#lc writes

CW: kinda angsty with talk of Simon’s past and serious injuries

In a winged!AU, where everyone’s wings are based on real birds and such, some people view those with crow or raven wings as bad luck or cursed or otherwise undesirable. Cliché start, I understand 😅. 

So our boy Simon grows up with his past, abuse amplified by his pitch black wings. Escapes to the military where wings are seen as an asset, and his powerful dark ones make him amazing at stealth. Through being with TF 141, he sees his wings as tools to protect his flock, and he grows to like them. Soap also helps by telling him how much he loves his LT’s beautiful black wings: “It’s like looken at th’night sky ye ken?” Oh yeah there’s definitely poly 141 in here, I love me some winged found family vibes.

And then he finds you.

“So, what’s Momsie’s real name?” Galinda asked her three year old. Zorina screwed her face together and then after a clock tick of some very serious thinking, brightened.

“Momsie’s real name is ‘my sweet!’” Zorina said, proud and sure. Galinda sighed.

“No, that’s not my real name.”

“Oh.” Zorina was crestfallen, but only for a moment before she tried again, fixing Galinda with the most serious look. “Momsie’s name is ‘oh Oz.’”

“What? No, why would you say that?”

“Mama always says, ‘oh Oz’ and then she does her head like this,” Zorina explained, shaking her head in a scarily accurate imitation of Elphaba.

Summary:

The living haunt the dead, sisters betray their brothers, and Cheng Xiaoshi chooses mercy.

Excerpt:

It was summer in Guidu, syrupy and relentless, and Cheng Xiaoshi was trying to be the bigger person. The woolly humidity meant that the shop's air conditioning unit was rattling itself into exhaustion, and he and Lu Guang were huddled in the foyer sofa, trying to distract themselves from the sensation of their own sweat on the back of their necks with a two-player game on their phones. Cheng Xiaoshi was defending themselves against the dungeon's horde of monsters and mimics to reach the next level, buried deep within the bottom of the cave. Lu Guang, on the other hand, was testing his patience.

"Lu Guang," Cheng Xiaoshi said. "You've got to follow me."

Lu Guang was presently hunched up on the sofa, nose nearly touching the screen of his phone as he tapped away at his phone. Cheng Xiaoshi, physically, was sitting right next to him on the sofa, but in the world of the game, his character had cleared the abyss to the other side of the crevice. He had thought Lu Guang was right behind him as he discovered the key to crossing the abyss, but Lu Guang, evidently, was not any better at following direction as he was at giving them.

Category:

Gen

Fandom:

时光代理人 | Link Click (Cartoon)

Relationships:

Cheng Xiaoshi & Lu Guang & Qiao Ling (Link Click)

Cheng Xiaoshi & Lu Guang's Yeye

Characters:

Cheng Xiaoshi (Link Click)

Lu Guang (Link Click)

Qiao Ling (Link Click)

Lu Guang's Yeye

Additional Tags:

Family

Friendship

Love

Mild Hurt/Comfort

Grief/Mourning

Case Fic

Food as a Metaphor for Love

Slice of Life

Mother-Son Relationship

Tadpole Guang

Summary:

On Mid-Autumn Festival, Cheng Xiaoshi, Lu Guang, and Qiao Ling combine their abilities to give Lu Guang's grandfather a gift. (sequel to 'courage of stars')

Excerpt:

There was a dimsum restaurant on every street corner of Guangzhou, but it turned out that Professor Lu had strong opinions of each of them as he explained to Cheng Xiaoshi the requirements of a proper dimsum restaurant, and what were failures. One was too expensive, the other did not make their dimsum in house, this one took too many creative liberties with what a chaar siu bao ought to be. Cheng Xiaoshi was beginning to understand where Lu Guang got his impossibly high standards for food.

“We’ll go to the restaurant near the Sacred Heart Cathedral,” Professor Lu said resolutely. “A Guang knows the one, don’t you?”

“Is it the one with the ginger milk pudding or the one with the goldfish on the wall?” Lu Guang asked as Cheng Xiaoshi snuck a piece of kabocha onto his bowl.

“The ginger milk pudding one. The other restaurant has changed chefs, and ah, what a pity. They let their chao fun crumble.”

"All dynasties come to an end," Lu Guang said gravely.

Cheng Xiaoshi and Qiao Ling exchanged muted sniggers. Neither of them would say it out loud to Lu Guang–in front of his grandfather, anyway–but the irony of Lu Guang, who could not cook a pot of rice quite right on his own, having high expectations for cuisine was too good to leave alone.

“What are you two smirking about?” Lu Guang complained.

“We are just charmed by your overall existence,” Cheng Xiaoshi said innocently, for which Lu Guang flicked him on the nose. Cheng Xiaoshi giggled, which then fizzled into a wheeze.

Summary:

“Stop it,” Lu Guang said hoarsely. “You’re just being cruel now. Cheng Xiaoshi is dead.” “That is what you know,” said the owl. “But what do you understand?”

Excerpt:

The day before Cheng Xiaoshi died, he flung himself onto the sofa on which Lu Guang sat reading. His eyes were crinkled with mischief and life.

“Can I tell you a story?” he asked.

Lu Guang, who was deeply entrenched in another, more sophisticated story, grunted.

“Does it have to be now?” he asked.

Cheng Xiaoshi sprung himself onto his knees, his arms folded over the top of the sofa like a dog looking over the window in wait of its owner.

“It’ll be short,” he said. “I promise!”

Cheng Xiaoshi’s stories were never short. He habitually lost track of his own plot midway through a sentence, wandering to whatever shiny thought caught his interest instead, before remembering the point. Lu Guang was in the thick of the novel’s climax, and he could feel an emotional catharsis working its way to the surface in only a matter of pages.

“Save it,” Lu Guang said. He squinted at the page. “I’m busy right now.”

“Tch!” Cheng Xiaoshi poked him hard on the cheek, to which Lu Guang scowled. “Fine, fine, whatever. When will you be done?”

“Never, if you keep talking.”

Lu Guang made a show of turning the page, even though he had absorbed next to nothing of its contents.

Cheng Xiaoshi hummed. He rested his cheek against his folded arms, his eyebrows arching as he craned to look over Lu Guang’s shoulder to the book he was reading. Lu Guang narrowed his eyes in an attempt to narrow his attention, which was difficult when Cheng Xiaoshi’s presence, much like a noontime sun, hung over everything.

“It’s just,” Cheng Xiaoshi piped up. “I was just thinking, about that one time when you were showing me this one book you loved. This is so random, okay, so–I was upstairs looking for one of my hats but I found that book, right? So do you remember when I was sick and–?”

“Cheng Xiaoshi,” Lu Guang said testily.

Cheng Xiaoshi scowled, clearly believing that he could have gotten away with it.

“Okay, okay!” he said. “Just–don’t forget to remind me to tell you, okay?”

“Fine, fine,” Lu Guang said hurriedly. “Just give me an hour or so.”

Cheng Xiaoshi slithered off the sofa and distracted himself with scurrying over to Qiao Ling’s. Now that the photo studio was blessedly quiet, Lu Guang buried his nose into the rest of his novel with veracity.

The climax was all-consuming, and it startled Lu Guang with its metaphors and meaning. He was left in its haze for hours, and outlined the anatomy of its auteurship aloud with intensity during dinner, when Cheng Xiaoshi asked what was so interesting about it. He had not remembered his promise to remind Cheng Xiaoshi to tell him what had been on his mind until late at night, when Cheng Xiaoshi was already mumbling in his sleep in the bunk below.

Tomorrow, Lu Guang thought to himself as he settled into his sleep. I’ll ask him tomorrow what it was he wanted to tell me.

And then the car struck.

tw: implied/ references to suicide

Cheng Xiaoshi, who--against all odds--knew exactly what he wanted to write. He was brimming with words, as if his rushing blood was ink for his pen itching to scratch itself out from his skin and onto the paper. His dad. He wanted to write about his dad. The way Baba sat him on his lap and read him fables. The way Baba took photos of alley cats at golden hour and made their fur glimmer. The way he joked that the studio was alive and convinced Cheng Xiaoshi that tidying up made the house happy, so remember to throw your dirty clothes in the washing machine.

He loved his dad and missed his dad and wanted other people to love and miss him, too.

Cheng Xiaoshi, who walked scarcely six steps out of the school grounds before the girl wrenched his backpack from his shoulders. Her friends tore into it like a pack of wolves--tossing his erasers, his calculator, his Pokemon trading cards that he had no one to trade with, until she grabbed hold of his notebook and scarpered.

Cheng Xiaoshi, who lost his breath when she taunted him--You've got no dad. What are you going to do, make one up?--and it was only once she killed his dream that he realised he even had one. The dream that he would write everything about his baba, that he would never forget anything from the texture of his stubble to the laugh in his eyes, that he could enchant everyone to believe Baba is alive and well as if he were a fairy thirsting for faith, and maybe that would bring him back home.

Cheng Xiaoshi, who staggered back home that night with a waterlogged notebook, no trading cards left, and a heart that was too tired to be broken. By the time the pages dried enough to accept a pen, he managed only three characters: 我爸爸--My father--and suddenly he remembered too much and not enough about him that any word he could think of felt like a failure. He threw the book aside and crawled into bed, empty of dinner and spirit. If the teacher scolded him for failing the assignment, if Qiao Shushu pursed his lips in disappointment for another write-up from school, if Qiao Ling looked at him with fragile admonition, he still insisted that the fault was on his laziness, and nothing else.