spatz | June recs

Quiet month for me, I was doing a lot of re-reading, so have a small random assortment of four stories!

Guanyin's Gift by Potboy/ @galadhir (Untamed/MDZS, JGY/LXC)

You can't build a goddess of mercy a large temple and pay for priests to worship her every day without earning at least some merit. Aka, by divine mercy, Jin Guangyao gets a chance to do his life all over again.

Excellent time-travel fix-it, JGY-style (so: subtlety and rumor and spycraft, with a side of making sure His People are all happy).

Reunion Dinner by vivisextion (Untamed/MDZS, gen)

Jiang Cheng realises that his own nephew has never tried his mother's signature dish, and takes it upon himself to rectify this.

Definitely a premise I've seen before, but his journey to re-creating the recipe draws in a lot of other characters in sweet ways - and also uses the author's own recipe/experience. Very satisfying.

Ready for Love by @idiopathicsmile (Singin' in the Rain, Cosmo/Don/Kathy)

Don and Kathy would move in together. They would have a dog or two and then inevitably, a small parade of adorable little brats who would call him Uncle Cosmo, and they would spend less and less time with him, not on purpose but busy with the rest of their lives, and ultimately Cosmo would learn to make his peace with it because he’d have no other choice and he would have to try to move on and not live too much in his memories. He could picture it so clearly, he figured if the songwriting gig with Monumental didn’t pan out, he could always return to the backwater circuit with a new act: The Amazing Cosmo of the Cosmos—ladies and gentlemen, he sees the future, he reads the stars, he silently pines for his best married pal and all the while tap dancing!
Don and Kathy inviting him along on their honeymoon, though—that part was a surprise.

Hilarious, darling post-movie get-together featuring note-perfect banter and pining ADHD Cosmo.

Running Behind by @asidian (Final Fantasy XV, gen)

There's a tag hanging on his storage pod, instead of the clipboard that documents his progress. On that tag, there's a single word stamped in red: defective. NH-01987's feet stick on the metal of the catwalk. Behind the ever-present metallic mask, his eyes grow huge.
He knows what that tag means. It means that, in the morning, while the other MT units are collected for training, a guard will come for him. He'll be restrained and escorted down the metal corridors toward the east wing, into the double-doors that house the correctional facility. But he won't be up for re-programming, not this time.
This time, they'll strap him down to a table for the last time ever. They'll pick him apart, to try and learn what caused his failures – and he has so very many of them, no matter how hard he's tried.
When they're finished, they'll take what's left to the crematory. That will be the end of him: a pile of ashes and a wisp of smoke.

I don't even go here, but I just could not resist a return to my fannish roots of reading fic about a fugitive child soldier with a barcode tattoo learning how to be a person - and it's a gorgeous h/c fic in its own right. 10/10 will comfort read again.