au where taxian-jun manages to open a portal to another universe a year or so after chu wanning dies. he goes to sisheng peak immediately, estimating that at this time he should already be emperor.

but he is not. because in this universe, mo ran never received the black flower. taxian-jun arrives at sisheng peak to find that not only has it not become wushan palace, but xue zhengyong is still sect leader.

he is annoyed, but mostly he’s just confused.

why are things different here? what changed in this world for it to be similar yet so different?

mo ran as the boyfriend you hire to show up at family events when you really want to piss off your parents. chu wanning who's decided he no longer wants to be huaizui's perfect adopted son and has found an ad online that says:

"I will be your father's worst nightmare." the rift between him and huaizui has grown ever since chu wanning made it clear at age 14 that he would be following his own path. in the years following, he's felt huaizui's disappointment every time he's visited and chu wanning is close to his breaking point.

goth mo ran with dark eyeliner and black boots with spikes on them piercings and edgy tattoos and ripped jeans and an undercut.

class president chu wanning who’s responsibility it is to make sure that his peers wear the appropriate clothes to class. cwn with glasses and his books clutched in his arms glaring up at mo ran who doesn’t need boots with platforms, but is wearing them anyway and so he towers over cwn in his sensible school shoes.

mo ran’s grin never faltering as cwn lectures him once again on school dress code

mo ran only ever seeing cwn in formal clothes at work and joking that he probably wears a white dress shirt and slacks to bed, only to drop by his house one day to give him something from xzy and be greeted by a bleary-eyed cwn in a soft sweater with loose hair. the sweater is oversized and one side is slipping off his shoulder. it’s clear he’s just woken up from a nap, and mo ran is immediately reminded of a tired kitten.

he has the weirdest impulse to kiss cwn on the forehead and see if he’s sleepy enough to accept the affection.

an au where chu wanning actually manages to get the long hatred flower out of mo ran without either of them dying.

not just half-out, not simply stopped from growing further, but fully removed.

meaning that mo ran suddenly has to deal with the horror of the world he’s made. in one moment he is taxian-jun; lying down next to his concubine in bed, sated and pleasantly sore after venting the frustration of a fruitless hunt for xue meng.

in the next, there is a flash of light and mo ran screams as something inside him is torn out root and stem.

au where chu wanning is a very successful wedding planner in crisis, because he is now having to plan a wedding for his long-time secret love mo ran.

what he doesn’t realise is that the “bride” that mo ran talks about doesn’t exist, and he’s actually planning his own wedding. he’d been devastated when mo ran had come to him asking for help with his wedding. he’d contemplated saying no and saving himself a lot of suffering, but mo ran had looked so hopeful.

in the end he’d swallowed his rejection and agreed, resigning himself to his worst nightmare.

one of those soulmate AUs where soulmates feel one another’s pain would be awful for ranwan because they are really both in constant pain.

imagine chu wanning feeling it when he whips mo ran with tianwen.

imagine him feeling the long hatred flower. he’d realise first and he’d try so hard to keep himself uninjured so that mo ran didn’t feel his pain. or, if he couldn’t protect himself he’d put a lot of effort into hiding the fact that he’d been injured so that nobody could put two and two together.

modern au where ranwan are dating but chu wanning still has anxieties about whether or not mo ran actually likes him or is just with him out of pity.

that is, until mo ran comes back home from a work dinner very drunk. so drunk, in fact, that he barely recognises his boyfriend. “mo ran,” chu wanning sighs as the love of his life stands in the doorway. “where are your shoes?”

“shoes?” mo ran asks, surprised.

then he looks down.

“oh.”

his shirt has half its buttons undone, his hair is a mess—and he is currently wearing one sock and no shoes.

mo ran is the perfect protagonist for 2ha, but 0.5 timeline xue meng is very typical protagonist material and a book from his pov would read so differently.

I mean—he’s a talented orphan studying under a great mentor whose parents and sect were killed by his evil cousin. after his mentor is imprisoned in the rebuilt ruins of his home by his cousin, he is tasked with raising a large enough force to rescue his shizun and take down the insanely powerful new emperor.

all the while he is being hunted by the man he once considered his brother.

the parallels between taxian-jun and frankenstein’s monster…

“I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. if I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.” taxian-jun seeking to punish his creator for making and then abandoning him and refusing him love. hunting him down across continents and killing everyone he dares to love when taxian-jun can have no love.

okay I’m imagining a yi city arc au with txj and blind cwn. cwn rescuing a half-dead stranger and coaxing him back to health, and not knowing what he’s invited into his home.

txj telling himself that he’ll stay only to make it more painful when he finally reveals his identity. taxian-jun cooking and cleaning for cwn, accompanying him to the market and going on night hunts with him, repeating his internal narrative that this is only what he’ll do until he gets bored. one day he’ll put an end to this lie and laugh at the horror on cwn’s face.

mo ran and chu wanning as actors who keep getting put in all the same movies because their chemistry is off the charts. them having a really big shared fanbase and chu wanning stumbling across fanfiction of the two of them and being unable to stop himself from reading it. it starts with just one or two fics. he's scandalised the whole time and keeps exiting out of the fic before hesitantly clicking back to continue reading. the interactions between him and mo ran are so unrealistic, but they make his chest warm and his heart beat faster.

au where during his ‘respect shizun’ phase mo ran 2.0 goes on a mission with chu wanning and ends up getting spiked with a truth serum that lowers his inhibitions.

and chu wanning is suddenly made very aware of what his polite, dutiful disciple thinks about him. chu wanning figures out what’s in mo ran’s liquor about a minute after the last of it has disappeared down mo ran’s throat. mo ran notes the strange aftertaste and chu wanning identifies the rare serum quickly.

he’s relieved that it’s not a poison. mo ran, however, is not.

rockstar mo ran au is so good because you can imagine straight-laced cwn’s embarrassment at how much he likes the very explicit works of rising star taxian-jun.

he’s too old for rock music, and far too old to be blushing over a 21 year old singer’s music video. but here he is. he has all of mo ran’s albums on cd, he has a poster of him that he keeps underneath his bed, and he became tentatively active on weibo so he could follow mo ran and his fan accounts. he even comes across reader/mo ran fanfiction, which opens him up to a whole new world.

thread of earrings I found on pinterest that I think different 2ha characters would wear chu wanning

chu wanning losing all his memories of mo ran would be super angsty because he wouldn’t believe that someone like mo ran could love him.

mo ran losing all his memories of cwn, on the other hand, would be comedic because he would instantly set about trying to seduce cwn cwn is very worried that without any memories of their history mo ran won’t want him anymore, and meanwhile mo ran has decided that they are going to have a spring wedding, three children and a dog

imagine 16 year old mo ran meeting post-canon ranwan. something goes wrong on a mission, they get caught in a trap, and all of a sudden they’re stumbling into a bewildered teenage mo ran.

“shizun?” he asks, eyes wide. “and—who the fuck are you?” “oh. fuck,” says the older mo ran with feeling as he looks at his younger self. “absolutely not.”

“language, mo ran,” chu wanning says; both out of habit and because he has no idea what else to say.

teenage mo ran rolls his eyes and adult mo ran grins at his husband.

thinking about a darker mo ran 2.0 where, like—he loves cwn, okay? he cares for him and cherishes him and wants to spend the rest of his life with him.

but cwn is so bad at taking care of himself.

always putting himself in danger. always sacrificing himself for others. it drives mo ran crazy how little cwn values his own life and he has dreams where cwn dies trying to help others at his own expense. he loses sleep thinking about it and he knows cwn will never understand.

so really, how much can mo ran be blamed for protecting cwn from himself?

teenage ranwan au where straight a student chu wanning, who has never so much as raised his voice at his guardian huaizui in his life, sneaks out of his bedroom window every other night to go meet up with his bad boy boyfriend mo ran they sit on a roof together and drink alcohol that mo ran insists he didn’t steal, and mo ran talks about how one day he’s going to make enough money to marry chu wanning and give him the best of everything that the world has to offer.

modern ranwan scenario where mo ran stalks cwn’s social media regularly despite telling himself he doesn’t have a crush on his ex-professor. it’s weird, but everyone has a weird hobby, so it’s fine.

that is, until one day cwn posts a picture with a man that mo ran doesn’t know. a young man. maybe around mo ran’s age, dressed in clearly expensive clothes. with his arm around cwn’s shoulders.

mo ran’s world is flipped on its head in seconds.

who the fuck is this man? why the fuck is he so close to cwn? why the fuck are his clothes so fancy?

sometimes I wonder whether hua binan finding out that mo ran was a bbbf would mean he’d hate him less, and while I think he probably wouldn’t hurt him to the same extent, I think he’d still hate him. his resentment for mo ran feels inexplicably deep. he might even resent him more for being a bbbf without golden tears. in the ‘you’ve never had to suffer what I’ve had to suffer’ kind of way. it’s not reasonable, or even quite true, but hbn has never had a problem twisting the truth to match his perception of the world.