milliways_bar | (no subject)

"Better not, or I'll have to start punching them again," Bucky says, dryly, and goes to the door. He wasn't kidding about the whistle, either, letting out a piercing one the second he spots a rat passing at the end of the hall.

Bucky crouches down when it reaches him and holds a low conversation with it, then leans against the door waiting for it to come back. It doesn't take long. He thanks it and carries the tray it brought over to the side of the bed, where he places it on a metal table.

"Okay. Water, because that usually helps, and two kinds of soup - the one you got for me before, and a good old fashioned New York chicken noodle. Cures everything," Bucky tells him. "Take your pick."

"This one would be honored to try some of your miracle soup." Wei Wuxian asks, with his prettiest manners. He's embarrassed, really, to be so weak in front of others. It's bad enough when it's Lan Zhan or his baba, who at least know why, and understand, but...

Ugh. He hates this. Stubbornly, he struggles to sit up, gnawing on the inside of his cheek to keep from going down again.

"Here." The easy, matter of fact way he moves to help lift Wei Wuxian up into a sitting position speaks volumes about how often he's done something just like it in the past.

Bucky pulls the tray table over in easy reach for him, and sits down in the chair beside the bed.

"Ah, thank you." He might be bitter as all hell about being this frail, but unlike some people, Jiang Cheng, he knows how to be at least somewhat graceful about it.

"Don't worry, I will be less fragile in the future, for sure." For one, he's pretty sure he knows exactly who the cut on his arm is for, so at least he can be properly settled in this body. And he'll have more time to work on this core, so it doesn't sputter out at the worst moments.

No thoughts to actually taking it easy or anything, nah.

"Sure you will." It doesn't sound like he's humoring him; it sounds like he's taking him at his word. Bucky knows very well just how far stubbornness can get you.

"Need help with the soup?" he asks, aware of how Wei Wuxian hadn't been able to hold the empty bowl. It's just as matter-of-fact as before. "If it makes you feel better, you can think of it as a turnabout for patching me up."

Has Wei Wuxian mentioned he hates this? He suddenly, viscerally, wants his shijie. It would be okay, if it was her - he could joke about being three, and she would laugh, and it'd all be fine.

But he won't ever see her again, so... he'd better get used to it. Right?

"Mmm, I think you'd better - I want to taste this miracle soup, not wear it." He agrees, forcing his face to be just a bit thicker for now.

Bucky nods, and picks up the spoon. It quickly becomes apparent that he's done this before, too.

"Back when I lived in Brooklyn," he says, "when Steve -- you might not have met Steve yet, he's around here sometimes, though. We grew up together. He's pretty healthy these days, but back then he got sick a lot."

It's no secret, not when Steve's past is on display in the Smithsonian.

"I used to grab this soup from down at the deli on the corner. Better than any doctor. No offense to your friend, mind you."

"Hey, it won't be me she's stabbing in retaliation." Wei Wuxian points out - maybe if Wen Qing is busy stabbing Bucky, Wei Wuxian will be able to escape without being accosted. Win!

This is absolutely not what would happen, but let a boy dream.

"Mmm, it is good soup though."

"I try to avoid being stabbed when I can," Bucky says, dryly.

"Anyway, glad you like it."

'When I can', Wei Wuxian feels, is an important qualifier. He feels the same! It's just that there's so many circumstances where there's no option but stabbing. Tragic, really.

Bucky earns a little bit of a smirking side-eye for that one though.

"Well, I did get you out of this one stab-free, so far. Slashing, on the other hand, is a favorite amongst bunny-yao, it turns out." Look, we can't have everything in life.

"So far," he agrees. "Be nice if we could keep it that way. And what the hell turns a perfectly nice rabbit into something like that, anyway?"

"Resentful energy - you have heard of qi, yes? When someone dies, but dies... poorly, unfulfilled somehow, angry, wronged, that energy... eeeeh, rots, for lack of a better term. Becomes malignant. It contaminates the one that has died, as well as things in its surroundings, things that were important, or are particularly susceptible to it. It is like any other energy - spread a little over a wide space, and most likely no one will ever notice the difference. Concentrate it - bind it to one thing in particular, or make sure a lot of people die poorly in one space, and you have a big problem. I don't know if the bunny was wronged, somehow, or it was just living in an area that became charged with resentful energy, but..." He waves a hand, a 'there you go' sort of gesture. "Doesn't tend to lead to good things. Hell of a weapon though."

...

Wei Wuxian will happily ramble about his work when given half a chance, even moreso now that he's not hiding a big horrible secret where his core should be.

"You're not kidding," Bucky says, tapping his chest where the bandages lie hidden under the scrub top. "No idea how you'd wrong a rabbit enough to make it that mad. Poor fuzzy guy."

Right answer! Wei Wuxian knew he liked this guy.

"Well, something got to the bunnies here - I mean, have you seen them? They like Lan Zhan, but all animals like Lan Zhan, so."

Could also have something to do with the bribery. And the petting. Something like that. Or maybe it's magic, Lan magic.

"The ones that spit fire sometimes? Yeah. I figured they were just here from some other world. Like everything in Thedas seems to spit poison, from what little I've seen anyway," Bucky tells him, with a small shrug. He seems remarkably calm about this, too.

"... Please tell me the bunnies here don't spit poison." Wei Wuxian asks, seriously. He'll have to tell Lan Zhan, and Lan Zhan would be sad, and he hates making Lan Zhan sad, he's done that so often in his lives already. Just let the man hold some bizarrely carnivorous bunnies, okay?

Edited 2021-10-17 02:00 (UTC)

"Not that I've ever heard or seen," Bucky reassures him. "And I'm pretty sure someone would have mentioned it if they did."

"For that matter I don't know if Thedas rabbits do. Their spiders do, that's for sure, especially the giant ones. And the wyverns."

"What is a wyvern?" Wei Wuxian asks, though his eyes gleam dangerously at the idea of giant spiders. He'd be good against giant spiders, he feels. It'd be a fun challenge.

"Kind of like a really mean cross between a giant salamander and a giant snake," Bucky tells him. "It's got fins here--"

He shifts the bowl for a second so he can use his hand to indicate the right points behind the jaw. "--and some along the edge of its tail. Scaled, more like a snake. The damn things leap, bite, claw, spit venom, and use their tails like a whip. Big, too - maybe 10 to 12 feet tall and at least twice that in length, plus the tail."

Bucky shakes his head. "Some people say they're related to dragons, and maybe, I guess, but if so it's really distant. They're pretty stupid, not intelligent at all, not like a real dragon. At least not where I come from."

Almost as an afterthought, he adds, "Wyvern scale makes good armor, though."

Edited 2021-10-17 03:18 (UTC)

"Aiya aiya aiya wait go back a moment... there are real dragons where you come from?" Wei Wuxian demands, because Bucky! You're supposed to lead with that! Now he needs to figure out how to get up so he can go see a dragon!

Bucky blinks at him.

"Well, not where I am right now," he says.

"Well no, you can't live on top of the dragon... I guess? Bucky, have you seen the dragons?" Look, all of the really good heroic stories as a child involved dragons - you can't just casually mention live dragons now and not give more details.

He shakes his head. "Not personally. Mostly you just hear stories. Legends, that kind of thing. Mostly."

"Mostly? Bucky-xiong!" Wei Wuxian protests, his expression pitiable. Or at least he likes to imagine it is.

"Let's just say that given some of the places I've spent time, and some of the other things I've seen and heard about ... some of the stories I believe," Bucky tells him.