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Part 6 of Wulian oneshots
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2025-08-19
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2,338
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1/1
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pitter patter, don’t want my heart to shatter

Summary:

Xie Lian goes into heat right before he is supposed to take his revenge on Yong'an. As a result he gets a mate and the family he never wanted, and falls even deeper into the pits of blue-hued depression.

Luckily for him, Wuming loves him just the way he is.

Notes:

Just a tiny snippet about postpartum depression. That shit is real.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Xie Lian stared at the leaking ceiling of the shack they were staying at, feeling beads of sweat roll off of his temples. Wuming was driving into him, deep, penetrating thrusts that made his whole body shake.

Someone moaned obscenely, and it took Xie Lian a moment to realize it was him. It was his voice, his raspy groans, his hurting body taking absolutely everything this odd, strong ghost had to give: his knot, his seed, his bite. Xie Lian wanted it all, his body thrumming with the need of it. 

A low growl resonated in his ears, a distant 'Dianxia' that made his insides burn with hate and want and all things ugly. 

"I’m not," he hissed back as one particularly strong thrust hit that sweet spot he hadn't even known existed, making him see shooting stars and exploding suns. Heat was coiling in him, a wave after another, an endless crashing of them against his insides, making him delirious and leaving him wanting so much. 

Heat. 

It was so unfair. His revenge, everything he had planned, stopped by this sudden heat. Fangxin—he didn't even know where it was. All he knew was that Wuming had been there when he had fallen down from the first onslaught of cramps, face flushed and unable to speak, his scent going haywire.

And Wuming... 

Wuming had been there, an alpha whose scent had spiked impossibly upon smelling Xie Lian, an alpha whose scent had made Xie Lian’s mouth water, and that was that. 

They had lost their masks a while ago. A long while ago, the suffocating weight of the mask unbearable as Xie Lian writhed and whined and trembled, his heat making a mess of him on the inside as much as Wuming was wrecking him on the outside, gripping, grasping, nibbling. They were kissing and then just biting, licking and sucking, all those things he never knew his mouth was capable of doing.

His lips were puffy and as swollen as his nipples that Wuming had spent an eternity on teasing, making him come twice from that alone. 

"Knot," he managed to choke out between those powerful thrusts that stretched him so wide he thought he would pass out. 

"Dianxia," Wuming groaned and latched his mouth on his neck, sweat mixing with blood as he sucked a deep mark into the sweaty skin of it. 

So sharp, his alpha fangs, Xie Lian thought dizzily as he felt Wuming's thrusts get sharper, something huge catching on until pushing inside. Xie Lian shrieked and his eyes crossed as he was knotted forcefully, Wuming a large, solid weight on his fragile, broken body. He started to sob as he came, feeling Wuming release impossibly deep inside him as they were locked together. 

Xie Lian's legs finally fell from Wuming's shoulders as he tried to ease himself away from the mating press that was straining his limbs. Wuming caught him instantly, maneuvering them into a position that was more comfortable, that thick knot still deep inside him. He closed his eyes, feeling the ghost caress his face with trembling fingers.

"Dianxia, I love you. Let me be yours," Wuming whispered and his voice broke.

Xie Lian didn't know what to say, what to feel, what to think, other than that he needed to rest before the next heatwave caught him. He closed his eyes and relaxed around the knot. 

 

When he emerged from his haze four days later with a new mating bite on his neck and body well sated, he didn't know what to feel, other than that he felt utterly domesticated, fucked out of his insanity and will to revenge. Consequently, he spent the next days just staring at the walls of the shack blankly and trying to think as his new mate tended to his needs: made him eat, made him gain weight and sleep until color returned to his face and strength returned to his body. 

A month later he discovered he was with a child. 

He spent the next months vomiting continuously as his belly swelled, as his movements became clumsy, as aches and pains assaulted him once more, as his fingers and feet became so swollen that he just couldn't sleep anymore. Sometimes, laying awake at night, he thought he would just let out blood to get rid of the fluid.

As the baby inside moved, twisting and turning happily, it looked like he was having an earthquake inside his belly. 

However, no matter how deep in the throes of nausea Xie Lian was, no matter how swollen he was, Wuming was there to look after him every day. He never failed to tell him how much he loved him in that deep, melodious voice of his, but Xie Lian was unable to return the words. 

As if it mattered, because it seemed that Wuming never really even expected to be loved by him at all. Maybe not even liked, maybe not even tolerated, and if Xie Lian thought about it too hard, he felt his heart clench painfully.

Seasons passed and they traveled, all of it a tremendous stress on Xie Lian's pregnant body. They found a new place, a bigger shack, and Xie Lian counted that around nine months had passed.

His labor started a week later.

It took him four days to deliver the baby. Contractions wrecked his body continuously, first short and in brief intervals, slowly getting stronger, harsher, longer and indefinitely more painful. He screamed and screamed and screamed, because it felt like his body was being torn apart once more, the visceral feeling of childbirth so very similar to when he had been killed by those hundred swords. Wuming was by his side, trying to tell him to breathe through it all just as a wayward healer had instructed, but the ghost was crying too much from the sight of his torture for the words to make any sense. 

"Make it stop!" Xie Lian screamed. "Take it out!" 

But what could Wuming do? Nothing, except to massage his back with a guasha comb to try to relieve his labor pains with a pained expression on his face. 

Finally, after those four horrible days and nights their baby daughter was born. Wuming was crying from joy, tears glistening in his beautiful gem-like red eye.

Xie Lian merely stared at the tiny bundle, feeling absolutely nothing. 

"Take her away," he murmured, finally closing his eyes despite the pain and the postpartum contractions he was still suffering through. 

The recovery took time, more than it should have. He was so weak and didn't have any energy or will to look at their daughter or care for her. When Wuming brought her to nest on top of his floppy belly, Xie Lian felt nothing but annoyance and gut-wrenching, horrible tiredness. Take her away, he wanted to scream, feeling more depressed than ever, even more depressed than in the heights of his previous depression. 

He spent the nights sweating away the last bits of his pregnancy; all the fluids and hormones that his body had been pumped up with. He spent days trying to care for this odd newborn, watching distantly as she cried, looking like a crumbled prune. He watched as her face became heavy with pimples and thought she looked ugly. He watched as she opened her eyes, unseeing and bleary, and wondered why he still felt nothing. 

When she slept, Xie Lian wanted to sleep as well, but couldn't. Instead he was filled with dark thoughts and the will to just leave both Wuming and their child. The mating bite on his neck ached and he felt completely incomplete, like he was drowning in a tidal wave of anxiety and blue shade of depression. 

Like was often the case with male omegas, he had no milk to offer. Hence, Wuming spent his days trying to source milk for the baby and food for Xie Lian. Xie Lian felt useless. His body had betrayed him first by going into heat, then by getting pregnant, then by not being able to give birth properly and finally by not even producing milk. He wondered if this was a curse by White No-Face, or just a divine punishment for himself for everything he had done or considered doing. 

The baby was fussy at evenings, crying for hours and hours, and often Xie Lian cried with her, trying to calm her down by carrying her and swaying her gently on his arms, all mechanical motions, mind detached. Wuming took turns, always ready, never complaining. He was a ghost, and Xie Lian had started to wonder if Xie Lian was too, because he was utterly unable to feel anything at all—a wrath in name yet not in materiality. 

One day he yelled and shouted at Wuming, told him that he hated him for getting him pregnant, and that he would never forgive him. 

Wuming left, looking shocked and torn beyond belief, and just like that, Xie Lian was alone with the baby. He shouted at the baby, too, making her cry.

Oh, he desperately wanted to throw her away, put her into a basket and just leave her somewhere for someone to find. In the end, he couldn't do it, but only because they were so poor that he didn't even have large enough a basket. 

The next day Wuming appeared, wearing his mask one more. That smiling mask that hid whatever he was feeling. He didn't say anything, merely took the baby who was crying in Xie Lian's limp arms, and looked down at her, caressing her tiny face. The rash on her face had finally started to disappear. 

Suddenly, looking at that smiling mask, the baby smiled for the first time, just a tiny twitch of her lips. But it was a smile regardless. Wuming gave her his long finger and the baby wrapped his fist around it tightly. Then he took a long piece of thick fabric from behind his back and wrapped it around his body, tying the baby to his chest until Xie Lian could only see her head and her tiny feet dangling from where she was snuggled inside the wrap and against Wuming’s chest.

The baby had stopped crying and Wuming took her out, leaving Xie Lian to heave with some unknown form of pain upon witnessing that small exchange of gestures and smiles he wasn't a part of. He fell asleep, didn't dream and woke up feeling only slightly more revitalized than before. 

After that Wuming took the baby out everyday, wearing her while looking for food and odd jobs, giving Xie Lian time to be alone. At first he hated it because he was left alone with all his dark thoughts. But he hated the baby, too. And he hated Wuming. He hated everything. Nothing in his life was good and nice, and even his clean body had now been made filthy. 

He had nothing. Nothing brought him joy anymore.

But Wuming was endlessly there for him. He kissed Xie Lian’s cheek goodnight even though he didn't want it nor deserved it. He and took care of their baby even though he didn't deserve that, either. And little by little the baby grew, started to smile more and cry less, her tiny cheeks becoming plump with the milk Wuming had been able to source. And little by little Xie Lian found himself drifting into her orbit—their orbit, the baby and Wuming's—hesitantly at first, heart beating fast, utterly scared that they would drive him away for having been so wretched and nasty.

But they didn't.

At some point Wuming removed his mask again and Xie Lian was struck by the realization of how pretty his alpha was. Eyes like gemstones, pouty crimson lips, pale skin, strong features. Tall, strong, broad and steadfast in his devotion. 

It made him really want to really look at his baby for the first time to see if there was a resemblance. 

One night, after making sure Wuming was sleeping next to the baby, Xie Lian slipped out. It had been a strange day because he had actually laughed at the funny noises and the bubbly gurgling yelping laughter of his child. He hadn't even realized what he had done before his gaze met with Wuming's wide eyes that were filled with deep longing and wonder, his long fingers twitching, clearly wanting to touch Xie Lian.

The night was cool around him. Stars were twinkling against the pitch black canvas of the sky. Cicadas were crying. 

"Dianxia," he heard Wuming speak, his presence larger than life around Xie Lian. Of course he was here.

Xie Lian drew in Wuming's scent and, for the first time, basked in it and found comfort in it. His solid, tall mate that stood by his side like an unmoving rock. Wuming gasped, probably smelling Xie Lian's own scent that had suddenly started to bloom under all the bitterness. Arms wrapped themselves around him and this time without hesitation.

"Wuming," he gasped, feeling like he was drowning all of a sudden, clutching at those strong forearms around him. "I’m in such a dark place. Won’t you help me?" 

Wuming nuzzled the top of his head adoringly and without any contempt or judgment. He didn't say anything, but the gesture was enough. Xie Lian slowly turned around in the embrace and brought his hands to cradle Wuming's face, stroking his cheeks and getting on his tiptoes to kiss him. Wuming only held him tighter as their tongues touched, danced and rubbed against each other, lips pressed tightly together. 

Inside, the baby slept and giggled in her sleep. 

After that, each day brough a new hue of color to Xie Lian's dark blue existence. And when he watched his daughter take her first wobbly steps with an adorable frown on her face, excessively cheered on by Wuming, he laughed, truly laughed, and everything exploded into a rainbow of wonder. 

However fleeting it was, he felt truly happy again. 

 

 

Notes:

Kudos, comments—always dearly loved.

This is based on this crappy piece I drew and the started to imagine the plot around it: https://www.tumblr.com/sodapopblitz/792196651562450944/dianxia-baby-daddy-sketch-with-ink

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