#flamingwell

a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Lan Wangji does not intentionally go looking for Wei Ying, he simply finds himself unable to sleep despite the late hour, but when he finds him sitting on the edge of one of the many piers for which Lotus Pier is named, he can't bring himself to look away either.

Wei Ying's not wearing any robes, his shirt loose and ruffled and his pants rolled up to the knee so he can dip his feet in the pond. He looks up at his approach and his face lights up in a smile. Every time he sees Wei Ying's smile, it becomes a little easier to breathe. "Lan Zhan! What are you doing up?"

"I could ask you the same thing," he returns, sitting next to him, although he keeps his feet out of the water.

He sighs and rolls his head across his shoulders until he's looking up at the sky. Lan Wangji follows his gaze. The moon is only half full, but the stars are bright. "Just thinking. What a mess, you know? Shijie and I knew running away would have consequences, but we didn't think it'd be these ones. They weren't supposed to think we were actually dead."

I was, he thinks, and doesn't say. Letters were supposedly sent to Jin Zixuan and Jiang Cheng but not to him. Which, of course not, why would they be? Jin Zixuan is Jiang Yanli's husband and Jiang Cheng is their brother. Lan Wangji is just a friend, at best, and nothing more.

Even if their letters had gotten through, Lan Wangji would have still spent all this time believing Wei Ying dead.

"We left Jiang Cheng alone," Wei Ying says miserably, pulling a leg up from the pond so he can wrap his arms around it. He knows Wei Ying is powerful enough to bring the major sects to their knees, but right now he looks like a wayward junior. "He doesn't do well alone."

"You're back now," he says because it's all he has. Even knowing that Wei Ying survived that fall, he can't quite get rid of over a decade's worth of hatred and resentment all at once. "He's not alone anymore."

Wei Ying rests his cheek on his knee, turned towards him. "He knows that. He doesn't believe it."

"Give him time," Lan Wangji advises and can't help the way his heart flips over in his chest. Time. They have time.

He sighs, but slumps over in a way where his shoulder brushes against his. Lan Wangji leans into it, holding his breath, but Wei Ying doesn't pull away.

He's breathing the same air as Wei Ying. They're speaking, he can feel the warmth of him against his side, his worst nightmare has come to an end.

you absolutely can ask about more than one!!! i talked about 1 here with hidey if you'd like to see that <3

9. fei du vs blood phobia vs saving the love of his life is an admittedly silly temporary title for my fic where i really just wanted torment fei du some more (terrible i know)

basically its about how things might go if lwz was injured and bleeding out and fei du is the only one around to prevent him from dying until help arrives and what that would be like for him to have to fight to stay both conscious and functional enough to help while covered in lwz's blood. this is admittedly similar to that one scene fei du had with the zhou brothers but iiiiii wanted to make it worse akdnsjdnfj so this time instead of it being someone he's sorta(?) friends with why not have it be his husband! especially since the last time this happened it ended badly and they were right outside the hospital then! not further out somewhere else. alone like they are now. where so many more things could go wrong.

evil i know. im sorry in advance for the torment i intend to inflict on people through this story and others. i simply enjoy doing this akdbdj

thanks for asking!!

a continuation of 1 2

They keep searching, but they don't find anyone else, so they figure it's just the five of them. Sam's relieved. He knows these people better than most of the other psychic kids and it means both that he's a lot more comfortable with trusting them and that he'll have a better chance of noticing if they start contemplating betrayal.

Ansem, as unhinged as he can be, is probably their biggest asset here. Azazel has already clawed into his mind and turned him into a murderer and Ansem's overcome that. Plus, he'd never hurt Andy, and Andy would literally die before hurting someone else. Ava, as twisted up as she is after the past few months, won't try and kill them unless she has to. Jake's killed before, but he doesn't like being pushed around, he hates Azazel, and he likes them. It's not perfect, but it's workable. Survivable.

"What's the end game here?" he asks Ava. "Are we entertainment? Seems like a lot of trouble for all that."

"Winner takes all," Ava says in a cadence that doesn't sound like her own, then she shrugs. "Whatever that means."

"I don't want it," Andy says. "All what? Blood? Bodies? Souls? Demons never have anything fun! Like puppies!"

Jake lifts his gaze to the sky. "You know, maybe I am feeling a little homicidal."

"I mean, we all always feel a little homicidal," Ansem says. He pauses as they all turn to look at him. "Right?"

"No, Ansem," they all say.

Ansem looks put out until Andy pats his shoulder.

~

Lily smiles when she sees her and waves with her gloved hand. Scott's got an arm around her shoulder and is careful to guide her through the crowd. She's gotten pretty good at controlling it and it doesn't work on the other pyschic kids anyway (Jess tries not to think too long about how they found that out), but they can't be too careful.

Lily takes the spot up front and Scott's in the back. "Did they show up?"

"Yeah," she says, nervous and jittery. "They're both back at our place, looking over our notes. I can't really get a read on them."

"I'm not really very good at mind reading," Lily says apologetically, then brightens. "Oh, speaking of, Ansem and Andy are missing!"

"Why are you happy about that?" she asks, glancing away from the road.

"They're probably with Sam, right?" Scott asks. "Hopefully."

Hopefully. "Anyone else?"

Lily shakes her head. "Not that we can verify. Jake hasn't replied, but he's in an active war zone, and neither has Rita, but she never checks her phone, so. We'll probably hear back from Jake sooner than we will her."

"Are the hunters going to try and kill us?" Scott asks.

She lets out a harsh breath. "Probably not? Sorry."

"It's okay," Lily says, hesitating before carefully setting her gloved hand on Jess's shoulder. "We're going to figure this out. Sam will be home in no time."

I feel like I hear much more often from people who knew me from mcu fandom and then moved into mdzs, but this particular course even more delightful to me. also seems right, (semi-)siblings fucked up about each other forever

a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Lan Xichen almost doesn't ask. The particulars aren't particularly important. The facts are that Wei Wuxian, after thirteen years gone, is here and walking and talking and chatting next to him about how much things have changed in Lotus Pier since he's been gone and he knows that the heavy, bitter grief that has hung over Wangji like a preemptive burial shroud is finally going to lift.

However, he can't help but be curious. "I can't help but notice, if you don't mind me asking, that you no longer seem to be deceased."

"Oh!" Wei Wuxian waves a dismissive hand. "I wasn't ever really, A-jie and I were just laying low."

A-jie? He can't possibly -

"A-Xian!" They both turn and Jiang Yanli is standing there, hands on her hips. Jin Zixuan is next to her, looking besotted and uninterested in anything else happening around him. "We said no outsiders!"

a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

When Lan Xichen hears that the juniors' night hunt that his brother was supervising hasn't arrived back when expected, he's mostly unconcerned. There are very few things that Wangji is unable to handle on his own and he assumes there's some sort of benign, logical explanation for the delay.

When he hears that they've spent the past couple days at Lotus Pier, that peace is instantly broken.

Jiang Cheng is not inhospitable to his brother, exactly - he mostly leaves that to Li Shichuan - but their mutual hatred means they spend as little time as possible in the other's presence. While a night hunt headed by any other senior could have multiple explanations for why they might choose to stay at Lotus Pier, for Lan Wangji to do so must mean something dire. He has to hope that if his brother were grievously injured or ill, the Jiang would send notice to him, if only to get him out of their keeping, but perhaps they're preoccupied or -

It does him no good to speculate. He can get to Lotus Pier faster than correspondence can get there and back, so he'll just see for himself.

Seeing guards at Lotus Pier's entrance where there usually aren't any doesn't do anything to east his anxiety, especially when they refuse to let him enter.

"We cannot allow any foreign disciples entrance without Sect Leader Jiang or Sect Heir Li's permission," she says, less patiently than she'd said it ten minutes ago. "We apologize for the inconvenience, Sect Leader Lan."

"My brother's in there," he begins, frustrated.

"We are not at liberty to discuss the goings on of Lotus Pier with foreign disciples at this time," she interrupts.

He's really very close to losing his temper. He and Jiang Cheng get along well enough, but certainly not well enough for him to forgive him trespass without a very good reason, which unfortunately he doesn't think this qualifies. If only he could -

"Aw, don't be like that," says a familiar voice that he hasn't heard for thirteen years as a lean man that he would have sworn was dead bounds up to them, a large grin on his face as he throws his arm around the Jiang disciple's shoulders. "It's okay, Lan Xichen, I'll walk you in."

The disciple sighs deeply. "Senior Brother Wei may also grant permission for foreign disciples to enter Lotus Pier."

a continuation of 1

Dean's just getting off from a salt and burn when he gets a call from an unknown number and almost doesn’t answer it. He needs bed and a shower and not in that order, but you can never know in this profession, so he rubs a hand over his face and says, “Hey.”

There’s a girl and she’s crying and that’s already waking him up when she says, “Dean?”

“That’s me, sweetheart,” he says, not recognizing her voice. He’ll figure out how she got his number later. “You okay?”

She takes a steadying breath. “Sam’s in trouble and I need your help.”

His blood goes cold. Sam. His little brother who he hasn’t spoken to in five years.

She won’t get into specifics, only gives him an address in San Francisco and tells him to get there as fast as he can. He curses down the line and she just hangs up on him. He almost calls her back, but he figures the fastest way to get some answers is to get his ass over there like she told him too.

But first, he has to call Dad.

John not the most reliable form of backup, Dean’s been hunting mostly on his own for years, and at least half the time Dean says that he could use a hand, he gets brushed off, but Dad will come this time.

He’ll come for Sam.

~

The smoking hot blonde who answers the door is tall and steel eyed and has an engagement ring and wedding band on her left hand which Dean doesn’t think much about until she’s looking them head on and says, “Dean, John. I’m Jessica Winchester. We need to find Sam.”

Even Dad – grim and closed mouth with an edge of fury to him that Dean hasn’t seen since Flagstaff – goes blank, staring at her in shock. Dean doesn’t know what his own face is doing.

“Come on,” she says, nudging the door open further. “Anything could be happening to him right now.”

“Wait,” he says. “You’re-”

“Sam and I got married last year,” she says. “We don’t have time for this. Azazel has Sam.”

“Who’s Azazel?” he asks, following her inside. It’s a nice apartment, decent, full of shit like throw pillows and matching dishes and all the things Sam used to crave so badly. The kitchen table is piled with books and papers, thick tomes the likes of which he’s used to seeing at Bobby’s and nowhere else. How did she pull this all together so quickly? She only called him seven hours ago and most of that was the middle of the night.

Unless they already had it. But that doesn’t make sense. Sammy left them, left hunting, why would he –

Jessica rolls her eyes. They’re red, but it seems she’s moved on from the tears to militant determination, but Dean’s still reeling. “The yellow eyed demon.”

Dad goes completely still.

“The what?” he asks.

“The thing that killed your mom,” she says impatiently.

He’s barely processed that when Dad says, “You found it.”

“We found the other kids it targeted,” she says, eyes and voice going colder than when she’d just been speaking to him. “Sam started getting visions a couple years ago and we found a couple of the other psychic kids and then some more. A few months ago they started going missing and we haven’t found any of them. It’s always sulphur and anyone in the same room left for dead. It’s Azazel. He was taking them and now he’s taken Sam and I can’t do this on my own so I called you.” She glares at both of them. “Don’t make me regret it.”

~

Sam wakes up alone in an abandoned town with a splitting headache. Jess is nowhere that he can see, which is good, he thinks. His phone is dead and he’s thinking it’s some sort of ghost or something until he literally walks into Andy.

“Sam!” he says in relief, gripping onto his sleeve. “Oh man, am I happy to see you!”

Ansem, who Sam still thinks isn’t quite sane most days, snorts and crosses his arms. “Yeah, are you? Because if we’re here and Sam’s here that means we’ve probably been taken like all the others. That we haven’t been able to find and have never heard from again.”

Andy wilts. “Oh, right.”

“Come on,” Sam says. “How’s your–”

“Not as good as yours,” Andy says. Ansem frowns. “It’s not and you know it. We all have our specialties for a reason.”

That’s fine. They’re going to figure this out. Jess must have noticed him missing by now and she’ll be looking for him. He doesn’t think about how they’ve been looking for the others for months with no luck.

They hear a scream and they’re running towards it. There’s someone trapped in what looks like an old outhouse, pounding on the door so hard it rattles. Sam doesn’t even think about it, he makes a yanking motion with his hand so the door flies off the hinges and out tumbles Ava.

Who’s been missing for months.

She stumbles out, breathing in air greedily, but she’s already backing away from them, shaking her head, her hands held out. “Don’t make me – I’ll do it, I’ve done it before, but I won’t, not if you don’t make me – please don’t make me–”

“AVA!” he shouts, reaching out for her. She shoves him back, or tries to, but his telekinesis is a lot stronger than hers and there’s nothing she can do to stop him from striding forward and grabbing her shoulders.

She’s struggling against him, nails digging into his arms. “I’ll do it, don’t make me do it, I don’t want to, but I will, I will I will I will!”

He shakes her. “AVA! Stop, calm down. It’s Sam. You’re okay. It’s okay.”

She stops, finally raising her head enough to look at him. There’s something crazed and desperate about her that wasn’t there when he saw her last. She was scared like they were all scared, but she wasn’t like this. “They always say that in the beginning and then they make me do it.”

“Do what, Ava?” he asks, trying to keep his grip form being bruising now that she’s not fighting against him.

Her eyes fill with tears and she whispers, “Kill them.”

He hears Andy go, “Woah, holy shit,” behind him and then the sound of Ansem hitting him.

“No one is killing anyone,” he says firmly. “I’m not killing you and you’re not killing me. Okay?”

“I don’t like it,” she says intensely. “I don’t want to do it anymore.”

“Ava,” he says, ducking down so she has no choice but to look him in the eye. “You don’t have to, okay? If something, who is not one of us, needs killing, then I’ll do it.”

“I can help too,” Ansem says. Then, “Ow!” as Andy steps on his foot.

Her face softens into something that’s finally familiar and her lips twitch up. She leans around Sam and says, “Hi guys.”

“Hi Ava,” they say in unison.

Sam’s starting to get why Dad was always creeped out by him and Dean doing that. “What’s going on? Are you okay? We’ve been looking for you.”

“We thought you were dead,” Ansem says.

Andy adds, “But we’re really glad you’re not!”  

Jesus.

Ava swallows. “They show up in groups. Some we knew, some we didn’t. Sometimes everyone gets along and agrees to work together. Sometimes the backstabbing starts quickly. Azazel is here and if people aren’t killing each other quickly enough, he whispers to them, manipulates them, turns us against each other.”

“Been there, done that,” Ansem says.

Ava doesn’t so much as twitch. “Until it’s just me and them and no one will listen to me, Sam, they keep not listening, until it’s me or them and I don’t want to do it, but I don’t want to die, I really don’t want to die. So I kill them and then it’s just me and then I wake up trapped again until someone gets me out.” Her voice drops. “No matter what I do, I can never get myself out.”

“It’s okay,” he says, even though he feels sick. Of all the possibilities they’d considered, this wasn’t one of them. “We’re going to stick together and figure this out. We’ll get out of here.” He pauses. “Where is here?”

“If you try and walk out, the demons stop you. Some die that way,” she says. “I don’t know. It’s been weeks and it’s already getting warmer, so I’d say somewhere in the middle of America? But everything here is old and no one's phones ever have any service.”

Okay, that’s all bad news, but, “Weeks? Ava, it’s May. You’ve been missing since February.”

She stares, yanking on the edge of her shirt anxiously. “What? No. That can’t – that can’t be right. The days sort blur, but it can’t be – that’s not possible. It hasn’t been that long.”

“When you’re the last one, you just wake up to it starting all over again, right?” Ansem asks. “People haven’t been disappearing all at once. Not the ones we know about, anyway.”

“What? You think Azazel is putting me in some sort of – that he’s just keeping me on ice or something in between,” she cuts herself off, fine tremors in her hands.

Sam hugs her, folding her against him and digging his chin into the top of her head, just like he hugged her the first time she had a panic attack in her kitchen. As if Azazel bleeding in all their mouths as babies wasn’t bad enough, he’s now put Ava through actual hell, turning her into something she never wanted to be and doing who knows what with her body in between. The comforting platitudes are starting to sound false, even though he means them, so he just holds her and lets her cry herself out.

Eventually she gently pushes away from him and rubs her sleeve over her eyes. “Sorry. I – sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he says gently. “You’re my friend. We’re going to get out of this together. I’m sorry I wasn’t there before, but I’m here now, okay?”

Her eyes are red and her face is swollen and this time when she smiles, he almost recognizes her. “Okay.”

“Uh,” Andy says nervously, stepping behind Sam and dragging Ansem with him. “We’ve got company.”

He turns and sees someone’s just turned a corner at the other end of the street with his back to them and he’s halfway to pushing Ava towards Andy when he gets close enough for Sam to recognize. His shoulders slump and he shouts, “JAKE! Hey!”

Jake pauses, turning towards them and a grin breaking out across his face as he jogs in their direction. “What the hell? I was in Afghanistan, man.”

“Have fun explaining this to your CO,” he says. If they make it out of here alive.

~

Jess doesn’t know if she’s done the right thing by calling Dean.

It wouldn’t be so bad if John wasn’t here, she doesn’t think, but she’d known better than wasting her breath trying to convince him not to call him. But Sam’s said over and over again that his father’s a good hunter, a good tracker, and they need that right now.

They’ve been losing people, one after another, and it felt like a noose tightening around their necks. And now Sam’s missing and what they’d been doing hadn’t been working so she’d done something else.

He’s still alive. He has to be.

Please let him still be alive. She can’t do this on her own.

“We have to leave for the airport in an hour to pick some people up,” she says. “Lily and Scott’s planes are landing about forty minutes apart.”

“Who’re are they?” John asks.

She swallows down something biting. “Lily can stop hearts and Scott electrocutes things. They’re friends and they’re going to help.”

John’s lips press together but he doesn’t say anything. Dean looks like he’s waiting for a punchline, but it’s no joke.

They’d kept everyone apart before, thinking it would just cause Azazel to take them all together, but that hadn’t done shit and now Sam is gone.

Neither Lily nor Scott had even hesitated. They’d been scared and desperate and confused when she and Sam had met them, like so many of the others, and Sam had been comforting and kind and told them that they weren’t alone, he’d been the one to help them figure out their powers and the one they called when they had nightmares and now he’s gone.

Jess doesn’t know what she’s going to do if they do find Azazel, but she knows she’ll feel a lot better about it with two powerful psychics on their side.

John is stone faced as he looks over their research, but he hadn’t been all that surprised, just like Sam had expected. Dean is still in shock and she’s not even sure which part is throwing him the most – Azazel, Sam being psychic, or that he has a sister-in-law that he’s never met.

They hadn’t had groomsmen or bridesmaids at their wedding. Even after four years of silence, Sam hadn’t felt right about anything else and Jess hadn’t pushed. It kept costs down, at any rate.

He’d been convinced that John and Dean would care more about Sam having Azazel’s blood than theirs. She doesn’t tell them that part, doesn’t tell them anything she doesn’t have to, but she wonders at it, that Sam could both be that convinced they’d hate him for something he couldn’t help and love them that deeply.

Based on the stories, she’d believed it more easily of John than Dean, but she doesn’t know either of them. Not really.

a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Eventually, the sun sets and the adrenaline wears off and they all go to their separate rooms.

Jiang Cheng lies in his bed, staring at the ceiling, and feels more tired than he has in a long time. He's exhausted, body and soul, down to the deepest parts of himself. He craves the sweet oblivion of sleep like he's craved little else in his lifetime.

He can't bring himself to close his eyes.

It's real, he knows it, his siblings and nephews in his home and sleeping safe and sound. He hasn't gone crazy, everyone saw them, his disciples and the Lan and the Jin. It's true and real, the only thing he's wanted for the past thirteen years is in his grasp and under his roof.

It feels like a dream. If he falls asleep, maybe he'll wake up to it all gone again. He might go crazy then. He barely survived losing them the first time. He can't do it again.

There's a knock against his door in a familiar pattern that he hasn't heard since before the war.

His throat is too tight to say anything, but like always he doesn't bother to wait for permission. Wei Wuxian slides the door open and then closed, tiptoeing inside and hovering over Jiang Cheng's bed. "Are you sleeping?"

"I'm not now," he says, injecting as much irritation in his tone as he can muster, as if he wasn't lying awake anyway. "What's wrong?"

He shrugs, scuffing his foot against the floor. He's not wearing boots, just in socks and his underrobe he wears for sleeping. "I haven't had my own room in a while. I can't sleep. I didn't want to disturb the kids, and I really didn't want to disturb Shijie."

They make identical disgusted faces at that and Jiang Cheng feels something break and reset inside him, like a bone that healed wrong and is just now back in its proper place. It hurts, but it's better. "So you came to disturb me instead?"

"Yeah," Wei Wuxian says, unrepentant, then drops down to shove him to the other side of the bed. "Come on, share with me."

"Knock it off!" he snaps even as he obligingly moves to the side. "You're being ridiculous. You're not a kid."

"You're being ridiculous," he snaps back, wiggling beneath his blankets and elbowing him in the ribs. Jiang Cheng is going to smother him with his pillow. "Go back to sleep. You won't even notice I'm here."

"Yeah, right," he retorts, but turns over, putting his back to him.