whether she could change fate, too.
Shamelessly anachronistic clubbing fic. Neji and Hinata out dancing. Or sparring. It’s a little hard to tell which. Set just after the end of "Cloud Hands".
Sparring could be a lot like sex, for some shinobi. And there was no question that most ninja out dancing were more or less sparring to a beat. But this was the first time Sakura had ever seen two people dancing, sparring, or having sex so intensely without ever touching.
A snapshot of Neji’s reaction to any disrespect for Hinata among the Hyuuga. Unrepentant clan-kink with D/s undertones. Set after "Cloud Hands", when Neji and Hinata are, perhaps, in their twenties.
It was over, everything except for collecting the bodies of the attackers. Intellectually, Neji knew that was exactly why Hiroki said it; the wired exhilaration of having survived again did often unhinge people’s tongues.
Twelve kisses between Kuroko, Kagami, Aomine, and Kise. Can be read as poly or as six separate timelines.
This he had won, and he would not let it go.
Some possible reasons Kiyoshi calls Aida "Riko" while Hyuuga calls her "Kantoku". Unabashed Fluff, I-2
"Besides, if you’re our coach, now, the whole team should be calling you Kantoku."
Kiyoshi is recovering from surgery and now comes the hard part: making him take it slow. In the process, Riko decides it’s time to deal with the things she and Kiyoshi and Hyuuga haven’t been talking about.
Almost two months after the Winter Cup, Riko gathered her club around her at the end of practice, grim and serious. “All right, everyone, listen up. We have a problem.”
Imayoshi decides to return Riko’s favor by throwing Aomine, Kuroko, and Kagami together in a match. It’s a different kind of revelation for each of them.
Aomine Daiki was a cynical sort of guy these days, so he wasn’t really surprised when Imayoshi-san started showing up at club practices as soon as the national exams were over. Imayoshi-san was a bit like Daiki, really; he got bored without a challenge. Besides, Wakamatsu seemed happy enough to have his ‘advice’, so who cared?
At least that was what Daiki thought until Imayoshi-san decided his next challenge would be Daiki.
Aomine decides that, if Kagami isn’t going anywhere, he has to be included. This gives Kuroko a moment of uncertainty, but the direct approach might be the best one after all.
Aomine Daiki loved a really good game of basketball. As far as he was concerned, it was the best thing in the world, even better than sex.
He actually spoke from knowledge, there.
It’s the end of the year, and Kise gets another shock from his captain, this one considerably more pleasant.
Kise Ryouta was feeling absolutely pathetic.
What else did you call a team captain who, instead of going directly to practice when classes ended, loitered around the doors waiting for one particular senpai so that they could walk to the school gates together, before the captain in question sprinted back to make practice on time?
The story of how Kagami wound up willing to be submissive for Kuroko.
“So, I know how I got here,” Aomine remarked thoughtfully, shifting a little against the bed. “But how did Tetsu talk you into this?”
Taiga grumbled against his bare shoulder. “You pick the weirdest times for long, meaningful talks.”
Kuroko wants a tangible marker of his committment to Kagami and Aomine, and of how they belong to him, and that’s when other people start noticing what’s going on.
It was Daiki who mentioned it first, stroking his thumb along the line of Taiga’s collarbone one afternoon when they were all tangled together in Tetsuya’s bed, still a little sticky but catching their breaths again.
“You’ve stopped wearing that necklace all the time.”
Aomine, Kuroko, and Kagami finally all wind up in bed together. Aomine thinks he knows how this will work, but when there are actual emotions at stake he’s probably the one with the least idea what’s going on.
“So.” Daiki flexed his foot and stretched his leg over the length of Seirin’s changing room bench, working the threatening cramp out of his calf. “New school year. Seems like the kind of thing we could stand to celebrate a little.”
Three moments in the developing relationship of Kagami, Aomine, and Kuroko as they all try to find a balance with each other.
Taiga had resisted for a long time, because there was such a thing as going down fighting, but the plain fact was that Aomine was cute when he was snitching food off someone.
Kuroko decides to push Aomine a little further, and offers to spank him for breaking his collar (again). Aomine is perfectly pleased, but Kagami needs a bit more reassurance.
“You know,” Tetsu murmured, fingers stroking over the line of Daiki’s new collar, “sometimes I think you let them break just so I’ll put another on you.”
Daiki looked up at him, relaxed by the feeling of being collared again. “You did say that you would, as often as necessary.”
The corners of Tetsu’s mouth curled up faintly, and he set his fingers under Daiki’s chin, keeping his head tipped back. “I did, and I will. Though I’m starting to wonder if I should punish you, when you break another one, for putting me to the trouble.”
Kagami and Aomine have a quiet moment together–so quiet that Kagami wonders a little how they got to be like this.
One of the things that had come as a surprise to Taiga—and this was saying something considering that he’d never, ever expected to be in a B&D relationship, let alone a threesome of the same—one of the things was that Daiki was a cuddler when they were together.
Kasamatsu and Kise play bed games, and Kise gets the punishment he deserves. (And, more importantly, the spanking he wants.)
Yukio gave him a stern look, setting his fingers under Ryouta’s chin to tip his head up and meet Yukio’s eyes. “What did you do, Ryouta?”
“Well, Hayakawa-senpai was trying to beat his own record for successful passes after a rebound.” Ryouta already sounded a little breathless, eyes wide under Yukio’s steady gaze. “And I just mentioned that maybe it would help if he kept his energy up longer, and that I had a spare bottle of Yunker Fanti. Nakamura-senpai said that really wasn’t the problem, but Hayakawa-senpai had already drunk the whole bottle.”
Four moments when Miyuki actually thinks about his hair, often to keep from thinking about something else.
His mother always combed his hair for school.
Miyuki spends some time contemplating Chris’ hands.
Miyuki Kazuya tended to watch people’s hands. He watched their whole bodies whenever they were throwing, of course, but especially their hands. It was the hands that told you exactly where the ball was going.
Chris finally notices just how much Miyuki has been seeking him out and decides it’s his turn to speak with his actions.
He wasn’t sure whether to kiss Rei-san or curse her for carting him off to Chris’ father’s gym for his physical therapy. He thought there might be discounts involved. Either way, there was Chris involved, and he was very aware of how pathetic it was to want to show off via physical therapy, thank you, he just… couldn’t quite stifle the impulse. He’d never been able to completely stifle that particular impulse, around Chris.
Wako has an epiphany and decides it’s time to break the deadlock between her boys in a way neither of them anticipated.
Was that what they’d have to do, to stay together? Not let anything be romantic or… or anything, between them at all? Because, for all Shinada-senpai teased their schoolmates sometimes, none of those three had ever dated anyone. Certainly not each other.
The drama club is putting on a play with some scenes worth of Wako’s fantasies. Takuto has to work a little to wrap his brain around the whole thing.
“We are the future of the world.” Sugata’s words filled the space, low and intimate. “What do you wish to make of it?” His thumb stroked over Takuto’s lips slowly and Takuto felt his whole face flush hot.
“I… um… The… The world…” Takuto’s hands scrabbled at the wall behind him as Sugata leaned closer. “Help…?” he finished, strangled.
The corners of Sugata’s mouth quivered as he looked at Takuto. One breath, and then two, and he finally lost it, dissolving into helpless laughter.
“Takuto-sama!” Yamasugata-senpai scolded. “If you forget your part, the word is ‘line’, not ‘help’!”
Lin Shu survives, and, with a certain amount of salutary brow-beating, finds a purpose in doing so that moves him to enter the world again, seek out his loved ones, and start walking a meaningful path forward with them.
For a long time, or what might have been a long time, he was afraid he’d failed, each time he woke. He woke weak, groggy, never able to rouse to full awareness, and he knew that sensation from a decade worth of illness, fought stubbornly against it, as he always had, to push his thoughts past the fog to grip on the world again.
This time, though, he could never force himself past the cloudy uncertainness of almost-dreams. And what did that mean, if not failure, to fall ill again before his last task was done?
Lin Shu and Nihuang settle into life at court, in the field, and in Jingyan’s home while Lin Manor is repaired. The rest of the court may need a few stiff drinks to recover from the process, especially once a complex political scandal breaks in the middle of it.
Now Jingyan returned his gaze, steady and serious. “Even though you hoped to be done with being the strategist, after Prince Qi, my brother’s, and Lin’s and Chiyan’s names were restored?”
For a long moment, he was silent, because that had been true. “I did finish with it, though,” he said at last, slowly. “And I returned to my old self, my own world, long enough to die there. I thought that would be the end of it, and I still believe I was right about that. This,” he swept a hand around, at the palace, at the ministers and officials and ladies moving through the halls and gardens, each intent on their own ends and ambitions, and the three of them in the middle of it all, “this is what comes after that end, another new life.” He gave Jingyan a tiny smile. “Now, what I can do, all that I can do, is for you and with you, nothing held back. That’s as it should be, and I have no wish to be done with it.”
Jingrui is finding himself drawn back toward a military position, after fighting at the northern border, and Yujin follows along, as he always has, despite his own reservations. Along the way, the two of them get into trouble, politics, and eventually a deeper understanding.
Very few of Yujin’s reservations had ever held up in face of Jingrui’s smile. Not when they were little and stealing sweets off Aunt Jing’s table (with her amused connivance, Yujin had realized years later); not when they were a little older and Jingrui had dragged Yujin everywhere after their glamorous, if also sometimes alarming, older cousins; not when they’d come of age and Jingrui hauled Yujin out onto the roads to wander the country with that very same smile. He could barely imagine leaving Jingrui’s side, at this point. So there was really nothing else to do but elbow him back until they managed to shove each other into the shallows, laughing.
Their work finally pushes Akai and Furuya together once too often, and Akai forces the issue of what happened to Scotch. In the wake of it, they find in each other some of the understanding they’ve both needed.
"You see so clearly, most times," Akai said, very softly, almost a whisper between them. "Remember what you saw, Furuya-kun. He didn’t do it on his own, no. Think about what he would have seen and heard, up on that roof. Already sure that the Organization would be coming for him, what did he hear right before he shot?"
Yunlan calls bullshit, at the very end, and everything changes, including himself. The SID can probably cope, but the Ministry may never be the same, to say nothing of Dixing.
It wasn’t, Zhao Yunlan thought, anything like what he’d have expected. He didn’t feel any great enlightenment or sudden attack of wisdom. It didn’t feel like a scroll of ages unrolling in his head, or like he was about to burst with the weight of memory. Returning divinity didn’t feel like anything appropriately dramatic, in his opinion. It was just…
He recognized this.
Yunlan calls bullshit, at the very end, and everything changes, including himself. The SID can probably cope, but the Ministry may never be the same, to say nothing of Dixing.
Knocking woke Yunlan up, and it took him a moment to figure out why, when he turned over to bury his head in the pillows, he wound up pressed tight against another body instead. “Ngh?” he asked, squinting at the expanse of chest in front of his nose.
“Do you want me to answer the door to your apartment?” Shen Wei asked, sounding both amused and far too awake.
Imagining the response of any of his team to that, Yunlan winced and pushed up onto his elbows. “I’m awake, I’m awake.”
Yunlan calls bullshit, at the very end, and everything changes, including himself. The SID can probably cope, but the Ministry may never be the same, to say nothing of Dixing.
Yunlan had seen Shen Wei fight and heal, entrance and command, but he’d never seen such delicate shaping as this—though that deep echo inside him felt like it had. Had even seen xiao-Wei play with his strength, perhaps—had coaxed or maneuvered him into it, most likely. Predictably, xiao-Wei looked entirely serious the whole time, as if this little whimsy was nothing but a functional test of control. Someone, at some point, must have convinced him that it was an appropriate test, though, and Yunlan was pretty sure that someone had been him. He gave his past self an approving internal nod.
Yunlan calls bullshit, at the very end, and everything changes, including himself. The SID can probably cope, but the Ministry may never be the same, to say nothing of Dixing.
He dropped Shen Wei off at the university, even though it meant circling back to the SID headquarters, and took away with him the tiny, wicked curl to xiao-Wei’s lips when Yunlan wished him a good day. The thought of xiao-Wei walking through his campus, greeting colleagues and students with a polite smile and trailing shock and disruption in his wake like a more entertaining version of his black cloak got Yunlan through the morning without giving in to the urge to sneak up behind his dreadfully earnest new office staff to see who was paying attention.
Much.
Yunlan calls bullshit, at the very end, and everything changes, including himself. The SID can probably cope, but the Ministry may never be the same, to say nothing of Dixing.
“You were always a morning person, weren’t you?” Yunlan asked from under his pillow, far too early the next morning. Why hadn’t he remembered that sooner?
“Just because we’re not going to the office doesn’t mean we don’t have work to do.” Xiao-Wei’s clear voice and unreasonably firm step approached, and something clinked on the bedside table. “If you’re not up in ten minutes, I’m going by myself.”
Yunlan calls bullshit, at the very end, and everything changes, including himself. The SID can probably cope, but the Ministry may never be the same, to say nothing of Dixing.
He was starting to understand, all the way up in his head, what xiao-Wei meant when he talked about the weight of gods in the world. He could feel the ground singing under his feet, feel the sky like it was something he could reach up and touch, feel the attention of the city’s river like it was alive and listening for his word and would rise if he just spoke.
Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei go apartment hunting.
At first Shen Wei had been amused by Yunlan’s team bringing another box of his belongings to Yunlan’s apartment every time one of them visited, as though he might not notice them moving him in if they just did it gradually enough.
Zhu Hong works on how to be Chief Elder, and falls hard for Ya Qing in the process. (Her uncle may have a point about her terrible taste.)
Zhu Hong had perfected the pout, the winsome look, and the hard fist as tools to make the world go her way, and she knew exactly how to use them. As time went on, and she’d started wanting to be stronger, she’d honed her natural abilities until she could do almost what any of her fully-transformed cousins could. She’d learned human ways so well she could blend in as completely as she wished.
None of that told her the first thing about how to be Chief Elder of the Yashou people.
The SID introduce Dixing to the police as ordinary citizens. The Supervisory Bureau may be having heart attacks in the background.
The first official visitor from Dixing had flown straight past “visitation” to a trial of citizenship, and Zhu Hong personally thought it had been planned to stress-test Minister Guo’s nerves. It would have done hers, too, if she hadn’t already known the whole thing was a put-up. As it was, she stood straight and serious beside the middle-aged police lieutenant who’d been assigned as her oversight partner, and carefully bit back her smirk when the gateway between realms misted into visibility and the man startled back.
“Is that it?” Tan Xiao asked eagerly, from behind them.
“Be patient, Mr. Tan,” she admonished. “She’ll be here in a moment.”
Professor Ouyang’s work isn’t through causing trouble, and everyone finds out why injuring Zhao Yunlan is an extremely bad idea. The Minster finds out a lot of things no one bothered to tell him earlier, and possibly wishes he hadn’t taken the job.
Shen Wei enjoyed the quiet times in his life, the times when he had no miscreants to chase down; when the humans were calm, not indulging in wars of conquest or moving their seat of government again; when his chosen profession had no crises and he could let himself be soothed by completing the small, daily tasks. He enjoyed those times very much, but he didn’t take them for granted.
Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan have a sort-of honeymoon trip, which involves conversations they should probably have had sooner.
It took most of a day to get up into the mountains near Dragon City, and to the currently empty retreat facility the University kept. Shen Wei had been there before, shepherding various classes to and from the biosciences observation center a little further north. It was a fairly familiar area, by now, which meant the wave of nostalgia that hit him as they unpacked the car took him by surprise.
Zhao Xinci invites Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei to dinner and an argument. Predictably, Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei are too busy trying to protect each other to bother about themselves.
“Yunlan?”
Zhao Yunlan looked up from his screen, a little startled. That was Li Huiliang’s voice, and Zhang Shi was usually careful to call him ‘Chief’ at work. “Yeah?” he asked, trying not to sound too obviously wary.
She stopped hovering in the door, at least, and came to hold out a folded sheet of paper. “This came for you. It’s from your father.”
Zhao Yunlan may have finally figured out a way to get Shen Wei to relax completely.
The apartment building was filling up with quiet life as the evening drew on, a little weight in his senses like a stone held in his hand. But not hard like a stone—lives were bright and a little skittery, like sparks on water. Taken together, though, all those little bits became a glare of brightness that flowed and pooled across the plain at the foot of the mountains, themselves a much deeper weight.
Which was actually really disorienting, because Shen Wei, currently wiping down the kitchen counters less than four meters away had almost as much weight in his senses as those mountains.
Some yes-we-are-together smut, immediately after the end.
When they were finally settled in one of the second floor rooms, been assured of fresh blankets, had the virtues of the kitchen extolled to them, and were finally alone in the cool, blue shadows of early evening, Wei Wuxian found himself once again at a loss for what he should be doing. This had not been on his mental road-map at all.
Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi and their growing partnership, before and after canon.
Sizhui had always been fascinated by the collection of Lan writings about the history and disciplines of their clan. They were so varied. Some were chilly and precise, some were zealous, and some, in Sizhui’s opinion, really wanted to go back and be monks and not deal with worldly matters at all. All of them, though, seemed to stumble when they tried to talk about intimacy and passion, and started talking around the details. It was really quite frustrating for a studious young man who just wanted to learn.
Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian return to Cloud Recesses. Lan Qiren is less than pleased, and Lan Wangji makes his first try at wedging open a better place for Wei Wuxian.
Lan Zhan was settling Wei Ying in his rooms when his uncle arrived to speak with him. Lan Zhan was not surprised.
His uncle had never hidden his disapproval of Wei Ying.
The juniors’ fierce defense of Wei Wuxian’s reputation leads Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji to a plan for defending the entire cultivation world. Wei Wuxian decides Nie Huaisang will be the best possible assistant. Nie Huaisang has some suggestions of his own, for this plan.
“…really don’t have to—” Wei Ying was saying, only to be interrupted by Ouyang Zizhen’s voice, full of indignant passion.
“You shouldn’t have to put up with that! It isn’t right! They just… they blame you for everything, Wei-qianbei, and you never did anything but try to keep people safe!”
“Yes, yes, they do,” Wei Ying said in a soothing tone, “but it isn’t like it matters.”
“Wei-qianbei!” Ouyang Zizhen sounded downright scolding, now.
Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi decide it’s time to let Jin Ling know how they feel about him.
Jin Ling’s sword struck a breath later, shattering it, and Sizhui couldn’t help smiling back at the delighted grin Jin Ling gave them as he turned, face bright with uncomplicated happiness that never failed to warm Sizhui almost as much as Jingyi’s rare quiet smiles did.
In that moment, he decided it was time to say something.
Meng Yao is just a little less reticent, and Lan Xichen, very taken with him, offers to arrange for him to stay the summer.
It was fine to take this stolen moment of formal farewell to bask in that warmth, but he shouldn’t mistake it for something personal. No matter how he might wish it were, or how it had seemed it might be, for that one moment during the presentation of gifts when their hands had touched. He couldn’t lower his guard just for that.
Lan Xichen continues tutoring Meng Yao, who eventually does realize that Lan Xichen is actually interested in him. Eventually.
Meng Yao hadn’t directly answered, when Lan Xichen had asked him if he enjoyed scholarship, largely because at the time, the answer would have been no. As the summer progressed, though, he thought his answer was changing. Or more precisely, that he was learning what scholarship actually was.
Meng Yao and Lan Xichen are courting. Nie Huaisang is very entertained. Lan Wangji is more dubious about the whole matter.
After Chang Yun was ejected in disgrace from the Lan summer lectures, whispers about Meng Yao had hushed, for the first time in his entire life. It was a little stunning, to be able to walk abroad without careful calculation of dangers and politics and how deferential he had to be to whom.
Political violence erupts, and Meng Yao and Lan Xichen find each other through it.
There was a strain of extremism, in Lan. Lan cultivators, especially the ones of Lan clan blood, were rarely capable of half-measures. When they chose a path, they chose with their whole hearts and never looked back. Mingjue had seen it in Xichen’s father’s choice of wife. He’d seen it in Lan Qiren’s choice of the Lan Discipline above all else. He’d seen it in Xichen’s own choice to follow the path of compassion, from which he would not budge for all his uncle’s strictness or Mingjue’s own efforts to get him to consider practicalities now and then.
He’d seen the very same thing surface in Meng Yao’s eyes, like a dragon rising from the still surface of the sea, when he’d heard Xichen might have been harmed.
Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue prepare for war, Meng Yao builds his spy network, and Nie Huaisang demonstrates his skills. When Lotus Pier falls, Jiang Yanli joins them and, in face of Jin Guangshan, gives Meng Yao his first lesson in poise.
Meng Yao laid his brush aside and sat back from his writing table, scrubbing his hands over his face. Plans to get the hostages out of Wen hands were going slowly. He was developing a remarkable information network among the lower servants; apparently the Wen were nearly as brutal to their own menials as they were to the other sects. But the very brutality that made people so willing to pass on information also made people fear taking action to cross their masters.
