( So hard up, so soft down. He is snow-bled, sheets of ice and light-grazed particles. The learned elegance of his people manicuring shrivelled tactility as monastic aestheticism. And Wei Ying, does he know how not to forgive?
And who are they, but the last strokes of deadened calligraphy, dust and dirt suckling from brush edges? Once, Lan Wangji vivisected himself, gut to marrow, gave this man more than Hanguang-Jun's honour — his pride. Under a moon like this, hungry and slow and the licks of her light, deep and knowing. Did he not, did he not? And he lived and mourned alone for it, a city nightless and its nightmares learned. He takes his seat, he knows, always — now — more netted in Wei Ying's gravitational pull than courtesy allows. Let the etiquettes bear it.
Beneath the ached press of Lan Wangji's palm, clay stretches and curls and tile tips glisten darkly of slate. The swords dip and nestle on his thighs, like temple offerings. Watch and wait and slant your eyes, and Lan Wangji is before the grandmaster again, he holds out the instruments of his discipline — but Wei Ying declines them. Drinks, and wet trickles down the bustling bristle of his fledgling dark, the fumbling but unflinched dusting of his beard.
A curious, but welcome experiment: Wei Ying lacking the nascent signs of facial hair was a boy of Gusu Lan schooling, a meddling weed stinging Wangji's fingertips. Cleanly shaven, a transgression against orthodoxy, fangs barely contained by a mean mouth bloodied with the spill of the Wen. In disarray, his chin shadowed, he was a blunt, snagged protrusion, another claw of Yiling. This, then. Who will the Wei Ying who bears the relaxed trim of a starting beard become?
Lan Wangji meets him even now, folding the cradle of his hands beneath Wei Ying's jar, not to capture and abduct the vessel, but to support it — a makeshift table, by any other name. If he cannot pour as hosts do, he will assist as a third-class attendant. Hanguang-Jun, the Patriarch's furniture. )
How has your son wronged you? ( A pause, sketched by metronomes. ) That you no longer decline wine for love of him.
( How has Lan Wangji slighted Wei Ying in poor, absent Sizhui's stead. )
( it's the dance of footwork, he thinks; an understanding of how two people watch each other, and he's used to the watching, to learning how to move and when to step shy or step close, when someone is pressed far enough, when it's too much. wei wuxian takes in the social politics and understands them, and throws away portions of them enough to suit himself.
arrogance, some called it. perhaps it was, once, but he knew their birthings, just as lan zhan did in the shadowed steps that followed a lifetime after he did his damndest to die. days spent kneeling, wrongs earned for being gifted, how smiles were a weapon and armour, the heat of the sun that burns and also has faces turning toward it like flowers covering a mountainside.
to be seen, to be necessary, to strive for a concept of justice for everyone, not just the lucky, the privileged few? oh, but to see beyond clans, that's the heart of it, isn't it? to claim him unfilial, and here, hah, it breaks and burns his heart when lan zhan joins him, when the swords settle across his soulmate's thighs and he knows what that promise is, more surely than anything else. cradled hands to support a jar that hardly needs it, and words poured in measure familiar, dripping down his face as the wine does, trickling through his forming beard.
it doesn't itch, but he feels it, and he smiles, letting the weight of the jar be lan zhan's, letting his hand break its familiar grip to skim down the bottle, to brush over lan zhan's hands, to fall away again, tugging at lan zhan's sleeve. )
Do you know why I drink, Lan Zhan?
( sizhui held like the jar, an excuse offered, when lan zhan's hands had poured full the gourd that spilled overfull past wei wuxian's lips, and it had not been good, it had not been lovely, but it had been something. it had been something, and failed, and familiar, and he wants his head to stop, silence itself for a while, not be caught in its endless musing and worries and everything else that was never supposed to make it past the smiles. )
( For the game of it, the anger. The quick and earnest numbing no opiate persists on hand to soften and slacken Wei Ying's senses, his tongue. For the habit of a lifetime, Yunmeng-learned. For want of alternative, driven to the ground like a chased fox. For want, for mourning.
Wind whips his cheek, and he barely raises his sleeve to curtain the attention from his face, from Wei Ying's. Throughout, his eyes lance this man, a face so writ in the familiar tones of bone peering beneath taut skin, the depth of endless dark sculpting his eyes as wandered rim. )
To still yourself.
( There is a mute, nervous energy that captures and captains Wei Ying like a frenzy, left unattended. An excess of yin, metabolised and manifested in the traditional faces of yang. If Lan Wangji were a healer —
But he only barters in bleeding and wounds and the cut of a deathless sword, only festers brother's condition with the petty complications of Wangji's own innumerable requests and exceptions. Angers Uncle, awes the sect. He is — selfish.
In this also, arm slipped down once more and his hands quiet, grasping Wei Ying's jar again. )
( His own hands, slick and sticky, shifting to leave Lan Zhan to cradle the jar, so that he can in turn consider his own hands, the weight of them, the unpleasantness of them now, but kinder to be coated in wine than the blood, the mud, the shadows they've been entangled with before. Presses his hands to Lan Zhan's, fingers teasing at weaving together, a mutual table to what? This isn't pleasure, but sometimes it is. Tonight it's the same ode to an old story, an older haunt of his frenzied mind.
Quiet, when he speaks, with a smile that haunts his lips like memory. )
For quiet, yes. My thoughts are always loud, Lan Zhan. Sometimes it's easier when I don't have to hear them quite so clearly.
( There is a fear he cannot assuage, but he considers it, cants his head as he studies Lan Zhan, rather than the jar of wine they hold in tandem, an offering to a shrine that doesn't exist. This is not a place of their ancestors. There are no ghosts to address, no honours to pay but in how they navigate around each other.
Faith. On some level, coming back around to faith. )
( And what else? But there is a weighted shameful burden in this, the knowing of man like the sectioning of air from his lungs, the rationing of breath. Wei Ying sees him — moon at his back, light lost and lingered. Sees through him: Lan Wangji, Lan Zhan, mere boy stabled before his mother's closed doors, knees stiffened in powdered snow. He did not know then, to kneel for true waiting — for hours and days, beholden to the corpse of the discipline whip.
But he would learn. His tongue's weighed down and slack, he will learn, how he will learn. )
You have great power you do not always exercise mindfully.
( To eviscerate men with words whispered and ghosts with breath, whistled. The Yiling Patriarch perished once, and what woke now from long slumber in the fluidity of Wei Ying's artless bones is a sophisticated revenant — power overwhelming, sharpened by wisdom, by the savage, animal understanding of its limitations. Strength, coupled with experience, preserved by learning.
Once, they toppled the Patriarch off a rooftop, with arrows and sword. Now, they could sooner tumble down the world. And Lan Wangji still reaches for him — to claim the wine jar, and sit it egregiously on the precipice of imbalance on roof tile. To walk his thumb, once, then again, over Wei Ying's knuckles, and knock their hard line once against the white mouth of his headband sigil. To set Wei Ying's hand down, fastidiously. A fool who does not understand has not earned his explanation. )
And I do not have... enough precious things. ( Only this: Sizhui, brother, the dark blade of Uncle's cutting, but once thawed glance. The concept of the silvered Cloud Recesses. The name his mother bore him to, the one his father elected him, through right of marriage. His sword, his guqin, two spirits bound to the greed of man. And beyond them, a massacre of illusory promises: — ) That I can afford you to treat one carelessly.
( it's within him to say, you know my trial, my difficulty in believing I am off anything precious. yet he doesn't need to feel it himself to hold his life precious, because it is precious to others. to trade one sort of existence for another, but he fits better into his skin now, enough to let his mind and tongue wander, to where they may flow. to patterns, to warm metal against thin veiled skin.
his fingers twitch, lift, hover without touching that same ribbon. the wine jar shudders where he won't, but doesn't spill, where he does, words uncaged on a night like this. apologies already ghosting between them, accepted without being vanquished. )
Why do you do that? With my hand, and your ribbon.
( his clan does not handfast, no, but the times he's touched that ribbon in recent memory have been from Lan Zhan's confusing panic, or when he himself was paper sealed and shifting. there's a meaning there, and decades old, one shared night of teasing gone poorly and orphan commiseration a nod to the fragility of memory, of loss where faces, voices fade, and nothing in the end stays.
his hand falls, and his fingers sketch lightly over the wood braced across Lan Zhan's thighs. settles over his soulmate's lap, fingers pressing down, remembering steel, fermenting promise. )
Without faith, I'm already lost, Lan Zhan. A lesson hard learned, and not survived the first time I bled heart's blood for it.
( his fingers pressing down, then sliding, encircling the breadth of the two swords layered. )
You're precious to me too.
( the following words left unsaid: And I'm used to losing what I hold precious. )
( Precious. Priceless. Quantified, qualified, shining. A glistened and gracious thing. A gift. How does it change Lan Wangji to be so contorted by a word, like the corners of wrapping paper, curled in and inhaling, in and out and in and out and learning to breathe and function in disfiguration? A wretched thing, to be as others make of you.
Tip of Wei Ying's blunt-blade nail, and there could be a hole in Lan Wangji, an unravelling. The world might pour from him, seep from his edges, the hungry milk moon teething at his lines. He feels white for his silk whites, for his erosion. The blankness of truth, staring back from the wrinkle, broken geometries of Wei Ying's plam in Wangji's hand, turned for soothsaying. Why do you do that — )
To soothe. ( Rasped, low and tectonic. Ill remembered. ) To ease.
( As with the rabbits, tickled sweet by lingered touch, the breeze of running fingers. Wangji tames them, coaxes them to comfort. Persuades himself now, fussing to collect Wei Ying's grasp from the leisurely stretch of the training swords to one battered hilt, to bite at the shape of it. )
Meet me in practice. ( Tomorrow, the week to come. Wake from this idle, confused sleep where the mind drenches in lethargy as if in opiates. ) You held a sword once. ( But not. Not here, not asked on a rooftop, with scents of smoke and crisp cold like calluses, bruising his lungs. He knows what this harkens to. ) I do not hunt my memories in your likeness. I see you.
( Not fraught, the shift of one grip for another, the swords for the hand that wields them. Not cut on their sharper edges, grinding against each other in rasping concerto, but finding the hollower spaces, near liminal, inbetween.
Soothing, and it does not soothe, not for him. Easing, and again, for whom? No fur to set to rights, but a different soothing, side by side, when warmth leeches from and into his hand, with words exchanged and the bottle set aside and left. Soothed in being worth gestures that are incomprehensible at first, at family, at acceptance in some forms, if not all.
By the words, I do not hunt my memories. To be seen, and not to hold the knife's edge of knowledge that cuts deep in hand, waiting for it to fall.
He gives his hand to Lan Zhan, and he smiles, lashes half lowered. )
I see you. ( Gaze raised, to meet Lan Zhan's eyes, dark and rich like the skies on new moons and the depths of waters and tree bark stark against white snow in winter, all things natural and immense and also seen by eyes with a sense of appreciation. )
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
And who are they, but the last strokes of deadened calligraphy, dust and dirt suckling from brush edges? Once, Lan Wangji vivisected himself, gut to marrow, gave this man more than Hanguang-Jun's honour — his pride. Under a moon like this, hungry and slow and the licks of her light, deep and knowing. Did he not, did he not? And he lived and mourned alone for it, a city nightless and its nightmares learned. He takes his seat, he knows, always — now — more netted in Wei Ying's gravitational pull than courtesy allows. Let the etiquettes bear it.
Beneath the ached press of Lan Wangji's palm, clay stretches and curls and tile tips glisten darkly of slate. The swords dip and nestle on his thighs, like temple offerings. Watch and wait and slant your eyes, and Lan Wangji is before the grandmaster again, he holds out the instruments of his discipline — but Wei Ying declines them. Drinks, and wet trickles down the bustling bristle of his fledgling dark, the fumbling but unflinched dusting of his beard.
A curious, but welcome experiment: Wei Ying lacking the nascent signs of facial hair was a boy of Gusu Lan schooling, a meddling weed stinging Wangji's fingertips. Cleanly shaven, a transgression against orthodoxy, fangs barely contained by a mean mouth bloodied with the spill of the Wen. In disarray, his chin shadowed, he was a blunt, snagged protrusion, another claw of Yiling. This, then. Who will the Wei Ying who bears the relaxed trim of a starting beard become?
Lan Wangji meets him even now, folding the cradle of his hands beneath Wei Ying's jar, not to capture and abduct the vessel, but to support it — a makeshift table, by any other name. If he cannot pour as hosts do, he will assist as a third-class attendant. Hanguang-Jun, the Patriarch's furniture. )
How has your son wronged you? ( A pause, sketched by metronomes. ) That you no longer decline wine for love of him.
( How has Lan Wangji slighted Wei Ying in poor, absent Sizhui's stead. )
no subject
arrogance, some called it. perhaps it was, once, but he knew their birthings, just as lan zhan did in the shadowed steps that followed a lifetime after he did his damndest to die. days spent kneeling, wrongs earned for being gifted, how smiles were a weapon and armour, the heat of the sun that burns and also has faces turning toward it like flowers covering a mountainside.
to be seen, to be necessary, to strive for a concept of justice for everyone, not just the lucky, the privileged few? oh, but to see beyond clans, that's the heart of it, isn't it? to claim him unfilial, and here, hah, it breaks and burns his heart when lan zhan joins him, when the swords settle across his soulmate's thighs and he knows what that promise is, more surely than anything else. cradled hands to support a jar that hardly needs it, and words poured in measure familiar, dripping down his face as the wine does, trickling through his forming beard.
it doesn't itch, but he feels it, and he smiles, letting the weight of the jar be lan zhan's, letting his hand break its familiar grip to skim down the bottle, to brush over lan zhan's hands, to fall away again, tugging at lan zhan's sleeve. )
Do you know why I drink, Lan Zhan?
( sizhui held like the jar, an excuse offered, when lan zhan's hands had poured full the gourd that spilled overfull past wei wuxian's lips, and it had not been good, it had not been lovely, but it had been something. it had been something, and failed, and familiar, and he wants his head to stop, silence itself for a while, not be caught in its endless musing and worries and everything else that was never supposed to make it past the smiles. )
no subject
Wind whips his cheek, and he barely raises his sleeve to curtain the attention from his face, from Wei Ying's. Throughout, his eyes lance this man, a face so writ in the familiar tones of bone peering beneath taut skin, the depth of endless dark sculpting his eyes as wandered rim. )
To still yourself.
( There is a mute, nervous energy that captures and captains Wei Ying like a frenzy, left unattended. An excess of yin, metabolised and manifested in the traditional faces of yang. If Lan Wangji were a healer —
But he only barters in bleeding and wounds and the cut of a deathless sword, only festers brother's condition with the petty complications of Wangji's own innumerable requests and exceptions. Angers Uncle, awes the sect. He is — selfish.
In this also, arm slipped down once more and his hands quiet, grasping Wei Ying's jar again. )
I fear you. I fear your stillness.
no subject
Quiet, when he speaks, with a smile that haunts his lips like memory. )
For quiet, yes. My thoughts are always loud, Lan Zhan. Sometimes it's easier when I don't have to hear them quite so clearly.
( There is a fear he cannot assuage, but he considers it, cants his head as he studies Lan Zhan, rather than the jar of wine they hold in tandem, an offering to a shrine that doesn't exist. This is not a place of their ancestors. There are no ghosts to address, no honours to pay but in how they navigate around each other.
Faith. On some level, coming back around to faith. )
Fear my loss?
no subject
But he would learn. His tongue's weighed down and slack, he will learn, how he will learn. )
You have great power you do not always exercise mindfully.
( To eviscerate men with words whispered and ghosts with breath, whistled. The Yiling Patriarch perished once, and what woke now from long slumber in the fluidity of Wei Ying's artless bones is a sophisticated revenant — power overwhelming, sharpened by wisdom, by the savage, animal understanding of its limitations. Strength, coupled with experience, preserved by learning.
Once, they toppled the Patriarch off a rooftop, with arrows and sword. Now, they could sooner tumble down the world. And Lan Wangji still reaches for him — to claim the wine jar, and sit it egregiously on the precipice of imbalance on roof tile. To walk his thumb, once, then again, over Wei Ying's knuckles, and knock their hard line once against the white mouth of his headband sigil. To set Wei Ying's hand down, fastidiously. A fool who does not understand has not earned his explanation. )
And I do not have... enough precious things. ( Only this: Sizhui, brother, the dark blade of Uncle's cutting, but once thawed glance. The concept of the silvered Cloud Recesses. The name his mother bore him to, the one his father elected him, through right of marriage. His sword, his guqin, two spirits bound to the greed of man. And beyond them, a massacre of illusory promises: — ) That I can afford you to treat one carelessly.
no subject
his fingers twitch, lift, hover without touching that same ribbon. the wine jar shudders where he won't, but doesn't spill, where he does, words uncaged on a night like this. apologies already ghosting between them, accepted without being vanquished. )
Why do you do that? With my hand, and your ribbon.
( his clan does not handfast, no, but the times he's touched that ribbon in recent memory have been from Lan Zhan's confusing panic, or when he himself was paper sealed and shifting. there's a meaning there, and decades old, one shared night of teasing gone poorly and orphan commiseration a nod to the fragility of memory, of loss where faces, voices fade, and nothing in the end stays.
his hand falls, and his fingers sketch lightly over the wood braced across Lan Zhan's thighs. settles over his soulmate's lap, fingers pressing down, remembering steel, fermenting promise. )
Without faith, I'm already lost, Lan Zhan. A lesson hard learned, and not survived the first time I bled heart's blood for it.
( his fingers pressing down, then sliding, encircling the breadth of the two swords layered. )
You're precious to me too.
( the following words left unsaid: And I'm used to losing what I hold precious. )
no subject
Tip of Wei Ying's blunt-blade nail, and there could be a hole in Lan Wangji, an unravelling. The world might pour from him, seep from his edges, the hungry milk moon teething at his lines. He feels white for his silk whites, for his erosion. The blankness of truth, staring back from the wrinkle, broken geometries of Wei Ying's plam in Wangji's hand, turned for soothsaying. Why do you do that — )
To soothe. ( Rasped, low and tectonic. Ill remembered. ) To ease.
( As with the rabbits, tickled sweet by lingered touch, the breeze of running fingers. Wangji tames them, coaxes them to comfort. Persuades himself now, fussing to collect Wei Ying's grasp from the leisurely stretch of the training swords to one battered hilt, to bite at the shape of it. )
Meet me in practice. ( Tomorrow, the week to come. Wake from this idle, confused sleep where the mind drenches in lethargy as if in opiates. ) You held a sword once. ( But not. Not here, not asked on a rooftop, with scents of smoke and crisp cold like calluses, bruising his lungs. He knows what this harkens to. ) I do not hunt my memories in your likeness. I see you.
no subject
Soothing, and it does not soothe, not for him. Easing, and again, for whom? No fur to set to rights, but a different soothing, side by side, when warmth leeches from and into his hand, with words exchanged and the bottle set aside and left. Soothed in being worth gestures that are incomprehensible at first, at family, at acceptance in some forms, if not all.
By the words, I do not hunt my memories. To be seen, and not to hold the knife's edge of knowledge that cuts deep in hand, waiting for it to fall.
He gives his hand to Lan Zhan, and he smiles, lashes half lowered. )
I see you. ( Gaze raised, to meet Lan Zhan's eyes, dark and rich like the skies on new moons and the depths of waters and tree bark stark against white snow in winter, all things natural and immense and also seen by eyes with a sense of appreciation. )
I'll find you. Come morning.