Multidimensional shenanigans where Jing Yuan gets forced into another timeline. Despite waking up in his own house, his own bed, Jing Yuan can tell that something is different. His bed sheets don’t smell like this, his room isn’t decorated like this. Miniature changes that Jing Yuan is unsettled by. He creeps out of the bed on guard, silently stalking through his own home- but this isn’t his home.
Not just his home, that is. He’s met with the beautiful, unusual sight of you- so this is what you look like in the morning? In the kitchen as if you belong there, comfortable and content in his robe. You’re getting out several pans, taking things out of the fridge. Making breakfast?
Perhaps he is a little caught off guard, though he doesn’t like to admit it. The scenery is wonderful, watching you so domestically work your way in his kitchen, in his clothes. He’d be a liar to say he’s never dreamed of what it would look like. But why? Why is it happening now? Why are you here?
When you turn around, you’re smiling, tutting at him while you wave a finger. ‘It’ll take more than that to scare me, a-yuan. Is this what happens when you retire? You’re losing your edge!’
He blinks. Once, twice. Since when do you call him such an endearing title? Since when is he retired?
You focus on getting things together for breakfast. ‘You’re up earlier than usual,’ you tell him, ‘so breakfast isn’t ready yet. But you can make yourself useful and feed the kids, okay?’
The kids. The kids? Jing Yuan has no choice but to admit he isn’t sure what’s happening anymore. He doesn’t recall ever having children- and with you? No, that’s something he’d remember.
Over the course of the day, Jing Yuan learns several things. The first is that ‘the kids’ refers not to human children but animal- you both have quite the collection. A handful of cats and dogs and several exotic birds. There are ducks and chickens in the back garden.
The second thing he learns is that he is married to you, and the third thing is that he is, in fact, retired. Fu Xuan is the general, and his young disciple, Yanqing, is no longer so young. He’s an adult now, making his way up the ranks with the speed and efficiency Jing Yuan always expected of him.
The last thing he learns is that this is all terrifyingly real- too complex to be a dream- but it is not his.
The first thing that comes to mind, of course, is to find a way back home. But it gets harder and harder to do so as he has to play his role of house husband with you. And this- this is something that aches. Because deep down it’s really a dream come true- this true love bloomed domesticity, shared with you. The way you look at him, your matching rings, your kiss on his cheek and hands around his waist. Affection is like second nature between the two of you, and Jing Yuan knows this not only in your examples but because if this was real, if this was his and he had you, he would do nothing else but kiss you and hold you all the time.
Jing Yuan is duty bound, though there are times he wish it wasn’t so. He has to find a way back to his home, because back home, his people still need him. Fu Xuan isn’t ready to be general yet, and Yanqing isn’t grown up. There are things he needs to do, but oh, to be selfish. To be in love with you and not worry about a thing- perhaps this is an enemies mind game, their attempt at torture. It’s certainly working.
The first week he shares with you, Jing Yuan smiles and kisses your cheek goodnight, knowing it is his role to do so, but things never go farther than that. He never holds you for too long, he never kisses your lips unless you ask him to.
He breaks your heart. After a week has passed and you’re getting ready for bed, your expression is breaking as you hold his hand and ask him what’s wrong. Why won’t he kiss you? Why won’t he touch you? Your love is too strong for something so unexpected. Too strong for secrets.
Jing Yuan is a weak man at heart. He cannot bear with hurting you, so for the time that’s allowed, he loves you. It’s a terrifying thing, because this Jing Yuan has never indulged in you before, and you are expecting someone who’s well versed in your strings. He hasn’t kissed these lips, not truly, and he hasn’t held you tight enough to appreciate your form. He is mind numbing tender with you the first night he gives in, and every night after that.
It’s almost shameful to admit that it’s better than he imagined it to be- because yes, he imagined. As previously mentioned, he is a weak man, and his mind wanders and dwells on things he cannot have. But here, he has you, and he is determined to not waste it. And if he rocks your world more intensely than usual because this sex isn’t dulled by repetition, it’s brand new; then he is happy to give that to you. You deserve every lick of pleasure you get and more.
He doesn’t know how to let it all go. When the opportunity presents itself to go back home- the man he came here as wouldn’t have hesitated. But the man he is now, changed by your touch, hesitates. He is duty bound nevertheless, and despite his own needs and wants, his hesitation, he goes back. He has to.
Waking up in his own universe is almost… pathetic. He looks around his room and realizes how empty it is, void of a life well lived in it. Your presence lifted everything up. Now, everything is stale.
Another heartbreak for something that was never his in the first place. He isn’t sure how much more he can take.
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-the bookshop-
aziraphale: *pacing*
crowley: *enters*
aziraphale, exasperated: where have you been?
crowley, confused: I thought you said-
aziraphale: I need your help
crowley, suspicious: okay…
aziraphale, wringing his hands: whilst you were gone, mr brown visited and he…well, he made it clear he wanted to…take me out on a date
crowley, bitter: I see
aziraphale, clears his throat: I, um, to get out of it I-I told him……..you’re my husband
crowley, raises his eyebrows: you did what?
aziraphale, flustered: I panicked! I didn’t know what else to say. he was rather persistent
crowley: so what…we have to act like we’re married around him?
aziraphale, dismissive: oh, I wouldn’t worry. I doubt he’ll be back anytime soon
mr brown, enters: hey mr fell-
aziraphale: *grabs crowley’s face and kisses him*
mr brown, coughs: err, sorry to interrupt…
aziraphale, lets crowley go: oh, sorry, mr brown, we didn’t see you there
mr brown, awkward: yeah just…forgot my hat
crowley, dazed: do you want to stay for dinner?
aziraphale, hisses: crowley!
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lol THIS ENDED UP BEING SO LONG but it's such a cute story opening that I had to draw Watson roasting Holmes's messiness for the newspaper and Holmes skillfully maneuvering his way out of having to do chores. It's all canon, even the indoor sharpshooting, except for the bit about the cold bath.
canon text under the cut:
An anomaly which often struck me in the character of my friend Sherlock Holmes was that, although in his methods of thought he was the neatest and most methodical of mankind, and although also he affected a certain quiet primness of dress, he was none the less in his personal habits one of the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction. Not that I am in the least conventional in that respect myself. The rough-and-tumble work in Afghanistan, coming on the top of a natural Bohemianism of disposition, has made me rather more lax than befits a medical man. But with me there is a limit, and when I find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece, then I begin to give myself virtuous airs. I have always held, too, that pistol practice should be distinctly an open-air pastime; and when Holmes, in one of his queer humors, would sit in an arm-chair with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges, and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V. R. done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved by it.
Our chambers were always full of chemicals and of criminal relics which had a way of wandering into unlikely positions, and of turning up in the butter-dish or in even less desirable places. But his papers were my great crux. He had a horror of destroying documents, especially those which were connected with his past cases, and yet it was only once in every year or two that he would muster energy to docket and arrange them; for, as I have mentioned somewhere in these incoherent memoirs, the outbursts of passionate energy when he performed the remarkable feats with which his name is associated were followed by reactions of lethargy during which he would lie about with his violin and his books, hardly moving save from the sofa to the table. Thus month after month his papers accumulated, until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned, and which could not be put away save by their owner. One winter’s night, as we sat together by the fire, I ventured to suggest to him that, as he had finished pasting extracts into his common-place book, he might employ the next two hours in making our room a little more habitable. He could not deny the justice of my request, so with a rather rueful face he went off to his bedroom, from which he returned presently pulling a large tin box behind him. This he placed in the middle of the floor and, squatting down upon a stool in front of it, he threw back the lid. I could see that it was already a third full of bundles of paper tied up with red tape into separate packages.
“There are cases enough here, Watson,” said he, looking at me with mischievous eyes. “I think that if you knew all that I had in this box you would ask me to pull some out instead of putting others in.”
“These are the records of your early work, then?” I asked. “I have often wished that I had notes of those cases.”
“Yes, my boy, these were all done prematurely before my biographer had come to glorify me.” He lifted bundle after bundle in a tender, caressing sort of way. “They are not all successes, Watson,” said he. “But there are some pretty little problems among them. Here’s the record of the Tarleton murders, and the case of Vamberry, the wine merchant, and the adventure of the old Russian woman, and the singular affair of the aluminium crutch, as well as a full account of Ricoletti of the club-foot, and his abominable wife. And here—ah, now, this really is something a little recherchè.”
He dived his arm down to the bottom of the chest, and brought up a small wooden box with a sliding lid, such as children’s toys are kept in. From within he produced a crumpled piece of paper, and old-fashioned brass key, a peg of wood with a ball of string attached to it, and three rusty old disks of metal.
“Well, my boy, what do you make of this lot?” he asked, smiling at my expression.
“It is a curious collection.”
“Very curious, and the story that hangs round it will strike you as being more curious still.”
“These relics have a history then?”
“So much so that they are history.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Sherlock Holmes picked them up one by one, and laid them along the edge of the table. Then he reseated himself in his chair and looked them over with a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes.
“These,” said he, “are all that I have left to remind me of the adventure of the Musgrave Ritual.”
I had heard him mention the case more than once, though I had never been able to gather the details. “I should be so glad,” said I, “if you would give me an account of it.”
“And leave the litter as it is?” he cried, mischievously. “Your tidiness won’t bear much strain after all, Watson. But I should be glad that you should add this case to your annals, for there are points in it which make it quite unique in the criminal records of this or, I believe, of any other country. A collection of my trifling achievements would certainly be incomplete which contained no account of this very singular business.
-The Memories of Sherlock Holmes: The Musgrave Ritual
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