lifetaker.

two or three weeks ago, i don’t even remember but doesn’t matter, my older brother tested positive for covid. he has bruton’s disease, a genetic immunodeficiency disorder, so it’s even harder for him to recover but still. my family and i have tried to remain hopeful. been spending most of my free time videocalling him since i’m not allowed to visit.

thought things were doing okay but things got a whole lot worse early this morning. i won’t go into the details of it but basically, we don’t think he’s gonna make it to the end of next week.

idk how to cope with loss, especially the loss of my older brother who is also my best friend. all i can say is fuck this pandemic and fuck the people that are the reason it’s lasted this long.

content warning : pda, negative thought patterns

Xiao’s infatuation is not a slow boil. His heartbreak is.

It’s a realization that had dawned on him months ago. He vowed to himself to keep it tucked away, on the backburner left to simmer. To worry about an uncertain future would be to neglect the demands of the present, is what he told himself. He had believed it. He had been pretty convincing back then.

Then, last week…November 20.

She hates that it is a gorgeous floral arrangement, not her Wanmin takeout order, that greets her when she answers the door.

She hates the inner knowing of who sent them … or rather, who bid her apartment a physical visit only to hurry away quickly thereafter.

She doubly hates how happy? relieved? she is that they still think of her — perhaps even as much as she still thinks of them.

Keqing leans forth to pluck the bouquet from where it lay, cursing herself for the way her hand trembled upon grazing its (freshly-trimmed) stems. Both of her arms are full once she’s claimed the bouquet in its entirety … too full, in fact. 

Inwardly, Keqing would admit that she’s impressed on account of three dozen or so flowers being as weighty as they are. She examines this thought several times over as she shimmies, slowly but surely, back into her apartment.

It is then — and only then — that the bouquet is suddenly feather light in her grasp. What weighs her down more, in that moment, is the descent of her whole heart — the heavy pitter patter she’s roused by as it drops to her stomach. Why this? Why now? Why? Why, why why, why?

She lodges herself in the crevasse separating her front door from the partition beside it. Lurching forward, her arms relinquish their hold of the bouquet. It falls, but unlike her heart, lands gently — harmlessly — on the floor she’s standing on.

A scowl unwittingly curls on Keqing’s lips at the sight. Pristinely picked qingxin flowers return her stare, but mockingly so. Still posed in a squat, her newly-empty hands settle atop her kneecaps, aiming to steady her as she crouches lower.

Then, her lips part, breath hot in her throat as she says, “I hate you.” She says it again and again … one, two, three, eight more times. Her throat is scorched earth by the time the words become clumsy and muddled on her tongue.

Keqing had omitted a word, and an important one at that. 

I WANT to hate you. 

Want. To do so is not something to be taken lightly. Something in her chest stirs, asserting that she remain keen-eyed and ravenous — that she pursue this “want” and turn it into a “reality”.

An ironic chuckle catches in her throat. The warmth pervading it dissipates, though at a cost —

— To her dismay, tears had begun to leak from her eyes. They stream down her face, dribble down her chin, and either stained her sweatshirt or pooled at her collarbone. 

When her squat form falters and she collapses onto the floor, her tears follow suit. They now graze her thighs, her shorts, her knees … the flower bouquet she’d inadvertently crushed upon falling.

It’s the panic that strikes her at this revelation — the looming fact that she’d ruined their gift — that ultimately humbles her. Quavering hands slam themselves against the floor, scouring their vicinity for leaves and thorns and qingxins, qingxins, qingxins …

I (don’t) want to hate you.

I want you.

I (still) want you.

Keqing’s fingers seize a singular qixing, unblemished by her fall. She coasts a thumb over its silken petals and is, all of a sudden, brought back to scaling cliffs, back to laughter imbuing cool mountain air, back to half-smiles and stolen glances, back to golden hour and eyes more gold than that, her name voiced in a kind whisper, her fingertips skimming coarseness and cuts and callouses, her fingertips marveling at the surprisingly gentle grasp they meet halfway …

She brings the qingxin to her lips and shuts her eyes.

I want you (to come back for me). I want you (to stay).

                     tell me something sweet to get me by .

independent & mutually exclusive ganyu from genshin impact * adored by amelia !