( Certain misfortunes are, in and of themselves, steeped in ridiculousness. There's a touch of whimsy in what's said, fear evident yet confused.
He nods, studying his husband's face while his lips curl into the touch of a fond smile, amused by what's said, considering what isn't. )
The pattern changed. It had only been men, until then.
( So yes, it interests him where otherwise it is simply a misfortune they might have capacity to assist in resolving.
He begins to play with his husband's fingers, gaze thoughtful. )
The change came with the bigger storm we keep hearing about. The one everyone traveling into town, and everyone in town, keeps mentioning. After the hail that managed, somehow, to cause damage to homes and certain livestock, yet very little to the fields.
( The quirk of his brow, focusing his attention on Lan Zhan, full and merciless in it's consuming presence. )
I don't think the two are so unrelated as they seem.
( Not so unrelated, then, a game of crepuscular speculation and tender findings, and Wei Ying, his Wei Ying, turned stormy and predatory and wronged by the possibility of mystery that eludes him.
Would it be so terrible a thing, to make use of themselves further? This world has neither earned nor better deserves them than their own. Yet Wei Ying breathes here, somewhat spirited.
He considers with unnecessary attention the logistics of the travel forthcoming, how far and wide their days of sun yet stretch, how long of a distance this will derail them. Then, nod trickling down, he accepts the inevitability of Wei Ying's whim coalescing into a power greater than what cradles the earth in orbit. )
Kiss me and have your way.
( It is indecent, unworthy of him. Sends his cheeks bright and bloomed, incandescent. His breath catches, too slow now to hesitate, to retract his audacity. He is not a man to require — payment. And yet. )
( Sparking fire within his gaze, affection, base lust, appreciation all fed from the wellspring of Lan Zhan's words. For reasons beyond his desire for counting, this isn't a life he imagined himself having. Thus his sliding from the chair, still holding his husband's hand, the lift to his lips even as he gazes down at beloved features, the whole of his complex and contradictory soulmate. The warm press of lips to knuckles, eyelids starting to close so he peers through lashes: )
Then I'd have you moving to our rooms now.
( He knows as well that as he dips down, as his free hand cradles Lan Zhan's blossoming cheek, lips finding lips, gentled pressure, held.
When his eyes open, his face held at improper but assisting distance, he asks: )
What do you want, Lan Zhan?
( Journeys need not begin in every given moment, and he has no intention to turn towards the deeper mountains until the morrow at soonest. Not for love of where they stand now, but for the honest joy that is simplified travel, with his husband, and that horse. )
( A kiss like a receding winter, feathery and crisp and raw, at once tepid and withering. He does not retreat; walks his tongue in languishing rolls on the wet line of his lips, shrunk near nothing. Chases Wei Ying's mouth, dab of sweat beading his temple and crooked and tumbling down the slant of his high cheek cutting down — and it is heat, isn't it, among sea-spumes of candles in the honeyed, balmy enclosure of a place so closely watched.
He remembers himself, his surroundings. Draws back, clumsy and flustered and tidal, flush fueling his face. He pretends, to mask the fumble, to consider. Then, because it is Wei Ying who asks, and so seldom — he does think. )
Innocents suffer. We will go. ( It can be so simple, he supposes, in a world walked in Wei Ying's footsteps. And what a wraith he is. )
Coin came of the last exorcism. ( And he is no longer the proud son of Gusu Lan, propelled by dignity to rise above the Heavens and base pecuniary needs, when his benefactors appear to own enough coin to spare their patronage for services swiftly rendered. ) Procure yourself fresh silks.
( So often, Wei Ying neglects himself, for the sake of others, as if happiness is of limited supply and he cannot be the one to stoke demand. ) You look a stray.
( Hunger, yes, he's known in different forms, for different ends. Less familiar is the hunger of his heart when chased by Lan Zhan's affections, carried by lips and touches or words and deeds. He swallows against a thickening throat, wanting to lean in, balanced against wanting everything without outside eyes.
Wanting answers for questions which matter in his estimation, perhaps in no other.
Yet there, the simplest path of agreement: they might have ability to help, and those who suffer, if not necessarily innocent, are not yet proven to such abscess of character as to necessitate their draining.
It's a near thing. He almost moves to sit in his husband's lap, smile already blossoming. His restraint such as it is manifests when he leans in, freshly named stray by the other half of his soul.
He's been stray for a long, long time. Beautiful, now, to have a home in another's heart, indelible.
By his husband's ear, breath warm, but not touching: )
( He would be as vermin or great sickness, burrowing beneath skin if he could, Wei Ying, his Wei Ying. Writhing, squirming, making himself impossibly small, readily contained — only to look upon Lan Wangji like a bright-eyed rabbit, cowering from rejection.
The tip of his finger chases Wei Ying's where their hands are bound, knuckle to digit. He brings these same hands back up to his mouth to kiss. )
I have not married you in greens. ( Implicit, yet. And on its footsteps, A matter to remedy. ) Or deep azure.
( Red is tradition and, conversationally, the superior colour in matters of wedded fortunes. But they have born the silks once, then again. Wei Ying at every turn, bound to his tresses. Lan Wangji, too, on the singular occasion — but enough of the clans have no rite of reds and embrace local colours more readily.
Would green suit? Perhaps too much of the Nie in it, jade vivid and strong. And azure? The Lan, indubitably. Purples and the sky in twilight would drench Wei Ying in Yunmeng again and — click of Lan Wangji's tongue, tempered — no, that won't do. )
No more darks. No white of mourning. Draw the eye.
( He chuckles at the thought, both blues and greens, yet it's the vibrancy which stays with him. His hand thrums from the aftermath of Lan Zhan's attentions, his own squeeze of fingers voluntary now in his warmth. )
I'll see what lively colours I can find before we leave.
( Straightening up, reluctance in the slow, feline nature of his movement, his smile softens, eyes following suit. )
Shall I find you in our room within the shichen?
( Patrons have redistributed attention, sighs and conversations as dusty as their surroundings. Fatally, beautiful human, mundane. How they slide from banality into absurdity is anyone's guess, beyond their own inclinations.
There's peace within it, somehow. Living a life for this moment, before they inevitably reclaim their world, and negotiate, fight, remove themselves to find a better semblance of peace there. )
( What a simple thing to barter a delicate afternoon tryst with a lover committed, a sure thing, their affection syrupy and slow. Nothing endangers this: not the whim of stray, crackling magic, not the stormy turn of Wei Ying's cruel whims. He allows himself, distantly, to taste the flavour of pining guaranteed a felicitous ending, no different than teasing a healing bruise with the press of his fingertips.
And he nods, at long last releasing Wei Ying's hand, allowing him to bloom into the chips and fragments of refined posture and lift himself serenely. )
Within the shichen. ( And what can a man procure in such a tight timeframe? Even the least ambitious dressmaker will want time to take Wei Ying's willow, imperfectly slim measures and tighten their wares. Still, there are greater miracles his husband has worked. )
You take half my soul. ( A strange farewell, yet he has grown accustomed. ) Go.
( He smiles, the laughter that trails behind him fond, lingering as long as his scent, and then, he's gone. To conversations with shop keeps and robes existing and needing only length, breadth of shoulder — not outsized, Wei Wuxian, compared to the people here. Paradoxical perhaps to their considerations, but this town is focal enough for overland trade to carry variance beyond his initial suspicion.
Thus, robes, and the new rucksack to replace one worn thin from abrasive interviews with the wider world, and supplies for travel, for writing, for... personal needs.
When he sweeps into their rooms later, package in his arms, rucksack heavy with necessities, there's but one thing his clever fingers find, plucking out a clay jar with a clever, bees wax coated cloth wrapped stopper. He holds out the lotion, for soothing and hydrating, even as he somehow sets the rest down on the bench across from the bed. )
What do you think of the scent?
( He found it pleasing, for this comfort to assuage scars, for this pleasure that is deciding against carrying all trauma unaddressed in one's flesh. He knows they both do. He suspects they both didn't need to, not as they have.
He also doesn't show the robes, doesn't even comment, a smile touching his lips when his eyes meet the wrapped package, before he again looks to Lan Zhan, brow quirked.
The bones of the inn breathe around them, conversing with the night's settling, the inquiries of the wind. A storm rides heavy and thick with promise of electric deluge, not yet arrived. Perhaps never to deliver. )
( Later, their inn: less crooked and damp and mould-laden than many to have housed them, more withered and husked and dry. A pale thing, chipping and splintering and snagging, when Lan Wangji's bare feet cross the floors, pattering. Crude nails, half risen like a peeling scab. The scent of deep, cloying oud.
He welcomes Wei Ying into a room ill lit, door crawling like a cat in his husband's wake to click shuttered, before the lock comes drawn. A still, quiet settlement, yes, and in its bones a purposeful savagery. He asks nothing, of no one, least of all the courtesy of true hospitality.
It has not been earned. Will not be freely given. He draws Wei Ying back, to himself, to the wide and sandy spread of their thin-linen clad bed. To sit, leg half drawn beneath himself as he watches the jar in Wei Ying's hand with hawkish, sharp interest. Fingers toy over the jar's swell, dance the edge. His lips purse, freely.
He tips the lid over, and the ointment within gives a soft, muted gleam. )
Unnecessary. ( Reedy, slack-tongued. But it is given and received, and he watches the fat of it slowly drip to liquify at its edges, catches the sweet, rising fragrance. Unnecessary, the coin was yours to expend. And so, Wei Ying did.
He looks up, unfastening the sailors' knot of his belts only to loosen the robes above and weep their layers down his shoulders with slow tugs of his sleeves, after. Revealing, if not the full labyrinth of his scars, then at least enough of their humble start to protect modesty.
No need, he suspects, to ask. No need, to consent, to make a spectacle of himself. Actions, before words, but. ) Thank you.
( He settles with the same smoothness as his husband's hair, dusty draping of himself on the expanse of their temporary bed. His boots slough off as any second skin, only a pause to note Lan Zhan's actions, robes loosened, shoulders bared.
It should not cause the ache of fondness it does. Nor the ache of sympathetic pain, more layered than his younger self could imagine.
Things done where no one you wish to impress can see have a weight and responsibility of all their own.
He doesn't look for the brand which mars chest alike to chest. He simply straightens, leaning in, pressing a kiss with seconds of lingering fondness to the skin he's not always certain his husband wears as comfortable. Or he sees, again, more of himself, and thus he lets the thought flow away.
Thank you, in a gesture of affection. )
Every day, you're welcome.
( In words forever inadequate, as he crawls behind Lan Zhan, settles and scoots so one leg frames Lan Zhan's unfolded leg. His fingers stretch and dip, collecting the hydrating cream of sorts.
They return, tracing small circles over the visible sections of scars, a mountain exposed as the winters snows melt and thaw. He swallows, and he speaks about the stores, the old woman at the village apothecary, the brothers are the ready made and tailoring shop. His voice, living and amused, flows in different avenues to the methodical circling of fingers over scar tissue, working in the salve, working on the tension, multiplied as it is. Lan Zhan may not need his words, but he's had too much of his silence, and so he fills their small chambers with that warmth, eyes memorizing each precious expanse of his husband's trust, made manifest, made touchable.
Even as the shutters whine and gasp, winds of the growing storm plucking then like zither strings, it is still his voice, their warmth, and the mystery of understanding arrived at with no less work required now than the stumbling steps of years before.
( This is the silk thread unraveled, the slow coaxing. Wei Ying, fitting loose and languidly behind him, like a painting's timid frame. The fall and dance of his fingertips, whispering molten agony where the balm sinks in the ravines of his scars, before suffusing in a cool, haunting stroke.
He breathes with it, against it. Weathers the treatment as if it's slow, salted ache and his wounds yet bleed, for all they've gone nearly two decades since their ripening. Now and then, movements slow and measured and tinny, he peels down more and more of his layers, revealing first the full shoulder's roundness, then the upper stretch of his arm, and lower and lower and lower, until he sits no better than a maiden debauched, silks wilted to his elbows. His back, a revelry of trickling scars, his hair like time-tarnished weeds.
The storm gathers, quickens, coils. Falls within itself, breathing alive surrounding them. He gasps once, when the shutters yowl, beating back against currents. Again, when Wei Ying's touch seems to have briefly removed itself.
Then, softly: )
They are yours. It is right for you to touch that which is yours.
( And yet some part of him seems to want convincing. )
( Storm without, quiet within. His fingers have different callouses now to the prime of his sword arts, more fitted to bow and instrument, regardless of when he does pick up the sword. Nothing spiritual. Nothing which would drain him swiftly, in a manner no usual blade does.
Yet those callouses know the maps of scarring, know what it feels like to find mended flesh which, in and of itself, couldn't heal clean. He memorises each interlaced line, remembers through another's telling the origins, marvels at how cruelty is imbedded, invested, into so many aspects of the major clans. Kindness too. There's no equity in either direction.
Recalling the gasp, first at the window shuddering, then at his own pause, Wei Wuxian does not again allow himself pause. He doesn't need it in the moment, massaging fingers following the slow unfolding down, down, down. )
What you wish to share of yourself, I am glad for.
( These are Lan Zhan's scars. No matter the reasons behind them, the only person who can choose how they're seen, if they're touched, if he wants them even acknowledged is the man sitting before him. One day, perhaps, he may allow them loved.
With the wind sighing at the shutters, perhaps it isn't today. Perhaps it is. His heart aches, pain and fondness twinning around each other, curled up as kittens sleeping in the spring sunlight. )
When you invite my touch, I settle, humbled.
( For the network across his back, especially: he's simply greedy in other contexts, feeling it unnecessary to point out what they both know. )
And when you speak, I listen to hear.
( Speak on the difficult things, on the past or present or future. On vinegar tendencies, or regrets, or fears, or joys. So precious, when they speak intending to hear and be heard. When they listen, and do not lecture.
Simply be. )
Edited (dw wanted this done way sooner than i was ready hahaha) 2024-07-12 15:19 (UTC)
( There are moments, glistening and strung together, when Wei Ying makes himself light and quick and small, so entirely diminutive that he fits in the nooks and crannies of Lan Wangji's need like waters cutting through ravines. When his breaths course like a river of silence.
And Lan Wangji may fool himself into the belief that his husband is attentively present, but not complicit in his humbling. That he is carefully, fastidiously shielded from the vast onslaught of Lan Wangji's ravenous grief.
He does not flinch, again, under Wei Ying's touch, not when its sedate flow sends thin susurrations of pleasure across broken skin; not when they tease and taunt and disarm him; not when flesh feels unbound and dissolving and bones creak and he breathes through the ghosts of ache, exorcism languid and staggered. )
I know it unrequested. ( Of Wei Ying, who asks nothing, who thinks he deserves far less than rags and week-old rice. Who coaxes monsters to his qiankun purse and whispers the dead alive, but starves for the scraps of Jiang Cheng's affection. Who accepted to seek out silks of his own only on request, who bears a body made whole only by death's own kiss, beneath them. ) But I wish I had untarnished flesh to give you.
( Intimacy has already gone shared, desire kindled, gladness shared. What lay in his hands or purse or blade's strength to gift has gone doled out. But it is not worthy, not sufficient. )
A smooth back. A leg unbroken. Hands uncalloused. ( Parts that suit and comprise him, but are not the best iterations of what they might have been. ) So that I might take gladness in handing you the best of myself.
( Ah, how he's thought, perhaps, he handles with better grace what claws at his heart in hearing. He doesn't. Warmth fills his eyes, as if the blood from the heart of him needed as much release as the tears summoned in truth. They're are a quiet thing, dew clinging to lashes, falling inevitably, carving pathways lower, lower, gone into the crook of his neck and his comfortable, dusty robes.
He understands what it is to wish, against reality and sense, to only have beautiful wholes to hand those you love. To have everything intact and wonderful: to measure out lives experiences together, not defined by carved, living truths eroding through them. To wish to have a world of yourself to give, to be frustrated by imperfection, though he himself is less frequently found at such cross purpose. His frustrations, immense as they are, tangled up in solutions he wishes to find, demands placed on himself, and the unutterable knowledge that perfection is never enough. It cannot, by its own nature.
Love is woven into flaws ever changing, improvements which can only exist because they are none of them as whole and untouched as they wish.
What hurts, what aches, is that understanding, imperfect and fractured, a crystal held in hand after breaking in the fall. He says nothing, hums acknowledgement, fingers methodical yet loving, tears... unchecked, viscous, tracing the planes of his face.
Wei Wuxian smiles. It's a joyous agony, that is love. He leans in to press one kiss, then another, to the expanse of his husband's shoulder. Across the back of his neck. Down the length of his other shoulder. Soft lipped, barely parted. If he could consume Lan Zhan's hurt, he would feast. He would glut himself, but he knows the impossibility. He understands sharing what one cannot be unburdened by, but only just, only recently. Only in trust, carved out of the hollow caverns of his humourous defenses. )
I hear. I... understand the wish.
( Even understanding, nboe deep and glacier slow, that he loves more for every fracture, for each deepened understanding of themselves. Oh sharing that too, as the true best, because it is lived. Survived. Embraced.
Which is no small thing. No small thing at all.
His head lifts with the shaking of the shutters, the whining creel of the wind, lamenting then joyous then raging, as winds do. )
They are too different. A man who has fed on slivers and scraps tolerates even days-old rice with gladness. Only perfection suits the second sect of a foremost sect, porcelain unchipped, calligraphy unwavered, the joyous tang of the Emperor, Smiling.
Shuddered is the line of his back, breaking, the dab of sweat that cascades and catches in decline. How he breathes with Wei Ying's affection, his stubborn fool's pride, the tide and deluge of the formidable farce of his carnal want. Can Lan Wangji trust in desire? The truth: it is a fluid, inky, gelid thing, fitting in a hundred dark spaces; Wei Ying sleeps in between the jagged ends of wrath and the soft curves of covetous timidity.
He opens his mouth to round a moan with the fall of Wei Ying's lips again —
And outside, the storm screams ruin.
It is impossible, then inexorable. The burst of movement like a gutting punch, he swerves and turns and is, all at once and irrefutable, a wall before Wei Ying. Their mouths crash, he brings them close. Lust and laughter and a sudden, feral detonation, a kiss like a curse, half-teeth snagging on the cherry skin of Wei Ying's lower lip. Gushing.
He does not linger, slips their foreheads to collide and holds, holds Wei Ying by the upper stretch of his arms, holds his dear heart dearest, holds — )
I might have loved a hundred men. ( But didn't, and it's gravel and hoarse and friction will erode the last of his conviction, turn him a ragged thing, small. ) And abandoned a thousand lovers.
( For duty, for the troubles of a war-torn, haunted son, for the wishes of the sect, for Lan Wangji's own whims and passions. He is stalwart, they say, a storm contained; his roots pillar the world. Yet he is... uncaring, innately negligent in the way of rich men who can readily replace all that which eludes them.
He has been so flimsy, ever allowing the light of his life to dim. His eyes shutter. )
( Thunder booms, a strike reverberating through the hollow of his chest. Lightning struck, he finds himself kissed, startled into appreciative surprise, jolted back and held in place and stunned, in that extended moment, lower lip swelling, delicious in its brief, poignant pain, a burst of sun behind his eyes.
He clutches, grabs, contorts to match the swift turned position of his husband, who speaks of loves and lovers, casts them aside in the same instant.
Dizzying, yet thrumming under his skin. He holds to Lan Zhan, half his wholeness, paradox, and presses his forehead against his soulmate's.
Friends are chosen. There's no immutable truth beyond that fact.
Friends are chosen. )
So you admit it? ( Soft, spoken by lips which ache to smile, then indulge. ) After all this time, we're friends?
( His expression eases, studying this face so improbably important to him, for reasons great and small. )
Thank you. For choosing me.
( For friendship, for arguments, for fights, for resolutions. For love. For lust, too, granted outlet, but most for the rest.
He falls back as the wind howls, pulls his husband with, cradle of thin padded bones passing muster except at the jut of his hips. The pressure and weight of one body, one willing brain wishing to be here, intoxicates. His heart thunders loud as the skies, it must, roaring as it does in his ears. Invitation in his gaze, in his body, in the words: )
So if you ever tire of me as a lover, if you tire of loving, I'll still have leave to call you friend.
( Truly, this man. The aches and hollow beauty and the echoed laughter of him between wilting ruins. A graveyard are his bones, ribs shallowly stabbing when Lan Wangji drops down, called. Ebb and tide, and Wei Ying yielding — so he must be sought and found. The quiet, sickly, late-bloomed surety that he will be given chase, after years of knowing his worth timid and fickle, a child of his immediate utility.
...and does he give his body in an equal trade, ill broken? Does he deceive himself with calculations of Lan Wangji's affections, with bed play and without?
He finds himself drawing back, only far enough to settle on his bent arms and gaze down over Wei Ying like every cat appraising prey caught through immodest ruse. His nose knocks Wei Ying's, bathes in the sibilant notes of his breath, soft and easing. This bed, narrow as any vice, rustling and groaning and feeling like a world, vast. )
Do you know a man learned enough to teach me how cease loving you? ( Drawling, wistful: a hermit, a wandering immortal. The Buddha, reborn. ) Tell me. I shall call him shizun.
( He arches up, just enough to press, to seek, and then to nip at the air before the very nose which had touched his own, eyes star bright within the scattered darkness of his whole. There's laughter here, a burbling stream within his lungs, and the curling of a leg to hook around Lan Zhan's: bold temerity, to claim his husband as his, his soulmate as his, his best friend as his. )
There's no such shizun, only the depths of replacing love with hate. You weren't born to live in hate.
( In spite of, despite, actions of parents; he nuzzles in, kisses pressed as flowing, unplanned seductions across the planes of Lan Zhan's face. )
I don't fear losing your love.
( Surely, he knows, much as the storm raging outside carries its own inevitable damages to the natural world birthing its conditions, were such to happen, it would have already. His worsts have been witnessed, prodded, bemused, agonized, perhaps despaired over by this man. His bests witnessed, longed for. Compromise is the spark of the tended fire between them, a give and take, negotiation and learned grace, learned acceptance. Understanding might be fractured, might be cinders at their hearth, but it isn't what allows the flame to burn.
He pulls his husband close, ignoring the flush, the blush, that's stolen over his own features. Isn't he the shameless one? Yet so often, Lan Zhan's words capture his ability to breathe for a moment, leaving it caught in precious moments before the world spins madly on. )
Don't fear, of all things, losing mine.
( The misunderstanding of reassurance, no thoughts specific to the carnivorous appetites of physical bodies, nor the abyssal consumption of the soul. Only each moment, held within their grasp, thunderous and moving, silent and soft and slow.
Fingers touch and stroke and press, recognizing each scar on a bare back, yet not tracing them for the memory of their laying. Tracing past, creating a second network of touch pathways bridging them all, rewriting the map of complicated living, heartache and righteousness.
Leaving behind a simpler one: written invisibly, in love and respect. )
Shall we drown out the storm?
( Mischief, invitation, and quiet consideration all at once, where he limpet clings and yet drops his head back onto the weight of his hair, haloed imperfectly around him, to watch the constellations of his Lan Zhan's eyes. )
( ...how is it, countlessly wedded and ferally bedded, that this man still finds the audacity to blush? It creeps across Wei Ying's cheeks, a feverish red, storming worse than the pattering, drumming onslaught of rain striking down, scratching the rattling wood of their window shutters and the roofs above.
He intends, at first, to tease him — then, Wei Ying applies himself, consummately fit for the purpose of conquering the territory of his husband's flesh, as if, having denied the guqin, he will still permit himself this one pleasure of tactility. He is weak for it, is Lan Wangji, the dregs of his raw nerves that still crisscross his back and lick his spine now alight with joyous wonder.
What is it that other men do, when they devote themselves to this moment? He wonders, but no cultivator of Cloud Recesses would speak it. Only the plain field of metaphors and the white rolling of painted eyes on contraband pictures no true disciple should behold, but Lan Wangji did, in confiscated spring books. That was his education, his study: eight pages of niche fornication, and Wei Ying, bright-eyed and seeking and willing.
He looks a dream, already ravished and unraveling on his their shriveled sheets. Lan Wangji wants, very badly, to kiss him again. Bites and licks and tortures his own lower lips, as if he might. And he steels himself. )
We start hard journey tomorrow. ( To a village and its mewling maids and men gone amiss, and energies astray. To another strange new world that anticipates Wei Ying's interest like a sleepy spring's breeze whispering across gelid lands. ) You will not taste a bed for days to come.
( Long, arduous, barely mitigated by occasional interruptions to sleep in open fields, in deserts and tents and alcoves. They are both creatures of attrition, resigned to wanting: Lan Wangji, in the name of discipline; Wei Ying, for having known little else. They will weather each call on their resources, though they will not thrive. )
Rest. Gather your strength. ( It is wise. Sensible. Required of them now, surely. Surely. )
( Fingers splaying, palms pressing to slick, warm skin. These are moments electric with understanding, his permission winding through instead of his acceptance of lessening, of tempered worth.
The storm rages, rants, whines, and he smiles, slow and heavy. Squirms enough to press up, anchored by his hands on Lan Zhan's back, simply because he can. Because he's wanted, and he wants. Because those are things they allow themselves, without the world necessitating permission.
Because they know deeper, simpler truths, in the sunshine of their affection, harsh on its warmth, burning in it's feral tenacity. )
The only way I'm resting is if you help wear me out.
( Not sly, this smile. Not even provocative by intent, with his skin stained red, his ears and neck hot, himself craving what he's allowed with this man, what he wants from no other person on this world or the next. This smile settles in a beatific understanding of self, in the promise of mountains and rivers, inevitable, powerful, natural.
He sleeps poorly, but for his husband's presence. He will not rest, without enough to tire not just body, but mind, ceaseless thoughts chasing avenues of question and solution. He's borne such enforced stillness, he yearns most to move, to debatable effect.
The waterfall of rain overhead turns into the muted roar of an unknown beast thwarted, and he strains up, trying to capture those worried, crimson lips with his own.
Bodies will ache, ground will grow no more friendly, but tonight the bed sits tolerable and intact, and they lay tangled across its landscape, parched and willing to drink deep and long, shed sweat and affection alongside this... youthful entanglement with physical desire. He won't find shame in that, not for them, not for twenty years spent in hollow venues for himself, in soul crushing searches for Lan Zhan.
For his own brother, perhaps, too, but the thought is there then gone so quickly, unable to gain purchase in a moment where the only complexity he cares to untangle is the one where he convinces his soulmate of the underlying necessity to pay heed and pour over each other in agonizing, wonderful detail, until tired and satiated, they both might sleep.
Roads stretch unknown lengths, turn beyond trees and hills and ravines. Storms break branches, bridges, barns.
( It should salt and pickle his wounds, should preserve each droplet round and flesh-like, voluminous — to grasp that some part of his husband wants him for the sake of want. And some part, too, desires him as medicinal relief for a sickness unending.
It does not. He breathes — is, and he meets Wei Ying's mouth when it is called, breath purred and chest rumbling, and coaxing the rags of his silks off his shoulders when next this sweet, virulent ghost of Yiling litters caresses on his upper arms, his back. It hangs snagged on his spine after, cold like morning dew and silent a mourning shroud — until Lan Wangji tips them over, legs slowly entangling, to wilt on their sides.
All the better, he illustrates shortly, to dip in and chase Wei Ying's mouth between stray, seismic heartbeats, to take, to take, to take, until they are hard for the telling — moments when they kiss, moments when they merely breathe. It is greedy, he supposes, richly obscene. Outside, past the quickening storm, spears of light still stab in.
Yet Wei Ying is long, lean, nimble. A body at the peak of its prowess, before the waning tides. There is no configuration of their bodies, no constellation of wooing calls that does not present this man as profoundly, resolutely irresistible. Perhaps to a different palate, another eye; Lan Wangji, trained narrowly on single target, cannot decipher another path but the one that leads, viciously, to complete satisfaction wherever Wei Ying lies healthy, laughing, prone. )
I carry two bathtubs' bones with us. ( The dregs, the remains. That of Taravast, with certainty. Of the warrior's pass after. A piece, too, of the House of Manouk, where they did not avail themselves of the facilities to their destruction — but the sweet, patient, placid ghostly apparition tempted Lan Wangji to rare kindness.
They have broken furniture already. What is a bed more. Still, he does not persist — only meets Wei Ying's mouth once, then again, red and riotous. )
Why do you require exertion? ( Why, still? In a realm indifferent to their hurts of old, with much of Wei Ying's typical stressors receded. He does not fault his husband, not in the face of aches he misunderstands. Only asks.
He inhales; no, kisses. Exhales, now. ) What hurts on this night?
( He's pliable under Lan Zhan's suggestions, rolling into his side in his half determined limpet cling. His, theirs, ours. He has to shake out of thoughts like light bleeding down in vicious, sudden branching arcs from the sky: who am I, who am I, who am I.
What smile turns his lips upwards, aching in the pleasant, buzzing aftermath of kisses like a summers hot, lazy afternoon with cooling foods in hand, shaded against the sun, wind stirring the humidity away. )
Nothing hurts tonight. ( A pause, considering, then the nod to follow, hair falling across his cheek where he lays. )
No hurts. It's still early, and I'm inclined to stay up late, you know. My thoughts don't rest easy.
( He breathes out in a huff swallowed by striking lightning outside, removed enough to sound the threat without providing one in truth. He shivers, curling in closer to his husband's front, blinking slow as he studies his face. )
You're a handsome medicine when you want to be, but that's not why I'm asking if you...
( Closer still, holding himself up with that awkward strain to speak by Lan Zhan's ear: )
... Wish to wet our sleeves tonight, indulging in our springtime desires.
( Lan Zhan, sleeves now unencumbered. Wei Wuxian, overdressed yet in comparison, unapologetic. He's hardly had chance or opportunity.
He settles his head down again, strokes down Lan Zhan's back from the side he can still access. Lends a heady weight at the hip, thumb tracing circles against skin. A world of moments, a peace granted in breathing at times like this. Such a fierce ache if affection claws at his heart, he almost gasps. )
I want you. But I'll want you tomorrow, and the day after, and later still.
( Not simply by desire in biology, no. He's too practiced at ignoring the body's wishes to find any necessity in such claims. Indulgences, the extra cake has at the tea house, that decadence? When allowed, accepted and consumed greatly, with equally great affection. )
( Nothing hurts, yet everything is tender, fragile, distant. Wei Ying, clumsily and indefatigably contorted, coils around him like an eel seeking to drink in and strangle.
He answers him, rounds both arms to fasten around his husband's waist and draws him in, the harsh forge of his core churning hot and keen and burning a print of friction and perspiration between them. Even bare, a cultivator will seldom catch chills, the gift of their qi a constant privilege weaponized towards survival.
His head drifts, feline-like and trickling, to rest at a steep angle beneath Wei Ying's chin, perched heavy on his lover's shoulder. And he breathes, pleased and placid with the hypnotic wooing of Wei Ying's clever strokes rousing bumps on his hip's skin, climbing the steps of his spine, spreading up his ribs. )
I desire you. ( Softer, enamoured. To confirm what should be obvious and plain yet wants occasional reassurance: he desires his husband avidly, thoroughly, as part of perfect awareness and in the absence of a concerted effort. There is no sliver of him that is immune and undisturbed by his lover's peripheral presence, let alone his scent, his touch. ) But worry you only pacify deeper hurt with... handsome medicine.
( A pretty, palatable euphemism that still leaves the true wound to bleed Wei Ying out, to skewer and torment him whole. ) Your mind is restless in perpetuity. You think, think, think. What of?
( The ease in lifting his chin, allowing access to his throat, this sweet intimacy which still unsettles the steady rhythm of his heart. He breathes in deep, slow, filling himself with the scent of Lan Zhan, layer and burning, skin to skin. Hair tickles and soothes in contact, his eyes half closing as words sink in, settling below the surface.
Does he look for handsome medicine? At times, yes. The wandering traces of his fingers over Lan Zhan's skin trace characters, lazy and slow. A name, especially: Lan Zhan, roadmap in his mind.
The storm outside renders his mind more calm. There's no immediate escape from his own heart demons. The urge to drown them into silence with alcohol is one he's struggled with internally for years, but neither does it pull on him now. Is there a lurking hurt? Is there an inherent desire for distraction, and this the opportunity? He breathes steady, his own qi following the touch of his fingers: easy sharing, and strange, feeling as if the depths of the ocean within Lan Zhan aren't merely echoing the emptied well with himself. )
Right now, of how our qi feels, of what's changed it in this world, because it's felt more and more like something has. About those such as Anurr, what creeping evils can infest slow and deadly over time. On what we'll find after this journey, not only tomorrow's, about who we'll be when we're wed again to our world. About the electric, savage beauty of the storm outside. About wanting you, in all ways, and wanting these moments, this closeness. Enjoying when we speak, even without words. About a change to that talisman I've been working on lately, you know the one, and the altered flags for directing energies. Thoughts rattle in the cage of my mind, questions and puzzles, and those have the pleasure of tinkering towards solutions. Others won't before it's time.
( So much spoken, and he subsides, mouth drying, throat parched. There is more, if he allows his thoughts to spiral onto pathways further than his current intention. Not frightening nor saddening, no, he's not trapped in a quagmire undefeated. He feels, above all things, happy. )
I've always preferred staying up in the quiet dark, and waking to the loud light. Tonight, there's only that and the fact I would enjoy using the bed for activities harder on aging bodies out on dirt packed roads.
( His chuckling laugh rumbling through him, softer than the swollen moans of the wind outside, the deluge of rain, not quite seasonably early. He cares and caresses with his hand, long strokes, nails pressed down just enough for feeling. Dragging across, not catching on, tissue which sits jagged even decades after some fractured form of healing, loving this embrace. )
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no subject
( Certain misfortunes are, in and of themselves, steeped in ridiculousness. There's a touch of whimsy in what's said, fear evident yet confused.
He nods, studying his husband's face while his lips curl into the touch of a fond smile, amused by what's said, considering what isn't. )
The pattern changed. It had only been men, until then.
( So yes, it interests him where otherwise it is simply a misfortune they might have capacity to assist in resolving.
He begins to play with his husband's fingers, gaze thoughtful. )
The change came with the bigger storm we keep hearing about. The one everyone traveling into town, and everyone in town, keeps mentioning. After the hail that managed, somehow, to cause damage to homes and certain livestock, yet very little to the fields.
( The quirk of his brow, focusing his attention on Lan Zhan, full and merciless in it's consuming presence. )
I don't think the two are so unrelated as they seem.
no subject
( Not so unrelated, then, a game of crepuscular speculation and tender findings, and Wei Ying, his Wei Ying, turned stormy and predatory and wronged by the possibility of mystery that eludes him.
Would it be so terrible a thing, to make use of themselves further? This world has neither earned nor better deserves them than their own. Yet Wei Ying breathes here, somewhat spirited.
He considers with unnecessary attention the logistics of the travel forthcoming, how far and wide their days of sun yet stretch, how long of a distance this will derail them. Then, nod trickling down, he accepts the inevitability of Wei Ying's whim coalescing into a power greater than what cradles the earth in orbit. )
Kiss me and have your way.
( It is indecent, unworthy of him. Sends his cheeks bright and bloomed, incandescent. His breath catches, too slow now to hesitate, to retract his audacity. He is not a man to require — payment. And yet. )
no subject
( Sparking fire within his gaze, affection, base lust, appreciation all fed from the wellspring of Lan Zhan's words. For reasons beyond his desire for counting, this isn't a life he imagined himself having. Thus his sliding from the chair, still holding his husband's hand, the lift to his lips even as he gazes down at beloved features, the whole of his complex and contradictory soulmate. The warm press of lips to knuckles, eyelids starting to close so he peers through lashes: )
Then I'd have you moving to our rooms now.
( He knows as well that as he dips down, as his free hand cradles Lan Zhan's blossoming cheek, lips finding lips, gentled pressure, held.
When his eyes open, his face held at improper but assisting distance, he asks: )
What do you want, Lan Zhan?
( Journeys need not begin in every given moment, and he has no intention to turn towards the deeper mountains until the morrow at soonest. Not for love of where they stand now, but for the honest joy that is simplified travel, with his husband, and that horse. )
no subject
( A kiss like a receding winter, feathery and crisp and raw, at once tepid and withering. He does not retreat; walks his tongue in languishing rolls on the wet line of his lips, shrunk near nothing. Chases Wei Ying's mouth, dab of sweat beading his temple and crooked and tumbling down the slant of his high cheek cutting down — and it is heat, isn't it, among sea-spumes of candles in the honeyed, balmy enclosure of a place so closely watched.
He remembers himself, his surroundings. Draws back, clumsy and flustered and tidal, flush fueling his face. He pretends, to mask the fumble, to consider. Then, because it is Wei Ying who asks, and so seldom — he does think. )
Innocents suffer. We will go. ( It can be so simple, he supposes, in a world walked in Wei Ying's footsteps. And what a wraith he is. )
Coin came of the last exorcism. ( And he is no longer the proud son of Gusu Lan, propelled by dignity to rise above the Heavens and base pecuniary needs, when his benefactors appear to own enough coin to spare their patronage for services swiftly rendered. ) Procure yourself fresh silks.
( So often, Wei Ying neglects himself, for the sake of others, as if happiness is of limited supply and he cannot be the one to stoke demand. ) You look a stray.
no subject
( Hunger, yes, he's known in different forms, for different ends. Less familiar is the hunger of his heart when chased by Lan Zhan's affections, carried by lips and touches or words and deeds. He swallows against a thickening throat, wanting to lean in, balanced against wanting everything without outside eyes.
Wanting answers for questions which matter in his estimation, perhaps in no other.
Yet there, the simplest path of agreement: they might have ability to help, and those who suffer, if not necessarily innocent, are not yet proven to such abscess of character as to necessitate their draining.
It's a near thing. He almost moves to sit in his husband's lap, smile already blossoming. His restraint such as it is manifests when he leans in, freshly named stray by the other half of his soul.
He's been stray for a long, long time. Beautiful, now, to have a home in another's heart, indelible.
By his husband's ear, breath warm, but not touching: )
In what colours?
no subject
( He would be as vermin or great sickness, burrowing beneath skin if he could, Wei Ying, his Wei Ying. Writhing, squirming, making himself impossibly small, readily contained — only to look upon Lan Wangji like a bright-eyed rabbit, cowering from rejection.
The tip of his finger chases Wei Ying's where their hands are bound, knuckle to digit. He brings these same hands back up to his mouth to kiss. )
I have not married you in greens. ( Implicit, yet. And on its footsteps, A matter to remedy. ) Or deep azure.
( Red is tradition and, conversationally, the superior colour in matters of wedded fortunes. But they have born the silks once, then again. Wei Ying at every turn, bound to his tresses. Lan Wangji, too, on the singular occasion — but enough of the clans have no rite of reds and embrace local colours more readily.
Would green suit? Perhaps too much of the Nie in it, jade vivid and strong. And azure? The Lan, indubitably. Purples and the sky in twilight would drench Wei Ying in Yunmeng again and — click of Lan Wangji's tongue, tempered — no, that won't do. )
No more darks. No white of mourning. Draw the eye.
no subject
( He chuckles at the thought, both blues and greens, yet it's the vibrancy which stays with him. His hand thrums from the aftermath of Lan Zhan's attentions, his own squeeze of fingers voluntary now in his warmth. )
I'll see what lively colours I can find before we leave.
( Straightening up, reluctance in the slow, feline nature of his movement, his smile softens, eyes following suit. )
Shall I find you in our room within the shichen?
( Patrons have redistributed attention, sighs and conversations as dusty as their surroundings. Fatally, beautiful human, mundane. How they slide from banality into absurdity is anyone's guess, beyond their own inclinations.
There's peace within it, somehow. Living a life for this moment, before they inevitably reclaim their world, and negotiate, fight, remove themselves to find a better semblance of peace there. )
no subject
( What a simple thing to barter a delicate afternoon tryst with a lover committed, a sure thing, their affection syrupy and slow. Nothing endangers this: not the whim of stray, crackling magic, not the stormy turn of Wei Ying's cruel whims. He allows himself, distantly, to taste the flavour of pining guaranteed a felicitous ending, no different than teasing a healing bruise with the press of his fingertips.
And he nods, at long last releasing Wei Ying's hand, allowing him to bloom into the chips and fragments of refined posture and lift himself serenely. )
Within the shichen. ( And what can a man procure in such a tight timeframe? Even the least ambitious dressmaker will want time to take Wei Ying's willow, imperfectly slim measures and tighten their wares. Still, there are greater miracles his husband has worked. )
You take half my soul. ( A strange farewell, yet he has grown accustomed. ) Go.
no subject
( He smiles, the laughter that trails behind him fond, lingering as long as his scent, and then, he's gone. To conversations with shop keeps and robes existing and needing only length, breadth of shoulder — not outsized, Wei Wuxian, compared to the people here. Paradoxical perhaps to their considerations, but this town is focal enough for overland trade to carry variance beyond his initial suspicion.
Thus, robes, and the new rucksack to replace one worn thin from abrasive interviews with the wider world, and supplies for travel, for writing, for... personal needs.
When he sweeps into their rooms later, package in his arms, rucksack heavy with necessities, there's but one thing his clever fingers find, plucking out a clay jar with a clever, bees wax coated cloth wrapped stopper. He holds out the lotion, for soothing and hydrating, even as he somehow sets the rest down on the bench across from the bed. )
What do you think of the scent?
( He found it pleasing, for this comfort to assuage scars, for this pleasure that is deciding against carrying all trauma unaddressed in one's flesh. He knows they both do. He suspects they both didn't need to, not as they have.
He also doesn't show the robes, doesn't even comment, a smile touching his lips when his eyes meet the wrapped package, before he again looks to Lan Zhan, brow quirked.
The bones of the inn breathe around them, conversing with the night's settling, the inquiries of the wind. A storm rides heavy and thick with promise of electric deluge, not yet arrived. Perhaps never to deliver. )
no subject
( Later, their inn: less crooked and damp and mould-laden than many to have housed them, more withered and husked and dry. A pale thing, chipping and splintering and snagging, when Lan Wangji's bare feet cross the floors, pattering. Crude nails, half risen like a peeling scab. The scent of deep, cloying oud.
He welcomes Wei Ying into a room ill lit, door crawling like a cat in his husband's wake to click shuttered, before the lock comes drawn. A still, quiet settlement, yes, and in its bones a purposeful savagery. He asks nothing, of no one, least of all the courtesy of true hospitality.
It has not been earned. Will not be freely given. He draws Wei Ying back, to himself, to the wide and sandy spread of their thin-linen clad bed. To sit, leg half drawn beneath himself as he watches the jar in Wei Ying's hand with hawkish, sharp interest. Fingers toy over the jar's swell, dance the edge. His lips purse, freely.
He tips the lid over, and the ointment within gives a soft, muted gleam. )
Unnecessary. ( Reedy, slack-tongued. But it is given and received, and he watches the fat of it slowly drip to liquify at its edges, catches the sweet, rising fragrance. Unnecessary, the coin was yours to expend. And so, Wei Ying did.
He looks up, unfastening the sailors' knot of his belts only to loosen the robes above and weep their layers down his shoulders with slow tugs of his sleeves, after. Revealing, if not the full labyrinth of his scars, then at least enough of their humble start to protect modesty.
No need, he suspects, to ask. No need, to consent, to make a spectacle of himself. Actions, before words, but. ) Thank you.
no subject
( He settles with the same smoothness as his husband's hair, dusty draping of himself on the expanse of their temporary bed. His boots slough off as any second skin, only a pause to note Lan Zhan's actions, robes loosened, shoulders bared.
It should not cause the ache of fondness it does. Nor the ache of sympathetic pain, more layered than his younger self could imagine.
Things done where no one you wish to impress can see have a weight and responsibility of all their own.
He doesn't look for the brand which mars chest alike to chest. He simply straightens, leaning in, pressing a kiss with seconds of lingering fondness to the skin he's not always certain his husband wears as comfortable. Or he sees, again, more of himself, and thus he lets the thought flow away.
Thank you, in a gesture of affection. )
Every day, you're welcome.
( In words forever inadequate, as he crawls behind Lan Zhan, settles and scoots so one leg frames Lan Zhan's unfolded leg. His fingers stretch and dip, collecting the hydrating cream of sorts.
They return, tracing small circles over the visible sections of scars, a mountain exposed as the winters snows melt and thaw. He swallows, and he speaks about the stores, the old woman at the village apothecary, the brothers are the ready made and tailoring shop. His voice, living and amused, flows in different avenues to the methodical circling of fingers over scar tissue, working in the salve, working on the tension, multiplied as it is. Lan Zhan may not need his words, but he's had too much of his silence, and so he fills their small chambers with that warmth, eyes memorizing each precious expanse of his husband's trust, made manifest, made touchable.
Even as the shutters whine and gasp, winds of the growing storm plucking then like zither strings, it is still his voice, their warmth, and the mystery of understanding arrived at with no less work required now than the stumbling steps of years before.
Far more grace, yet gangly still. )
no subject
( This is the silk thread unraveled, the slow coaxing. Wei Ying, fitting loose and languidly behind him, like a painting's timid frame. The fall and dance of his fingertips, whispering molten agony where the balm sinks in the ravines of his scars, before suffusing in a cool, haunting stroke.
He breathes with it, against it. Weathers the treatment as if it's slow, salted ache and his wounds yet bleed, for all they've gone nearly two decades since their ripening. Now and then, movements slow and measured and tinny, he peels down more and more of his layers, revealing first the full shoulder's roundness, then the upper stretch of his arm, and lower and lower and lower, until he sits no better than a maiden debauched, silks wilted to his elbows. His back, a revelry of trickling scars, his hair like time-tarnished weeds.
The storm gathers, quickens, coils. Falls within itself, breathing alive surrounding them. He gasps once, when the shutters yowl, beating back against currents. Again, when Wei Ying's touch seems to have briefly removed itself.
Then, softly: )
They are yours. It is right for you to touch that which is yours.
( And yet some part of him seems to want convincing. )
no subject
Yet those callouses know the maps of scarring, know what it feels like to find mended flesh which, in and of itself, couldn't heal clean. He memorises each interlaced line, remembers through another's telling the origins, marvels at how cruelty is imbedded, invested, into so many aspects of the major clans. Kindness too. There's no equity in either direction.
Recalling the gasp, first at the window shuddering, then at his own pause, Wei Wuxian does not again allow himself pause. He doesn't need it in the moment, massaging fingers following the slow unfolding down, down, down. )
What you wish to share of yourself, I am glad for.
( These are Lan Zhan's scars. No matter the reasons behind them, the only person who can choose how they're seen, if they're touched, if he wants them even acknowledged is the man sitting before him. One day, perhaps, he may allow them loved.
With the wind sighing at the shutters, perhaps it isn't today. Perhaps it is. His heart aches, pain and fondness twinning around each other, curled up as kittens sleeping in the spring sunlight. )
When you invite my touch, I settle, humbled.
( For the network across his back, especially: he's simply greedy in other contexts, feeling it unnecessary to point out what they both know. )
And when you speak, I listen to hear.
( Speak on the difficult things, on the past or present or future. On vinegar tendencies, or regrets, or fears, or joys. So precious, when they speak intending to hear and be heard. When they listen, and do not lecture.
Simply be. )
no subject
( There are moments, glistening and strung together, when Wei Ying makes himself light and quick and small, so entirely diminutive that he fits in the nooks and crannies of Lan Wangji's need like waters cutting through ravines. When his breaths course like a river of silence.
And Lan Wangji may fool himself into the belief that his husband is attentively present, but not complicit in his humbling. That he is carefully, fastidiously shielded from the vast onslaught of Lan Wangji's ravenous grief.
He does not flinch, again, under Wei Ying's touch, not when its sedate flow sends thin susurrations of pleasure across broken skin; not when they tease and taunt and disarm him; not when flesh feels unbound and dissolving and bones creak and he breathes through the ghosts of ache, exorcism languid and staggered. )
I know it unrequested. ( Of Wei Ying, who asks nothing, who thinks he deserves far less than rags and week-old rice. Who coaxes monsters to his qiankun purse and whispers the dead alive, but starves for the scraps of Jiang Cheng's affection. Who accepted to seek out silks of his own only on request, who bears a body made whole only by death's own kiss, beneath them. ) But I wish I had untarnished flesh to give you.
( Intimacy has already gone shared, desire kindled, gladness shared. What lay in his hands or purse or blade's strength to gift has gone doled out. But it is not worthy, not sufficient. )
A smooth back. A leg unbroken. Hands uncalloused. ( Parts that suit and comprise him, but are not the best iterations of what they might have been. ) So that I might take gladness in handing you the best of myself.
no subject
( Ah, how he's thought, perhaps, he handles with better grace what claws at his heart in hearing. He doesn't. Warmth fills his eyes, as if the blood from the heart of him needed as much release as the tears summoned in truth. They're are a quiet thing, dew clinging to lashes, falling inevitably, carving pathways lower, lower, gone into the crook of his neck and his comfortable, dusty robes.
He understands what it is to wish, against reality and sense, to only have beautiful wholes to hand those you love. To have everything intact and wonderful: to measure out lives experiences together, not defined by carved, living truths eroding through them. To wish to have a world of yourself to give, to be frustrated by imperfection, though he himself is less frequently found at such cross purpose. His frustrations, immense as they are, tangled up in solutions he wishes to find, demands placed on himself, and the unutterable knowledge that perfection is never enough. It cannot, by its own nature.
Love is woven into flaws ever changing, improvements which can only exist because they are none of them as whole and untouched as they wish.
What hurts, what aches, is that understanding, imperfect and fractured, a crystal held in hand after breaking in the fall. He says nothing, hums acknowledgement, fingers methodical yet loving, tears... unchecked, viscous, tracing the planes of his face.
Wei Wuxian smiles. It's a joyous agony, that is love. He leans in to press one kiss, then another, to the expanse of his husband's shoulder. Across the back of his neck. Down the length of his other shoulder. Soft lipped, barely parted. If he could consume Lan Zhan's hurt, he would feast. He would glut himself, but he knows the impossibility. He understands sharing what one cannot be unburdened by, but only just, only recently. Only in trust, carved out of the hollow caverns of his humourous defenses. )
I hear. I... understand the wish.
( Even understanding, nboe deep and glacier slow, that he loves more for every fracture, for each deepened understanding of themselves. Oh sharing that too, as the true best, because it is lived. Survived. Embraced.
Which is no small thing. No small thing at all.
His head lifts with the shaking of the shutters, the whining creel of the wind, lamenting then joyous then raging, as winds do. )
no subject
( He understands, Wei Ying says, and in truth —
They are too different. A man who has fed on slivers and scraps tolerates even days-old rice with gladness. Only perfection suits the second sect of a foremost sect, porcelain unchipped, calligraphy unwavered, the joyous tang of the Emperor, Smiling.
Shuddered is the line of his back, breaking, the dab of sweat that cascades and catches in decline. How he breathes with Wei Ying's affection, his stubborn fool's pride, the tide and deluge of the formidable farce of his carnal want. Can Lan Wangji trust in desire? The truth: it is a fluid, inky, gelid thing, fitting in a hundred dark spaces; Wei Ying sleeps in between the jagged ends of wrath and the soft curves of covetous timidity.
He opens his mouth to round a moan with the fall of Wei Ying's lips again —
And outside, the storm screams ruin.
It is impossible, then inexorable. The burst of movement like a gutting punch, he swerves and turns and is, all at once and irrefutable, a wall before Wei Ying. Their mouths crash, he brings them close. Lust and laughter and a sudden, feral detonation, a kiss like a curse, half-teeth snagging on the cherry skin of Wei Ying's lower lip. Gushing.
He does not linger, slips their foreheads to collide and holds, holds Wei Ying by the upper stretch of his arms, holds his dear heart dearest, holds — )
I might have loved a hundred men. ( But didn't, and it's gravel and hoarse and friction will erode the last of his conviction, turn him a ragged thing, small. ) And abandoned a thousand lovers.
( For duty, for the troubles of a war-torn, haunted son, for the wishes of the sect, for Lan Wangji's own whims and passions. He is stalwart, they say, a storm contained; his roots pillar the world. Yet he is... uncaring, innately negligent in the way of rich men who can readily replace all that which eludes them.
He has been so flimsy, ever allowing the light of his life to dim. His eyes shutter. )
But I will never leave my friend.
no subject
( Thunder booms, a strike reverberating through the hollow of his chest. Lightning struck, he finds himself kissed, startled into appreciative surprise, jolted back and held in place and stunned, in that extended moment, lower lip swelling, delicious in its brief, poignant pain, a burst of sun behind his eyes.
He clutches, grabs, contorts to match the swift turned position of his husband, who speaks of loves and lovers, casts them aside in the same instant.
Dizzying, yet thrumming under his skin. He holds to Lan Zhan, half his wholeness, paradox, and presses his forehead against his soulmate's.
Friends are chosen. There's no immutable truth beyond that fact.
Friends are chosen. )
So you admit it? ( Soft, spoken by lips which ache to smile, then indulge. ) After all this time, we're friends?
( His expression eases, studying this face so improbably important to him, for reasons great and small. )
Thank you. For choosing me.
( For friendship, for arguments, for fights, for resolutions. For love. For lust, too, granted outlet, but most for the rest.
He falls back as the wind howls, pulls his husband with, cradle of thin padded bones passing muster except at the jut of his hips. The pressure and weight of one body, one willing brain wishing to be here, intoxicates. His heart thunders loud as the skies, it must, roaring as it does in his ears. Invitation in his gaze, in his body, in the words: )
So if you ever tire of me as a lover, if you tire of loving, I'll still have leave to call you friend.
no subject
( Truly, this man. The aches and hollow beauty and the echoed laughter of him between wilting ruins. A graveyard are his bones, ribs shallowly stabbing when Lan Wangji drops down, called. Ebb and tide, and Wei Ying yielding — so he must be sought and found. The quiet, sickly, late-bloomed surety that he will be given chase, after years of knowing his worth timid and fickle, a child of his immediate utility.
...and does he give his body in an equal trade, ill broken? Does he deceive himself with calculations of Lan Wangji's affections, with bed play and without?
He finds himself drawing back, only far enough to settle on his bent arms and gaze down over Wei Ying like every cat appraising prey caught through immodest ruse. His nose knocks Wei Ying's, bathes in the sibilant notes of his breath, soft and easing. This bed, narrow as any vice, rustling and groaning and feeling like a world, vast. )
Do you know a man learned enough to teach me how cease loving you? ( Drawling, wistful: a hermit, a wandering immortal. The Buddha, reborn. ) Tell me. I shall call him shizun.
no subject
( He arches up, just enough to press, to seek, and then to nip at the air before the very nose which had touched his own, eyes star bright within the scattered darkness of his whole. There's laughter here, a burbling stream within his lungs, and the curling of a leg to hook around Lan Zhan's: bold temerity, to claim his husband as his, his soulmate as his, his best friend as his. )
There's no such shizun, only the depths of replacing love with hate. You weren't born to live in hate.
( In spite of, despite, actions of parents; he nuzzles in, kisses pressed as flowing, unplanned seductions across the planes of Lan Zhan's face. )
I don't fear losing your love.
( Surely, he knows, much as the storm raging outside carries its own inevitable damages to the natural world birthing its conditions, were such to happen, it would have already. His worsts have been witnessed, prodded, bemused, agonized, perhaps despaired over by this man. His bests witnessed, longed for. Compromise is the spark of the tended fire between them, a give and take, negotiation and learned grace, learned acceptance. Understanding might be fractured, might be cinders at their hearth, but it isn't what allows the flame to burn.
He pulls his husband close, ignoring the flush, the blush, that's stolen over his own features. Isn't he the shameless one? Yet so often, Lan Zhan's words capture his ability to breathe for a moment, leaving it caught in precious moments before the world spins madly on. )
Don't fear, of all things, losing mine.
( The misunderstanding of reassurance, no thoughts specific to the carnivorous appetites of physical bodies, nor the abyssal consumption of the soul. Only each moment, held within their grasp, thunderous and moving, silent and soft and slow.
Fingers touch and stroke and press, recognizing each scar on a bare back, yet not tracing them for the memory of their laying. Tracing past, creating a second network of touch pathways bridging them all, rewriting the map of complicated living, heartache and righteousness.
Leaving behind a simpler one: written invisibly, in love and respect. )
Shall we drown out the storm?
( Mischief, invitation, and quiet consideration all at once, where he limpet clings and yet drops his head back onto the weight of his hair, haloed imperfectly around him, to watch the constellations of his Lan Zhan's eyes. )
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( ...how is it, countlessly wedded and ferally bedded, that this man still finds the audacity to blush? It creeps across Wei Ying's cheeks, a feverish red, storming worse than the pattering, drumming onslaught of rain striking down, scratching the rattling wood of their window shutters and the roofs above.
He intends, at first, to tease him — then, Wei Ying applies himself, consummately fit for the purpose of conquering the territory of his husband's flesh, as if, having denied the guqin, he will still permit himself this one pleasure of tactility. He is weak for it, is Lan Wangji, the dregs of his raw nerves that still crisscross his back and lick his spine now alight with joyous wonder.
What is it that other men do, when they devote themselves to this moment? He wonders, but no cultivator of Cloud Recesses would speak it. Only the plain field of metaphors and the white rolling of painted eyes on contraband pictures no true disciple should behold, but Lan Wangji did, in confiscated spring books. That was his education, his study: eight pages of niche fornication, and Wei Ying, bright-eyed and seeking and willing.
He looks a dream, already ravished and unraveling on his their shriveled sheets. Lan Wangji wants, very badly, to kiss him again. Bites and licks and tortures his own lower lips, as if he might. And he steels himself. )
We start hard journey tomorrow. ( To a village and its mewling maids and men gone amiss, and energies astray. To another strange new world that anticipates Wei Ying's interest like a sleepy spring's breeze whispering across gelid lands. ) You will not taste a bed for days to come.
( Long, arduous, barely mitigated by occasional interruptions to sleep in open fields, in deserts and tents and alcoves. They are both creatures of attrition, resigned to wanting: Lan Wangji, in the name of discipline; Wei Ying, for having known little else. They will weather each call on their resources, though they will not thrive. )
Rest. Gather your strength. ( It is wise. Sensible. Required of them now, surely. Surely. )
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( Fingers splaying, palms pressing to slick, warm skin. These are moments electric with understanding, his permission winding through instead of his acceptance of lessening, of tempered worth.
The storm rages, rants, whines, and he smiles, slow and heavy. Squirms enough to press up, anchored by his hands on Lan Zhan's back, simply because he can. Because he's wanted, and he wants. Because those are things they allow themselves, without the world necessitating permission.
Because they know deeper, simpler truths, in the sunshine of their affection, harsh on its warmth, burning in it's feral tenacity. )
The only way I'm resting is if you help wear me out.
( Not sly, this smile. Not even provocative by intent, with his skin stained red, his ears and neck hot, himself craving what he's allowed with this man, what he wants from no other person on this world or the next. This smile settles in a beatific understanding of self, in the promise of mountains and rivers, inevitable, powerful, natural.
He sleeps poorly, but for his husband's presence. He will not rest, without enough to tire not just body, but mind, ceaseless thoughts chasing avenues of question and solution. He's borne such enforced stillness, he yearns most to move, to debatable effect.
The waterfall of rain overhead turns into the muted roar of an unknown beast thwarted, and he strains up, trying to capture those worried, crimson lips with his own.
Bodies will ache, ground will grow no more friendly, but tonight the bed sits tolerable and intact, and they lay tangled across its landscape, parched and willing to drink deep and long, shed sweat and affection alongside this... youthful entanglement with physical desire. He won't find shame in that, not for them, not for twenty years spent in hollow venues for himself, in soul crushing searches for Lan Zhan.
For his own brother, perhaps, too, but the thought is there then gone so quickly, unable to gain purchase in a moment where the only complexity he cares to untangle is the one where he convinces his soulmate of the underlying necessity to pay heed and pour over each other in agonizing, wonderful detail, until tired and satiated, they both might sleep.
Roads stretch unknown lengths, turn beyond trees and hills and ravines. Storms break branches, bridges, barns.
Wei Wuxian adds, voice lore: )
Make sure not to break the bed.
( ... this a tease, surely. Surely. )
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( It should salt and pickle his wounds, should preserve each droplet round and flesh-like, voluminous — to grasp that some part of his husband wants him for the sake of want. And some part, too, desires him as medicinal relief for a sickness unending.
It does not. He breathes — is, and he meets Wei Ying's mouth when it is called, breath purred and chest rumbling, and coaxing the rags of his silks off his shoulders when next this sweet, virulent ghost of Yiling litters caresses on his upper arms, his back. It hangs snagged on his spine after, cold like morning dew and silent a mourning shroud — until Lan Wangji tips them over, legs slowly entangling, to wilt on their sides.
All the better, he illustrates shortly, to dip in and chase Wei Ying's mouth between stray, seismic heartbeats, to take, to take, to take, until they are hard for the telling — moments when they kiss, moments when they merely breathe. It is greedy, he supposes, richly obscene. Outside, past the quickening storm, spears of light still stab in.
Yet Wei Ying is long, lean, nimble. A body at the peak of its prowess, before the waning tides. There is no configuration of their bodies, no constellation of wooing calls that does not present this man as profoundly, resolutely irresistible. Perhaps to a different palate, another eye; Lan Wangji, trained narrowly on single target, cannot decipher another path but the one that leads, viciously, to complete satisfaction wherever Wei Ying lies healthy, laughing, prone. )
I carry two bathtubs' bones with us. ( The dregs, the remains. That of Taravast, with certainty. Of the warrior's pass after. A piece, too, of the House of Manouk, where they did not avail themselves of the facilities to their destruction — but the sweet, patient, placid ghostly apparition tempted Lan Wangji to rare kindness.
They have broken furniture already. What is a bed more. Still, he does not persist — only meets Wei Ying's mouth once, then again, red and riotous. )
Why do you require exertion? ( Why, still? In a realm indifferent to their hurts of old, with much of Wei Ying's typical stressors receded. He does not fault his husband, not in the face of aches he misunderstands. Only asks.
He inhales; no, kisses. Exhales, now. ) What hurts on this night?
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( He's pliable under Lan Zhan's suggestions, rolling into his side in his half determined limpet cling. His, theirs, ours. He has to shake out of thoughts like light bleeding down in vicious, sudden branching arcs from the sky: who am I, who am I, who am I.
What smile turns his lips upwards, aching in the pleasant, buzzing aftermath of kisses like a summers hot, lazy afternoon with cooling foods in hand, shaded against the sun, wind stirring the humidity away. )
Nothing hurts tonight. ( A pause, considering, then the nod to follow, hair falling across his cheek where he lays. )
No hurts. It's still early, and I'm inclined to stay up late, you know. My thoughts don't rest easy.
( He breathes out in a huff swallowed by striking lightning outside, removed enough to sound the threat without providing one in truth. He shivers, curling in closer to his husband's front, blinking slow as he studies his face. )
You're a handsome medicine when you want to be, but that's not why I'm asking if you...
( Closer still, holding himself up with that awkward strain to speak by Lan Zhan's ear: )
... Wish to wet our sleeves tonight, indulging in our springtime desires.
( Lan Zhan, sleeves now unencumbered. Wei Wuxian, overdressed yet in comparison, unapologetic. He's hardly had chance or opportunity.
He settles his head down again, strokes down Lan Zhan's back from the side he can still access. Lends a heady weight at the hip, thumb tracing circles against skin. A world of moments, a peace granted in breathing at times like this. Such a fierce ache if affection claws at his heart, he almost gasps. )
I want you. But I'll want you tomorrow, and the day after, and later still.
( Not simply by desire in biology, no. He's too practiced at ignoring the body's wishes to find any necessity in such claims. Indulgences, the extra cake has at the tea house, that decadence? When allowed, accepted and consumed greatly, with equally great affection. )
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( Nothing hurts, yet everything is tender, fragile, distant. Wei Ying, clumsily and indefatigably contorted, coils around him like an eel seeking to drink in and strangle.
He answers him, rounds both arms to fasten around his husband's waist and draws him in, the harsh forge of his core churning hot and keen and burning a print of friction and perspiration between them. Even bare, a cultivator will seldom catch chills, the gift of their qi a constant privilege weaponized towards survival.
His head drifts, feline-like and trickling, to rest at a steep angle beneath Wei Ying's chin, perched heavy on his lover's shoulder. And he breathes, pleased and placid with the hypnotic wooing of Wei Ying's clever strokes rousing bumps on his hip's skin, climbing the steps of his spine, spreading up his ribs. )
I desire you. ( Softer, enamoured. To confirm what should be obvious and plain yet wants occasional reassurance: he desires his husband avidly, thoroughly, as part of perfect awareness and in the absence of a concerted effort. There is no sliver of him that is immune and undisturbed by his lover's peripheral presence, let alone his scent, his touch. ) But worry you only pacify deeper hurt with... handsome medicine.
( A pretty, palatable euphemism that still leaves the true wound to bleed Wei Ying out, to skewer and torment him whole. ) Your mind is restless in perpetuity. You think, think, think. What of?
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( The ease in lifting his chin, allowing access to his throat, this sweet intimacy which still unsettles the steady rhythm of his heart. He breathes in deep, slow, filling himself with the scent of Lan Zhan, layer and burning, skin to skin. Hair tickles and soothes in contact, his eyes half closing as words sink in, settling below the surface.
Does he look for handsome medicine? At times, yes. The wandering traces of his fingers over Lan Zhan's skin trace characters, lazy and slow. A name, especially: Lan Zhan, roadmap in his mind.
The storm outside renders his mind more calm. There's no immediate escape from his own heart demons. The urge to drown them into silence with alcohol is one he's struggled with internally for years, but neither does it pull on him now. Is there a lurking hurt? Is there an inherent desire for distraction, and this the opportunity? He breathes steady, his own qi following the touch of his fingers: easy sharing, and strange, feeling as if the depths of the ocean within Lan Zhan aren't merely echoing the emptied well with himself. )
Right now, of how our qi feels, of what's changed it in this world, because it's felt more and more like something has. About those such as Anurr, what creeping evils can infest slow and deadly over time. On what we'll find after this journey, not only tomorrow's, about who we'll be when we're wed again to our world. About the electric, savage beauty of the storm outside. About wanting you, in all ways, and wanting these moments, this closeness. Enjoying when we speak, even without words. About a change to that talisman I've been working on lately, you know the one, and the altered flags for directing energies. Thoughts rattle in the cage of my mind, questions and puzzles, and those have the pleasure of tinkering towards solutions. Others won't before it's time.
( So much spoken, and he subsides, mouth drying, throat parched. There is more, if he allows his thoughts to spiral onto pathways further than his current intention. Not frightening nor saddening, no, he's not trapped in a quagmire undefeated. He feels, above all things, happy. )
I've always preferred staying up in the quiet dark, and waking to the loud light. Tonight, there's only that and the fact I would enjoy using the bed for activities harder on aging bodies out on dirt packed roads.
( His chuckling laugh rumbling through him, softer than the swollen moans of the wind outside, the deluge of rain, not quite seasonably early. He cares and caresses with his hand, long strokes, nails pressed down just enough for feeling. Dragging across, not catching on, tissue which sits jagged even decades after some fractured form of healing, loving this embrace. )
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