can’t study for my test because i’m having brain rot about neil accidentally getting super drunk and stumbling up to aaron like “andrew???” and aaron is like “wrong one” and neil is like “andrew.” and aaron is like “???? are you stupid” and neil goes to look for andrew but he stumbles into the table, and aaron has to catch him or he will get trampled for fucks sake, and neil just collapses into him in a drunk cuddly heap. and aaron is like “neil. you need to stand up” and neil is like “i am” and aaron is like “that’s because i’m holding you up” and they get neil to stand but neil kinda just flops into aaron’s arms again. and neil is like “i don’t hate you, i don’t, but it’s okay if you hate me” and aaron is like “ugh, ew are you really an emotional drunk???” and neil, to aaron’s horror, looks at him with tears in his eyes because you know when you’re too drunk and you kind of just get a little scared and you need help???? ya. and aaron is like … ok. and kinda holds neil until andrew comes back from the bar with more drinks. and he sees neil basically asleep on aaron’s shoulder, and aaron looking uncomfortable but accepting, so he kinda raises an eyebrow, an okay? and aaron nods and is just patting neil on his back
and tomorrow they’ll wake up and neil will toddle downstairs with his hand against his temple and aaron will have advil ready for him, and he’ll say “you’re annoying and you don’t know when to shut your mouth or mind your own business, but i don’t hate you” and the thank you for helping repair my relationship with my brother and thank you for testifying and thank you for staying goes unsaid but yeah
and that’s how aaron and neil became kind of friends
edit: vomited out a one shot for y’all (this will prob become a 5+1)
Aaron swirled his drink a few times, listening to the ice clacking against the glass.
Eden’s was packed tonight, courtesy of it being the end of the school year. College students and the regular patrons flocked to the bar, the dance floor, and all of the tables, leaving Aaron to reserve a high-top table, and his legs to dangle from the stool.
“Drew?”
Aaron ignored him in favor of the twinkling sound the ice makes in his glass. He’d already taken shots, danced, had another drink, danced again, and now Aaron’s body was heavy with alcohol and exhaustion.
“Drew,” Neil said again.
Aaron looked around their table and didn’t see Andrew. He remembered Andrew getting up and walking to the bar with their empty tray. Aaron found him a few seconds later, hands in his pockets at the bar. That and Neil, staring up at him, looking uneasy.
Before Aaron could tell Neil to get out of his face, Neil was speaking.
“Are you’nt having fun?” Neil frowned, blinking sleepy, hooded eyes at him. He leaned closer to study Aaron’s face.
“What are you doing?” Aaron grumbled, pushing Neil’s face away.
Aaron hadn’t even pushed him hard, he more removed Neil from his space rather than pushed him, but Neil wobbled like his world had tilted out of orbit. Aaron realized, quickly, that Neil was going to fall backwards. He grabbed two fistfuls of Neil’s shirt and pulled him forwards. Neil’s head lulled on his shoulders with the force, his chin hitting his chest then righting itself.
Aaron’s stomach lurched, sick with the thought that someone had put something in one of Neil’s drinks, as he would for anyone, but thankfully he’s never been put in that situation. Neil’s eyes were hooded, his face flushed. Aaron snapped once at Neil’s ear, and Neil recoiled immediately.
“Does your head hurt or anything?” Aaron asked. Neil shook his head, frowning.
“Are you dizzy? Follow my finger.” Aaron pushes Neil back so he can see his face, keeping one hand on Neil’s shoulder to hold him up. Neil follows Aaron’s finger as it moves back and forth, albeit a little labored, but not as if he’d been roofied. Aaron declares that Neil’s reaction times and responses are fine, but he still pulls the front of his shirt up and checks his belt, the button of his pants.
“What—?” Neil slapped a hand on his abdomen, stopping his shirt from being lifted any higher. Aaron didn’t need to see anything but his pants, but it was reassuring that Neil still had inhibitions.
His clothes were fine. His belt was still done, zipper up. No one had tried anything. Aaron relaxed.
“Sorry,” Aaron said. “Sorry, I just needed to…”
While racking his mind back to why Neil is this drunk, Aaron remembered Neil taking shots with Aaron, Nicky, and Kevin. Four shots. He’d seen Neil sip on another drink like the idiot had the tolerance for alcohol that the rest of them had.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Aaron said and released Neil. Neil attempted to step back, his hands raised in surrender.
“No?” Neil asked warily. Even drunk as fuck, he still respected boundaries. Andrew’s boundaries specifically, as it still hadn’t registered that he wasn’t talking to the right twin.
“I’m not Andrew,” Aaron said.
“Where’s Andrew?” Neil asked, turning his head pathetically in search. Aaron only had a good view of Andrew because they were seated at a high-top. Over the throng of taller people coupled with strobing lights, Neil’s view was obstructed.
“At the bar,” Aaron nodded in that direction.
Neil turned towards the bar. Well, he attempted to. He pivoted, lost his balance, and toppled into the table. He tried to right himself and started to fall to the other side. Aaron caught Neil before he could bust his shit and get trampled.
“Jesus Christ, Josten,” Aaron spat, righting Neil with hands on his biceps. Neil slapped a hand on the table and leaned his weight on it. The table quaked under such abuse, but held.
Neil turned slowly, grappling against the table as if he was standing in one of those spinning fair rides. In his excursion to simply spin 180°, his hand slipped off the edge of the table as he faced Aaron once again. He reached for the table, missed, reached for it again, missed, said, “Motherfucker,” under his breath, and finally gripped onto the edge. His eyes locked on Aaron’s again, and Neil’s useless hand landed on Aaron’s shoulder.
“Andrew,” Neil said. Aaron didn’t know if it was more a request or if it was just not registering.
“Wrong,” Aaron said, tense under Neil’s hand, but he didn’t push him off. He’d rather hold Neil up than peel him off the floor. “Aaron.”
“‘m very drunk,” Neil said, looking up pleadingly at Aaron as if he had a magical cure to shitfacedness, and all Neil had to do for it was look a little scared. “I’m sorry.”
“Why?” Aaron asked.
“I’m drunk.”
Aaron snorted. “That’s kind of the point when you’re at a bar.”
“But,” Neil said, taking a labored breath, “I’m…too drunk.”
This was beginning to feel exceedingly similar to speaking to a child. Aaron was annoyed, but not completely heartless, unlike the narrative of Aaron Neil had likely concocted. “It’s okay, Neil,” Aaron said. “You should sit down.”
Neil promptly sat as if there was a chair under him, but there was not. Aaron, still holding Neil vertical, got pulled out of his chair with the momentum. To avoid toppling to the ground—which did not get mopped as often as it should—Aaron planted his feet on the floor and hauled Neil up by his armpits.
“Help,” Neil murmured. His arms dropped to his sides as he yielded his dead weight to Aaron.
“Stand up,” Aaron grunted, readjusting to wrap an arm around Neil’s back. One of Neil’s arms flopped over Aaron’s shoulder.
“I am,” Neil complained.
“No, you are not.”
“I am.”
“Neil,” Aaron said through clenched teeth, “I am holding you up. You need to lock your knees.”
“Oh,” Neil said. He looked at his feet as if he needed to check they were on the ground.
To be fair, Neil did lock his knees, but he also leaned all of his upper body on Aaron, arms still hanging limply at his sides. He tucked his head into Aaron’s neck with, what seemed, every intention to make a home there for the night.
“Neil,” Aaron said, frozen against the hair tickling his cheek. “God dammit.”
“And…ron,” Neil spoke against his shoulder.
“Yes,” Aaron said sarcastically. “That’s me.”
“Can I j’stay here?” Neil slurred.
From what Aaron had seen of Neil’s dynamic with his brother, he knew Neil would get off if he said no. He could place Neil into a stool or pull up a chair with a back so he wouldn’t fall out and concuss himself. He could shove Neil off and make him fend for himself. He could pawn him off to Andrew.
At the moment, those other options seemed like far too much work.
That, or maybe it was the med student in him, the intrinsic urge to heal and help and nurture that smarted at the thought of pushing Neil off.
Aaron didn’t push him off when Neil readjusted and tucked an arm into his chest, the other gripping Aaron for stability. He didn’t when Neil asked again, a quiet, “Aaron.”
“Okay,” Aaron conceded. He rubbed a hand up and down Neil’s back placatingly, but also because Neil seemed like he needed it. And he came to Aaron for it. Well, he came to Andrew and got Aaron. But he didn’t push Aaron off, and Aaron hasn’t done the same.
And they just…stood like that. For what seemed like a long time, but it probably was only a few minutes before Neil spoke again.
“Aaron,” Neil said.
Aaron hummed in response.
“I don’ hate you.”
“What?” Aaron asked. “What the fuck are you talking about, Neil?”
“I don’t hate you.”
“What?” Aaron said again.
“I don’wanna fight.” Neil lets out a colossal breath.
“We haven’t fought in a long time,” Aaron says, his idea of agreement. Acceptance.
Neil was quiet, because it was true. Neil seemed content to lay in Aaron’s arms, and Aaron didn’t have another stool next to him. He sure as shit wasn’t giving his up for Neil, but Neil was genuinely so unsteady on his feet that Aaron couldn’t let him go.
He trembled a bit, and Aaron was almost amused that after everything Neil had been through, being a little too drunk is what finally did it for him.
But Aaron had felt that way before. Inebriated and scared in a crowded room of strangers. Neil, however, has people he knows. How can Aaron be upset at Neil for wanting the comfort that he also craved? How can he be upset that Neil feels safe enough with Andrew to ask for help? That his brother finally feels safe with someone too?
“Aaron,” Neil said.
“What,” Aaron said.
“It’s okay if you hate me.”
“Oh God,” Aaron groaned, “Ew. Are you really an emotional drunk?”
Neil pulled back and, to Aaron’s horror, there were actual tears in his eyes. His lip trembled as he bit it, holding the tears in. Aaron hated how much of himself he was seeing in Neil tonight. The harrowing fact that maybe they are quite similar.
“Oh God,” Aaron said again, mortified. He grabbed the back of Neil’s head and shoved it back into his shoulder, effectively hiding Neil’s teary face.
He cast a desperate look to Andrew, who was finally on his way back to the table. He patted Neil on the shoulder, like one would burp a baby when they have no idea how to do so.
“Andrew.”
Andrew didn’t need prompting to look. His eyes were trained on Neil and Aaron from the moment he turned around. By the nonchalance of his movements and his lack of alarm, Aaron guessed he had been watching their interaction.
Andrew set the tray down on the table and cast a significant look between them, settling on Neil’s intoxicated form keeled over on Aaron’s shoulder.
Andrew raises one eyebrow, a silent question, an okay?
Aaron finds himself nodding, and unsure why. All he knows right now, a few drinks in, is that he doesn’t hate this. And he doesn’t hate that Neil doesn’t hate him.
-
The smell of coffee set Neil’s feet moving like a Pavlovian response. He was half awake already with a pounding headache, like his eyeballs were beating his closed lids to death.
Neil toddles down the stairs with his eyes closed, a hand pressed hard to his temple, stabilizing his brain.
Aaron was standing at the counter already, facing the sputtering coffee pot. His arms were crossed, hair ruffled from sleep. At the sound of footsteps behind him, he turned.
The memories from last night played past Neil’s mind like a sped-up movie. He grimaced in embarrassment, and felt a little sick at how drunk he was. How stupid he was, to drink that much. He should have known his tolerance isn’t matched with the rest of them. He could have gotten hurt, could have said something—
Fuck.
“Fuck,” Neil said, covering his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Aaron said. He turned back to the coffee, though his posture was rigid.
Neil grabbed a glass of water. He noticed Aaron watching from the corner of his eye, but Neil chose to ignore him, figuring that’s best. He sat on the counter with his water, sipping it slowly while he and Aaron waited for the coffee to finish brewing.
The silence was thick, but they were both too stubborn to leave the kitchen. Usually, they preferred to wait and pretend the other wasn’t there.
That’s what Neil thought, at least. After a painful few minutes, Aaron huffed and grabbed the bottle of Advil from the drawer next to the sink. He shook two pills out and sat them next to Neil.
Neil stared at them until Aaron cast a pointed look at the pills, then physically gestured to them with raised brows. Neil took them while Aaron watched.
The coffee pot beeped. Aaron made a split second decision, grabbing two mugs and pouring coffee into them. He slid Neil’s across the counter. It sloshed over the side, but Aaron wasn’t capable of caring at the moment. His mind was busy, and he knew Neil had noticed his lack of eye contact; the analytical fuck.
“Look,” Aaron said. He did not look at Neil to say it. “You’re annoying, and you never know when to shut your mouth or mind your business. Most of the time, I’m convinced you have a death wish, and a lot of the time I find myself resenting you. You complicated our lives, put us all in danger, didn’t give a shit.”
Neil’s chest hurt. He didn’t know if it was anger or guilt. Aaron started talking again before he could figure it out.
“But I don’t hate you. I can’t, really. I can’t even fault you for the shitty things you did, because it all worked out.” Aaron glanced quickly at Neil, looked away. His cheeks were red.
The thank you for helping repair my relationship with my brother and thank you for testifying and thank you for being good to Andrew went unsaid, but Aaron hoped Neil wasn’t obtuse enough to force him to say it out loud.
Neil must have understood, because he nodded. Aaron figured that was as close to a reconciliation they were going to have, so he leaned against the counter and pretended everything was normal.
For the first time, they drank their coffee in silence without animosity orchestrating it.
Neil’s mug was half empty when Andrew joined them. He paused in the doorway, squinty eyed and mussed, looking between the two. Neil on the counter, Aaron leaning against it. Their silence, but lack of tension.
“This is weird,” Andrew finally said, his voice gravely from sleep.
“Yeah,” Neil and Aaron said simultaneously.
Neil glanced over his mug at Aaron, the corner of his mouth twitching. Aaron regarded it, but looked away, because something like contentment had made its way onto Andrew’s face.
Aaron smiled at that instead.
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I’ve grown to appreciate the aus where Shen Yuan enters the story as “Shen Yuan” - same name, probably similar face, generally able to interact with PIDW as himself and change the story through his added presence. I like the sense of “if only you’d been here, things might have been better the first time around” of it all.
And I was thinking, it’s a funny coincidence in that scenario that someone named Shen Yuan gets put into… another Shen Yuan. What are the chances? What a weird twist of fate that Airplane would pick out the name that his most dedicated critic could slip into seamlessly.
What about a version where it’s not coincidence at all?
Airplane goes to school with a kid named Shen Yuan. He’s prickly and hard to approach and a little intense, but Airplane is persistent. In fairness, Airplane is relentless - and maybe it’s a good thing that they end up being friends, because they’re a little too much for anyone else to handle. They balance each other out. They’re the “weird kids” in class and they’re okay with that, because even when they don’t have any words for it, they know they’re not like their classmates, not really. That’s okay; they don’t want to be.
Recesses and breaks are consumed with the elaborate stories that Airplane wants to tell, and all the holes Shen Yuan pokes into them. It’s not mean-spirited, though, even though Shen Yuan isn’t the kind to temper his words. It’s passionate. He cares about those stories the way Airplane cares about them, and it can’t be mistaken for anything else when they lean together conspiratorially across the lunchroom table. They’ve both got notebooks filled with details and characters and monsters. Shen Yuan’s practically got a whole bestiary sketched out in wobbly childhood attempts at art, entries fervently scrawled beside them. Airplane prattles out plots nonstop, always with the promise of shining eyes and being asked “what happens next?”
They come up with a whole world together. Airplane’s going to write about it someday. Shen Yuan is going to read every word.
Shen Yuan misses school. Shen Yuan starts missing school a lot.
Airplane goes to the hospital room instead. He doesn’t think to worry, because Shen Yuan is okay - that’s what he says. He looks okay, and he’s a kid, and it doesn’t feel real that anything bad should happen to a kid. He doesn’t think to worry. He doesn’t think to say goodbye.
It’s one of the older Shen brothers who catches him on the way up to the room one day, in the hallway just outside - snaps at him to go the fuck home, and when Airplane hesitates, pushes him into the elevator and tells him not to come back. “Tells” is a generous way to describe the way the words come out - a growl, a hiss, the sound an animal would make when a hand got too close to a wound.
(It’s not fair to name a villain after him, even if the name never really comes up in the story. He wasn’t trying to be mean. He’d lost a brother minutes before, and he was getting his brother’s friend out of the way so he didn’t have to… see. It isn’t fair, but then, none of it is fair.)
Death feels very real after that.
The notebooks get shoved into a closet, and it’s not until Airplane’s moving out and one falls on him from a high shelf that he thinks about it again. He’s written things, lots of things, but nothing as ambitious as this - nothing as important. It could be good, he considers. He’d promised. Shen Yuan wanted to read it.
The problem was that no one else does, not for a long time, not until Airplane has whittled himself and his art into a corner and into such an unfamiliar shape that he has to wonder how it’s still his own face he sees in the mirror. He has to eat. He has to pay rent. Shen Yuan would yell at him, but Shen Yuan isn’t there to yell at him, and who cares. Who cares if it could have been better? The people who actually are here love it, and it’s paying his bills, and sometimes stories don’t go the way they’re supposed to and the world is fucking unfair. It doesn’t matter.
(It does. But he shoves that thought away along with styrofoam cups and soda bottles to the bottom of a garbage bag.)
Authors are not gods and their power is limited, but Airplane exercises just a sliver of what he’s been granted and gifts an inconsequential sort of immortality. He thinks about making him a rogue cultivator, maybe the kind that goes around documenting beasts and compiling his findings. He thinks about making him someone too powerful for death to touch, or too important to threaten, but when Airplane looks at the world he crafted and everything that’s become of it, it feels like the kindest thing he can do for Shen Yuan is a childhood where he’s loved, and a death that’s peaceful. What does it say about that world, that he’d kill off his best friend too early again instead of making him live there?
(The best writing he ever does is the only, shining moment of humanity that his scum villain ever displays: a lament about death that comes too early, about a brother gone too soon. The commenters praise him. The commenters flatter over how real the emotions feel. The commenters don’t get any response from Airplane on that chapter.)
Death is incredibly real when it comes for him too early, too, still hovering over his keyboard with the story technically finished and incredibly incomplete. Airplane could tell himself that’s because the written version can never be the version in the writer’s head, always shifting and with every possibility still on the table, but he knows better than that. The System knows better than that, with its condescending message about “improving” his writing and “closing plot holes” and “achieving his original vision”...
…and he’s a child again. He’s a child in his own story, he’s Shang Qinghua now without the benefit yet of a peak or cultivation or anything, and maybe he’s a little bitter, and a little scared, and…
And Shen Yuan - with longer hair, with robes, with a couple of older kids watching him from across the street, but undeniably the prickly little boy who used to sit down imperiously across from him and tell him everything that was wrong with the chuck of writing that had been handed to him last period, but with that smile that said he was only invested because he knew it could be better and they were going to make it better - marches up to him with a fire in his eyes and a frown that warns of a coming tirade.
“You told it wrong,” is the first thing he says.
Shang Qinghua wants to ask how him how he’s here, how this is possible, or maybe laugh because, yeah - yeah, Shen Yuan has no goddamn idea how wrong he got absolutely everything.
(Shang Qinghua wants to say “I missed you” and “why did you leave so soon” but he’s here now. He’s right here.)
“I know,” he says instead. “I’m sorry. It all kind of… spiraled out of control.”
Shen Yuan frowns, but then it dissipates the way it always does, and his eyes shine with ideas the way they always used to. “That’s okay,” he relents, grabbing for his hand. “We’ll fix it. We’ll make it what it was supposed to be.”
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