#jaimeblue

Reality is Overrated: (Gen with very minor NHS/OMC) I think this is the posted fic I'm proudest of. It's a "stuck in a dream" fic where Nie Huaisang wakes up with his family alive all around him and the news that he had an accident which explains why he has lost some memories. The only person who sees anything wrong is Jin Zixun, who keeps trying to tell him that none of it is real. This was from a MDZS Kink Meme Prompt (issued by Fortune_Maiden!) asking for a fic inspired by the Superman comic plotline of "For The Man Who Has Everything" that just took over my brain, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out, down to the ending which hadn't been part of the original plotting but just brought the story around to a satisfying end.

The Nie Sect Murder Tortoises Series: (some Gen, some SangYao, other pairings occasionally) This started out with a crack fic about Nie Huaisang domesticating the Tortoise of Slaughter in Qishan, and turned into a whole universe unto itself. It even has lore, art, and a fic written by another author (Fortune_Maiden - my conversation with her about NHS and spiritual tortoises was what inspired the idea in the first place). This is probably what's been read most of anything I've done, so you are welcome to join us all in the murder tortoise crackiness!

Winning the Game: (Gen, but with minor NHS/OMC content and a torture scene) This was my answer to the question "What happened to Nie Huaisang after he passed out at the indoctrination camp in The Untamed?" It's angsty, hurt/comfort, but also something I'm terribly proud of. NHS is a survivor and often underestimated, and these are on full display in this fic.

Nothing Mutt-ers As Much As You: (Gen, Jin Ling & Jiang Cheng) Short and sweet fic about JC being caught asleep in a pile of puppies, but it's a great, tender moment between nephew and uncle, a relationship I adore and frankly should write more of (but damn I don't write post-canon much).

And the rise to the top is a fall from below: (can be read as either Gen or SangYao) I love unconventional takes on tropes, so in this one I did a take on the soulmate AU with Nie Huaisang & Jin Guangyao as soulmates. NHS discovers JGY is his soulmate when he fails at killing him, because in this au, a person is physically incapable of killing their soulmate, and the story is an example of the entwined love and hate that make NHS and JGY such wonderful compelling characters to play off of each other. I really do love them even when I torture them so!

The Good, The Bad, and the Dirty: (mostly Gen with minor NHS/NZH) Bodyswap shenanigans! NHS, JGY, NMJ, and LXC all wake up in different bodies and have to figure out what happened, what to do about it, and how to not let anyone in on the fact that they aren't who they say they are. I had so much fun writing this! But if there's one thing to read it for, it's the scene with NMJ trying to pass as JGY in Koi Tower. It was my FAVOURITE scene to write and was so satisfying!!!!

Trouble is My Business: (SangCheng) The San Francisco Prohibition era AU that nobody asked for but I gave them anyway. I got to learn a little about SF Chinatown, dust off my love for the music and general atmosphere of the era, and got to write my fav couple in the middle of it all. What more could I ask for?

A Miracle Engulfed in Flames: (SangCheng - Explicit) This is the fic I wrote for the Reverse Big Bang in partnership with Mikoiifish, an amazing artist that I worked so well with, I've commissioned her to create images for another project. This story is an au with major fantasy/fairy-tale elements and I had to wrack my brain a few times to get the lore just right and the causes and effects of things, and I think the final product is something I'm quite proud of :D And of course Mikoiifish's art is AMAZING. Open the link for that alone!

They Can Love Me Better: (Nie Huaisang/Jiang Cheng/Qin Su revenge triad) JGY gets his comeuppance by the three people he'd least suspect. It all started with some wonderful people on Tumblr putting forward the SangChengSu agenda, and I've happily subscribed to it and written it twice (with at least one more to come). It just turned out to be such a great scene showing the dynamics of the three, and the sexiness of them (nothing graphic, but you can feel the heat between them), all written from JGY's pov as he gets owned. Yeah, this was a fun one :D

They Get Around: (NHS/multi, LQY/multi) Okay, this is a little fic I wrote that not many have read but I love the hell out of it! It was an experiment in writing mostly through dialogue (dialogue in general is one of my strengths and something I love to write), so by a certain point you're identifying the characters by the way they talk and how they address each other (e.g. only Wei Wuxian calls Nie Huaisang "Nie-xiong"), but even more, it was a humorous take on many of my favourite ships. The idea is that it's a modern day au where NHS & LQY are friends having bad luck in love, and set each other up on blind dates with people found for them online. Nothing graphic, pure fun, and I love how it turned out.

Lover, Please Stay: (NHS/LWJ) This I wrote for the MDZS Mixtape Exchange 2022. The song I was given was AMAZING and really inspired me, and I think the story came out well to bring out some of the lyrics and emotions in the song. The idea is that after WWX's death and LWJ's beating at the hands of the Lan Elders, he goes to Qinghe to heal and NHS becomes his caretaker. The road to love isn't always clear-cut, particularly when you know the other person's heart already belongs to someone, but sometimes things actually do work out in the end.

I'll Carry Your Load: (NHS/NZH - Explicit) 5 Times Nie Zonghui carried Nie Huaisang's Saber (and 1+1 time Huaisang did the carrying). This was a passion project of mine, and involved more than a bit of emotion at the end - it's basically the course of NHS & NZH falling in love with each other through tales of NZH carrying NHS' saber - very much inspired by the scene in Fatal Journey where the Nie are being attacked outside the saber tomb and NHS just reaches over and takes one of NZH's twin sabers as if he'd done it a million times before. I love SangHui to pieces! But yeah, be prepared for potential tears.

When Fate Opens a Window, Let Us Fly Through It: (NieLan with mischievous baby bros) A take on the Lan Ribbon Marriage trope with NMJ waking up bound with LXC 'by accident'. The Nie and the Lan are so much fun to write together, and damn it, NMJ deserves some happiness!!!

A Night at the Purple Peony: (NHS/Surprise - Explicit) One of my FAVOURITE fics I've written because not only did I have so much fun writing it, but the surprise pairing has become a HUGE guilty pleasure of mine and I've written often since. So yeah :D The plot is that NHS is in the mundane world at a gay club he's been told about, a place where men can go to meet one another in private. He and many others are masked, and he has an intimate night with one... and one day discovers that man is someone he knows in the Jianghu. I'm particuarly proud of the fan dancing seduction scene ;)

I Will Never be Satisfied: (Yu Ziyuan/Multiple - Explicit) The Yu Ziyuan gets gangbanged fic that one person on the Kink Meme asked for and I had a fun time writing. No higher meaning, just sex, but I'm pretty damned pleased with how it turned out :D

Would I Spend Forever Here and Not Be Satisfied: (NHS/OFC - Explicit, NonCon, Necrophilia) In a strange way, this fic is me in a nutshell. I saw a prompt and got an idea for it, and in the process of writing what was supposed to be an excuse to write a necrophilia scene, I created LORE and questions about right/wrong, the needs of the many vs the needs of the one, complete with NHS' innate desire for vengeance. And it's good! (At least I think so.)

~*~*~*~

It is said that when a cultivator develops their golden core, they are better attuned to the forces in the world. They grow the ability to control the powers of nature to enhance their fighting skills, and some can even use it to divine the future. One of the more interesting side-effects is that a golden core can help its owner to feel the threads connecting them to the ones they love, and in very rare cases, give them a hint to the identity of the one to whom they hold the greatest connection, their soulmate.

And thus a few things are known among cultivators about this unique phenomenon. The hint will not begin to show until the cultivator begins to develop their core, and will only grow as the core grows. The hint may be anything, word or image, and may appear differently on each soulmate as it may act as a compass to find the other. And finally, the golden core's attunement to the thread between soulmates will prevent one from killing the other.

In the end, it is up to the soulmates to find one another, and to decide whether they wish to find each other, to remain together, or to abandon the other to fate.

~*~*~*~

While Nie Huaisang was a romantic at heart, he had never particularly cared for the idea of soulmates. The stories that caused his heart to race were those of star-crossed lovers, defeating the odds to spend but a moment in each other's arms before they are torn apart by circumstance or death. Soulmates seemed to be a rather boring concept, the idea of a lover being pre-determined by fate rather than one loved despite it, and thus was not enough of a motivation for him to develop his golden core any further. Da-ge had tried using it as a tactic once, believing that if self-defence and honouring their ancestors wasn't enough to get Huaisang to practice his saber, then the idea of finding his soulmate would work where other arguments had failed. He had been disappointed when that tactic had failed as well, and Huaisang continued as he preferred, staying uninvolved in sect politics, feeding his birds, and painting canvases with the beauty in the world around him.

All thoughts of soulmates fled his mind until a day long after his brother had died. Months of anger and mourning had consumed him, particularly after the realization that his brother had died by no accident but by the machinations of someone Huaisang had cared for, a man close as a brother. But the red veil over his eyes eventually faded, giving him purpose anew. He needed to avenge his brother, to kill the man who had dared take Chifeng-Zun out of this world, working from the shadows rather than challenging him to combat like an honourable warrior would. He was determined to do it, to kill Jin Guangyao (no longer Meng Yao, no longer the sweet man who had braided Huaisang's hair and kissed his forehead whenever he had been upset by an argument with Da-ge).

He had decided to use poison – if Jin Guangyao could strike from the shadows, then it was only right that Huaisang return the favour. He had sat in his room at Koi Tower, there for a visit with his San-ge, waiting for him to arrive and share a drink of wine before bed. He had sat with the glass before him, hand tilting the vial of poison to place a few drops in the bottom of the glass...

But his hand would no longer move.

Confused, he kept trying, determined to be the instrument of Jin Guangyao's demise, and yet his hand refused to obey him. When the knock had come on the door, he had used his best acting skills to hide the vial and welcome in his nemesis, pretending his affection for the man remained steadfast despite the knowledge of what he had taken from Huaisang. Jin Guangyao had left him after the bottle was finished, kissing him on the forehead as if he were fifteen again, and once the door had closed, Huaisang cried out his helplessness into his pillow until he fell into a fitful sleep.

The next morning when he bathed, trying to wash away the tears and disappointment of the night before, his hands ran over a patch of discoloured skin on his right thigh that had appeared sometime after he had begun cultivating a golden core and refused to go away, no matter what ointment he used. He looked at it now, instinctively rubbing at it as if that could remove it, and the shape of it vaguely reminded him of Jin Guangyao's hat. He remembered the failure of the night before and his mind started working... soulmates? No, it was such a silly concept, one he had rejected years ago in his youth.

After three more attempts – another failed attempt at poisoning, a strange inability to hire an assassin, and one night where he had stood over Jin Guangyao's sleeping body, hand raised with a dagger he could not move – he was forced to face the fact that it seemed soulmates did in fact exist, and his was the man who had killed the most important person in his world.

He decided that he would have to destroy him another way – soulmate or not, Jin Guangyao had to pay for killing Nie Mingjue and forcing Huaisang into a role he had no desire to take. It took years to get the information he needed, to get the pieces in place, and then the final step of bringing back Wei Wuxian. Poor Mo Xuanyu, Huaisang had felt for the pitiful boy who'd experienced nothing but hardship, but he was desperate, and all he had to do was not do anything at all, to remain silent and let the boy sacrifice himself for their common goal.

And finally, years of planning came to fruition and the truth was out! Jin Guangyao's mask was pulled off and everyone in Guanyin Temple could see the madman behind the deaths of so many people. It had hurt Huaisang so badly to see him in such a state, so different from the Meng Yao he remembered with fondness despite the terrible acts that Jin Guangyao had committed. But the truth was out, and the others in the temple could no longer justify standing back and doing nothing, allowing the perpetrator of all of these crimes to face no consequences.

And then Lan Xichen turned to Huaisang, and he feared his Er-ge would go soft and let Jin Guangyao get away unscathed once they were away from the temple. All he had wanted was to remind Lan Xichen that San-ge was a threat, not to be taken lightly or easily forgiven. Had he intended the man to kill Jin Guangyao, Huaisang would never have been able to get the words out.

And yet when the sword pierced through San-ge's chest, Huaisang wanted to cry out in both relief and devastation. The deed was done and not by his own hand... but then Jin Guangyao had looked at him over Lan Xichen's shoulder, their eyes meeting, and they both <i>knew</i> what had happened and why. The only moment their eyes would ever meet to recognize each other as soulmates was the last they would have together.

“Nie Huaisang. Good for you. I didn't expect that you would be my downfall...”

And then the temple collapsed.

Huaisang felt so very empty, the loss affecting him more than he ever thought it would. He didn't know what to say to Lan Xichen because, while he had not seen Jin Guangyao move, neither had he intended him to be killed. In the end, all he had left was an empty hat and a hollow soul.

He returned to the temple the next day, needing to think of what plans would be necessary to move his brother's body so that Nie Mingjue could have a proper burial, and as he stepped through the debris, he nearly tripped over something long and thick hidden under the dust. Pulling it out, he could see it was covered in richly embroidered fabric.

It was Jin Guangyao's severed arm.

As he lifted it, the fabric fell away, leaving only the cold, stiff flesh bared to the cool autumn air. As Huaisang looked on it, he noticed something he would never have noticed before, as it was placed where robes would easily hide it from curious eyes. Up near the top of the inner bicep was a mark in the vague shape of a fan.

Huaisang cried, grieving for the Meng Yao he had known when he was young, for the man he could have known if only he had not killed Nie Mingjue. “Why did you do it? It didn't have to be this way. How long did you know?” The questions no longer mattered, not really, but asking them felt cathartic nevertheless.

Even after the temple had been excavated and Da-ge's body put to rest, Huaisang continued to feel empty. He still went about performing his duties with minimal competence, but his heart was even less in the work than it had been before.

One day, he was invited to Lanling by the newly established Jin Rulan, an obvious attempt by the young boy to strengthen ties with the other sects. He expected a few meetings, a nice dinner, and then a return home to his quiet, lonely life. He had, then, been surprised as he so rarely was these days when Jin Rulan sat him in a room with a maid and closed the door on them, giving them privacy. The maid revealed something she had kept in secret for years, fearing for her life had her knowledge come to light. On many occasions, during her duties to clean and prepare Jin Guangyao's chambers, she had overheard him expressing frustration and anger all related to a single thing. No matter what he did or tried, he could not kill Nie Huaisang.

Huaisang thanked her for her secret, promising to keep it to himself. He then left not just the room but Koi Tower, wandering past the walls and toward the road, simply needing to get away from people in general, whether he knew them or not.

And once he was alone, he laughed, loud and broken and liberated. They had been more alike than either of them could have known.