I don't remember when I first found people attractive, instead of just knowing people were attractive. Sometime in my teen years? When teasing everyone became something I could tell meant something different to women and young ladies, mostly, so I had to be more careful and more deliberate. It was fun! But there was something there that'd changed, and changing expectations, and I started reading an assortment of novels that wouldn't have been on the common Gusu Library Shelves, if you know what I mean!
Those were fun and exciting and also extremely safe and had nothing to do with anyone I actually knew for quite some time, so if any stray ideas came into my head on nights I didn't sleep well, I remembered more of those things when just ignoring things didn't resolve them. Had some interesting dreams, I assume, though I only remember the end result, not the dreaming! I don't miss that.
Which implies I did remember things, at some point, and mostly that's not true — the few I remember were faceless, shapeless, more impression than anything tangible, and then there were the few with you. What was it, for sure one before you left Gusu or something like that, another one much later, after you visited Yiling. I don't remember actually touching you. In dreams, obviously! And don't take this poorly, but for many reasons, I didn't think about those much at all. I don't know that I even remembered them until lately, and even that's hazy... I don't remember most my dreams, ah?
( the nightmares, he makes himself forget. the nice dreams don't startle him into waking, still fresh on mind. only the dreams of loss did that, and he never recalled those beyond the weight in his chest when waking, and he's not presently talking about those things. nor inclined to, generally. )
You'd think with the amount of things I read when I was younger I would have been more creative with myself, but there's always so much going on, it was more like... a lulling, snatching something kinder when there wasn't enough alcohol to drown things out, and I wanted anything else to sink into, that sort of thing. Not so much as a teenager, but in my early twenties. Most of when you knew me!
( you know if he reflects on this at all it's going to be pathetic so how does he make himself not sound pathetic? )
Then everything was more complicated than ever, and for a long time there wasn't anything to think about but the passing of time, and then after that — travel, shadow men pulling strings for solving mysteries, you were with me the whole time, when did I have time for anything? If I'd even thought of it, I didn't keep thinking, ah?
When I was traveling on my own after Jin Guangyao was killed, while you settled into Chief Cultivator and Sizhui was finding his way to his past with Wen Ning, when I was off with Little Apple, that was probably the first time since?
Not that it was a priority, but traveling the world in ways I never could before, keeping company with a donkey and people in this or that town or this or that village or this or that city, all nice, moments of brightness and dullness and darkness, depending. I might have found some of myself out there or something like that, and then I found myself, and it was a little different form of living I hadn't thought about in a long, long time. Which was nice! Really, it was! I've always had skilled hands, ah? ;)
You know, how come I never thought about toys? You'd think I would think about things like that! Creative inventions! Then again I was traveling with everything packed on one donkey.
I spent the last year and a half trying to seduce you after we married for the fourth time? That failed horribly but I know I dreamed about you a lot more then!
But also you were there so often I never did anything unless I stole off into quiet places and then it was just quick and maddening and more about release than anything else!
( And this... overwhelms, overcomes. Drowns, tidally. Fills him from root to brim and drenches his bones and he envisions: the boy he knew, pale and funerary in borrowed whites, alive on rooftops. The king of a dead castle, singing the dregs and ruins of Yiling awake from sleep. The martyr, the memory, the hope, the dream, the passion.
The man, flesh and forlorn marrow and desire, somewhere, petty and paltry and ruinous, utterly... pedestrian. Pathetic, perhaps. But sweet.
Lan Wangji featured in the unmaking of this man, at once a fixture and a folly. A quiet, steadfast opportunity. It should flatter him.
( Cracked, the cage of his ribs, the cradle of his heart. The pain he knows, recognises from years aging, the headier for the vintage, for the depths to which it aches.
These are not words he can ask for. He doesn't know until that moment, when his breath catches, when his eyes burn, when he's standing in a dusty street in a city set to tear itself apart like so many poised on change do, and his hand seeks the material of his unfamiliar robes, fists over his breastbone. For a heartbeat, then five, he cannot breathe.
He can weep, but he cannot find air.
The delay is in his writing, is in the words: )
I love you.
( Is in the blooming warmth and sadness he can't quite separate, for Lan Zhan, for the few who have loved him for all he is and all he isn't, in spite of and because of everything that is his self. Yanli had always known. She'd always been right, like he knew she always had been.
There are some pains you willingly tie yourself to, no matter the journey. There are some joys worth the challenges of finding them despite the paths to them seeming all but lost.
Pale, thin fingers. Not so fragile as bird's bones, no, his life has proven that time and again. His sword grip, no less strong now, for all the blade does not bear its own soul-drunk energies, greedy and willing and loyal. )
Where will I find you?
( He should say, later. Tonight. Some time that isn't still before the heavy heat of the day, in winter not so insurmountable a challenge. Dust and dregs of death and dull symmetry of form, shadows swallowed by the light that hung heavy overhead, gasping down over all of them.
( Is there a point where their lives can have less of that? He doesn't enjoy it. Never has, can't say he ever will, because the one time he did was so deeply steeped in his own trauma and conceptualisation of revenge, he can't relate to that moment, doesn't want to linger in that pain, anymore.
Fingers twitch around nothing, hands empty. He should be used to that sensation. When did he lose those calluses? )
Minimise. Protect. Survive.
( Order of importance, this scant not quite farewell. )
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1/?
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( the nightmares, he makes himself forget. the nice dreams don't startle him into waking, still fresh on mind. only the dreams of loss did that, and he never recalled those beyond the weight in his chest when waking, and he's not presently talking about those things. nor inclined to, generally. )
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( you know if he reflects on this at all it's going to be pathetic so how does he make himself not sound pathetic? )
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( ... okay not helping )
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Not that it was a priority, but traveling the world in ways I never could before, keeping company with a donkey and people in this or that town or this or that village or this or that city, all nice, moments of brightness and dullness and darkness, depending. I might have found some of myself out there or something like that, and then I found myself, and it was a little different form of living I hadn't thought about in a long, long time. Which was nice! Really, it was! I've always had skilled hands, ah? ;)
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Nevermind, nevermind, not important!
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I'm pathetic
Lan Zhaaaan put me out of my misery
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But also you were there so often I never did anything unless I stole off into quiet places and then it was just quick and maddening and more about release than anything else!
end
wait the real end now
1/3
( And this... overwhelms, overcomes. Drowns, tidally. Fills him from root to brim and drenches his bones and he envisions: the boy he knew, pale and funerary in borrowed whites, alive on rooftops. The king of a dead castle, singing the dregs and ruins of Yiling awake from sleep. The martyr, the memory, the hope, the dream, the passion.
The man, flesh and forlorn marrow and desire, somewhere, petty and paltry and ruinous, utterly... pedestrian. Pathetic, perhaps. But sweet.
Lan Wangji featured in the unmaking of this man, at once a fixture and a folly. A quiet, steadfast opportunity. It should flatter him.
He wants to weep. )
Wei Ying.
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Your fingers.
Long, narrow, beautiful, fine. Dancing a sword's hilt or flute ribs.
Round-knuckled, bird-boned. White, strained on a cup downed for me.
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That was all.
You were enough.
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( Cracked, the cage of his ribs, the cradle of his heart. The pain he knows, recognises from years aging, the headier for the vintage, for the depths to which it aches.
These are not words he can ask for. He doesn't know until that moment, when his breath catches, when his eyes burn, when he's standing in a dusty street in a city set to tear itself apart like so many poised on change do, and his hand seeks the material of his unfamiliar robes, fists over his breastbone. For a heartbeat, then five, he cannot breathe.
He can weep, but he cannot find air.
The delay is in his writing, is in the words: )
I love you.
( Is in the blooming warmth and sadness he can't quite separate, for Lan Zhan, for the few who have loved him for all he is and all he isn't, in spite of and because of everything that is his self. Yanli had always known. She'd always been right, like he knew she always had been.
There are some pains you willingly tie yourself to, no matter the journey. There are some joys worth the challenges of finding them despite the paths to them seeming all but lost.
Pale, thin fingers. Not so fragile as bird's bones, no, his life has proven that time and again. His sword grip, no less strong now, for all the blade does not bear its own soul-drunk energies, greedy and willing and loyal. )
Where will I find you?
( He should say, later. Tonight. Some time that isn't still before the heavy heat of the day, in winter not so insurmountable a challenge. Dust and dregs of death and dull symmetry of form, shadows swallowed by the light that hung heavy overhead, gasping down over all of them.
He does not say later.
He barely keeps himself from saying right now. )
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Not tonight.
The matter of bloodshed upon us.
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Fingers twitch around nothing, hands empty. He should be used to that sensation. When did he lose those calluses? )
Minimise. Protect. Survive.
( Order of importance, this scant not quite farewell. )
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( Ah, he is too raw, then. Too worn-in, for how this stings. )
Have no concern. Mere delay.
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