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bbcphile · 5 months

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WIP Wednesday (MLC longfic again!)

Now that my amnesia fic is posted, it's time for more of my MLC longfic! At long last, LLH is awake again . . . and not doing that well.

(You can find earlier excerpts here.)

CW/TW: Panic attack, bicha flare, suicidal ideation

Something was different. The pain was there as always, waiting to devour him whole once he acknowledged it, but there was something else, something blanketing it, muting it somehow.

Li Lianhua stretched out his senses like a limb and tried to make sense of it.

Ah. Warmth. That was the strange sensation. Warmth–heat, even–all around him–his back, his chest, his legs, even his fingers, which had been more like blocks of ice than flesh and blood these last few months.

He leaned back, pushing into the banked heat behind him. The solid core of warmth tucked against his front from navel to neck twitched, then pressed against him more securely, as though it could make a home for itself inside his sternum, ribs, and spine and heat him from within.

He felt warm everywhere.

Well, almost everywhere.

He rolled forward slightly, wiggled further down on the bed, and tugged the core of warmth up higher. He curled his arms and shoulders around it and nestled the bit in his hand between his face and the pillow until it cradled his cheek.

Much better.

He smiled into his new, warmer pillow and let himself start to relax back into sleep.

“Xiangyi?”

The warmth against his face gradually took shape as his skin and mind began to wake. That was a finger–no, several fingers. A hand. A large hand. And those calluses–how could he not know them when they had clashed steel with him, choked him, clinked brimming cups of wedding wine with him, even been inside him, taking him apart with a gentleness he hadn’t known they could profess.

He let his awareness spread throughout his body, setting aside the pain, and yes, that was a-Fei’s chest he had pressed himself against, like Huli Jing requesting head scritches, and those were a-Fei’s legs, tangled with his, and that was a-Fei’s breath rustling his hair–less now than it had been a moment ago–and that was indeed a-Fei’s arm he was clutching like a child would a favorite toy.

But a-Fei had been holding him first.

Why was a-Fei holding him? It was one thing to wake up in each others’ arms in the newly wed room, after their . . . exertions. Before a-Fei knew that any real dream of a future was doomed to fail.

But to hold him now? After he’d given away the wangchuan flower and left a-Fei behind, left their promise behind? To hold him like he still mattered. Like he wasn’t a curse who killed everyone he’d ever cared about. Like he was some sort of treasure . . .

Treasure . . .

Cabinets stained in blood, Xiaobao’s blood–

“Xiaobao,” he gasped, flinging himself free and to his feet. Where was Xiaobao? He had to find him, had to heal him, before it was too late–

“Xiangyi! Sit down!” A-Fei caught him as his legs buckled and lowered him back onto the bed.

Why wasn’t Xiaobao here? Had he killed him, too, just like he killed everyone he cared about?

“Duobing,” a-Fei roared. “Get in here. Now!” Callused fingers cupped both sides of his face, turning it gently but firmly toward him. “Xiangyi, look at me. He’s alright. He’s on his way.”

“How could he be alright?” Li Lianhua gasped, clutching at his shoulders, the already blurry world turning more hazy. “I saw the blood!”

“I healed him. He’s safe,” a-Fei said, cradling his head as though he could hold the shattering pieces of his mind together. “Now breathe.”

Li Lianhua choked on an inhale, his lungs spasming, only managing to draw in a desperate wheeze.

A-Fei cursed and dropped to his knees by the bed, pressing one hand to Li Lianhua’s back and the other to his chest, filling both with a familiar warmth that began to break apart the iron bands strangling his throat and lungs. “Try again. Feel my hands. Press against them when you inhale.”

The next breath shook and spluttered like a dying candle but some air squeaked through nonetheless.

“Good.” A-Fei gave his back a short supportive pat. “Again.”

Lotus Tower shook as footsteps pounded toward the bed. “What’s wrong?” panted a beautifully familiar, impossible voice. “Xiaohua’er?”

“Bicha,” a-Fei growled, rising from the floor to kneel on the bed at his side, his hands still bracketing him on either side. “He thinks you’re dead. Show him the scab.”

“Shit,” the Xiaobao-shaped hallucination cursed. It seemed especially cruel of hallucinations to now match the blurriness of their surroundings. It made them seem far too real.

The hallucination knelt at his feet and took his hands. “It’s me, Xiaohua’er,” it said, tears in its eyes and voice. “I’m alright. A-Fei healed me. See?” It brought his hand up to a spot on the back of his skull and pressed his fingers to a crusted, raised line on its scalp. “I’m right here and I’m alright. Do you believe me?”

He could feel it. Why could he feel it? His fingers had always passed through hallucinations before. And even when he’d dreamt of Xiaobao, or of a-Fei, of holding them again, it hadn’t felt as real as this. His fingers traced the ridges of the scab–a perfectly neat seam–then the silk curtain of hair that covered it.

This was Xiaobao’s hair. The texture, the thickness, what he could see of the color–no hallucination could do justice to this.

This was his Xiaobao.

He was alive.

“Xiaobao,” he cried, turning his head this way and that to make sure it was the only injury. “You’re alright!”

Xiaobao’s bright smile shone through despite the haze his eyes imposed on everything. “Told you. No harm done. So focus on taking care of yourself, ok, lao huli?”

Li Lianhua huffed out a wet attempt at a scoff and bopped the side of his head. “No harm? What do you call this?”

Xiaobao captured his hands with his and brought them down from his head to rest between them. “Less serious than a Bicha attack. How are you feeling?”

Li Lianhua blinked. A Bicha attack? He turned his attention inward to his qi, and–

Ah. There was a-Fei’s Beifeng Baiyang, somehow wrapped around his Yangzhouman and pushing the last of the poison back into the recesses where it would lie in wait, coiled and ready for the next attack. The black tinge was almost gone from his veins.

He had been so worried about Xiaobao that he hadn’t even realized.

A-Fei had probably saved his life. Again.

He shouldn’t have bothered.

#mysterious lotus casebook #lhl #WIP Wednesday #lianhua lou #my fic #Di Feisheng #Li Lianhua #Fang Duobing #Difanghua #Things will get much better for LLH #starting in the next chapter #If tumblr blocks this excerpt from the MLC tag bc of my tws like it's done on previous weeks I will be so mad #I literally just finished writing this 5 minutes ago #this is the shortest turnaround time ever btwn when I've written something and posted it #cue internal screaming #also I am trying a new narcolepsy med which means thinking feels weird and consequently writing is a massive struggle #so I really hope this lives up to expectation

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humming-fly · 1 year

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every year for my birthday I do something self-indulgent and THIS year it's me finally organizing all the doodles and lore for my kirby oc Fayre that I have yet to put on tumblr into one place!

because i love you all putting the vast majority of this under a readmore but yeah if you want a collection of doodles and vaguely coherent scraps of info about my little guy please read on and if you want to ask questions about 'em go for it i love talking about these idiots

gonna also be mentioning a few other OC's here so for the record Strix belongs to @alagaesia-overlord and Stell belongs to @aseuki, because everyone knows it's more fun being insane about something if you have company~

real quick gonna just link to the past main posts on fayre for posterity lol

Fayre Details/Backstory:

So as has already been established in prior posts fayre is a very fae-aligned little critter that pretty exclusively hangs out in the woods with their 1-way mirror mask behaving for all intents of the word like some sort of weird cryptid. In terms of defining characteristics they have a set of very odd wings that constantly emit a stunning aura that causes confusion/distress when observed at close quarters, as well as a permanent 0.0 expression that they can't change (so no blinking, smiling, etc.) which is a byproduct of their creation as a mirror clone.

How all that worked out is their 'original', Prism, landed right next to a mirror portal as a newborn and more or less immediately wandered into it - my general headcanon about how the mirror doubles work is that they're made up of Every reflection someone has made up to the point they look into the amazing mirror, but since prism only just existed her first and only reflection was the 0.0 expression of a child looking through the mirror before passing through it, so fayre is locked and loaded with that expression but nothin' else. This is also why fayre's wings are way different than prism's bird-of-paradise setup, as technically prism's back was never reflected by the mirror either so it got the randomizer setting instead.

Despite being 'born' more or less at the same time the two never formally met until many years later, as prism wandered right into the mirror world and fayre wandered right out into the primary world and neither ever looked back. Differences aside, when prism did eventually track fayre down they immediately hit it off and now consider each other to be twin siblings. (Prior to meeting Prism Fayre didn't know they were a mirror clone, but largely took learning that detail in stride, as they do with most things)

In terms of early life fayre was actually found and raised by a small village of broom hatters, who came upon this child in a little crater they'd made after falling off the cloud holding up the mirror

The broom hatters assumed that fall was what had paralyzed their face, but fortunately as the broom hatters are a race of faceless creatures themselves the lack of expressions wasn't ever a problem. Not being able to move or open their mouth means fayre can't talk with it, but instead uses the general telepathic way of speaking used by most species lacking that particular facial feature. The main benefit of that skill is being able to throw their voice and also talk in hieroglyphics if desired

Fayre stayed with the broom hatters until reaching early adolescence, after which they left to go explore the natural world - though now living on their own they do still come back to say Hi every year or so during the Sweeping Seasons.

Fayre got their wings sometime while off living by themselves in the woods, and after some trial and error did figure out a way to more or less 'replace' their wings with a funky cape (the trial and error being a learning curve whereupon getting near people with their wings would cause people to get dizzy/sick, so for a while they were wandering around in a little cape they found until they could puzzle out a way to properly tuck them away) - while the cape is replacing the wings they're more or less 'in stasis', so damaging the cape doesn't damage the wings and vice versa, and is more of a strange pocket dimensional swap than anything. Thus the cape can't actually be removed from fayre, trying to rip it off them won't hurt or anything but will probably just yank them around a bit (maybe they're somehow trading their wings with an equivalent in the yarn dimension? who knows, they certainly don't)

The wings themselves are pretty odd as they look sort of like dragonfly wings but are actually made up of individual feathers of varying traits - general consensus is they are indeed very pretty, but other than gliding fayre can't actually fly that well with them. The stunning aura on them Does keep bugs and wildlife away though making them ideal for forest exploration, and fayre will wrap themselves up in them every night when going to bed as the wings work to deter any predators from going after them, and it's Comfy

~Plot Stuff Begins~

Meeting Strix:

For quite a while Prism was the only consistent point of contact Fayre had with anyone else, and even then the two only visited one another infrequently, both happy to largely keep to the homes and lives they've carved out for themselves.

The first major change to fayre's day to day life was the introduction of another puffball named Strix, who happened upon them while looking for their wayward coworker

After conversing a bit it was discovered that Strix is actually employed as a Reaper, of the paper-pushing variety, and only tends to poke their head out of purgatory when hunting down their work-shirking coworker.

Said work-shirking coworker is also the reason strix is the only person fayre has met that isn't affected by their wing's wonky aura - spending a few centuries in close quarters with someone who puts out a very similar status effect tends to build up an immunity, which fayre tries their best to take full advantage of

Fayre and Strix managed to hit it off early on, and occasionally meet up every month or so for an hour or two to get their required socializations in before wandering back off from whence they came. Strix will often share their work bereavements, or encourage fayre to actually learn some self-defense, which is largely met with playful ambivalence, though despite fayre's general disinterest in combat some minor progress was made on strix's part

(To that end farther the line a more favorable and not at all ominous deal was struck between the two so time will tell how that pans out)

During one of these chats strix also shared some of their Tragic Backstory:tm:, which fayre empathized with in the only way they know how

These friendly meetings continued with regularity for some odd years, up until fayre accidentally rode-along on one of strix's business calls~

Meeting Stell (aka The 'Among-Us' Arc):

Unfortunately for Fayre, Strix had been called to investigate what was reported to be an erroneous wish caused by a faulty comet, one without its proper safety regulations in place. Fayre tumbled on through strix's portal and into the sidelines of an ongoing fight between strix and some new armored fighter apparently affiliated with said comet.

Hoping to avoid whatever anime-ass conflict was going on over there, fayre started drifting towards the only other point in space of any note, the giant cat-like mechanical comet. Unfortunately for fayre, whoever had maintained that comet had rigged it up with a series of perimeter defenses, which fayre became intimately familiar with as they were shot down and forced to land on the comet itself to escape the bullet-hell firing at them.

Suffering some fun knicks and scrapes predominantly on their wings fayre pushed that on the back burner with their cape and started to look for an exit from this weird mechanical death trap. (Past this point Fayre has a quasi-permanent notch in their left feather).

Thus began fayre's fun-filled two-ish weeks of impromptu among us where they had a jolly time hiding in the vents and cutting wires to stall the maniac doing their level best to eject them with lethal force

Eventually contact was made with the assailant, whose name was apparently Stell, and an agreement was brokered just as Strix finally decided to stop by again to see how fixing that busted-ass comet was going.

after that misunderstanding was cleared up Fayre finally got off that shitty comet and after being dropped off in the woods by strix managed to trudge all the way to the mirror dimension to visit prism and get some bandaids (slash bullet holes patched up)

Mirror Arc & Beyond:

Some additional fun is had with the twins in the mirror dimension, namely the whole kitten kaboodle becoming corrupted for a time and fayre becoming a bit of an asshole because of it, which predominantly ended up aimed at strix who popped by to help sort all that out

post-corruption fayre found out apparently strix took the verbal abuse personally and fixed that all right up in their own way by visiting them at their workplace

tragically for fayre's happy-go-lucky attitude they've come to be attached to strix, which only became obvious once strix relayed a recent near-death experience to them and they got to experience their first ever Bummer Emotion

making that extra fun was learning said near-death experience was caused by their good friend Stell, which in turn lead to fayre's first ever Catching Hands Emotion

fayre's emotional roller coaster topped out after more or less jumping stell in a convenience store and trying to forcibly shove their own negative emotions down his throat after he brushed off the encounter he'd had with strix (partially due to running a high fever but that sure wasn't fayre's problem) - since then they've leveled back out and are back to being the most emotionally well-balanced of the three, which is a low bar to clear but hey first place is still first place~

#why yes this Is a birthday gift to myself #internet backups are important and also fun to find down the line hahaha #anyways hope you all enjoy my Special Little Guy #also tw for flashing image way at the bottom of this massive post #long post #like for real it's a Long post i used the full 30 images #fayre #kirby oc #ahh #my art #doodles

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