Jing Yuan Angst - Blog Posts

Friends

Jing yuan x g/n!reader

Summary: The xianzhou citizens don't often indulge in romance, to love is to one day see yourself fall into the embrace of mara— to let your lover witness it. Some still love, some deny themselves of such feelings.

Cw. Angst, unrequited love (not really), getting drunk, mixed signals, implied sexual stuff and a little bit of that but they don't actually do it (i think), no fluff no comfort because that shit is for the weak

A/n: Did I cry writing this? Yes. Was it worth it? I don't know.

Love.

noun

an intense feeling of deep affection.

He wonders if you ever noticed how he felt about you. Lingering gazes lasting deeper than it should, ‘accidental’ brushes against your hand or how he finds himself dropping everything he's doing just to be with you.

“Jing yuan, your move.”

Your words snap him back to reality, he awkwardly bit his lip, his focus back on the board. Right.

He wonders as he moves his piece two tiles forward, would you ever get wind of these growing feelings of his? If you did,

“Checkmate.”

Would you feel the same?

A light chuckle leaves his lips, the sight of your frustrated expression ingrained in his mind, like every memory he has of you.

A loud slam echoed in the room, “How do you always win?”

“You make brash decisions on the board,” Jing yuan backtracks the pieces before the soul-crushing checkmate, he positioned your pieces, “It should've gone here, you could've blocked my move.”

An exasperated sigh escapes you, clamping chunks of your hair frustratedly after realising you could've won, “I hate you.”

The man laughs as he tidies up the table, eyes still trained on you.

He doesn't know how and why you both ended up in this position.

Your relationship was complicated.

He doesn't understand you.

Sometimes you'd hold his hand, tell him all your secrets like he were a priest at a confessional, take care of him and everything of the like.

Yet, you always pushed him away. He'd sit right beside you, looking over your shoulder to read the novel you recently took interest in. As if he were a bug, you'd swat him away for being too close.

“Ji, don't get too close. I'm melting from the heat.” you say, but it was winter?

He doesn't understand love at all.

He loves mimi, he loves starchess, he loves his family (the high-cloud quintet, or should I say, ex-family), he loves tea, he loves his home.

Sometimes you two would go out to the library, indulging in me-time, faces buried in pages.

“Jing yuan, have you found a book about that one novel I told you about?” He shook his head no, he doesn't indulge in fictional work that often. But you loved novels.

“I think I found it.” He wipes the dust off the book spine. ‘How to fall in love with a genius’, what a strange book title.

“Really?” quietly tiptoeing towards his direction, the library lady eyeing you two; you had a habit of making too much noise, leading to the bookkeeper scolding you both.

“Here,” he blew over the cover, dust particles puffing in your face.

“Bastard—” words barely audible as you spoke in-between coughs, “Thanks though”

The bookkeeper glaring at you two, sending shivers down your spine. The idiot laughs again, you slap his back.

You both get kicked out.

Friends don't get drunk together, friends don't cuddle, friend's don't do this.

Like ‘friends’, you cling to him in his bed, head nuzzled in his neck. Jing yuan was scared to hug you or even dare to hold your waist.

He can only get a taste of heaven but never the real thing, you can hug him yet when he reciprocates he's too close.

He envies at how audacious you are. That you're not afraid to hold him like he's yours but he could never call you his. How you could just stare at him with those loving resplendent eyes but he could never stare longer at yours.

This time however, he wishes he slept in, he wishes he told you he was busy, that he doesn't want to hang out today.

One drink turned to two, two drinks turned to three. More, more and more, until you're on top of him, all of him you can see.

“Ji.”

How cruel you are. Straddled on his lap as he was laid against the pearly sheets of his bed, your eyes devoid of light as your free hand tug on the hem of his shirt, “Jing yuan, I'm sorry”

You cried again, gripping his shirt tightly. Why can't he push you away?

Tears spill out as you desperately wanted to love him, as he did too. But was it really love?

“I love you.” he accidentally slips out.

Your eyes widened in fear, you tried to convince yourself you didn't hear anything as you grind your hips on his lap, croaking out a guttural moan.

“Please,” you grinded faster, your hips burning, you prayed to god that what you heard was a lie, that you misheard him.

He groans in desperation, hands on your hips, “I really love you.”

Without a second thought, as if you were sober, you swatted his hand away and got off his lap. He stares at you like you were a madman— why did you suddenly stop?

He wishes he was drunk enough to indulge in you that night, but sober enough to have never said that.

He sat up, his hand reaching out for you but you swat it away again, “Stop.”

A sob stuck in his throat, heavy breaths drowning out the wanton moans from earlier.

“I…”

He wishes he never even loved you in the first place.

Tomorrow came, those lingering gazes on each other no more, those playful banters dissipated into thin air.

He can't bring himself to confront you, too scared to accept what's become to the two of you.

“Ji— General. Documents from Madam Yukong”

The way your eyes dart to anything but him, he bit his lip anxiously, “Yes, thank you. You may leave now.”

As if nothing happened last night, you bowed your head and ran away as quickly as possible. Does he even have the courage to ask you for another game of starchess?

Days passed yet no progress. Your relationship has turned into a strictly professional one. So cold to each other, yanqing and fu xuan can't wrap their hands around what could've happened but they don't have it in them to ask what happened.

The general signed paperwork, like usual. Not noticing loud thumping footsteps nearing his desk.

“General,” a part of him wished it was your voice.

“Yes yanqing?”

“They've turned in their resignation paper”

Oh. Huh?

He thinks yanqing is joking. Not when his dear retainer thrusts the documents to his hand does he realise he's really lost you.

“For what exactly?” he asks as if he doesn't know the answer.

Yanqing sighs, “I'm not sure either, but they talked about retiring.”

“They're too young to retire,” the man scratched his head, his mind racing with a million thoughts and a million regrets.

“General, they're 630 years old”

“Oh right,” he gave his retainer a weak smile, hoping the young boy doesn't notice the uneasiness in his eyes when he read through the contents, “I shall talk to them before I approve their resignation. You may leave.”

Yanqing nods, taking his leave as Jing yuan trembles. He's lost the high-cloud quintet, does fate have to take you too in its stride, far away from him?

He was okay with just being friends with you.

Jing yuan called for you in his private garden, he didn't expect you to actually come especially after that.

“You came.”

“You called,” your eyes as empty as that one night.

He tried his best to hold back the tears, heart burning yet he had to remain professional. After all, he was your boss.

“Yanqing brought me your resignation request.” he pauses, unable to find the right words.

Normally, if an employee of his decides to resign, he'd sign away their request and carry on with his life but this— how could he just sign so easily?

“Have you not signed it yet?”

“No.” he can't bring himself to.

Your fingers found solace under the table, fiddling and fidgeting together but you'd rather die than let the man in front of you notice it, “Can't you just sign it?”

“It's just… you've been working with me since the high-cloud quintet and it's not that easy.”

“How so?”

“We’d lose an important member of society, your contributions to the mechanical team have been beneficial,” he tapped his foot aggressively, agitated. “Can't you think twice about it?”

Without hesitation, “I can't. I'm getting old, sooner or later I'd die—”

He listens, not interrupting you, “— I don't want to die without living.”

Living? What a lie. You've been more alive by his side more than anything.

“What exactly do you mean by living?”

He pretends to not understand, he wishes you'd just take him into consideration and talk to him like he was Jing yuan, not the general arbiter.

“You know what I mean,” the air sucked out of your lungs, why did he have to make you say it out loud?

“I want to live. I want to be finally free of my duties, get married, and retire.”

He nodded along with your words, he felt sick. Sicker than he ever was in his life.

“I wish you told me sooner”

“What good would it bring?”

“I just wished you were honest from the start.”

The words were once stuck again in your throat, trying to blink nonstop to not let those pathetic tears spill out, “This is for me—”

“What about me?”

Desperation laced in his tone, he wishes you'd give him a chance, that you'd let him in.

“What about you?”

You wonder, what about him? He wants to ask, what about us?

“This is about me,” neither of you could find the words, but you try.

“I want to live,” forlorn, not a glimmer of hope in your eyes, he wishes on a sliver of hope, “Is that too much to ask?”

Yet life is cruel. It was a mistake trying to be more than friends with you, again; he wished he stayed as friends with you. He would have been fine with anything.

For your own good, “I understand.”

Jing yuan reluctantly took his pen, staring at the paper. He signed.

“Thank you.”

He signed you away, at least now, there's no more need for formalities. He is no longer your boss, he is just jing yuan to you.

“I… “ his mouth snapped shut.

“No more words, general?”

As selfish as it sounds, he wants to tell you that he's willing to leave this life behind. That if you want to live, he'll live with you, if you want to marry, he'll marry you. If you want to retire, he'll retire with you.

But duty calls, he can't just stop being ‘general arbiter’ in a heartbeat for you. He wishes he could.

It's not that hot outside today, but he feels like burning.

“Ah, nothing. Where will you go now?”

“It doesn't matter, I'll just go somewhere, live alone or maybe start a new life.”

“I wish luck for your future endeavours.”

Jing yuan has never been selfish. This time however, he wishes he wasn't the general. He wishes he was just a normal man, he wishes he had the privilege, that he had the choice to be your man.

You could no longer handle being under this suffocating atmosphere, “Can I leave now?”

“By all means.”

That was the last time he talked to you, he wonders, he wishes, that he was anyone but him. Not even he could have foreseen this.

When your footsteps grew quieter as you were farther away from him, he cried.

It's been long since he's cried… years, centuries perhaps.

He's lost his family, he's lost you too. All because he wanted to be more than friends.

He wonders if you cried too, if you'd come back. It's for the best.

In due time, one of you will turn mara struck. He doesn't have the heart to see you in that state. But he wishes you gave him the chance to love you, even for just two years. A year or two is all he needs to be content.

None of that matters, he wipes his tears. Reporting back to the seat of divine foresight.

Note: not proofread so dont laugh. 😔😔😔 Before one of you bitches say, who hurt you, who hurt you? No, this is just me projecting with my cupioromantic and aromantic tendencies. ITS SO COMMON TO SEE MC BEING THE ONE GETTING REJECTEd BUT NOT THE CHARACTER GETTING REJECTED I NEED MORE FICS WITH THIS PLOT GRRRRR 😟. ITS 3:16 AM FUCK SLEEP FUCK IT ALL GRRRR

Written by @khuzena. Likes, reblogs and comments are always appreciated. ♡