#hints of future difanghua

[bbcphile]

WIP Wednesday (MLC amnesia fic edition)

Happy Wednesday! I'm taking one more week off sharing excerpts of my long fic to share bits from the amnesia/discovering mind control bug fic! (It's finally all drafted and will hopefully be posted on AO3 soon!) Enjoy! (You can find the previous excerpt here.)

“A-Fei,” Li Lianhua murmured, his voice shaky as though it had been drawn from a-Fei’s own lungs. His pupils dilated as his gaze slid to his waistband, then trailed a burning path from a-Fei’s navel to his throat, before fixing on his lips. “This isn’t–” He swallowed, his finger twitching against the band of a-Fei’s pants. “You don’t remember all the reasons we shouldn’t.”

That was all the answer he needed. “I don’t care,” a-Fei said, lurching forward to cup Li Lianhua’s face with his hand. “Neither should you.”

For an instant, Li Lianhua leaned into the touch, his eyes falling closed, and his head tipping back with a shuddering exhale.

Then he pulled away, lowering a-Fei’s hand with him. “I can’t. I can’t, a-Fei.”

This didn’t make any sense. He obviously wanted to. What was stopping him?

Oh. Of course. “Is there someone else? Fang Duobing?”

Li Lianhua’s eyes bulged. “What?”

It didn’t take long to come to a decision. “I don’t mind sharing,” he said with a nod.

Li Lianhua flushed. “Why would you–it’s not–he’s my–” he spluttered helplessly, before abandoning any attempt at an excuse and hitting him on the arm instead. “Don’t be ridiculous. And anyway, I’ve seen your so-called sharing at dinner. No thanks.”

A-Fei crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re not a chicken leg. And that wasn’t sharing. I know the difference.” He couldn’t exactly remember sharing things in the past, but he couldn’t remember most things at the moment, so that didn’t have to mean anything. And regardless, it was just another skill to master. He could do it.

Li Lianhua was worth it.

[bbcphile]

MLC Amnesia Fic (What's Sealed Away)

It was one thing to know what his qi felt like in his meridians–although he didn’t know what his neili was called, only that it had a name–and to know that, if he started running his sword forms, his arms and legs would guide him where his mind couldn’t. Muscle memory felt familiar. Reliable. But this? This free-floating knowledge, not connected with any event, any memory, any movement or motion? Just facts appearing in his mind? Assertions he was supposed to accept unquestioningly as truth? With no memory of how he learned them? Nothing to prove their validity? He clenched his hand around his dao’s scabbard. There had to be a better way than this.

NOTES:

I had a ton of feels about the differences between DFS and a-Fei, different types of memory and what is and isn’t lost in the sheer mindfuckery that is amnesia (very loosely inspired by my own experiences with amnesia), and a desire to explain some of the weird behaviors in the amnesia arc (why a-Fei spends so much time away from everyone else in the Mountains Red arc–-which LLH justifies with a lie about a-Fei sleeping instead, why LLH never tells FDB that it’s dangerous and painful for a-Fei to get his memories back, etc.), and thus this fic was born.

TW/CW: amnesia, body horror (finding the mind control bug), panic attack (to skip the panic attack, stop at “he pressed his shaking hands against the sheets” and start again at “His pulse finally started to slow.”)

Thanks to @momosandlemonsoda for being an amazing beta reader!!

Relationship: Di Feisheng/Li Lianhua (with hints of future difanghua)