I'm sitting in a puddle of my own tears as i write this because chen yi and ai di have my sanity hostage rn:
THE HEART STICKER ON THE GUN I am actually crying this is somehow even more chaotic than the pillow 🤣
Chen yi visited ai di in prison?? Chen yi brought a cake?? Chen yi CRIED????? Who's cutting onions in here omg 🥲
I'm so glad that ai di was the one with the knife, but boy really had to rough chen yi up just to get him into that chair huh?
Chen yi smirking like that is SO FRICKING HOT like wtf was that sir I'm surprised ai di managed to keep holding onto his chopsticks when he saw that
Ai di is once again shocked into submission when chen yi casually eats that chili pepper 😭 and the way chen yi casually just hoists him up... 🔥
Chen yi tying ai di to the bed in order to confess to him is so on brand but also really the perfect way he could have dealt with this, ai di is so stubborn that it might really have been the only way chen yi could get him to listen 🥲
I'm probably not the only one crying over that montage of ai di celebrating their birthdays alone right? It's the saddest scene I've ever watched and the background track of ai di brokenly singing happy birthday... I CRIED SO HARD OKAY
Ai di is honestly so traumatised, he's loved chen yi for probably close to 10 years at this point and he is so disbelieving that chen yi finally loves him back, that his first response to his confession is "am I just a replacement because you couldn't get the guy you actually like?" I just. My heart hurts for him so much 🥺
A million kudos to jiang dian (ai di's actor), he's got the vulnerable look down SO GOOD??¿¿?¿? His expression when chen yi gently grabs his face to force him to turn his head and look at him???? HE'S SO TERRIFIED and the way his eyes are tearing up and he can't even look at chen yi in the eye please!!!! I can't do this 😭😭
And then, AND THEN when chen yi unties him and ai di finally processes the confession, the wondrous look in his eyes when he stares at chen yi asdkjjsjjfjsjfjskkckd I FEEL SO SATISFIED LIKE HIS PINING AND PAIN HAS FINALLY BLOSSOMED INTO THIS MOMENT
The way he grabs chen yi's shirt I literally went AAAAAAA!!!! When he pulls chen yi close and his eyes are trying to threaten him with "You better have thought through it clearly" like he is warning chen yi that this is final!!!! There's no turning back from here no returns no refunds you'll be stuck with me for the rest of your life aaaaAAAA
"What's mine will always be mine" "I won't let anyone take you away from me" I AM!!!!! SCREAMING!!!!!!!!
"Me too" "I'll kill whoever tries to take you away from me" MURDER MENTIONED CASUALLY WITH A HUGE SMILE AND A RARE CHEN YI DIMPLE!!!!!!!!!!! MYGODS FOR TWO MAFIA BOYS THEY ROMANCE BETTER THAN ANYONE IN THIS ENTIRE SERIES
Ai Di's trauma is peeking through again with the "am I dreaming?" hnghhhhshxhsjjfjs my boy has dreamed of this moment for so long that he can't believe its real bjdjkkfnirjfs AGH 😭
Chen yi biting ai di's finger and going "You can try" with the most BEDROOM EYES I have ever seen
The rope burns on ai di's wrists and the cuts and bruises on chen yi's face and arms THEY BOTH HURT EACH OTHER BUT THEY'RE FINALLY ON THE SAME PAGE
Okay the scene where they're both in pastels and ai di in that gigantic sweater twirling his sleeves is SO HECKIN ADORABLE he looks so comfortable and happy with Chen yi now? 🥺 also that oversized sweater is probably to hide all the hickeys that Chen yi gave him eHEHEH
I want to pretend that Chen yi getting shot didn't happen but it honestly opens up a lot of interesting thoughts for what's going to happen next. With all the comments about death that ai di made throughout the series, we would expect that ai di be the one who wound up actually getting hurt or dying in the end. But because it's Chen yi, and if (WHEN) he survives, it's gonna change ai di's worldview so much? He's talked about them dying so often but I don't think he ever considered the possibility of Chen yi dying before he does. He's always been comfortable with dying for Chen yi, but now I think he'll be even more invested in living for the both of them.
(Also, call me delulu but I'm dying to see ai di acting all feral and possessive over him while Chen yi's recovering 🙈)
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3. taxi
oh man, this one FOUGHT me y'all. so much cutting and pasting. I am not even kidding when I say that everything that happens in this chapter was supposed to be part of the last one, and I gave up and cut that one off early because I was sick of trying to finish this part. and now this is my longest chapter yet. you know, out of all three of them. at 1.3k. lol. I am not, how do you say, fast. but I was hoping I'd be able to get a chapter written over christmas, and I'm really proud of myself for finishing it!
Content warnings for this chapter: box boy universe, pet whump, dehumanization, cage mention, rampant classism. As always, please tell me if there's anything else I need to tag.
[masterlist] [chapter two] [chapter four]
“Okay I know they’re supposed to be expensive but what can you possibly be charging this much money for.”
“Adoption fees are to offset the cost of room, board and medical care while at the facility,” the employee parrots, without so much as the decency to look ashamed.
“He does not look like he has had literally any of those things while he’s been here. Or possibly in his entire life.”
“Ma’am, if you cannot afford the adoption fee, then you cannot adopt a Pet.”
“Oh, I can afford it,” Vanessa growls, handing over a very shiny credit card before her mouth can get her in enough trouble to stop the employee from taking it. She bites her lip until she tastes copper to keep from saying, I’d just rather put it towards something that isn’t blatantly and obviously going right back into Worldwide Rehabilitative Un-fucking-limited’s pockets despite the fact that this is supposed to be a goddamn government facility.
Harm reduction, she reminds herself. Paying extortionate fees to kill shelters is still harm reduction. It’s the unsavory truth, but it doesn’t make the blood in her mouth taste any sweeter.
“Sign here,” the woman says, handing her credit card back along with a digital pad and stylus, and Vanessa cracks her wrist before she takes them. It’s sore and snapping like a glowstick from the mountain of paperwork she’s already been made to sign since the employee unceremoniously hauled the man on the floor behind her down from his double-high-stacked wire crate. She can’t decide whether to consider it an obscenely large amount, or an obscenely little one for all that it represents.
She can’t think about it too hard. Can’t draw too much of her own attention to the fact that she’s really doing this, or she might just run screaming back out into the grey-tinted autumn afternoon, and then where would this guy be?
She scribbles her name on the touchpad, and just like that… it’s done.
—
“Don’t forget your leash and collar,” the employee reminds her.
“I won’t be using those,” Vanessa says, with all the imperious rich-lady self-assurance she can fake.
“You will if you don’t want to be liable for civil and/or criminal penalties up to and including the permanent forfeiture of your right to Pet ownership,” the woman drones like she’s rattling it off from a handbook, and nobody has the right to own a person but even Vanessa knows better than to argue the system with someone who literally works for it.
She grinds her teeth as she takes the lengths of bulky blue nylon from the woman. She crouches beside the man, who’s bent himself into an odd kneeling fetal position on the cold tile floor. “Sorry,” she whispers as she slides the coarse material around his throat, feeling his pulse beat harsh and rapid underneath. She hopes she’s being quiet enough that the employee won’t hear her talking to him like a person—because he is a person, goddamnit—but she knows better than to trust her own volume. Best if she can get the fuck out of here with him now, before she makes a mistake.
She really doesn’t want to lead this dude crawling down the street like an animal. Doesn’t want to imagine what people will think. But she asks him, “Can you stand?”, and he makes a sound like a choking dog, and so much for both their dignity, she fucking guesses.
“Ugh, fine, whatever, just… come on.”
—
Fuck standing, the guy can barely support himself on all fours. His joints threaten to buckle at every step as Vanessa urges him out onto the chilly sidewalk. Coat of dirt aside, he’s got nothing on him but a pair of boxers as filthy as he is and that godawful blue collar, and when his bare skin meets the frigid pavement his body clenches so hard she can practically hear his teeth slam shut.
She looks at the unwashed man before her, shivering hard enough to rattle his bones in the cold October air. Looks at her thick brown coat. Ugh, she likes this coat, the lining is stitched in in all the right places to keep the texture of the shell from making her want to climb out of her own skin and no amount of dry cleaning in the world is going to convince her to put it on again once it touches… whatever the fuck is all goddamn over this guy. She sighs and shrugs it off.
Fuck fuck fuck it’s cold. She’s shivering herself in just plain blue jeans and her second favorite Cure t-shirt. But a million “if you’re cold, they’re cold!” memes flash through her mind and she grumbles aggrievedly and drapes the wool coat over his massive, gaunt frame. This dude has like a foot on her standing, she remembers when the lapels will barely pull around his shoulders. She’s gonna have to shake Austin down for clothes.
God, it feels beyond fucked up to have a person on a leash, and it doesn’t help that the cheap blue nylon feels plasticky in her hand and she hates the texture. She can’t imagine how much worse it must feel around the throat of the shuddering man before her. She’s taking the damn thing off him as soon as she gets him home, she’ll get him a better one if Roselle can’t find her a loophole and she absolutely fucking has to, but when the fifth or sixth cab passes her by without even slowing down she starts to wonder how the hell she’s going to get him home at all.
—
“You want to go to the corner,” the employee says boredly, not so much as looking up from her newspaper when Vanessa shoulders her way back through the door.
“You what?” Vanessa echoes.
“The corner. Better if you go another block or two, even. Cabs don’t stop in front of the shelter.”
Of course they don’t, Vanessa thinks.
She hipchecks the door back open and returns to the stupid goddamn hitching post they so conveniently provide along the front wall of the shelter, where she’s awkwardly strung up the loop of the stupid blue leash. “Hey, uh, dude? I’m gonna go up the street a bit, okay, I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”
He barely acknowledges that he’s heard her, curled back up under her coat in that same odd position with his forearms tucked into his chest. “...not that you would,” she adds dubiously, before power-walking away to the next block.
Vanessa hisses through her teeth in the bleak grey air and rubs at her goosebump-riddled arms, but true to the employee’s disaffected word it’s only a matter of minutes this time before a cab driver catches her wave and pulls over. “Thanks,” she says as she tumbles in. “I’m going back to the Heights. Need to pick someone up first, though. Just on the next block.”
The driver looks skeptical, but he rolls down the quiet street all the same—until he clocks the shelter just as Vanessa tells him to stop. “No. Nuh uh. No way. I don’t let Pets in my cab.”
“I’ll double your fare. Up front.”
The driver shakes his head, staring revulsed in the direction of the hitching post. “Not worth all that crud on my seats.” Oh. Great. He’s seen him.
“What if I cover the seats. Newspaper.”
The driver sizes her up with a calculating gaze, one elbow propped on the back of his seat, and somewhere in the middle of wanting to punch him for looking at her she finds herself wishing for once that she’d dressed… richer. Finally, he grouses, “Triple fare. And the meter’s runnin’ while ya cover ‘em.”
“Fine,” Vanessa spits, and sprints out with the door wide open before he has time to change his mind.
She barges into the shelter one last time, hopefully the last fucking time in her life if she has any say in it. Leaning over the counter, with a grin that’s probably a little too smug for her to be proud of, she snatches the newspaper directly out of the apathetic employee’s complicit hands.
-
taglist: @maracujatangerine @pigeonwhumps @tragedyinblue @marchtothefuckingsea @octopus-reactivated @briars7
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I cannot fathom what the plot of V10 would even be if it really does become the final season.
Like, regardless if that's really what's gonna happen or not, IF V10 even happens, I'm just thinking hypothetically.
We just had an entire Volume of nothing of actual importance happen, and then.....????????
Sure, we saw some shit with Summer. But all that really did was provide more questions and kinda just stoke people's already ongoing theories and such.
Even learning about The Tree and the Gods and such was meaningless, and our characters didn't actually grow in any meaningful way.
So it really boils down to: V8 had all Hell break loose, the main cast and 1 cockroach fall into the void, Salem got 2 relics, and an entire Kingdom and then some got dumped onto another in the middle of a sandstorm.
Then the characters from the Void just show up to continue the plot.
So I'm really struggling to see what could possibly get resolved in any meaningful way...
Cuz we still have:
Tyrian & Mercury already at Vacuo
The relic from Beacon still not found
No idea how to actually beat Salem
The possible merging of Oscar & Oz
Winter being a Maiden
The summer Maiden still not heard of or seen
Summer Rose and whatever the fuck happened there
Raven, as she is still a Maiden and a charceter that SHOULD have relevance, especially now with the news of the Summer Secret
Silver Eyes to actually be relevant to the plot
SEWs being made into Grimm
Where is Pietro & Maria
Penny's death & Jaune's part in it actually being addressed (saying "they talked about it off screen" doesn't count)
Neo's whole thing
And just so much more.... like SO much more!
There's 2 main ways (that may just kinda merge into 1) the heros could win as things stand: The villains keep screwing themselves over or switching sides and end up helping (intentionally or not) to defeat Salem, or, they toss Salem into a portal that sends her directly to the Tree in Ever After and she's forced to Ascend 😑
Awful bonus points if it's Jaune that pushes her.
Like...... even with a whole Volume of content, I really don't see a satisfying conclusion or one that even really makes sense.
I'm kinda hoping they don't even try to make a finale. If it dies here and now, it'd be a mercy
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