( Ah, but he betrays himself, slips into the sheets of shyness that dress Wei Ying when the brazen luster of his bravado has faded, like bronze dulled. Lan Wangji hears him, the gutting weight of his breath punching out, battering his insides.
Rolls and drags the heft of his sleeve's silks over his head, over Wei Ying's as if to entomb him in their narrow-light world, to stifle and contain him. Their mouths meet again, and so he has, so he has, and the next turn of the storm's tumbling nearly quakes them —
But cannot interfere in this small, finite space where only the pretty depth of his husband's musk persists, where he breathes in the joy of him, this dream they share between tender heartbeats. Blinking, he thinks his lashes touch Wei Ying's cheeks, their chins knock, and the great white of watching walls screams back down upon them like a summer bird. )
Look at me. Say so again. ( Which part? What a flirt this man is, when he lives in Lan Wangji's heart so, uninvited. ) Two seasons.
( Together, hand in hand amid crops golden and schools of river fishes, and Wei Ying's precious bare ankles, glimpsed a-running through the fields. And making love among grass blades burdened by dew, picking oranges from roadside trees, counting stars off their porch near twilight. )
A lifetime after, but two seasons first. Sleep in my arms. Meditate with morning. Cross swords. Feed me your spiced wickedry.
( He laughs, a summer breeze among the reeds; he squirms, wiggling as they shift, part provocation and part simple desire to be closer to someone whom he holds in incandescent affection; he stills in the gossamer privacy of silk sleeves repurposed yet again, in Lan Zhan's unsung creativity. How to explain the gravity given underneath Lan Zhan's weight, where the world feels unshakeable and considered, where the well of an individual life is pulled instead towards the river of mutual, changing experience. There are few times he wants the second half of his soul more than when he feels so unutterably solid, so undeniably present. The heat of bodies, the humming of qi, the sanctuary of beating hearts cradled in two sets of lungs, matching, badum, badun.
He aches, the wind groaning as it plucks at the eaves, at the shutters, denied entry. )
Two seasons.
( Staring into his husband's face, studying him intently, wholly. He imagines: bare feet on river stones, sleeves tied back, yet still managing to wet. Rabbits tumbling off furniture, only to leap back up, start over again. Of sunsets witnessed in quiet, mutual warmth, leaning shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart, breathing in time with each other and the world around.
Of a kitchen they both stand in, of meals cooked together. Of teasing, of laughter, of love.
Anything else might fill in that imagining, that soon reality. Yet it won't be dead, or dying. It won't be a place of grief, or imprisonment. They can walk, hand in hand, to whatever village or town lays closest, and no one, nothing, will seek to split them apart from that freedom. )
In the kitchen and outside of it.
( He promises. Oh, he promises. )
Let us find each other, in a world where we can learn who we wish to be. Not one where others have created those stories for us.
( A time for themselves, without crisis. How unique an opportunity, is that. )
( There: Wei Ying subdued, molten and exquisitely placid and poised even as he succumbs to the call to rest. Slowly, in increments, Lan Wangji wilts around him, mouths pressing obliviously and calling to each other like planets coaxing strange things within orbit, and the constellation of tacitly surrendered moans and half-stifled breaths is an eruption of vagaries of sound.
At some turn, when the storm threatens to break, but only hastens, and the quiet of tension bursts their eardrums, and petrichor kindles in the air like fresh incense, bloomed — his hands remember themselves, the art of caressing, of whispering his husband close to pleasure, of teasing, pacifying, stroking. He is not... for the lazy, easy application of effort, not for anything but his thumbs chasing the jutting frame of Wei Ying's hips, for kisses rounded under his ear's lobe.
Not for diplomacy, not for sensible conduct — not when Jin Guangyao played a reasonable game, and treachery is simple, extortion consummate, and Wei Ying, poor Wei Ying, never did learn. )
Grant me a child, when we truly settle.
( Returned to their home, Cloud Recesses or the road, or whether it is that Wei Ying wishes their roots bound. It is unfair to ask, when they are tangled, to command, as if this does not require a conversation with a man barely awoken to the reality of his decades-long matrimony.
He should, at the very least, afford Wei Ying the dignity of considering this without the distraction at very literal hand, without his silks parting. Well, family enlargements do start in beds. )
( Oh, there's enough to recommend moments like these, even as there's enough to whisper, will it last? He's grown to ignore those thoughts, aware they're reflections of himself, not his faith in Lan Zhan, and also a part of his faith in standing for what he believes.
He doesn't quiet himself, he makes surrender an art of motion as much as it is grace, rousing from the symphonies of incomplete pleasures to flutter lashes, to arch up, to rake teeth against his husband's throat.
Less calculation than pairing action with thought, for it follows as he rolls them over, as his fingers press and nails trace, how he seeks all baring of skin for the sake of contact and, inevitably, aroused interests. Yet he perches now, hair mussed and falling in tangled tumbles over shoulders and back, braces thighs, anchors himself above and bound to Lan Zhan, this borrowed, wooden bed, this suffusing succor of a storm come passion, oh.
His laughter, bright, deepens. His eyes, dark, shine. )
There's a world filled with orphans, Lan Zhan. ( An exhalation, almost panting. ) If you look, if your heart can bear opening to even those without the famed skills of the clans, you'll grant yourself as many children as you care to watch grow and fly away.
( Kisses, raining down like lightning strikes, and strokes of nothing like genius, fumbling in mild, amused frustration for the later easing of ways — chosen whichever way, in course, so shall it be.
He is not a man who has learned deceit in these avenues, between these sheets or any other, no. Yet he is a man who, tangled as heart and limbs might be, knows the remaining stumbling blocks of pride don't linger in his chest.
Gifted cultivators or not, none among them ever prove immortal. Few even claim the oldest age of healthy workers of the land.
So who are they, really, but another form of temporary creature in this beautiful chaotic world, crafting a home between their hearts?
( And then he is tumbled, fleetingly too fond and readily enamoured, gazing up into Wei Ying's bright eyes and feverish face, Lan Wangji's hair rapidly and loosely dishevelled. There is rain pattering above, like fingers drumming on their rooftop, but he cannot see the tears of it, nothing but his husband and the charcoal-like, dispersing suggestion of a living, breathing world. They might be the only people left in it. They might not exist at all. This is how spirits feel, unanchored.
Wei Ying's kisses punctuate his exhalations, keep him grounded. He answers them on instinct, clumsily brushing their noses at times, their chins at others. Laughs, then — gutturally slow — quiets. )
I risk burying a child without cultivation. ( As I do a husband, he needn't say, but looks and looks and looks, and his bitten mouth feels slack, clammy and cold and a forgotten thing.
This is ever the danger between men possessed of qi and those unblessed with it: the unions are bound for disaster. And he can bear it, he tells himself, can allow himself to love and grieve and love and grieve Wei Ying again, because he has walked with death and returned to him, and the Patriarch cannot be denied.
But a young child is a different proposition, and he feels, selfish and alone, it cannot be that a parent should ever have to think to bury a son or daughter. It is not the way of things, not a pain the mind should muster or the heart survive. )
( Ah, to slowly drink in the pain beneath him, bitter and acerbic, addictive. No desire to create these voids, grief which cannot sink skin deep, only infest marrow like so many burrowing larva, growing fat on the richest part of them, hollowing from within.
Do bones snap as readily as those of the bird, then? When they're so riddled with holes there's no structure remaining to uphold the scaffolding of functioning humanity.
He presses down, blanketing his husband with the warmth of himself, the evidence of how arousal stands unconcerned with extraneous matters of the heart and mind, nudged from intrusion with careful adjustment of hips. Breath matches breath. Hearts beat in time. Rain swells, settles. The storm, uncaring, uninterested, bellows and rumbles on.
How hands find hands to entwine with matters less than the moment they do. Nuzzled into the side of his husband's face, he waits. Lets them settle in turbid water, until the sediment of their sentiments ceases muddying what should be heard, be said. )
Death will attempt to come. We won't allow it to arrive in violence, to what extent we can prevent it.
( Resting as he is, fingers squeezing, asking, alive. )
Find the children of your heart. I'll raise them as ours.
( Don't make him the arbiter. Didn't give him the caveats, he who has before lost every child he's taught, every youth he's cared for, at the hands of violence. Every one a cultivator. Every bright beauty of potential smashed and left to rot.
Cultivation does not guarantee extended life. It's merely a possibility, one rarely made true, but that's not what Lan Zhan needs to hear. It's the practical side of Wei Wuxian with no place in this warmth, this vulnerability.
His soul mate needs heart, not mind. Not unaddressed, buried grief of his own, better left subterranean. )
You know what you need. Let you lead us along that path, ah?
( The children of his heart. What heart, then? The one that beats thunderously to bruise the cage of his ribs, that propels him, indiscriminate of the gravity of the moment, to coax Wei Ying's limbs about it, to press up in the quiet cup of his hands.
He has long legs, does Wei Ying, lean and wan and lacking lustre, the muscle of a starved creature accustomed to hard runs. An athlete, prepared consummately for his marathon, and Lan Wangji has ever chased without being hunted, pursued without calls on his time — and he finds he knows, between gasps and the start of breaking breath and sibilant hissing, he knows the colour of his husband's greed, how it rounds and envelops and drowns him.
And he laughs, honeyed and low: )
Am I to give Wei Ying children, then? ( Softly, half-huffed, the proof of amusement. Certainly, he has entertained the possibility of yielding, the dream of a family born of flesh — but even sweet virgins of Cloud Recesses who do not possess Lan Wangji's veteran maturity understand, however grudgingly, that babes come of wombs.
Wei Ying, for all his efforts, is barren of that spawning pool. Lan Wangji, pressed to eclipse his meditation by rapidly unfolding his lover's silks to grasp at the inevitable proof of his masculinity — is not all that different.
Then again, the Patriarch did promise the unthinkable. )
You bore me a son in chastity. ( One who has reached an age where he might gently question the miracle of his parentage. ) You should produce twins now.
( Unfair, should any of this be fair, with a husband demanding the improbable while commanding such attentions as he has: Wei Wuxian laughs, breathless, a tremor shivering through him before his teeth bite down into his lip.
Sorted thoughts, flying apart again. Focus, beyond what he feels.
A practice as familiar as drinking to drown the whirring wings of his thoughts, insectile. )
Oh — really? It's your turn to find your miraculous birthing, you great, beautiful ridiculous man.
( The affection there, in stuttered breaths and glazed gazes through thick lashes, hinting at another word, meant as fondly: fool.
He's a man who learned stillness, but still rarely prefers such. Touch and the sustenance of their physical bodies, inevitably male, possessing different angles than he supposed followed female lines. Thoughts quick and fleeting, dragonflies skimming rivers in deceptive calm.
Wei Wuxian hadn't claimed A-Yuan as his except to tease the man he'd been delighted to see at all, let alone with the sole surviving child of the Wen clan clinging to his leg.
Biting back a groan, he nips at his husband's jaw, nuzzles his neck. )
Stand in enough crowds. See what comes to shelter in the berth of your legs.
( A smile, in voice and across his lips, as he shifts his weight to one arm and allows the other to drag down his soulmate's front, mapping by touch, seeking out those places which pleased in turn. Too busy, too full, a sharp inhalation swallowed by a rolling crack and flashing illumination from that storm.
Rain beats down until waterfalls consume the roof in all but reality, his mind as scattered before it focuses back: him, me, us. )
( This, then, should be a game to test the meditation skills of devoted disciples and of they who dedicate themselves, in twisted tongues and flowered words, to the art of discipline. Wei Ying, unraveled and all blunt teeth and nipping and groaning and arching in and there, the quiet rut of hands and greedy fingertips chasing a proper hold, and what is conversation? The art of concubines, unveiling themselves, of ancient warriors facing the Heavens with poetry as they bleed.
They should prevail against base instincts long enough to negotiate, he supposes between breezy inhalations, between the hammering of thunder — long enough to agree the fate of their family, whole. )
You neglect your duty. ( Hereby awarded by Hanguang-Jun, punctuated with the flick of a wrist. Let it never be said he is tame or sophisticated in his machinations — no son of Lanling is he, not born, not bred, not in their making.
Only diligently, wisely focused on the merits of a family grown vast and large, retaliating with hard bites against Wei Ying's shoulder, all bone, for his delays. )
Shall I do the same? ( ...not to say a man may withhold his affections in the absence of an heir, but. He is not without the fledgling merits of at least attempting diplomacy. )
( He mouths an ouch that turns into more of a moan, which might have been embarrassing, in other circumstances. Instead he buries his face in the side of his husband's neck, as much as he can, and mutters: )
Are you that seeking of self inflicted suffering?
( Sweat beads and rolls across his skin, cool in the air around their bodies, albeit heated between them. )
We can find your set of twins together, ( he says, practically murmurs into the shell of Lan Zhan's ear, moving against him with a slick and sweet hunger he wants, oh, he wants to drown in, crave air like the times he stayed deep beneath the rivers surface. Break through at last to breathe deep, lungs and soul filling with vibrant life.
Wet.
Damp.
What?
Wei Wuxian jerks his head back and around, eyes barely registering the roof as he clutches his husband's shoulders and rolls then both away from the spreading stain in the ceiling, where water, driven hard and deep and long to the shrieking pleasure, drips faster, faster, fast.
He rolls them the wrong direction, backs leaving the rumpled sheets and legs still tangled in them as he leads the sideways fall to the ground. Lightning crashes with them, lighting the small but undeniable hole that has opening in the ceiling. )
( Fair compromise. A fine solution. Wei Ying exerting himself to produce Cloud Recesses another heir, blessed be his womb, while addressing the more pregnant problem of the clan, epitomized by its second heir, still releasing stubborn, guttural exhalations, while his hands chase his lover's back, his sweet spine —
And come away... wet. He blinks, dragging his fingertips beside him to watch the fattened tears of water slip down, and feels another bead roll down his lashes, a third crown his cheek.
Then, with a roar, the roof gives way, and Wei Ying rolls them over, over, over, and he hits ground, knees first and rattled, swerving to his side to protect his husband and failing all too miserably to break their fall. Sheets tangle, claustrophobic and crude, and the pitter-pattering of rain turns into heartened deluge.
Outside, the screams of a maid nearby, then the wails of the inn keeper, already starting a tour of his house to assess damage and kowtow his apologies to affected guests. He abandons his love to his own devices, to crawl on hands and knees, then come upright to hastily bind himself back into a semblance of modesty, sobriety and grace.
They receive the knock, inevitably. He answers it, takes the inn keeper's apologies, and pledges they will release the room and take occupancy of another in the floor below, and yes, it will be close to the kitchens, the smells, ever so sorry, the inn keeper is aghast, such extraordinary gentlemen — ...and is Lan Wangji's companion well, splayed there on the floor? He has harmed himself? Was is the waters? )
We will head downstairs shortly. ( By way of closure to the man and instruction to Wei Ying, and the door shutters with a muted click. And hissed, behind him: ) You will die virginal and little touched.
( ...for all he's thoroughly defiled his husband on a number of occasions, and the storm is surely not his fault alone — )
( He laughs, robes assembled with the art of swift necessity. He still looks a man halfway debauched, and his laughter, against the waterfall of rain, tips him into tumbled madness. Beautiful and flawed, having won freedom from the sheets, and amusement from his husband's frustration.
Two steps, and he throws himself at Lan Zhan's back, nuzzling into his air, his neck. Arms around a familiar chest, laughing, low and lovely, alive. It's ridiculous, and wonderful, and: )
Promises, promises! Haven't you already made sure that can't be true?
( Though he allows himself to sigh, close his eyes, ache with frustrated want. It's annoying, he determines, to stop be at more than half attention when the situation must, again, prove fickle.
He extricates himself to the more distant roll and rumble of thunder, resting briefly his his head pressed to the knob at the top of Lan Zhan's spine.
Movement, to gather belongings not unpacked, readying to move. Chatter flows from him as the water does from the ceiling, all the way to their bread scented bed room, it's smaller space, it's narrower bed.
He raises into his toes reaching to touch the list ceiling. Taps fingers. Grins. )
Feels more solid than upstairs. Shall we try again?
( Hopefully, large eyed as a kitten, from where he's sat himself on the bed's edge.
( A part of him, childlike and syrupy and fond like mellow morning's sun wishes he had coaxed Wei Ying on his back, where his spine still warms with tactile possibility, whishes he could have carried this fool in whatever cavern nethers the inn keeper has nursed available. He cannot beg — not for the pretense of dignity, but because Wei Ying has their affairs to collect, his effects to make ready. Because, trickling down with the upstairs wet in dollops and lazy steps behind them, they must not interfere with the work of rushed servants who already hasten to make amends.
His shoulder singes, where Wei Ying's arms quickly landed, his mouth. He feels — made lively, sooner than the jade that has dictated much of his life. Feels intoxicated.
They enter their new room, small and sickly and the bed rickety and the linens more coarse, and he needn't ask but knows already this is likely a spare quarter volunteered to the house staff. In another life, he might have permitted himself a moment's self-pity. Now, he only wishes for Wei Ying not to know, not to learn of it, not to sadden.
Instead of allowing his husband that time, he sits beside him, like obedient stalks perched at the bed's side — then suddenly pushes his husband to tip on the bed, rushing to crawl behind him and wrap an arm steeled around Wei Ying's waist from behind, dragging him inward as if a perfect, beloved toy. Then, gravelly: )
Once upon a time, there lived a young monk named Lan An. ( If his husband cannot sleep, if restlessness comes — if there is no other way to help, let there be this. ) Or perhaps senior Wei wishes to hear the stories of young Yuan again.
( Trussed and pulled in, laid on his side and cupped to the indignity of his husband's lap rather than the other way around, he sighs. Long, low, pointedly over the top, but he allows himself to relax into the man behind him.
Not tired enough for this, he thinks, but he doesn't mind the mutual indulgence, here where the muted fury of the storm and the displaced servant linger in scents and echoes of sound. His soulmate speaking at any length holds a special importance to him, grounds focus where it might otherwise scamper away.
To creaking floors, to muffled voices, to the scent of bread, he murmurs: )
A-Yuan.
( He is not, ultimately, fascinated by the history of the Lan Clan. They might be married, but it doesn't circumvent his own lack of place or peace there, in various ways. He's unbothered. He doesn't need, doesn't crave, what can't be given.
He also suspects his husband erroneously believes such talk would lull him into sleep, instead of send his mind thinking of other things while nicely backed by the cadence of Lan Zhan's words.
He'll wait for his husband to sleep. What he does after, he'll figure out. Maybe the answer will even be the sensible: find sleep himself. )
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no subject
( Ah, but he betrays himself, slips into the sheets of shyness that dress Wei Ying when the brazen luster of his bravado has faded, like bronze dulled. Lan Wangji hears him, the gutting weight of his breath punching out, battering his insides.
Rolls and drags the heft of his sleeve's silks over his head, over Wei Ying's as if to entomb him in their narrow-light world, to stifle and contain him. Their mouths meet again, and so he has, so he has, and the next turn of the storm's tumbling nearly quakes them —
But cannot interfere in this small, finite space where only the pretty depth of his husband's musk persists, where he breathes in the joy of him, this dream they share between tender heartbeats. Blinking, he thinks his lashes touch Wei Ying's cheeks, their chins knock, and the great white of watching walls screams back down upon them like a summer bird. )
Look at me. Say so again. ( Which part? What a flirt this man is, when he lives in Lan Wangji's heart so, uninvited. ) Two seasons.
( Together, hand in hand amid crops golden and schools of river fishes, and Wei Ying's precious bare ankles, glimpsed a-running through the fields. And making love among grass blades burdened by dew, picking oranges from roadside trees, counting stars off their porch near twilight. )
A lifetime after, but two seasons first. Sleep in my arms. Meditate with morning. Cross swords. Feed me your spiced wickedry.
no subject
( He laughs, a summer breeze among the reeds; he squirms, wiggling as they shift, part provocation and part simple desire to be closer to someone whom he holds in incandescent affection; he stills in the gossamer privacy of silk sleeves repurposed yet again, in Lan Zhan's unsung creativity. How to explain the gravity given underneath Lan Zhan's weight, where the world feels unshakeable and considered, where the well of an individual life is pulled instead towards the river of mutual, changing experience. There are few times he wants the second half of his soul more than when he feels so unutterably solid, so undeniably present. The heat of bodies, the humming of qi, the sanctuary of beating hearts cradled in two sets of lungs, matching, badum, badun.
He aches, the wind groaning as it plucks at the eaves, at the shutters, denied entry. )
Two seasons.
( Staring into his husband's face, studying him intently, wholly. He imagines: bare feet on river stones, sleeves tied back, yet still managing to wet. Rabbits tumbling off furniture, only to leap back up, start over again. Of sunsets witnessed in quiet, mutual warmth, leaning shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart, breathing in time with each other and the world around.
Of a kitchen they both stand in, of meals cooked together. Of teasing, of laughter, of love.
Anything else might fill in that imagining, that soon reality. Yet it won't be dead, or dying. It won't be a place of grief, or imprisonment. They can walk, hand in hand, to whatever village or town lays closest, and no one, nothing, will seek to split them apart from that freedom. )
In the kitchen and outside of it.
( He promises. Oh, he promises. )
Let us find each other, in a world where we can learn who we wish to be. Not one where others have created those stories for us.
( A time for themselves, without crisis. How unique an opportunity, is that. )
no subject
( There: Wei Ying subdued, molten and exquisitely placid and poised even as he succumbs to the call to rest. Slowly, in increments, Lan Wangji wilts around him, mouths pressing obliviously and calling to each other like planets coaxing strange things within orbit, and the constellation of tacitly surrendered moans and half-stifled breaths is an eruption of vagaries of sound.
At some turn, when the storm threatens to break, but only hastens, and the quiet of tension bursts their eardrums, and petrichor kindles in the air like fresh incense, bloomed — his hands remember themselves, the art of caressing, of whispering his husband close to pleasure, of teasing, pacifying, stroking. He is not... for the lazy, easy application of effort, not for anything but his thumbs chasing the jutting frame of Wei Ying's hips, for kisses rounded under his ear's lobe.
Not for diplomacy, not for sensible conduct — not when Jin Guangyao played a reasonable game, and treachery is simple, extortion consummate, and Wei Ying, poor Wei Ying, never did learn. )
Grant me a child, when we truly settle.
( Returned to their home, Cloud Recesses or the road, or whether it is that Wei Ying wishes their roots bound. It is unfair to ask, when they are tangled, to command, as if this does not require a conversation with a man barely awoken to the reality of his decades-long matrimony.
He should, at the very least, afford Wei Ying the dignity of considering this without the distraction at very literal hand, without his silks parting. Well, family enlargements do start in beds. )
no subject
( Oh, there's enough to recommend moments like these, even as there's enough to whisper, will it last? He's grown to ignore those thoughts, aware they're reflections of himself, not his faith in Lan Zhan, and also a part of his faith in standing for what he believes.
He doesn't quiet himself, he makes surrender an art of motion as much as it is grace, rousing from the symphonies of incomplete pleasures to flutter lashes, to arch up, to rake teeth against his husband's throat.
Less calculation than pairing action with thought, for it follows as he rolls them over, as his fingers press and nails trace, how he seeks all baring of skin for the sake of contact and, inevitably, aroused interests. Yet he perches now, hair mussed and falling in tangled tumbles over shoulders and back, braces thighs, anchors himself above and bound to Lan Zhan, this borrowed, wooden bed, this suffusing succor of a storm come passion, oh.
His laughter, bright, deepens. His eyes, dark, shine. )
There's a world filled with orphans, Lan Zhan. ( An exhalation, almost panting. ) If you look, if your heart can bear opening to even those without the famed skills of the clans, you'll grant yourself as many children as you care to watch grow and fly away.
( Kisses, raining down like lightning strikes, and strokes of nothing like genius, fumbling in mild, amused frustration for the later easing of ways — chosen whichever way, in course, so shall it be.
He is not a man who has learned deceit in these avenues, between these sheets or any other, no. Yet he is a man who, tangled as heart and limbs might be, knows the remaining stumbling blocks of pride don't linger in his chest.
Gifted cultivators or not, none among them ever prove immortal. Few even claim the oldest age of healthy workers of the land.
So who are they, really, but another form of temporary creature in this beautiful chaotic world, crafting a home between their hearts?
And bodies, and souls, and oh. )
no subject
( And then he is tumbled, fleetingly too fond and readily enamoured, gazing up into Wei Ying's bright eyes and feverish face, Lan Wangji's hair rapidly and loosely dishevelled. There is rain pattering above, like fingers drumming on their rooftop, but he cannot see the tears of it, nothing but his husband and the charcoal-like, dispersing suggestion of a living, breathing world. They might be the only people left in it. They might not exist at all. This is how spirits feel, unanchored.
Wei Ying's kisses punctuate his exhalations, keep him grounded. He answers them on instinct, clumsily brushing their noses at times, their chins at others. Laughs, then — gutturally slow — quiets. )
I risk burying a child without cultivation. ( As I do a husband, he needn't say, but looks and looks and looks, and his bitten mouth feels slack, clammy and cold and a forgotten thing.
This is ever the danger between men possessed of qi and those unblessed with it: the unions are bound for disaster. And he can bear it, he tells himself, can allow himself to love and grieve and love and grieve Wei Ying again, because he has walked with death and returned to him, and the Patriarch cannot be denied.
But a young child is a different proposition, and he feels, selfish and alone, it cannot be that a parent should ever have to think to bury a son or daughter. It is not the way of things, not a pain the mind should muster or the heart survive. )
You cannot ask it of me.
no subject
( Ah, to slowly drink in the pain beneath him, bitter and acerbic, addictive. No desire to create these voids, grief which cannot sink skin deep, only infest marrow like so many burrowing larva, growing fat on the richest part of them, hollowing from within.
Do bones snap as readily as those of the bird, then? When they're so riddled with holes there's no structure remaining to uphold the scaffolding of functioning humanity.
He presses down, blanketing his husband with the warmth of himself, the evidence of how arousal stands unconcerned with extraneous matters of the heart and mind, nudged from intrusion with careful adjustment of hips. Breath matches breath. Hearts beat in time. Rain swells, settles. The storm, uncaring, uninterested, bellows and rumbles on.
How hands find hands to entwine with matters less than the moment they do. Nuzzled into the side of his husband's face, he waits. Lets them settle in turbid water, until the sediment of their sentiments ceases muddying what should be heard, be said. )
Death will attempt to come. We won't allow it to arrive in violence, to what extent we can prevent it.
( Resting as he is, fingers squeezing, asking, alive. )
Find the children of your heart. I'll raise them as ours.
( Don't make him the arbiter. Didn't give him the caveats, he who has before lost every child he's taught, every youth he's cared for, at the hands of violence. Every one a cultivator. Every bright beauty of potential smashed and left to rot.
Cultivation does not guarantee extended life. It's merely a possibility, one rarely made true, but that's not what Lan Zhan needs to hear. It's the practical side of Wei Wuxian with no place in this warmth, this vulnerability.
His soul mate needs heart, not mind. Not unaddressed, buried grief of his own, better left subterranean. )
You know what you need. Let you lead us along that path, ah?
no subject
( The children of his heart. What heart, then? The one that beats thunderously to bruise the cage of his ribs, that propels him, indiscriminate of the gravity of the moment, to coax Wei Ying's limbs about it, to press up in the quiet cup of his hands.
He has long legs, does Wei Ying, lean and wan and lacking lustre, the muscle of a starved creature accustomed to hard runs. An athlete, prepared consummately for his marathon, and Lan Wangji has ever chased without being hunted, pursued without calls on his time — and he finds he knows, between gasps and the start of breaking breath and sibilant hissing, he knows the colour of his husband's greed, how it rounds and envelops and drowns him.
And he laughs, honeyed and low: )
Am I to give Wei Ying children, then? ( Softly, half-huffed, the proof of amusement. Certainly, he has entertained the possibility of yielding, the dream of a family born of flesh — but even sweet virgins of Cloud Recesses who do not possess Lan Wangji's veteran maturity understand, however grudgingly, that babes come of wombs.
Wei Ying, for all his efforts, is barren of that spawning pool. Lan Wangji, pressed to eclipse his meditation by rapidly unfolding his lover's silks to grasp at the inevitable proof of his masculinity — is not all that different.
Then again, the Patriarch did promise the unthinkable. )
You bore me a son in chastity. ( One who has reached an age where he might gently question the miracle of his parentage. ) You should produce twins now.
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Sorted thoughts, flying apart again. Focus, beyond what he feels.
A practice as familiar as drinking to drown the whirring wings of his thoughts, insectile. )
Oh — really? It's your turn to find your miraculous birthing, you great, beautiful ridiculous man.
( The affection there, in stuttered breaths and glazed gazes through thick lashes, hinting at another word, meant as fondly: fool.
He's a man who learned stillness, but still rarely prefers such. Touch and the sustenance of their physical bodies, inevitably male, possessing different angles than he supposed followed female lines. Thoughts quick and fleeting, dragonflies skimming rivers in deceptive calm.
Wei Wuxian hadn't claimed A-Yuan as his except to tease the man he'd been delighted to see at all, let alone with the sole surviving child of the Wen clan clinging to his leg.
Biting back a groan, he nips at his husband's jaw, nuzzles his neck. )
Stand in enough crowds. See what comes to shelter in the berth of your legs.
( A smile, in voice and across his lips, as he shifts his weight to one arm and allows the other to drag down his soulmate's front, mapping by touch, seeking out those places which pleased in turn. Too busy, too full, a sharp inhalation swallowed by a rolling crack and flashing illumination from that storm.
Rain beats down until waterfalls consume the roof in all but reality, his mind as scattered before it focuses back: him, me, us. )
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( This, then, should be a game to test the meditation skills of devoted disciples and of they who dedicate themselves, in twisted tongues and flowered words, to the art of discipline. Wei Ying, unraveled and all blunt teeth and nipping and groaning and arching in and there, the quiet rut of hands and greedy fingertips chasing a proper hold, and what is conversation? The art of concubines, unveiling themselves, of ancient warriors facing the Heavens with poetry as they bleed.
They should prevail against base instincts long enough to negotiate, he supposes between breezy inhalations, between the hammering of thunder — long enough to agree the fate of their family, whole. )
You neglect your duty. ( Hereby awarded by Hanguang-Jun, punctuated with the flick of a wrist. Let it never be said he is tame or sophisticated in his machinations — no son of Lanling is he, not born, not bred, not in their making.
Only diligently, wisely focused on the merits of a family grown vast and large, retaliating with hard bites against Wei Ying's shoulder, all bone, for his delays. )
Shall I do the same? ( ...not to say a man may withhold his affections in the absence of an heir, but. He is not without the fledgling merits of at least attempting diplomacy. )
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( He mouths an ouch that turns into more of a moan, which might have been embarrassing, in other circumstances. Instead he buries his face in the side of his husband's neck, as much as he can, and mutters: )
Are you that seeking of self inflicted suffering?
( Sweat beads and rolls across his skin, cool in the air around their bodies, albeit heated between them. )
We can find your set of twins together, ( he says, practically murmurs into the shell of Lan Zhan's ear, moving against him with a slick and sweet hunger he wants, oh, he wants to drown in, crave air like the times he stayed deep beneath the rivers surface. Break through at last to breathe deep, lungs and soul filling with vibrant life.
Wet.
Damp.
What?
Wei Wuxian jerks his head back and around, eyes barely registering the roof as he clutches his husband's shoulders and rolls then both away from the spreading stain in the ceiling, where water, driven hard and deep and long to the shrieking pleasure, drips faster, faster, fast.
He rolls them the wrong direction, backs leaving the rumpled sheets and legs still tangled in them as he leads the sideways fall to the ground. Lightning crashes with them, lighting the small but undeniable hole that has opening in the ceiling. )
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( Fair compromise. A fine solution. Wei Ying exerting himself to produce Cloud Recesses another heir, blessed be his womb, while addressing the more pregnant problem of the clan, epitomized by its second heir, still releasing stubborn, guttural exhalations, while his hands chase his lover's back, his sweet spine —
And come away... wet. He blinks, dragging his fingertips beside him to watch the fattened tears of water slip down, and feels another bead roll down his lashes, a third crown his cheek.
Then, with a roar, the roof gives way, and Wei Ying rolls them over, over, over, and he hits ground, knees first and rattled, swerving to his side to protect his husband and failing all too miserably to break their fall. Sheets tangle, claustrophobic and crude, and the pitter-pattering of rain turns into heartened deluge.
Outside, the screams of a maid nearby, then the wails of the inn keeper, already starting a tour of his house to assess damage and kowtow his apologies to affected guests. He abandons his love to his own devices, to crawl on hands and knees, then come upright to hastily bind himself back into a semblance of modesty, sobriety and grace.
They receive the knock, inevitably. He answers it, takes the inn keeper's apologies, and pledges they will release the room and take occupancy of another in the floor below, and yes, it will be close to the kitchens, the smells, ever so sorry, the inn keeper is aghast, such extraordinary gentlemen — ...and is Lan Wangji's companion well, splayed there on the floor? He has harmed himself? Was is the waters? )
We will head downstairs shortly. ( By way of closure to the man and instruction to Wei Ying, and the door shutters with a muted click. And hissed, behind him: ) You will die virginal and little touched.
( ...for all he's thoroughly defiled his husband on a number of occasions, and the storm is surely not his fault alone — )
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( He laughs, robes assembled with the art of swift necessity. He still looks a man halfway debauched, and his laughter, against the waterfall of rain, tips him into tumbled madness. Beautiful and flawed, having won freedom from the sheets, and amusement from his husband's frustration.
Two steps, and he throws himself at Lan Zhan's back, nuzzling into his air, his neck. Arms around a familiar chest, laughing, low and lovely, alive. It's ridiculous, and wonderful, and: )
Promises, promises! Haven't you already made sure that can't be true?
( Though he allows himself to sigh, close his eyes, ache with frustrated want. It's annoying, he determines, to stop be at more than half attention when the situation must, again, prove fickle.
He extricates himself to the more distant roll and rumble of thunder, resting briefly his his head pressed to the knob at the top of Lan Zhan's spine.
Movement, to gather belongings not unpacked, readying to move. Chatter flows from him as the water does from the ceiling, all the way to their bread scented bed room, it's smaller space, it's narrower bed.
He raises into his toes reaching to touch the list ceiling. Taps fingers. Grins. )
Feels more solid than upstairs. Shall we try again?
( Hopefully, large eyed as a kitten, from where he's sat himself on the bed's edge.
He's wet enough already. Surely... )
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( A part of him, childlike and syrupy and fond like mellow morning's sun wishes he had coaxed Wei Ying on his back, where his spine still warms with tactile possibility, whishes he could have carried this fool in whatever cavern nethers the inn keeper has nursed available. He cannot beg — not for the pretense of dignity, but because Wei Ying has their affairs to collect, his effects to make ready. Because, trickling down with the upstairs wet in dollops and lazy steps behind them, they must not interfere with the work of rushed servants who already hasten to make amends.
His shoulder singes, where Wei Ying's arms quickly landed, his mouth. He feels — made lively, sooner than the jade that has dictated much of his life. Feels intoxicated.
They enter their new room, small and sickly and the bed rickety and the linens more coarse, and he needn't ask but knows already this is likely a spare quarter volunteered to the house staff. In another life, he might have permitted himself a moment's self-pity. Now, he only wishes for Wei Ying not to know, not to learn of it, not to sadden.
Instead of allowing his husband that time, he sits beside him, like obedient stalks perched at the bed's side — then suddenly pushes his husband to tip on the bed, rushing to crawl behind him and wrap an arm steeled around Wei Ying's waist from behind, dragging him inward as if a perfect, beloved toy. Then, gravelly: )
Once upon a time, there lived a young monk named Lan An. ( If his husband cannot sleep, if restlessness comes — if there is no other way to help, let there be this. ) Or perhaps senior Wei wishes to hear the stories of young Yuan again.
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...
( Trussed and pulled in, laid on his side and cupped to the indignity of his husband's lap rather than the other way around, he sighs. Long, low, pointedly over the top, but he allows himself to relax into the man behind him.
Not tired enough for this, he thinks, but he doesn't mind the mutual indulgence, here where the muted fury of the storm and the displaced servant linger in scents and echoes of sound. His soulmate speaking at any length holds a special importance to him, grounds focus where it might otherwise scamper away.
To creaking floors, to muffled voices, to the scent of bread, he murmurs: )
A-Yuan.
( He is not, ultimately, fascinated by the history of the Lan Clan. They might be married, but it doesn't circumvent his own lack of place or peace there, in various ways. He's unbothered. He doesn't need, doesn't crave, what can't be given.
He also suspects his husband erroneously believes such talk would lull him into sleep, instead of send his mind thinking of other things while nicely backed by the cadence of Lan Zhan's words.
He'll wait for his husband to sleep. What he does after, he'll figure out. Maybe the answer will even be the sensible: find sleep himself. )