( as in the challenge is. all that meant is now he's very nonchalantly hunting after his husband, so.
there's his excellence.
his yunmeng heritage coming out.
wei wuxian is on the prowl while also listening to the word on what's happened with prassenze, concerns about the storms, and oh, the thievery that's gone down, meaning yes he's distracted, but he's going to find Lan Zhan in spite of all the other new information he's taking in. )
( Excuse, master Wei, the gentleman who takes cover solace in the company of two singularly pointy-nosed, chinned and fingered elderly dames, who are having the slow and measured time of their lives answering his questions.
Discovering the whereabouts of a missing bride is a fine and honourable endeavour, worth neglecting one's husband over, until spidey senses tingle, hair climbs Wangji's nape, and he turns all at once — feeling hunted. )
...good morning. ( Kindly, do not skin him, O Scorned Conjugal One, your nose looks — adequate in perfect dark. )
( the badge of Lan Zhan's morning transgression is a red, swollen tip of his nose, comic cross between an insect sting and the rawness of a winter suns burning. it brings the comical drawings of the Yiling Patriarch to mind, the decades of heavy drinking that Wei Wuxian did not have opportunity to engage in. if his eyes were less clear, if they were more red than gently shadowed, if he were not, hah, freshly shaved, the comedy might have played out to a different extent. instead of looks the young man stung and swollen, unfortunate what it does to that pretty face, and:
his patience, such as he has it, set gently, deliberately, finally aside. he smiles, but he's not looking at either esteemed woman, graced with the lines of their years while every woman in his life and in his husband's has only met too early graves. age is venerated, respected, and utterly ignored as he steps close, sliding into his husband's space with only courtesy paid in passing to his companions. fingers of each hand skim the sides of Lan Zhan's neck, his inexorable tenderness a spring flood bearing down a box canyon.
fingertips hook and hold, catching at loose hair at the base of Lan Zhan's skull, anchoring there when his thumbs frame either side of Lan Zhan's face, aimed to hold him steady, hold him true, for the canted angle of Wei Wuxian's descent, lashes that close like a sigh when lips meet lips, chapped and imperfect. yet it's the parting of those same lips, the heat of exhalation and a tongue that lathes over Lan Zhan's mouth in request, the small sound caught in the back of his throat if he's allowed entry, if the kiss deepens, that leaves him lingering, forming himself to the curves of Lan Zhan's hard planes, content.
and the deliberate disregard for the commentary, the surprise, of the older women in their prestigious, ponderous daze, oh, he thinks nothing of it, even when the kiss finds a conclusion, when his head pulls back without the rest of him deciding to retreat. what he does find are words at perfect conversational volume. )
You forgot to give me a good morning kiss.
( and one of the two women, hearing this, cackles into an unconvincing cough, behind her raised, tremoring hand. )
( One heartbeat: he sits lone, courteous, a man of dignity, honour and obligations.
The next: Wei Ying attacks him, mouth feral and burgeoned greed, the fire of him a torch calling banners, all consuming. If Wuxian, born Wei, were sired in a leading sect, he might have ruled hillside and valleys, made nest over cradles of bones. Instead, a servant's son, thorn in Yu Ziyuan's throat, the soft of her belly.
He consumes Lan Wangji, piece, particle. Warmth of him incadescent, a hard burn. A woman draws her voice thick. Another coughs. The third murmurs, There, there, easy. Then Wei Ying relinquishes him, and Wangji's arm fetters his waist on instinct, draws him in, their foreheads a tight collision. Dust dancing long and slow like winter's plays. )
I did not. ( Whispered, as if there has been a moment since they've ventured in these hungering lands that they have ever been alone. As if they may have this — as if a woman does not bemoan the scandal already — and Wangji pulls away, taut. )
My husband has come for his ribbon. ( This, to their audience. He starts, carefully, to peel it from his own forehead. )
( The tidal pull of Lan Zhan's step back is what draws Wei Wuxian along even still, arms a slow slide from his husband's neck to slide momentary and deliberate down the front of his near immaculate robes. He ever means to rule little beyond himself and command the safety, the unhunted happiness, of those he calls his own, but the call down from the hills in this pursuit is one where his husband denies himself as much out of petulance for outside interruptions as it is simplicity of responding with you cannot take what isn't there to give to a world that remains unmoved.
He watches, dark eyes hawk-sharp and softening only as Lan Zhan's hands slide along silk, as the ribbon is coaxed free of its home tangled into the weave of Lan Zhan's hair. The fall and catch of his breath in as Lan Zhan's ribbon slides free, and he tugs at his husband's waistband, forward, onward, where are you fleeing to now? )
And his husband.
( To the gasp of the same voice, the scandal, hushed by another older woman's strident tones, hardly can be if they're married, Edith as their voices rise and fall, white noise to his enduring preoccupation.
He is a parched landscape; he is Yiling, dormant but living in its duress; he is the shrieking need beneath the limitations of his flesh; he is the spark, and tinder, and kinder than the easy conflagration he might otherwise command. What he wants is not to kneel before the unconcerned whims of the world. If he kneels, let it be willing. Let it be before no man other than the one before him now, or let it be a different prostration, before those he holds as family, were he to beg a forgiveness that stirs no heat within, only heartbreak. )
If he's willing.
( Challenge laid out, wrist raised, for the binding: he goes not easy or simply into the morning's stretching hours, beckoning for his wants, his wishes, and his husband's frustrated sharing, the tide creeping back in around their feet. Too ready, to easy, to be swept away. )
( Cornered, like a hunted thing, entrapped. To look upon Wei Ying, skin and bones and cartilage, threadbare and crumbled — he might appear the lesser between them, the likely victim of Lan Wangji's pursuit. But then he drags his hand over his husband's waistband, voice sibilant. He entreats. He conquers.
And the world is only Wei Ying's to own, after all.
The women, coo or croak or simply fill out the negative spaces between them with sound, so that nothing will presume to part them. This is too private a moment for spectators — beyond the subject of intimacy, the velvety, heavy weight of Wangji's own tenuous rejection. )
He is willing. ( Conciliatory, calm. His brother's voice, woefully repurposed. Zewu-Jun would not approve. Zewu-Jun need never learn that Lan Wangji's diplomatic debut safeguards his chastity. ) But, stand with justice. No regrets.
( The pledge of a lifetime passed, haunting the halls of their frustrations. The man Wei Ying became bled out for the principles of the boy who created him. )
We cannot gladden, while two young spouses are parted. ( For all that Firo and Prassenze are both strange and strangers, ephemeral silhouettes who would not have spared a thought for Lan Wangji or Wei Ying, a few days prior. He knows this much: that Wei Ying's righteousness is shared by few. ) After we reunite them.
( This isn't justice, though it is mystery, though it is person struggling with themselves in isolation, wishing to be just so, more than enough, and losing track of what that really means along the way. He's not worried about her in a deep sense, only worried she'll make things harder for herself, but congratulations! People do that all the time. If they're clever enough, they learn better. If they're sly enough, they learn worse. )
Will you whisper in her ear to stand strong and proud and bared before her spouse? Seen for every unlovely part of herself, along with the beloved?
( These words to breathe between them, steady as the beating of twin hearts matched in purpose. Thin veneer of it, and he's not a careless man, but he is a care worn one, and he plucks his husband's ribbon, shifts back, idly runs the back of his other hand across his abused nose, blinking in mild startled recollection of it's painful sufferance. )
The injustice isn't in the running. It's in the costs everyone else paid, ah? So why did it feel necessary, why the trying again and again for something perfect, when life isn't perfect, it's glorious and lived in each flawed, vibrant moment?
( Wrapping that ribbon around his arm, and bracing, a man readied and prepared for certain kinds of interpersonal war.
He speaks of the lady spouses. Doesn't he? He speaks of himself and Lan Zhan also. Doesn't he? )
( Life is not perfect. One woman, her faults bare, suffices. Two lovers may meet in transparency, honesty, equal footing.
Wei Ying, who speaks once more as men of fables do, the characters of plays where righteousness always paves the path to a happy, earned ending. Who has not learned from his misfortunes to doubt, to condemn, to mislead. To question.
No more running?
One of the women, hand to her mouth, sketches jarring cuts of gossiping sound, I wonder if they chase each other in their bedding compartment. Claudia, is that what we heard last night —
And he binds their hands and tugs once, the swing staggered, less to incentivise Wei Ying to merrymaking than to signal his presence, his persistence. He has heard. He will linger. He will agree. )
This life or the next. ( Whoever may stumble or arrive at new existence. ) Where you lead, I will follow.
( Whatever rooftop or theatre stage of tragically endeared little old ladies, now grinning defyingly at each other. )
( He listens, tugged forward and stepping light with it, before he grins, a sun's unveiling after night. There may come a day where they stop making vows in inopportune moments, where time sides with them, where the perfection of temporary harmony surrounds them in a soft, effervescent glow. That day is not this day, but he's happy as he says: )
This life or the next, we'll stand side by side.
( Then set himself to whirling around, not so much forgetting their newly bound wrists as having turned into it, having made it part of the daily expectations that anchor him as surely as he'd once intended to anchor Lan Zhan. The bound ribbon brings him up short, their hands reaching out to each other without holding, and he laughs, low and under his breath, when he reaches back for Lan Zhan's hand to press palm to palm, to twine fingers with fingers, and tug him more firmly, happily along. )
With wanting to find where she's hidden herself, ah, has she not left behind a trail? The lot of our group is looking, but I do know what her face looks like. If we go compartment to compartment...!
( Unambiguously, Lan Wangji at his side, two ghosts chasing, wisps of silken white dancing a long shadow in the wake of rushed steps. Discretion becomes them, but not the game of discovery: the woman Prassenze eludes them at every turn, like smoke distant from fire — fleetingly within reach, only to withhold herself resolutely at the last moment.
Lan Wangji does not name their quest done, their time wasted. Only, after walking an eighth compartment, tinkers enough with possibilities, to think — to stay Wei Ying, hand to the pleasant curve of his back: )
If... ( It aches him to speak the words, unstitches his mouth and leaves whispers of hurt in the wake of mere suggestion. ) ...they are not soulmates?
( If Prassenze merely discovered her wife unworthy too late to change her wedding's course, or if sentiments shifted and escape was the only recourse? If this woman saw her fate written bloody and large, and did not wish herself among the brushstrokes of this picture? )
( He leans in, leans against, comes close to draping himself on his husband without ever quite making it to legitimate draping, because these sly glimpses in shifting faces of the milling crowds of the train's carriage are both fascinating and the mild kind of frustrating that'd appreciate the solution here being along the lines of a less slippery Prassenze. It is not, however, and so he clucks his tongue against the back of his teeth while they observe, until Lan Zhan's slow, thoughtful, horrified question makes its way past his lips.
His rather lovely lips. It's unfair, they never seem to chap as much as Wei Wuxian's does. He wonders why. An idle thought to pair with the question posed. He turns his head, speaking low for his husband to hear, forsaking the study of crowd and hiding young wife in favour of his not as young husband, in their equally young matrimony. )
That only occurred to you now?
( He blinks slow and thoughtful, then drapes more, pressing a kiss to... the top of one ear. Oh, to be of enough a height that nothing is sacred or out of reach. It's a stolen moment, no eyes particularly on them with where they are, Wei Wuxian indulging because he's able to do so with full knowledge that Lan Zhan isn't turning away from him.
It's delightful, delicious, devastating, to be wanted beyond reason. Even if they're equally frustrated youths when it comes to doing anything about it.
He grins, both at his wandering thoughts, and a lack of concern over Lan Zhan's sudden realisation that they're meddling. )
I trust they'll make their own way forward through this muddle they're in, together or on separate pathways. Being soulmates, ( he says, fondness softening his tone, gravity lending it weight; ) doesn't prevent people from eluding with purpose. For all sorts of reasons, real and otherwise. The only way we'll know is asking, ah?
( The quirk of his brows as he studies Lan Zhan's face, a little too fascinated, a little less intense than those times where he needs confirmation from him. Here, he's curious, he's observing, and he's... glancing away to catch sight of a familiar face for the brief instance before it's swallowed up by the crowd again and he sighs. )
There she goes again.
( With a groan, his head comes to descend and rest upon Lan Zhan's shoulder, along with more of his leaning weight. Oh, the sheer ridiculousness of this task, in this dream-struck landscape of solidified illusions. )
( Taunting, seductive, playful, the string of their patience pulled lavishly taut until it's obscene that its integrity persists, to tease them. Swell of Wei Ying's hunger beastly and sharp-fanged, and who is Lan Wangji, but the feverish burn of his ears, the incandescence that lights him at the possibility of being seen in intimacy, surprised in the vulnerable moments of his candid desire?
There she goes again. From the corner of his eyes, a face he has seen before, blitzing. The recurrence alone, and Wei Ying's identification, mark Prassenze. His eyes did not glimpse her in her compartment. Now, he knows. Now, he —
Dashes, suddenly, hand to Wei Ying's shoulder to push him hard into the door between carriages that rattles, creaking in its hinges, rust flaking to peel away with gold. They are not seen, for one heartbeat, while passengers appear distracted by the sudden stoking of the outside winds, and candlelight winks dimmed. He kisses Wei Ying like he shouldn't be kissed, more bloody line and mean teeth, once and again, and releasing before they can be caught in this. They have a woman to spy, a new spouse to soothe, and all Lan Wangji seems to have mastered is the art of stealing away the man he should have whisked off with years prior. )
Behave. ( More important, somehow, in the moment, than identifying and chasing Prassenze — the very subject of their chase. They have felt, since Lan Wangji's... withdrawalout of step, in jagged and stormed asynchrony: as if, faced with the threat of his husband's disappearance, Wei Ying has now concluded to make up time and assail him, until Wangji surrenders every particle of his body, his person.
Until he cannot run again.
...ah. Wei Ying worried. It should not cut and cleave and settle, fungal and ruinous. It should not humble and warm him, years later, that places can trade, and Wei Ying too can worry. What better moment than now to kiss him again about it? )
Soulmates who flee should not be hunted. ( He has learned this on his own skin. )
( He learns better and better the sharp toothed hunter beneath Lan Zhan's surface, the one that loves and wants and desires fiercely, the parts of themselves pressed too hard, too indelicate, too consuming to be sensible. The additional spark of it to the smoldering embers he woke with, punctuated by his husband's teeth sinking into the innocent flesh of his nose, pulls the volunteered gasp from his throat, allowed acknowledgement of surprise and pleasure and genuine shock that shouldn't be anything of the kind, with this pointed teasing, this knowing of a when, not an if.
When they do, without further interruptions by pride or frustration or the feckless world.
Behave? He behaves exactly as he intends, and that means the puzzle of the less bruising kiss that follows after Lan Zhan shifts away leaves Wei Wuxian with lips parted, corners upturned. There's a wonder in this that's only less concerned about the missing wife and her distressed spouse because there is no evil, no death, no immediate threat to them all where his focus must slide in, consuming and directed.
He has mind and heart and physicality to share. Laughter too, on an inhale, reaching out and tugging much more difficult to see on his husband's waistband yet again. Nudges him back with flat palmed hands at either hip, until they rejoin the carriage, or the next one. )
Not hunted, ( he says, he agrees: ) but pursued. Lll...
( The one moment where he falters, before he leans in, cheeks flushed with red lingering from Lan Zhan's stolen moment and guided force, the ache in his shoulders a new note ignored much like the lingering swelling of his nose. Leans in, lover close: )
Love...
( But he's stymied himself with framing the word here and now, and so Lan Zhan has the rarity of Wei Wuxian striking himself silent, pulling away only to grant the respectability of property local social distance for a full few seconds before he's wrapped himself around Lan Zhan's side.
Soft voiced, pitched so low it takes cultivated senses to hear, he says: )
Love takes defending and protecting, even from ourselves. Whatever form that takes.
( Including days on days of giving half space and time and incessant messages sent, a pursuit, not a hunting. Reminders, not pit traps.
( Love, Wei Ying says, as children do — bashful, young, stuttered. As if the word might stain his mouth like blood or cinnabar, cloying. And he shares of it and himself, like a gentle lady handing out alms to the starved on temple grounds.
Lan Wangji wants to make him small, smaller than his sister's hands could handle. Wants to curl and coil around him, to keep him safeguarded and close. A precious, timid thing, this massacrer of men, this destroyer of fortunes. Lan Wangji could yet marry him again for it. )
Does she flee to protect Firo, or herself? ( It matters: if the woman seeks only her welfare, or that of her bride. Perhaps they meddle, by following, in ways that come adorned with body counts. )
She fled, willing. Perhaps, changed face. ( And the next swallow's sour, hard. The shapeshifter of hell, heavy on his back, in his qiankun purse, in his memory. ) Now eludes her spouse.
( ...as Lan Wangji himself did, mere days prior, the cut of his gaze dulled as he steers it past Wei Ying's shoulder, onto distant, greyed crowds. )
She changed at each turn to please her spouse's companions. ( And failed. ) Wei Ying. If shame is enough to part her from her bride... perhaps best allowed.
( Celebrate not his small victories where he should, as another man, another person, so boldly tread. But he is a man of withholdings, of hesitations to impose, of easy social manner to allow the shallow attachments he held more common to go uncommented upon, and his deepest attachments to be as wholly consuming as they are even now. Or wholly meant, wholly cared for, and wholly shoved to the side for their sake without consultation.
They both have fled, eluded, decided. Changed aspects to better please, or better appease, the memory of a needing. Here, Lan Zhan staring into the crowd, he turns himself so he looks alongside him, clucking his tongue and shaking his head. )
If we were only made of our mistakes without our learnings, we would not be the men we are today. Do we deny her that opportunity? We, who have not married her?
( A half smile, and another nudge, leaning shoulder to shoulder, keeping elbow close. They do have work enough to do, not just for this mystery but for the enduring ones of their own and everyone's return to homes far distant. Still, here they are. Here they stand. )
Think if I set up a full train announcement for Firo to talk to her errant spouse, it'd help, or send her hiding further?
( It's half joking. Half serious. Given how he'd pursued after Lan Zhan, it's only half of what his own resolutions would lead toward these days. Instead, more seriously: )
Who dreams, and who is dreamed? Do you suspect it of either of the newly wedded?
( We, who have not married her. Excuse this man — your man — the stormed look, mouth gently agape, lip trembled. Uncertainty wrecks and ruins him less than the petty reminder that days have come and gone and dwindled, and he has spent a season whole without a marriage new.
...this must be resolved at the earliest opportunity. He eyes, scathingly, the tips of his headband with stubborn hostility, sharpened by the need to right this great and howling wrong. But then, Wei Ying distracts him with the prospect of efficiency — with questions of true, genuine import —
And he blinks once, incredulous. Again, testing the waters. A third time, for sport. )
Why not both?
( After all, like calls to like. Dreams too must circle and understand each other. The shared commonality of their nature might explain the intensity of Firo and Prassenze's romance — and something in him sparks once more, warmly affectionate. Perhaps soulmates, after all. )
( He smiles at that answer, much as he shifts so he can partly press against his husband's shoulder from behind. It's not something unreasonable in his estimate. This concept of dream born and dream real, energy formed and guided.
Matched as a pair, or seeking in each other fulfillment of their own dreams. There's a sort of balance in all of that. )
Why not indeed? Seems like the elder sister is enough alike in her own way. Think she is too?
( In the end his investment here is most weighed towards ensuring safety. For the rest, for dreamers and dreams given their own imperfect agency, he only hopes: the two women will meet and speak and resolve.
With fewer shifting masks in the process. Here and now, he rests his fingers on Lan Zhan's shoulder, perches his chin upon those fingers. )
Because we do know that whomever has been helping has their own stakes to support three attempts at perfect.
( And does he laugh, does he jest? Shoulder peched by Wei Ying, the look of Lan Wangji a stringent, stalwart stain of luster paint, stripped. A void of man, a lacking, anemic. Can a dream be lesser than him, the shadow he became, reduced by grief?
He thinks, in her mourning, Firo was fire, scorching fingertips. Her bride, storming before them now, a pale face in the distance — is a troubled sea. Their companions are loud, obscene, frivolous, but lively.
There is no absence of life here, dream or living. What difference? )
Only Wei Ying is wakeful. ( The edge of his voice is honeyed with laughter. ) I thank Wei Ying for dreaming me with all ten toes.
On a vessel that sails on dreams through dreams, what of this isn't?
( No difference between when one wakes or one sleeps, but to a man who has spent years awake and sleeping in a darkness unending but for the concept of time passing, so complete, so quiet, so consuming without heat or cold or any contrast worth feeling, oh, does he shudder delicately at the thought. Turn his head in, rest the side of his forehead against Lan Zhan's cheek, his jaw, whatever of the side of his face he finds.
To fall toward the smile and the tease that's half promise, mind shying away from other waking dreams, from nightmares made flesh, from grief that hollowed and stole and hallowed until he was reformed into something smaller and larger in the end, tendons stretched to fit the shape of a different mortal darkness between cartilage and bone. )
What else did I dream of you to your liking?
( These are not things one asks of another, but he lets laughter sweeten his voice, he lets his eyes which closed unnoticed slide open, peering toward Lan Zhan's face and seeing so little of it, one blinded by closeness, the other catching the outline of a beloved nose. )
I'd like to review all the details myself. My memory, you know. It's a thing which desires refreshing.
( A promise, heavier, warmer, viscous between them even when he shifts to straighten, to lean less like a tree felled in windstorm against the break of Lan Zhan's frame. We are awake, we are dreamed, we are living. In the end, the living is what matters. )
Dreaming or waking, we see each other.
( Eyes shifting, sliding, still close and unwilling to part. )
( A man who flatters himself wounds the heavens that carved him from hubris, from unworthiness, from patches and frayed thread of indignity. He offends with his breath, his person, his callous brazenness.
Better, then, to turn the weapon's tip against its wielder, mouth uncharitably soft and skirting the quiet, pulsing flat of Wei Ying's temple by his side. )
You dreamed me wedded.
( Compliments, absent poetry. A man like honey, trickle-warm, smooth. Let no one doubt the formidable prowess of Lan Wangji, an arrow seizing his target. Wei Ying created him as the subject of a marriage to a perfect, worthwhile man. How blessed is Lan Wangji. How tenderly grateful.
But then, past the whim of his fleeting humour, he murmurs: )
Possessed of a sword hand to serve my sect leader. ( His brother. ) A guqin to honour Cloud Recesses. ( His heritage. ) Qi to uphold justice.
( These trinkets of fortune and heavenly kindness that make of him a worthwhile instrument for his people. These attributes that the sect of Gusu Lan nurtures and cultivates, if only the pupil is willing. These, his mother seeded, and men of his father's blood raised. )
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( as in the challenge is. all that meant is now he's very nonchalantly hunting after his husband, so.
there's his excellence.
his yunmeng heritage coming out.
wei wuxian is on the prowl while also listening to the word on what's happened with prassenze, concerns about the storms, and oh, the thievery that's gone down, meaning yes he's distracted, but he's going to find Lan Zhan in spite of all the other new information he's taking in. )
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( Excuse, master Wei, the gentleman who takes
coversolace in the company of two singularly pointy-nosed, chinned and fingered elderly dames, who are having the slow and measured time of their lives answering his questions.Discovering the whereabouts of a missing bride is a fine and honourable endeavour, worth neglecting one's husband over, until spidey senses tingle, hair climbs Wangji's nape, and he turns all at once — feeling hunted. )
...good morning. ( Kindly, do not skin him, O Scorned Conjugal One, your nose looks — adequate in perfect dark. )
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( the badge of Lan Zhan's morning transgression is a red, swollen tip of his nose, comic cross between an insect sting and the rawness of a winter suns burning. it brings the comical drawings of the Yiling Patriarch to mind, the decades of heavy drinking that Wei Wuxian did not have opportunity to engage in. if his eyes were less clear, if they were more red than gently shadowed, if he were not, hah, freshly shaved, the comedy might have played out to a different extent. instead of looks the young man stung and swollen, unfortunate what it does to that pretty face, and:
his patience, such as he has it, set gently, deliberately, finally aside. he smiles, but he's not looking at either esteemed woman, graced with the lines of their years while every woman in his life and in his husband's has only met too early graves. age is venerated, respected, and utterly ignored as he steps close, sliding into his husband's space with only courtesy paid in passing to his companions. fingers of each hand skim the sides of Lan Zhan's neck, his inexorable tenderness a spring flood bearing down a box canyon.
fingertips hook and hold, catching at loose hair at the base of Lan Zhan's skull, anchoring there when his thumbs frame either side of Lan Zhan's face, aimed to hold him steady, hold him true, for the canted angle of Wei Wuxian's descent, lashes that close like a sigh when lips meet lips, chapped and imperfect. yet it's the parting of those same lips, the heat of exhalation and a tongue that lathes over Lan Zhan's mouth in request, the small sound caught in the back of his throat if he's allowed entry, if the kiss deepens, that leaves him lingering, forming himself to the curves of Lan Zhan's hard planes, content.
and the deliberate disregard for the commentary, the surprise, of the older women in their prestigious, ponderous daze, oh, he thinks nothing of it, even when the kiss finds a conclusion, when his head pulls back without the rest of him deciding to retreat. what he does find are words at perfect conversational volume. )
You forgot to give me a good morning kiss.
( and one of the two women, hearing this, cackles into an unconvincing cough, behind her raised, tremoring hand. )
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( One heartbeat: he sits lone, courteous, a man of dignity, honour and obligations.
The next: Wei Ying attacks him, mouth feral and burgeoned greed, the fire of him a torch calling banners, all consuming. If Wuxian, born Wei, were sired in a leading sect, he might have ruled hillside and valleys, made nest over cradles of bones. Instead, a servant's son, thorn in Yu Ziyuan's throat, the soft of her belly.
He consumes Lan Wangji, piece, particle. Warmth of him incadescent, a hard burn. A woman draws her voice thick. Another coughs. The third murmurs, There, there, easy. Then Wei Ying relinquishes him, and Wangji's arm fetters his waist on instinct, draws him in, their foreheads a tight collision. Dust dancing long and slow like winter's plays. )
I did not. ( Whispered, as if there has been a moment since they've ventured in these hungering lands that they have ever been alone. As if they may have this — as if a woman does not bemoan the scandal already — and Wangji pulls away, taut. )
My husband has come for his ribbon. ( This, to their audience. He starts, carefully, to peel it from his own forehead. )
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( The tidal pull of Lan Zhan's step back is what draws Wei Wuxian along even still, arms a slow slide from his husband's neck to slide momentary and deliberate down the front of his near immaculate robes. He ever means to rule little beyond himself and command the safety, the unhunted happiness, of those he calls his own, but the call down from the hills in this pursuit is one where his husband denies himself as much out of petulance for outside interruptions as it is simplicity of responding with you cannot take what isn't there to give to a world that remains unmoved.
He watches, dark eyes hawk-sharp and softening only as Lan Zhan's hands slide along silk, as the ribbon is coaxed free of its home tangled into the weave of Lan Zhan's hair. The fall and catch of his breath in as Lan Zhan's ribbon slides free, and he tugs at his husband's waistband, forward, onward, where are you fleeing to now? )
And his husband.
( To the gasp of the same voice, the scandal, hushed by another older woman's strident tones, hardly can be if they're married, Edith as their voices rise and fall, white noise to his enduring preoccupation.
He is a parched landscape; he is Yiling, dormant but living in its duress; he is the shrieking need beneath the limitations of his flesh; he is the spark, and tinder, and kinder than the easy conflagration he might otherwise command. What he wants is not to kneel before the unconcerned whims of the world. If he kneels, let it be willing. Let it be before no man other than the one before him now, or let it be a different prostration, before those he holds as family, were he to beg a forgiveness that stirs no heat within, only heartbreak. )
If he's willing.
( Challenge laid out, wrist raised, for the binding: he goes not easy or simply into the morning's stretching hours, beckoning for his wants, his wishes, and his husband's frustrated sharing, the tide creeping back in around their feet. Too ready, to easy, to be swept away. )
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( Cornered, like a hunted thing, entrapped. To look upon Wei Ying, skin and bones and cartilage, threadbare and crumbled — he might appear the lesser between them, the likely victim of Lan Wangji's pursuit. But then he drags his hand over his husband's waistband, voice sibilant. He entreats. He conquers.
And the world is only Wei Ying's to own, after all.
The women, coo or croak or simply fill out the negative spaces between them with sound, so that nothing will presume to part them. This is too private a moment for spectators — beyond the subject of intimacy, the velvety, heavy weight of Wangji's own tenuous rejection. )
He is willing. ( Conciliatory, calm. His brother's voice, woefully repurposed. Zewu-Jun would not approve. Zewu-Jun need never learn that Lan Wangji's diplomatic debut safeguards his chastity. ) But, stand with justice. No regrets.
( The pledge of a lifetime passed, haunting the halls of their frustrations. The man Wei Ying became bled out for the principles of the boy who created him. )
We cannot gladden, while two young spouses are parted. ( For all that Firo and Prassenze are both strange and strangers, ephemeral silhouettes who would not have spared a thought for Lan Wangji or Wei Ying, a few days prior. He knows this much: that Wei Ying's righteousness is shared by few. ) After we reunite them.
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( This isn't justice, though it is mystery, though it is person struggling with themselves in isolation, wishing to be just so, more than enough, and losing track of what that really means along the way. He's not worried about her in a deep sense, only worried she'll make things harder for herself, but congratulations! People do that all the time. If they're clever enough, they learn better. If they're sly enough, they learn worse. )
Will you whisper in her ear to stand strong and proud and bared before her spouse? Seen for every unlovely part of herself, along with the beloved?
( These words to breathe between them, steady as the beating of twin hearts matched in purpose. Thin veneer of it, and he's not a careless man, but he is a care worn one, and he plucks his husband's ribbon, shifts back, idly runs the back of his other hand across his abused nose, blinking in mild startled recollection of it's painful sufferance. )
The injustice isn't in the running. It's in the costs everyone else paid, ah? So why did it feel necessary, why the trying again and again for something perfect, when life isn't perfect, it's glorious and lived in each flawed, vibrant moment?
( Wrapping that ribbon around his arm, and bracing, a man readied and prepared for certain kinds of interpersonal war.
He speaks of the lady spouses. Doesn't he? He speaks of himself and Lan Zhan also. Doesn't he? )
No more running, ah?
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( Life is not perfect. One woman, her faults bare, suffices. Two lovers may meet in transparency, honesty, equal footing.
Wei Ying, who speaks once more as men of fables do, the characters of plays where righteousness always paves the path to a happy, earned ending. Who has not learned from his misfortunes to doubt, to condemn, to mislead. To question.
No more running?
One of the women, hand to her mouth, sketches jarring cuts of gossiping sound, I wonder if they chase each other in their bedding compartment. Claudia, is that what we heard last night —
And he binds their hands and tugs once, the swing staggered, less to incentivise Wei Ying to merrymaking than to signal his presence, his persistence. He has heard. He will linger. He will agree. )
This life or the next. ( Whoever may stumble or arrive at new existence. ) Where you lead, I will follow.
( Whatever rooftop or theatre stage of tragically endeared little old ladies, now grinning defyingly at each other. )
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( He listens, tugged forward and stepping light with it, before he grins, a sun's unveiling after night. There may come a day where they stop making vows in inopportune moments, where time sides with them, where the perfection of temporary harmony surrounds them in a soft, effervescent glow. That day is not this day, but he's happy as he says: )
This life or the next, we'll stand side by side.
( Then set himself to whirling around, not so much forgetting their newly bound wrists as having turned into it, having made it part of the daily expectations that anchor him as surely as he'd once intended to anchor Lan Zhan. The bound ribbon brings him up short, their hands reaching out to each other without holding, and he laughs, low and under his breath, when he reaches back for Lan Zhan's hand to press palm to palm, to twine fingers with fingers, and tug him more firmly, happily along. )
With wanting to find where she's hidden herself, ah, has she not left behind a trail? The lot of our group is looking, but I do know what her face looks like. If we go compartment to compartment...!
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You shall hunt.
( Unambiguously, Lan Wangji at his side, two ghosts chasing, wisps of silken white dancing a long shadow in the wake of rushed steps. Discretion becomes them, but not the game of discovery: the woman Prassenze eludes them at every turn, like smoke distant from fire — fleetingly within reach, only to withhold herself resolutely at the last moment.
Lan Wangji does not name their quest done, their time wasted. Only, after walking an eighth compartment, tinkers enough with possibilities, to think — to stay Wei Ying, hand to the pleasant curve of his back: )
If... ( It aches him to speak the words, unstitches his mouth and leaves whispers of hurt in the wake of mere suggestion. ) ...they are not soulmates?
( If Prassenze merely discovered her wife unworthy too late to change her wedding's course, or if sentiments shifted and escape was the only recourse? If this woman saw her fate written bloody and large, and did not wish herself among the brushstrokes of this picture? )
She eludes with purpose. ( Perhaps they meddle. )
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( He leans in, leans against, comes close to draping himself on his husband without ever quite making it to legitimate draping, because these sly glimpses in shifting faces of the milling crowds of the train's carriage are both fascinating and the mild kind of frustrating that'd appreciate the solution here being along the lines of a less slippery Prassenze. It is not, however, and so he clucks his tongue against the back of his teeth while they observe, until Lan Zhan's slow, thoughtful, horrified question makes its way past his lips.
His rather lovely lips. It's unfair, they never seem to chap as much as Wei Wuxian's does. He wonders why. An idle thought to pair with the question posed. He turns his head, speaking low for his husband to hear, forsaking the study of crowd and hiding young wife in favour of his not as young husband, in their equally young matrimony. )
That only occurred to you now?
( He blinks slow and thoughtful, then drapes more, pressing a kiss to... the top of one ear. Oh, to be of enough a height that nothing is sacred or out of reach. It's a stolen moment, no eyes particularly on them with where they are, Wei Wuxian indulging because he's able to do so with full knowledge that Lan Zhan isn't turning away from him.
It's delightful, delicious, devastating, to be wanted beyond reason. Even if they're equally frustrated youths when it comes to doing anything about it.
He grins, both at his wandering thoughts, and a lack of concern over Lan Zhan's sudden realisation that they're meddling. )
I trust they'll make their own way forward through this muddle they're in, together or on separate pathways. Being soulmates, ( he says, fondness softening his tone, gravity lending it weight; ) doesn't prevent people from eluding with purpose. For all sorts of reasons, real and otherwise. The only way we'll know is asking, ah?
( The quirk of his brows as he studies Lan Zhan's face, a little too fascinated, a little less intense than those times where he needs confirmation from him. Here, he's curious, he's observing, and he's... glancing away to catch sight of a familiar face for the brief instance before it's swallowed up by the crowd again and he sighs. )
There she goes again.
( With a groan, his head comes to descend and rest upon Lan Zhan's shoulder, along with more of his leaning weight. Oh, the sheer ridiculousness of this task, in this dream-struck landscape of solidified illusions. )
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( Taunting, seductive, playful, the string of their patience pulled lavishly taut until it's obscene that its integrity persists, to tease them. Swell of Wei Ying's hunger beastly and sharp-fanged, and who is Lan Wangji, but the feverish burn of his ears, the incandescence that lights him at the possibility of being seen in intimacy, surprised in the vulnerable moments of his candid desire?
There she goes again. From the corner of his eyes, a face he has seen before, blitzing. The recurrence alone, and Wei Ying's identification, mark Prassenze. His eyes did not glimpse her in her compartment. Now, he knows. Now, he —
Dashes, suddenly, hand to Wei Ying's shoulder to push him hard into the door between carriages that rattles, creaking in its hinges, rust flaking to peel away with gold. They are not seen, for one heartbeat, while passengers appear distracted by the sudden stoking of the outside winds, and candlelight winks dimmed. He kisses Wei Ying like he shouldn't be kissed, more bloody line and mean teeth, once and again, and releasing before they can be caught in this. They have a woman to spy, a new spouse to soothe, and all Lan Wangji seems to have mastered is the art of stealing away the man he should have whisked off with years prior. )
Behave. ( More important, somehow, in the moment, than identifying and chasing Prassenze — the very subject of their chase. They have felt, since Lan Wangji's... withdrawalout of step, in jagged and stormed asynchrony: as if, faced with the threat of his husband's disappearance, Wei Ying has now concluded to make up time and assail him, until Wangji surrenders every particle of his body, his person.
Until he cannot run again.
...ah. Wei Ying worried. It should not cut and cleave and settle, fungal and ruinous. It should not humble and warm him, years later, that places can trade, and Wei Ying too can worry. What better moment than now to kiss him again about it? )
Soulmates who flee should not be hunted. ( He has learned this on his own skin. )
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( He learns better and better the sharp toothed hunter beneath Lan Zhan's surface, the one that loves and wants and desires fiercely, the parts of themselves pressed too hard, too indelicate, too consuming to be sensible. The additional spark of it to the smoldering embers he woke with, punctuated by his husband's teeth sinking into the innocent flesh of his nose, pulls the volunteered gasp from his throat, allowed acknowledgement of surprise and pleasure and genuine shock that shouldn't be anything of the kind, with this pointed teasing, this knowing of a when, not an if.
When they do, without further interruptions by pride or frustration or the feckless world.
Behave? He behaves exactly as he intends, and that means the puzzle of the less bruising kiss that follows after Lan Zhan shifts away leaves Wei Wuxian with lips parted, corners upturned. There's a wonder in this that's only less concerned about the missing wife and her distressed spouse because there is no evil, no death, no immediate threat to them all where his focus must slide in, consuming and directed.
He has mind and heart and physicality to share. Laughter too, on an inhale, reaching out and tugging much more difficult to see on his husband's waistband yet again. Nudges him back with flat palmed hands at either hip, until they rejoin the carriage, or the next one. )
Not hunted, ( he says, he agrees: ) but pursued. Lll...
( The one moment where he falters, before he leans in, cheeks flushed with red lingering from Lan Zhan's stolen moment and guided force, the ache in his shoulders a new note ignored much like the lingering swelling of his nose. Leans in, lover close: )
Love...
( But he's stymied himself with framing the word here and now, and so Lan Zhan has the rarity of Wei Wuxian striking himself silent, pulling away only to grant the respectability of property local social distance for a full few seconds before he's wrapped himself around Lan Zhan's side.
Soft voiced, pitched so low it takes cultivated senses to hear, he says: )
Love takes defending and protecting, even from ourselves. Whatever form that takes.
( Including days on days of giving half space and time and incessant messages sent, a pursuit, not a hunting. Reminders, not pit traps.
Or so he thinks. )
I suspect she's facing similar right now.
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( Love, Wei Ying says, as children do — bashful, young, stuttered. As if the word might stain his mouth like blood or cinnabar, cloying. And he shares of it and himself, like a gentle lady handing out alms to the starved on temple grounds.
Lan Wangji wants to make him small, smaller than his sister's hands could handle. Wants to curl and coil around him, to keep him safeguarded and close. A precious, timid thing, this massacrer of men, this destroyer of fortunes. Lan Wangji could yet marry him again for it. )
Does she flee to protect Firo, or herself? ( It matters: if the woman seeks only her welfare, or that of her bride. Perhaps they meddle, by following, in ways that come adorned with body counts. )
She fled, willing. Perhaps, changed face. ( And the next swallow's sour, hard. The shapeshifter of hell, heavy on his back, in his qiankun purse, in his memory. ) Now eludes her spouse.
( ...as Lan Wangji himself did, mere days prior, the cut of his gaze dulled as he steers it past Wei Ying's shoulder, onto distant, greyed crowds. )
She changed at each turn to please her spouse's companions. ( And failed. ) Wei Ying. If shame is enough to part her from her bride... perhaps best allowed.
( Prassenze does not deserve her spouse, then. )
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( Celebrate not his small victories where he should, as another man, another person, so boldly tread. But he is a man of withholdings, of hesitations to impose, of easy social manner to allow the shallow attachments he held more common to go uncommented upon, and his deepest attachments to be as wholly consuming as they are even now. Or wholly meant, wholly cared for, and wholly shoved to the side for their sake without consultation.
They both have fled, eluded, decided. Changed aspects to better please, or better appease, the memory of a needing. Here, Lan Zhan staring into the crowd, he turns himself so he looks alongside him, clucking his tongue and shaking his head. )
If we were only made of our mistakes without our learnings, we would not be the men we are today. Do we deny her that opportunity? We, who have not married her?
( A half smile, and another nudge, leaning shoulder to shoulder, keeping elbow close. They do have work enough to do, not just for this mystery but for the enduring ones of their own and everyone's return to homes far distant. Still, here they are. Here they stand. )
Think if I set up a full train announcement for Firo to talk to her errant spouse, it'd help, or send her hiding further?
( It's half joking. Half serious. Given how he'd pursued after Lan Zhan, it's only half of what his own resolutions would lead toward these days. Instead, more seriously: )
Who dreams, and who is dreamed? Do you suspect it of either of the newly wedded?
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( We, who have not married her. Excuse this man — your man — the stormed look, mouth gently agape, lip trembled. Uncertainty wrecks and ruins him less than the petty reminder that days have come and gone and dwindled, and he has spent a season whole without a marriage new.
...this must be resolved at the earliest opportunity. He eyes, scathingly, the tips of his headband with stubborn hostility, sharpened by the need to right this great and howling wrong. But then, Wei Ying distracts him with the prospect of efficiency — with questions of true, genuine import —
And he blinks once, incredulous. Again, testing the waters. A third time, for sport. )
Why not both?
( After all, like calls to like. Dreams too must circle and understand each other. The shared commonality of their nature might explain the intensity of Firo and Prassenze's romance — and something in him sparks once more, warmly affectionate. Perhaps soulmates, after all. )
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( He smiles at that answer, much as he shifts so he can partly press against his husband's shoulder from behind. It's not something unreasonable in his estimate. This concept of dream born and dream real, energy formed and guided.
Matched as a pair, or seeking in each other fulfillment of their own dreams. There's a sort of balance in all of that. )
Why not indeed? Seems like the elder sister is enough alike in her own way. Think she is too?
( In the end his investment here is most weighed towards ensuring safety. For the rest, for dreamers and dreams given their own imperfect agency, he only hopes: the two women will meet and speak and resolve.
With fewer shifting masks in the process. Here and now, he rests his fingers on Lan Zhan's shoulder, perches his chin upon those fingers. )
Because we do know that whomever has been helping has their own stakes to support three attempts at perfect.
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Perhaps all is dream.
( And does he laugh, does he jest? Shoulder peched by Wei Ying, the look of Lan Wangji a stringent, stalwart stain of luster paint, stripped. A void of man, a lacking, anemic. Can a dream be lesser than him, the shadow he became, reduced by grief?
He thinks, in her mourning, Firo was fire, scorching fingertips. Her bride, storming before them now, a pale face in the distance — is a troubled sea. Their companions are loud, obscene, frivolous, but lively.
There is no absence of life here, dream or living. What difference? )
Only Wei Ying is wakeful. ( The edge of his voice is honeyed with laughter. ) I thank Wei Ying for dreaming me with all ten toes.
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On a vessel that sails on dreams through dreams, what of this isn't?
( No difference between when one wakes or one sleeps, but to a man who has spent years awake and sleeping in a darkness unending but for the concept of time passing, so complete, so quiet, so consuming without heat or cold or any contrast worth feeling, oh, does he shudder delicately at the thought. Turn his head in, rest the side of his forehead against Lan Zhan's cheek, his jaw, whatever of the side of his face he finds.
To fall toward the smile and the tease that's half promise, mind shying away from other waking dreams, from nightmares made flesh, from grief that hollowed and stole and hallowed until he was reformed into something smaller and larger in the end, tendons stretched to fit the shape of a different mortal darkness between cartilage and bone. )
What else did I dream of you to your liking?
( These are not things one asks of another, but he lets laughter sweeten his voice, he lets his eyes which closed unnoticed slide open, peering toward Lan Zhan's face and seeing so little of it, one blinded by closeness, the other catching the outline of a beloved nose. )
I'd like to review all the details myself. My memory, you know. It's a thing which desires refreshing.
( A promise, heavier, warmer, viscous between them even when he shifts to straighten, to lean less like a tree felled in windstorm against the break of Lan Zhan's frame. We are awake, we are dreamed, we are living. In the end, the living is what matters. )
Dreaming or waking, we see each other.
( Eyes shifting, sliding, still close and unwilling to part. )
So shall they.
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( A man who flatters himself wounds the heavens that carved him from hubris, from unworthiness, from patches and frayed thread of indignity. He offends with his breath, his person, his callous brazenness.
Better, then, to turn the weapon's tip against its wielder, mouth uncharitably soft and skirting the quiet, pulsing flat of Wei Ying's temple by his side. )
You dreamed me wedded.
( Compliments, absent poetry. A man like honey, trickle-warm, smooth. Let no one doubt the formidable prowess of Lan Wangji, an arrow seizing his target. Wei Ying created him as the subject of a marriage to a perfect, worthwhile man. How blessed is Lan Wangji. How tenderly grateful.
But then, past the whim of his fleeting humour, he murmurs: )
Possessed of a sword hand to serve my sect leader. ( His brother. ) A guqin to honour Cloud Recesses. ( His heritage. ) Qi to uphold justice.
( These trinkets of fortune and heavenly kindness that make of him a worthwhile instrument for his people. These attributes that the sect of Gusu Lan nurtures and cultivates, if only the pupil is willing. These, his mother seeded, and men of his father's blood raised. )
I am grateful.
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