Title: can't stop falling
Fandom: Guardian
Rating: G
Length: ~300 words
Notes: The flashiest of flashfics. Set in Ye Olde Haixing Era.
Summary: Zhao Yunlan needs some help.


By the mountain stream at the western edge of the Allied Headquarters, on a broad flat rock, Zhao Yunlan sat and contemplated Ma Gui’s knife doubtfully, and the polished metal disk that passed for a mirror in this era with even more trepidation. But he’d been in the past for a week now, and he had to do something.

“Lord Kunlun, is something wrong?” Shen Wei stopped in front of him.

Zhao Yunlan looked up ruefully. “I’ve lost my shaving things, and I’m trying to work out how to use Ma Gui’s blade without losing a finger or cutting off my nose.”

Shen Wei didn’t question the situation. “I could do it for you.” There was only the barest of hesitations in the offer. “If you’d let me.”

“By all means. Would you?” Zhao Yunlan grinned.

He expected a Dixing ability, maybe the cool static rush of dark energy against his skin. His Shen Wei was always so cleanly shaven, it had to be a power. But this Shen Wei sat down beside him, took off his mask and looked pleased. “You trust me.”

“With my life.” It was true. This young, fresh-faced Shen Wei with his boundless curiosity was just as much the centre of Zhao Yunlan’s world as the man he would become; Zhao Yunlan trusted him to the ends of the earth – which was more or less where they were. The fact that he didn’t set Zhao Yunlan’s heart racing the way his future self did was neither here nor there.

Shen Wei smiled and set his mask aside. “Did you bring soap?”



No more than three minutes later, feeling the steady line of pressure as the blade glided down his cheek to his jawline, Shen Wei drawing it across his skin with calm, practised efficiency, Zhao Yunlan had to recant.

Any Shen Wei – at any point in the timeline – could have him for the asking.