ONLY BY LEE HI – Jing Yuan (hsr) X Gn!reader, Modern!au, Sfw

voicelines about you: as their lover ! (part 2)

featuring: sunday, aventurine, blade (+ black swan, acheron) [ part 1: dan heng, jing yuan, gepard, kafka, jingliu. ]

notes: well. the long awaited part 2 is here! (i took absolutely wayyy too long to finish this but a lovely anon requested the penacony cast so i just waited until now haha) stay tuned for either a future aventurine fic or a sunday fic tho; reblogs are appreciated!

Sunday

About [Name]: Ah, you speak of my beloved. [Name] has managed to strike your interest as well? Heh, I'm joking. You aren't that type of person, no? ….But yes, my lover truly is quite stellar, if not incomparable. I doubt I'd find anyone in the universe as lovely as I do them.

About [Name]: Smitten Robin often jokes about how my eyes change whenever I see them. ‘Softens like the smitten man you are,’ she says. Well, my sister is hardly wrong about matters of the heart, and to be fair, her words are indeed correct. While I cannot be with them every second of the day, despite my only wish to do so…. I suppose this much is fine. At the very least, this bewitched version of myself shall ward any that dare take [Name] away from me.

About [Name]: Preparation. …My mansion has everything [Name] shall ever desire. As for I, what I only desire is them alone, and for them to be right by my side. When the time is right, what's mine shall also be theirs, and none shall ever separate the two of us again. Should anyone attempt it, well, there's a reason my mansion is built the way it is.

Aventurine

About [Name]: [Name], [Name], [Name].... I see that you too have an eye for priceless treasures. Unfortunately for you, this particular one is already mine to behold. Mm, I wonder how my lover must be faring right now…. Missing them is truly, horribly debilitating.

About [Name]: Unworthy Whenever I think of [Name] being with me, of all people… Sometimes, the thought is unbearable. To think they would care for someone like me…. How truly lucky I am. Or maybe it's the other way around? Hehe, take a guess.

About Topaz: Contradictory Topaz and [Name] get along fairly well, despite her rather obvious dislike for me. Nonetheless, I suppose I can understand why. My lover is irresistibly charming~ Now, does this make me jealous, I wonder…. How about we bet on that?

Blade

About [Name]: Though this sword may be battered and broken, if you harbor any intention of harm towards them, I will not hesitate to brandish this blade.

About [Name]: Mara Infliction When afflicted with mara, the senses are ravaged ceaselessly, muddying the mind—being unable to distinguish ally from foe. This is my path. And yet their face is clear, pure amidst the carnage, alleviating the haze for but a moment. My mind may be overridden with hatred, but I will never forget that feeling of salvation.

(BONUS: Kafka’s Voiceline about [Name] !) About [Name]: Truly A Shame Bladie’s little darling, hm? Definitely a wonder, that one, taming him so easily. Those two are definitely an interesting case, that's for sure. Scary, marastruck Blade and them…. truly a shame. Even I know just how the ending of that particular script will end.

Acheron

About [Name]: …They are my lover, yes. Hm? Tell you more about them? Heh, I think you'd have better luck asking [Name] instead of me. I probably wouldn't even know where to begin.

About [Name]: Keeping Memories Despite the fact of my memories being in less than the best condition, [Name] always tells me about all the exciting things they've come across, whether it be delicious food from various planets, or even the most mundane things like the sound of the rushing water, the sight of fireflies in the night. They truly make everything worth remembering.

(BONUS: Black Swan’s Voiceline about [Name] !) About [Name]: Eye Of The Storm Ah, you speak of that Galaxy Ranger's companion…. The abyss that is her consciousness seems to only become calm in the face of them, akin to the eye of the storm. A shining light in the middle of nothingness—that is something that even she cannot let go of. No wonder Miss Acheron is quite taken with them.

Black Swan

About [Name]: The memories of Memokeepers are sorted into various categories by their importance. As my lover, my memories of them hold the greatest value of all. Such memories…. even if the Remembrance wishes for me to hand them over, I doubt I will ever allow it.

About [Name]: Dancing My proficiency in the act of dancing is all thanks to my continued practice with [Name] on our shared time together. Fufu, ‘dates,’ if you will. Every moment I spend in their arms, swaying to the beat of the music at every turn… those are the memories I wish to forever retain.

About Acheron: Indebted One time, Miss Acheron managed to get lost in the middle of the Reverie Hotel’s halls... as usual. [Name] came across her then, and proceeded to have a lovely chat with her. I owe her a debt for keeping my lover company as I was preoccupied with some matters the Garden of Recollection entrusted to me to relay to the family. Next time, perhaps I should invite her over for some dinner with [Name]....

end notes thanks for sticking around the part 2 (for the ogs who read pt 1) and do look forward to more HSR content in the future! also did i say i love aventurine

© 𝐈𝐂𝐄𝐔𝐍𝐇𝐈𝐄 : do not repost, copy, or plagiarize my work.

istg this was something sweet and cute but my mind is fuck up

ೃ⁀➷ TW/CW: DARK CONTENT, 18+ (MINORS/AGELESS/BLANK BLOGS DON’T INTERACT), Bad English, Babytrapping, AFAB Reader (one use of feminine words such as "mama" and body parts?), Pregnancy, Yandere, Toxic Relationship, Stomach Bulge, Noncon/Dubcon?, let me know if I need to add more TW/Tags ♡ My blog contains dark content, be careful when interacting/following! Please if you like my work don't forget to reblog/interact with me♡ Minors, ageless, blank blogs, and silent readers will get blocked if interact with me.

Yandere Diluc who baby trapped you. You wanted to leave, or at least have a break, since the relationship just wasn't working as it used to. Diluc was too paranoid, too protective, and too focused on his work to actually pay attention to you.

Of course, he noticed the change in your demeanor; how you acted more silent and cold toward him. Of course, he noticed. When he doesn't. It's not like you can leave so easily: you no longer worked and stayed inside his house all the time, and he made sure his maids and butler helped you out with everything you might need, but also keep you under constant watch since he can't always be around you.

However, Diluc can't help but wonder if it is enough to keep you with him. That maybe, maybe, he should do something else to make sure that you could never run away from me, that will make you, even more, dependent on him. He thought about it for days until he came to the "right" conclusion...

A child.

With a child, even if you somehow manage to escape, you will be forever linked to him. He wouldn't need to worry about you escaping him for at least 9 months, but he will constantly worry about your health and the baby. Oh, that cute, adorable baby you are going to give birth to... One that looks like you, running around the house asking for their mama and papa... So cute...

Diluc cannot wait until he gets you pregnant; he makes sure to be there for you, be present, and be less cold for days, weeks maybe, until he's with you in bed once again, spilling his seed deep inside of you again and again, until there is a small budge on stomach...

Until one day you come back to him shaking, tears almost falling from your eyes, saying you have to tell him something very important and Diluc can almost tell where this conversation is going...

This work belongs to @/alj0saray, do not repost, translate, copy, rewrite or share on tiktok without my permission. Reblogs are appreciated and encouraged♡

What is it with Honkai Star Rail fans and being allergic to tagging spoilers

If you can tag your post freaking out about x character in the new update with every fucking hsr tag under the sun, you can type the words “hsr spoilers”. It’s not that hard, and it keeps you from potentially ruining the story experience for someone else.

This is money cat. He only appears every 1,383,986,917,198,001 posts. If you repost this in 30 seconds he will bring u good wealth and fortune.

Unwanted reunion

✧ jing yuan x gn!reader

✧ prompts: “catching the other one crying shortly after an argument and immediately feeling an overwhelming wave of guilt crash onto you.” + "it's okay, we can fix this..." + “playing with their hair until they fall asleep”|| 1k event

✧ contents: hurt/comfort, angst, established relationship, implied character death

✧ a/n: if u wonder how in the world i came up with the scenario below. i genuinely don't know either it's a mystery to even me. CREATIVE LIBERTY WINS AGAIN THE PROMPTS WERE LITERALLY INSPO AND NOT WRITTEN DIRECTLY INTO THE SCENARIO. also implied that this took place after the battle with phantylia so keep that in mind.

NOT BETA-READ AS USUAL FELLAS I WANTED TO HAND THIS OVER TO YA'LL ASAP AS AN APOLOGY FOR STARVING YOU ALL FOR SO LONG!! it's mild angst though, so sorry.

Jing Yuan's can feel a familiar heaviness weigh on his body as well as the feeling of someone wrapping a roll of gauze on his arm. However opening his eyes proved to be a challenge in itself and it's only with great struggle that he can manage to force them slightly open to the bright light.

The first thing he notices is the familiar ceiling of your shared home. A bit weird since whenever he did get injured he would immediately be rushed towards a private room by the Seat of Divine Foresight - which was the safest place for him to stay. Perhaps you had gotten your will again to take care of him - seeing as you're a high ranking healer yourself and quite a stubborn soul.

But his eyes still widen a tiny bit when he sees you sitting by the edge of the bed, one hand gripping his gauzed wound while your other hand is busy trying to find something to keep your hard work in place. You're humming a soft tune again, he never knows what sort of melody you're humming, only that it had become a habit for you after the amount of years you had spent by his side bandaging his battle wounds. Something about helping your mood and staying positive.

"Your recklessness knows no bounds, Jing Yuan." the sternness of your voice snaps him out of the daze he's in, immediately rising up from the bed only to groan in pain when the wounds that you had just wrapped up react to his body folding, "... And still don't know when to rest - even when I'm in the middle of treating you."

"...How much time has passed?" he asks, voice hoarse after having slept for who knows how long. You only hum, setting the bandages aside - the gesture causing Jing Yuan to follow your hand movements which makes him notice the bloodied bandages inside the trash by your legs.

"A couple of days, I was just finishing changing your bandages when you finally woke up. Here, some water." you inform, raising a glass towards his lips, patiently waiting for him to move closer.

You only start to speak again after he's taken several gulps, placing the cup of water back on the nightstand beside his bed. "Why are you so willing to throw your life away?" you ask after a moment of silence, helping Jing Yuan rest against the headboard, eyes never leaving his own that don't dare to even look into your own.

"It's my duty-"

"Your duty is to make sure as many of the Cloud Knights survive a battle. Not gamble your life on a piece that you weren't sure had the capabilities to help."

Jing Yuan bites his tongue at your immediate rebuttal, you were right after all. "The Master Diviner was right there by you. A troop was enough to guard the entrance, you didn't need to leave the master diviner with them to go on this-"

"... Can't you be happy for once whenever we meet like this?" he asks quietly, effectively stopped you from saying anything more. His gaze is cast downwards whenever he mutters the same question to you whilst shrinking a bit after asking. There's no sign of the proud general in your presence - in front of you is just Jing Yuan asking a supposedly harmless question.

Perhaps that's the reason why you can never shove him away immediately.

"... You know what my answer is."

Jing Yuan was no crier. In fact, you think he stopped crying or showing any visible sign of discomfort or uneasiness the day he got the title as General. You're pretty sure you can count the amount of times you've seen Jing Yuan cry on one hand.

Perhaps his ability to hide his own needs and wants so often day by day for the past centuries makes your dismissal of his simple wishes that more gut-wrenching for you. You try to ignore the overwhelming guilt that washes over you every time you have to say the same thing to him.

"... You have a lot of things that you want to get done on the Luofu, Jing Yuan." you murmur softly, extending a hand to run your fingers through his locks, breaking apart any knots that may have formed in his sleep.

"You know we can meet again, but now is not the time - especially now," you gently remind with a sombre smile, your hand moving from his hair to rest against his chin to make him face you.

"It's gonna be alright, okay?" he scoffs at your reassurance, finally coming to terms with your conditions once again like always, wrapping his arms around your waist to fall down back on the bed with you on top.

"Remember the last time you said those words to me?" he says, almost sounding offended at your choice of words to which you only smile against his skin in guilt.

"It was the first time I saw you cry so hard," you try to joke, pressing your hands against the mattress to push yourself off of Jing Yuan, choosing to hover above him instead.

"... I'm sorry," you decide to say in the end after a moment of silence, once again threading your fingers through his hair - an act you knew used to calm him before. At this moment though, you're not so sure.

"Why? Shouldn't I be sorry?" he asks in return, a small yawn leaving his lips as his eyes struggle to stay open. You smile bitterly as you shake your head, still threading your fingers through his hair.

"No, none of it was your fault - what happened back then was out of your control. But this time it isn't. I can wait for a long time, Jing Yuan. I know you're aware of that so don't try to rush anything to meet me again." you tell him, leaning down to press your lips against his forehead.

"So it's time to wake up, dear. Luofu is waiting for you."

translation

Aventurine doesn't like being understood, but he does like understanding other people. It is essential for manipulation, for scheming, for control. And he likes controlling you especially—for keeping you close but your heart a comfortable distance away, for opening your legs when he wants the pleasure of your body, for playing your emotions however he needs. And the day will come when that skill will be invaluable—the day when he must die without shattering you. (Or: You are the only person in the universe who understands Aventurine in his mother tongue. He often regrets teaching it to you.)

5k words. gender neutral reader, established relationship, angst, non-graphic sex (reader bottoms, anatomy neutral), themes of cultural loss, references to slavery, aventurine’s canonically implied desire to die. MDNI.

Aventurine cannot lie in Avgin.

Deception does not come easily to him in his mother tongue. His command of it is too weak—and too kind. The universe was a different place in the days when his life was coloured by the warble of Avgin dialect. It felt simpler, partly because he was a child and partly because Sigonia was yet untouched by outsiders. There were no corporations, no casinos, no commodity codes. His entire world was sand, desert, mother, sister, father (or more often—ghost), goddess, tent, wagon, luck, sin, rain, blessing, Avgin.

Katican.

Aventurine is sure that he knew more than just those words. He was fluent as a child. He had conversations with his sister that were complex enough to make his heart hurt, though perhaps his heart was just constantly aching anyway. But the rest of his early words escapes him. He could maybe dredge them up if he thinks long enough, but he also isn't sure if his tongue and lips could form the shape of them anymore. Sometimes he still counts in Avgin, memorises phone numbers in it, but he doesn’t remember the last time he actually strung together a full sentence in the language.

When Aventurine was first stolen into slavery (a word that he had not known as a child, and still doesn't know in Avgin), he wasn’t given a Synesthesia Beacon. He had to rely on his ears and his wits, deciphering the harsh edges of the Katican dialect and then the strange garble of Interastral Standard Language. By the time he had a Beacon installed, it was already translating all speech into Standard—his dominant language.

Sometimes he feels a little aggrieved by it, but at least it wasn't Katican. He'd have blown out his brains if it were.

But it is easy to console himself: Avgin is not a useful language anyway. Dead languages have no value, and the Avgin dialect was killed along with its people. You can’t perform commerce in a dead language, can't negotiate contracts, can't enter a gambling den and use your silver tongue to rob people blind. You can't use a dead language to fell governments and extract resources; you can't use a dead language to bring an entire planet to its knees. You can’t use a dead language to gamble your life; you can't use it to save yourself from the gallows.

You cannot deceive people in a language that is defined by sand, sister, goddess, ghost.

Aventurine cannot lie in Avgin. His command of it is too weak, and there is no one left to which he can lie, anyway.

When you ask Aventurine to teach you his first language, he gives you an amused look.

“Why Avgin?” he asks. “No one speaks it anymore. I can teach you Common Sigonian if you’d like. Or we could learn Xianzhounese together. Maybe Intellitron code? I know a little.”

“You speak Avgin,” you argue.

“Not often,” he says. “And badly when I do.”

“But it's still your language. And I want to understand you.”

Aventurine has to stop himself from laughing. Understand him? He hates being understood. When people understand him, it makes him predictable. And unlikeable. Hardly a position from which he can manipulate people in.

You understand him well enough to know that.

“You'll have to give me a better reason than that,” he says neatly. “Make it worth my while. Reward me.”

You look at him as you ponder, your eyes lingering on his. Perhaps trying to read him, though he prefers to think you're just enjoying the sight of them.

“I’ll teach you my language as well?”

“You mean—you'll reward my hard labour with more work?” he says, lighthearted.

You frown at him despite the joke. “You don't want to understand me better than what a Synesthesia Beacon would allow?” He blinks, pausing. “It’ll be convenient too. We can talk shit about other people in public and no one will understand us.”

Aventurine considers you. He doesn't like being understood, but he does like understanding other people. It is essential for manipulation, for scheming, for control. And he likes controlling you especially—for keeping you close but your heart a comfortable distance away, for opening your legs when he wants the pleasure of your body, for playing your emotions however he needs. And the day will come when that skill will be invaluable—the day when he must die without shattering you.

He also likes the idea of talking shit in public.

“I'm listening,” he says, voice lilting. You lean in, smiling. Sweet. It makes his heart feel something he isn't used to. Something addictive. Something disgusting. He scrambles to cover it with one of the usual tools: humour or distraction or maybe just plain old lying—his most reliable weapon.

“I'll throw in a kiss?” you try.

He hums. “Just one?”

“One per day.”

“Three.”

“You drive a hard bargain.”

“Well, I am a businessman.”

You snort, but he knows you're endeared. You have very noticeable tells when you’re flustered.

“Okay,” you say. “Three kisses on days you teach me.”

“Deal.”

Aventurine remembers more Avgin than he thought he would.

It comes to him slowly, painstakingly. You aren't interested in structured lessons, and he wouldn't be able to provide them anyway. He has a nonexistent grasp of grammar aside from this sounds right and that sounds strange, and Avgin dialect is both so niche and so dead that no textbooks are available. The scholars have abandoned the language as much as the politicians abandoned its people. Aventurine only has you, his fragmented memory, and whatever questions come to mind as you live out your days with him.

Mostly, you ask him about basic vocabulary. Sometimes you ask him to repeat sentences from your conversations in Avgin, like he’s some kind of multilingual parrot. Each prompt forces him to wade through the fog in his mind, the one that’s been shrouding his childhood memories until now. He's startled at how naturally the old words roll off his tongue: One, two, three, four. Good morning. Good evening. Good night. Sweet dreams. Five, six, seven, eight. You're lying to me. Why do you always lie to me? I don't know what you're talking about. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Welcome home. Have you eaten? Have some bread. I made you stew. Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty. That was dangerous. I thought you wouldn't make it back to me. Sometimes I think you want to die. One hundred, one thousand, one million, one billion. I'm sorry. Come here. Let me kiss you. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry.

When you say, How do I ask you to let me hold you, he answers easily. He'd heard the words so often as a child: Let me hold you, Kakavasha. Let Mama hold you. His mouth forms the sounds without conscious thought.

He regrets it almost immediately.

When Aventurine hears it from you—stilted, halting, but no less gentle—he stops breathing. Let me hold you. You say it all the time in Standard, but it feels different in Avgin. More painful. A strange sense of panic closes in on him when he's wrapped up in you, thinking in Avgin, thinking sand, sister, goddess, ghost. He holds you tightly, like the rags cut from his father’s shirt, or his mother’s locket won back from the shell-slashers, or a bag of poker chips beneath a card table, clutched within his trembling grip.

“Aventurine, is something wrong?” you ask in Avgin, and he replies in Standard with his usual smile.

“Hm? No. What could be wrong if I have you here?”

Lying is one of his greatest tools. Sex is another one. So he says, “I think I'd like my reward now,” and he runs his lips along your jaw, your pulse, the spot over your heart (there's a word for that in Avgin but not Standard, he tells you), until you're laughing. I thought you wanted three kisses, you tease, and he replies, Who said I wanted to kiss you on the mouth?

But he coaxes open your thighs, and once he's inside you, he collects his payment properly. He kisses you, and kisses you, and kisses you—and you swallow his lies whole.

There are some things that Aventurine doesn't teach you. Mostly, they’re things that he can’t teach you.

There are countless gaps in his Avgin. His speech is painfully childish—probably more childish than it was when he actually stopped speaking it. He doesn't know how to swear (something that disappoints you) and he doesn't know how to flirt (something that devastates you). He doesn’t know any words that would be useful for work either: commercialization, governance, stakes, winnings, profit. When you ask him what his job title is in Avgin (“Was senior management even a thing in Avgin society?”), he laughs and gives you the word for gambler.

Then there are the words that he remembers—has remembered his whole life—but never says. Not to you, and not to himself. He doesn't teach you any prayers. He doesn't teach you any blessings. He doesn't teach you about Mama Fenge, or the Kakava Festival, or how the rain fell when he was born. When you ask him, What holidays did you celebrate when you were little? he shrugs and says, We didn't have any. Sigonia’s too bleak to do any partying.

Then you ask him one day, while your bodies are spent in the afterglow of sex, sticky with sweat and sweetness, how to say I love you. And he goes quiet.

Love is a cheap word in Interastral Standard. In the language of globalisation and trade, love has been commercialised, commodified, capitalised for power. You say it to him in many contexts: I love this, I love that, I love you. He hardly ever reacts, and he's never said it back. It would feel unnecessary and also cruel if he did: Aventurine has only ever said the words himself as either a joke or a manipulation.

But love feels different in Avgin than in Interastral Standard, doesn't sound like a thing that can be traded or bought. Kakavasha only ever said the word love to his mother, to his sister, to his father's grave. Love in his mother tongue feels priceless.

When Aventurine thinks about you saying it—I love you, Kakavasha, in clumsy, earnest Avgin—something so painful swells in his throat that he can hardly breathe.

“There is no word for love in my language,” he tells you.

You blink. “Okay, then what's an idiom for it?”

“There is none. There’s no word or phrase expressing love.”

You raise a brow. “That’s hard to believe.”

“Is it?” He smiles. “There’s no Avgin in the known universe who cares about love. Only scheming, thieving, and treachery—and you can't do those things when love is involved.”

You look at him in alarm. “Why are you saying that?” You're practically squirming in your discomfort. “I don't know why you think I'd believe such a racist stereotype.”

“It’s not a stereotype,” he says. “I'm not talking about the Avgin culture. I'm talking about myself.”

After all, he is the only Avgin left.

It is an unfair thing to say. A cruel thing to say. After all the laughing and kissing and crying and fucking, after all the tender eyes and gentle words from you—it is probably the worst pain imaginable: I don't give a shit about you. He waits for you to cry.

But you only stare at him calmly, studying him. You brush the hair out of his eyes, seeing them clearly.

“If you lie to me all the time,” you say in Avgin, “eventually I'll stop believing anything you say.”

Aventurine is speechless. His heart does that addictive, disgusting thing again. He thinks about leaving, but then you say, Let me hold you, and he can't do anything other than obey.

Avgin dialect was once included in the Synesthesia Beacon list of functions. The Intelligentsia Guild added it before the Second Katica-Avgin Extinction Event, when the IPC was trying to get a political foothold on Sigonia via the Avgin people. The language was alive then, with enough value to be included into the Synesthesia LLM by the linguists.

But since the Extinction Event—since Kakavasha ran away from home—the Synesthesia data on Avgin has been stagnant, a fossil. Aventurine knows because he's subscribed to software updates for certain languages (Avgin Sigonian, Common Sigonian, Interastral Standard, and now your mother tongue). He gets pinged every time there's a new addition for slang, for neologisms—but there hasn't been a ping for the Avgin dialect since he had the Beacon installed. The live translation function hasn't even been available since the previous Amber Era. When he checks its page on his Synesthesia app, it's very clear why—

SIGONIAN, AVGIN DIALECT SPEAKERS: 0 STATUS: Extinct END OF SERVICE: 2156 AE

The complete death of the language has led to an irritating dilemma for you and Aventurine. You keep running into words that he doesn't know—this time not because of his childlike speech, but because they never existed in his language to begin with. Ocean, tropical, rainforest. Starskiff, accelerator, space fleet. Stock market, shortselling, mutual funds. Black hole, event horizon, spaghettification. All things that never came up for Kakavasha, but now come up for Aventurine, and the language has not evolved to include it.

He always wants to switch to Standard to discuss these things, but you're insistent on speaking in Avgin as much as possible. He doesn't know why, but he doesn't mind humouring you—partly because he likes to indulge you, and partly because he’s grown used to hearing the honeyed timbre of Avgin dialect in your household. The place would feel strange without it.

So you start filling the gaps with other languages, filtering them through the lyricism of Avgin. Loanwords, he thinks they’re called. You take ocean, tropical, rainforest from Amazian; starskiff, accelerator, space fleet from Xianzhounese; stock market, shortselling, mutual funds from Interastral Standard. For the astrophysics terms, you try directly translating them—with limited success.

“Can't I literally just say ‘black hole’?” you ask in Avgin, and he nearly spits out his coffee.

“Please don't. That's a dirty word.” He can't bring himself to say what it means, but from the way you’re laughing, you can clearly guess.

“I thought you said you didn't know how to swear.”

“You've just reminded me how.”

“You're welcome.” You look on the verge of cackling. Aventurine finishes his coffee and wonders when you're going to surprise him with your newfound vulgarity.

“Let's just do the space terms based on Standard,” he says. Begs.

“No, that's so boring.”

“Then let's do your language.”

You open your mouth. Close it. Give him a blank look.

“You don't know how to say those words in your mother tongue either, do you,” he intuits.

“Well, ‘spaghettification’ doesn't really come up in everyday conversation, does it?”

“Then maybe we don't need it.” He smiles, senses an opportunity. Smells blood. “How about ‘love’? I'd much rather know how you say that. I bet it sounds beautiful.”

You give him a long look. Your eyes are vulnerable when you share it: Love. I love you. He’s fascinated by the sound of it. Your voice is never that fragile when you say it in Standard. It's never so earnest. He repeats it, staring at you, and your gaze falls to the ground. His mouth curls.

“I like it,” he says. “Let's use that. It'll sound nice in Avgin.”

You try to recover. “Sure. That works. But back to ‘black hole’—”

And the two of you continue like that for days, weeks, months. It feels like a complete bastardization of his mother tongue on some days, in some conversations. Almost unrecognisable. But it doesn't feel bad. It’s all he has, it's all you have, and when he walks into your home, he starts speaking it without thinking: your bastard, patchwork language. The Avgin dialect that exists only in your house. A tongue that can only be understood by a liar.

And then, one lazy Sunday morning, he gets a familiar ping. He expects it to be Interastral Standard, as usual. The language balloons with each planet that the IPC colonises.

But instead, he opens his screen and freezes.

SIGONIAN, AVGIN DIALECT SPEAKERS: 2 STATUS: Endangered. SERVICE RESUMED: 2157 AE NEW UPDATES: 103 loanwords and 5 neologisms added.

He can't stop looking at the status. Endangered. Endangered, which means dying, but alive. The Avgin dialect is alive again. The Intelligentsia Guild determined it, so it must be true. But Aventurine can't agree: there are no Avgin speakers in the known universe other than the two of you, and what you speak isn't real Avgin. The Avgin spoken by his mother and father and sister is dead; the Avgin spoken by Kakavasha is dead. The festivals are gone; the deserts have been terraformed. There are no wagons; there are no dances; there are no prayers. There are no blessings, and he has no home—

As long as you are alive, the blood of the Avgin will never run dry.

His throat locks up.

“Aventurine?” you ask. Your voice is drowsy, but concerned. “Is something wrong?”

He looks at you from his phone, a polished smile on his face.

“No.” His syllables are plain and efficient in the noise of Interastral Standard: “Just looking at details for a new assignment. It’ll be a long one.”

“Oh.” You frown. “Will you be away from home for a long time, then?”

He stops himself from swallowing. “Yes, I'll be away from the house. For several months, probably.”

“Okay.” Your voice is small. “Take care of yourself, okay? I'll miss you.”

Each word you speak resonates with heartbreak. It always does in these conversations, even in Standard—but the sorrow is amplified in Avgin. His mother tongue has an inherently sad quality to it, he's noticed. His people have lost so much over their history—their language is one of loss. It's his language of loss. Kakavasha did all his grieving in Avgin; Aventurine has never felt sorrow in Standard. When the language died, so did Kakavasha—and all his regrets with it.

“You'll come home to me, right?” you ask. It's a beautiful sentence in Avgin. A heartrending one. He feels something that he hasn't known since he was a child.

It's a feeling he has to kill.

“Yes,” he says in Standard. “Of course I'll come back.”

This is not the first time that Aventurine has been mistaken for dead, but this is the longest time.

The latest world to join the IPC network was a tough acquisition. It had been ruled by a despot who wreaked havoc on both the people and the planet, and who was too stupid and reckless to resolve conflicts with his trade partners. He probably would have blown up the whole star system had he been left to his own devices. Aventurine had no qualms about bringing him to ruin, nor did he have qualms about nearly dying in the process.

If things had gone his way, he'd either be dead or missing. This would have been the perfect opportunity to do the latter, actually—to be freed from the IPC. Free to drift alone, speaking with strangers in strange, unfamiliar tongues. No connection to his past, to the cruel history of his luck, to his commodity code. No tether to his inherently unjust destiny. But instead he's back in your house, pockets heavy with his borrowed wealth, speaking to you in his bastardised, childish Avgin. I'm sorry. Come here. Let me kiss you. Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry.

Your Avgin is—shockingly fluent. He doesn't know how. He can't think about it right now. All he can process is the wounded animal noise of your speech as you yell at him, as you cry. Like an injured songbird, or a weeping child. Why did you leave, why did you lie, why do you always lie to me, why don't you give a shit about me, you spit. Why do you want to die, why do you want to die, why do you want to die, you keep saying. Sand, sister, goddess, ghost, he keeps hearing. Sand, sister, goddess, ghost. Don't leave me, big sister. People will die. Why do you have to go?

“I’m sorry,” he tries again, this time in your language. “I'm so sorry. Come here. Let me hold you.”

You collapse into your mother tongue. Aventurine is both relieved and horrified. Relieved that he doesn't need to hear the language of his grief—horrified that he needs to hear yours. He's never heard you cry like this. He's never heard you break like this. These must have been the words you used when the soldiers found you hiding in your closet, when they dragged you out of your home. You were just a child.

Aventurine doesn't know the words you are using—you've never taught them—but he still understands them.

You're very malleable when you’re sad; even more so when you're hysterical. Aventurine understands this about you, and he understands how to calm you—this time in your native tongue—and he understands how to kiss you. He understands that you need to feel close to him. He understands that there are ways to accomplish this other than sex. A normal person would talk it out, have an honest conversation, come to a mutual understanding, and maybe even stop trying to kill himself. They wouldn't fuck you into the mattress while your face is still wet with tears.

But Aventurine is not a normal person. He doesn't know how to have an honest conversation, and he doesn't want to be understood. Lying is his greatest weapon, and sex is a close second. So he kisses you until you’re too breathless to cry, fucks you until you can't think, and makes you come so hard that you’re in too much bliss to grieve. And maybe it's horrible of him, but he enjoys it. He enjoys the way your body takes him in so easily, the way your nails dig into his back, the way you tighten around him when you climax, so wet and needy for him. The way you beg for him in your language for liars as he spends himself inside you: I love you, Aventurine, I love you, I love you, I love you—

Only because it feels good. This is all only because he enjoys fucking you. This is all only because you enjoy fucking him. This is all it'll ever be, and it'll be this way until he gets to meet his end.

(Some months ago, Aventurine started dreaming in Avgin.

It surprised him when he first noticed it. The last time he remembers having a dream in his native tongue, he was twelve years old and still in chains. And even then, it had become a sporadic, strange thing. Awful to wake up from. One minute he was with his mother and sister on a cool, rainy day, speaking fluently in Avgin as he laughed and played—and the next minute, he was being shaken awake in his cage, hearing the cruel lash of Katican.

But ever since he's started speaking Avgin with you, he's been dreaming in it. Vividly. Sometimes he's a child in these dreams, and sometimes he's grown. He's always back in the Sigonian desert, among the tents and the campfires and his family wagons. His mother and sister are alive. Sometimes his father is too. The skies roar with thunder and the stellar winds are always harsh, but they always keep him cocooned up in their arms. He's always warm.

Sometimes Aventurine dreams of nicer days. Clear skies, warm sun, cool breeze—all blessings from the Mother Goddess. On these days, he tends to be an adult, and you tend to be there with him. Your Avgin is fluent but strange, filled with funny loanwords and peculiar slang. His father likes the neologisms and starts using them—but only in wrong ways. His sister finds it embarrassing and keeps apologising to you.

His mother loves you. She loves you so much it hurts. This is how I know you're blessed, Kakavasha, she says, glowing. You’re so lucky to have found such a kind person.

Kakavasha knows this. He knows he's lucky, and in his dreams, that isn't a bad thing. In his dreams, his luck means that his home is not violently excised from his heart: his father never dies; his mother never dies; his sister never dies. The tents are not burned; the wagons are not destroyed. He is never forced to forget his people's dishes, their songs, their language, their joy. And in his dreams, his luck means that he meets you anyway, without all the loss and the chains and the lying.

In his dreams, he is able to bring you to the desert. He is able to teach you the Avgin he spoke as a child, to cook all the meals his mother used to make, to share with you their coffee and their tea. He teaches you prayers. He teaches you blessings. He tells you about Mama Fenge, about how the rain fell when he was born. He takes you to the Kakava Festival, shows you how to dance, sings to you all the Avgin songs until you're singing back. He presses his palm to yours in prayer; he kisses you in devotion, not avoidance.

Sometimes the two of you still fight, the same fights that you have in real life, but he handles them with honesty. He listens to you. He apologises to you. He tells you that he’ll change, and he means it—because this world is a kind one, and he has no need to be so cruel to you.

In this kind world, when you lay in bed with his arms tight around you, you smile at him and say, I love you, Kakavasha. You say it in Avgin—real Avgin, not the dialect born from genocide and deceit—and when he responds, there's not even a little bit of insincerity in his voice. Because Kakavasha never became Aventurine in these dreams, so he has no Interastral Standard in which he can lie to you, no silver tongue with which he can manipulate you, no commodity code that inspires his fear of being controlled by you. Kakavasha only knows Avgin, and he only has his sand, his family, his goddess, his home.

And he has you. Finally, he has you.

He kisses you, and kisses you, and kisses you—and then he tells you the truth.)

.

.

.

Aventurine cannot lie in Avgin.

You noticed this very early on: whenever he lies to you, he always switches to Interastral Standard. Probably he wouldn't be able to do it in his mother tongue. His command of it is too weak, and the words he knows are all too kind. He speaks with the innocence of a child, and children cannot deceive people in the way that adults can. Children cannot perform commerce or negotiate contracts. They cannot use a silver tongue to rob people blind. They cannot save themselves from the gallows.

So Aventurine’s Avgin is defenceless. Vulnerable. So vulnerable it hurts. You are not so vulnerable in your first language because your captors spoke it on occasion, and you learned to lie in it to gain their pity. You told Aventurine that knowing it would help him understand you, but this was a deception. Aventurine’s mother tongue was a language of trust, but yours is a dialect of abuse.

The Avgin language died before Aventurine could be gutted by it; this is why it disarms him so completely. This is why he’s so indulgent and so warm when you use it with him, why he yields to all your requests. Not requests for money or gifts—you’re certain those are meaningless to him—but for affection. Let me hold you. Let me touch you. Let me kiss you. He can never say no.

This is also why he loves hearing you speak his mother tongue, you think—it makes him feel at home, it makes him feel safe. Maybe it even makes him feel loved. He never seems so at peace speaking any other language, so you try to use Avgin as much as possible. You like seeing him happy. You like it even if it means you need to teach him your own native language in exchange, even when it means you need to hear him say all the things your captors used to say. You don't mind it if it's him. You never mind the harm he inflicts on you, especially not when it brings you closer to him.

It is convenient that he cannot lie in Avgin. You only wanted to learn it in the first place because he talks in his sleep—mostly in Standard, but sometimes in his native tongue. And now that you know he cannot lie in Avgin, you also know he's always being honest in his dreams. Honest when he throws his arms around you in his sleep. Honest when he grabs you so tightly that you bruise. Honest when he buries his face into your neck and whispers prayers into your skin.

Most of the words he says are common ones, the earliest vocabulary that he taught you. But there are some things he's withheld from you—and to learn those things, you had to track down linguists from the Intelligentsia Guild, bribe them with your dirty money, have them give you all their deprecated, extinct data. It felt two-faced, and it was violating, but it was the only way. You already know that Aventurine would rather die than translate his feelings for you, would never want this part of himself understood.

I'm sorry for always leaving you.

I'm sorry for making you cry.

I can't bear the thought of losing you.

Freedom would be too lonely without you.

I don't want to hurt you anymore.

I don't want to lie to you anymore.

I missed you.

I want you.

I need you.

I love you.

end

afterword

Friends

Jing yuan x g/n!reader

Summary: The xianzhou citizens don't often indulge in romance, to love is to one day see yourself fall into the embrace of mara— to let your lover witness it. Some still love, some deny themselves of such feelings.

Cw. Angst, unrequited love (not really), getting drunk, mixed signals, implied sexual stuff and a little bit of that but they don't actually do it (i think), no fluff no comfort because that shit is for the weak

A/n: Did I cry writing this? Yes. Was it worth it? I don't know.

Love.

noun

an intense feeling of deep affection.

He wonders if you ever noticed how he felt about you. Lingering gazes lasting deeper than it should, ‘accidental’ brushes against your hand or how he finds himself dropping everything he's doing just to be with you.

“Jing yuan, your move.”

Your words snap him back to reality, he awkwardly bit his lip, his focus back on the board. Right.

He wonders as he moves his piece two tiles forward, would you ever get wind of these growing feelings of his? If you did,

“Checkmate.”

Would you feel the same?

A light chuckle leaves his lips, the sight of your frustrated expression ingrained in his mind, like every memory he has of you.

A loud slam echoed in the room, “How do you always win?”

“You make brash decisions on the board,” Jing yuan backtracks the pieces before the soul-crushing checkmate, he positioned your pieces, “It should've gone here, you could've blocked my move.”

An exasperated sigh escapes you, clamping chunks of your hair frustratedly after realising you could've won, “I hate you.”

The man laughs as he tidies up the table, eyes still trained on you.

He doesn't know how and why you both ended up in this position.

Your relationship was complicated.

He doesn't understand you.

Sometimes you'd hold his hand, tell him all your secrets like he were a priest at a confessional, take care of him and everything of the like.

Yet, you always pushed him away. He'd sit right beside you, looking over your shoulder to read the novel you recently took interest in. As if he were a bug, you'd swat him away for being too close.

“Ji, don't get too close. I'm melting from the heat.” you say, but it was winter?

He doesn't understand love at all.

He loves mimi, he loves starchess, he loves his family (the high-cloud quintet, or should I say, ex-family), he loves tea, he loves his home.

Sometimes you two would go out to the library, indulging in me-time, faces buried in pages.

“Jing yuan, have you found a book about that one novel I told you about?” He shook his head no, he doesn't indulge in fictional work that often. But you loved novels.

“I think I found it.” He wipes the dust off the book spine. ‘How to fall in love with a genius’, what a strange book title.

“Really?” quietly tiptoeing towards his direction, the library lady eyeing you two; you had a habit of making too much noise, leading to the bookkeeper scolding you both.

“Here,” he blew over the cover, dust particles puffing in your face.

“Bastard—” words barely audible as you spoke in-between coughs, “Thanks though”

The bookkeeper glaring at you two, sending shivers down your spine. The idiot laughs again, you slap his back.

You both get kicked out.

Friends don't get drunk together, friends don't cuddle, friend's don't do this.

Like ‘friends’, you cling to him in his bed, head nuzzled in his neck. Jing yuan was scared to hug you or even dare to hold your waist.

He can only get a taste of heaven but never the real thing, you can hug him yet when he reciprocates he's too close.

He envies at how audacious you are. That you're not afraid to hold him like he's yours but he could never call you his. How you could just stare at him with those loving resplendent eyes but he could never stare longer at yours.

This time however, he wishes he slept in, he wishes he told you he was busy, that he doesn't want to hang out today.

One drink turned to two, two drinks turned to three. More, more and more, until you're on top of him, all of him you can see.

“Ji.”

How cruel you are. Straddled on his lap as he was laid against the pearly sheets of his bed, your eyes devoid of light as your free hand tug on the hem of his shirt, “Jing yuan, I'm sorry”

You cried again, gripping his shirt tightly. Why can't he push you away?

Tears spill out as you desperately wanted to love him, as he did too. But was it really love?

“I love you.” he accidentally slips out.

Your eyes widened in fear, you tried to convince yourself you didn't hear anything as you grind your hips on his lap, croaking out a guttural moan.

“Please,” you grinded faster, your hips burning, you prayed to god that what you heard was a lie, that you misheard him.

He groans in desperation, hands on your hips, “I really love you.”

Without a second thought, as if you were sober, you swatted his hand away and got off his lap. He stares at you like you were a madman— why did you suddenly stop?

He wishes he was drunk enough to indulge in you that night, but sober enough to have never said that.

He sat up, his hand reaching out for you but you swat it away again, “Stop.”

A sob stuck in his throat, heavy breaths drowning out the wanton moans from earlier.

“I…”

He wishes he never even loved you in the first place.

Tomorrow came, those lingering gazes on each other no more, those playful banters dissipated into thin air.

He can't bring himself to confront you, too scared to accept what's become to the two of you.

“Ji— General. Documents from Madam Yukong”

The way your eyes dart to anything but him, he bit his lip anxiously, “Yes, thank you. You may leave now.”

As if nothing happened last night, you bowed your head and ran away as quickly as possible. Does he even have the courage to ask you for another game of starchess?

Days passed yet no progress. Your relationship has turned into a strictly professional one. So cold to each other, yanqing and fu xuan can't wrap their hands around what could've happened but they don't have it in them to ask what happened.

The general signed paperwork, like usual. Not noticing loud thumping footsteps nearing his desk.

“General,” a part of him wished it was your voice.

“Yes yanqing?”

“They've turned in their resignation paper”

Oh. Huh?

He thinks yanqing is joking. Not when his dear retainer thrusts the documents to his hand does he realise he's really lost you.

“For what exactly?” he asks as if he doesn't know the answer.

Yanqing sighs, “I'm not sure either, but they talked about retiring.”

“They're too young to retire,” the man scratched his head, his mind racing with a million thoughts and a million regrets.

“General, they're 630 years old”

“Oh right,” he gave his retainer a weak smile, hoping the young boy doesn't notice the uneasiness in his eyes when he read through the contents, “I shall talk to them before I approve their resignation. You may leave.”

Yanqing nods, taking his leave as Jing yuan trembles. He's lost the high-cloud quintet, does fate have to take you too in its stride, far away from him?

He was okay with just being friends with you.

Jing yuan called for you in his private garden, he didn't expect you to actually come especially after that.

“You came.”

“You called,” your eyes as empty as that one night.

He tried his best to hold back the tears, heart burning yet he had to remain professional. After all, he was your boss.

“Yanqing brought me your resignation request.” he pauses, unable to find the right words.

Normally, if an employee of his decides to resign, he'd sign away their request and carry on with his life but this— how could he just sign so easily?

“Have you not signed it yet?”

“No.” he can't bring himself to.

Your fingers found solace under the table, fiddling and fidgeting together but you'd rather die than let the man in front of you notice it, “Can't you just sign it?”

“It's just… you've been working with me since the high-cloud quintet and it's not that easy.”

“How so?”

“We’d lose an important member of society, your contributions to the mechanical team have been beneficial,” he tapped his foot aggressively, agitated. “Can't you think twice about it?”

Without hesitation, “I can't. I'm getting old, sooner or later I'd die—”

He listens, not interrupting you, “— I don't want to die without living.”

Living? What a lie. You've been more alive by his side more than anything.

“What exactly do you mean by living?”

He pretends to not understand, he wishes you'd just take him into consideration and talk to him like he was Jing yuan, not the general arbiter.

“You know what I mean,” the air sucked out of your lungs, why did he have to make you say it out loud?

“I want to live. I want to be finally free of my duties, get married, and retire.”

He nodded along with your words, he felt sick. Sicker than he ever was in his life.

“I wish you told me sooner”

“What good would it bring?”

“I just wished you were honest from the start.”

The words were once stuck again in your throat, trying to blink nonstop to not let those pathetic tears spill out, “This is for me—”

“What about me?”

Desperation laced in his tone, he wishes you'd give him a chance, that you'd let him in.

“What about you?”

You wonder, what about him? He wants to ask, what about us?

“This is about me,” neither of you could find the words, but you try.

“I want to live,” forlorn, not a glimmer of hope in your eyes, he wishes on a sliver of hope, “Is that too much to ask?”

Yet life is cruel. It was a mistake trying to be more than friends with you, again; he wished he stayed as friends with you. He would have been fine with anything.

For your own good, “I understand.”

Jing yuan reluctantly took his pen, staring at the paper. He signed.

“Thank you.”

He signed you away, at least now, there's no more need for formalities. He is no longer your boss, he is just jing yuan to you.

“I… “ his mouth snapped shut.

“No more words, general?”

As selfish as it sounds, he wants to tell you that he's willing to leave this life behind. That if you want to live, he'll live with you, if you want to marry, he'll marry you. If you want to retire, he'll retire with you.

But duty calls, he can't just stop being ‘general arbiter’ in a heartbeat for you. He wishes he could.

It's not that hot outside today, but he feels like burning.

“Ah, nothing. Where will you go now?”

“It doesn't matter, I'll just go somewhere, live alone or maybe start a new life.”

“I wish luck for your future endeavours.”

Jing yuan has never been selfish. This time however, he wishes he wasn't the general. He wishes he was just a normal man, he wishes he had the privilege, that he had the choice to be your man.

You could no longer handle being under this suffocating atmosphere, “Can I leave now?”

“By all means.”

That was the last time he talked to you, he wonders, he wishes, that he was anyone but him. Not even he could have foreseen this.

When your footsteps grew quieter as you were farther away from him, he cried.

It's been long since he's cried… years, centuries perhaps.

He's lost his family, he's lost you too. All because he wanted to be more than friends.

He wonders if you cried too, if you'd come back. It's for the best.

In due time, one of you will turn mara struck. He doesn't have the heart to see you in that state. But he wishes you gave him the chance to love you, even for just two years. A year or two is all he needs to be content.

None of that matters, he wipes his tears. Reporting back to the seat of divine foresight.

Note: not proofread so dont laugh. 😔😔😔 Before one of you bitches say, who hurt you, who hurt you? No, this is just me projecting with my cupioromantic and aromantic tendencies. ITS SO COMMON TO SEE MC BEING THE ONE GETTING REJECTEd BUT NOT THE CHARACTER GETTING REJECTED I NEED MORE FICS WITH THIS PLOT GRRRRR 😟. ITS 3:16 AM FUCK SLEEP FUCK IT ALL GRRRR

Written by @khuzena. Likes, reblogs and comments are always appreciated. ♡ 

ONCE MORE !

kamisato ayato x fem!reader smau

synopsis — what happens when your ex comes back from abroad and you realize you still like him, but as destiny likes to play with us all it just so happens that he starts getting closer with your roommate? what will you do?

✓ tags ! exes to lovers, slowburn, jealousy, modern au, college au, angst, crack

✓ warnings ! cursing, alcohol consumption, y/n is a dumbass with self-sabotaging tendencies, your mom jokes, mentions of mature themes but nothing explicit, brief scaramouche x reader

✓ status ! ongoing, sporadic updates

✓ taglist ! open, send an ask to be added

author's note – ignore the timestamps unless stated otherwise.

character profiles !

skk canon || mr. worldwide

chapters !

• 001 — i tweeted

• 002 — hashtag my grills <3

• 003 — gorgeous (🧋)

• 004 — she brought dazai out

• 005 — that TRAITOR

• 006 — simp era

• 007 — karma

• 008 — guard dog

• 009 — truth or dare (🧋)

• 010 — two years ago, part one

• 011 — two years ago, part two

• 012 — an abomination

• 013 — who's this scaramucci guy

• 014 — would you like to play cupid

• 015 — that was a disaster

• 016 — giggling like a schoolgirl

• 017 — nothing happened

• 018 — fix that attitude of yours

• 019 — ouch

• 020 — what if? (🧋)

• 021 — haha

• 022 — angsty and full of rage

• 023 — somewhere in the haze (🧋)

• 024 — where the hell have u been loca

• 025 — the morning after (🧋)

• 026 — kay lol

• 027 — i'm a genius

• 028 — just some friendly advice

• 029 — oohhh drama

• 030 — thank u childe

• 031 — happy birthday (🧋)

♪ [bonus] — insight into ayato's character

• 032 — [tbc...]

Thinking about luocha and how everyone is blind to his potential in yandere fics

HAVE YOU SEEN THAT MAN COUNTERPARTS??! They're all unhinged like crazy scientist kind of unhinged. And his crush is canonically in that coffing is multiple universes

Damn I want him

I only trust fanfics (any kind) written by women and gays

I only trust and enjoy noncon written by women and gays.