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omgpurplefattie · 9 months

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Snippet of Detoxify, Chapter 5

I have spent today watching the Lianhualou concert and writing the next chapter of my (modern) City AU, and here's a bit of what I have written.

Li Lianhua PoV

Li Lianhua got home at half past eleven, by pedal boat. Shulin and Wu Xi had stuck him with needles for hours, talked both with him and over him, gave him herbal concoctions to drink (that was mostly Shulin; even Wu Xi looked doubtfully at some of his ingredients) and made him go through exercises that bordered on the superstitious or fantastical.

When Zhang Ping brought home little Teddy, Shulin had gone to put her to bed while Wu Xi carried on sticking him with needles and taking extensive notes. They gave him a number of instructions, some of them sensible, a few of them a tad weird, and one of them actually bizarre.

“Real life doesn’t work that way,” Li Lianhua protested to Wu Xi while Shulin was leaving a message on the boat rental’s answering machine.

“You can’t deny there’s qi involved, and you can’t deny that it’s a very ancient daoist tradition,” Wu Xi said. “I’m not telling you to do anything extraordinary; that would be counterintuitive. Just observe what happens.”

“And why do you think, anyway, that I…”

Shulin finished his phone call and laughed. “The signs are clear,” he declared. “Don’t forget that I’m with Peizhi, and he’s with Jing Beiyuan. We know our pillow princesses, and you obviously are one.”

Li Lianhua sputtered offendedly, but Wu Xi just pushed him out the door. “You can drop me at the point by the nightclub where the cabs are, and then you ride your boat home to your lovely men.”

And now here he was, approaching the berth and their bus from the water, where they wouldn’t expect him to appear.

He tied up the boat and walked up the three steps at the quay that you needed when the tide was low, and looked at his home.

Di Feisheng’s workshop was packed up again, and the Lotus Bus had settled down for the night -- the strings of lights in the roof extension were dark, and the only light inside the bus proper was the blue flicker of something playing on the big screen, and the orange glow from the basic kitchen light.

He opened the door and stepped inside. A-Fei and Xiaobao were vegging out on the couch, cuddling up to each other, each with a half-empty beer bottle at hand. When they noticed Li Lianhua entering, the boppy music from their show stopped, and they both smiled at him -- Xiaobao with an almost canine happiness, and Di Feisheng with his honest smile that not only involved teeth but brought light to his eyes.

Li Lianhua considered getting himself a drink as well, but instead sat on the couch with them, parking his skinny behind neatly between them. They both scooted over a little bit, long practice telling them exactly how much space Li Lianhua needed. It wasn’t much.

Their arms had been around each other and slid apart just a little to encompass him. Li Lianhua dropped into his rightful place with a deep, contented sigh.

“My lovely men,” he said, possessively, and as if on cue, each of them leaned in to kiss him -- first A-Fei, then Xiaobao.

It was so extremely soothing to come home to them; leaving them would be terribly hard when the time came.

“Is there any carrot cake left?” he asked.

#mysterious lotus casebook #city au #modern au #li lianhua #di feisheng #fang duobing

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