[ He knows it to be a tease. Lan Zhan has bent many of the Lan principles for Wei Ying, even broken them, but those he can uphold without any ill effect on his... companion... he continues to do so. Luckily, Wei Ying is far more passionate about alcohol than he is meat, and even the addition of spice to his food when he visits Gusu isn't too difficult for Lan Zhan to cater to.
He shouldn't cater to Wei Ying's every whim, according to his uncle and plenty of other elders in their sect. Lan Zhan silently disagrees and continues to support Wei Ying to live the happiest, fullest life possible. Even if that means him leaving Lan Zhan behind in Cloud Recesses. Even if his vision of a peaceful existence is far from peaceful in Lan Zhan's eyes. Wei Ying is a warrior, despite how he laments the loss of Suibian. He battles expectations with every step he takes towards justice, and while sometimes that road has taken him through self-destructive territories, Wei Ying is nothing if not stubbornly optimistic. His words are his shield, music his weapon, and may the heavens pity anyone who stands in his way.
Reclined as he is on the ground, Lan Zhan is spared the embarrassment of reaching to brush the hair from his eyes simply because he isn't within reach. Such a fearsome man contained behind such a beautiful face, strength bottled in a slender frame. ]
You fear no man.
[ Least of all Lan Zhan, if his constant teasing means anything. If the way he pushes and prods, searching for attention and then leaving when it is awarded to him, is an indication of fear, then it is one that Lan Zhan neither understands nor accepts. Rabbits may scatter from an unfamiliar threat, but even a solemn, solitary bear may befriend them with time.
Not that Lan Zhan imagines himself a bear. ]
What help do you need, Wei Ying?
[ He asks as he crosses his legs beneath him and folds to the ground, shaking out his sleeves to either side so they flow over his knees. Seated, there's even less distance between him and Wei Ying, and he rests the hand closest to him with the palm raised. No word of reminder, but Wei Ying had requested to hold his hand, after all. ]
[ He fears beasts and memories and endless nights. Fears the cold that climbs his lower back, for want of the shallow defences a golden core might have lent him against the elements. Fears the look of Jiang Cheng, a broken sword, tip still sharpened to stab him. Fears knowing he'd allow it. Fears himself.
Does not fear this: Lan Zhan, easing like a spring bloom beside him, so preciously careful to avoid disturbance beneath and around him. A fixture that breathed alive, like an extension of Wei Wuxian's person, only extensively, classically ornamental.
Not a sword too, for all of Lan Zhan's edges; wire, at the worst of him. Poison, lead and weigh t in stream.
Wei Wuxian, drunk-mad from sips of fragrant sandalwood, knocks their shoulders together in a swayed tilt. Hello.
Then, fitfully, he sits his ring finger in Lan Zhan's palm, waving it in rapid, hovered circles that barely touch skin and tickle through intimation. ]
Don't worry. I think I've found my own way to defeat you.
[ No man's composure can survive this onslaught unfractured. Wei Wuxian doesn't pride himself in underhanded hostilities, but even the mightiest general would struggle to fault his strategy. Brilliance, this. Shining.
He grins up, light of the dawning sun stolen to spell a ribbon of relief on his mouth. He can do this: suffer new intimacy, to crown his old manner. Dress in new expectations, but remain (preserve) himself. ]
Wish me luck?
[ Like the endless parade of Yunmeng residents who cheered the two sons of the sect, bound for their Sunshot war. Who lived to welcome the return of one. ]
[ The fact that he doesn't jolt at the gentle bump against his shoulder is a testament to how at ease he is around Wei Ying. If anyone else tried it, he'd tense into a true facsimile of a statue rather than the relaxed, yet upright, posture he maintains now. His brother is the only other person who inspires such comfort in Lan Zhan, and he is isolated far from them in the mountains of Gusu.
A smile tugs at the corner of Lan Zhan's lips. If only Wei Ying knew that he had defeated Lan Zhan long ago in another life. He had chipped at the walls around Lan Zhan's heart, defenses built up with decorum and duty. Wei Ying's boundless cheerfulness, playfulness, stubbornness had caused cracks in those walls; his death had obliterated them. That finger, teasing like its owner, sparks warmth in the tips of Lan Zhan's ears. Such a small touch is a fierce weapon in the battle which Wei Ying has already won. ]
What is Wei Ying's strategy?
[ Lan Zhan rotates his upper body towards Wei Ying and catches the way the sun reflects on the angles of his face, shaping him for Lan Zhan's hungry eyes to trace. Wei Ying has always had his own light, radiant, even when the shadows of Yiling clustered to shroud him in darkness. Wei Ying is so much like the sun, and Lan Zhan the humble moon chasing him through the sky, hoping to reflect a little of that light for himself. ]
[ Challenged. Foolishly challenged, Lan Zhan's attention rapt and undivided, set on him, summoning the fevered flush of his ears, lighting the tip of his nose. He wants to wrinkle it, but then the rabbit likeness will be so incriminating and profound that Wei Wuxian will suffer the tortures of another eight feline lives, and still never redeem his reputation.
The finger rounds and twirls and tickles, rhythm and pressure irregular, like playing the flows of current through a flute's holes, to define the sound. And his second weapon, revealed between starved wolf grins, catching Lan Zhan's eye while he unleashes the full force of his... nattering: ]
I'm hungry. Aren't you hungry? Famished.
[ Hardly, stomach a storm, roiling as if he were on his maiden voyage, absent the sea legs he grew in Yunmeng. ]
We should have eaten before. Mhmmmmm. Imagine now, soup. [ ...well. Maybe some of the interest isn't purely performative. ] Broth. No! Not the thickened one. Clear. Nice and smooth and ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Lan Zhan, do you think they trust ginger here?
[ So close to Cloud Recesses, only a day's walk away? The locals must share in the ascetic habits of their benevolent masters, even in the villages. No, dinner is cursed, no matter how keenly Wei Wuxian wishes it differently. ]
They use it in the north, don't they? In Qinghe. To bring out the richness of bone marrow. Mmmmmmmmmmm, fresh, ground ginger, and some goji here and there, just a few beads. To pop in your mouth? Don't you like that? Pop-pop.
[ He smacks his lips together, lazy and easy, chatter like white noise that starts, finally, to deafen even him. Carefully, his ring finger retires, while his middle one takes up post to tickle twirls in Lan Zhan's palm in earnest.
His voice sheds an octave, honeyed: ]
...you'll yield, you know you will. It's impossible not to. Miiiiiight as well get it done with early. Laugh. Come on. Laugh.
[ Lan Zhan blinks once, twice. Somehow, Wei Ying is able to derail his mind from thoughts of downy rabbits and forlorn moons to think about soup. His own stomach hasn't had much of an appetite since Wei Ying left Cloud Recesses for his most recent jaunt through the realm, and the thought of food hadn't crossed his mind in the last couple of days. Spilling his deepest secret, the lack of outright rejection, being beckoned to meet Wei Ying—there had been far more on his mind than broth or any other food.
No, the only meal he needs is Wei Ying. To drink in the sound of his melodic rambling, to feast on his explosive and bewitching company, to savor the feather-light touches of his fingertip on the palm of his hand. The fingertip which causes his hand to twitch once as if ready to snap shut and ensnare its attacker. Lan Zhan is not ticklish, least of all on his sword-callused hands. ]
Ginger has many medicinal qualities. [ Meaning: it isn't unheard of to include in food for the sick, though not often indulged in by the people of his region.
At the heavier touch to his palm, Lan Zhan inhales. To others, it would be observed as little more than a sniff, a slight intake of air only slightly louder than a normal inhale; for Lan Zhan, it is a gasp compared to his normally even, silent breathing. His lips part on the exhale when Wei Ying continues in such a tone, making Lan Zhan's bones and blood sing with memories of Wei Ying on an expansive roof, master of his own unique cultivation, danger in the eyes that glittered the moonlight as his twisted melody filled the air.
It is a memory that terrifies Lan Zhan, seeker of peace, and excites Hanguang-jun, Head Cultivator. ]
There is nothing to laugh at. [ Lowering his chin, eyes on their hands, he finally folds his fingers up, a flower closing its petals against the nightly chill, and holds Wei Ying's hand steady. ] I have already yielded.
[ There, the muted, tender, gasped betrayal of Lan Zhan's attention. Wei Wuxian's got the trick of it. Spend just enough time coaxing ticklish circles in that particular spot and... ]
Lan Zhan, you know perfectly well what I mean. But, admit it, you just don't tickle eno —
[ ...Wei Wuxian's fingers are bound, shamefully captured, the leathered sheath of Lan Zhan's sword calluses armouring knuckles and joints. Yielding, Lan Zhan says, but triumphant. Aghast, Wei Wuxian stares down, clumsy for the light tug he gives to play-rescue his fingers, never quite applying himself to break the clasp. This... was not the plan here.
( Discussed. Agreed. Journeyed for. Done. But at the time of Wei Wuxian's choosing, and this was not that stuttered heartbeat.) ]
...well, well. Attacking while your envoy's speaking, hmmm? What foul play. I hope this isn't the battle honour the mighty Hanguang-Jun is teaching our young and impressionable disciples.
[ As if they ever respected ethics at any point of the Sunshot campaign. As if Wei Wuxian didn't hunt down Wen Chao like a plague-addled dog. As if corpses didn't rise and fall, exhumed by their own rancour, seduced to join cause against Qishan Wen because Wei Wuxian whispered mad folly against the rot of muscle that crowned their jaw, their cheek, that gateway of dissent, the waiting ear.
Days gone. Past irrelevant. His fingers, now. He stares at them, paternally disappointed: ]
Look what you've gotten yourselves into. [ Then, lighter, to voice his captured soldiers: ] Mercy, mercy.
[ Laughter leaves him with another strike of low evening breeze, with chains of sage and poppy stalks, bending and bowing to survive in servitude to the wind. Cowards. And Wei Ying, known Wuxian, known the Yiling patriarch, who has never been cravenly. Who looks up, suddenly alert, in the way of prey catching the scent of their predators.
He looks at his hand, held. At Lan Zhan, sixteen years at wait for it. At the hill around them, deadened and still. ]
All right. Well. Don't tell these fools, but I'm quite fond of them. They don't deserve it, but I'll pay ransom, just this once. Agreed?
[ If Wei Ying were to give anything other than a testing tug, Lan Zhan would yet again yield. Yield, and perhaps leave him, unsure of where to progress if even simply holding his hand is unwanted. But he'd said he wanted it, and Lan Zhan had not sensed any teasing in his words then. He likes to think that he understands, at least, when Wei Ying is teasing if not the purpose behind such jokes and diversions.
For example, he knows that Wei Ying is joking about honor and the quality of his teachings. He does not, however, know why it is considered foul play to hold the hand of his fated person, the one who asked him to hold his hand in the first place. Perhaps it is because his leporine friend requires a slow, steady approach or he is likely to bolt. Lan Zhan will continue to practice patience, to wait for the rabbit to willingly walk into his waiting palm.
He huffs a soft breath of laughter when Wei Ying addresses his own fingers and then voices their reply. They are worthy hostages, beautiful and skilled and so very necessary for the defense of their master. Yet Lan Zhan holds them gently, folded among his own tiny soldiers, perhaps more of a meeting of allies rather than a clash of opposing armies. Or, if Wei Ying is the envoy sent to bargain for their freedom, maybe the little fiends have learned some sympathy for their captor.
Ridiculous. They are fingers and nothing more, though they are still precious fingers to Lan Zhan.
Humming, he looks from their joined hands up at Wei Ying, meeting his eyes fully for the first time since he'd arrived. His head tilts to one side, curiously offering an ear as his hair slides across his shoulders. ] Ransom. What is the price? [ It's backward, he knows. The captor should name the ransom, yet he can't help wondering what it is that Wei Ying is guiding him towards. He has learned, from experience, that such ploys are often to bring about an effect that Wei Ying wished for in the first place. If manipulating Lan Zhan into giving him something will please him, then Lan Zhan is a happy pawn. ]
[ Later, he will think, there might have been protocol, forewarning, tradition. There might have been shame and poetry, and petty inspiration from rumours wild-eyed schoolboys trade in the dark. There might have been countless components to right the wrongs of impulse, but then (then) there is Lan Zhan, prone and uniquely sighted, in a new day that barely blinks away the blindness of Jin Guangyao's rule —
And Wei Wuxian thinks, it's ended, it's done, no more ills can be righted, or deaths avenged, or stones turned, or secrets unravelled, they've exhausted themselves among spatters of blood, and now they've come together again, like dark and nameless somethings, starved, stomachs concave.
Lan Zhan holds his hand. Anchoring, Wei Wuxian grasps back, and closes the yawning gap between them, two worlds colliding in the predictable dissonance of an untrained kiss — mouths too harsh, when Wei Wuxian invades without positioning, chins clashing, breath stirred and knocked out. No force or skill, only the stubborn heat of Wei Wuxian's mouth, carving out a path on the pursed line of Lan Zhan's lips, his jaw in clumsy derailment, like drunken calligraphy, blunt and brittle on hard wood, Wei Wuxian lives, Wei Wuxian was here.
Pressure builds in his ears like blood to a drum's beat, cloying and thickened. The smell of coming storm and livened greenery, electricity granular between his teeth. He pulls back, lashed by his own impertinence, sharp-elbowed, too long-limbed, unwieldy. The strings that stich-bound him in place come undone, and his knees fall, back slovenly, his hand bloodless in Lan Zhan's.
He sits back, struck and dazed, as if he were thralled to action, and now the spirit's left him. Two wars won, two lives lived, two leaders of the cultivation world unseated — and this, his first tryst.
For shame. ]
Paid.
[ Unasked, unchartered, perhaps unwelcome. But delivered, and Wei Wuxian's gain made. ]
[ Two worlds collide, and Lan Zhan is left in the swirling chaos that Wei Ying has once again created. Never would he have imagined a kiss, and yet it makes perfect sense. Perhaps one day, he will look back on tonight, hopefully fondly and not longingly, and consider how he played right into Wei Ying's plan for the kiss. Lan Zhan doesn't mind—has not minded for a long time—playing to the whims of his closest companion. If there must be one willing pawn in the schemes of Wei Wuxian, let it be his lovesick Lan Zhan.
He has no concept of whether the kiss is a good one, only that he wishes to drink Wei Ying in like a man dying of thirst, crawling through a vast yellow desert on his knees in search of an oasis. Their noses bump before a tilt of the head allows Wei Ying closer, and a true, open-mouthed gasp that escapes Lan Zhan leads to their teeth knocking together as well. He does not know what to do, only knows that he's eager to taste the claim that Wei Ying has branded onto his lips. When Wei Ying retreats, Lan Zhan quickly releases his fingers, no longer held hostage, and reaches up to grab the back of his elbow instead. He must keep him close, keep them together, keep Wei Ying from running away.
No more running, for either of them.
Chest moving visibly to regain the breath that Wei Ying had stolen from him, Lan Zhan stares at him with open amazement and, somehow still after so long, confusion. He snaps out of this and draws him back in, using enough force to bring Wei Ying within kissing distance. Lan Zhan initiates this second kiss, hungrier and deeper, his tongue seeking entry. He must taste, must lay his own claim, must fight not to take things further despite the shameful thoughts he's had for so long. His hands wander despite his efforts not to push, not to startle the skittish rabbit, not to ruin what he has wanted, needed, for so long. He smooths his palm over the jut of Wei Ying's hip so his fingers may splay against the small of his back and urge him closer, amending the angle of the kiss though their knees crash into each other as he pivots, manipulates Wei Ying's posture, seeks the light of Wei Ying like an eager sunflower.
When he withdraws his lips, but not his hands, he looks frightened by his own actions and needs. He leans forward slightly, enough to press his forehead to Wei Ying's with the cool ribbon of the Lan headband held captive between their heated skin. ]
[ Strike, parry, action, counteraction. He should have expected, trading blows with a swordsman, Lan Zhan has never seen open territory he wouldn't test back for weakness, once Wei Wuxian draws first blood. All fair in love, so they'd better make war.
He can't breathe. They slot better together this time, Lan Zhan shamelessly benefitting from every academic advantage of observing Wei Wuxian's fumbled overture, and refining it for round two. There's a moment, touch on his back burned and ebullient like the Wen brand, when he thinks, That's new. Points to Lan Zhan for innovation. Except Wei Wuxian's mouth carries the tired swell of recent friction, and he teethes at Lan Zhan's tongue, teasing, grin a gentle bridge affixing them between 'friendly' and 'feral', because, really. Who does the second master Lan think he is, and who gave him the right to invasion?
Not Wei Wuxian, maneuvered, ill-fitting, an accessory no better than Lan Zhan's contrived hair needles and headpieces — stranded listlessly at Lan Zhan's side, then before him, then against him. Stabbing cold, the proud metal of the Lan headband eats into his forehead, reminding one (both) of them that there is more at stake here than two of the shepherds might have, playing at first love. Hello.
There's enough of the mouse in him, body submitting to squeeze itself in and out of the cage of tight spaces. He doesn't fight Lan Zhan's grip, because restraints only tighten with resistance. Instead, he leans into it, taking advantage of the nudge to move along, to take himself those few steps farther, crawling ungainly on irritated knees to settle again, back to Lan Zhan's back, leaning with far too much of his weight, in a familiar pose. Pause. Review. Calculate. Adjust. Carry on.
His voice sounds scratchy to his ear, disused like the wheeze of a corpse's first lung-tearing breath after the waking. ]
...do you want to see my new river course talisman?
[ Through the power invested in Wei Wuxian, they're not talking about this. And it is a fine talisman, however untried. ]
[ Now that the bars have been lifted and the doors opened, Lan Zhan doesn't see the possibility of retreat in his future. He cannot give up the territory he has won from Wei Ying, because love may be a war, but he had lost it long ago to Wei Ying. Now is a new battle, one whose goal is to win back some agency so that he may pay genuine homage to the sovereign of his heart. There is no hope to regain his heart for which he pays ransom, but maybe he can convince Wei Ying to let him give it fully, explicitly, rather than in stolen glances and kisses. ]
Wei Ying.
[ Lan Zhan follows him, unwilling to let him out of his sight even if he can feel the weight of his presence against his body. He must look like a fool shifting around in the grass, staining his robes green where they press beneath his knees. Words escape him, because how can he convey feelings he doesn't quite grasp? The ache in his chest when Wei Ying is away, the warmth he feels at night seeing him in the Jingshi, the soaring joy of playing their duet for him or, even more blissful, together? Only one word comes to mind, and it escapes him without permission, his voice as raw with emotion as it is with the need for another kiss, another touch, anything Wei Ying will bless him with. ]
Please.
[ It sounds pathetic, weak, but here is the one person who has earned Lan Zhan's trust to see him in such a vulnerable state. For what he's pleading, he cannot say. All he knows is that he needs more of Wei Ying, today and every day after. Perhaps it's this deep hunger that pushes him to say more, or perhaps he is still drunk on Wei Ying's first stumbling kiss. ]
[ A man burning wouldn't ask so plaintively for water. And Wei Wuxian remembers this: scratches of sound, where they were stares before, one long rained night when he escorted out a caravan of Wens. The same melody of gut-clawing exchanges. He knows the swallow-root bitterness of Lan Zhan's despair.
Please. Unseen, he mouths it mutely at the horizon, as if echoing Lan Zhan will lend Wei Wuxian half of his burden. Absently, he fishes through his travel satchel, knowing the folded scrap by feel, confident enough to slip it back and rest it on Lan Zhan's knuckles with a tap. Half-frayed, the parchment paper shows Wei Wuxian's talisman draft to revert a river's flow, for villagers who can't dam it fast enough to prevent floods — and his recent itinerary, when the back of the strip reveals itself to be a ticket for a play, two months ago, in Lanling. ]
I'm telling you to bask in my brilliance. And fix my start and ending arrays.
[ A cheap diversion, if practical. He's not too proud to recognise elegant sorcery would change the course of the river so it sprouts from where the talisman's been cast, rather than letting the stream still burst from its original fount, and only change direction when it meets the array. Too often, this is the trouble of his spell work: once the talisman's achieved its lofty goal, challenge completed, he's too bored to refine it.
...this is where the likes of sect Lan, scrupulous to a religious fault, come in handy.
But then, Lan Zhan's never been a willing instrument, and Wei Wuxian thinks it'll be storm and rain and both of them drowning, before Lan Zhan submits without a cause again. Wei Wuxian's thoughts ache his temples like fingertips drumming over a bruise. He feels the pull of his mouth, the painful contortions to peel away theatrical nonchalance.
Honesty. All right. All right. ]
I need a moment. Just one? [ A finger rises up; a considering frown later, its sheepish sibling. ] Two. To breathe. [ His turn, now. ] Please.
[ Despair is a familiar companion to Lan Zhan, one that he barely takes note of at this point in his life. It has walked with him since childhood when he was kept from seeing his mother, despair growing with him until it took his hand firmly on the day that she died. Since then, it has been something that keeps him quiet, withdrawn. With such a companion at his side, why risk feeding it by making friends with others who may also leave him? Never had he intended to let that despair grow from the love Lan Zhan felt for Wei Ying, love he tried to deny for so long until that same old despair flared up and singed the edges of his heart, his love, when he'd let Wei Ying slip from his fingers sixteen years ago.
He has learned patience, but even that is beginning to fray now that he is so close to something he never imagined having but will never let go of once it is his. Lan Zhan would never commit the sins of his father, wouldn't dream of such twisted love even in his darkest of nightmares. He would treasure Wei Ying, share the Jingshi with him rather than imprison him in it. Promise him the freedom to leave with the trust, hope, that he would return.
The paper, upon inspection, makes him relax somewhat. The talisman has all the hallmarks of a Wei Wuxian original, from the fact that it's drawn on the back of a play ticket to the fact that it lacks the diligence to live up to what Lan Zhan knows is Wei Ying's full potential as a cultivator. He is brilliant, but his attention flits between ideas the way his feet wander between villages. So much about Wei Ying is nomadic, and here Lan Zhan sits, a pillar of Cloud Recesses, unmoving except for duty and love.
The talisman lays in his palm, temporarily abandoned for more pressing matters. Wei Ying holds up a finger, two, and Lan Zhan remembers to breathe. He reaches for him, fingers wrapping loosely around his wrist, and draws his hand close enough to kiss the tips of those two fingers. ]
You may have three, and I will amend your talisman.
[ ...oh. Oh, but Hanguang-Jun really shouldn't be trusted with disciples any longer. It would seem he is past any point of battling fairly. For one of his moments (wasted), Wei Wuxian is wrecked helplessly on the ground, staring down the dry print of Lan Zhan's clever mouth on his fingers, the worrying, implicit promise. This is fire, one of them will burn. Wrinkling his nose, Wei Wuxian smells ashes.
He's given three moments, so he takes ten. Then, another few heartbeats. Then, cheating when Lan Zhan doesn't call out the indulgence, another set, until his back feels pleasantly moulded to answer the negative spaces of Lan Zhan's spine.
He thinks, once the sky dilutes and expels the last coppers of sunset, he's pushed his luck as far as it will bend. The stars are all too literally rising in uproar against his cowardice. It's all very well to loiter, until astral bodies decide to embarrass you. After a certain point, action can't be helped.
Stiffness oils his joints by the time he's shifting again, the defensive draw of his knees up now rewarding him with a flinch. He moves, anyway, half crouching, half crawling, and tsk, there a pebble bites into his knees — until he sits before Lan Zhan again, plopping down to kneel in the familiar slouch of every last one of his repentance sessions, back when madame Yu still guided his punishments. A man with experience.
He cheats, inevitably, stealing a glance of Lan Zhan's work on his talisman, before remembering the spark that sets his smile alight: ]
Hi. [ Hello. Greetings. How do you do. ] You look well. I'm glad to see you. You'd better tell me the precious fruit of my youthful turnip passions is well too.
[ Will he ever tire of embarrassing his darling baby Yuan under the guise of the first sweet nothing that comes to his tongue? Most likely not. He is owed, for sixteen years of absence — which he may well have caused, but surely no one who was present can bring himself to prove it.
History chronicles have done a fine job of recording everyone but Wei Wuxian's part in his physical downfall. He is credited, generously, with full authorship of his moral corruption. ]
[ The three moments pass, and in that time, Lan Zhan settles back down on the ground in a relaxed yet attentive pose. Back straight, legs folded, robes carefully arranged though they now bear twin green smudges where both knees had bruised the grass beneath him. Once he has settled, he uses the next handful of stolen moments to focus on the talisman. He is overly diligent to make up for Wei Ying's haphazard execution of a good idea, filling in the blanks and elevating the cultivation from a simple spell to a true boon. A fingertip traces the lines of ink, slow and steady, both for increased awareness and to spoil Wei Ying with more time. Even after several minutes, when Lan Zhan has added to the talisman and set it on his knee for safekeeping, he remains silent.
The sun sets over the horizon, stealing the warmth of the day and leaving behind the faint chill of night, a breeze that carries with it the scent of all the night-blooming flowers that begin to wake. Once the sky is dark enough, he tilts his head back to gaze up at the stars. Connecting the dots between familiar constellations occupies his mind for a while, but there is an ever-present awareness of Wei Ying behind him, slouched against his rigid back, stealing more time and attempting to wear on Lan Zhan's patience.
Shameless. Foolish. Lan Zhan has proved how long he can wait for Wei Ying, that he has waited longer for the promise of far less.
He feels him moving before he appears in his periphery, black robes blending in with the darkness around them. Lan Zhan feels incredibly seen, not just because of his stark white robes, but the fact that he had bared his heart and Wei Ying had asked for the time to turn it over in his hands, inspecting the organ and searching for a solution.
The words are startling without context, and for a moment, Lan Zhan blinks in silence as he searches for understanding. Wei Ying provides it, drawing out a map of the conversation he wishes to have had. Lan Zhan, ever indulgent, smiles and bows his head. ]
Hello, Wei Ying. I am glad to see you, too, and in good health. Sizhui is well and wishes for me to convey his desire to see you in Cloud Recesses soon.
[ It isn't a lie. Perhaps the words had not left Sizhui's own lips when wishing Lan Zhan safe travels, but the sentiment was in his posture and his eyes. Lan Zhan knows that A-Yuan misses Wei Ying as much as Lan Zhan does when he leaves, that he has so many questions for the first father he had known who buried him in a garden and defended him with his life. ]
What is the next point of conversation now that we have exchanged greetings?
I don't know. We're always doing things out of turn.
[ This, at least, they'll both agree on: swearing fealty before elders, binding in caves, delivering last stands in battle, raising up radish sons. Then, bidding each other a good day. It seems entirely reasonable against the erratic pattern of their past life. What's yet another baffling turn of unfortunate events? ]
Dinner? You don't look hungry. [ By his sect's standards, Lan Zhan looks obscene, silks tarnished with taint of weed, ink teasing his fingertips, where he was forced to correct Wei Wuxian's talisman without notice. It suits him, in the way a floor doesn't look lived and warm until heels have drafted the first scratches. ] Eat anyway. Maybe we'll coax some wine in you, too.
[ An unlikely proposition, if only because Lan Zhan's tolerance for entertainment may have broadened with time, but still seems cursed to walk the familiar grounds of poetry, exotic philosophy and, at its most audacious, a clandestine dash of pepper and anise. Of that, and the curious, weighted pace of Lan Zhan's breathing at night, observed during their bound travel to rescue and restitch the tatters of the Yiling Patriarch's reputation, Wei Wuxian plans to speak not a word.
They have a night ahead of them to deflect the discomforts of revisiting the known and the alien and the accomplice conclusion of what those blurred boundaries entail.
Locked in its practice smile, Wei Wuxian's face feels as tight as a sailor's knot. He lifts himself, immune to the parting claw marks of his body's tension, and holds both arms out, bravely volunteering his grip against the Lan arm strength, to help raise up the jade-pale princess as well. ]
Hanguang-Jun, your humble servant begs an audience.
[ A huff of laughter leaves Lan Zhan, soft and almost imperceptible. To Wei Ying, who knows his subtleties and silences, he wonders if it could come anywhere close to comparing to his own bright laughter. Impossible, Wei Ying's laughter is the magpie's song, summer rain on the road, a clap of thunder.
Lan Zhan considers his stomach, assesses its emptiness, and nods. He doesn't feel the hunger, but he knows that his energy will deplete if he doesn't take food sometime soon. He can subsist on air and water alone if necessary, meditate through the stabs of hunger in his gut, fight well beyond the limitations of ordinary men. That is during war, though. Now, in a quiet night on the side of a simple dirt road, he has no reason to reject the offer of a meal, least of all with the one he most wishes to share one with. ] I will eat, but no wine.
[ It's not the fierce rules of his sect, nor personal preference, that causes him to snub the alcohol tonight. He's experienced first-hand the effects of it on his mind, the way it clouds his senses and lifts the shackles of his inhibitions in a dangerous combination that leaves him vulnerable and unable to recall his trespasses when he regains the mind to apologize for them. No, tonight's conversation is too important, and while he won't begrudge Wei Ying his vice, he won't partake in it. After all, he has other vices to attend to tonight.
His face tilts to watch Wei Ying as he rises, once again a helpless flower searching for more of the sun's light. He tries not to take offense in that smile, the kind that Wei Ying wears like armor against the world. Instead, Lan Zhan takes the offered hands but does not use them for leverage as he pushes himself to his feet, simply enjoying the weight of them in his palms. Considering he has given in to debauchery twice already, it is easy for him to smooth his thumbs over the ridges of Wei Ying's knuckles, featherlight in his touch in contrast to the fingers that press against his palms. ]
Hanguang-jun was left behind in Cloud Recesses. Lan Zhan is here to serve.
[ Years in, it shouldn't surprise him any longer that Lan Zhan — who's made a fortress of the prison of his regulated body, like a hummingbird sheltering in a gilded cage — yearns for touch indiscriminately, that he chased Wei Wuxian's mouth and his knuckles before, drinks in the twining of their fingers now. Days, years later, will he still be so easily satisfied, part emboldened wolf taking the measure of his prey, part child trotting towards fresh revelation?
Certainly, Wei Wuxian doesn't complain. Their fingers thread together, like roots of an ageing tree, the fit ancestral. Let Lan Zhan be bright-eyed and muscle-soft, as if Wei Wuxian were more willow bark than humble palliative. His courtship suit, which isn't that, would need all the help it can get, if it were. ]
Delinquent.
[ Hanguang-Jun, the thickness of his cheek, skirting his duties. If the line of Wei Wuxian's grin falters, it's to mourn the loss of every teasing opportunity Lan Zhan's countless titles bestowed on the adoring masses. Humming, he tugs up, and they both pretend his newfound strength had no convenient ally in Lan Zhan's assistance. Woe is Wei Wuxian, vanquishing the evils of Lan Zhan's twig-weight, all on his lonesome. Woe and agony, cough, cough.
But then they're two simple, lively fragments of lightning in the dark, facing each other with animal grace. This close, Lan Zhan's gaze cuts new shapes, thunderous. Wei Wuxian retaliates by exploring suicide (again) and hardening the bite of his nails in Lan Zhan's palm, hollowing skin, flirting with blood. Cultivator's healing, sword calluses. In the alcoves of Wei Wuxian's learned kindness lurks natural cruelty. He has said before, Yiling is not a place, but a state of mind. ]
Hi again. [ Heavens help them all, if Lan Zhan decides to weaponise his beauty. It's not fair, snagging the breath out of Wei Wuxian's lungs again, when he only just complained of suffocation. ] Free world. Love whom you want. Hate whom you want. Wear the terribly painful hair fashions you want.
[ He winces, within himself, every time rising moonlight trains on the ridiculously heavy piece of spun silver that has been thrust down on Lan Zhan's head. Is this vanity? And somehow not against the three-slash-ten thousand rules? Zewu-Jun and the grand master seem equally complicit in the habit, so Wei Wuxian has long suspected some part of it must be disciplinary. Ancient torture. Completely on the Gusu Lan mark. ]
Edited 2020-08-23 07:34 (UTC)
losing my shit laughing at Lan head ornaments being torture devices
[ A joke, and he prays to the heavens that Wei Ying hears the softened tone of his voice, strains to see the uptick of his lips that indicates a smile. He is unskilled in teasing, but Wei Ying's playful nature inspires it in him. It is another change in the long list that has overtaken the old Lan Zhan and formed him into a new, more human creature. Since being overcome by the storm that is Wei Ying, an unknowable tempest, Lan Zhan has certainly learned how to float along in new and unconventional ways. First, it was as students when Wei Ying was the only thing close to a friend that Lan Zhan had ever known. Brash, brave, bold. A gust of fresh air rattling the shutters on Cloud Recesses' windows and sending the pages of ancient tomes fluttering. Later, it was as the founder of his own cultivation, new yet old, thrillingly terrifying and perverse. Lan Zhan still wonders if he might have been able to help if he'd sought to understand more than admonish. Maybe, if he had known that tortures Wei Ying was facing, of the lack of a golden core to temper the evil he claimed to control, they could have weathered such self-inflicted evils together.
Wei Ying's fingernails dig into the meat of his palm and draw him back to the present, out of thoughts of a past life and towards this second one. It is not the pain as much as it is the pressure of another's touch. How pathetic, that even a cruel touch from his beloved is one he treasures. Self-flagellation at the hands of another.
He huffs a breath of annoyance. Here he is, baring his heart and soul to Wei Ying with the moon as his witness, and he speaks of hair ornaments. Yes, it is a free world, and Lan Zhan is free to pry one hand from Wei Ying's hold, reach up to the silver that curves through the air above his head, and wrench it free. His hair falls down around his face as he drops the piece of jewelry to lie in the grass, fallen mercury or perhaps, given the shape, a snake ready to strike. If it is distracting Wei Ying, then it is an enemy. Let it be a snake. ]
[ Like a child finished with his toy, or Jin Ling with his latest adornments, Lan Zhan discards his crown with no care for the jewellery smith who forged it, wove it, beat the startle and haze out of its shine. Wei Wuxian... stares, lost, then found, then the littlest bit numbed by the poison of power traversing his limbs. Say the word, and Lan Zhan will enact it. Suggest, and he'll lay down his life's possessions. It trickles through him like congealed oil, the sudden, limpid understanding that Wei Wuxian can also control a man who custodes a pulse.
Releasing Lan Zhan, he thaws to a crouch, hand clumsy but sweet-tempered, following the curves of the crown's filigree, the time-carved etchings. Robes are tailored to the wearer, but jewellery too often goes passed down. He rescues the piece, and hears the troubled gasps of generations of Lans, offering gratitude. Looks up, where Lan Zhan lords over. ]
You have no request. [ Tell Lan Zhan that he may — no, that's a demand still. Syntax and semantics favour Wei Wuxian's narrative. There's no corner of broad heavens offended by a silvered tongue. ] You have blind hope and a terrible idea.
[ And the comfort of never knowing his name truly despised, never living in fear of wayward curses — else, Lan Zhan would not have presumed to scatter his belonging on open ground, when at best peasants or looters might recover and melt it for gain — and at worst, a more knowing hand would use the crown as groundwork for spells.
Never mind. To the satchel it goes, awkwardly fitted until the boiled leathers bulge and mould, the teeth of its edges dragging over Wei Wuxian's hip through the cover. He raises himself, remembering with a murky sigh to pass his fingers through soft side strips of Lan Zhan's fallen hair and lift it like weeds behind his head, where Wei Wuxian can't see his own work, but lifelong practice guides him to bind a half tail. Small mercy for the hair pins that used to cinch the crown. The most infamous delinquent, yes, but not even Wei Wuxian volunteers his hair down completely in public company.
There. Stepping back to squint in the dark, Lan Zhan looks... much.. better already. Yes. If he thinks it often enough, it will turn true. ]
[ He will not lose to Wei Ying's diversions of language or food, though he knows the importance of both. Looking down at him, fingers flitting over the silver before pocketing it, Lan Zhan feels conflicted. The warrior in him doesn't want to surrender this battle, no matter how painful the fight or devastating the final defeat. A softer, more private part of him, the one that is still very much the boy kneeling in front of the Jingshi and waiting for his mother despite the snow freezing in his hair, fears that forward action may ruin him. Retreat means giving up the ground he has gained, but advancing could mean giving up Wei Ying and the ease of his companionship.
Well, not ease. Nothing about Wei Ying is easy other than the understanding he has and exploits in Lan Zhan. It's not a comfort, either, not when his chest tightens at the sight of him, fond and aching and wanting. Wei Ying challenges him in every sense of the word. He challenges Lan Zhan to see the greys in the world and to question the very tenets of his sect. Who decides what is evil? Those who have won wars and instated themselves as the just. Who decides if hope is blind? The one who cannot see a possible future. And what of terrible ideas? Perhaps the one most frightened of their outcomes.
Lan Zhan bows his head to allow Wei Ying close enough to tie his hair. He bites his tongue to contain a sigh of contentment at the skilled fingers combing against his scalp, drawing the hair back, exposing his face though he feels less vulnerable with his hair tied properly. A paradox. He'd been willing to stand disheveled in front of Wei Ying, and he's been reminded of propriety by the most unlikely source. ]
Stop running. [ He lifts his head again but stays close to Wei Ying. His palms skate over the tight sleeves of Wei Ying's robes until he can catch his hands, fingers gentle but firm, shying away from slotting between Wei Ying's but encircling his wrists. They silently plead for the end of Wei Ying's diversions. There had been a kiss, two, and Lan Zhan hadn't been the one to seek out the first. ] Tell me how to live, and I shall. If my hope is blind, remove the blindfold. If the idea is terrible, teach me the proper way to think. But please, Wei Ying, do not leave me alone on this cliff again.
[ Mouth hot and belly febrile, quiet infection running its riotous course in his rushed mind. Around him, the wind barely howls like a learning pup. He feels as if he'll survive the draining, though Lan Zhan cuts and punctures with every edge of agility Wei Wuxian remembers from his swordplay. ]
I'm not. Running. [ Gritted, between tiring teeth. Milled, white noise stacking. ] You're... you've waited sixteen years for the answer to a riddle I've just been asked. Everything tastes of delay to you.
[ Caught again. The trouble of the day, as if, after proposing their encounter, Lan Zhan still can't trust in Wei Wuxian to see it through. Between Lan Zhan's fire and the embers of old anger, the wick of his patience has burned at both ends. Lan Zhan detains him from slipping back. No trouble. He leans in, forehead bridging to meet Lan Zhan's shoulder, angle strained, but the petty ache of it keeping him alert, composed and prone — calculated, forcing words out, quick and vicious. ]
I've woken to two boys-turned-men, a Jin ruling dynasty, to Jiang Ch — Jiang Wanyin's grudges, and Wen Qing and my sister dead for decades. To Wen Ning.... unresolved, and this man, this stranger Mo Xuanyu wanting vengeance. As for my memory... [ He laughs. Has to laugh. A quilt of gifted patches, so thinly frayed that Wei Wuxian startles to know this will be the whole of him, one day, when old men's sicknesses take him in ways the average cultivator won't nurture. ] I've dealt with it. I'm catching up, to all of you. I've made good time.
[ Sorted and settled accounts that preceded him, overhauled a ruling house, gave peace to two wandering cultivators, paid homage at altars, released Wen Ning, reclaimed the boys Jin Ling and Lan Yuan, undid some of his sorcery, reinforced the rest. Bade Baxia farewell, and become an unsung hero to crippled and grotesque prostitutes everywhere.
He has achieved, in the span of months, what emperors set out to do in lifetimes. Some matters linger. Stabbing worse than the prickling of his ill-trained nephew, Jiang Cheng won't meet his gaze across the grounds, let alone take his hand. ]
I will split this ground open and people it with dead flesh, and we can see who runs first, you and I.
[ Lan Zhan's blood runs cold. Sixteen years. So Wei Ying had known of his feelings, even at a time when he had barely understood them himself. He had spent much of his youth refusing to believe he could fall to such folly, that he might be weak to someone as joyously frivolous as Wei Wuxian. Looking down at the face he loves, noting the strain of the clenched jaw and sparking anger in his eyes, Lan Zhan tightens his hold on Wei Ying's hands. He had let go once before at a similar standoff, he will not make the same error twice. The weight of Wei Ying's presence in his life hadn't been felt until it lifted with his absence, and it's the terror of being left with that same jagged void in his heart that compels him to push, take, demand.
As Wei Ying leans against him, Lan Zhan relaxes his grip and straightens his spine, desperate to offer Wei Ying some comfort even as he strips it away in search of an answer if not reciprocation. It's true that he's being unfair by demanding so much of him so soon, but if Wei Ying had known, surely he would have guessed this time would come. He may have underestimated Lan Zhan's determination for it is newly born with the rebirth of his fated one. A part of him died with Wei Wuxian, the delicate bird raised in a cage and fearing freedom. Then, with the sacrifice of Mo Xuanyu, a tiger had been born in Lan Zhan's heart, pacing in its prison, searching for the opportunity to escape and claim its prey. ]
You do not have to face this new world alone.
[ Wei Ying doesn't have to do anything alone, and yet he so often tries to take the weight of the world on his narrow shoulders. Lan Zhan has long wondered why—ill-fated heroism, fear for his loved ones, a death wish. Whatever the cause, Lan Zhan wishes he were allowed to be the cure.
Sighing, a soft release of air through his nose, he releases Wei Ying's hands. But it's not to move away, not to allow any measure of distance between them. His arms wrap around Wei Ying, one across his waist and another enveloping his shoulders. Embracing him, entwining them, binding him to Wei Ying. ]
[ He hisses out, but the heat's permeated tissue and blood already, made its home inside Wei Wuxian, leaving the splinters of his voice to smoothen out, his mind to chill. Think, now, clearly. Think (don't pity him). Think, and don't growl when Lan Zhan's arms constrict him tighter than a binding charm, the taut lines of Wei Wuxian's shoulders lifting, concave and full and stubborn in rise. Cats wouldn't be gripped close, not for fear of claws.
He thinks, for a treacherous moment, to try his fangs on Lan Zhan's throat til he's raw. Doesn't, because gentlemen of the cultivation world don't cannibalise their intended, and there's a strange comfort in sulkily agreeing to flatten his ear to Lan Zhan's chest and time his breathing against the southbound drum of his heartbeat. ]
You can have me. There's not much meat to me, but I'll put it back on the bone. [ Poor joke from the scion of a clan of vegetarians. And what did he say? Don't deflect. ] That's your plea answer.
[ And maybe there's a rot sickness inside him, same as festers in the cadavers he wakes last, the ones who answer Chenqing's thrall with something like rancour — less for those who slighted them in the living world, than for the necromancer who subjugates them even now, unerringly. Hollowed out, so cracked and fragile that the lightest tap of Lan Zhan's arms on his back will dent him, and then the liquid will spill out, the simmered brew of his hoarse, base bite. Lan Zhan, who asks of him now. Who wants him now. Who thinks himself entitled.
Who deserves a few seconds of solace, before the truth balances hope out. ]
You can have me, but you can't keep me. [ A gift, now and then, meetings of vicious mouths and squabble, and revising Wei Wuxian's talismans — of which he has a fair collection, each one in direr straits and need of alteration than the one before it. His patience grinds down; he stirs, pulling back. ] That's what I can offer. Think it over during dinner.
[ That other diversion which at least serves the critical point of biding Lan Zhan's time, this once. They're romantics in sect Lan. Zewu-Jun all but carved the conclusion on stone slab, beside three other thousand rules, for Wei Wuxian's literary pleasure. They are not of a kind to take lovers to bed one evening, then abandon them merrily at first light of dawns. They don't respond to cutoffs and uncertainty. ]
What use is my reputation if I cannot be arrogant when it matters?
[ Wei Ying is the string of a guqin in his arms, pulled taught, a bolt of lightning hot against his chest. There is still so much of Yiling's venom in him, poisoning him into a feral animal ready to strike even at an ally. Lan Zhan would let him. Just as Wei Ying had once wished for Bichen to be the one to strike him down, so would the illustrious Hanguang-jun beg Master Wei to be the one to finish him. If he cannot win his love, if he cannot tempt his fate, let him die at its hands.
His heart sings with the answer, but the final note of the chord hovers in the air as is expecting a twist, a turn. Wei Ying does not sound happy, and so Lan Zhan hesitates. Meat on the bone. Another joke, a sign that this isn't as serious to Wei Ying as it is to Lan Zhan. This he had anticipated, and though he has his answer, some of the wind escapes his wings and brings him back down to the ground. He should have asked if Wei Ying could ever return his feelings, that perhaps the song in his heart could become a duet. Lan Zhan, for all his knowledge of books and textbook-perfect speech, has failed to find the right words when it matters most. ]
I do not wish to keep you. [ He thinks of his father's masquerade at love, a child's definition that possession could earn him happiness. His mother, sequestered to the Jingshi, an object on a shelf, a trophy of ill-bred love. Lan Zhan doesn't want that for Wei Ying. He wants a companion, a partner, a willing lover. What use is a bond if the one bound spends all of their energy and focus on gnawing at the ties, wrists bloodied in a bid for freedom? ] I do not need time to consider it. I want you willing. Happy. Free.
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He shouldn't cater to Wei Ying's every whim, according to his uncle and plenty of other elders in their sect. Lan Zhan silently disagrees and continues to support Wei Ying to live the happiest, fullest life possible. Even if that means him leaving Lan Zhan behind in Cloud Recesses. Even if his vision of a peaceful existence is far from peaceful in Lan Zhan's eyes. Wei Ying is a warrior, despite how he laments the loss of Suibian. He battles expectations with every step he takes towards justice, and while sometimes that road has taken him through self-destructive territories, Wei Ying is nothing if not stubbornly optimistic. His words are his shield, music his weapon, and may the heavens pity anyone who stands in his way.
Reclined as he is on the ground, Lan Zhan is spared the embarrassment of reaching to brush the hair from his eyes simply because he isn't within reach. Such a fearsome man contained behind such a beautiful face, strength bottled in a slender frame. ]
You fear no man.
[ Least of all Lan Zhan, if his constant teasing means anything. If the way he pushes and prods, searching for attention and then leaving when it is awarded to him, is an indication of fear, then it is one that Lan Zhan neither understands nor accepts. Rabbits may scatter from an unfamiliar threat, but even a solemn, solitary bear may befriend them with time.
Not that Lan Zhan imagines himself a bear. ]
What help do you need, Wei Ying?
[ He asks as he crosses his legs beneath him and folds to the ground, shaking out his sleeves to either side so they flow over his knees. Seated, there's even less distance between him and Wei Ying, and he rests the hand closest to him with the palm raised. No word of reminder, but Wei Ying had requested to hold his hand, after all. ]
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Does not fear this: Lan Zhan, easing like a spring bloom beside him, so preciously careful to avoid disturbance beneath and around him. A fixture that breathed alive, like an extension of Wei Wuxian's person, only extensively, classically ornamental.
Not a sword too, for all of Lan Zhan's edges; wire, at the worst of him. Poison, lead and weigh t in stream.
Wei Wuxian, drunk-mad from sips of fragrant sandalwood, knocks their shoulders together in a swayed tilt. Hello.
Then, fitfully, he sits his ring finger in Lan Zhan's palm, waving it in rapid, hovered circles that barely touch skin and tickle through intimation. ]
Don't worry. I think I've found my own way to defeat you.
[ No man's composure can survive this onslaught unfractured. Wei Wuxian doesn't pride himself in underhanded hostilities, but even the mightiest general would struggle to fault his strategy. Brilliance, this. Shining.
He grins up, light of the dawning sun stolen to spell a ribbon of relief on his mouth. He can do this: suffer new intimacy, to crown his old manner. Dress in new expectations, but remain (preserve) himself. ]
Wish me luck?
[ Like the endless parade of Yunmeng residents who cheered the two sons of the sect, bound for their Sunshot war. Who lived to welcome the return of one. ]
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A smile tugs at the corner of Lan Zhan's lips. If only Wei Ying knew that he had defeated Lan Zhan long ago in another life. He had chipped at the walls around Lan Zhan's heart, defenses built up with decorum and duty. Wei Ying's boundless cheerfulness, playfulness, stubbornness had caused cracks in those walls; his death had obliterated them. That finger, teasing like its owner, sparks warmth in the tips of Lan Zhan's ears. Such a small touch is a fierce weapon in the battle which Wei Ying has already won. ]
What is Wei Ying's strategy?
[ Lan Zhan rotates his upper body towards Wei Ying and catches the way the sun reflects on the angles of his face, shaping him for Lan Zhan's hungry eyes to trace. Wei Ying has always had his own light, radiant, even when the shadows of Yiling clustered to shroud him in darkness. Wei Ying is so much like the sun, and Lan Zhan the humble moon chasing him through the sky, hoping to reflect a little of that light for himself. ]
Good luck, Wei Ying. You hardly need it.
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The finger rounds and twirls and tickles, rhythm and pressure irregular, like playing the flows of current through a flute's holes, to define the sound. And his second weapon, revealed between starved wolf grins, catching Lan Zhan's eye while he unleashes the full force of his... nattering: ]
I'm hungry. Aren't you hungry? Famished.
[ Hardly, stomach a storm, roiling as if he were on his maiden voyage, absent the sea legs he grew in Yunmeng. ]
We should have eaten before. Mhmmmmm. Imagine now, soup. [ ...well. Maybe some of the interest isn't purely performative. ] Broth. No! Not the thickened one. Clear. Nice and smooth and ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Lan Zhan, do you think they trust ginger here?
[ So close to Cloud Recesses, only a day's walk away? The locals must share in the ascetic habits of their benevolent masters, even in the villages. No, dinner is cursed, no matter how keenly Wei Wuxian wishes it differently. ]
They use it in the north, don't they? In Qinghe. To bring out the richness of bone marrow. Mmmmmmmmmmm, fresh, ground ginger, and some goji here and there, just a few beads. To pop in your mouth? Don't you like that? Pop-pop.
[ He smacks his lips together, lazy and easy, chatter like white noise that starts, finally, to deafen even him. Carefully, his ring finger retires, while his middle one takes up post to tickle twirls in Lan Zhan's palm in earnest.
His voice sheds an octave, honeyed: ]
...you'll yield, you know you will. It's impossible not to. Miiiiiight as well get it done with early. Laugh. Come on. Laugh.
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No, the only meal he needs is Wei Ying. To drink in the sound of his melodic rambling, to feast on his explosive and bewitching company, to savor the feather-light touches of his fingertip on the palm of his hand. The fingertip which causes his hand to twitch once as if ready to snap shut and ensnare its attacker. Lan Zhan is not ticklish, least of all on his sword-callused hands. ]
Ginger has many medicinal qualities. [ Meaning: it isn't unheard of to include in food for the sick, though not often indulged in by the people of his region.
At the heavier touch to his palm, Lan Zhan inhales. To others, it would be observed as little more than a sniff, a slight intake of air only slightly louder than a normal inhale; for Lan Zhan, it is a gasp compared to his normally even, silent breathing. His lips part on the exhale when Wei Ying continues in such a tone, making Lan Zhan's bones and blood sing with memories of Wei Ying on an expansive roof, master of his own unique cultivation, danger in the eyes that glittered the moonlight as his twisted melody filled the air.
It is a memory that terrifies Lan Zhan, seeker of peace, and excites Hanguang-jun, Head Cultivator. ]
There is nothing to laugh at. [ Lowering his chin, eyes on their hands, he finally folds his fingers up, a flower closing its petals against the nightly chill, and holds Wei Ying's hand steady. ] I have already yielded.
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Lan Zhan, you know perfectly well what I mean. But, admit it, you just don't tickle eno —
[ ...Wei Wuxian's fingers are bound, shamefully captured, the leathered sheath of Lan Zhan's sword calluses armouring knuckles and joints. Yielding, Lan Zhan says, but triumphant. Aghast, Wei Wuxian stares down, clumsy for the light tug he gives to play-rescue his fingers, never quite applying himself to break the clasp. This... was not the plan here.
( Discussed. Agreed. Journeyed for. Done. But at the time of Wei Wuxian's choosing, and this was not that stuttered heartbeat.) ]
...well, well. Attacking while your envoy's speaking, hmmm? What foul play. I hope this isn't the battle honour the mighty Hanguang-Jun is teaching our young and impressionable disciples.
[ As if they ever respected ethics at any point of the Sunshot campaign. As if Wei Wuxian didn't hunt down Wen Chao like a plague-addled dog. As if corpses didn't rise and fall, exhumed by their own rancour, seduced to join cause against Qishan Wen because Wei Wuxian whispered mad folly against the rot of muscle that crowned their jaw, their cheek, that gateway of dissent, the waiting ear.
Days gone. Past irrelevant. His fingers, now. He stares at them, paternally disappointed: ]
Look what you've gotten yourselves into. [ Then, lighter, to voice his captured soldiers: ] Mercy, mercy.
[ Laughter leaves him with another strike of low evening breeze, with chains of sage and poppy stalks, bending and bowing to survive in servitude to the wind. Cowards. And Wei Ying, known Wuxian, known the Yiling patriarch, who has never been cravenly. Who looks up, suddenly alert, in the way of prey catching the scent of their predators.
He looks at his hand, held. At Lan Zhan, sixteen years at wait for it. At the hill around them, deadened and still. ]
All right. Well. Don't tell these fools, but I'm quite fond of them. They don't deserve it, but I'll pay ransom, just this once. Agreed?
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For example, he knows that Wei Ying is joking about honor and the quality of his teachings. He does not, however, know why it is considered foul play to hold the hand of his fated person, the one who asked him to hold his hand in the first place. Perhaps it is because his leporine friend requires a slow, steady approach or he is likely to bolt. Lan Zhan will continue to practice patience, to wait for the rabbit to willingly walk into his waiting palm.
He huffs a soft breath of laughter when Wei Ying addresses his own fingers and then voices their reply. They are worthy hostages, beautiful and skilled and so very necessary for the defense of their master. Yet Lan Zhan holds them gently, folded among his own tiny soldiers, perhaps more of a meeting of allies rather than a clash of opposing armies. Or, if Wei Ying is the envoy sent to bargain for their freedom, maybe the little fiends have learned some sympathy for their captor.
Ridiculous. They are fingers and nothing more, though they are still precious fingers to Lan Zhan.
Humming, he looks from their joined hands up at Wei Ying, meeting his eyes fully for the first time since he'd arrived. His head tilts to one side, curiously offering an ear as his hair slides across his shoulders. ] Ransom. What is the price? [ It's backward, he knows. The captor should name the ransom, yet he can't help wondering what it is that Wei Ying is guiding him towards. He has learned, from experience, that such ploys are often to bring about an effect that Wei Ying wished for in the first place. If manipulating Lan Zhan into giving him something will please him, then Lan Zhan is a happy pawn. ]
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And Wei Wuxian thinks, it's ended, it's done, no more ills can be righted, or deaths avenged, or stones turned, or secrets unravelled, they've exhausted themselves among spatters of blood, and now they've come together again, like dark and nameless somethings, starved, stomachs concave.
Lan Zhan holds his hand. Anchoring, Wei Wuxian grasps back, and closes the yawning gap between them, two worlds colliding in the predictable dissonance of an untrained kiss — mouths too harsh, when Wei Wuxian invades without positioning, chins clashing, breath stirred and knocked out. No force or skill, only the stubborn heat of Wei Wuxian's mouth, carving out a path on the pursed line of Lan Zhan's lips, his jaw in clumsy derailment, like drunken calligraphy, blunt and brittle on hard wood, Wei Wuxian lives, Wei Wuxian was here.
Pressure builds in his ears like blood to a drum's beat, cloying and thickened. The smell of coming storm and livened greenery, electricity granular between his teeth. He pulls back, lashed by his own impertinence, sharp-elbowed, too long-limbed, unwieldy. The strings that stich-bound him in place come undone, and his knees fall, back slovenly, his hand bloodless in Lan Zhan's.
He sits back, struck and dazed, as if he were thralled to action, and now the spirit's left him. Two wars won, two lives lived, two leaders of the cultivation world unseated — and this, his first tryst.
For shame. ]
Paid.
[ Unasked, unchartered, perhaps unwelcome. But delivered, and Wei Wuxian's gain made. ]
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He has no concept of whether the kiss is a good one, only that he wishes to drink Wei Ying in like a man dying of thirst, crawling through a vast yellow desert on his knees in search of an oasis. Their noses bump before a tilt of the head allows Wei Ying closer, and a true, open-mouthed gasp that escapes Lan Zhan leads to their teeth knocking together as well. He does not know what to do, only knows that he's eager to taste the claim that Wei Ying has branded onto his lips. When Wei Ying retreats, Lan Zhan quickly releases his fingers, no longer held hostage, and reaches up to grab the back of his elbow instead. He must keep him close, keep them together, keep Wei Ying from running away.
No more running, for either of them.
Chest moving visibly to regain the breath that Wei Ying had stolen from him, Lan Zhan stares at him with open amazement and, somehow still after so long, confusion. He snaps out of this and draws him back in, using enough force to bring Wei Ying within kissing distance. Lan Zhan initiates this second kiss, hungrier and deeper, his tongue seeking entry. He must taste, must lay his own claim, must fight not to take things further despite the shameful thoughts he's had for so long. His hands wander despite his efforts not to push, not to startle the skittish rabbit, not to ruin what he has wanted, needed, for so long. He smooths his palm over the jut of Wei Ying's hip so his fingers may splay against the small of his back and urge him closer, amending the angle of the kiss though their knees crash into each other as he pivots, manipulates Wei Ying's posture, seeks the light of Wei Ying like an eager sunflower.
When he withdraws his lips, but not his hands, he looks frightened by his own actions and needs. He leans forward slightly, enough to press his forehead to Wei Ying's with the cool ribbon of the Lan headband held captive between their heated skin. ]
I have my own ransom to pay.
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He can't breathe. They slot better together this time, Lan Zhan shamelessly benefitting from every academic advantage of observing Wei Wuxian's fumbled overture, and refining it for round two. There's a moment, touch on his back burned and ebullient like the Wen brand, when he thinks, That's new. Points to Lan Zhan for innovation. Except Wei Wuxian's mouth carries the tired swell of recent friction, and he teethes at Lan Zhan's tongue, teasing, grin a gentle bridge affixing them between 'friendly' and 'feral', because, really. Who does the second master Lan think he is, and who gave him the right to invasion?
Not Wei Wuxian, maneuvered, ill-fitting, an accessory no better than Lan Zhan's contrived hair needles and headpieces — stranded listlessly at Lan Zhan's side, then before him, then against him. Stabbing cold, the proud metal of the Lan headband eats into his forehead, reminding one (both) of them that there is more at stake here than two of the shepherds might have, playing at first love. Hello.
There's enough of the mouse in him, body submitting to squeeze itself in and out of the cage of tight spaces. He doesn't fight Lan Zhan's grip, because restraints only tighten with resistance. Instead, he leans into it, taking advantage of the nudge to move along, to take himself those few steps farther, crawling ungainly on irritated knees to settle again, back to Lan Zhan's back, leaning with far too much of his weight, in a familiar pose. Pause. Review. Calculate. Adjust. Carry on.
His voice sounds scratchy to his ear, disused like the wheeze of a corpse's first lung-tearing breath after the waking. ]
...do you want to see my new river course talisman?
[ Through the power invested in Wei Wuxian, they're not talking about this. And it is a fine talisman, however untried. ]
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Wei Ying.
[ Lan Zhan follows him, unwilling to let him out of his sight even if he can feel the weight of his presence against his body. He must look like a fool shifting around in the grass, staining his robes green where they press beneath his knees. Words escape him, because how can he convey feelings he doesn't quite grasp? The ache in his chest when Wei Ying is away, the warmth he feels at night seeing him in the Jingshi, the soaring joy of playing their duet for him or, even more blissful, together? Only one word comes to mind, and it escapes him without permission, his voice as raw with emotion as it is with the need for another kiss, another touch, anything Wei Ying will bless him with. ]
Please.
[ It sounds pathetic, weak, but here is the one person who has earned Lan Zhan's trust to see him in such a vulnerable state. For what he's pleading, he cannot say. All he knows is that he needs more of Wei Ying, today and every day after. Perhaps it's this deep hunger that pushes him to say more, or perhaps he is still drunk on Wei Ying's first stumbling kiss. ]
Tell me that I may love you.
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Please. Unseen, he mouths it mutely at the horizon, as if echoing Lan Zhan will lend Wei Wuxian half of his burden. Absently, he fishes through his travel satchel, knowing the folded scrap by feel, confident enough to slip it back and rest it on Lan Zhan's knuckles with a tap. Half-frayed, the parchment paper shows Wei Wuxian's talisman draft to revert a river's flow, for villagers who can't dam it fast enough to prevent floods — and his recent itinerary, when the back of the strip reveals itself to be a ticket for a play, two months ago, in Lanling. ]
I'm telling you to bask in my brilliance. And fix my start and ending arrays.
[ A cheap diversion, if practical. He's not too proud to recognise elegant sorcery would change the course of the river so it sprouts from where the talisman's been cast, rather than letting the stream still burst from its original fount, and only change direction when it meets the array. Too often, this is the trouble of his spell work: once the talisman's achieved its lofty goal, challenge completed, he's too bored to refine it.
...this is where the likes of sect Lan, scrupulous to a religious fault, come in handy.
But then, Lan Zhan's never been a willing instrument, and Wei Wuxian thinks it'll be storm and rain and both of them drowning, before Lan Zhan submits without a cause again. Wei Wuxian's thoughts ache his temples like fingertips drumming over a bruise. He feels the pull of his mouth, the painful contortions to peel away theatrical nonchalance.
Honesty. All right. All right. ]
I need a moment. Just one? [ A finger rises up; a considering frown later, its sheepish sibling. ] Two. To breathe. [ His turn, now. ] Please.
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He has learned patience, but even that is beginning to fray now that he is so close to something he never imagined having but will never let go of once it is his. Lan Zhan would never commit the sins of his father, wouldn't dream of such twisted love even in his darkest of nightmares. He would treasure Wei Ying, share the Jingshi with him rather than imprison him in it. Promise him the freedom to leave with the trust, hope, that he would return.
The paper, upon inspection, makes him relax somewhat. The talisman has all the hallmarks of a Wei Wuxian original, from the fact that it's drawn on the back of a play ticket to the fact that it lacks the diligence to live up to what Lan Zhan knows is Wei Ying's full potential as a cultivator. He is brilliant, but his attention flits between ideas the way his feet wander between villages. So much about Wei Ying is nomadic, and here Lan Zhan sits, a pillar of Cloud Recesses, unmoving except for duty and love.
The talisman lays in his palm, temporarily abandoned for more pressing matters. Wei Ying holds up a finger, two, and Lan Zhan remembers to breathe. He reaches for him, fingers wrapping loosely around his wrist, and draws his hand close enough to kiss the tips of those two fingers. ]
You may have three, and I will amend your talisman.
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He's given three moments, so he takes ten. Then, another few heartbeats. Then, cheating when Lan Zhan doesn't call out the indulgence, another set, until his back feels pleasantly moulded to answer the negative spaces of Lan Zhan's spine.
He thinks, once the sky dilutes and expels the last coppers of sunset, he's pushed his luck as far as it will bend. The stars are all too literally rising in uproar against his cowardice. It's all very well to loiter, until astral bodies decide to embarrass you. After a certain point, action can't be helped.
Stiffness oils his joints by the time he's shifting again, the defensive draw of his knees up now rewarding him with a flinch. He moves, anyway, half crouching, half crawling, and tsk, there a pebble bites into his knees — until he sits before Lan Zhan again, plopping down to kneel in the familiar slouch of every last one of his repentance sessions, back when madame Yu still guided his punishments. A man with experience.
He cheats, inevitably, stealing a glance of Lan Zhan's work on his talisman, before remembering the spark that sets his smile alight: ]
Hi. [ Hello. Greetings. How do you do. ] You look well. I'm glad to see you. You'd better tell me the precious fruit of my youthful turnip passions is well too.
[ Will he ever tire of embarrassing his darling baby Yuan under the guise of the first sweet nothing that comes to his tongue? Most likely not. He is owed, for sixteen years of absence — which he may well have caused, but surely no one who was present can bring himself to prove it.
History chronicles have done a fine job of recording everyone but Wei Wuxian's part in his physical downfall. He is credited, generously, with full authorship of his moral corruption. ]
That's how this should have started.
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The sun sets over the horizon, stealing the warmth of the day and leaving behind the faint chill of night, a breeze that carries with it the scent of all the night-blooming flowers that begin to wake. Once the sky is dark enough, he tilts his head back to gaze up at the stars. Connecting the dots between familiar constellations occupies his mind for a while, but there is an ever-present awareness of Wei Ying behind him, slouched against his rigid back, stealing more time and attempting to wear on Lan Zhan's patience.
Shameless. Foolish. Lan Zhan has proved how long he can wait for Wei Ying, that he has waited longer for the promise of far less.
He feels him moving before he appears in his periphery, black robes blending in with the darkness around them. Lan Zhan feels incredibly seen, not just because of his stark white robes, but the fact that he had bared his heart and Wei Ying had asked for the time to turn it over in his hands, inspecting the organ and searching for a solution.
The words are startling without context, and for a moment, Lan Zhan blinks in silence as he searches for understanding. Wei Ying provides it, drawing out a map of the conversation he wishes to have had. Lan Zhan, ever indulgent, smiles and bows his head. ]
Hello, Wei Ying. I am glad to see you, too, and in good health. Sizhui is well and wishes for me to convey his desire to see you in Cloud Recesses soon.
[ It isn't a lie. Perhaps the words had not left Sizhui's own lips when wishing Lan Zhan safe travels, but the sentiment was in his posture and his eyes. Lan Zhan knows that A-Yuan misses Wei Ying as much as Lan Zhan does when he leaves, that he has so many questions for the first father he had known who buried him in a garden and defended him with his life. ]
What is the next point of conversation now that we have exchanged greetings?
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[ This, at least, they'll both agree on: swearing fealty before elders, binding in caves, delivering last stands in battle, raising up radish sons. Then, bidding each other a good day. It seems entirely reasonable against the erratic pattern of their past life. What's yet another baffling turn of unfortunate events? ]
Dinner? You don't look hungry. [ By his sect's standards, Lan Zhan looks obscene, silks tarnished with taint of weed, ink teasing his fingertips, where he was forced to correct Wei Wuxian's talisman without notice. It suits him, in the way a floor doesn't look lived and warm until heels have drafted the first scratches. ] Eat anyway. Maybe we'll coax some wine in you, too.
[ An unlikely proposition, if only because Lan Zhan's tolerance for entertainment may have broadened with time, but still seems cursed to walk the familiar grounds of poetry, exotic philosophy and, at its most audacious, a clandestine dash of pepper and anise. Of that, and the curious, weighted pace of Lan Zhan's breathing at night, observed during their bound travel to rescue and restitch the tatters of the Yiling Patriarch's reputation, Wei Wuxian plans to speak not a word.
They have a night ahead of them to deflect the discomforts of revisiting the known and the alien and the accomplice conclusion of what those blurred boundaries entail.
Locked in its practice smile, Wei Wuxian's face feels as tight as a sailor's knot. He lifts himself, immune to the parting claw marks of his body's tension, and holds both arms out, bravely volunteering his grip against the Lan arm strength, to help raise up the jade-pale princess as well. ]
Hanguang-Jun, your humble servant begs an audience.
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Lan Zhan considers his stomach, assesses its emptiness, and nods. He doesn't feel the hunger, but he knows that his energy will deplete if he doesn't take food sometime soon. He can subsist on air and water alone if necessary, meditate through the stabs of hunger in his gut, fight well beyond the limitations of ordinary men. That is during war, though. Now, in a quiet night on the side of a simple dirt road, he has no reason to reject the offer of a meal, least of all with the one he most wishes to share one with. ] I will eat, but no wine.
[ It's not the fierce rules of his sect, nor personal preference, that causes him to snub the alcohol tonight. He's experienced first-hand the effects of it on his mind, the way it clouds his senses and lifts the shackles of his inhibitions in a dangerous combination that leaves him vulnerable and unable to recall his trespasses when he regains the mind to apologize for them. No, tonight's conversation is too important, and while he won't begrudge Wei Ying his vice, he won't partake in it. After all, he has other vices to attend to tonight.
His face tilts to watch Wei Ying as he rises, once again a helpless flower searching for more of the sun's light. He tries not to take offense in that smile, the kind that Wei Ying wears like armor against the world. Instead, Lan Zhan takes the offered hands but does not use them for leverage as he pushes himself to his feet, simply enjoying the weight of them in his palms. Considering he has given in to debauchery twice already, it is easy for him to smooth his thumbs over the ridges of Wei Ying's knuckles, featherlight in his touch in contrast to the fingers that press against his palms. ]
Hanguang-jun was left behind in Cloud Recesses. Lan Zhan is here to serve.
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Certainly, Wei Wuxian doesn't complain. Their fingers thread together, like roots of an ageing tree, the fit ancestral. Let Lan Zhan be bright-eyed and muscle-soft, as if Wei Wuxian were more willow bark than humble palliative. His courtship suit, which isn't that, would need all the help it can get, if it were. ]
Delinquent.
[ Hanguang-Jun, the thickness of his cheek, skirting his duties. If the line of Wei Wuxian's grin falters, it's to mourn the loss of every teasing opportunity Lan Zhan's countless titles bestowed on the adoring masses. Humming, he tugs up, and they both pretend his newfound strength had no convenient ally in Lan Zhan's assistance. Woe is Wei Wuxian, vanquishing the evils of Lan Zhan's twig-weight, all on his lonesome. Woe and agony, cough, cough.
But then they're two simple, lively fragments of lightning in the dark, facing each other with animal grace. This close, Lan Zhan's gaze cuts new shapes, thunderous. Wei Wuxian retaliates by exploring suicide (again) and hardening the bite of his nails in Lan Zhan's palm, hollowing skin, flirting with blood. Cultivator's healing, sword calluses. In the alcoves of Wei Wuxian's learned kindness lurks natural cruelty. He has said before, Yiling is not a place, but a state of mind. ]
Hi again. [ Heavens help them all, if Lan Zhan decides to weaponise his beauty. It's not fair, snagging the breath out of Wei Wuxian's lungs again, when he only just complained of suffocation. ] Free world. Love whom you want. Hate whom you want. Wear the terribly painful hair fashions you want.
[ He winces, within himself, every time rising moonlight trains on the ridiculously heavy piece of spun silver that has been thrust down on Lan Zhan's head. Is this vanity? And somehow not against the three-slash-ten thousand rules? Zewu-Jun and the grand master seem equally complicit in the habit, so Wei Wuxian has long suspected some part of it must be disciplinary. Ancient torture. Completely on the Gusu Lan mark. ]
losing my shit laughing at Lan head ornaments being torture devices
[ A joke, and he prays to the heavens that Wei Ying hears the softened tone of his voice, strains to see the uptick of his lips that indicates a smile. He is unskilled in teasing, but Wei Ying's playful nature inspires it in him. It is another change in the long list that has overtaken the old Lan Zhan and formed him into a new, more human creature. Since being overcome by the storm that is Wei Ying, an unknowable tempest, Lan Zhan has certainly learned how to float along in new and unconventional ways. First, it was as students when Wei Ying was the only thing close to a friend that Lan Zhan had ever known. Brash, brave, bold. A gust of fresh air rattling the shutters on Cloud Recesses' windows and sending the pages of ancient tomes fluttering. Later, it was as the founder of his own cultivation, new yet old, thrillingly terrifying and perverse. Lan Zhan still wonders if he might have been able to help if he'd sought to understand more than admonish. Maybe, if he had known that tortures Wei Ying was facing, of the lack of a golden core to temper the evil he claimed to control, they could have weathered such self-inflicted evils together.
Wei Ying's fingernails dig into the meat of his palm and draw him back to the present, out of thoughts of a past life and towards this second one. It is not the pain as much as it is the pressure of another's touch. How pathetic, that even a cruel touch from his beloved is one he treasures. Self-flagellation at the hands of another.
He huffs a breath of annoyance. Here he is, baring his heart and soul to Wei Ying with the moon as his witness, and he speaks of hair ornaments. Yes, it is a free world, and Lan Zhan is free to pry one hand from Wei Ying's hold, reach up to the silver that curves through the air above his head, and wrench it free. His hair falls down around his face as he drops the piece of jewelry to lie in the grass, fallen mercury or perhaps, given the shape, a snake ready to strike. If it is distracting Wei Ying, then it is an enemy. Let it be a snake. ]
You know that was not my request.
my work here is done
Releasing Lan Zhan, he thaws to a crouch, hand clumsy but sweet-tempered, following the curves of the crown's filigree, the time-carved etchings. Robes are tailored to the wearer, but jewellery too often goes passed down. He rescues the piece, and hears the troubled gasps of generations of Lans, offering gratitude. Looks up, where Lan Zhan lords over. ]
You have no request. [ Tell Lan Zhan that he may — no, that's a demand still. Syntax and semantics favour Wei Wuxian's narrative. There's no corner of broad heavens offended by a silvered tongue. ] You have blind hope and a terrible idea.
[ And the comfort of never knowing his name truly despised, never living in fear of wayward curses — else, Lan Zhan would not have presumed to scatter his belonging on open ground, when at best peasants or looters might recover and melt it for gain — and at worst, a more knowing hand would use the crown as groundwork for spells.
Never mind. To the satchel it goes, awkwardly fitted until the boiled leathers bulge and mould, the teeth of its edges dragging over Wei Wuxian's hip through the cover. He raises himself, remembering with a murky sigh to pass his fingers through soft side strips of Lan Zhan's fallen hair and lift it like weeds behind his head, where Wei Wuxian can't see his own work, but lifelong practice guides him to bind a half tail. Small mercy for the hair pins that used to cinch the crown. The most infamous delinquent, yes, but not even Wei Wuxian volunteers his hair down completely in public company.
There. Stepping back to squint in the dark, Lan Zhan looks... much.. better already. Yes. If he thinks it often enough, it will turn true. ]
Well... that is a look on the young master.
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[ He will not lose to Wei Ying's diversions of language or food, though he knows the importance of both. Looking down at him, fingers flitting over the silver before pocketing it, Lan Zhan feels conflicted. The warrior in him doesn't want to surrender this battle, no matter how painful the fight or devastating the final defeat. A softer, more private part of him, the one that is still very much the boy kneeling in front of the Jingshi and waiting for his mother despite the snow freezing in his hair, fears that forward action may ruin him. Retreat means giving up the ground he has gained, but advancing could mean giving up Wei Ying and the ease of his companionship.
Well, not ease. Nothing about Wei Ying is easy other than the understanding he has and exploits in Lan Zhan. It's not a comfort, either, not when his chest tightens at the sight of him, fond and aching and wanting. Wei Ying challenges him in every sense of the word. He challenges Lan Zhan to see the greys in the world and to question the very tenets of his sect. Who decides what is evil? Those who have won wars and instated themselves as the just. Who decides if hope is blind? The one who cannot see a possible future. And what of terrible ideas? Perhaps the one most frightened of their outcomes.
Lan Zhan bows his head to allow Wei Ying close enough to tie his hair. He bites his tongue to contain a sigh of contentment at the skilled fingers combing against his scalp, drawing the hair back, exposing his face though he feels less vulnerable with his hair tied properly. A paradox. He'd been willing to stand disheveled in front of Wei Ying, and he's been reminded of propriety by the most unlikely source. ]
Stop running. [ He lifts his head again but stays close to Wei Ying. His palms skate over the tight sleeves of Wei Ying's robes until he can catch his hands, fingers gentle but firm, shying away from slotting between Wei Ying's but encircling his wrists. They silently plead for the end of Wei Ying's diversions. There had been a kiss, two, and Lan Zhan hadn't been the one to seek out the first. ] Tell me how to live, and I shall. If my hope is blind, remove the blindfold. If the idea is terrible, teach me the proper way to think. But please, Wei Ying, do not leave me alone on this cliff again.
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I'm not. Running. [ Gritted, between tiring teeth. Milled, white noise stacking. ] You're... you've waited sixteen years for the answer to a riddle I've just been asked. Everything tastes of delay to you.
[ Caught again. The trouble of the day, as if, after proposing their encounter, Lan Zhan still can't trust in Wei Wuxian to see it through. Between Lan Zhan's fire and the embers of old anger, the wick of his patience has burned at both ends. Lan Zhan detains him from slipping back. No trouble. He leans in, forehead bridging to meet Lan Zhan's shoulder, angle strained, but the petty ache of it keeping him alert, composed and prone — calculated, forcing words out, quick and vicious. ]
I've woken to two boys-turned-men, a Jin ruling dynasty, to Jiang Ch — Jiang Wanyin's grudges, and Wen Qing and my sister dead for decades. To Wen Ning.... unresolved, and this man, this stranger Mo Xuanyu wanting vengeance. As for my memory... [ He laughs. Has to laugh. A quilt of gifted patches, so thinly frayed that Wei Wuxian startles to know this will be the whole of him, one day, when old men's sicknesses take him in ways the average cultivator won't nurture. ] I've dealt with it. I'm catching up, to all of you. I've made good time.
[ Sorted and settled accounts that preceded him, overhauled a ruling house, gave peace to two wandering cultivators, paid homage at altars, released Wen Ning, reclaimed the boys Jin Ling and Lan Yuan, undid some of his sorcery, reinforced the rest. Bade Baxia farewell, and become an unsung hero to crippled and grotesque prostitutes everywhere.
He has achieved, in the span of months, what emperors set out to do in lifetimes. Some matters linger. Stabbing worse than the prickling of his ill-trained nephew, Jiang Cheng won't meet his gaze across the grounds, let alone take his hand. ]
I will split this ground open and people it with dead flesh, and we can see who runs first, you and I.
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As Wei Ying leans against him, Lan Zhan relaxes his grip and straightens his spine, desperate to offer Wei Ying some comfort even as he strips it away in search of an answer if not reciprocation. It's true that he's being unfair by demanding so much of him so soon, but if Wei Ying had known, surely he would have guessed this time would come. He may have underestimated Lan Zhan's determination for it is newly born with the rebirth of his fated one. A part of him died with Wei Wuxian, the delicate bird raised in a cage and fearing freedom. Then, with the sacrifice of Mo Xuanyu, a tiger had been born in Lan Zhan's heart, pacing in its prison, searching for the opportunity to escape and claim its prey. ]
You do not have to face this new world alone.
[ Wei Ying doesn't have to do anything alone, and yet he so often tries to take the weight of the world on his narrow shoulders. Lan Zhan has long wondered why—ill-fated heroism, fear for his loved ones, a death wish. Whatever the cause, Lan Zhan wishes he were allowed to be the cure.
Sighing, a soft release of air through his nose, he releases Wei Ying's hands. But it's not to move away, not to allow any measure of distance between them. His arms wrap around Wei Ying, one across his waist and another enveloping his shoulders. Embracing him, entwining them, binding him to Wei Ying. ]
Split it. Fill it. I will remain.
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[ He hisses out, but the heat's permeated tissue and blood already, made its home inside Wei Wuxian, leaving the splinters of his voice to smoothen out, his mind to chill. Think, now, clearly. Think (don't pity him). Think, and don't growl when Lan Zhan's arms constrict him tighter than a binding charm, the taut lines of Wei Wuxian's shoulders lifting, concave and full and stubborn in rise. Cats wouldn't be gripped close, not for fear of claws.
He thinks, for a treacherous moment, to try his fangs on Lan Zhan's throat til he's raw. Doesn't, because gentlemen of the cultivation world don't cannibalise their intended, and there's a strange comfort in sulkily agreeing to flatten his ear to Lan Zhan's chest and time his breathing against the southbound drum of his heartbeat. ]
You can have me. There's not much meat to me, but I'll put it back on the bone. [ Poor joke from the scion of a clan of vegetarians. And what did he say? Don't deflect. ] That's your plea answer.
[ And maybe there's a rot sickness inside him, same as festers in the cadavers he wakes last, the ones who answer Chenqing's thrall with something like rancour — less for those who slighted them in the living world, than for the necromancer who subjugates them even now, unerringly. Hollowed out, so cracked and fragile that the lightest tap of Lan Zhan's arms on his back will dent him, and then the liquid will spill out, the simmered brew of his hoarse, base bite. Lan Zhan, who asks of him now. Who wants him now. Who thinks himself entitled.
Who deserves a few seconds of solace, before the truth balances hope out. ]
You can have me, but you can't keep me. [ A gift, now and then, meetings of vicious mouths and squabble, and revising Wei Wuxian's talismans — of which he has a fair collection, each one in direr straits and need of alteration than the one before it. His patience grinds down; he stirs, pulling back. ] That's what I can offer. Think it over during dinner.
[ That other diversion which at least serves the critical point of biding Lan Zhan's time, this once. They're romantics in sect Lan. Zewu-Jun all but carved the conclusion on stone slab, beside three other thousand rules, for Wei Wuxian's literary pleasure. They are not of a kind to take lovers to bed one evening, then abandon them merrily at first light of dawns. They don't respond to cutoffs and uncertainty. ]
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[ Wei Ying is the string of a guqin in his arms, pulled taught, a bolt of lightning hot against his chest. There is still so much of Yiling's venom in him, poisoning him into a feral animal ready to strike even at an ally. Lan Zhan would let him. Just as Wei Ying had once wished for Bichen to be the one to strike him down, so would the illustrious Hanguang-jun beg Master Wei to be the one to finish him. If he cannot win his love, if he cannot tempt his fate, let him die at its hands.
His heart sings with the answer, but the final note of the chord hovers in the air as is expecting a twist, a turn. Wei Ying does not sound happy, and so Lan Zhan hesitates. Meat on the bone. Another joke, a sign that this isn't as serious to Wei Ying as it is to Lan Zhan. This he had anticipated, and though he has his answer, some of the wind escapes his wings and brings him back down to the ground. He should have asked if Wei Ying could ever return his feelings, that perhaps the song in his heart could become a duet. Lan Zhan, for all his knowledge of books and textbook-perfect speech, has failed to find the right words when it matters most. ]
I do not wish to keep you. [ He thinks of his father's masquerade at love, a child's definition that possession could earn him happiness. His mother, sequestered to the Jingshi, an object on a shelf, a trophy of ill-bred love. Lan Zhan doesn't want that for Wei Ying. He wants a companion, a partner, a willing lover. What use is a bond if the one bound spends all of their energy and focus on gnawing at the ties, wrists bloodied in a bid for freedom? ] I do not need time to consider it. I want you willing. Happy. Free.
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