( 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
( 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. )