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the ache toward it (commentary)
the ache toward it
we best love, pei shouyi/yu zhenxuan, 4k
for some perspective, i started this on april 25, 2021 and posted it on march 13, 2022. that being said, it sat with only the first scene done from then to july, with the majority of it written in about a two week span in july. from there i poked at it about once a month until forcing myself to finish it recently.
90% of my shouzhen characterization comes from these translations of the psy/yzx letters. transcribing them for posterity:
the title of the fic comes from carl phillips' hymn, which is not, like, the most relevant to this fic but stuck with me bc of this analysis. Less the rescue. / More, always, the ache / toward it—"the object of his desire is not to find or be a savior but rather desire itself".
most of the time when i write fic i am literally just doing this, but characters like pei shouyi require a little more thoughtfulness than a stream-of-conscious pwp. he's not like other chatty, self-conscious characters i've written. i tried to straddle a line between his honest thoughts and the things he would tell himself. caring about yzx, but not admitting it. i also tried to make his attraction to yzx read as more clinical or detached, drawing on his medical training. i kind of thought of him as someone who could totally have a normal sex life with your typical, vanilla attraction, but that being another mask for him. not that psy would change himself much to please others but playing the flirty guy to get laid? yeah. his interest in yzx is more instinctual, less camouflaged by social acceptability. weirder, i guess.
for yzx's side of things, i wanted him to read as childishly fascinated and attracted to psy. over time, it's more than just psy being the first person to express concern for him, but that psy's demeanor allows yzx to be himself without any expectations. He'd seen the expression in Yu Zhenxuan's eyes, the way he'd looked up at Pei Shouyi through his damp bangs, towel still draped over his head, as Pei Shouyi set two bowls of ramen down between them. It was the same look the neighborhood stray would give Pei Shouyi; pitiful, insistent. referring to him as a stray is also a nod to his, uh, rabid-ness. i wanted to show the extent of his desire for psy's attention, the precursor to his behavior in wbl s2. he doesn't care if psy knows that he's a lil crazy—"Pencil accident," Yu Zhenxuan says. He must know that Pei Shouyi knows, but his expression is mild, not a hint of shame.
it was also my intention to write yzx specially as an autistic character. i didn't want this to read like a list of symptoms (because i am not autistic), but feel like a more natural part of his characterization. things like less sensitivity to pain (Zhenxuan doesn't even flinch when Pei Shouyi begins to dab at it with disinfectant.), stimming (Yu Zhenxuan is lying on his back with his head towards Pei Shouyi, arms outstretched over him and fingers fanned out.), and restlessness (Yu Zhenxuan begins to entertain himself by methodically peering inside every drawer around the office.). i hope this characterization wasn't either too subtle or too cliche.
there is something i love about two people being on their own wavelength while a third wheel awkwardly watches, so the scene where yzx is escorted to the nurse's office by another student was one of my favorites. psy being able to be sarcastic with yzx, and yzx being able to give it back and enjoying it. i wanted yzx to be nosy about psy, to want to have shared secrets with him. ("A boyfriend?" He probably thinks he's being subtle, unaware of the hopeful hitch at the end of his question.) anything that proves he is different to psy than others.
He'd always been good at math, was even roped into tutoring his baby cousin after Gao Shide's father left. gsd/psy is actually my favorite relationship from wbl so i wish i could've referenced them more than this throwaway line.
There's a bruise on his cheek that's nearly healed, fading into a dull purple that blends in with the bags under his eyes. Pei Shouyi wonders how much he sleeps. Where he sleeps. psy to yzx's face: i don't want to know anything about you. psy inside: are you eating enough? sleeping enough? who's hurting you?
Yu Zhenxuan is slow to pack up his things, like there's something he wants to do before he's ready to go, but he waits until he's at the door. / "Pei Shouyi," Yu Zhenxuan says, voice warm. "Thank you." this is a reference to the series and psy's memory of yzx in the doorway.
i knew that i wanted yzx to bring up his autism with psy specifically, rather than psy just making assumptions when he's listing off all of yzx's diagnoses for gsd in wbl2. i started the scene without a clear direction of where to take it, but it kind of turned into this opportunity for yzx to echo the sentiments expressed in his letter above—"[...] Sometimes I feel like I would be better off if I just stopped trying." / Yu Zhenxuan says this, like his need for connection isn't leaking out of him. i wanted to show that he tried to take psy's advice and make friends, but also that he modeled his older persona on psy himself at first before settling on something more comfortable and himself. i thought a lot about yzx's daydream where he's eating dinners with psy's coworkers and how all of these pieces of his characterization show that he doesn't just want to fit into psy's life, but to be accepted by others.
btw For a single moment, Pei Shouyi's fingers twitch at his sides as he fights the impulse to reach out, run a hand through Yu Zhenxuan's hair. He needs a cigarette, and possibly also a lobotomy. i feel like i have written this exact sequence of lines before. i am nothing if not predictable.
as i said before, i wrote the first scene in april of last year and then wrote most of the rest in july. in brainstorming between then, i took a note which only said "playing favorites" "who said you're my favorite" thermometer and tongue thoughts. as you can see i am a very detailed outliner. anyway i ended up really liking this short little scene. ("What favorite?" Pei Shouyi asks as something shifts restlessly in his gut. He holds the thermometer, even though Yu Zhenxuan should be able to hold it in place on his own. There's an urge building under his skin, the faint desire to press his gloved fingers into Yu Zhenxuan's mouth, to feel the ridges of his teeth and the meat of his tongue. Yu Zhenxuan watches him, gaze steady despite the droop in his eyelids.) another instance of yzx trying to prove that he is Different to psy, more vague medfet, yzx vaguely turned on despite being ill. i think this and the short scene that follow serve as a nice buildup to the scene that follows.
i wish i could track the tweets i made about this idea down, but. the whole fic started because i had these lines floating around in my head where in the moment before climax, all the things that he wants to do to yzx slipping through psy's subconscious, and then in the post-nut clarity realizing that he has to leave because of those desires. despite the problematic age gap and position of authority, i never thought psy would actually really care about any moral implications. ("I won't tell," Yu Zhenxuan whispers. The thought honestly hadn't occurred to Pei Shouyi yet.) instead, it's that he can't allow yzx to rely on him. i choose to believe that psy is lying to himself when he tells yzx that he cannot love. rather, he is not confident in his own ability to be someone that yzx can rely on. it's because he cares that he pushes yzx away okay!! of all the parts of this fic, the last scene is the one i am probably least dissatisfied with partially because it's the idea i sat with for a year (no pressure) and partially because i feel like one of my signatures as a writer is fumbling the ending.
"How much longer do you plan on doing this to yourself?" / "It's not like I have a choice," Yu Zhenxuan says. He looks up, eyes meeting Pei Shouyi's. His pupils are wide and dark, a boy possessed. "Besides, this is the only way I can get you to touch me." i love unhinged yzx. this is a man who held onto a used bandage for over a decade, there is nothing he would not to do to get psy's attention. similarly, there is nothing he wouldn't let psy do to him: There is something wild in his expression, naive desperation. Pei Shouyi is certain that Yu Zhenxuan would let him do anything—fuck him, hit him, scrape his nails across every inch of his skin—as long as Pei Shouyi touched him. He is also certain that Yu Zhenxuan would thank him for it.
Yu Zhenxuan tries to catch his eye. "You want me too," he says. His voice is faintly confused, and Pei Shouyi knows that he must've given too much of himself away if Yu Zhenxuan knows. "I've seen the way you look at me." as you can imagine, i was thinking of the scene in wbl2 after yzx's arrest, where yzx is so hopeful and psy is cruelly cold. yzx may be deranged but he's not wrong, psy does want him. that he might have let his mask slip horrifies psy a bit.
i will stop talking here, because i refuse to reread the porn i wrote in a hurry. thank you ao3 user talkfast for the comment because i will take the compliment "the writing feels very precise, not a single word wasted" to my GRAVE.
we best love, pei shouyi/yu zhenxuan, 4k
for some perspective, i started this on april 25, 2021 and posted it on march 13, 2022. that being said, it sat with only the first scene done from then to july, with the majority of it written in about a two week span in july. from there i poked at it about once a month until forcing myself to finish it recently.
90% of my shouzhen characterization comes from these translations of the psy/yzx letters. transcribing them for posterity:
pei shouyi to yu zhenxuan:
i want to tell you this. yu zhenxuan, every time i see you all bruised up, i know your heart needs someone to heal it. but do you know that my heart used to be covered with wounds too? i'm sorry. the scars in my heart made me unable to muster up the courage to love you. so i could only choose to be cold towards you, even vanishing from your sight since then. but if it's possible, no one would want to remain lonely all by himself. if possible, i hope there will be a person who can enter in. do you know, when a person's initial courage is quenched, he may not want to ever experience it again? so, don't place your hopes on me. i don't know how to accept a relationship and have no courage to let someone walk into the bottom of my heart. you will grow up. when you grow up, you will meet someone who is really able to protect you. yu zhenxuan, thank you for appearing before me for a short while. i will not tell you that i wanted to escape from that room because your voice and your figure appeared too frequently. it was too overloaded with our shared memories. to wipe away those memories of you with my own hands, to act as if we never met. perhaps, my heartlessness is the best for you.
yu zhenxuan to pei shouyi:
pei shouyi, thank you. i understood from the moment i saw you again, that you are still the same you. although 12 years have passed, i know you were also waiting for me, waiting for me to find you. sorry for making you wait so long. in 12 years, i have listened to you and have changed a lot. i am different now. now, i have friends around me although i still don't quite know how to express myself. but i feel that they rely on me too. they will text me and ask me some questions. i tried wearing clothes in your style, but i realized it doesn't suit me. after wearing them for some time, i found it was no longer me. i dislike to style my hair that way when i go to work. i dislike wearing suits to work. pei shouyi, to me, each day spent with you is an eternity. the days without you are just fleeting moments. so if possible, can you let me stay by your side like this, even if just for one more day?
the title of the fic comes from carl phillips' hymn, which is not, like, the most relevant to this fic but stuck with me bc of this analysis. Less the rescue. / More, always, the ache / toward it—"the object of his desire is not to find or be a savior but rather desire itself".
most of the time when i write fic i am literally just doing this, but characters like pei shouyi require a little more thoughtfulness than a stream-of-conscious pwp. he's not like other chatty, self-conscious characters i've written. i tried to straddle a line between his honest thoughts and the things he would tell himself. caring about yzx, but not admitting it. i also tried to make his attraction to yzx read as more clinical or detached, drawing on his medical training. i kind of thought of him as someone who could totally have a normal sex life with your typical, vanilla attraction, but that being another mask for him. not that psy would change himself much to please others but playing the flirty guy to get laid? yeah. his interest in yzx is more instinctual, less camouflaged by social acceptability. weirder, i guess.
for yzx's side of things, i wanted him to read as childishly fascinated and attracted to psy. over time, it's more than just psy being the first person to express concern for him, but that psy's demeanor allows yzx to be himself without any expectations. He'd seen the expression in Yu Zhenxuan's eyes, the way he'd looked up at Pei Shouyi through his damp bangs, towel still draped over his head, as Pei Shouyi set two bowls of ramen down between them. It was the same look the neighborhood stray would give Pei Shouyi; pitiful, insistent. referring to him as a stray is also a nod to his, uh, rabid-ness. i wanted to show the extent of his desire for psy's attention, the precursor to his behavior in wbl s2. he doesn't care if psy knows that he's a lil crazy—"Pencil accident," Yu Zhenxuan says. He must know that Pei Shouyi knows, but his expression is mild, not a hint of shame.
it was also my intention to write yzx specially as an autistic character. i didn't want this to read like a list of symptoms (because i am not autistic), but feel like a more natural part of his characterization. things like less sensitivity to pain (Zhenxuan doesn't even flinch when Pei Shouyi begins to dab at it with disinfectant.), stimming (Yu Zhenxuan is lying on his back with his head towards Pei Shouyi, arms outstretched over him and fingers fanned out.), and restlessness (Yu Zhenxuan begins to entertain himself by methodically peering inside every drawer around the office.). i hope this characterization wasn't either too subtle or too cliche.
there is something i love about two people being on their own wavelength while a third wheel awkwardly watches, so the scene where yzx is escorted to the nurse's office by another student was one of my favorites. psy being able to be sarcastic with yzx, and yzx being able to give it back and enjoying it. i wanted yzx to be nosy about psy, to want to have shared secrets with him. ("A boyfriend?" He probably thinks he's being subtle, unaware of the hopeful hitch at the end of his question.) anything that proves he is different to psy than others.
He'd always been good at math, was even roped into tutoring his baby cousin after Gao Shide's father left. gsd/psy is actually my favorite relationship from wbl so i wish i could've referenced them more than this throwaway line.
There's a bruise on his cheek that's nearly healed, fading into a dull purple that blends in with the bags under his eyes. Pei Shouyi wonders how much he sleeps. Where he sleeps. psy to yzx's face: i don't want to know anything about you. psy inside: are you eating enough? sleeping enough? who's hurting you?
Yu Zhenxuan is slow to pack up his things, like there's something he wants to do before he's ready to go, but he waits until he's at the door. / "Pei Shouyi," Yu Zhenxuan says, voice warm. "Thank you." this is a reference to the series and psy's memory of yzx in the doorway.
i knew that i wanted yzx to bring up his autism with psy specifically, rather than psy just making assumptions when he's listing off all of yzx's diagnoses for gsd in wbl2. i started the scene without a clear direction of where to take it, but it kind of turned into this opportunity for yzx to echo the sentiments expressed in his letter above—"[...] Sometimes I feel like I would be better off if I just stopped trying." / Yu Zhenxuan says this, like his need for connection isn't leaking out of him. i wanted to show that he tried to take psy's advice and make friends, but also that he modeled his older persona on psy himself at first before settling on something more comfortable and himself. i thought a lot about yzx's daydream where he's eating dinners with psy's coworkers and how all of these pieces of his characterization show that he doesn't just want to fit into psy's life, but to be accepted by others.
btw For a single moment, Pei Shouyi's fingers twitch at his sides as he fights the impulse to reach out, run a hand through Yu Zhenxuan's hair. He needs a cigarette, and possibly also a lobotomy. i feel like i have written this exact sequence of lines before. i am nothing if not predictable.
as i said before, i wrote the first scene in april of last year and then wrote most of the rest in july. in brainstorming between then, i took a note which only said "playing favorites" "who said you're my favorite" thermometer and tongue thoughts. as you can see i am a very detailed outliner. anyway i ended up really liking this short little scene. ("What favorite?" Pei Shouyi asks as something shifts restlessly in his gut. He holds the thermometer, even though Yu Zhenxuan should be able to hold it in place on his own. There's an urge building under his skin, the faint desire to press his gloved fingers into Yu Zhenxuan's mouth, to feel the ridges of his teeth and the meat of his tongue. Yu Zhenxuan watches him, gaze steady despite the droop in his eyelids.) another instance of yzx trying to prove that he is Different to psy, more vague medfet, yzx vaguely turned on despite being ill. i think this and the short scene that follow serve as a nice buildup to the scene that follows.
i wish i could track the tweets i made about this idea down, but. the whole fic started because i had these lines floating around in my head where in the moment before climax, all the things that he wants to do to yzx slipping through psy's subconscious, and then in the post-nut clarity realizing that he has to leave because of those desires. despite the problematic age gap and position of authority, i never thought psy would actually really care about any moral implications. ("I won't tell," Yu Zhenxuan whispers. The thought honestly hadn't occurred to Pei Shouyi yet.) instead, it's that he can't allow yzx to rely on him. i choose to believe that psy is lying to himself when he tells yzx that he cannot love. rather, he is not confident in his own ability to be someone that yzx can rely on. it's because he cares that he pushes yzx away okay!! of all the parts of this fic, the last scene is the one i am probably least dissatisfied with partially because it's the idea i sat with for a year (no pressure) and partially because i feel like one of my signatures as a writer is fumbling the ending.
"How much longer do you plan on doing this to yourself?" / "It's not like I have a choice," Yu Zhenxuan says. He looks up, eyes meeting Pei Shouyi's. His pupils are wide and dark, a boy possessed. "Besides, this is the only way I can get you to touch me." i love unhinged yzx. this is a man who held onto a used bandage for over a decade, there is nothing he would not to do to get psy's attention. similarly, there is nothing he wouldn't let psy do to him: There is something wild in his expression, naive desperation. Pei Shouyi is certain that Yu Zhenxuan would let him do anything—fuck him, hit him, scrape his nails across every inch of his skin—as long as Pei Shouyi touched him. He is also certain that Yu Zhenxuan would thank him for it.
Yu Zhenxuan tries to catch his eye. "You want me too," he says. His voice is faintly confused, and Pei Shouyi knows that he must've given too much of himself away if Yu Zhenxuan knows. "I've seen the way you look at me." as you can imagine, i was thinking of the scene in wbl2 after yzx's arrest, where yzx is so hopeful and psy is cruelly cold. yzx may be deranged but he's not wrong, psy does want him. that he might have let his mask slip horrifies psy a bit.
i will stop talking here, because i refuse to reread the porn i wrote in a hurry. thank you ao3 user talkfast for the comment because i will take the compliment "the writing feels very precise, not a single word wasted" to my GRAVE.