( 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. )
( He might have thought he would flinch when teeth find throat, might have thought at worst he would gasp: the low groan, unplanned, unexpected thrill of a particular kind of, not competition, but striving. A particular indulgence, just between them, in their borrowed privacy and twinned heat, in unsteady heartbeats and quiet cacophonic inhalations.
He likes the thought of being wanted, even as he shoes away from that tragedy of wanting, of separation and death and the finality presented and denied to his unknown husband, his known brother. Not thoughts for now, not for this, not shades to linger at the headboard as so many are wont to do.
Yet there's allure in being desired, because he does not think that beautiful has even been enough, does not think love carves itself from pain and joys and everything else simply for beauty, for delight. He trails lips and fingers that rake with measured force through the freed waterfall of Lan Zhan's hair, against scalp, against propriety, for the sheer pleasure of it.
Frames a face familiar and loved in so many expressions and moments, pale and beautiful, ruddy and enchanting. Brushes a thumb across a cheek, holding dark strands at bay, and strains just so, just like this, to deliver another kiss, to nip gently at Lan Zhan's lower lip. Gentle, because it's easy to be rough. Gently, because it seems like it's what's been asked, even before a pledge forms on his husband's tongue, a deep fear, and aching sweetness, in words.
Not too disappear as a dream, as a nightmare. There's no logic to it — he's hardly slept away from Lan Zhan in the last two years, why of all times should he willingly do so now? — but hearts don't care for logic, fears don't understand reason.
His husband bargains, and dozens of tiny needles claw at his heart, affection overwhelming. )
That's no price, Lan Zhan. That's a pleasure.
( Another slow kiss, the hitch of his hips in an abortive roll, the dropping of his head but not his gaze. )
I promise. Short of some major disaster, I'm here. For tomorrow morning, and add many as you'll have me for after.
( Not a bargain, not a cost. If he thought it was true in any meaningful sense, he would roll them both over now, limpet clinging, and praise nothing but the merits of platonic rest.
He understands, and it's the wits and words Lan Zhan does not always employ to clarity, but it's there.
Please don't leave me to take alone after this. Don't leave me to wake to an empty, cold bed, to the uncertainty of how much this all is dreaming. )
( after. There is yet an 'after' brokered between them, ring by ring weaving the chainmail, and clinks and glints of it blinding and deafening and stolid. It is at once pledge and permission, Wei Ying forfeiting of himself both his present and his future.
So it begins: torrentially, without thanks, only Lan Wangji assailing like a huntsman pursuing prey, hands cruel and bound in Wei Ying's hair and the rest of their geometries falling in clumsy, then a righting place — and later, he will ask himself, was this the way of it? Was this the root of trouble and qualm, was it always so simple?
But now is for a thousand notches on the vellum of his headband, rounded clean around Wei Ying, now is learning and bright footsteps on an inn's half-deserted corridor and sighs of wind warring beyond, and a night cool and kindly. Now is their own. )
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
( 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. )
no subject
( 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.
no subject
( 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. )
no subject
( 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. )
no subject
( 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. )
no subject
( 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. )
no subject
( He might have thought he would flinch when teeth find throat, might have thought at worst he would gasp: the low groan, unplanned, unexpected thrill of a particular kind of, not competition, but striving. A particular indulgence, just between them, in their borrowed privacy and twinned heat, in unsteady heartbeats and quiet cacophonic inhalations.
He likes the thought of being wanted, even as he shoes away from that tragedy of wanting, of separation and death and the finality presented and denied to his unknown husband, his known brother. Not thoughts for now, not for this, not shades to linger at the headboard as so many are wont to do.
Yet there's allure in being desired, because he does not think that beautiful has even been enough, does not think love carves itself from pain and joys and everything else simply for beauty, for delight. He trails lips and fingers that rake with measured force through the freed waterfall of Lan Zhan's hair, against scalp, against propriety, for the sheer pleasure of it.
Frames a face familiar and loved in so many expressions and moments, pale and beautiful, ruddy and enchanting. Brushes a thumb across a cheek, holding dark strands at bay, and strains just so, just like this, to deliver another kiss, to nip gently at Lan Zhan's lower lip. Gentle, because it's easy to be rough. Gently, because it seems like it's what's been asked, even before a pledge forms on his husband's tongue, a deep fear, and aching sweetness, in words.
Not too disappear as a dream, as a nightmare. There's no logic to it — he's hardly slept away from Lan Zhan in the last two years, why of all times should he willingly do so now? — but hearts don't care for logic, fears don't understand reason.
His husband bargains, and dozens of tiny needles claw at his heart, affection overwhelming. )
That's no price, Lan Zhan. That's a pleasure.
( Another slow kiss, the hitch of his hips in an abortive roll, the dropping of his head but not his gaze. )
I promise. Short of some major disaster, I'm here. For tomorrow morning, and add many as you'll have me for after.
( Not a bargain, not a cost. If he thought it was true in any meaningful sense, he would roll them both over now, limpet clinging, and praise nothing but the merits of platonic rest.
He understands, and it's the wits and words Lan Zhan does not always employ to clarity, but it's there.
Please don't leave me to take alone after this. Don't leave me to wake to an empty, cold bed, to the uncertainty of how much this all is dreaming. )
no subject
( after. There is yet an 'after' brokered between them, ring by ring weaving the chainmail, and clinks and glints of it blinding and deafening and stolid. It is at once pledge and permission, Wei Ying forfeiting of himself both his present and his future.
So it begins: torrentially, without thanks, only Lan Wangji assailing like a huntsman pursuing prey, hands cruel and bound in Wei Ying's hair and the rest of their geometries falling in clumsy, then a righting place — and later, he will ask himself, was this the way of it? Was this the root of trouble and qualm, was it always so simple?
But now is for a thousand notches on the vellum of his headband, rounded clean around Wei Ying, now is learning and bright footsteps on an inn's half-deserted corridor and sighs of wind warring beyond, and a night cool and kindly. Now is their own. )