Sakura has grown adept at recognising the point at which a fever teeters between recovery and fatality.

The grey light of Spain carries their history with it, and it's gleaming through the cracks. // Two long cons, in thirteen conversations.

His Grace the Archduke Yuri Plisetsky wins the Ballistic Grand Tournament in his debut year, at the age of fifteen. Things go downhill from there.

Patience, Sakura decides, is for people who aren't holding lives in the space between their mind and their fingers.

"No, see, we've all been trained a certain way. The training system is traditional; it's centuries old. Nobody taught you. You ballist like it's got nothing to do with war at all." A sleepy, extraordinary smile crawls over Victor's face. "Nobody else does it like that. That's why we're going to win." [fic & art collab with inknose]

"No, see, we've all been trained a certain way. The training system is traditional; it's centuries old. Nobody taught you. You ballist like it's got nothing to do with war at all." A sleepy, extraordinary smile crawls over Victor's face. "Nobody else does it like that. That's why we're going to win."

"I don't mess with the fae," Otabek says. "I'm not asking you to mess with them," JJ flat-out lies.

Girls, you know, are much too clever to fall out of their prams.

or, one hundred and thirty-three principles of the Gusu Lan, pertaining to the state of marriage *** He bows to Wei Wuxian, sword in hand, sleeves falling properly. Wei Wuxian bows in return, and the sect leaders begin the opening courtesies, and for all of ten minutes Lan Wangji is under the impression that he is betrothed to a boy who is perfectly normal and acceptable apart from an unfortunate tendency to fidget with his clothes. That impression does not last.

"I'm starting to feel," says Lan Xichen, "that this was a counterproductive suggestion." Wei Wuxian looks down onto the pristine, tranquil cold springs of the Cloud Recesses. Sitting in the water, their bare shoulders rising like dumplings carefully spaced in a steaming-basket, are a large number of Lan disciples. "They seem to be doing better," he says, encouragingly. "If they--oh, no, I see what you mean." At the near bank, someone has pressed someone else against the rocks and is kissing them frantically.

Jin Guangyao lifts his head and smiles. "I'm considering a problem." "Can I be of any assistance with it?" He drops a kiss on Lan Xichen's chest. With the nail of one finger he lightly traces the characters for irony on Lan Xichen's side. "Not this one, er-ge."