#i dont expect the fandom to unite around 1 player

[thatfizzyyyy]

the way i fear cameron or matt will make it into top 3 bc the fandom is so divided among many people... and a lot of fandom favs werent given great edits either (think izzy/america) so there may not be a ton of overlap between casual favs and fandom favs like there was last year...

[ryukoishida]

QZGS|The King’s Avatar Fic: In which something nice happens to our birthday boy.

Title: Ágúst Fandom: The King’s Avatar / Quan Zhi Gao Shou Character(s)/Pairing(s): YuHuang Summary: Since his birthday happens during the summer break, Huang Shaotian is used to spending this day by himself, receiving messages and mailed gifts from his teammates and other pro-player friends in the Alliance. And without fail, his captain will always be the first to wish him a happy birthday, but this year seems a little different. [Takes place during the summer between S9 and S10] Part: 1/1 Rating: PG-13 A/N: Gasp. Me, writing something in canon-verse? Amazing. Literally just… mindless, cheesy fluff. Happy birthday to our beloved chatty Sword Saint! And happy birthday to @andthenabanana~

Writing Commission | Editing & Translation Services

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[Flowing Cloud]: Happy birthday, Huang Shao! Did you receive the package I sent you???

[Troubling Rain]: Thx, Xiao Lu! And yeah i did… Speaking of which, how do u figure im gonna finish all those snacks by myself, kid?!

A few days ago, the famed Sword Saint of Team Blue Rain had received an express delivery parcel from an unknown address in Taiwan: a giant box of local snack varieties from the team’s young swordsman. Placed atop of the rainbow packages of Kaui Che pork and beef jerky, fruit jellies, honey layer cakes, sugar and spice nougats, pineapple cakes, and for some strange reason, Alishan tea leaves, was a birthday card — and not just any plain, ol’ greeting card either. The brat had chosen the kind that played obnoxiously loud tinkling rendition of “Happy Birthday to You” when the receiver flipped open the card.

Huang Shaotian quickly snapped the card shut and winced at the horrid echo of the melody that had sounded especially strident in his quiet apartment, and one corner of his lips couldn’t help but lift upward into a heartfelt smile.

[Troubling Rain]: i cant stop eating those pineapple cakes and this is all ur fault, so u better buy more and bring them to the dorm after summer break! And whats up with the tea leaves? Im not captain, u know I dont drink that bitter stuff :(

[Flowing Cloud]: The tea is my mom’s contribution, I swear! Maybe you can give them to captain if you really don’t want it?

[Troubling Rain]: well…. in that case, thank ur mom for me, ok?

[Flowing Cloud]: Will do! ;) Anyway, I have to go now.

[Troubling Rain]: aight. And thx again for the present and card!

Popping one of the mango-flavoured fruit jellies into his mouth, Huang Shaotian exited the private message window he was using while texting Lu Hanwen, and scrolled back up the chat log in the Blue Rain group chat, where members had been posting about their summer adventures in the forms of (sometimes rather “artistically” blurry) photographs featuring either gorgeous sceneries of foreign countries or delicious food they’d found. In between the envious ooh-ing and fascinated aah-ing at the colourful photos were members discussing the transfers during the summer window, various Glory-related rumors and news, and other things that only reclusive young men who spent most of their days playing games on their computers were interested in.

Though most of them hailed from different parts of Guangdong, so they’d return home to visit their families and take the time to rest until the new season began in September, a few of them still found the energy and time to take a nice vacation with their friends or family and travel abroad after an intense month-and-a-half of spending hours fighting level 75 Wild Bosses and gathering rare materials in the online game.

Lu Hanwen, for example, was currently enjoying a brief but lovely trip in Taiwan with his parents. Having debuted at such a young and tender age, Lu Hanwen had missed out on a lot of experiences that teenagers his age usually encountered; he had also undergone a lot of pressure and scrutiny that kids his age usually didn’t have to suffer through — this past season had taught him that the hard way.  

On the trip back to Guangzhou, with his eyes still bloodshot from the frustrated tears that he’d wiped dry just a few minutes ago, Lu Hanwen promised both his captain and vice-captain that he would train hard over the summer so that he would not make such mistakes during team matches again.

Before Huang Shaotian could open his mouth, Xu Jingxi was already ruffling the teenager’s hair from the seat behind, which earned him an indignant ‘hey!’ from Lu Hanwen but laughter from the rest of the team.

“It’s okay,” Yu Wenzhou had said, his smile gentle, his gaze calm but warm. “You already did really well, Hanwen, so take your time over the summer to recover and return for another year of hard work come September.”

Since they knew the kind of boy Lu Hanwen was, Yu Wenzhou had made sure to give Lu Hanwen’s parents a call as well.  

And it seemed like the kid was enjoying himself with his family.

Huang Shaotian paused when he saw the photos that Yu Wenzhou had posted late last night. Most of the photos he’d taken were breathtaking nature sceneries: mountain ridges still coated with a layer of snow at the peaks, flat surface of a lake reflecting sapphire and jade specks surrounded by lush forests; only one or two photos featured Yu Wenzhou himself, and even then, those pictures were taken with an unsteady hand, but Huang Shaotian could still appreciate his wind-swept hair and smiling lips — a little more open and carefree than the one he always wore in front of the journalists, a little more careless — amidst the shards of shadows that fell around him from the foliage above.

He mentioned that he was travelling to the west coast of Canada to visit some relatives that had immigrated to Vancouver quite some years ago, and his cousins had taken him to all sorts of local places to hike and camp. It was a fact known by many other pro-players and the fanbase of Blue Rain that Yu Wenzhou, despite his delicate and refined appearance that he displayed before the public, was surprisingly an outdoorsy type; one wouldn’t assume so from the fact that he was the captain of an eSports team who presumably spent a lot of his time indoors, but that’d never stopped him from visiting the closest national park for a half-day hike or going on a two-week long camping trip in the mountainous region of Yunnan.  

With an impatient sigh, Huang Shaotian scrolled back to the most recent messages in the group chat, but what he was seeking was simply not there. He couldn’t help but feel the immense heaviness in his heart grew a little degree more; he bit his lower lip and considered sending the other man a message but almost immediately decided against that.

He slammed his phone into the pillow beside him and dived face-down into the mattress with a muffled groan that sounded like a slowly-dying animal. He couldn’t do this anymore. He couldn’t stand this anymore.

Fuck.

Yes, he liked Yu Wenzhou.

No, not as friends or teammates or bros or anything like that. What were we — still elementary school kids?

No. Huang Shaotian more than liked Yu Wenzhou; he was in love with the guy, all right? He wanted to hold his hand, and embrace him, and kiss him, and… and yes, sleep with him. He wanted to do all those wonderful, wonderful things with Yu Wenzhou but there was only one problem: Yu Wenzhou didn’t know anything about this and Huang Shaotian didn’t know how to tell him without scaring his captain away.

Every year, without fail, Yu Wenzhou would be the first person to send him birthday wishes. In most of those instances, he’d be out of town, so birthday wishes would come in various forms: a mailed card, a text, a voice recording, or even a thoughtful little souvenir from wherever he’d been travelling to. But August 10th was almost over, and other than the small set of photos he’d uploaded onto the team group chat yesterday, Yu Wenzhou’s username and icon remained disappointingly grey in his friend list.

It was 11:46pm when the doorbell to his apartment unit rang with an urgent flair, effectively pulling Huang Shaotian out of his dreary reverie.

He wasn’t expecting any guests at this hour, though it wouldn’t be the first time that a few of his teammates, along with a few close friends from the Alliance, who apparently had nothing better to do than to drop by Guangzhou and pester him (i.e. giving him a surprise birthday party, which, despite his mumbling and grumbling, he actually appreciated), showed up at his door without as much as a text ahead of time.

What he hadn’t expect to find was one Yu Wenzhou, a timeworn suitcase sitting by his feet and a hefty duffle bag on his shoulder. It looked like he’d been rushing to get here, for his breathing was still unsteady and his sweat-stained, ink-black hair was plastered messily over his forehead and stuck to the nape of his neck.

“C-Captain? W-What are you—”

“Did I make it in time?” Yu Wenzhou asked, his brows suddenly dipping in concern, and when he didn’t get an answer from his vice-captain, he added, “my phone battery was dead on the flight back.”

“What? In time for what?” Huang Shaotian was still bewildered; he still couldn’t believe that Yu Wenzhou — who was supposed to be in the wilderness somewhere in the west coast of North America roasting marshmallows over a bonfire or hunting bears or whatever it was that they did when people went camping — that Yu Wenzhou was currently standing in his doorway.

He blinked once, twice, speechless.

“Shaotian…” Yu Wenzhou reached over and touched him gingerly on the shoulder. “Your birthday. Did I come back in time for your birthday?”

Oh.

“It’s not midnight yet,” Huang Shaotian replied numbly, at least the last time he checked, which wasn’t that long ago, actually.

“Great!” Yu Wenzhou heaved a relieved sigh, and then with a softer smile and a warm gaze that was similar to the usual one he gave his teammates —but it was slightly off, yet Huang Shaotian was still too stunned by his captain’s sudden appearance that he couldn’t quite comprehend the expression that seemed so obvious when he thought back upon it later on — he said, “in that case, happy birthday, Shaotian.”

“T-Thank you,” Huang Shaotian lowered his head to hide the flush that’d suddenly bloomed across his cheeks, realizing that for once, he couldn’t look directly into Yu Wenzhou’s eyes. He was afraid of discovering what lay within those ink-blue depths; he was scared that he’d see something wonderful there only to find out that it was all in his imagination, his misinterpretation, a misunderstanding. Then, his logic — being lost somewhere between his fretful phone-scrolling and Yu Wenzhou’s unannounced arrival — finally caught up. “Wait, wait a fucking minute, hold on for just a second. W-what the hell are you even doing here, Captain? Aren’t you supposed to be in, like, the mountains strumming a guitar and singing songs around a campfire or something?”

Yu Wenzhou raised a brow, one corner of his lips tucked upwards into an amused grin, “I’m absolutely tone-deaf, Shaotian, or don’t you remember?”

Good lord, of course he remembered, Huang Shaotian winced visibly at the reminder. The one time their whole team decided to celebrate someone’s birthday at a karaoke was the last time they did so, because everyone belatedly discovered that, as soon as their captain, who was known to have a gentle, mesmerizing speaking voice, started opening his mouth to sing the first verse of Eason Chan’s famous ballad “Ten Years”, they all wished they’d brought some earplugs with them, even if it meant disrespecting (or insulting) their nice, kind captain.

“Okay, okay, fine, that wasn’t actually even the point. The point is—"

“Shaotian…” Yu Wenzhou interrupted softly with a helpless smile that was enough to stop the other man in the middle of his rant.

“Uh, yes?” Huang Shaotian halted, eyes widening a little.

“Aren’t you going to let me in?”

“Oh. Oh! Yeah, yeah come on in!” His blush deepened, but he turned around quickly to shuffle over and make space for Yu Wenzhou to step into his apartment. After setting his bags and shoes down at the entranceway, Yu Wenzhou made his way to the couch in the living-room, his manner casual as if he’d been here many times, felt comfortable enough to make himself at home on his vice-captain’s couch.

“You want something to drink?” Huang Shaotian was already walking towards the tiny kitchen he barely used, and without waiting for Yu Wenzhou to reply, he muttered, “I’ll get you something to drink. Uh, let’s see, what do I have in here?”

Some rummaging and a yelped curse later — presumably in his haste, he’d accidentally hit his head on something — Huang Shaotian came out with two bottles of beverage.

When Yu Wenzhou glanced over, he couldn’t help but let a corner of his lips curved up into an amused smile. For whatever reason, Huang Shaotian was currently acting like as if he was the uninvited guest, maneuvering carefully around his own home like the floor was covered in glass and he was trying not to startle the man sitting in his living-room. He placed the two bottles of peach-flavored black tea onto the coffee table and sat down gingerly beside Yu Wenzhou, taking special precaution to leave a good amount of space between them.

“You don’t seem too happy to see me, Shaotian,” Yu Wenzhou observed, picking up the bottle easily and twisting the cap off to take a sip of the artificially sweetened iced tea.

“That’s crazy talk, captain! Of course I’m happy to see you — I’m absolutely thrilled to see you!” Huang Shaotian stuttered, and decided that now was a good time to drink his tea as well, but his hands were shaking so much that it took him a few seconds before he could grip the cap properly. He gulped down the liquid as if his life depended on it, and when half of the tea had been consumed, his nerves seemed to have returned as well. He sighed, looking away, and murmured, “I was just — I didn’t expect to see you here, of all places, this late at night, is all. You could’ve said something, you know? I could’ve come to the airport to pick you up.”

“Then it wouldn’t be a surprise anymore, now would it?”

A soft hint of laugher was laced within Yu Wenzhou’s low voice, like the softest breeze ruffling through the summer flower fields — sweet and sensual.

“N-No, I guess not.”

It was the voice that caressed his heart late at night, when his dreams were consumed by the images of the man he’d grown up with — from awkward teenagers who competed with each other for a spot in the team to partners standing side-by-side, protecting each other’s backs, creating opportunities for each other to attack and invade and win — and those images had been strange yet mesmerizing. The slow fumbling fingers on the keyboard that everyone in the Alliance teased about were elegant and left spots of sparks on his bare skin, his smiling lips against the curve of his ear, his neck, his teeth sinking into his supple skin and leaving marks on his hips and the insides of his thighs, his heated breaths mixing with Huang Shaotian’s gasps, ragged and fragmented syllables of their names falling from their parted lips…

Huang Shaotian didn’t remember when he’d first started having these indecent dreams about his captain, but as much as he hated himself for having them in the first place, he couldn’t let the sensations disappear once he woke up; he couldn’t let him go.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t the first person to wish you happy birthday,” Yu Wenzhou began once more after he put the bottle of tea down, his voice slightly strained with regret as he returned his gaze towards Huang Shaotian.  

“Why should you be sorry—” Huang Shaotian snapped his head up and stared directly at the other man, his topaz eyes widened with puzzlement.

“Because I want to spend every birthday with you, Shaotian, and I want to always be the first person to wish you a happy birthday,” Yu Wenzhou smiled up at him, as if the statement that just came out of his mouth was a casual, harmless comment about the weather, like it was the most apparent, most genuine sentiment in the world. He tilted his head slightly to the side so that his dark forelocks fell into his eyes, his cheeks tinting just the faintest shade of pink, his smile soft, his voice softer, “is that not obvious?”

“I—I…”

At the back of his mind, Huang Shaotian thought he knew he understood the meaning of each word, but when stringed together like this, when Yu Wenzhou — the man he respected so much as the team’s captain, the friend he treasured so much over the years of ups and downs in their career, the boy he gradually learned to admire though he’d refused to admit this when he was younger, more stubborn — when he spoke to him like this, it was difficult for Huang Shaotian to understand anything.

His mind was buzzing, rearranging the words to make sense out of them, and when it finally clicked, blood roared in his ears, tainting his cheeks red. Everything else in his brain was lost and drowned out by only one, single thought: Yu Wenzhou likes me, he likes me, he likes me, he likes me…

“Y-You’re not playing fair, Yu Wenzhou!”

“They do say those who use tactics have dirty hearts,” Yu Wenzhou’s smile grew a little bolder, a little more mischievous. He shuffled closer, and Huang Shaotian could do nothing but be captivated by the almost animalistic, hungry look in Yu Wenzhou’s eyes — an emotion he’d never seen before, an emotion he dared not fantasize about because it was too dangerous, too damn dangerous — and it wasn’t until his back hit the stiff armrest of his couch that he realized that Yu Wenzhou had successfully trapped him in between his arms.

He leaned forward until their foreheads were touching lightly, their breaths mingling — shallow, hot, irresistible.

There was nowhere for him to escape, but he didn’t want to, Huang Shaotian thought, he’d been running for years now, and he wanted to stop, to rest, to find his way home.

Yu Wenzhou’s eyes held only him, and him alone, and Huang Shaotian felt his heart beating beneath his ribs, beating so hard he was afraid Yu Wenzhou might hear it, might tease him for it, but then Yu Wenzhou was holding his hand and guiding it so that his palm was lying flat against the left side of his chest, and Yu Wenzhou’s heart was palpitating hard, too, like he’d been running for miles, for years.

And Huang Shaotian thought with a smile, gods we’d both been such idiots.

“So, Shaotian, what do you say? Will you let me?” Yu Wenzhou asked in a whisper, words branded on skin.

“Let you… what?” Huang Shaotian sounded weary. This may be a confession — one that he’d only dreamed too many times about in the past, it was true — but he hadn’t forgotten the fact that he was still dealing with one of the great tacticians of Glory.

“Let me accompany you on your birthdays in the years to come,” Yu Wenzhou answered easily, brushing the tip of his thumb gently across Huang Shaotian’s cheek, feeling the heat pooled there, his mesmerized gaze, the way his irises darkened at his touch.

“Only if your kissing skills are better than your terrible hand-speed,” Huang Shaotian challenged him with a shaky grin.

“You’re on,” Yu Wenzhou chuckled, and closed the distance between them with a kiss, too ready and keen to show Huang Shaotian what he was capable of.

This, Huang Shaotian decided faintly before he was entirely distracted by Yu Wenzhou’s consuming kisses, was the best birthday he could ever ask for.