More than one way to skin a cat

[flemmings]

Which is this? Wednesday's prompt? I wish inspiration would pay attention to that word prompt instead of coming perennially late, like the mail.


Fu Chai sleeps soundly under Gou Jian's gaze. Gou Jian looks at the peaceful face, smooth as a boy's with its daytime lines all gone; looks at the red lips open and snoring more than a little loudly. The damnable certainty, the unbounceable confidence of the man, no different than when he stormed into Yue's capital with only a guard or two and demanded to see the Prince Regent. Fu Chai hasn't changed at all. Gou Jian has. In the darkest watches of the night when the waiting women in the outer hallway grow weary and doze a little, it would be the simplest thing to take that pillow and place it over Fu Chai's face and lean on it with all his weight... Whatever noise, whatever struggle the king of Wu made, he'd be dead by the time anyone came to the rescue.

So would Gou Jian, of course; and in very short order, so would his queen and generals here, and his advisors back in Yue, and many, many of Yue's people. Indeed Yue itself would come to an end once Wu Zi Xu took over as regent to Fu Chai's ungrown son. Gou Jian frowns. How neatly Fu Chai has made Gou Jian powerless, and how cleverly he rubs Gou Jian's nose in that fact just by the reckless indulgence he shows towards him.

No, Gou Jian won't even think of killing the king of Wu. The alternatives to his present state are all much worse. He'll abide the turning of Fortune's wheel and the dictates of Heaven. In time the balance will come back to him. And then he'll repay Fu Chai's generosity with his own. Bring him back to Yue to company the king's leisure. Play chess with him while discussing politics and strategy. Dismiss him at night to his hut near the stables.

Or place him by his bedside during the night watches and sleep under his gaze?

Gou Jian shifts uneasily. Something he doesn't want to think about threatens to become clear in his head, and he turns his mind away from it.

No, if and when he conquers Wu, its king will be given a sharp sword and invited to enter Wu's Great Hall and not come out.

Comments

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

Touching with a sense of foreboding. I love it!

In fact I am loving ALL these little snippets by the way. They are just all lovely and wonderful!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Thank you. And some day they may form a coherent narrative. I just hope it doesn't degenerate into mindless fangirl yaoi and happy domesticity in Wu.

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

It's really very good, and it reminds me of just how opaque Gou Jian is. He bore so much, but what was really going on in his head?

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

The joy of Uncle Ming, and the drawback of a hamhanded writer, is that one may form one's own conclusions on the basis of purely visual evidence alone.

Trouble being that I really really hate the idea of an unacknowledged attraction between Gou Jian and all-but-ep-41 Fu Chai. I'd wonder what was wrong with him. With a wife like Ya Yu, why has he no eye for quality? Even Fan Li is preferable. So one must write A/Us where Last Ep Fu Chia (LEFC) shows up around episode 20.

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

This is exactly what the writers should have shown, but utterly failed to. Thank you for this insight into Gou Jian.

shouldn't the first line of the third paragraphy be "...Gou Jian won't even think of killing the king of Wu."?

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Which this? ^_^ Gou Jian's internal dilemma (in which case it's OK, they had Uncle Ming to express it for them) or Gou Jian's unwitting unwilling attraction to Fu Chai (in which case, well hey, the writers were /obviously/ Gou Jian x Fan Li OTP fanbois. Only not. The second writer was m/m deaf in a bad way.)

Yes, of course. I did it somewhere else and caught it but that one slipped by. Writing before work, you know.

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

I'd like to say the latter, but somewhere along the way practically all the m/m strands were lost >_< Even with the former, one gets the impression from the series that the director and writers were just trying to show the changes in Gou Jian's character in response to external forces, so that Uncle Ming basically had to show what he wasn't given to tell.

I admire those of you who can write a love-scene (or similar) after work (or before, as it were), like Theroux and Trollope.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I wonder how much he could be given to tell, though? Gou Jian is secretive- so much is obvious. Keep 'em guessing always. He's not the kind to talk about his feelings or motivation. WZX is the only one who tells us why people do what they do-- or why WZX thinks they do what they do, because I think he's wrong. The writers, or at least the director, gave us Gou Jian's scene in the rain, which conveyed more things more convincingly than dialogue could.

The day is divided into before work and after work. If one's going to write at all it has to be one of those two. And a layman's day is an awful lot shorter than a doctor's.

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

Better late than never, in this case very much so. (better that is, not late.) Delicious!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked. I keep thinking this is going to tip over the edge of fangirl yaoi like a king stepping off a cliff and plunge to its death. Ah well. Can't be worse than raping-seme Fu Chai and healing-cock Fan Li.