( but he is heading that direction, taking to... high routes that aren't routes at all. easiest for avoiding those roaming the streets, and keeping an eye out for trouble to break up. )
( polite, with a quieting of the wind, self generated or otherwise, and then, lower, huskier, half because no distractions please what is their life: )
( for not dithering? for the open windows? hard to say, when the pendant goes quiet, and his focus is simpler, slipping between shadows and slivers of silvered light at the heights, moonstruck and starlit where the warmth of lights and fires within homes below are banked, turned inward, concealed. see us not, do us no harm.
such stark consideration, then, to see the glint of glass and depths of shadow and light open to him by his husband's directive; that he must circle round, walk light foot and quiet across one last rooftop, avoid the pitfall of collapsing through into another's room, voyeur to another person's life.
he flips down, hands on eaves, feet on window ledge, and for a moment he is as perched as any bird, surveying possibilities, taking in the untouched battlefield. which is pristine, in it's own findings: then he's in, and through, and smiling, and he's less seeking Lan Zhan out that with certainty allowing gravity to draw him in, and close, and irreverent to the particulars of how Lan Zhan holds himself, or the new bruise blooming on his shins. simple, then, to skim hands along upper arms, let the chill of them brush along the sides of his husband's neck, brushing back hair, sinking into warmth at the his protected nape, and find lips with lips, chest to chest, hips angled slightly off to not meet bone with better covered flesh, and want, and want, and let the aching tiredness sink deeper to where he eedn't follow it down yet, to the level of dreams and nightmares and promises, until the dead cannot call to him, and the bright flame of life pulsing within consumes all.
which is to say, he didn't much bother with hello. )
( And then the eye of the storm settles on him wide-bright unblinking, and hands roil and snag in his hair, dark weave of it unwinding like sea spume, and he is panting, consumed, light-footed — a step back and waxed floors screeching, and he nearly surrenders his footing but for catching the fallback on a swinging arm against the wall —
And he peels back long enough to regain the dregs of his bearings, fever high on his cheekbones like a candle's oils, spilled. He looks, inevitably, at the wet bruise of his husband's mouth. Looks away, incandescent — opens his mouth — closes it.
And, finally, raises his hand as if to either stay or beckon Wei Ying close, fumbling in his step against the wall, blush deepened.
( A step stumbled, caught, the flush that sweetens pale skin into blooming fire, oxygen deprived and glorious. Dark eyes flickering, first here, then there, and he finds his own gaze does not shift, consumes Lan Zhan expression by expression, each degree of heat and want and is it not this simple.
A moment. Two. His step, taken closer, nudges back towards the sturdiness of the wall: no rot within, no insect devoured husk. A hush following an exhalation, but he feels patience as a memory, not a truth, and it weaves into his voice. )
Lan Zhan.
( Him, and here, and wherever they are. He adds: )
Charm the room silent, if it isn't anyway.
( So that the window, as it still lays open, defeats the purpose, or aids it through sheer willpower alone. Fingers stroke, taste, tease; his tongue tracing his own lips, the extent of his mercy. A man certain of his welcome, and he delights within it, terribly. )
( Hint of bloodshed to Wei Ying's gaze, and this might be Yiling again, empire ruinous, and Lan Wangji might look upon the dark demonic shadow of the risen patriarch. Brittle charcoal and commanding, at once too much and too little, overwhelming and sedate.
Lan Wangji, impossibly and predictably, falls tender prey to this predation, charmed into perfect, docile paralysis. At first, he does not move. Then, jolting, he bursts into action, deploying a twin set of parchment papers enlivened with hasty scribble that land on the door's pillars and blink golden, before dying down — he considers — then exerts himself for a second round of two parchment strips more, now toward the window. Insurance.
After, poets and tales of romance would recommend wooing his lover abed. He has, in no uncertain terms, invited. Only, he slips to one knee, then thudded, the next, by the floor of the beside, sleeves pooled at each side of him like a bleedout. )
Sit. Let me unbind your boots. ( Let us speak, but in a way profoundly domestic. )
( A blink, half pleased, a touch amused, a smidge uncertain: he doesn't want time to think, both brilliant and moronic in its fashion. There's a thrill when Lan Zhan starts to sink, but it muddies, swirls somewhere between anticipation and avoidance when he sinks down too, fingers twitching, reaching out again for hair, to trace his husband's features. He's no still, calm thing: he's not a man who knows how to be cared for, tended, worshipped, and he cannot, does not fathom it now.
He should, perhaps. His blindness can take surprising turns. )
Have you even seen to yours?
( Wei Wuxian hasn't looked, twirls a finger slow, delicate, to curl smooth, dark locks around. Fiddles and twitches and leans in because he's only soft angles when clothed, but here his throat curves, here his lips purse, here are kisses peppered botheringly over brow, to want, to want, to not understand the quiet wishes done for his comfort, too alien a concept even now.
Let him prostrate. Let him plead. Let him shiver before the touch of fingers to bare calf, then the release of socked foot, the tension in his body bow right before the next one, muscles of his legs twitching, a restless horse ready to bolt, to run. Not away, but haphazardly, joyously forward.
He doesn't want to think, because it's always too loud, and Lan Zhan at his feet is li too distant when he wants the weight of him, the heat of him, the blushing force of him here, melding, and what to say? )
Lan Zhan...
( A swallow, throat dry, another quick wetting of his lips. What two men do is less a mysterious education than it once was, but it's empty, a hollow to fill, and he shudders again over the nothing of his husband's fingers brushing brief against his skin, and this is unexpected torment. )
Come here?
( Stop, and start, and go. Don't see him, then do. He has little enough idea of what he wants other than the silence of thinking, the focus on affection and love and no little lust too, he's well aware, into this moment and the ones that stretch beyond. )
( They are out of synchrony, it strikes him, a rare occurrence within the battlefield but the perennial tone of their personal relations. Blunt, jagged steps. Visceral withdrawals. So often, it spells the spawning cradle of misunderstandings: one side experiencing haste as aggression; the other, caution as disinterest.
He must weigh, consider, calculate. One step forward cannot come at the expense of two back. He retreats within himself, a sea calling back its waters, impossibly, sinisterly chilled where Wei Ying burns bright.
He pushes them both to balance, to stillness. Meets Wei Ying halfway by nestling in, his head tipped and heavy and bound for his husband's knees, cheek brushed to the side while his hands seek out Wei Ying's, fingers knotting like a sailor's rope — at once drawing distance and peering closer.
Rolled lazy and low, the wafts of cheap, heavy incense shielding the start of water's damp, of cunning mould. Coarse linens, splintered floors. Shifting, he feels flesh trapped, breath fragile. )
Here, now. You are certain? ( A beat, thunderous. ) ...no. Search yourself before you answer. Bide your time.
( Take a moment. Breathe. ) There are deeds that cannot be undone, after.
( A slow, prolonged squint, and he sighs, soft, shoulders loosening. How long ago would he have taken this as a kind rejection? A polite way to bow out? When did he begin to recognise the insecurity within his partner, the strange to him sustained disbelief in Wei Wuxian's interest?
There is something within Lan Zhan which believes only in transience, fleeting natures. He has consumed within himself such dedication, he believes none of it found in the world, and fights to find peace with it, however it hurts.
He doesn't know how to combat that, even while it simmers his ardour, gives him a focus, an intent. Here he shifts, hands and hands, tugs, coaxes, pulls. )
I don't know how to pace this. I don't know the steps. I don't have the training. I have the will and the desire, and I'm annoyingly quick to learn.
( A smile, slow and teasing, self aware but not self-conscious. There it is: the want, the attempt to bring Lan Zhan up, between legs which part to give access to the slip of bed between, to draw close, and draw him closer. Bring more of his husband in ready reach, and that, that feels like a beginning he understands, the first step in a free form flow.
Or perhaps that was at the window: perhaps that was the moment words crafted invitation. Perhaps. )
I want — ( and seeks lips, parted, awkward angles or more forgiving ones, he's unconcerned ) — you. The hows we can discover, ah? Yours and mine.
( It has not, to this point, occurred to him why Lan Zhan would kneel, where his own thoughts have wandered, how to anchor him in being wanted anymore than he knows how to accept the same in whole.
Yet he believes. He sees dark eyes, warm cheeks, robes spilling off limbs as sheets slip from beds to pool below, and he believes, this man, he wants me. )
( The will, the desire, the industry, the ingenuity, the utmost enterprise. The invitation of a body coaxing, slithering and warm-blooded and unexpectedly strong, yielding only in the ways that suggest titillations of power. What Wei Ying gives now freely is his own to wrench returned back, after.
They fall back on a bed that creaks and groans worse than a petulant harlot, a learned courtesan, wood rearing its torn, dented face to show poverty and the attrition of time-gnawed resources. This might have been Cloud Recesses and a marriage bed drowned in the bead-weight of a hundred charms of conjugal fortune. In another life, they may yet have this — six weddings and six heartbeats now, and the seventh threatening to drum thunderously out of Lan Wangji's chest, to eviscerate him.
He lands, clumsily, without breaking his fall — lifts after, to seat himself on bended elbows and keep both hands enshrining the tumble of Wei Ying's hair, loosening it from its tie. Instinct guides the press of their mouths, off-key again, the angle too slanted. It does not matter. )
You are so warm. I did not anticipate. ( He should have; this is no memory, where he beds a man who never did wake, a ghost. ) You are never as anticipated. ( And his mouth is honeyed, treacle. Slow. All of him, slowed. ) You should remove my headband. Your headband.
( In a world of utter change, this much is constant. )
( Down, pressed and weighed, bed shifting to accommodate two forms converging at once, hands and lips and robes pulling, caught beneath him. His hair freed with Lan Zhan's unwinding, and he smiles up at him, chin tucked the touch to allow greater ease before lips meet, not quite aligned; before he shifts, that squirming motion, to not only change angle best achieved with tilting head, turned chin, but so that the evidence of his warming presses better into the hollow by Lan Zhan's hip.
Not young enough in halves to stand at attention without warning, in these later, unexpected years, but evident when he arches up, shifting clothing to allow the freedom at his shoulder where his elbows better bend, where his hands trace the contours of his husband's face, where he breathes in smiling, exhales, lips parting, and slips deft fingers back, working at the knot of the headband with a familiarity he hadn't imagined two years ago, let alone twenty. )
I rarely remain cold. ( He says, nonsense words, the headband loosening in touches, in inhalations. ) Too warm blooded. Might be all that spice and humidity from Yunmeng summers, ( he continues, burbling words, unthought and winding toward playfulness, towards honesty, away again. The drape of the headband loosens, spills downward, Wei Wuxian's lips pursing in momentary reflex, pressing a kiss to the metal worked into Gusu's winding, circling clouds. ) but I suspect it's due to my present company.
( Lips part after words murmured in heat against the warmth of the metal and silk ribbon, and he bites down soft, teeth holding headband in place with delicacy while his fingers free the trailing knot, dance across Lan Zhan's hair to tug through the anchoring locks of his hair. Freed, the headband flows downhill, pale blues splashing against the sides of Wei Wuxian's jaw, down and settling across his throat, to the sides, on Lan Zhan approved sheets, cleaned and laundered, scented fresh. Lips quirk in a smile, tongue held at bay to not wet their headband, before poking forward to thrust the metal back into his clever, clever fingers, and he allows the whole to slide over his chin, to settle across the rise of his throat, shifting as he swallows, as he lets go.
As he peers up, and hands find new purchase, this time working on the singular knot that holds Lan Zhan's hair even yet at bay, but so much more relaxed than the topknot encased by the crown of his dignity, adapted and found again and again in these strange lands. Fingers massage scalp with a hesitancy born only of unfamiliarity: the motions learned against his own canvas, knowing the motions that relieve for him the tiny aches accumulated, release of another kind. When he arches up, pulls his husband down for another kiss, the angles lend better harmony, and he tries for deeper, slower kissing, peers through slit lids and heavy lashes to study Lan Zhan's face too close for easy viewing, closes fully before his tongue flicks out, seeing if he can taste his husband, coaxing, teasing, welcoming. Not the raw urgency of even his first step into this temporary abode, but want, oh, that's easier to settle into, that's something he can share. Can't he?
Can't he?
His shifting attempts to bring one partly exposed calf around the hidden silks of his husband's own lower leg, clinging and pressing upward yet again, leads to breath catching at the unplanned friction, eyes fluttering open to glimpse if Lan Zhan had caught the same, caught the reaction, response. Better to be still? Better to move? What is too much, or enough? Thoughts starting to thrum, and he shoves back, filters through them to the salient details: his husband's breath, his own. The thudding of his husband's heart, the answering drumming of his own.
That's something he does share. Doesn't he? )
Can you imagine? Me wearing nothing but our headband.
( Dark eyes, warm invitation. Imagine. Embrace what needn't remain only in the realm of dreams and fantasies whose discovery are part of the joyousness of chosen unions. Or so he imagines. So he wonders and chooses to believe. So he wants, as surely as he'll admit to wanting to himself. )
( Here, slivers of brokered friction, thigh to thigh and charcoaled tongues and the quiet, simmered symphorophilia of their marriage, unwinding. Lacing together again. This knowledge pre-dates the etiquettes, mouth to mouth and heat stirring like a sea rising grey and massive, to overwhelm.
He feels it, in the tips of his fingers, dancing in Wei Ying's hair, in his toes that've barely shrugged off their boot straps, in nerves of what flesh of his burns through silks stretching, in the quiet, pale rain of his headband, fluttering first against his cheek, then downing to settle on Wei Ying's tender, rabbiting jugular, up and down, up and down. He bites, unthinkingly, where the metal clasp stills, above it to redden the stretch of Wei Ying's skin, around. It will be clumsy, tomorrow, littered bruises a domestication of cleaving fingerprints, and Lan Wangji's qi mysteriously absent and hapless before weeping marks. )
I can. I have. ( A decades-long, private, vaguely coalesced fantasy, risen from the visceral depths of Lan Wangji's grief-yearning. What has the fallen Yiling Patriarch not been to him? Friend, adversary, tormentor, courtesan. Quarrelsome, clawing, vicious oppressor, willing prize. He has defiled this man once with marital touch in the stern frigidity of the crisped chilled cave and a thousand times in fever dreams. ) You were beautiful.
( Like a mariner drawn to moonlight, so is the flickered dance of sweet candle's light to Wei Ying's cheek — too pale to be beautiful, bone jutting, the look of him, manicured starvation. One day, he will resemble himself again, exemplary. Now, he is — ragged, raw. Lan Wangji's own between kisses and kindness. The answer, perhaps: move. )
Pledge me something. ( Before, if there is to be be an after. ) Do not leave with night.
( As Wei Ying so often conspires to, dark-stepped and trickled and feline, like ink spilled from a jar. So Lan Wangji must chase him, drenched in the delirium of his own genius, riddling the universe between brushstrokes and raven-bird feathers and chalk of skull bone, and he is for slow coaxing, then, for tutoring back to his flesh and his bed's confines. For steering. )
Not for restlessness or exercise or curiosity. ( For necessity, perhaps: defenses or the quiet calls of a wine-tried body. ) Let me wake to you. That is my price.
( A simple gift, if not from a man who's already given himself to death first, twice over. )
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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( but he is heading that direction, taking to... high routes that aren't routes at all. easiest for avoiding those roaming the streets, and keeping an eye out for trouble to break up. )
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1/2
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only to then trip recovering himself, sending in audio: )
Ooph!
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Why is this man like this. )
Perhaps better subtle.
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( the hurried, somewhat wheezed response, before wind catches at the pendant as he's back in motion. )
What room?
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( polite, with a quieting of the wind, self generated or otherwise, and then, lower, huskier, half because no distractions please what is their life: )
What room?
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Open windows.
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Thank you.
( for not dithering? for the open windows? hard to say, when the pendant goes quiet, and his focus is simpler, slipping between shadows and slivers of silvered light at the heights, moonstruck and starlit where the warmth of lights and fires within homes below are banked, turned inward, concealed. see us not, do us no harm.
such stark consideration, then, to see the glint of glass and depths of shadow and light open to him by his husband's directive; that he must circle round, walk light foot and quiet across one last rooftop, avoid the pitfall of collapsing through into another's room, voyeur to another person's life.
he flips down, hands on eaves, feet on window ledge, and for a moment he is as perched as any bird, surveying possibilities, taking in the untouched battlefield. which is pristine, in it's own findings: then he's in, and through, and smiling, and he's less seeking Lan Zhan out that with certainty allowing gravity to draw him in, and close, and irreverent to the particulars of how Lan Zhan holds himself, or the new bruise blooming on his shins. simple, then, to skim hands along upper arms, let the chill of them brush along the sides of his husband's neck, brushing back hair, sinking into warmth at the his protected nape, and find lips with lips, chest to chest, hips angled slightly off to not meet bone with better covered flesh, and want, and want, and let the aching tiredness sink deeper to where he eedn't follow it down yet, to the level of dreams and nightmares and promises, until the dead cannot call to him, and the bright flame of life pulsing within consumes all.
which is to say, he didn't much bother with hello. )
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( And then the eye of the storm settles on him wide-bright unblinking, and hands roil and snag in his hair, dark weave of it unwinding like sea spume, and he is panting, consumed, light-footed — a step back and waxed floors screeching, and he nearly surrenders his footing but for catching the fallback on a swinging arm against the wall —
And he peels back long enough to regain the dregs of his bearings, fever high on his cheekbones like a candle's oils, spilled. He looks, inevitably, at the wet bruise of his husband's mouth. Looks away, incandescent — opens his mouth — closes it.
And, finally, raises his hand as if to either stay or beckon Wei Ying close, fumbling in his step against the wall, blush deepened.
Give him a moment, sir. )
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( A step stumbled, caught, the flush that sweetens pale skin into blooming fire, oxygen deprived and glorious. Dark eyes flickering, first here, then there, and he finds his own gaze does not shift, consumes Lan Zhan expression by expression, each degree of heat and want and is it not this simple.
A moment. Two. His step, taken closer, nudges back towards the sturdiness of the wall: no rot within, no insect devoured husk. A hush following an exhalation, but he feels patience as a memory, not a truth, and it weaves into his voice. )
Lan Zhan.
( Him, and here, and wherever they are. He adds: )
Charm the room silent, if it isn't anyway.
( So that the window, as it still lays open, defeats the purpose, or aids it through sheer willpower alone. Fingers stroke, taste, tease; his tongue tracing his own lips, the extent of his mercy. A man certain of his welcome, and he delights within it, terribly. )
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( Hint of bloodshed to Wei Ying's gaze, and this might be Yiling again, empire ruinous, and Lan Wangji might look upon the dark demonic shadow of the risen patriarch. Brittle charcoal and commanding, at once too much and too little, overwhelming and sedate.
Lan Wangji, impossibly and predictably, falls tender prey to this predation, charmed into perfect, docile paralysis. At first, he does not move. Then, jolting, he bursts into action, deploying a twin set of parchment papers enlivened with hasty scribble that land on the door's pillars and blink golden, before dying down — he considers — then exerts himself for a second round of two parchment strips more, now toward the window. Insurance.
After, poets and tales of romance would recommend wooing his lover abed. He has, in no uncertain terms, invited. Only, he slips to one knee, then thudded, the next, by the floor of the beside, sleeves pooled at each side of him like a bleedout. )
Sit. Let me unbind your boots. ( Let us speak, but in a way profoundly domestic. )
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( A blink, half pleased, a touch amused, a smidge uncertain: he doesn't want time to think, both brilliant and moronic in its fashion. There's a thrill when Lan Zhan starts to sink, but it muddies, swirls somewhere between anticipation and avoidance when he sinks down too, fingers twitching, reaching out again for hair, to trace his husband's features. He's no still, calm thing: he's not a man who knows how to be cared for, tended, worshipped, and he cannot, does not fathom it now.
He should, perhaps. His blindness can take surprising turns. )
Have you even seen to yours?
( Wei Wuxian hasn't looked, twirls a finger slow, delicate, to curl smooth, dark locks around. Fiddles and twitches and leans in because he's only soft angles when clothed, but here his throat curves, here his lips purse, here are kisses peppered botheringly over brow, to want, to want, to not understand the quiet wishes done for his comfort, too alien a concept even now.
Let him prostrate. Let him plead. Let him shiver before the touch of fingers to bare calf, then the release of socked foot, the tension in his body bow right before the next one, muscles of his legs twitching, a restless horse ready to bolt, to run. Not away, but haphazardly, joyously forward.
He doesn't want to think, because it's always too loud, and Lan Zhan at his feet is li too distant when he wants the weight of him, the heat of him, the blushing force of him here, melding, and what to say? )
Lan Zhan...
( A swallow, throat dry, another quick wetting of his lips. What two men do is less a mysterious education than it once was, but it's empty, a hollow to fill, and he shudders again over the nothing of his husband's fingers brushing brief against his skin, and this is unexpected torment. )
Come here?
( Stop, and start, and go. Don't see him, then do. He has little enough idea of what he wants other than the silence of thinking, the focus on affection and love and no little lust too, he's well aware, into this moment and the ones that stretch beyond. )
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( They are out of synchrony, it strikes him, a rare occurrence within the battlefield but the perennial tone of their personal relations. Blunt, jagged steps. Visceral withdrawals. So often, it spells the spawning cradle of misunderstandings: one side experiencing haste as aggression; the other, caution as disinterest.
He must weigh, consider, calculate. One step forward cannot come at the expense of two back. He retreats within himself, a sea calling back its waters, impossibly, sinisterly chilled where Wei Ying burns bright.
He pushes them both to balance, to stillness. Meets Wei Ying halfway by nestling in, his head tipped and heavy and bound for his husband's knees, cheek brushed to the side while his hands seek out Wei Ying's, fingers knotting like a sailor's rope — at once drawing distance and peering closer.
Rolled lazy and low, the wafts of cheap, heavy incense shielding the start of water's damp, of cunning mould. Coarse linens, splintered floors. Shifting, he feels flesh trapped, breath fragile. )
Here, now. You are certain? ( A beat, thunderous. ) ...no. Search yourself before you answer. Bide your time.
( Take a moment. Breathe. ) There are deeds that cannot be undone, after.
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( A slow, prolonged squint, and he sighs, soft, shoulders loosening. How long ago would he have taken this as a kind rejection? A polite way to bow out? When did he begin to recognise the insecurity within his partner, the strange to him sustained disbelief in Wei Wuxian's interest?
There is something within Lan Zhan which believes only in transience, fleeting natures. He has consumed within himself such dedication, he believes none of it found in the world, and fights to find peace with it, however it hurts.
He doesn't know how to combat that, even while it simmers his ardour, gives him a focus, an intent. Here he shifts, hands and hands, tugs, coaxes, pulls. )
I don't know how to pace this. I don't know the steps. I don't have the training. I have the will and the desire, and I'm annoyingly quick to learn.
( A smile, slow and teasing, self aware but not self-conscious. There it is: the want, the attempt to bring Lan Zhan up, between legs which part to give access to the slip of bed between, to draw close, and draw him closer. Bring more of his husband in ready reach, and that, that feels like a beginning he understands, the first step in a free form flow.
Or perhaps that was at the window: perhaps that was the moment words crafted invitation. Perhaps. )
I want — ( and seeks lips, parted, awkward angles or more forgiving ones, he's unconcerned ) — you. The hows we can discover, ah? Yours and mine.
( It has not, to this point, occurred to him why Lan Zhan would kneel, where his own thoughts have wandered, how to anchor him in being wanted anymore than he knows how to accept the same in whole.
Yet he believes. He sees dark eyes, warm cheeks, robes spilling off limbs as sheets slip from beds to pool below, and he believes, this man, he wants me. )
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( The will, the desire, the industry, the ingenuity, the utmost enterprise. The invitation of a body coaxing, slithering and warm-blooded and unexpectedly strong, yielding only in the ways that suggest titillations of power. What Wei Ying gives now freely is his own to wrench returned back, after.
They fall back on a bed that creaks and groans worse than a petulant harlot, a learned courtesan, wood rearing its torn, dented face to show poverty and the attrition of time-gnawed resources. This might have been Cloud Recesses and a marriage bed drowned in the bead-weight of a hundred charms of conjugal fortune. In another life, they may yet have this — six weddings and six heartbeats now, and the seventh threatening to drum thunderously out of Lan Wangji's chest, to eviscerate him.
He lands, clumsily, without breaking his fall — lifts after, to seat himself on bended elbows and keep both hands enshrining the tumble of Wei Ying's hair, loosening it from its tie. Instinct guides the press of their mouths, off-key again, the angle too slanted. It does not matter. )
You are so warm. I did not anticipate. ( He should have; this is no memory, where he beds a man who never did wake, a ghost. ) You are never as anticipated. ( And his mouth is honeyed, treacle. Slow. All of him, slowed. ) You should remove my headband. Your headband.
( In a world of utter change, this much is constant. )
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( Down, pressed and weighed, bed shifting to accommodate two forms converging at once, hands and lips and robes pulling, caught beneath him. His hair freed with Lan Zhan's unwinding, and he smiles up at him, chin tucked the touch to allow greater ease before lips meet, not quite aligned; before he shifts, that squirming motion, to not only change angle best achieved with tilting head, turned chin, but so that the evidence of his warming presses better into the hollow by Lan Zhan's hip.
Not young enough in halves to stand at attention without warning, in these later, unexpected years, but evident when he arches up, shifting clothing to allow the freedom at his shoulder where his elbows better bend, where his hands trace the contours of his husband's face, where he breathes in smiling, exhales, lips parting, and slips deft fingers back, working at the knot of the headband with a familiarity he hadn't imagined two years ago, let alone twenty. )
I rarely remain cold. ( He says, nonsense words, the headband loosening in touches, in inhalations. ) Too warm blooded. Might be all that spice and humidity from Yunmeng summers, ( he continues, burbling words, unthought and winding toward playfulness, towards honesty, away again. The drape of the headband loosens, spills downward, Wei Wuxian's lips pursing in momentary reflex, pressing a kiss to the metal worked into Gusu's winding, circling clouds. ) but I suspect it's due to my present company.
( Lips part after words murmured in heat against the warmth of the metal and silk ribbon, and he bites down soft, teeth holding headband in place with delicacy while his fingers free the trailing knot, dance across Lan Zhan's hair to tug through the anchoring locks of his hair. Freed, the headband flows downhill, pale blues splashing against the sides of Wei Wuxian's jaw, down and settling across his throat, to the sides, on Lan Zhan approved sheets, cleaned and laundered, scented fresh. Lips quirk in a smile, tongue held at bay to not wet their headband, before poking forward to thrust the metal back into his clever, clever fingers, and he allows the whole to slide over his chin, to settle across the rise of his throat, shifting as he swallows, as he lets go.
As he peers up, and hands find new purchase, this time working on the singular knot that holds Lan Zhan's hair even yet at bay, but so much more relaxed than the topknot encased by the crown of his dignity, adapted and found again and again in these strange lands. Fingers massage scalp with a hesitancy born only of unfamiliarity: the motions learned against his own canvas, knowing the motions that relieve for him the tiny aches accumulated, release of another kind. When he arches up, pulls his husband down for another kiss, the angles lend better harmony, and he tries for deeper, slower kissing, peers through slit lids and heavy lashes to study Lan Zhan's face too close for easy viewing, closes fully before his tongue flicks out, seeing if he can taste his husband, coaxing, teasing, welcoming. Not the raw urgency of even his first step into this temporary abode, but want, oh, that's easier to settle into, that's something he can share. Can't he?
Can't he?
His shifting attempts to bring one partly exposed calf around the hidden silks of his husband's own lower leg, clinging and pressing upward yet again, leads to breath catching at the unplanned friction, eyes fluttering open to glimpse if Lan Zhan had caught the same, caught the reaction, response. Better to be still? Better to move? What is too much, or enough? Thoughts starting to thrum, and he shoves back, filters through them to the salient details: his husband's breath, his own. The thudding of his husband's heart, the answering drumming of his own.
That's something he does share. Doesn't he? )
Can you imagine? Me wearing nothing but our headband.
( Dark eyes, warm invitation. Imagine. Embrace what needn't remain only in the realm of dreams and fantasies whose discovery are part of the joyousness of chosen unions. Or so he imagines. So he wonders and chooses to believe. So he wants, as surely as he'll admit to wanting to himself. )
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( Here, slivers of brokered friction, thigh to thigh and charcoaled tongues and the quiet, simmered symphorophilia of their marriage, unwinding. Lacing together again. This knowledge pre-dates the etiquettes, mouth to mouth and heat stirring like a sea rising grey and massive, to overwhelm.
He feels it, in the tips of his fingers, dancing in Wei Ying's hair, in his toes that've barely shrugged off their boot straps, in nerves of what flesh of his burns through silks stretching, in the quiet, pale rain of his headband, fluttering first against his cheek, then downing to settle on Wei Ying's tender, rabbiting jugular, up and down, up and down. He bites, unthinkingly, where the metal clasp stills, above it to redden the stretch of Wei Ying's skin, around. It will be clumsy, tomorrow, littered bruises a domestication of cleaving fingerprints, and Lan Wangji's qi mysteriously absent and hapless before weeping marks. )
I can. I have. ( A decades-long, private, vaguely coalesced fantasy, risen from the visceral depths of Lan Wangji's grief-yearning. What has the fallen Yiling Patriarch not been to him? Friend, adversary, tormentor, courtesan. Quarrelsome, clawing, vicious oppressor, willing prize. He has defiled this man once with marital touch in the stern frigidity of the crisped chilled cave and a thousand times in fever dreams. ) You were beautiful.
( Like a mariner drawn to moonlight, so is the flickered dance of sweet candle's light to Wei Ying's cheek — too pale to be beautiful, bone jutting, the look of him, manicured starvation. One day, he will resemble himself again, exemplary. Now, he is — ragged, raw. Lan Wangji's own between kisses and kindness. The answer, perhaps: move. )
Pledge me something. ( Before, if there is to be be an after. ) Do not leave with night.
( As Wei Ying so often conspires to, dark-stepped and trickled and feline, like ink spilled from a jar. So Lan Wangji must chase him, drenched in the delirium of his own genius, riddling the universe between brushstrokes and raven-bird feathers and chalk of skull bone, and he is for slow coaxing, then, for tutoring back to his flesh and his bed's confines. For steering. )
Not for restlessness or exercise or curiosity. ( For necessity, perhaps: defenses or the quiet calls of a wine-tried body. ) Let me wake to you. That is my price.
( A simple gift, if not from a man who's already given himself to death first, twice over. )
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