[ 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.
[ Willing. Happy. Free. So simply offered, like the first spoonful of sweet dew, swirled in congee, after weeks of convalescence. Months of chiefly cultivation and one invisible ugly hat later, and, would you look at that: Lan Zhan's wrestled down words. He'd better have at least deployed the good bait, when he netted Wei Wuxian in just now, like prime fish brooding around his old haunts after a night of sea troubles.
Willing and happy and free — and coaxed. Done and done and done, and... sorted. He nods into Lan Zhan's shoulder, in miniature ripples of movement he thinks (hopes) Lan Zhan will recognise. ]
Fair terms. [ So he should, for the sake of his nature, argue them. But he feels himself depleted, a stretch of conquered and barren ground, safer now that the blood of their quarrel's drenched him downl. ] I like them.
[ His eyes shutter close, never a sign of relaxation when he's still invariably restrained, but easing, certainly — negotiating to infuse the nervous quality of his energy in the waiting, electric air of an evening that couldn't determine if it wanted to flirt with the start of storms.
Lan Zhan will probably reveal some grand umbrella invited from literal air, if rain broke. It's just eerily efficient enough to suit his nature. ]
Did you finish my talisman?
[ In the prolonged interval Wei Wuxian brokered them, despite his initial offer. He would be ashamed now, if he weren't desperate before, drenched in the need to survive the chasm of the imminent confrontation. At least, if he's not being fed, he can still explore some gains. ]
[ Victory in the form of a truce, triumph in peace. Lan Zhan relaxes his grip on Wei Ying further, no longer worried that his most precious rabbit will bolt. A snake retreating to strike another day like the crown houses in the worn leather of Wei Ying's bag. Tilting his face down towards him, he kisses the exposed side of his neck simply because his face is buried against the crisp shoulder of his robes. He's still hunger, craven in a way that only the infamous Wei Wuxian could make a man of the Lan Sect feel. There is a more pressing hunger to attend to, however, and he lifts a hand to card through Wei Ying's hair in hopes of coaxing him to withdraw from his sanctuary. He has no need to gloat, humble and repentant for his vicious forward attacks, and so his lips remain closed but upturned in a soft smile. ]
There is an inn down the road that serves meat and wine.
[ An offering to his god, a sacrifice of his principles. Two. Three, if Wei Ying will permit him, but he doesn't wish to push his luck. To have Wei Ying at his side, to be permitted to steal a warm kiss or search for the weight of his hand, is enough. Lan Zhan has earned more than he could hope for—a profession of love from Wei Ying is still a distant, but now tangible, goal.
He takes a small step back and holds his palm out to Wei Ying. What he fills it with—the hair ornament, his hand, his heart—any or all would be appreciated. ]
Yes. You forgot to account for slope. I altered it.
[ In the wake of world war peasant-hillside, Lan Zhan feels... adrift, sat on the cusp between flight in the night and letting Wei Wuxian's chin, stubbornly planted on (in) his shoulder, anchor him to the ground.
It becomes apparent, instantly, that this is... Lan Zhan content with his victory, and Wei Wuxian, who doesn't exactly live to be difficult, but also finds scant incentive in ignoring that instinct, makes a note to plot out an elaborate revenge scheme later. Disaster can strike Wei Wuxian's remaining talismans, until only Lan Zhan's snow-driven white can banish the ink stains from their unfolded corners. The crown can chip and dent. Wei Wuxian can (and will) look Lan Zhan in the eye and assert dominance over dinner by sticking his chopstick in the last piece of gloomy tofu. He'll choke on it, but his authority will be known.
...then, Lan Zhan's mouth tickles down the troubled line of his neck, and he stills, like every hare who hopes the wolf will glance at her supine body in tall grass and shun her, for fear she's too long a corpse now, and her taste has soured. Lan Zhan has no such frivolous hesitations. A note of surprise dilates into a moan, half for the stirrings of fondness flushing the root of Wei Wuxian's nape, half to punish Lan Zhan for waking him.
Fine. He's... alert. Mind addled, eyes blinking open and accustoming to dim starlight, falling a step back and in line beside Lan Zhan again — only to gaze at the offer of the hand with understandable, age-old suspicion, before a grin gives the go, and he strokes the inside of Lan Zhan's palm with two fingers again.
If at first you don't succeed, try and try until Lan Zhan bores and pretends to give up (again). ]
Hey. Watch it. I'm apparently a spoken-for man.
[ By the same person who inflicts himself brazenly on the last vestiges of Wei Wuxian's untouched territory, but it's the principle of misplaced chastity that counts. Ask Lan Qiren, on a day when his death as a revered veteran of the elderly generation is as desired as it is impending.
Later. Now, there's the trifle of his talisman,and — the slope? His mouth hangs a wide gasp, somewhere between horror and amusement. ]
...did I? Nooooooooooo. Did I really? [ As if... this is something even the dullest cultivator, inheritor of sect Lan or otherwise, can be bored enough to invent. ] That's terrible. I'm getting negligent in my old age. I have a pair for it, you know. To revive wells? That's for droughts. They have too many in Lanling. You wouldn't think it, they're so up north, but they're at least twenty days each summer season...
[ Compared to the wild, stormy ocean that he must navigate between his heart and Wei Ying's, a small bought of spiteful rain from his beloved is easily weathered. Let him concoct slapdash talismans for review, lose the silver hair ornament to be found by a needy farmer on his way to market, claim the tofu and inspire Lan Zhan to order more for Wei Ying to enjoy. This is not a case of dominance—Wei Ying already has dominion over Lan Zhan.
The moan is a pleasant surprise, secret music floating up to his thirsty ears. He hazards another kiss, firmer where he plants it just beneath Wei Ying's ear, a huff of breath stirring his hair. It earns him the ticklish assault to his palm that makes his fingers curl around the attackers, once again trapping them in his grasp. Foolish Wei Ying, falling back into the same trap he'd set earlier.
Humming, he begins to pick his way back to the road and puts them on the right trajectory for the inn. He hopes the hour isn't too late, but the silver in his pocket is sure to inspire some hospitality. ] And this man who has spoken for you. Do you speak for him?
[ Playful wording, but a sincere curiosity. Lan Zhan would never give his attention to another, let alone his heart, but he wonders how Wei Ying would react if anyone were to try and claim Lan Zhan as their own.
A long sigh falls from his lips even as they curve up. He loves, more than anything, the relaxed Wei Ying who pokes fun at others through his own casual rejection of diligence and academia. It reminds him of simpler times when they were students worried about little more than alcohol and talismans. ] You are kind to help them. Consider using your arrays in tandem. One to divert the source, the other to plant it a safe distance from the town.
[ Kissed and trapped — but happy and free and willing. He can handle that equivalence, even as the knots of his stomach tighten whenever Lan Zhan looks at him with the heat of molten iron, before it paints itself in the shapes of edge and sword. Wei Wuxian placed himself before the lion's maws. He cannot complain now that he is a morsel chewed too quickly. But he swings their kindled hands again, pointedly and painfully, like children walking down the meadow. ]
...transmuting an entire stream? Ufffffffffffffff, Lan Zhan. It's...one thing to play with a few parameters across the line of the same river bank, but changing the source completely...
[ ...is a feat and a half that he will, of course, start interrogating the moment they've happily occupied an inn table and, through the grace of Wei Wuxian's inability to contain the blessing of his presence to one particular space, any further cushions within a wide radius. He is a graceful man of many skills, which largely concentrate on reducing a population's wine reserves, past, present and future.
And scratching and poking and prodding until fresh ink rewrites the world. He is piqued, just enough to train the arrow of his sharpening gaze on Lan Zhan with clear, resolute interest. Ah, but it's been too long since his focus has been, like the river they've debated for an hour, gently migrated to appropriately friendly pastures. ]
You'd better have brought talisman paper. [ As if a gentleman cultivator whose coin purse hasn't collapsed into itself would neglect base preparation. If not the mighty Hanguang-Jun, then his legions of disciples would have armed him, or lovey-dovey darling Yuan, when Lan Zhan fled his gates. ] I'll speak for that.
[ Fair exchange, he concludes with a nefarious stumble over a rain of pebbles that seems to materialise — it's not that he's not looking, it isn't — at his feet under glory of dark. Lan Zhan has been thieving every last sliver of touch within his reach, has seized Wei Wuxian with the greed of his mouth, for the one kiss Wei Wuxian initiated earlier. He is a starved thing, beneath the whites of his propriety. Wei Wuxian should have known. ]
I don't need to speak for my better half. [ Through virtue, if nothing else, that he is not the Yiling Patriarch. ] He was born true. His eyes don't stray easily. When they will, it will be because it's time. It's right to.
[ Because every account between them has been given, the red of each ledger dissolved, the affection that bound them curtailed itself. Because they are burned down, no longer forest, but trees. ]
[ Lan Zhan allows the swing of their arms, the long sleeve of his robe flapping in the air between them like a young bird struggling for flight. He fights the repetitive arc just long enough to slot their fingers together more comfortably, securely, so that such childish play may not wrench their hands loose from one another.
As Wei Ying trails off, Lan Zhan picks up the pieces of his sentence and thought to continue them to completion. ] Is a long-term solution. A river that overflows one season is likely to in the next.
[ He doesn't acknowledge the veiled request for talisman paper. Wei Ying knows, or should by now, that Lan Zhan is an upstanding cultivator who never leaves without the proper supplies. Even when traveling a friendly road towards his lover, he would not be so hasty and naive as to forget such important materials.
Wei Ying loses his footing, and Lan Zhan grips his hand more firmly to catch him. He says nothing of it, but there is a ghost of a smile on his lips—whether it's born of amusement for the misstep and Wei Ying's undignified noise as a result, or the fact that Wei Ying's focus had been on Lan Zhan when it should have been on the road, is a secret he will guard.
Then Wei Ying begins to laud Lan Zhan's loyalty, and he hangs his head slightly, his eyes on the road rather than the horizon as it usually is thanks to his rigid posture. A better half, born true and with eyes that do not stray, and yet he hasn't always listened to the heart which had belonged to Wei Ying for so long. That is his biggest regret, but one that motivates him to be Wei Ying's humble servant for eternity, in this life and all others after. ]
Members of the Lan Sect do not stray once they have found their fated person. Even in death, we do not wander.
[ It shouldn't rankle him, hard nail on dried scab, flush of an old wound waiting to burst again beneath it; it shouldn't gain the reins of him, not when Wei Wuxian feels them tighter than talisman string or garrote, gnawing at his throat. There, that stretch of skin, where Lan Zhan's mouth put right in him everything that was wrong, only moments before. There, too, itching.
Death. Really. Not even in death, as if Lan Zhan's ever walked those grounds. As if he's known the notes of ghostly lullabies, lacerating bone, peering through the window of his body in the tired temple of his soul, to find it wanting and bare. As if Wei Wuxian cares to think about the possibility of a pale corpse and roles reversed — ( Ah. This is why it riles, then. )
The pendulum arc of their hands stills, and Wei Wuxian pushes it past that lull, back into sway. Hyperbole. This is the Lan way, painted in legend: they speak of life and death and sentiment and pledges, because they hold themselves better than the likes of Wei Wuxian and the whispering stalks of grass crunching beneath his feet, both slaves to their mundane nature.
If Wei Wuxian didn't envy every sharp edge of Lan Zhan's light, he might stifle it in his cupped hands. Impatience still bleeds out of him, between rushed side glances and a snake-sound hiss. ]
[ As if he doesn't have a perfect count of every Lan rule, old and new. ]
Look here. I know you members of the Lan sect like to study, so have a lesson: a wedding bed fits two. [ Observe, two fingers rising. ] If you fill it with your clansmen's convictions, brace yourself to hit the floor. You know, even in death.
[ Looking over at Wei Ying, he can almost taste the vitriol in his words. It's true that Lan Zhan has not died. His body has not decayed into the earth to become a feast for all manner of creatures. His spirit has never been lost to another plane, wandering or ascending or whatever had happened to Wei Ying. His voice has not become a memory in those he left behind, his deeds lauded or loathed, his smile painted on the heart of a loved one. But he has experienced death in his own ways. The death of his mother, a woman he barely knew and yet loved more than the father who held her captive. Wei Ying, someone who deserved his trust and protection, whom Lan Zhan failed at the height of his need and the depth of his helplessness. Part of himself, too, had gone with Wei Ying, though seeing his fierce annoyance now, he doesn't admit to it. Never will he burden Wei Ying with tales of his life during those sixteen years, how he became a shell of himself only filled with the need to raise A-Yuan, Wei Ying's sweet boy, Lan Zhan's responsibility. The search and the punishment which delayed it. The drink. The brand.
His lips purse with fresh annoyance of his own. It should be expected that Wei Ying sees a tradition and attempts to poke holes in it as if a tradition can only be upheld through obligation and not through shared values. Lan Zhan has proven that he no longer adheres to rules so strictly and that he has learned, through Wei Ying's noble example, that the parameters of rules must be called into question. Lan Zhan hardly fell in love because of a rule, and it wasn't the cause of his passion, either.
Tightening his grip on Wei Ying's hand, he holds it in place on the next upswing, pulls it to his chest, and presses the knuckles of his too-thin hand to feel the steady beating of his heart through layers of silk and flesh. ]
Lan Wangji does not stray. [ Though speaking in the third person will surely earn him a teasing, heightened language is the only way he knows how to make himself sound as serious as his declaration deserves. ] For sixteen years, Lan Wangji did not stary. Did not cast his eyes on another. Raised a son for the memory of his fated love. Do not belittle my heart for upholding a custom steeped in loyalty and devotion.
[ Once, as a boy, he might have asked what exorcism felt like. To split the soul in many parts, then extirpate them? Painful work. A howling. And then, Uncle Jiang said, look at the lake, that one there, now throw your pebble in, and another, and a third. You too, Jiang Cheng. Watch the ruin of ripples, watch the waters turn, the balance shift to sickness. Watch the tumult.
Now, think if every rock could be fished, every dust stain removed, every lick of violence depleted. How would the lake feel, no longer tainted?
Like this: Wei Wuxian, deflating with each breath he feels foolishly compelled to time to the rumble of Lan Zhan's heartbeat, under the bridge of knuckle bone. He fights Lan Zhan's grasp for a moment; shakes free, only to splay his hand whole, to turn the slick warmth of his palm on Lan Zhan's chest and listen. Sixteen years, never straying, never shunning Yuan, or his fealty, or his fated love.
Fate...? Men write their fortunes. Braid and bind each red string to their life's purpose with honest hands. Whatever histories will write of Jin Guangyao, he worked his end. Whatever Wei Wuxian brokered, mouth dry with crumbled dirt, writhing between stone and stiffened corpses — that was his own design.
And this fool of a man, who plants himself so readily beside the Yiling patriarch, who keeps the pace even as mother night's chills swathe him... Lan Zhan chose Wei Wuxian as his poison. ]
Lan Wangji.
[ The subject of this fairy tale that started sixteen years ago in blood, carried on in mourning whites, and lives his grand finale here, pecked by Wei Wuxian's hawkish cruelty. Hanguang-Jun. Better yet: ]
Lan Zhan. [ Cotton-soft, between them. Every sorry he's not allowed to say. ] I overstepped.
[ Surrendering Wei Ying's hand is a simple task, yet one he hesitates to complete. Willing. Happy. Free. His own words echo in his mind, a monk's mantra to remind him how to escape the mistakes of his father and how to prove to Wei Ying that his love is not born of possession. Lan Zhan has never allowed himself possessions that were kept for any selfish reasons. Bichen, a weapon. Wangji, a tool. Jade tokens for entry into Cloud Recesses. Hair ornaments for symbols of status. Everything serves a purpose. Except for Wei Ying, who will never be a possession, and yet may someday choose to belong with Lan Zhan rather than to him.
Wei Ying may laugh at fate, but Lan Zhan considers it a bittersweet friend. The red string between them may be woven by their own hands, tied in knots with the bite of cruel words or knitted with flowers thanks to kindnesses, perhaps even cut with the dull scissors of time or swift strike of a blade. They were born with that string already tied to them—what they choose to do with it is their own design.
He covers Wei Ying's hand with his own, gentle rather than forceful. There's no regret in him for the words he'd spoken, long-winded but medicinal after the poison of Wei Ying's sarcasm. If he knew of his love's thoughts, he'd be forced to correct them again. Their story was conceived at the gate of Cloud Recesses with a silencing spell and born on a rooftop aglow with moonlight, two smiles of an emperor, and Wei Ying's own mischievous grin. ]
Wei Ying. [ The ice of his expression melts into warm fondness. ] You could not know. I had not told you.
[ Stop making my excuses, he doesn't bite back, teeth have blunted between the past hour's offensives. Too much. He's filled one evening's tally with Lan Zhan's hurts, and they're too bound for more blood, connected decisively at the point of Lan Zhan's heartbeat.
It's too much, so it has to reduce top nothing: he invades, distracting, in the two-pace radius where only practised glares and a gentleman's dagger might still protect Lan Zhan from close-range harm. Brows a hard slant, he studies — then decides, the clash of his mouth on Lan Zhan's temple, jaw, mouth, like a wave hitting shore. Soft, for the resigned lack of recourse.
Self-taught, he'll have to also finish Lan Zhan's education: these are kisses of apology. Before, of acquaintance. At some point, they will be teasing, at another passionate, territorial, cruel. Nuances, like in sword work. ]
I know more things than you've ever thought to teach me. [ Lan Zhan and his pretty sect and his rigorous grand master, rooted so rigidly in orthodoxy. ] I'll be good over dinner.
[ He's already spoiled the better part of their journey down the hill, to the firefly-lit span of a crouched village, where inns and administrative halls dwarf dwellings like juts of a hungry dagger over sand lines. They walk. He nudges them to it. This body lacks the benefits of cultivation — within a few hours, like a child, it will need rest.
From earlier, he remembers: the meandering walkway into the main marketplace, to the sibilant street to the miniature artisan district and, ever separate, the foreign inn quarters. Little Apple's enjoyed fine hospitality against Wei Wuxian's coin for the better part of a day, that scoundrel.
And then, the inevitable adjustment, slip of Wei Wuxian's step from beside Lan Zhan to gently ease behind him, where a light breeze or, say, the small but ever-present likelihood of a stray dog begging road scraps must cross Lan defenses before reaching him.
He may have a problem. That problem tends to bark. ]
You could silence me and feed me, if you'd like. But you should talk. You never talk.
[ Arguably, because Wei Wuxian never shuts up to allow it. ]
[ The distraction is thorough and easily pierces Lan Zhan's defenses. The walls that stand as solid granite for others are thin silk to Wei Ying, easily torn from where they hang to leave Lan Zhan bare, vulnerable. At least this siege is a desirable one as he sprinkles kisses across his face, much-needed spice for a man so used to a bland diet of loneliness and unrequited love. So he had thought. They may be self-taught, but Lan Zhan is a studious learner, one who prides himself in his dedication to teachings, and Wei Ying is by far the best tutor he has ever had.
Humming before they part, Lan Zhan looks down at Wei Ying with wonder. He had only dared to dream of kissing him in the darkness of the Jingshi, stealing such lewd thoughts from the shadows and hoping Wei Ying would never find out. Guilty. Shameless. Now those same soft presses of lips calm his guilt as well as his momentary frustration with the object of his no longer buried desires. ]
You are more well-versed in many disciplines, Wei Ying. Aside from discipline itself.
[ A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, a playful string of which Wei Ying holds the end. They pass the first line of buildings, shut up for the night with windows like eyes shut to the world while the inhabitants sleep. At the end on the lane, he spots the same inn he had passed earlier in the day, a lifetime ago before waiting for Wei Ying, before kissing Wei Ying. ]
Feed, but never silence. I never talk because I am listening to you. [ Wei Ying is, after all, so skilled at speaking that he does it at length, and with such a wide variety of words. ] What do I have talk about?
[ Oh, Lan Zhan's so soft. Too soft by far. Who gave Hanguang-Jun the right to melt so completely over a bouquet of fleetingly peppered kisses? Oh no, Wei Wuxian's heart nearly builds itself from chaos and clutter to melt. ]
Shhhhhhhh. Trust the master. You're drunk.
[ And he loops his arm with Lan Zhan's again despite any lurking canine dangers, because birds of a feather sway gently on jagged roads together, and friends don't let friends show their face so bare in the midnight road. Some spirit will spy the great chief cultivator with lowered defenses, then parade around with his stolen likeness, and they'll know, everyone will know what Lan Zhan looks when he's tame. His spotless reputation can only take so much disgrace.
Inn within reach, he only breaks from Lan Zhan long enough to fetch Little Apple from another tavern and pass the donkey unto the new stable hand's care, before stepping in and — ...ah. But it's warm. Nice and warm and pleasing, and a low table to greet him, a handsome man to return to. A body that still answers him, sweetly aching when he sits on a cushion and not hard ground, after a day of travel.
He should pay more attention to their server, or their surroundings, or the scents of hefty broth simmering in the fireplace. Neglects all of these things, elbows locked on the table, soft palms cupping his chin and cheeks. Is he not too adorable to be denied information? He is, indeed he is, he must make himself so. ]
Tell me everything. Lan Zhan, don't play coy. Sixteen years, come and gone. Whooosh.
[ Possibly, with that same sound of Wei Wuxian's hollowed whistling. ]
I barely had scraps of you before. Now, I know less. What poetry do you like anymore? [ A pause, then with the awkward jumble of his hand through his hair. ] I don't even know which of the poets are still alive. Scholars die too quickly.
[ Soft hearts, quick-filled. Imagine if they took poets to battle? Terrible. ]
Jin Ling tells — well, Jin Ling showed me. He doesn't tell me much of anything. But he wears a glove on his arrow hand when he shoots. They all do. It's the — [ His fingers pinch air. ] 'Done thing' nowadays. It was just, you know, fussy before. So, that's changed.
[ In a world that seems to have suspended its breath until Wei Wuxian could redeem his reputation, the Lanling Jin had the audacity to discover best archery practices. ]
[ Lan Zhan allows the linking of their arms to forge them into the shortest but strongest of chains, two pieces entwined and inseparable. Even the passage of time and the finality of death hadn't been able to keep them apart, so why should the fear of a dog when Lan Zhan's shoulders are wide enough to hide behind, scowl dark enough to fend off worse than a simple-minded animal? His reputation is far from a priority for him now, the notion carefully folded up and tucked into a corner of his mind. Another lesson learned from Wei Ying who did what he saw as just before worrying about what society believed was right.
Allowing Wei Ying to part from him momentarily, he steps into the inn and towards a corner table, requests a few extra cushions for Wei Ying and his penchant for lounging more horizontally than vertically. His own back is stiff as a board as he orders for them both—tea, wine, broth, vegetables—and then lifts his face to welcome Wei Ying to the table as a flower welcomes the sun's light after a long winter's night. He is indeed worthy of adoration, but not only because of the innocent intrigue he feigns for Lan Zhan.
Sixteen years, come and gone. He tries not to shut his eyes against the reminder. ]
I read classics, new poetry and literature are unknowns. [ He is, after all, still the same old fuddy-duddy at heart. It is also easy to ignore new practices in the remote safety of Cloud Recesses. Still, Lan Zhan had wandered the realm enough to know of some changes that may have escaped his uncle's notice. ] You know more of archery than I do.
You have seen for yourself the use of your inventions. It is a big change for cultivation.
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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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Willing and happy and free — and coaxed. Done and done and done, and... sorted. He nods into Lan Zhan's shoulder, in miniature ripples of movement he thinks (hopes) Lan Zhan will recognise. ]
Fair terms. [ So he should, for the sake of his nature, argue them. But he feels himself depleted, a stretch of conquered and barren ground, safer now that the blood of their quarrel's drenched him downl. ] I like them.
[ His eyes shutter close, never a sign of relaxation when he's still invariably restrained, but easing, certainly — negotiating to infuse the nervous quality of his energy in the waiting, electric air of an evening that couldn't determine if it wanted to flirt with the start of storms.
Lan Zhan will probably reveal some grand umbrella invited from literal air, if rain broke. It's just eerily efficient enough to suit his nature. ]
Did you finish my talisman?
[ In the prolonged interval Wei Wuxian brokered them, despite his initial offer. He would be ashamed now, if he weren't desperate before, drenched in the need to survive the chasm of the imminent confrontation. At least, if he's not being fed, he can still explore some gains. ]
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There is an inn down the road that serves meat and wine.
[ An offering to his god, a sacrifice of his principles. Two. Three, if Wei Ying will permit him, but he doesn't wish to push his luck. To have Wei Ying at his side, to be permitted to steal a warm kiss or search for the weight of his hand, is enough. Lan Zhan has earned more than he could hope for—a profession of love from Wei Ying is still a distant, but now tangible, goal.
He takes a small step back and holds his palm out to Wei Ying. What he fills it with—the hair ornament, his hand, his heart—any or all would be appreciated. ]
Yes. You forgot to account for slope. I altered it.
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It becomes apparent, instantly, that this is... Lan Zhan content with his victory, and Wei Wuxian, who doesn't exactly live to be difficult, but also finds scant incentive in ignoring that instinct, makes a note to plot out an elaborate revenge scheme later. Disaster can strike Wei Wuxian's remaining talismans, until only Lan Zhan's snow-driven white can banish the ink stains from their unfolded corners. The crown can chip and dent. Wei Wuxian can (and will) look Lan Zhan in the eye and assert dominance over dinner by sticking his chopstick in the last piece of gloomy tofu. He'll choke on it, but his authority will be known.
...then, Lan Zhan's mouth tickles down the troubled line of his neck, and he stills, like every hare who hopes the wolf will glance at her supine body in tall grass and shun her, for fear she's too long a corpse now, and her taste has soured. Lan Zhan has no such frivolous hesitations. A note of surprise dilates into a moan, half for the stirrings of fondness flushing the root of Wei Wuxian's nape, half to punish Lan Zhan for waking him.
Fine. He's... alert. Mind addled, eyes blinking open and accustoming to dim starlight, falling a step back and in line beside Lan Zhan again — only to gaze at the offer of the hand with understandable, age-old suspicion, before a grin gives the go, and he strokes the inside of Lan Zhan's palm with two fingers again.
If at first you don't succeed, try and try until Lan Zhan bores and pretends to give up (again). ]
Hey. Watch it. I'm apparently a spoken-for man.
[ By the same person who inflicts himself brazenly on the last vestiges of Wei Wuxian's untouched territory, but it's the principle of misplaced chastity that counts. Ask Lan Qiren, on a day when his death as a revered veteran of the elderly generation is as desired as it is impending.
Later. Now, there's the trifle of his talisman,and — the slope? His mouth hangs a wide gasp, somewhere between horror and amusement. ]
...did I? Nooooooooooo. Did I really? [ As if... this is something even the dullest cultivator, inheritor of sect Lan or otherwise, can be bored enough to invent. ] That's terrible. I'm getting negligent in my old age. I have a pair for it, you know. To revive wells? That's for droughts. They have too many in Lanling. You wouldn't think it, they're so up north, but they're at least twenty days each summer season...
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The moan is a pleasant surprise, secret music floating up to his thirsty ears. He hazards another kiss, firmer where he plants it just beneath Wei Ying's ear, a huff of breath stirring his hair. It earns him the ticklish assault to his palm that makes his fingers curl around the attackers, once again trapping them in his grasp. Foolish Wei Ying, falling back into the same trap he'd set earlier.
Humming, he begins to pick his way back to the road and puts them on the right trajectory for the inn. He hopes the hour isn't too late, but the silver in his pocket is sure to inspire some hospitality. ] And this man who has spoken for you. Do you speak for him?
[ Playful wording, but a sincere curiosity. Lan Zhan would never give his attention to another, let alone his heart, but he wonders how Wei Ying would react if anyone were to try and claim Lan Zhan as their own.
A long sigh falls from his lips even as they curve up. He loves, more than anything, the relaxed Wei Ying who pokes fun at others through his own casual rejection of diligence and academia. It reminds him of simpler times when they were students worried about little more than alcohol and talismans. ] You are kind to help them. Consider using your arrays in tandem. One to divert the source, the other to plant it a safe distance from the town.
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...transmuting an entire stream? Ufffffffffffffff, Lan Zhan. It's...one thing to play with a few parameters across the line of the same river bank, but changing the source completely...
[ ...is a feat and a half that he will, of course, start interrogating the moment they've happily occupied an inn table and, through the grace of Wei Wuxian's inability to contain the blessing of his presence to one particular space, any further cushions within a wide radius. He is a graceful man of many skills, which largely concentrate on reducing a population's wine reserves, past, present and future.
And scratching and poking and prodding until fresh ink rewrites the world. He is piqued, just enough to train the arrow of his sharpening gaze on Lan Zhan with clear, resolute interest. Ah, but it's been too long since his focus has been, like the river they've debated for an hour, gently migrated to appropriately friendly pastures. ]
You'd better have brought talisman paper. [ As if a gentleman cultivator whose coin purse hasn't collapsed into itself would neglect base preparation. If not the mighty Hanguang-Jun, then his legions of disciples would have armed him, or lovey-dovey darling Yuan, when Lan Zhan fled his gates. ] I'll speak for that.
[ Fair exchange, he concludes with a nefarious stumble over a rain of pebbles that seems to materialise — it's not that he's not looking, it isn't — at his feet under glory of dark. Lan Zhan has been thieving every last sliver of touch within his reach, has seized Wei Wuxian with the greed of his mouth, for the one kiss Wei Wuxian initiated earlier. He is a starved thing, beneath the whites of his propriety. Wei Wuxian should have known. ]
I don't need to speak for my better half. [ Through virtue, if nothing else, that he is not the Yiling Patriarch. ] He was born true. His eyes don't stray easily. When they will, it will be because it's time. It's right to.
[ Because every account between them has been given, the red of each ledger dissolved, the affection that bound them curtailed itself. Because they are burned down, no longer forest, but trees. ]
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As Wei Ying trails off, Lan Zhan picks up the pieces of his sentence and thought to continue them to completion. ] Is a long-term solution. A river that overflows one season is likely to in the next.
[ He doesn't acknowledge the veiled request for talisman paper. Wei Ying knows, or should by now, that Lan Zhan is an upstanding cultivator who never leaves without the proper supplies. Even when traveling a friendly road towards his lover, he would not be so hasty and naive as to forget such important materials.
Wei Ying loses his footing, and Lan Zhan grips his hand more firmly to catch him. He says nothing of it, but there is a ghost of a smile on his lips—whether it's born of amusement for the misstep and Wei Ying's undignified noise as a result, or the fact that Wei Ying's focus had been on Lan Zhan when it should have been on the road, is a secret he will guard.
Then Wei Ying begins to laud Lan Zhan's loyalty, and he hangs his head slightly, his eyes on the road rather than the horizon as it usually is thanks to his rigid posture. A better half, born true and with eyes that do not stray, and yet he hasn't always listened to the heart which had belonged to Wei Ying for so long. That is his biggest regret, but one that motivates him to be Wei Ying's humble servant for eternity, in this life and all others after. ]
Members of the Lan Sect do not stray once they have found their fated person. Even in death, we do not wander.
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[ It shouldn't rankle him, hard nail on dried scab, flush of an old wound waiting to burst again beneath it; it shouldn't gain the reins of him, not when Wei Wuxian feels them tighter than talisman string or garrote, gnawing at his throat. There, that stretch of skin, where Lan Zhan's mouth put right in him everything that was wrong, only moments before. There, too, itching.
Death. Really. Not even in death, as if Lan Zhan's ever walked those grounds. As if he's known the notes of ghostly lullabies, lacerating bone, peering through the window of his body in the tired temple of his soul, to find it wanting and bare. As if Wei Wuxian cares to think about the possibility of a pale corpse and roles reversed — ( Ah. This is why it riles, then. )
The pendulum arc of their hands stills, and Wei Wuxian pushes it past that lull, back into sway. Hyperbole. This is the Lan way, painted in legend: they speak of life and death and sentiment and pledges, because they hold themselves better than the likes of Wei Wuxian and the whispering stalks of grass crunching beneath his feet, both slaves to their mundane nature.
If Wei Wuxian didn't envy every sharp edge of Lan Zhan's light, he might stifle it in his cupped hands. Impatience still bleeds out of him, between rushed side glances and a snake-sound hiss. ]
Right. Yes, I'm certain. Rule number... six thousand... eight hundred... something-something. Yes.
[ As if he doesn't have a perfect count of every Lan rule, old and new. ]
Look here. I know you members of the Lan sect like to study, so have a lesson: a wedding bed fits two. [ Observe, two fingers rising. ] If you fill it with your clansmen's convictions, brace yourself to hit the floor. You know, even in death.
[ Who cares what 'members of the Lan sect' do? ]
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His lips purse with fresh annoyance of his own. It should be expected that Wei Ying sees a tradition and attempts to poke holes in it as if a tradition can only be upheld through obligation and not through shared values. Lan Zhan has proven that he no longer adheres to rules so strictly and that he has learned, through Wei Ying's noble example, that the parameters of rules must be called into question. Lan Zhan hardly fell in love because of a rule, and it wasn't the cause of his passion, either.
Tightening his grip on Wei Ying's hand, he holds it in place on the next upswing, pulls it to his chest, and presses the knuckles of his too-thin hand to feel the steady beating of his heart through layers of silk and flesh. ]
Lan Wangji does not stray. [ Though speaking in the third person will surely earn him a teasing, heightened language is the only way he knows how to make himself sound as serious as his declaration deserves. ] For sixteen years, Lan Wangji did not stary. Did not cast his eyes on another. Raised a son for the memory of his fated love. Do not belittle my heart for upholding a custom steeped in loyalty and devotion.
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Now, think if every rock could be fished, every dust stain removed, every lick of violence depleted. How would the lake feel, no longer tainted?
Like this: Wei Wuxian, deflating with each breath he feels foolishly compelled to time to the rumble of Lan Zhan's heartbeat, under the bridge of knuckle bone. He fights Lan Zhan's grasp for a moment; shakes free, only to splay his hand whole, to turn the slick warmth of his palm on Lan Zhan's chest and listen. Sixteen years, never straying, never shunning Yuan, or his fealty, or his fated love.
Fate...? Men write their fortunes. Braid and bind each red string to their life's purpose with honest hands. Whatever histories will write of Jin Guangyao, he worked his end. Whatever Wei Wuxian brokered, mouth dry with crumbled dirt, writhing between stone and stiffened corpses — that was his own design.
And this fool of a man, who plants himself so readily beside the Yiling patriarch, who keeps the pace even as mother night's chills swathe him... Lan Zhan chose Wei Wuxian as his poison. ]
Lan Wangji.
[ The subject of this fairy tale that started sixteen years ago in blood, carried on in mourning whites, and lives his grand finale here, pecked by Wei Wuxian's hawkish cruelty. Hanguang-Jun. Better yet: ]
Lan Zhan. [ Cotton-soft, between them. Every sorry he's not allowed to say. ] I overstepped.
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Wei Ying may laugh at fate, but Lan Zhan considers it a bittersweet friend. The red string between them may be woven by their own hands, tied in knots with the bite of cruel words or knitted with flowers thanks to kindnesses, perhaps even cut with the dull scissors of time or swift strike of a blade. They were born with that string already tied to them—what they choose to do with it is their own design.
He covers Wei Ying's hand with his own, gentle rather than forceful. There's no regret in him for the words he'd spoken, long-winded but medicinal after the poison of Wei Ying's sarcasm. If he knew of his love's thoughts, he'd be forced to correct them again. Their story was conceived at the gate of Cloud Recesses with a silencing spell and born on a rooftop aglow with moonlight, two smiles of an emperor, and Wei Ying's own mischievous grin. ]
Wei Ying. [ The ice of his expression melts into warm fondness. ] You could not know. I had not told you.
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It's too much, so it has to reduce top nothing: he invades, distracting, in the two-pace radius where only practised glares and a gentleman's dagger might still protect Lan Zhan from close-range harm. Brows a hard slant, he studies — then decides, the clash of his mouth on Lan Zhan's temple, jaw, mouth, like a wave hitting shore. Soft, for the resigned lack of recourse.
Self-taught, he'll have to also finish Lan Zhan's education: these are kisses of apology. Before, of acquaintance. At some point, they will be teasing, at another passionate, territorial, cruel. Nuances, like in sword work. ]
I know more things than you've ever thought to teach me. [ Lan Zhan and his pretty sect and his rigorous grand master, rooted so rigidly in orthodoxy. ] I'll be good over dinner.
[ He's already spoiled the better part of their journey down the hill, to the firefly-lit span of a crouched village, where inns and administrative halls dwarf dwellings like juts of a hungry dagger over sand lines. They walk. He nudges them to it. This body lacks the benefits of cultivation — within a few hours, like a child, it will need rest.
From earlier, he remembers: the meandering walkway into the main marketplace, to the sibilant street to the miniature artisan district and, ever separate, the foreign inn quarters. Little Apple's enjoyed fine hospitality against Wei Wuxian's coin for the better part of a day, that scoundrel.
And then, the inevitable adjustment, slip of Wei Wuxian's step from beside Lan Zhan to gently ease behind him, where a light breeze or, say, the small but ever-present likelihood of a stray dog begging road scraps must cross Lan defenses before reaching him.
He may have a problem. That problem tends to bark. ]
You could silence me and feed me, if you'd like. But you should talk. You never talk.
[ Arguably, because Wei Wuxian never shuts up to allow it. ]
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Humming before they part, Lan Zhan looks down at Wei Ying with wonder. He had only dared to dream of kissing him in the darkness of the Jingshi, stealing such lewd thoughts from the shadows and hoping Wei Ying would never find out. Guilty. Shameless. Now those same soft presses of lips calm his guilt as well as his momentary frustration with the object of his no longer buried desires. ]
You are more well-versed in many disciplines, Wei Ying. Aside from discipline itself.
[ A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, a playful string of which Wei Ying holds the end. They pass the first line of buildings, shut up for the night with windows like eyes shut to the world while the inhabitants sleep. At the end on the lane, he spots the same inn he had passed earlier in the day, a lifetime ago before waiting for Wei Ying, before kissing Wei Ying. ]
Feed, but never silence. I never talk because I am listening to you. [ Wei Ying is, after all, so skilled at speaking that he does it at length, and with such a wide variety of words. ] What do I have talk about?
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Shhhhhhhh. Trust the master. You're drunk.
[ And he loops his arm with Lan Zhan's again despite any lurking canine dangers, because birds of a feather sway gently on jagged roads together, and friends don't let friends show their face so bare in the midnight road. Some spirit will spy the great chief cultivator with lowered defenses, then parade around with his stolen likeness, and they'll know, everyone will know what Lan Zhan looks when he's tame. His spotless reputation can only take so much disgrace.
Inn within reach, he only breaks from Lan Zhan long enough to fetch Little Apple from another tavern and pass the donkey unto the new stable hand's care, before stepping in and — ...ah. But it's warm. Nice and warm and pleasing, and a low table to greet him, a handsome man to return to. A body that still answers him, sweetly aching when he sits on a cushion and not hard ground, after a day of travel.
He should pay more attention to their server, or their surroundings, or the scents of hefty broth simmering in the fireplace. Neglects all of these things, elbows locked on the table, soft palms cupping his chin and cheeks. Is he not too adorable to be denied information? He is, indeed he is, he must make himself so. ]
Tell me everything. Lan Zhan, don't play coy. Sixteen years, come and gone. Whooosh.
[ Possibly, with that same sound of Wei Wuxian's hollowed whistling. ]
I barely had scraps of you before. Now, I know less. What poetry do you like anymore? [ A pause, then with the awkward jumble of his hand through his hair. ] I don't even know which of the poets are still alive. Scholars die too quickly.
[ Soft hearts, quick-filled. Imagine if they took poets to battle? Terrible. ]
Jin Ling tells — well, Jin Ling showed me. He doesn't tell me much of anything. But he wears a glove on his arrow hand when he shoots. They all do. It's the — [ His fingers pinch air. ] 'Done thing' nowadays. It was just, you know, fussy before. So, that's changed.
[ In a world that seems to have suspended its breath until Wei Wuxian could redeem his reputation, the Lanling Jin had the audacity to discover best archery practices. ]
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Allowing Wei Ying to part from him momentarily, he steps into the inn and towards a corner table, requests a few extra cushions for Wei Ying and his penchant for lounging more horizontally than vertically. His own back is stiff as a board as he orders for them both—tea, wine, broth, vegetables—and then lifts his face to welcome Wei Ying to the table as a flower welcomes the sun's light after a long winter's night. He is indeed worthy of adoration, but not only because of the innocent intrigue he feigns for Lan Zhan.
Sixteen years, come and gone. He tries not to shut his eyes against the reminder. ]
I read classics, new poetry and literature are unknowns. [ He is, after all, still the same old fuddy-duddy at heart. It is also easy to ignore new practices in the remote safety of Cloud Recesses. Still, Lan Zhan had wandered the realm enough to know of some changes that may have escaped his uncle's notice. ] You know more of archery than I do.
You have seen for yourself the use of your inventions. It is a big change for cultivation.
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