Heeyyy Death. You Looking Hella Fine In That Tattered, Black Robe Man. No, No Listen - I’m Dead Serious.

Give a man a plane ticket and he’ll fly for a day

Push a man out of a plane and he’ll fly for the rest of his life.

AFTG SUMMER EXCHANGE 2021

This is my gift for @prettybrownbitch 💞

I wanted to combine all your prompts together, but i wrote this and... I thought it sat well on its own. The good news is that writing this finally jumpstarted my other andreil fics so you're welcome to pretend that whatever andreil i ever share from now on is dedicated to you!

The summary:

Andrew thought coming off drugs will get rid of all side-effects, so why is Neil still here?

AKA the scene where Neil picks up the cigarette from the ground and smokes it, but from Andrew’s POV

Absolute unit x tiny unit

(via)

I’m Angry. Can You Tell?

I also write poetry. I prolly write more poetry than anything else really.

Anger is easy to feel.

Easier to manage than abandonment,

Easier to manage than bitter disappointment,

Easier to manage than crippling despair.

It is so easy to feel fiery fury,

And expect justice to soothe those flames.

It is so easy to be in denial

To cling to it.

To let it have you think things can be different,

That it can be better.

If only you are are angry enough, 

Passionate enough to command change in every facet of the universe.

So yes, anger is easy.

Easy to swallow,

Easy to let burn,

Easy to pull out and use as a shield.

It is easy as it is empty.

Fruitless in its gains

Barren in its answers

A tempting, hellish, warm, void for the lost who cannot deal with the cold, unfeeling nature of life.

And yet to embrace life as frigid is to surrender.

It is to resign yourself to a dreary, insipid existence,

An existence of the same ruthless, unwavering pain.

Rage cannot change circumstance,

But submission will yield no revolution.

Be enraged,

Angry,

Pissed,

Fucking furious.

For you burn bright as you do, if only for yourself.

  Be weary and disillusioned when there is nothing left but Death’s waiting hand,

Be weary and disillusioned when you can do no more. 

Yield your rage when there is nothing left to burn.

It is easy to be angry.

Easier than holding expectations,

Easier than nobility,

Easier than infinite patience.

And for peace, it is just.

Lost to Happiness

The woman sitting in front of me is smiling. It’s a vacant, empty smile. The smile a baby would have, clueless and blissful in ignorance.

“It’s such a lovely day. It’s warm, the sun is shining, it can’t get any better,” she says. Her voice is soaked in pure and simple joy.

It makes my stomach twist and bile rise in my throat. I feel like vomiting, watching this woman smile blankly in the sun. Instead, I force my stony face into a semblance of a smile and agree. We return to complete silence.

The woman wears my sister’s face. She uses my sister’s voice. She has my sister’s touch.

She is not my sister.

My sister has shadows painted underneath her eyes and a furrowed brow. Her mind always runs, sprints, gallops, with endless clever ideas and possibilities. She does not comment on the weather and sit happily in silence. My sister has ambition. And a pressure that whipped her brain into only giving perfection, like a jockey whipping his horse to finish first. Her ambition was inherent. The pressure was a complex, parasitic creature that latched on and sucked her dry. It morphed out of her ambition, anxiety, and our skewed childhood somewhere along the way. It made her neither good nor bad. There were other qualities that decided that.

There was a time of course before she was stolen from me, before there was mounting pressure at all. It coincided with our skewed childhood. Happy pockets of time littered those years; some separated by lengthy stretches, others fell together side by side.

In those days, the sun hated our exposed skin. We tumbled inside, sweat-drenched and dark as ebony without a single care. Water lapped our feet and sand rubbed between our toes before we ran, head first, into rising, salty waves. We shrieked at each other, triumphant glee or sour disappointment bursting from our throats, over endless card games. The wind whistled in our ears as we biked, hands-free, down steep hills. The heavy scent of flowers filled the evening breeze as our mother braided jasmines and marigolds into our hair. She whispered to me in the pitch-black night as we lied in our bed. We muffled our giggles in our blankets. Two feet away, our mother drowsily told us to shut up. Our father was already snoring and dead to the world. She grasped my hand and asked for a story. I weaved her a fantastical tale of magic, the struggle for power, and a battle for peace. Somewhere near the end, still holding hands, we fell asleep.

Suddenly I can’t bear to look at the woman. Blinking furiously, I pretend to consider the beauty of nature as wistful anguish ravages my heart. Eventually, I sigh and turn back to find her looking at me.

“The jasmines are beautiful, aren’t they?” I feel bitter over how mundane her comment is and how easily she swallows my deceit.

“Yeah, they are. Remember when ma used to braid them into our hair?” The woman’s face closes and her eyes flicker. Something like hope rises in my chest. I hold my breath and stare expectantly. My sister hates those times. There were too many poisonous words in harsh voices and raised hands; too many broken bottles, ringing shots, and prejudice. It drove her to excel, to spite everything that pushed her down. But there was too much pain that accompanied our bliss for her to love any of it.

The shadow that crossed her face is destroyed by a relentless light. “Not really, it was such a long time ago and I’m no good for memory. But I’m not surprised that she did - mothers usually do that for their daughters.”

My heart beats hard as it falls - split between anger and grief. “Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I suppose.” It’s hard to sound emotionless when the woman’s smiling at me but I try my best. Wretched silence falls upon us again.

My sister is almost never quiet with me. Even when we fight and she ignores my existence, it’s all too easy to provoke her into a screeching, fist fight. We did not argue a lot in our youth; that changed, as many things did, when we grew older. We are both obstinate people, so when we did fight it was war. As children, I only had to wait until the apartment was empty for us to reconcile; a common circumstance as both our parents worked long hours. It was hard for her to ignore my apologies in a one bedroom apartment; especially when she was expected to care for me as the eldest. Later in life, especially while she was far away in university, I would wait weeks and then months for her forgiveness as pressure drove her to hostility. She grew too sensitive and I grew too blatant for us. A wall of our own fury was erected every time we clashed and dismantled every time we made peace.

The woman is sweet and innocent as a lamb. There is nothing that she is passionate about; nothing that propels her to be livid; nothing that prompts her to search for answers. She is nothing like my sister and the knowledge burns me.

My sister is the pinnacle of academic accomplishment. She had the highest average of her grade in every year of school. Her awards and degrees fill the walls. A stack of her research proposals lay waiting on her desk, as is her work in her own lab. She was accepted into prestigious universities and medical schools under thousands of dollars in scholarships. My heart is yet to stop swelling with fierce pride when I think about her every achievement.

My heart is yet to stop cracking when I think about her every achievement.

It was pressure that shoved her over the edge. There is no other explanation for what happened. Doctors are unsure of what caused her coma. But I know her best and I know that her need for success and everything bad finally suffocated her.

It took seventy-six days of lying in a hospital bed, with shallow breathing and tubes sticking out of her, for her to wake up. She did not panic when she woke up. She calmly laid there as doctors rushed around her. I felt fear slip down my throat as I watched her. My sister demands answers immediately, she overreacts, she becomes hysterical. I was told that her ease was a good sign, that it signified her understanding of what was happening. I let that appease me.

She was beaming contently in her cot as she looked out the window when I was allowed to see her again. The sight disturbed me being so contradictory to my sister. I ran and pulled her into a hug, sobbing into her shoulder, anyway. She embraced me back. For a second I believed everything would be alright.

But then she asked, “I’m sorry, but who are you?”

I fell away from her and screamed.

It has been many years of revulsion, denial, rage, and despair since then. Everyone else has abandoned any hope for my sister coming back. I cannot.

The woman is happy. My sister is happy. It is selfish of me to crave for my sister’s return when she was so unhappy in her own thoughts. But enduring the agony of being without her is too grueling. I look at the woman, my sister, and say, “Hey, we should go back to the house. It’s getting late.”

She smiles, her eyes are amicable and cheerful but lacking all of our history and love. “Yes, you’re right. Let’s go.”

I envelop her into a tight hug before we leave our darkening garden. She hugs me back and tears prick my eyes. There are stars peeking out in the sky now. I want to curse them for doing this to us. I can’t give up on my sister; I need her back.

But she is happy now, joyous even. The thought crawls out of a corner of my brain and brands itself onto my heart. I close my eyes as I feel defeat creep into me.

Prologue

I’m writing a novel and it’s the primary basis of my description.

The new slave girl darted her eyes around constantly and, when she thought no one was looking, furrowed her dark brow in thought. It intrigued Priscilla Elizabeth Hamilton as she observed people often herself. She noted that the girl was younger than she was, maybe fourteen or fifteen while she herself was already seventeen. Priscilla watched her continue to take in her surroundings rapidly and consistently while she knelt on the floor, hands and ankles bound in iron. There was something clever behind her dark eyes despite the anxiety radiating off of her. The two other new slaves beside her were much older and seemed resigned to their fate; their eyes trained on the floor and shoulders weighed down. Priscilla was used to slaves like that - subdued and docile. The little girl who twitched and fidgeted in her shackles, as if she could wriggle her way to freedom, was certainly interesting. Priscilla was apparently not the only one to notice.

“Little slave. What are you doing, writhing in your chains like that? Are they too loose for you?” Her father’s voice drawled out, lazy and condescending; his power made apparent by his effortless arrogance.

The girl’s head snapped to Edward Hamilton. The air around her turned prickly. Her face debated a snarl. The other slaves stared, somehow feeling the terror that escaped her. There were two very clear choices the girl had. Priscilla oddly hoped that she would be wise and not get herself killed; she was too interesting to die so soon.

In hardly a fraction of a second, the slave lowered her eyes in submission, shaking her head repeatedly and cowering. Edward settled back in his chair, satisfied with the alarm he instilled in the room. Priscilla’s father had always been a simple man - in both mind and wishes. “Good. Now, what is your name? Or can you even understand me? A savage like you would find our civilized speech complicated, after all.” Priscilla fought the urge to roll her eyes at the irony.

“My name is Halima.” The soft voice that floated from the girl’s mouth was accented like all the slaves; the vowels stretched out and the words almost musical. The lilt in their voices was always something Priscilla secretly enjoyed.

“Halima,” her father pronounced it with a lazy sneer as he strutted over to the trembling girl. “Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the role you have now.” He kicked her onto her stomach and sunk a foot into her back. “The only movement I should see from you should be done in accordance to what you are ordered to do. I have no need to see you squirming like a pig and making a racket.” He dug his foot in harder and sneered, “But don’t you worry my dear, you won’t need those chains for that much longer - I’ll have you branded soon enough.”

With a final harsh kick, Edward finally relented off the girl and dragged her back into a kneel by the shackles around her wrists. Priscilla was unsurprised that the blood Halima coughed up and dripped down her chin was red as her own. Halima’s eyes brimmed with unshed tears; her thin frame wracked with silent sobs.

Her father, who had seated himself once again, watched with something akin to satisfaction. “Don’t dribble on the carpet, Halima.” He didn’t bother looking at the other slaves when he said, “Get out; I expect not to be able to distinguish them from the rest come morning.”

“Yes master,” came three soft, musical voices, followed by a flurry of movement. The new slaves were heaved up, albeit in a kind, supporting manner, and lead away.

Priscilla’s sisters and mother were too bored and distracted; her father too pleased and self-absorbed; her brother too starstruck by their father’s showcase of power to notice what happened as the slaves fled the room. But she saw it clearly. Halima’s shoulders were stiff and tense; there was a flash of blood-stained teeth as her lips pulled back in a quiet snarl. She was small and young but had all the presence of a caged beast, one too strong to stay confined. A threat of a reckoning shimmered behind her dark eyes.

There was a distinctive lack of alarm and an abundance of excitement when Priscilla thought, Oh, this is fascinating.

Anybody else have no idea how their personality is perceived by others? Like am I nice? Am I mean? I have no idea.

Thanks everyone for the prompts! I decided to try and knock these all out in one go:

@thegirlwhotrashcans: remember, you asked for it. au, nobody dies, wwx and yanli bodyswap. they’re married to lwj and jzx. 100% crack. bonus points if jin zixuan completely loses his shit and lwj looks very calm but loses his sh*t after everything is back to normal

@alightbuthappypen: Competency kink! One or both of them (when I say ‘them’ I mean wangxian obvs, I know what I’m about) getting hot and bothered about the other being amazing. On a nighthunt maybe? Or anywhere else that strikes your fancy!

@hearteyeswangji: WRITE MORE P*RN

I think I can manage that. With a few tweaks, accidental seriousness, and broad, ridiculous fix-its tacked on. I have no idea how long this might be. Let’s try it in installments? I’ll reblog and add on as I go. Maybe it’ll be fun. We’ll find out.

Disclaimer that this is just gonna go for it with no revising and no beta readers, so pls do not hold me to any conceivable standard of coherency thx

–

WILL INCLUDE: wangxian, xuanli, let jyl and lwj be friends agenda, canon divergence, fix-it, everybody lives, arranged marriage, bodyswap, light angst, getting together, Attempts at Comedy, eventual (light?) wangxian smut

The Sunshot Campaign has just been won. Everyone goes over to Jin Guangshan’s house after the Nightless City banquet, to Negotiate Stuff, and some hasty political marriages happen resulting in Xuanli Wedded Bliss and Wangxian Un-confessed Wedded Tension. Then, suddenly…a curse befalls our brave heroes.

–

Wei Wuxian wakes suddenly, feeling odd. He’s sleeping on his stomach for one thing, which is not his usual, but he feels warm and comfortable enough that he doesn’t think it strange. But then there is the scent of peonies and gardenias, which is both familiar and alien, somehow. It makes him open his eyes. 

Which is when he sees the hand before him on the bolster. It is slender and elegant. Small. Pale. Familiar? Wearing a jade bangle. He pushes himself up a bit, startled, only to see the hand move when he does. 

The hand. Is his hand. He stares at it. The shock of it, coupled with the early hour, leave his mind working very slowly.

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