( Wei Ying drinks as children do, with lulls and gallops of his throat rattled by gulps, with twinkled eyes, with gusto. Effervescence suits Wei Ying, his temper like the cusp of wintered-spring that must have conceived him.
Lan Wangji, mouth crackled, drinks in the look of him hearty and hale and each day stronger like a fortress learning the flat and sharp edges of its stone, where the push becomes give in its defences. He grows like children do, like weeds and nightmares.
Medicines protect Wei Ying. The drink he teases conspires, through accrual, to soothe him from petty hurts, from the wind lashing his face and the scratched, treacle of rains that stoke to lick the deck like footsteps. )
Uncertain. ( Lan Wangji does not look away from the dark beam of Wei Ying's eyes, wonders foolishly when it learned to stab him. ) The half was spilled. Perhaps the full dosage was feared.
( And what is a lie? Only a moment of gasped anticipation, when truth bares itself as parchment paper: easily folded, corrupted by ink stain. Truth is not sacrosanct. What if Wei Ying showed more disciple in his drink now than every wasteful turn when he allowed his wine to bloom wet trails down his throat, the sharp-peaked jut of his collarbone?
A man who does not require Wei Ying to finish his drink may reward his restraint. Lan Wangji is not him — only nods at what lingers in his cup and steadies himself to complete the farce: )
( Hands over hands, layers of skin and bone and tendon thriving, thrumming with life, with separate and complimentary callouses, and the cup, clutched in the midst of them. He shifts closer, ever closer, inserting himself into the air that breathes against Lan Zhan's clothing, against the exposed flesh of his neck and face. The cup, their hands, cradled between them, holding something precious and yet dispensable for the needs of others, branching from their own. Perhaps reluctant: perhaps not.
Close, and he leans in, to the side, to speak by his cheek, for his ear. )
I devoured the pulp, Lan Zhan. My juice is yours, ah? I didn't fail to feast in the process of capturing the light.
( Close, too close. He knows the game, the dance steps Wei Ying strings with impunity. And skidding from his mouth — )
Shameless.
( — for he will not be a disciple yoked and paralysed by boyhood yearnings, print of Wei Ying's white hot heat a slap to his cheek, claws raking. There is an obdurate, animal childishness to Wei Ying, the gilded, cravenly temptation to feel out his liberties by straining against them. To push a few steps farther, past that point.
If Lan Wangji does not stand as a wall now, he will fissure later. He does not shield his gaze, does not withdraw first. Only, waves Wei Ying away once to signal an invitation for distance, then brings up the cup and partakes in soft, measured sips from the rim yet glistened by his husband's mouth. I do not fear you. )
Sweet. ( His mouth stitches on the tack of fruit. ) Tart. ( Refreshing, if he is lent to candour. But then, hands toiled for this gift, stretched and ached. He remembers: ) Thank you.
( A chuckle, body singing with the reverberation of an amusement that leaves his lashes lowered, and he nuzzles his nose against Lan Zhan's cheek even as he shifts back, grants the space requested. Shame is someone else's burden, and if it were either of theirs, they'd not be here now. Pressing liberties is a learning curve of allowance and acceptance, of what boundaries are firm, and which shift. If there were more eyes on them now, Wei Wuxian would opt for circumspection, but stolen moments with sunshine in hand and shadows keeping them from the busy eyes of the working crew are theirs if they claim them.
Distance, reintroduced, is as natural as breathing, inhale, step back, exhale, step back again. Lick lips in memory and unconscious mimic, blink without realising either, and smile, unprompted, for the words, and the open appreciation that isn't needed, it's not why, but is appreciated, as a lesson long learned. )
You're welcome. I'm glad my efforts were to taste.
( Now for a wink, then the shift to let hands fall away from cup, orange stains across them testimony to the process leading to the results of the here and now. )
( To taste, to measure, to quietly simmered appreciation. So far, they've played a game of fortress, each concession of kindness uneasily conquered. For days now, they've dallied with artless submission, walls downed, gates open and an invitation to pillage, cast like a gauntlet.
Under Wei Ying's scrutiny, he drinks in manicured gulps, easy. Finishes, and casts the cup gently aside to lean on the rail's thin perch that chatters like crone teeth. For a moment, light spearing down like white blight, when he thinks he should apologise for deeds misunderstood and words unspoken. I'm sorry, though he names no fault.
Warmth stains the bridge of Wei Ying's knuckles like hot burning. A coppered gold, blood dipped. )
Wei Ying. ( You need not retaliate for each gift with one in kind. He breathes in thin, reedy measures. Pivots, just as waters crest below and stab the ship's belly like a fusillade: ) What gifts do women favour?
( There is another kind of thirst, one that pools in his chest with a tightness that thrums along with his heartbeat. Something in what scant provisions he can offer, when he's as happy to take what's given freely, but has tempered that lean for the past year and a half with making his own way, finding his own gains.
Part of him, selfishly happy that, circumstances aside, this is a road they can share, share even with their son. Sizhui being on his mind as he watches Lan Zhan drink has him blinking, behind in understanding the question. Then hearing, and breathing out in a huff of laughter, shaking his head. )
Whatever they like, Lan Zhan. What woman are you thinking to gift?
( Salt on his lips, settling in ravines raked by edge of raw, exposed teeth. His canines should be sharp things, blood-thirsting. A killer's bite, jaw settled. He aches, suddenly, for metal in his nose, scraping his nostrils. Clawing the interstices of his body, where liquid and flesh have yet to accrue, and he breathes, alone with himself.
He does not know when he clutches Wei Ying's hand. It is, on impulse, unimportant. At sea, they co-exist less as intrusions of rattled intimacy, than simple, tolerated constants. A hand warm, but salt-leathered.
There was a question. Like the dove-greys of the unyielding sky, that question will persist. He drags Wei Ying's hand over the rail beneath his, with a trembled squeeze. )
Emilia. Allison. ( Strangers, but for the duress that has bound them, one and each and all. Beautiful, accomplished, strong. But their desires, their temperaments under circumstances that do not bind them to urgent need? He cannot speculate their wants. )
( He considers this answer, even as his skin pebbles, goosebumps painting his mostly hidden forearms, his chest, his back. The hairs at the small of his neck stand on end, and it's nothing, is a hand against wood, with a hand pressed down over the top.
The tremble, that works its way up his nerves, echoes in the chambers of his heart from beat to beat. A rattle in his chest, and it hurts, in a way he'd looked away from once.
Not again. His eyes study Lan Zhan's features in profile, drink in the planes of his face, where sharpened features are rounded by health and sleep is not settled as easily as it once was on him; where sly tendrils of hair seek a freedom Lan Zhan doesn't wish to allow them, and Wei Wuxian wants to drag his free hand up, tease another tendril free, a banner for flying on this cursed sea's winds. )
Were we who we are in our home, ( he says, with a smile that begs wry forgiveness for his roundabout means of accepting a bounty that was Lan Zhan's to give, when he held it: a prosperous clan, coffers filled from two decades away from the war that burned them bare; ) I would say items of elegance, of good use. Clothing with Lan charms, but in colours to their likings. Qiankun pouches rather than the ingenious sleeves you're known for. Practical, beautiful things, for another time and place.
( a smile that brightens into degrees of challenge, not to his husband, but to the world they claw their way through, the survival they seek. he presses his hand up under the weight of Lan Zhan's, as if to shift it off, but doesn't move even if he's granted that freedom: only turns his wrist, offers palm and splayed fingers, a meeting instead of a subjugation. here. )
Here, unless you've come into funds, I'd say elegant simplicity of the practical. Talismans, wards, charms. They aren't your sword arts, but you're no less gifted, and your calligraphy is art.
( practical, elegant. rich for a different means, if one is not here to spend funds that Wei Wuxian will need to rustle up: though he can. he will. he'll do what Lan Zhan needs him to do, and try not to run ragged, between his husband and their son and the adopted children who come, then go. )
( Our home: his brow lifts, the angle sharpens. The line of it a smear of ink, slanted. Four walls can burst from raked ground like teeth from bloodied gums. They stitch as one: either jailhouse or fortress. And come back to Cloud Recesses, but Wei Ying's gaze fell sharp and slithered on him, like strips of oak peeled off the tree's husk.
The diplomacy of 'home' never took root between them. When their stars align once more and the path to the jingshi reopens, Lan Wangji will take Wei Ying between his mother's walls and ask him to decide on which side of the door he will sit his padlock. Then, they will live there, because it is a place for sharing a lifetime. Or they will flee, because that lifetime is done. What difference, the space of a 'home'? Men define it.
He shifts, spread of Wei Ying's knuckles mountainous beneath the roof of his palm, and the pressure of it settles to prickle Wei Ying's fingers. He aches and warms to think that he supplies not pain but inconvenience — enough paltry discomfort to keep Wei Ying alive and alert and well. )
A gift of calligraphy unasked is arrogance.
( Careful, breezy. For a man to determine his skill is art is to slap the cheek of the heavens with his vanity. Others pay proclaim his craftsmanship. Lan Wangji alone cannot monetise it. Dusk and dust swallow the horizon. He watches it, watches himself, releases Wei Ying. )
Wei Ying. A gift also for mistress Wen. ( This was not the intent, the tone of conversation. Whim delivers him here. He does not falter. ) She shares a martyr's temperament. ( With you. ) A gift to remind her worth.
( Home is people, a state of mind. A perspective on the world, and he does not allow himself to think of this land they've wandered, fought through, shadow stepped within, as being home. He doesn't want to settle into that, even aware, long aware, that's he's already home.
In his own skin, on his own feet, he's home. To have Lan Zhan there, to have Sizhui within eye's reach, is a luxury, the warmth of a home expanded beyond the bounds of his own meagre skin.
He laughs, sharp and then trailing into a lasting chuckle, studying Lan Zhan's face even with his lips curled up at the corners, amusement dripping into the winds beyond them. No hand holding, again, but the press, and he wonders when Lan Zhan will stop expecting the moment he'll fly free to mean never returning. )
Your seals are beautiful, Lan Zhan, and those are useful. Each woman you speak of is both practical and deserving of elegance. Offer her silks, offer her slippers, offer her usable goods to keep in hand and defend those she cares for. Allison might cook. Wen Qing does, though you might give her ideas.
( Of medical decoctions they're doubtlessly perfect targets for, and more the wisdom of her temper and temperament to advise him in this. Still. He flexes his fingers under Lan Zhan's hand. )
Kindness. What she values most neither of us can give, beyond our staying hale and whole, and to... invite her to tea, Lan Zhan.
( Silks, slippers, the practicalities of life as forlorn fugitives. In a sect's home, among the higher echelons of cultivation, to grant a woman instruments of the kitchen is to insult the skill of her righteous path. A gift swiftly rerouted to the amorphous, invisible hand of her sophisticated cook.
He suspects there is an absence in him, ground raked and arid where Zewu-Jun's social graces bloomed. That the seed of strategic kindness never caught wet of prolific growth within him, the filigree light of paltry, sweet, pale lies broke under his touch, before it could spread the porous sickness of etiquette.
At their cores, women want as men do: satisfaction. The filling of a cup, a want of the body, yearning of the heart, aspiration of the mind. As age claims, legacy. Here, Lan Wangji can give none of these things. Worse, he cannot even simulate them. He cannot begin to think of the pleasure his futile attempts might bring. )
I lack warmth in kindness. ( Not kindness, he knows, has been told. Only the performance of it. The dogged, cloying saccharine ability to turn base truths into comfort. Children enjoy him, for his naked conversation appeals to the scope of their understanding. For grown men and women, he is — blunt-edged, a blade forged with tremulations. Crude.
Wei Ying tolerates his frayed edges. Covers them with laughter and his palatable manner, like Lan Wangji shields his hand. Beneath it, Wei Ying's fingers pulse, spasmodic — he clamps down, like tectonic plates latching. Then the edge of his mouth snags on a bolting smile: )
The Patriarch has an appetite for losing battles? ( If Wei Ying can parade the victory of his brute charm, why should Lan Wangji withhold the triumph of his brute strength? )
( Laughter, slow and rumbling in his chest, caught and captured by willing means and measures. He leans in, shoulder to shoulder, head turned to speak at Lan Zhan's cheek, breath warm against his cheek. The wind steals heat to temper its delivery, as it would devour the words exchanged, forever satisfied with its own capricious ways. )
The Patriarch has an appetite for Lan Zhan's embrace. Truly, how many times have I passed out and fell groundward to be spared injury to my head in your voluminous sleeves?
( His eyes drag down knowingly and pointedly to the drape of the sleeves Lan Zhan prefers even now, in the robes that Wei Wuxian has purchased or wheedled or have god-blessed cleanliness instilled upon. If strength is to be Lan Zhan's dancing bear, then he'll lean into it, as he leans heavier in degrees against Lan Zhan's side, leaving his hand trapped and pressed and anchored even while the swells of the water rock him into and then away from his husband. )
Your kindnesses are meant. They're not so cold as you think, Lan Zhan. We know men who draped themselves in warmth, and meant it like the banked fire that consumes the house whose hearth it lay within. Give what feels right. Ask what they wish. It's not shameful, that asking.
( A smile, smaller, softer, crinkle-eyed and pleased in a manner that harkened back to the melancholy that haunts him still with the memory of Jiang Yanli's loss. Of his role in it, of her sacrifice, unasked and unwarranted. )
You had no sister to show you fierce kindness in your youth. You learn your own in your prime instead.
( There is an instinct, in children, like that of water to fill out the stretches of space supplied to it, and of eclipses to consume the sun — to stretch themselves, thin and membranous, until their chokehold becomes a trembled latch, and the walls of their barriers, tested, have thinned down to stone root.
Wei Ying leans into him, warmth of him white fever against Lan Wangji's shoulder, and his proximity singes. You are afraid, he thinks, and so you exert yourself to stoke my fear first.
Only, Lan Wangji only grief known, a certainty sepulchral. Aversion of forced touch wells in him, but does not spill over. He finds in himself the precise balance where nausea turns into a fondness of the destructive sickness that reduces him. Where he can create himself by carving out negative space. )
Shhhhhhhhhh. ( Weak, ebbing. ) Softer pace. You spook your quarry.
( As if they partake of a night hunt, and Wei Ying is no better than the infant disciples learning the way of whispers and stolen steps, how to crowd prey without drawing up its defences. He turns, next time Wei Ying sways in, half meeting the dare, half heating it further. Withdraw, or see this done. )
I had — ( Stays himself, mouth raw, words rasped. Raked. ) Have a brother.
( A year apart, like stars divided. Even in seclusion, sect leader Lan Xichen could share half of a shi with his brother, each season. And now? What was that bend of metal, his warm mouth, how low did its arc deepen? Zewu-Jun, grinning like a spoiled cat. )
I did not know what it was to ache for him before. ( An arrogant assumption: that, to have shed one man as a limb for sixteen years would inure him to the loss of another. He has learned, to live is to learn. Why must he always be the one to live — unnecessary. His hand stings, flinches away from Wei Ying's. )
( he laughs, in the quiet, rumbling way that ensures the sound won't carry beyond them, beyond the wind that swallows their words as they eddy past, a shoal in the middle of this sea. checks his leaning, shifts his balance, in subtle degrees.
testing boundaries, forever testing. only sleep truly strips him of all pretense, leads to the totality of collapse, the full awareness of impinging and the failure to rein himself in. he'd known the shape of the people around him once.
he learns their shapes now, this shifted landscape. Lan Zhan wins this dare, even before he lets go, leaves Wei Wuxian's hand clutching the railing without the heat pressed down above it, callouses across his knuckles, remembering. )
It's... not an enjoyable sensation.
( said softly, eyes trailed down, away, to the ghost of a hand over his own. not literal, thankful as he is in passing for that truth, but the ghosts conjured by the pathways they're conversing down ache in his chest. a heartbeat gone heavy, gone wrong. )
For the aches in his heart even before this, he'll have the joy of your reunion, and you the same.
( he does not let go of the railing, does not lift a hand to brush against a sleeve, to offer that as consolation, as truth that changes nothing but the way of returning to a familial whole later on. whatever their differences, lan zhan and lan xichen will walk their paths in view of each other, reaching across to each other.
there's a beauty in that, a strength, and a depth of affection not yet shattered by the world. one he hopes never shall be.
he clears his throat, edges away from the oncoming storm, and allows his eyes to close even as he smiles, thinks of the half finished conversations with jiang cheng, thinks of two foxes curled up in the mud under the rain-laden leaves, of a golden core and an emptiness that would have been guaranteed even without the sacrifice that left his vessel empty before the war found a way to break it twice. )
Anyway, I remember, there was something I was going to do.
( whatever it was, but not recalled, time to go, to move, to... open his eyes and stare across a leaden sea, with its roiling death tucked neatly beneath the waves. )
Would you like more on the morrow? I thought to bring some to Sizhui, too.
( the orange juice. liquid offering, sunshine held where the clouds hold captive the one that burned. )
( ...and will he have that joy, breathe the same air as his blood brother in reunion? He thinks, at times — now, vantage distorted — he remembers white-blinding glimpses of Zewu-Jun, but not the brush strokes of him in his totality. That treacherous rabbiting thing, his heart, quakes and limps and thunders over the possibility that one day, soon, oh so soon, close — he will shutter his eyes and his brother will be strange, snow-buried ambiguity.
What was the look of his mother, her features, her nature?
She comes to him, a gift of fading inks, watered. Her silhouette, rain and spatters and the chalk of her footsteps, the haze that consumed them. What would he give, to gain her again? A child's hands barely fit the rim of her robes. A man's, grown —
Gaze trailed after Wei Ying, before he drifts two fingers bound to his mouth, then sets them on the mounds and crevices of Wei Ying's knuckles, in passing. )
I beg your hands' ruin. Sketch him for me. As you remember him.
( Distant, diffuse, blurred lines untethered and dissolved beneath the lens of Wei Ying's fogged memory. Lan Wangji knows the risks, the scope of his request: Wei Ying, who never knew his brother past title or gain of sanctuary at Cloud Recesses, Wei Ying whose memory runs pale, Wei Ying whose goodness so often stretches his resources. Wei Ying, who won't refuse him now, with his mouth small and downturned and unkissed bruised, and so Lan Wangji dismisses him before he must accept: )
( Adrift, but in the certainty of one with a rudder and means to direct the boat set upon the waves. Wei Wuxian studies Lan Zhan, for a moment asking himself to see... and seeing, in turn, what leads him to a momentary pause.
No jest in this moment, the peculiarity of his memory one that is ruthlessly logical, excising what doesn't matter to him because there's too much on his mind that does matter, that he wishes to focus on. Slicing away the worst of times so only the dregs of his unconscious recall them, because lingering in dark spaces has happened enough in his life through circumstances beyond his immediate fixing that he doesn't care to carve any more shadows into his heart or mind.
Dismissed, and there, his fingers anointed linger, a tug at Lan Zhan's sleeve, just the once. I will, he doesn't need to say, and he smiles with a softer edge of years long exhaustive understanding, for things he'd never allowed himself, images too caught in his own head. Sketching forward, not sketching memories of what remained, or what had been. )
Until later, Lan Zhan.
( Now, for his son: now, for the subtle sweep of searching out a space and time to put to paper the images of what Lan Xichen is in his mind, built past the shattering of his faith in the temple, in the moment where Lan Xichen would have died as readily as Wei Wuxian once had, for a loss he couldn't quantify. )
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Lan Wangji, mouth crackled, drinks in the look of him hearty and hale and each day stronger like a fortress learning the flat and sharp edges of its stone, where the push becomes give in its defences. He grows like children do, like weeds and nightmares.
Medicines protect Wei Ying. The drink he teases conspires, through accrual, to soothe him from petty hurts, from the wind lashing his face and the scratched, treacle of rains that stoke to lick the deck like footsteps. )
Uncertain. ( Lan Wangji does not look away from the dark beam of Wei Ying's eyes, wonders foolishly when it learned to stab him. ) The half was spilled. Perhaps the full dosage was feared.
( And what is a lie? Only a moment of gasped anticipation, when truth bares itself as parchment paper: easily folded, corrupted by ink stain. Truth is not sacrosanct. What if Wei Ying showed more disciple in his drink now than every wasteful turn when he allowed his wine to bloom wet trails down his throat, the sharp-peaked jut of his collarbone?
A man who does not require Wei Ying to finish his drink may reward his restraint. Lan Wangji is not him — only nods at what lingers in his cup and steadies himself to complete the farce: )
Again.
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Close, and he leans in, to the side, to speak by his cheek, for his ear. )
I devoured the pulp, Lan Zhan. My juice is yours, ah? I didn't fail to feast in the process of capturing the light.
( Hanguang-jun. )
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Shameless.
( — for he will not be a disciple yoked and paralysed by boyhood yearnings, print of Wei Ying's white hot heat a slap to his cheek, claws raking. There is an obdurate, animal childishness to Wei Ying, the gilded, cravenly temptation to feel out his liberties by straining against them. To push a few steps farther, past that point.
If Lan Wangji does not stand as a wall now, he will fissure later. He does not shield his gaze, does not withdraw first. Only, waves Wei Ying away once to signal an invitation for distance, then brings up the cup and partakes in soft, measured sips from the rim yet glistened by his husband's mouth. I do not fear you. )
Sweet. ( His mouth stitches on the tack of fruit. ) Tart. ( Refreshing, if he is lent to candour. But then, hands toiled for this gift, stretched and ached. He remembers: ) Thank you.
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Distance, reintroduced, is as natural as breathing, inhale, step back, exhale, step back again. Lick lips in memory and unconscious mimic, blink without realising either, and smile, unprompted, for the words, and the open appreciation that isn't needed, it's not why, but is appreciated, as a lesson long learned. )
You're welcome. I'm glad my efforts were to taste.
( Now for a wink, then the shift to let hands fall away from cup, orange stains across them testimony to the process leading to the results of the here and now. )
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Under Wei Ying's scrutiny, he drinks in manicured gulps, easy. Finishes, and casts the cup gently aside to lean on the rail's thin perch that chatters like crone teeth. For a moment, light spearing down like white blight, when he thinks he should apologise for deeds misunderstood and words unspoken. I'm sorry, though he names no fault.
Warmth stains the bridge of Wei Ying's knuckles like hot burning. A coppered gold, blood dipped. )
Wei Ying. ( You need not retaliate for each gift with one in kind. He breathes in thin, reedy measures. Pivots, just as waters crest below and stab the ship's belly like a fusillade: ) What gifts do women favour?
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Part of him, selfishly happy that, circumstances aside, this is a road they can share, share even with their son. Sizhui being on his mind as he watches Lan Zhan drink has him blinking, behind in understanding the question. Then hearing, and breathing out in a huff of laughter, shaking his head. )
Whatever they like, Lan Zhan. What woman are you thinking to gift?
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He does not know when he clutches Wei Ying's hand. It is, on impulse, unimportant. At sea, they co-exist less as intrusions of rattled intimacy, than simple, tolerated constants. A hand warm, but salt-leathered.
There was a question. Like the dove-greys of the unyielding sky, that question will persist. He drags Wei Ying's hand over the rail beneath his, with a trembled squeeze. )
Emilia. Allison. ( Strangers, but for the duress that has bound them, one and each and all. Beautiful, accomplished, strong. But their desires, their temperaments under circumstances that do not bind them to urgent need? He cannot speculate their wants. )
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The tremble, that works its way up his nerves, echoes in the chambers of his heart from beat to beat. A rattle in his chest, and it hurts, in a way he'd looked away from once.
Not again. His eyes study Lan Zhan's features in profile, drink in the planes of his face, where sharpened features are rounded by health and sleep is not settled as easily as it once was on him; where sly tendrils of hair seek a freedom Lan Zhan doesn't wish to allow them, and Wei Wuxian wants to drag his free hand up, tease another tendril free, a banner for flying on this cursed sea's winds. )
Were we who we are in our home, ( he says, with a smile that begs wry forgiveness for his roundabout means of accepting a bounty that was Lan Zhan's to give, when he held it: a prosperous clan, coffers filled from two decades away from the war that burned them bare; ) I would say items of elegance, of good use. Clothing with Lan charms, but in colours to their likings. Qiankun pouches rather than the ingenious sleeves you're known for. Practical, beautiful things, for another time and place.
( a smile that brightens into degrees of challenge, not to his husband, but to the world they claw their way through, the survival they seek. he presses his hand up under the weight of Lan Zhan's, as if to shift it off, but doesn't move even if he's granted that freedom: only turns his wrist, offers palm and splayed fingers, a meeting instead of a subjugation. here. )
Here, unless you've come into funds, I'd say elegant simplicity of the practical. Talismans, wards, charms. They aren't your sword arts, but you're no less gifted, and your calligraphy is art.
( practical, elegant. rich for a different means, if one is not here to spend funds that Wei Wuxian will need to rustle up: though he can. he will. he'll do what Lan Zhan needs him to do, and try not to run ragged, between his husband and their son and the adopted children who come, then go. )
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The diplomacy of 'home' never took root between them. When their stars align once more and the path to the jingshi reopens, Lan Wangji will take Wei Ying between his mother's walls and ask him to decide on which side of the door he will sit his padlock. Then, they will live there, because it is a place for sharing a lifetime. Or they will flee, because that lifetime is done. What difference, the space of a 'home'? Men define it.
He shifts, spread of Wei Ying's knuckles mountainous beneath the roof of his palm, and the pressure of it settles to prickle Wei Ying's fingers. He aches and warms to think that he supplies not pain but inconvenience — enough paltry discomfort to keep Wei Ying alive and alert and well. )
A gift of calligraphy unasked is arrogance.
( Careful, breezy. For a man to determine his skill is art is to slap the cheek of the heavens with his vanity. Others pay proclaim his craftsmanship. Lan Wangji alone cannot monetise it. Dusk and dust swallow the horizon. He watches it, watches himself, releases Wei Ying. )
Wei Ying. A gift also for mistress Wen. ( This was not the intent, the tone of conversation. Whim delivers him here. He does not falter. ) She shares a martyr's temperament. ( With you. ) A gift to remind her worth.
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In his own skin, on his own feet, he's home. To have Lan Zhan there, to have Sizhui within eye's reach, is a luxury, the warmth of a home expanded beyond the bounds of his own meagre skin.
He laughs, sharp and then trailing into a lasting chuckle, studying Lan Zhan's face even with his lips curled up at the corners, amusement dripping into the winds beyond them. No hand holding, again, but the press, and he wonders when Lan Zhan will stop expecting the moment he'll fly free to mean never returning. )
Your seals are beautiful, Lan Zhan, and those are useful. Each woman you speak of is both practical and deserving of elegance. Offer her silks, offer her slippers, offer her usable goods to keep in hand and defend those she cares for. Allison might cook. Wen Qing does, though you might give her ideas.
( Of medical decoctions they're doubtlessly perfect targets for, and more the wisdom of her temper and temperament to advise him in this. Still. He flexes his fingers under Lan Zhan's hand. )
Kindness. What she values most neither of us can give, beyond our staying hale and whole, and to... invite her to tea, Lan Zhan.
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He suspects there is an absence in him, ground raked and arid where Zewu-Jun's social graces bloomed. That the seed of strategic kindness never caught wet of prolific growth within him, the filigree light of paltry, sweet, pale lies broke under his touch, before it could spread the porous sickness of etiquette.
At their cores, women want as men do: satisfaction. The filling of a cup, a want of the body, yearning of the heart, aspiration of the mind. As age claims, legacy. Here, Lan Wangji can give none of these things. Worse, he cannot even simulate them. He cannot begin to think of the pleasure his futile attempts might bring. )
I lack warmth in kindness. ( Not kindness, he knows, has been told. Only the performance of it. The dogged, cloying saccharine ability to turn base truths into comfort. Children enjoy him, for his naked conversation appeals to the scope of their understanding. For grown men and women, he is — blunt-edged, a blade forged with tremulations. Crude.
Wei Ying tolerates his frayed edges. Covers them with laughter and his palatable manner, like Lan Wangji shields his hand. Beneath it, Wei Ying's fingers pulse, spasmodic — he clamps down, like tectonic plates latching. Then the edge of his mouth snags on a bolting smile: )
The Patriarch has an appetite for losing battles? ( If Wei Ying can parade the victory of his brute charm, why should Lan Wangji withhold the triumph of his brute strength? )
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The Patriarch has an appetite for Lan Zhan's embrace. Truly, how many times have I passed out and fell groundward to be spared injury to my head in your voluminous sleeves?
( His eyes drag down knowingly and pointedly to the drape of the sleeves Lan Zhan prefers even now, in the robes that Wei Wuxian has purchased or wheedled or have god-blessed cleanliness instilled upon. If strength is to be Lan Zhan's dancing bear, then he'll lean into it, as he leans heavier in degrees against Lan Zhan's side, leaving his hand trapped and pressed and anchored even while the swells of the water rock him into and then away from his husband. )
Your kindnesses are meant. They're not so cold as you think, Lan Zhan. We know men who draped themselves in warmth, and meant it like the banked fire that consumes the house whose hearth it lay within. Give what feels right. Ask what they wish. It's not shameful, that asking.
( A smile, smaller, softer, crinkle-eyed and pleased in a manner that harkened back to the melancholy that haunts him still with the memory of Jiang Yanli's loss. Of his role in it, of her sacrifice, unasked and unwarranted. )
You had no sister to show you fierce kindness in your youth. You learn your own in your prime instead.
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Wei Ying leans into him, warmth of him white fever against Lan Wangji's shoulder, and his proximity singes. You are afraid, he thinks, and so you exert yourself to stoke my fear first.
Only, Lan Wangji only grief known, a certainty sepulchral. Aversion of forced touch wells in him, but does not spill over. He finds in himself the precise balance where nausea turns into a fondness of the destructive sickness that reduces him. Where he can create himself by carving out negative space. )
Shhhhhhhhhh. ( Weak, ebbing. ) Softer pace. You spook your quarry.
( As if they partake of a night hunt, and Wei Ying is no better than the infant disciples learning the way of whispers and stolen steps, how to crowd prey without drawing up its defences. He turns, next time Wei Ying sways in, half meeting the dare, half heating it further. Withdraw, or see this done. )
I had — ( Stays himself, mouth raw, words rasped. Raked. ) Have a brother.
( A year apart, like stars divided. Even in seclusion, sect leader Lan Xichen could share half of a shi with his brother, each season. And now? What was that bend of metal, his warm mouth, how low did its arc deepen? Zewu-Jun, grinning like a spoiled cat. )
I did not know what it was to ache for him before. ( An arrogant assumption: that, to have shed one man as a limb for sixteen years would inure him to the loss of another. He has learned, to live is to learn. Why must he always be the one to live — unnecessary. His hand stings, flinches away from Wei Ying's. )
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testing boundaries, forever testing. only sleep truly strips him of all pretense, leads to the totality of collapse, the full awareness of impinging and the failure to rein himself in. he'd known the shape of the people around him once.
he learns their shapes now, this shifted landscape. Lan Zhan wins this dare, even before he lets go, leaves Wei Wuxian's hand clutching the railing without the heat pressed down above it, callouses across his knuckles, remembering. )
It's... not an enjoyable sensation.
( said softly, eyes trailed down, away, to the ghost of a hand over his own. not literal, thankful as he is in passing for that truth, but the ghosts conjured by the pathways they're conversing down ache in his chest. a heartbeat gone heavy, gone wrong. )
For the aches in his heart even before this, he'll have the joy of your reunion, and you the same.
( he does not let go of the railing, does not lift a hand to brush against a sleeve, to offer that as consolation, as truth that changes nothing but the way of returning to a familial whole later on. whatever their differences, lan zhan and lan xichen will walk their paths in view of each other, reaching across to each other.
there's a beauty in that, a strength, and a depth of affection not yet shattered by the world. one he hopes never shall be.
he clears his throat, edges away from the oncoming storm, and allows his eyes to close even as he smiles, thinks of the half finished conversations with jiang cheng, thinks of two foxes curled up in the mud under the rain-laden leaves, of a golden core and an emptiness that would have been guaranteed even without the sacrifice that left his vessel empty before the war found a way to break it twice. )
Anyway, I remember, there was something I was going to do.
( whatever it was, but not recalled, time to go, to move, to... open his eyes and stare across a leaden sea, with its roiling death tucked neatly beneath the waves. )
Would you like more on the morrow? I thought to bring some to Sizhui, too.
( the orange juice. liquid offering, sunshine held where the clouds hold captive the one that burned. )
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What was the look of his mother, her features, her nature?
She comes to him, a gift of fading inks, watered. Her silhouette, rain and spatters and the chalk of her footsteps, the haze that consumed them. What would he give, to gain her again? A child's hands barely fit the rim of her robes. A man's, grown —
Gaze trailed after Wei Ying, before he drifts two fingers bound to his mouth, then sets them on the mounds and crevices of Wei Ying's knuckles, in passing. )
I beg your hands' ruin. Sketch him for me. As you remember him.
( Distant, diffuse, blurred lines untethered and dissolved beneath the lens of Wei Ying's fogged memory. Lan Wangji knows the risks, the scope of his request: Wei Ying, who never knew his brother past title or gain of sanctuary at Cloud Recesses, Wei Ying whose memory runs pale, Wei Ying whose goodness so often stretches his resources. Wei Ying, who won't refuse him now, with his mouth small and downturned and unkissed bruised, and so Lan Wangji dismisses him before he must accept: )
Go. To Sizhui. Go.
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No jest in this moment, the peculiarity of his memory one that is ruthlessly logical, excising what doesn't matter to him because there's too much on his mind that does matter, that he wishes to focus on. Slicing away the worst of times so only the dregs of his unconscious recall them, because lingering in dark spaces has happened enough in his life through circumstances beyond his immediate fixing that he doesn't care to carve any more shadows into his heart or mind.
Dismissed, and there, his fingers anointed linger, a tug at Lan Zhan's sleeve, just the once. I will, he doesn't need to say, and he smiles with a softer edge of years long exhaustive understanding, for things he'd never allowed himself, images too caught in his own head. Sketching forward, not sketching memories of what remained, or what had been. )
Until later, Lan Zhan.
( Now, for his son: now, for the subtle sweep of searching out a space and time to put to paper the images of what Lan Xichen is in his mind, built past the shattering of his faith in the temple, in the moment where Lan Xichen would have died as readily as Wei Wuxian once had, for a loss he couldn't quantify. )