( Where white mountains scream with unending vastness, and the great, groaning gaze of the abyss blinks away through the cataract of dawns, clouding. It might be the slate sky of dead dry twilight or a winter’s morning; might be the height of it, inexcusable, inexorable, and their legs burned alive with the quiet, simmering pulse of ache-ache-ache, building.
Travel has been costly where the slope turned mean and glacial up the peak, steep enough to stand erect like a proud man’s throat for the noosing. He obliged Wei Ying to accept their horse, after some time — less for the chivalry of sparing his husband, more so the opportunity to wade through the cartilage of forests run thick and slimy with perpetual frost on Bichen’s back, scouting. In the end, they arrive, the monastery a cold sprawling disaster, upheld by the dignity of its repute and the beautiful haunting of trilling birds. Beneath, the mines that once burst with the maw-churning sounds of hard, bitter work traded for nuggets of — ...dark, dreary things.
Not water, he is told. He asks, thoroughly. Embers for warmth and pigments and stone. Iron, also — but Lan Wangji suspects, more.
They are welcomed cleanly, discreetly, with the transactional facility of merchants or petty predators symbiotic with a household: doors open, doors close. The first nun to see them by the gates takes their introduction papers, a cheaply recommendation from the leader of a settlement exorcised during travel. She does not remove her skins of fawn veils, does not wash them in hospitality.
Only opens her doors through the work of code and levers, and the beastly jaws of the gates come undone, and they must rush in — yes, even their horse, and it is a tongue-tied youth who takes the reins in his trembling hands.
And they are bidden in.
No quarters, at first, not until the spiritual leader of establishment seizes them: sister Sorrow, a name chosen in blunt-bladed sacrifice for her mourning grief. She does name why, does not seem perplexed by the brazen theatrics of her appellative. She accepts it, as she tolerates them, wordlessly and seamlessly and entirely — at ease.
In the end, they receive rooms, at the very tunnel’s end of a deserted western wing, long abandoned after the season’s first floodings seeped in through elderly vents. This part of the monastery, he learns, was erected just above the mines’ hollows. There are yet
Some of the lubricious condensation has turned to spears of ice. Dried now, she says, and the brazier flames will keep strong, and the shaky bed and floors will weather, and the ruinous bathing halls will not collapse for a handful of nights. No longer. But then, she tells them, passing on the evening’s meal of rice gruel and thick spice stew and a seaweed soup, they cannot be seated among the women. Aged concubines, exiled princesses, scholars secluded among tombs, wise women who no longer bear the world — and young, lively girls, sent by the affluent for a handsome schooling, away from modern temptations.
This is no home, says Sister Sorrow, for the base and the disbelieving. They wake to prayer and flagellation, long fasts and ablutions, six hours of lessons for the young long before the midday bell. The religion, Lan Wangji attempts but fails to decipher: local, possessed of an ambitious pantheon, embracing the beauty of pain through deprivation. As in hunger, bone reveals its beauty, so too does virtue shine through lacking. Each day, the sisters seek less.
And at night, at least half their number yowl.
They have been cat-like for three weeks hole. It was the men first, he remembers, and now they’ve cleansed of their evil. And he sees them: women shrouded in robes like ghosts haunting, veils heavy and drawn to a tight bind, steps licking stone as they cluster together. Their eyes cross over him, gaze cruel and limber but snagging, their hostility tactile. They do not speak to them; only Sister Sorrow, who passes them by and sketches with her clasping hands the half-bow of greeting that they answer with deeper, more persistent interest. They do not greet.
They have meowled, says Sister Sorrow, and taken a vow of silence to make amends.
With so little time allowed to them, Lan Wangji had anticipated the opportunity to interrogate at least a number of the sisters — formally, during a collective dinner. Privately, in dark corners. No such fortune. They are isolated in the abandoned dining halls of their wing, the only rattling the rare footsteps of the adolescent who intrudes to deliver their meal, his gaze downcast — and the relentless, seismic grinds of the mines.
Some of the mine’s gears, the boy murmurs, are still turning.
Then they are alone, truly lone, only diffuse candlelight and the ever-blinding swell of Wei Ying’s laughter to tide them. Lan Wangji gratefully attacks his rice gruel, spurning the spice stew. And then, in the worst of his husband’s corruptions, he speaks during dinner-time. )
Your charms have waned. ( Certainly, failed this once to win them favour. )
( He shakes out the blankets, prodding at the stuffing of the mattress: old, yes, but despite the distance and the decay, not moulded. He tosses the blankets back over the bed, flashing Lan Zhan a smile as he turns back to the table, seating himself to eat when his own curious nature has him moving first.
He needed a sense of the room in their silence. Now he has it. )
I'm more curious where the supposed recovered men are. We've seen the silent meows, but their objection to us staying was a lack of feminity on our part. Where do these recovered men dwell?
( Nowhere, he thinks, in the monastery. Beneath them vibrates the mountain, the clawing grasp of greed which tends to follow mining after it's initial, easy access.
He wonders: will we find them men there? Only a few younger boys here, and is that chance, or design?
He spoons the offering of, if not gratitude, then basic necessity of hosting without killing first from neglect. )
My other question to start. Shall we let this first night lapse and see what visits? These women guard secrets, we both sense that, and the silent cats aren't resolved so much as enduring. What in the world do you think they did to "purify" the men?
( Charms work upon all those assailed, lacking in defences. But this is not the hour to grieve the lost innocence of his spring days before the dauntless barrage of Wei Ying's fleeting glances and tender laughter. He has — against odds and expectations — survived the series of unfortunate events known as his sophomoric seduction.
...and Wei Ying is so little changed, since, barely bones bound by fledgling strips of flesh and eyes bright-burning embers and alive, like a hunting bird. Feed more, he does not speak, because there is a tempest in Wei Ying that stokes at every careless reminder that his form is studied and lacking — that Lan Wangji, who should trust him above all yet retains suspicions over his body and its welfare.
No. Better, instead, to collect the service bowl between both hands and unceremoniously tip it to drip in the red bile of the spice stew, topping Wei Ying's portion and expelling it from contaminating the rest of their meal. Falling back, Lan Wangji's eyes water from the mere exposure. )
We will be unwelcome, searching their corridors in formal inquiry past nightfall. ( Not with how stringently the nuns mandate both disciplined devotion and separation of the genders. And where, asks Wei Ying, are the men? None seen, but for the boy-child who attends them, seemingly relegated to menial and helpfully isolated tasks. )
If we break curfew. ( When, but he will save Wei Ying that face. ) We must not rouse attention in common grounds.
( They must slink in the shadows and hope that the nuns' schedule of devotions does not include night-time prayer. A pause, then, somehow yet pretending he did not study the areas least patroned by the nuns upon arrival: )
The gardens, the kitchens, the stables or the mines.
( Such interplay, as spice flows, Lan Zhan near to weeping at the strength. Some small part of him wants to reach out, brush at the corner of an eye, the unshed tear, and taste it — no meaningfull part, but he acknowledges the fleeting impulse even as he eats, spice a heat that sings across his tongue, sizzles down his throat, and settles as furnace in his stomach.
They are to move quietly and swiftly. He swallows, nodding his understanding before a smile, brief and amused, crosses his spice touched lips. )
I've robes to help with that.
( Standing with the bowl, he goes to where his extraneous qiankun pouch sits, balancing down in hand, sliding fingers in, wigging gently, until they find what they seek.
The deep blue robes he summons out near his the floor before he sweeps to capture then across his free forearm, still balancing the bowl.
With victory, he grins at Lan Zhan, rising smoothly with the click of shifting bone ignored. There's no notable pain. Simply age, remembering him.
He presents his robes with a flourish, sparkling light caught in his eyes to drive away the dank and cold and dreary. )
My vote is the kitchens first. As long as we're careful.
( Robes, Wei Ying says, and some part of Lan Wangji questions how a change of wear could possibly improve on his already dark silks — but then, they are midnight and terrible pretty and dainty in ways in which the fierce Yiling Patriarch so seldom permits himself. An air of elegance, of permissiveness, of casual, if earned indulgence.
He will be beautiful in fresh skins of luxury, Lan Wangji supposes. He is beautiful bare, beautiful broken, beautiful tattered, beautiful in blooded glory. Perhaps his partisanship now runs too deep to pretend distinction.
And so, he does not — only calls Wei Ying close to him with the wave of a hand, his part of the rice safely eliminated — a dinner frugal, but sufficient for a man who has embraced discipline as both penitence and private reassurance.
Habit commands him to fill Wei Ying's cup and extend it, even when it contains only a strange fermented liquid of plum peels, strongly and pungently alcoholic. For guests, the young man had indicated, with an air of long lust. )
The kitchens. ( He agrees it as if they negotiate their matters, and he has been presented with an offer he is loathe to refuse. ) And if it is xianli?
( How can two mere men persist against the charms of divine cat spirits turned to handsome mortal flesh forms to drain humans of their vitality? )
( He quirks his brow as the exchange of robes for cup; alcohol not the friend he made it once, but still ... enjoyed. Nuanced or not.
He drains the cup with one long swallow, column of his throat alabaster, stone. A match to their surroundings, and then it crumbles as he smiles - moving again, setting both bowl and empty cup down on the table. )
Then one of us sits pretty as distraction, and the other one slaps a talisman on each of them.
( To his satchel, and from within the rummaging before he finds a cluster of neat talismans, holding them aloft between two fingers with a small sound of victory.
Then he actually looks at them, brings his hand back down, and pulls out another stack, immediately, shoving the first back down. )
These ones! Yes, binding or stilling or those which weigh people down to the ground. We'll adapt!
( Quickly, he finishes off his bowl, keeping it in hand after along with the chopsticks. One easy ruse, carrying it along, though...
He parts his robes over his chest just enough to find a particular talisman, activation near seamless, and the scent of the spice... gone. He glances over to his husband, smile ready. )
Shall we?
( Into the halls of stone and damp and cold, creeping forward, silent beyond the grave in their living attendance. )
And of course Wei Ying is armed, readied, impossibly attuned with the needs of the moment — only when said moment entails a diabolical renunciation of decorum and forethought. He says nothing at first, mouth lightly agape and broken by stupefaction. Then, gently peeling away from his seat, he settles in the domesticity of taming their bowls and remaining dining ware in a passing pile, before exiling it to the table's periphery.
Silks, Wei Ying says, and Lan Wangji — dressed in layered moonlight — does not endeavour to pretend he will divest his clothes. Dignity, modesty and efficiency dictate he does not dally to steal glances from the snagged corner of a wandering eye, where Wei Ying sheds old skins for new. There is a titillating pleasure in the anticipation, the knowing which of Wei Ying's edges are likely to reveal themselves, where his skin has grown supple, where it stays taut. Is it a sin, to foster desire, to simmer and boil it, in such devout confines? He knows himself, the flavour of his want. Lets it roll on the tongue, build and bloom.
Then, when he assumes Wei Ying presentable, he ferries the tray of bowls and leads their path to exit their wing through a gate of rails and iron, no better than a jail door that creaks, groans and hisses as he pushes it open. From afar, in the blunt, shrouding dark of the corridor, he thinks he spies — gold, the reflective glint of sharp eyes and a questing gaze. It strikes him, belatedly and only once Wei Ying has passed, to close their jail-gate shut and seal it with wards of quiet make.
They must trust in their hosts, yes — but their hosts, in turn, do not trust them. )
Why invite us, if they extend no trust? ( Glinting, as he passes, on the walls of the corridor: wet, blooded inscriptions telling evil to beware the forces of righteousness that watch. )
( Fingers flick forward, altering a line with no outward seeming thought: meaning changed, to the flickering darkness of eyes shuttered like storm lanterns at sea.
Measured, sure, he passes a number of his tricks, oh, whatever anyone wishes to call then, into his husband's hand, into the fluttering maw of voluminous sleeves. Here, he doesn't say with his tongue and lips and throat. Secure these as well. )
With the storms as they've been, it might be courtesy. Or opportunity. Or wariness of what is said by travelers turned away.
( Down the barely lit connecting hall, puddles of shadow stretching between flames held in glass, stuttering and gasping in the chill breeze flowing higher overhead. He picks their way, slinking and predatorial, noting what isn't there: visible guards. Visible forms to match the earlier eyes.
Lingering scents of bread and gruel and spice, however, those grow subtly stronger as they progress. Step by step, to the generous maw of the kitchens, banked for the evening, silent but for the memory of chaos.
At least walking in there are no bodies hung or waiting for their consumption: low hurdle as it is, no denial to it's importance. )
I'll look on the left side, you take right?
( To groupings of dried herbs and vegetables, to woven flat baskets for drying, to the lurking casks with the lingering scent of alcohol: yes, that left for Lan Zhan.
He himself slips from cupboard to cupboard, to cabinet, to the tall, thin door behind which he finds shelves and darkness, both overabundant. He clocks his tongue against the back of his teeth, feeling for the energy of the world around them. Poised, it feels, but not imminently threatening.
He slips into that darkness too, and his eyes roam while his ears attune to the little noises, such as the shifting of wings that tells him in all bizarre avenues that some flighted animal is tucked back where he cannot see. )
( The right, to Wei Ying's left — an acceptable division, between shelves upon shelves in luxuriant display, and Lan Wangji tasked with tall inventory. First, the nuts, then the herbs, then the dried dusts and caked syrups, oils finely aged to a point of thickening at the heart of things. And vinegars, ruthlessly astringent, calling to him when he opens his flasks and the bite of them stings.
The wines, after: sweet, cloying. Perhaps tainted with herbs and honeys so thoroughly overwhelming that even Lan Wangji steps back, dissuaded from his inspection. He turns, nearly ready to tell Wei Ying that the pantry is luxuriantly supplied — nearly opulently so, for the tastes of ascetics — only to still in his step, nose catching a whiff of foul wrongness.
Earthy, thick, a heady, gutting scent. Blood, with inevitability, but — hand sweeping through the shelves, he peels back the tattered rags of a modesty cloth to reveal a large bowl, wide and low and spanning a stretch he would deign fitting for a laundry basket, filled to the rim with a disgusting soup of marinating guts and the remains of chickens, feathers yet tarred in blood. A fresh spilling.
His freed hand jumps to his mouth, to cover it and his nose from the instinct to gag. )
Claw marks. ( He hisses out, before stumbling a spate of steps back and permitting Wei Ying to either assume control of their probe, or walk him back. Yes, claw marks, deep running, utterly feline —
And just as he moves, behind him, something dark and small darts by across the shelves. )
( He is turned and turning, the change in Lan Zhan's breathing a warning before even his words reach Wei Wuxian's ears. Stepping with the flourish of quiet robes and practiced feet, only to lift his hands before his face to catch what leaps at him, thin and bedraggled and silent.
He's never considered if a chicken can look scruffy, likely would have lived his life without the thought of his arms weren't now full of a squirming, flapping bird. Still no sound, only the beating of wings, and his bitten off exclamation as his arms wrap around the feathers and bones and the scent of blood strikes his nose like a hit to his head.
He rocks back, steadiest now compared to a moment before, looking to his husband with his raised hand, the fowl breathing hard and settling with the temporary exhaustion of a hunted creature against his chest. The smaller heart beats fast and running, and the scent of blood doesn't rise from it — wafts instead from where it leapt, where Lan Zhan stands.
The bird struggles again when he steps closer. He stills, eyes parting the darkness with a touch of qi. Claw marks, deep and feral, sized wrongly for the cats he's seen keeping house at every estate or farmer's home across the lands he's traveled. Entrails and feathers, but there's no purpose to keeping everything like this, collected and useless instead of converted into the multitudes of plenty it could represent.
There's a cruelty to it, and he says nothing in that moment, because at the entrance of the kitchen comes a scraping claw, and several taps in quick succession: the chicken stills in terror palpable enough he tastes it on his tongue, and he nods his head back to the wing he came from, for his husband to follow, for them to duck out of sight and observe.
Shifting the bird to a one armed grip, he pulls out one scent numbing talisman, placing it flat on the shelf he passes, activated as he goes. It amplifies the nonliving scents around, to mask the living: spice and gruel and blood, blood, blood.
The tapping continues, hooded figure manifesting from the shadows, eyes a passing glint in the banked embers of the kitchen fires. Hands seem strangely elongated when they're lifted, but his gaze catches on the lifted triangles when the individual lowers their hood, still veiled: he would think it hair styled just so if the mass of one didn't flick forward, the mass of the second turn and angle back.
The person, probably female, peering into the dark where the vat of blood and more sits, cants her head. Her ears listen, and he breathes quiet, knows his husband can create the silence they may need without extraneous sound.
A hiss, eventually, and the sudden violence of moment that has a clawed hand rake against the side of the containing wood, the chicken in his arm flinching, trying to tuck its head under a scraggly wing. The carnage is covered again, the woman (yes? no?) twisting and stalking off with preternatural grace, the implication of a tail twisting in high dudgeon as she moves back through, heading for the kitchen entrance.
His eyes seek Lan Zhan, brow quirked. The chicken continues to leave its head partially buried, shivering. )
Do we follow?
( Or continue investigating, because without guards, without observation, that still looked very much like a person on rounds. Checking in on something specific.
Does he hear then the sloshing of movement through liquid? Does he not? He cannot say. )
( This is no time to woo in matrimony, he does not say, because they are sophisticated men of earnest cultivation, scholars of dignity and the art, and, I accept your gift, all the same.
It is no hour for wooing, bird flapping and restless and a bundle of stained coarse plumage and a soup's upcoming joy, and the round tourmaline of its sharp, focused pupil — and Wei Ying, who cares even for this cursed creature wants it living and well, and so Lan Wangji finds himself performing the unspeakable: the silence spell, on a chicken, binding. It works, somehow, as their... visitor presents herself.
Hand to Bichen's hilt and drawing, the lines of his body ridden with tension, a step forward to inject himself between Wei Ying and... she? And she appears curious, nearly sanguine, feral in the way of every cold-blooded creature headed for carnage but aware of the larger, more dexterous predator. She seeks her bowl of innards, not them, and studies them with honeyed, trickling interest that only sharpens and spears when it turns on the chicken.
She flinches, prepared for the pounce — the air thickens, crisps — then chance tumbles down a set of steel cutlery, then pans, then she has what she had sought in hand, and the rippling vibrations of her, come and gone, nearly send the candles gone.
And he was too slow, Bichen bare but not yet biting. At the last moment, a single mercy, he remembers the animal entrapped in his husband's arms and releases the spell, so that it might soothe itself with the swelling sounds of its terror. Do they follow? )
We clear the floor. ( Investigate, just as a second pot of guts and gore appears to be... belching? And bubbling and breaking into tinny, ghastly sound. And he should not fear a pot, no, but he is slow to grasp it, catching it in a tentative grasp to settle it on a nearby table and wave Wei Ying to bring light close.
This disgusting pinnacle of culinary delight shows the same core ingredients: entrails, skin, claws, hearts, thin peels of flesh — and on the inner edges of the pot, writ in candle wax, symbols. He recognises them, more their slow study of the region's tongues, then for all else. )
...divination. They read their future in this. ( Did, once. No. He bends down to catch a proper taste of the verdant virility of the stench. ) Yet do.
( The chicken, freed from silence, squawks and huffs and ceases struggling, eyes glossy in the light of the candle brought near to Lan Zhan for his examinations. The bird resumes struggling when he attempts to lean close: he straightens, absently patting the crusted feathers of its head. )
Divinations in entrails, but for what? The mines? Their faith? The curses they believe they're under?
( And what causes this feral edge? Desperation, greed, guilt?
He awaits further commentary from his husband before he turns back toward the door, chicken settling as he moves away from the evidence of endings, pacing forward. It disturbs him little in a grander scheme: wasteful, and too rich in fear and fetid emotion, leaving his stomach unsettled.
In the corridor, a drop of blood. Another, further away, and it's usually carelessness for the feline woman who passed back through, on task to her own concerns and expectations.
The trail leads away from the cold, dripping wing of their sad room. Back toward where the front courtyards sit, such as they are: beneath them, rumbling felt rather than heard )
They're active in whatever their purpose may be. Or purposes.
( A glance back to his soulmate, his brows quirked, his bedraggled chicken extending its neck to likewise examine Lan Zhan. )
They've sought knowledge tonight. Do you think they found it?
( ...the chicken comes along, a grudging but vocal party to this investigation. At first, Lan Wangji tips his head — and lo, but the bird mirrors him — at his intervention, blinking away the sleepy start of stupor, the hour of curfew licking at his senses. Exhaustion does not ring and shackle his bones, but habit tames his movements, sweetens his reactions.
He stirs only to test the pot again, thumb sweeping the rim, tasting the latent, crackling energies. And a shudder walks his back in wide steps. )
...fecundity. Child-bearing. ( A... scandalous matter at best, obscene and perversely blood-thirsting, at worst. He does not ask why nuns are concerned with carnal affairs; remembers the concubines who were forced into shameful isolation, or who perhaps absconded behind sheltered walls to give birth to inopportune children. Still, seed would have to have quickened in tender wombs, by the time of their entry.
They walk the kitchen, blood droplets littered, pinching the ground. To the grounds, and here Lan Wangji presumes to take first steps forward, forever safe-guarded by his greater qi reserves. In hand, Bichen glares pale and monstrously wintered, winking back at the cascading light of a moon that gazes on, diffuse.
Blood on the pathways, on drips of gravel. Few smears, dark under light. He walks the steps to find the trails ending at root of tree, then resuming every few paces, lost and found, lost and again. And he returns to Wei Ying and their chicken son to report: )
Whatever knowledge, they took to the trees. Feline instincts.
( And shrieking beyond, the tinny start of feverish yowling. )
( He does, at least, extend the chicken towards his husband, he of the holding pouch of living creatures. The chicken clucks and extends legs, neck held forward, ready to flap and run should teeth extend and death come rushing in: or doesn't.
A nod, with the puzzled furrow of his brow. Fecundity is as natural as it isn't: he knows nothing of the practices of this religious retreat, pretends nothing. Only: )
Don't tell me we'll find the men roosting there.
( ... He laughs, but uncertainly. That's a missing piece he's uncertain about, and once the chicken is secured, he nods upward, taking to the trees on light feet, feeling as much as seeing the trail of blood to follow, the sounds I'm the middle distance leading them on.
Until he pauses, trees gone thick to thin, winding down towards a path leading elsewhere on the mountain, into... a meadow, limed with molten moonlight and flickering torches. He grimaces in the face of the sounds and movements visible in glimpses beyond their thinning trees, looking towards his husband, brow raised. )
One way to make good. I... think their partners show more skin than fur.
( Changed still, but differently. Yet it's... beyond that, he sees, beyond the careless copulations on blankets and grasses and leaves, the scent of blood and sex blessedly not reaching them in great strength
He gestures, beyond the meadow, to a looming darkness on the mountainside. )
( There is a moment, scattered like sand granules between them, when he watches Wei Ying's offer with the saintly patience of a man confronted with fleeting madness. The chicken's armed, poised, ready, already beholden to the desperate boldness of a creature prepared to defend its life, legs bunny-kicking and pedaling emptily against dangers unknown — but rattling, sending a pox of bumps across Lan Wangji's spine, licking his limbs.
He accepts his charge, each less enthused than the other, grudgingly packaging the chicken in his arms before committing to the great betrayal of fast-stepping back to Wei Ying and his own quarters, beyond the iron-barred gate. No great company for their evening, but better than exposing the creature to feline elements overnight.
After, he slinks back outside where the air has... changed, a scent of hunt and prowling crisping the horizon. He gives chase, rapidly behind Wei Ying, the hefty perch branch that accepts them creaking an unfriendly groan of welcome under their combined weight. Better not to shift and coil, unlike the pairings he spots far too clearly in the distance, peopling the meadow with a fever of passions and shrill gasps.
Beyond, Wei Ying indicates, and at first he struggles to pierce the dark, before — yes. Yes, perhaps. A tip of his head, eyes faintly narrowed — )
They would have come from there. ( As evidence: a bead chain of lit torches, bound around the entryway. ) This, then, is where the men were held.
( Only emerging once more with moonlight to... serve the nuns in heir desires. )
Come. Abed tonight. Better to inspect with light's advantage. ( Perhaps they are in luck and the... animals that the lust-stricken men have become are crepuscular or nocturnal. )
( Keeping only enough attention on the sounds of the meadow revelry to know if they stop or change in overall tenor, he pauses, considering. What they don't know weighs heavier than what they do, but sensible enough to wait for morning with the cave.
Bed, however, seems a journey on the horizon rather than arrived and settled. He nods, back tracking to grant them distance, speaking softly in murmurs as they go. )
After we see if we can get an idea of how many aren't affected. Is everyone remaining human in outward appearance truly at rest? Are only the ones we saw robed affected? We already know they're protecting each other, but to what extent? Is this a gradual change, or instant?
( A glance towards the ghost of his husband in this night's light. )
Not to mention, how many chickens are coming in with supplies. At some point, where are they getting them from?
( To him more indicating this hasn't been long established, is even newer than their overall condition, rumours which brought them here. )
Maybe age leaves some safer...
( Thinking of the young boy, of the younger members of this religious sect. )
Or... distance from the mines? Enlightened if they're not sending in the children.
( He slows as they reach the main collection of buildings once more, gilded in the moonlight, forbidding and quiet. Shadows arm to breathe here, steady and slow before disruption. He feels the weight of it, a leviathan beast with a tremendous heartbeat, before the insects of the night chirrup their songs, and the heaviness breaks.
His hand rests briefly on his breastbone. Was that imagined, or was that real? Without asking, he looks to Lan Zhan, studying him for confirmation: imagination, or detected strangeness? )
( His husband, a mind at work, thoughts restlessly churning, storming, howling. Age, as a safeguard against whatever summons conscript swathes of the region's men to exercise their passions ignobly within sight's reach. He hesitates, considering the night, its possibilities — then sketches a frail nod, accepting the line of thought. )
The young and elderly often less suitable for congress.
( For lovemaking and the children born of it, for all men lack the rigidity of restrictions that time imposes on their female counterparts. Still, they are less likely to... complete the act to the satisfaction of seed sown in tender wombs. If the purpose is breeding, then —
He turns, bolting and bristling like a cat, yet stepping backward the way of the trodden path, where shadows graze and growl and consume them in the corridor to their quarter. The silence here feels less suffocating, more weighted. Present, but not cloying. Dense.
He cuts through it: )
Why did it not affect you?
( Lan Wangji, perhaps, a timid speculation: he has never lusted after women, for all he has appraised the likes of Emilia and Wen Qing and found them aesthetically pleasing, fundamentally, understandably attractive. But never to a peak of desire, where Wei Ying has more often been drawn to feminine persuasions.
Deep in the monastery's clutches, he feels it, all at once as Wei Ying does, reaction immediate — grasping for Bichen's hilt, nearly unsheathing, the clawing energies around them thickening. He circles, paces like an animal poorly restrained, all the way to their barred gate that screams out its rust, when he pushes it open, then closed behind them, locked and safe.
Even here, he nods for Wei Ying toward the gate — ward it — and carries on striding, unable to contain the sense of animal, predatory danger until, like a hand's stroke, it suddenly and inexplicably wanes. )
( His slow look toward Lan Zhan bleeds incredulity married to amusement: to him, a non sequitur over particularities and jealousies having little to do with the present moment. )
Why did it not affect you?
( Chuckling to himself, shaking his head. Of all questions, really, isn't that silly? If it's based on overriding needs, possessions of sorts, they've yet to steep enough in the cause with defenses neglected. He doubts in the passing sense that desire, genuine desire, plays a part for any party left being in that feckless fornication forum amidst the flowers.
They retreat, strategic, locks less impervious than the wards he sets at Lan Zhan's nod and his own lingering amusement. Below the rumbling mechanisms of mountain mining, whatever exploitations in place a burr to the natural exhalations of such places.
The walls weep water. They bleed cool.
The weight drops off, and all he hears, he feels, is the thin trickling of water seeping through cracks in the carved and molded walls. )
You felt that.
( Confirmation: they both did. He slows outside their scant quarters, head tilting, considering. )
I wonder. ( Eyes traveling the ceiling, the walls, the floor. ) Just what they might have woken up, unknowing.
( Yet he heads inside, stretching as he goes, plaintive as he says: )
Couldn't be a mountain with convenient hot springs, could it?
( Ever the one to enjoy both the heat sinking into his bones, and the gasping refreshment of mountain fed cold spring waters. He pulls out think paper from their bags, shuffling through talismans until he finds what he seeks, casually and unconcernedly placing them on the walls, the ceiling with a hup and leap, the door. The floor, though in this the chicken finally finds limits, pecking at one in disgruntlement at being disturbed into waking at their entrance. )
( He felt that. Nervous energies exuding off him like the aftermath of earth, quaking. Ripples and ripples and waves of tension, of nervous magic, crackling. Qi clinging to the air like an angry cat clawing fresh drapes. He feels — unmoored, stirred without being permitted the satisfaction of sating his bloodlust. Awakened to no purpose.
He pulls back, forcing himself to stillness, to obedience, to listening and recovering and remembering himself. To calming, just as the chicken dares to breathe beside him and huffs, throwing Lan Wangji savage, affronted glances.
Around them, the violent twists and turns and coils of Wei Ying's wards force peace and quiescence. He finds himself at ease, more for the pleasure of his husband's company, reinforced through his qi, than any delusion of danger truly extirpated. A mountain with hot springs, Wei Ying says wistfully, and Lan Wangji all at once understands that he is not a man to fail his husband so completely that he forgets the pangs of chills Wei Ying endures, absent the hold of a core.
Taking the knee, he whispers awake a fire talisman with a generous injection of his strength, watching flame burst, then transporting it to visit each of the strange little cell's five braziers. A little kindling, some residual coal, even incense. The cell, he suspects, was not recently fitted for guests.
He sits on the bedside, as warmth starts to quiver and bloom and the chicken, fastidiously woken, deigns to retreat back in its corner where it's staked humble territorial gains. It... will be an interesting night's cohabitation, to be sure. )
If it roosts, you deserve it. ( This to Wei Ying, who has hereby earned every last one of the chicken's tortures for befriending it in the kitchens. ) Likely, the... women pertained to the monastery. Cursed nuns. To speak to them of their... nocturnal occupation may grieve them.
( Surely, one of the many vows they break at night is chastity, after all. )
( The glance of concern between Lan Zhan and the chicken is near immediate. )
Do they do that?
( He asks, but what is roosting anyway? Isn't that just sleeping? As many chickens as have come into their temporary ownership over the years, largely due to Lan Zhan's stubborn drunken single-mindedness, he can't remember any roosting, only feathers and cages and pecking after who knew what on the ground. This cave room, this cell, is bereft of any such mysterious ground targets, which is... worth noting, he comes to realise, last of his talisman wards placed. )
I'm not inclined to speak with them on anything other than pleasantries until we see that cave in daylight.
( He comes round, pulling from his rucksack inkstone, stick, and brush, blank slips tucked under an arm. When he settles near his husband, he's already in process of grinding the ink he needs, using water from a water pouch next to their things.
Work to be done, in his mind, when his husband is about to sleep. )
What did the one leader say, that they're up early? The unaffected at least. See what you hear first thing in the morning?
( Says the man wishing to approach mid morning rather than dawn, partly for his nature, partly because he wants to see if the danger feels any less present when they divide. Temporarily.
( His husband, this creature of prosperous mischief, of constant, unyielding terror — he coaxes his wits and his scant possessions beside him, teasing free the first lines of his thoughts to snag them on ideas, to give shape to revelation. It is art, sooner than scholarly pursuit, a man playing with inks. Bemused, half-smiling, impossibly fond, Lan Wangji allows it, retreating to a corner where the enclave leads into the confines of a narrow restroom to address his bare ablutions. Pale smears of blood clutching his hands, his ankles. Not his own. They will want proper baths with morning, come hell or river water. )
I shall, after a river bath at dawns.
( Duty hangs heavy and well attended between them, but even Lan Wangji must prioritise certain missions of the body. He does not defend the point, sees no purpose; only starts the work of removing the whims and regalia of Hanguang-Jun, the filigree, glistened gift of the guan his husband purchased him from this strange, new world. So much of him is no better than a spoiled concubine, now: before, the kept son of a foremost sect. Now, the spoiled soulmate of a man of better means. How fates twine and turn.
He returns, all but two of his silk layers dismissed and packaged, chicken haughtily paddling behind him, only the click of its claws and Lan Wangji's bare heels announcing their presence. In the dim, smokey haze of their quarters, he narrows his gaze to retrace the outline of Wei Ying's shape, the beautiful garden of his bones.
And stills, instead of the typical negotiation of intimacies that fastens so much of their nightly interaction, settling on — eyes, watching from behind their warded, barred doors. A spiderweb of them, eyes and eyes and eyes behind Wei Ying, fierce and feline and unblinking, pupils slim spears or suns blown. )
...Wei Ying. ( And the eye-web all at once nictates with membranes like galaxies bursting into deathliness, blinks away and dissipates, and in its wake lies only a clever mist of cloying, dark malice.
He staggers, mouth dry and face drawn, and in him a quiet certainty that what he has seen now was only for his eyes to withstand. A quiet collapse, back on the cold spread of their bed, beside Wei Ying — catching his hand without preamble, a shiver still subduing him. )
I do not think it best we part. I fear what dark design here wants you.
( Stilling, he quirks his brow, fingers curling around the calloused strength of Lan Zhan's hand. This isn't as often the type of fear he sees his husband face, and while all beings possess irrationalities by the nature of their perfect imperfections, Lan Zhan rarely strays to fancies not sourced simply from vinegar jars.
Concern to heed, for all he doesn't know the sudden, burgeoning reason behind it. )
They may want us both, Lan Zhan. Likely do, given your strength.
( Yet he sets aside his everything for the moment, his nest beginning, left undeveloped. Leaning into Lan Zhan, turning toward him, he settles his weight against his husband, seeks peace in the sure and steady knowledge of his heart beating. The steadfast nature of his affection.
Such things are never meant to be taken lightly. Neither, in this case, should concern. )
You're going to have to carry me to your morning river, you know.
( Here he smiles, turns his gaze upon Lan Zhan, peering through lashes. Teasing as an outlet of emotion and duress never quite leaves him in full.
He sees no nictating, membraneous blanket of watching eyes. He feels the unease of this mountain, but he is in ways almost off a flavour with it: absent of innocence to the greater world, used to erosion, used to being used as convenient, fighting for what unwanted hopes he claims.
He closes his eyes, knowing sleep arrives late for him, and attempts to sleep.
He does. Then he dreams, of meadows walked barefoot in a summer's heat, but no, there is snow, brief and biting and beautiful, shocks of cold impact, but no, those are stars that fall, willing and weeping, crashing with earth shattering thuds into a dark mountainside, fires spiraling into gravid chaos, winds confused and garrulous, smoke thick enough he cannot breath, he is the hawk the deer the fox the beetle, he cannot breathe —he wakes gasping, coughing, hands at his throat with the taste of ash thick on his tongue, the side of their thin pallet still warm from Lan Zhan's rising.
Dreams hold little importance to him: he calms his coughing, waves off concern, and shoves the fraying mass of memories away as he lurches upward, seeking water to splash across his face. It's not enough of a shock, but it helps wake him better, does nothing to change the taste in his mouth. )
Think they'll have anything like tea?
( He asks, blinking in bleak, bleary confusion as the roster clicks, and clucks, and puffs out its chest. The thinnest, most warbly, astounding crow emerges from its beak. And goes on. And on. And on.
He stares, flabbergasted, before he at last breaks into laughter, coughing as the ash drives itself away, vanquished in the absurd reality establishing sway. )
What kind of call was that? Ah, Lan Zhan, what will we do with that ridiculous thing?
( Late to the turmoil, the animal summons of Wei Ying's violent stirring, his quickening from dusk to dawns to demented agony; had strayed only for the petty start of his ablutions, retreating with the balmy wan licks of early day in their enclave to mend with trembled hand where travel tattered loose the mouth of his silks, the joining of Wei Ying's trousers at the mountainous jut of his hip. A seamstress, Lan Wangji will not rival, but the start of his narrow-eyed, quivering work will suffice.
Then, Wei Ying: an eruption of hiccuped, groveling sound, the unmistakable exhalations of panic — and Lan Wangji, numb and loose-limbed and fumbling to his feet, the chicken waddling behind him, until they are both mothering the bed's side, where the teeth of the steely frame eat at Lan Wangji's calves, and the chicken must lift futilely and plunge on a charitable corner.
He does not touch Wei Ying at first, does not wish him startled; only slinks instinctively to recover their rinsed dinner cups and replenish it with leftover, lukewarm tea, ill at ease with the thought of water torn from the belly of a mines' mountain. At least this will have been boiled, cleansed through steam. He offers out the drink, mouth all sickly sweet patience, treacle: )
...Wei Ying.
( Beautiful Wei Ying, great chasm of nightmares, and how Lan Wangji has failed him. They have an agreement between them: Lan Wangji cannot sleep alone for fear of what waking without his husband might deliver; Wei Ying cannot bear a bed unshared for what his nights will gift. He takes the knee, fingers dwelling slow circles of heat on his lover's thigh in mere phantom-reassurance that he is here, he waits.
The chicken is no where do discreet: what comes out of it, pathetic and timid and chalky, may well be an adolescent's public flaunt that he has, in fact, the finest appendage with which all maidens may be satisfied. Lan Wangji is first in awe, then aghast, then overcome with terror. And softly, as Wei Ying thaws into amusement: )
Your findling. Your son to marry off. ( A limp, thin, unambitious cock, spurting haphazardly in spittle of gravelly sound. Looking rather smug with himself, too, as he fluffs up in a full moon and nests on the bed's side. )
Tell me your stories, while I carry you to bathe. ( A sweeter solution than the simple asking after his husband's dreams. This, at least, gives him the pretense of dignity, allows Wei Ying to package and bind his fears and hauntings amid his gibberish at dawns, while Lan Wangji turns, knelt, to offer his back for climbing. )
( Proffered tea cupped in hands, he settles uneasily back on the bed, murmuring thank you and nothing else for the moment it takes him to sip, then drain, lukewarm tea in one long swallow. His mouth almost feels his own again, and already the memories retreat, as most dreams do on waking. It takes him long moments to recognise the lingering unease as larger than himself, external. His husband's ministrations, the unexpected comfort of willing, kind contact, does more to center him than breathing, than clarity.
Certainly more than the chicken, who continues looking fatly proud with feathers fluffed, nestled in it's own hollow. )
Aren't the makes usually eaten?
( He asks, voice distracted, empty cup resting on his knee.
Looming pressure. Difficulty breathing. He's not ill, yet the thrumming certainty around him tells him something is.
Lan Zhan's offer, the kneeling and presentation of his back, jostle thoughts into a differing sort of chaos. The cup nestles in thin blankets before he leans forward, melts into the expanse of his husband's narrow shoulders. Neither of them are particularly broad men, and he finds little beyond mild amusement in that truth.
He allows, without reservation, the coddling this implies. No embarrassment anymore, no bracing himself internally for the cut to follow, no expectation of pain. Acceptance has been slow and fraught as far as self battles go, meaningful for the freedoms they buy from his own thought cage. He can be indulged. He can be spoiled. He allows it rarely, loving the possibility of it deeply, for the faith and trust it spins out of his aching, raw chest. )
Thank you.
( For this, for many things besides. His lips brush a familiar temple, and he settles in, holding with his thighs to Lan Zhan's narrow hips, quiet, subdued. Dreams now fully fled, instead he examines the pockets of silence as his soulmate moves. )
( A tenuous shift of balances, a hard climb. He carries Wei Ying on his back, arms braced to bracket his husband's thighs, as he might armour to battle once his wounds have bled deep, his legs worn. There is a drag to it, a measured, trickling resistance — not the weight of Wei Ying, which qi can compensate, but the prickling pains of bearing a body so precious, so close.
He is careful to tease open the screeching, rusted barred doors of their cell. Careful, to leave within a bowl of water for the chicken and last night's crumbs, and to release their dinner plates outside of the cell. Careful, to walk Wei Ying across the swollen, tired interstices of the barely waking monastery, which seems, for all its spartan discipline, unfond of an early waking.
Nothing disturbs them. No one. Silence, and the world is still. )
The hour of dawns rang twice. ( Mao-shi, jade rabbit coaxed to stirring and brewing the medicines of mother Moon. He knows this time as he knows his blood and his bones, and he wakes to it in perfect obedience — startled to it again, on this day, to pursue his duties. )
Their bells called, half a shichen apart. The same women walked the corridor with candles to set light to cell braziers.
( Their own, also, crackling and blossoming outside, sending wafts of fresh incense and timid warmth. Remembers when the same woman who had already traversed the corridor returned to scathe their brazier with fresh fire, licking her fingertips to spell the death of the existing flame. Then, she revived it, as if it were plain and foretold and of reason to repeat herself thusly.
He whispers, crossing close to the kitchens, where the first sounds of human commotion signal pots and pans stirring and the start of the fast-breaking meals — )
The women tightly bound, dressed for modesty. ( And softer: ) Their incense hides musk.
( He can tell, as any gentleman raised in the art of incense, with an appetite for sandalwood — and one who has experienced, also, far too much exposure to the departed Jin Guangshan, who alongside his companions at times joined feasts without undertaking ablutions, fresh from his sheets, doused in perfumes.
He can tell the scent of coupling, even as he ferries Wei Ying to the crisp outdoors in search of their river waters. )
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( Where white mountains scream with unending vastness, and the great, groaning gaze of the abyss blinks away through the cataract of dawns, clouding. It might be the slate sky of dead dry twilight or a winter’s morning; might be the height of it, inexcusable, inexorable, and their legs burned alive with the quiet, simmering pulse of ache-ache-ache, building.
Travel has been costly where the slope turned mean and glacial up the peak, steep enough to stand erect like a proud man’s throat for the noosing. He obliged Wei Ying to accept their horse, after some time — less for the chivalry of sparing his husband, more so the opportunity to wade through the cartilage of forests run thick and slimy with perpetual frost on Bichen’s back, scouting. In the end, they arrive, the monastery a cold sprawling disaster, upheld by the dignity of its repute and the beautiful haunting of trilling birds. Beneath, the mines that once burst with the maw-churning sounds of hard, bitter work traded for nuggets of — ...dark, dreary things.
Not water, he is told. He asks, thoroughly. Embers for warmth and pigments and stone. Iron, also — but Lan Wangji suspects, more.
They are welcomed cleanly, discreetly, with the transactional facility of merchants or petty predators symbiotic with a household: doors open, doors close. The first nun to see them by the gates takes their introduction papers, a cheaply recommendation from the leader of a settlement exorcised during travel. She does not remove her skins of fawn veils, does not wash them in hospitality.
Only opens her doors through the work of code and levers, and the beastly jaws of the gates come undone, and they must rush in — yes, even their horse, and it is a tongue-tied youth who takes the reins in his trembling hands.
And they are bidden in.
No quarters, at first, not until the spiritual leader of establishment seizes them: sister Sorrow, a name chosen in blunt-bladed sacrifice for her mourning grief. She does name why, does not seem perplexed by the brazen theatrics of her appellative. She accepts it, as she tolerates them, wordlessly and seamlessly and entirely — at ease.
In the end, they receive rooms, at the very tunnel’s end of a deserted western wing, long abandoned after the season’s first floodings seeped in through elderly vents. This part of the monastery, he learns, was erected just above the mines’ hollows. There are yet
Some of the lubricious condensation has turned to spears of ice. Dried now, she says, and the brazier flames will keep strong, and the shaky bed and floors will weather, and the ruinous bathing halls will not collapse for a handful of nights. No longer. But then, she tells them, passing on the evening’s meal of rice gruel and thick spice stew and a seaweed soup, they cannot be seated among the women. Aged concubines, exiled princesses, scholars secluded among tombs, wise women who no longer bear the world — and young, lively girls, sent by the affluent for a handsome schooling, away from modern temptations.
This is no home, says Sister Sorrow, for the base and the disbelieving. They wake to prayer and flagellation, long fasts and ablutions, six hours of lessons for the young long before the midday bell. The religion, Lan Wangji attempts but fails to decipher: local, possessed of an ambitious pantheon, embracing the beauty of pain through deprivation. As in hunger, bone reveals its beauty, so too does virtue shine through lacking. Each day, the sisters seek less.
And at night, at least half their number yowl.
They have been cat-like for three weeks hole. It was the men first, he remembers, and now they’ve cleansed of their evil. And he sees them: women shrouded in robes like ghosts haunting, veils heavy and drawn to a tight bind, steps licking stone as they cluster together. Their eyes cross over him, gaze cruel and limber but snagging, their hostility tactile. They do not speak to them; only Sister Sorrow, who passes them by and sketches with her clasping hands the half-bow of greeting that they answer with deeper, more persistent interest. They do not greet.
They have meowled, says Sister Sorrow, and taken a vow of silence to make amends.
With so little time allowed to them, Lan Wangji had anticipated the opportunity to interrogate at least a number of the sisters — formally, during a collective dinner. Privately, in dark corners. No such fortune. They are isolated in the abandoned dining halls of their wing, the only rattling the rare footsteps of the adolescent who intrudes to deliver their meal, his gaze downcast — and the relentless, seismic grinds of the mines.
Some of the mine’s gears, the boy murmurs, are still turning.
Then they are alone, truly lone, only diffuse candlelight and the ever-blinding swell of Wei Ying’s laughter to tide them. Lan Wangji gratefully attacks his rice gruel, spurning the spice stew. And then, in the worst of his husband’s corruptions, he speaks during dinner-time. )
Your charms have waned. ( Certainly, failed this once to win them favour. )
no subject
Charms only work on those willing to face charm.
( He shakes out the blankets, prodding at the stuffing of the mattress: old, yes, but despite the distance and the decay, not moulded. He tosses the blankets back over the bed, flashing Lan Zhan a smile as he turns back to the table, seating himself to eat when his own curious nature has him moving first.
He needed a sense of the room in their silence. Now he has it. )
I'm more curious where the supposed recovered men are. We've seen the silent meows, but their objection to us staying was a lack of feminity on our part. Where do these recovered men dwell?
( Nowhere, he thinks, in the monastery. Beneath them vibrates the mountain, the clawing grasp of greed which tends to follow mining after it's initial, easy access.
He wonders: will we find them men there? Only a few younger boys here, and is that chance, or design?
He spoons the offering of, if not gratitude, then basic necessity of hosting without killing first from neglect. )
My other question to start. Shall we let this first night lapse and see what visits? These women guard secrets, we both sense that, and the silent cats aren't resolved so much as enduring. What in the world do you think they did to "purify" the men?
no subject
( Charms work upon all those assailed, lacking in defences. But this is not the hour to grieve the lost innocence of his spring days before the dauntless barrage of Wei Ying's fleeting glances and tender laughter. He has — against odds and expectations — survived the series of unfortunate events known as his sophomoric seduction.
...and Wei Ying is so little changed, since, barely bones bound by fledgling strips of flesh and eyes bright-burning embers and alive, like a hunting bird. Feed more, he does not speak, because there is a tempest in Wei Ying that stokes at every careless reminder that his form is studied and lacking — that Lan Wangji, who should trust him above all yet retains suspicions over his body and its welfare.
No. Better, instead, to collect the service bowl between both hands and unceremoniously tip it to drip in the red bile of the spice stew, topping Wei Ying's portion and expelling it from contaminating the rest of their meal. Falling back, Lan Wangji's eyes water from the mere exposure. )
We will be unwelcome, searching their corridors in formal inquiry past nightfall. ( Not with how stringently the nuns mandate both disciplined devotion and separation of the genders. And where, asks Wei Ying, are the men? None seen, but for the boy-child who attends them, seemingly relegated to menial and helpfully isolated tasks. )
If we break curfew. ( When, but he will save Wei Ying that face. ) We must not rouse attention in common grounds.
( They must slink in the shadows and hope that the nuns' schedule of devotions does not include night-time prayer. A pause, then, somehow yet pretending he did not study the areas least patroned by the nuns upon arrival: )
The gardens, the kitchens, the stables or the mines.
no subject
( Such interplay, as spice flows, Lan Zhan near to weeping at the strength. Some small part of him wants to reach out, brush at the corner of an eye, the unshed tear, and taste it — no meaningfull part, but he acknowledges the fleeting impulse even as he eats, spice a heat that sings across his tongue, sizzles down his throat, and settles as furnace in his stomach.
They are to move quietly and swiftly. He swallows, nodding his understanding before a smile, brief and amused, crosses his spice touched lips. )
I've robes to help with that.
( Standing with the bowl, he goes to where his extraneous qiankun pouch sits, balancing down in hand, sliding fingers in, wigging gently, until they find what they seek.
The deep blue robes he summons out near his the floor before he sweeps to capture then across his free forearm, still balancing the bowl.
With victory, he grins at Lan Zhan, rising smoothly with the click of shifting bone ignored. There's no notable pain. Simply age, remembering him.
He presents his robes with a flourish, sparkling light caught in his eyes to drive away the dank and cold and dreary. )
My vote is the kitchens first. As long as we're careful.
no subject
( Robes, Wei Ying says, and some part of Lan Wangji questions how a change of wear could possibly improve on his already dark silks — but then, they are midnight and terrible pretty and dainty in ways in which the fierce Yiling Patriarch so seldom permits himself. An air of elegance, of permissiveness, of casual, if earned indulgence.
He will be beautiful in fresh skins of luxury, Lan Wangji supposes. He is beautiful bare, beautiful broken, beautiful tattered, beautiful in blooded glory. Perhaps his partisanship now runs too deep to pretend distinction.
And so, he does not — only calls Wei Ying close to him with the wave of a hand, his part of the rice safely eliminated — a dinner frugal, but sufficient for a man who has embraced discipline as both penitence and private reassurance.
Habit commands him to fill Wei Ying's cup and extend it, even when it contains only a strange fermented liquid of plum peels, strongly and pungently alcoholic. For guests, the young man had indicated, with an air of long lust. )
The kitchens. ( He agrees it as if they negotiate their matters, and he has been presented with an offer he is loathe to refuse. ) And if it is xianli?
( How can two mere men persist against the charms of divine cat spirits turned to handsome mortal flesh forms to drain humans of their vitality? )
no subject
( He quirks his brow as the exchange of robes for cup; alcohol not the friend he made it once, but still ... enjoyed. Nuanced or not.
He drains the cup with one long swallow, column of his throat alabaster, stone. A match to their surroundings, and then it crumbles as he smiles - moving again, setting both bowl and empty cup down on the table. )
Then one of us sits pretty as distraction, and the other one slaps a talisman on each of them.
( To his satchel, and from within the rummaging before he finds a cluster of neat talismans, holding them aloft between two fingers with a small sound of victory.
Then he actually looks at them, brings his hand back down, and pulls out another stack, immediately, shoving the first back down. )
These ones! Yes, binding or stilling or those which weigh people down to the ground. We'll adapt!
( Quickly, he finishes off his bowl, keeping it in hand after along with the chopsticks. One easy ruse, carrying it along, though...
He parts his robes over his chest just enough to find a particular talisman, activation near seamless, and the scent of the spice... gone. He glances over to his husband, smile ready. )
Shall we?
( Into the halls of stone and damp and cold, creeping forward, silent beyond the grave in their living attendance. )
no subject
( One sits pretty, while the other —
And of course Wei Ying is armed, readied, impossibly attuned with the needs of the moment — only when said moment entails a diabolical renunciation of decorum and forethought. He says nothing at first, mouth lightly agape and broken by stupefaction. Then, gently peeling away from his seat, he settles in the domesticity of taming their bowls and remaining dining ware in a passing pile, before exiling it to the table's periphery.
Silks, Wei Ying says, and Lan Wangji — dressed in layered moonlight — does not endeavour to pretend he will divest his clothes. Dignity, modesty and efficiency dictate he does not dally to steal glances from the snagged corner of a wandering eye, where Wei Ying sheds old skins for new. There is a titillating pleasure in the anticipation, the knowing which of Wei Ying's edges are likely to reveal themselves, where his skin has grown supple, where it stays taut. Is it a sin, to foster desire, to simmer and boil it, in such devout confines? He knows himself, the flavour of his want. Lets it roll on the tongue, build and bloom.
Then, when he assumes Wei Ying presentable, he ferries the tray of bowls and leads their path to exit their wing through a gate of rails and iron, no better than a jail door that creaks, groans and hisses as he pushes it open. From afar, in the blunt, shrouding dark of the corridor, he thinks he spies — gold, the reflective glint of sharp eyes and a questing gaze. It strikes him, belatedly and only once Wei Ying has passed, to close their jail-gate shut and seal it with wards of quiet make.
They must trust in their hosts, yes — but their hosts, in turn, do not trust them. )
Why invite us, if they extend no trust? ( Glinting, as he passes, on the walls of the corridor: wet, blooded inscriptions telling evil to beware the forces of righteousness that watch. )
no subject
( Fingers flick forward, altering a line with no outward seeming thought: meaning changed, to the flickering darkness of eyes shuttered like storm lanterns at sea.
Measured, sure, he passes a number of his tricks, oh, whatever anyone wishes to call then, into his husband's hand, into the fluttering maw of voluminous sleeves. Here, he doesn't say with his tongue and lips and throat. Secure these as well. )
With the storms as they've been, it might be courtesy. Or opportunity. Or wariness of what is said by travelers turned away.
( Down the barely lit connecting hall, puddles of shadow stretching between flames held in glass, stuttering and gasping in the chill breeze flowing higher overhead. He picks their way, slinking and predatorial, noting what isn't there: visible guards. Visible forms to match the earlier eyes.
Lingering scents of bread and gruel and spice, however, those grow subtly stronger as they progress. Step by step, to the generous maw of the kitchens, banked for the evening, silent but for the memory of chaos.
At least walking in there are no bodies hung or waiting for their consumption: low hurdle as it is, no denial to it's importance. )
I'll look on the left side, you take right?
( To groupings of dried herbs and vegetables, to woven flat baskets for drying, to the lurking casks with the lingering scent of alcohol: yes, that left for Lan Zhan.
He himself slips from cupboard to cupboard, to cabinet, to the tall, thin door behind which he finds shelves and darkness, both overabundant. He clocks his tongue against the back of his teeth, feeling for the energy of the world around them. Poised, it feels, but not imminently threatening.
He slips into that darkness too, and his eyes roam while his ears attune to the little noises, such as the shifting of wings that tells him in all bizarre avenues that some flighted animal is tucked back where he cannot see. )
no subject
( The right, to Wei Ying's left — an acceptable division, between shelves upon shelves in luxuriant display, and Lan Wangji tasked with tall inventory. First, the nuts, then the herbs, then the dried dusts and caked syrups, oils finely aged to a point of thickening at the heart of things. And vinegars, ruthlessly astringent, calling to him when he opens his flasks and the bite of them stings.
The wines, after: sweet, cloying. Perhaps tainted with herbs and honeys so thoroughly overwhelming that even Lan Wangji steps back, dissuaded from his inspection. He turns, nearly ready to tell Wei Ying that the pantry is luxuriantly supplied — nearly opulently so, for the tastes of ascetics — only to still in his step, nose catching a whiff of foul wrongness.
Earthy, thick, a heady, gutting scent. Blood, with inevitability, but — hand sweeping through the shelves, he peels back the tattered rags of a modesty cloth to reveal a large bowl, wide and low and spanning a stretch he would deign fitting for a laundry basket, filled to the rim with a disgusting soup of marinating guts and the remains of chickens, feathers yet tarred in blood. A fresh spilling.
His freed hand jumps to his mouth, to cover it and his nose from the instinct to gag. )
Claw marks. ( He hisses out, before stumbling a spate of steps back and permitting Wei Ying to either assume control of their probe, or walk him back. Yes, claw marks, deep running, utterly feline —
And just as he moves, behind him, something dark and small darts by across the shelves. )
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( He is turned and turning, the change in Lan Zhan's breathing a warning before even his words reach Wei Wuxian's ears. Stepping with the flourish of quiet robes and practiced feet, only to lift his hands before his face to catch what leaps at him, thin and bedraggled and silent.
He's never considered if a chicken can look scruffy, likely would have lived his life without the thought of his arms weren't now full of a squirming, flapping bird. Still no sound, only the beating of wings, and his bitten off exclamation as his arms wrap around the feathers and bones and the scent of blood strikes his nose like a hit to his head.
He rocks back, steadiest now compared to a moment before, looking to his husband with his raised hand, the fowl breathing hard and settling with the temporary exhaustion of a hunted creature against his chest. The smaller heart beats fast and running, and the scent of blood doesn't rise from it — wafts instead from where it leapt, where Lan Zhan stands.
The bird struggles again when he steps closer. He stills, eyes parting the darkness with a touch of qi. Claw marks, deep and feral, sized wrongly for the cats he's seen keeping house at every estate or farmer's home across the lands he's traveled. Entrails and feathers, but there's no purpose to keeping everything like this, collected and useless instead of converted into the multitudes of plenty it could represent.
There's a cruelty to it, and he says nothing in that moment, because at the entrance of the kitchen comes a scraping claw, and several taps in quick succession: the chicken stills in terror palpable enough he tastes it on his tongue, and he nods his head back to the wing he came from, for his husband to follow, for them to duck out of sight and observe.
Shifting the bird to a one armed grip, he pulls out one scent numbing talisman, placing it flat on the shelf he passes, activated as he goes. It amplifies the nonliving scents around, to mask the living: spice and gruel and blood, blood, blood.
The tapping continues, hooded figure manifesting from the shadows, eyes a passing glint in the banked embers of the kitchen fires. Hands seem strangely elongated when they're lifted, but his gaze catches on the lifted triangles when the individual lowers their hood, still veiled: he would think it hair styled just so if the mass of one didn't flick forward, the mass of the second turn and angle back.
The person, probably female, peering into the dark where the vat of blood and more sits, cants her head. Her ears listen, and he breathes quiet, knows his husband can create the silence they may need without extraneous sound.
A hiss, eventually, and the sudden violence of moment that has a clawed hand rake against the side of the containing wood, the chicken in his arm flinching, trying to tuck its head under a scraggly wing. The carnage is covered again, the woman (yes? no?) twisting and stalking off with preternatural grace, the implication of a tail twisting in high dudgeon as she moves back through, heading for the kitchen entrance.
His eyes seek Lan Zhan, brow quirked. The chicken continues to leave its head partially buried, shivering. )
Do we follow?
( Or continue investigating, because without guards, without observation, that still looked very much like a person on rounds. Checking in on something specific.
Does he hear then the sloshing of movement through liquid? Does he not? He cannot say. )
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( This is no time to woo in matrimony, he does not say, because they are sophisticated men of earnest cultivation, scholars of dignity and the art, and, I accept your gift, all the same.
It is no hour for wooing, bird flapping and restless and a bundle of stained coarse plumage and a soup's upcoming joy, and the round tourmaline of its sharp, focused pupil — and Wei Ying, who cares even for this cursed creature wants it living and well, and so Lan Wangji finds himself performing the unspeakable: the silence spell, on a chicken, binding. It works, somehow, as their... visitor presents herself.
Hand to Bichen's hilt and drawing, the lines of his body ridden with tension, a step forward to inject himself between Wei Ying and... she? And she appears curious, nearly sanguine, feral in the way of every cold-blooded creature headed for carnage but aware of the larger, more dexterous predator. She seeks her bowl of innards, not them, and studies them with honeyed, trickling interest that only sharpens and spears when it turns on the chicken.
She flinches, prepared for the pounce — the air thickens, crisps — then chance tumbles down a set of steel cutlery, then pans, then she has what she had sought in hand, and the rippling vibrations of her, come and gone, nearly send the candles gone.
And he was too slow, Bichen bare but not yet biting. At the last moment, a single mercy, he remembers the animal entrapped in his husband's arms and releases the spell, so that it might soothe itself with the swelling sounds of its terror. Do they follow? )
We clear the floor. ( Investigate, just as a second pot of guts and gore appears to be... belching? And bubbling and breaking into tinny, ghastly sound. And he should not fear a pot, no, but he is slow to grasp it, catching it in a tentative grasp to settle it on a nearby table and wave Wei Ying to bring light close.
This disgusting pinnacle of culinary delight shows the same core ingredients: entrails, skin, claws, hearts, thin peels of flesh — and on the inner edges of the pot, writ in candle wax, symbols. He recognises them, more their slow study of the region's tongues, then for all else. )
...divination. They read their future in this. ( Did, once. No. He bends down to catch a proper taste of the verdant virility of the stench. ) Yet do.
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( The chicken, freed from silence, squawks and huffs and ceases struggling, eyes glossy in the light of the candle brought near to Lan Zhan for his examinations. The bird resumes struggling when he attempts to lean close: he straightens, absently patting the crusted feathers of its head. )
Divinations in entrails, but for what? The mines? Their faith? The curses they believe they're under?
( And what causes this feral edge? Desperation, greed, guilt?
He awaits further commentary from his husband before he turns back toward the door, chicken settling as he moves away from the evidence of endings, pacing forward. It disturbs him little in a grander scheme: wasteful, and too rich in fear and fetid emotion, leaving his stomach unsettled.
In the corridor, a drop of blood. Another, further away, and it's usually carelessness for the feline woman who passed back through, on task to her own concerns and expectations.
The trail leads away from the cold, dripping wing of their sad room. Back toward where the front courtyards sit, such as they are: beneath them, rumbling felt rather than heard )
They're active in whatever their purpose may be. Or purposes.
( A glance back to his soulmate, his brows quirked, his bedraggled chicken extending its neck to likewise examine Lan Zhan. )
They've sought knowledge tonight. Do you think they found it?
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( ...the chicken comes along, a grudging but vocal party to this investigation. At first, Lan Wangji tips his head — and lo, but the bird mirrors him — at his intervention, blinking away the sleepy start of stupor, the hour of curfew licking at his senses. Exhaustion does not ring and shackle his bones, but habit tames his movements, sweetens his reactions.
He stirs only to test the pot again, thumb sweeping the rim, tasting the latent, crackling energies. And a shudder walks his back in wide steps. )
...fecundity. Child-bearing. ( A... scandalous matter at best, obscene and perversely blood-thirsting, at worst. He does not ask why nuns are concerned with carnal affairs; remembers the concubines who were forced into shameful isolation, or who perhaps absconded behind sheltered walls to give birth to inopportune children. Still, seed would have to have quickened in tender wombs, by the time of their entry.
They walk the kitchen, blood droplets littered, pinching the ground. To the grounds, and here Lan Wangji presumes to take first steps forward, forever safe-guarded by his greater qi reserves. In hand, Bichen glares pale and monstrously wintered, winking back at the cascading light of a moon that gazes on, diffuse.
Blood on the pathways, on drips of gravel. Few smears, dark under light. He walks the steps to find the trails ending at root of tree, then resuming every few paces, lost and found, lost and again. And he returns to Wei Ying and their chicken son to report: )
Whatever knowledge, they took to the trees. Feline instincts.
( And shrieking beyond, the tinny start of feverish yowling. )
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( He does, at least, extend the chicken towards his husband, he of the holding pouch of living creatures. The chicken clucks and extends legs, neck held forward, ready to flap and run should teeth extend and death come rushing in: or doesn't.
A nod, with the puzzled furrow of his brow. Fecundity is as natural as it isn't: he knows nothing of the practices of this religious retreat, pretends nothing. Only: )
Don't tell me we'll find the men roosting there.
( ... He laughs, but uncertainly. That's a missing piece he's uncertain about, and once the chicken is secured, he nods upward, taking to the trees on light feet, feeling as much as seeing the trail of blood to follow, the sounds I'm the middle distance leading them on.
Until he pauses, trees gone thick to thin, winding down towards a path leading elsewhere on the mountain, into... a meadow, limed with molten moonlight and flickering torches. He grimaces in the face of the sounds and movements visible in glimpses beyond their thinning trees, looking towards his husband, brow raised. )
One way to make good. I... think their partners show more skin than fur.
( Changed still, but differently. Yet it's... beyond that, he sees, beyond the careless copulations on blankets and grasses and leaves, the scent of blood and sex blessedly not reaching them in great strength
He gestures, beyond the meadow, to a looming darkness on the mountainside. )
Is that an entrance to the mines?
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( There is a moment, scattered like sand granules between them, when he watches Wei Ying's offer with the saintly patience of a man confronted with fleeting madness. The chicken's armed, poised, ready, already beholden to the desperate boldness of a creature prepared to defend its life, legs bunny-kicking and pedaling emptily against dangers unknown — but rattling, sending a pox of bumps across Lan Wangji's spine, licking his limbs.
He accepts his charge, each less enthused than the other, grudgingly packaging the chicken in his arms before committing to the great betrayal of fast-stepping back to Wei Ying and his own quarters, beyond the iron-barred gate. No great company for their evening, but better than exposing the creature to feline elements overnight.
After, he slinks back outside where the air has... changed, a scent of hunt and prowling crisping the horizon. He gives chase, rapidly behind Wei Ying, the hefty perch branch that accepts them creaking an unfriendly groan of welcome under their combined weight. Better not to shift and coil, unlike the pairings he spots far too clearly in the distance, peopling the meadow with a fever of passions and shrill gasps.
Beyond, Wei Ying indicates, and at first he struggles to pierce the dark, before — yes. Yes, perhaps. A tip of his head, eyes faintly narrowed — )
They would have come from there. ( As evidence: a bead chain of lit torches, bound around the entryway. ) This, then, is where the men were held.
( Only emerging once more with moonlight to... serve the nuns in heir desires. )
Come. Abed tonight. Better to inspect with light's advantage. ( Perhaps they are in luck and the... animals that the lust-stricken men have become are crepuscular or nocturnal. )
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( Keeping only enough attention on the sounds of the meadow revelry to know if they stop or change in overall tenor, he pauses, considering. What they don't know weighs heavier than what they do, but sensible enough to wait for morning with the cave.
Bed, however, seems a journey on the horizon rather than arrived and settled. He nods, back tracking to grant them distance, speaking softly in murmurs as they go. )
After we see if we can get an idea of how many aren't affected. Is everyone remaining human in outward appearance truly at rest? Are only the ones we saw robed affected? We already know they're protecting each other, but to what extent? Is this a gradual change, or instant?
( A glance towards the ghost of his husband in this night's light. )
Not to mention, how many chickens are coming in with supplies. At some point, where are they getting them from?
( To him more indicating this hasn't been long established, is even newer than their overall condition, rumours which brought them here. )
Maybe age leaves some safer...
( Thinking of the young boy, of the younger members of this religious sect. )
Or... distance from the mines? Enlightened if they're not sending in the children.
( He slows as they reach the main collection of buildings once more, gilded in the moonlight, forbidding and quiet. Shadows arm to breathe here, steady and slow before disruption. He feels the weight of it, a leviathan beast with a tremendous heartbeat, before the insects of the night chirrup their songs, and the heaviness breaks.
His hand rests briefly on his breastbone. Was that imagined, or was that real? Without asking, he looks to Lan Zhan, studying him for confirmation: imagination, or detected strangeness? )
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( His husband, a mind at work, thoughts restlessly churning, storming, howling. Age, as a safeguard against whatever summons conscript swathes of the region's men to exercise their passions ignobly within sight's reach. He hesitates, considering the night, its possibilities — then sketches a frail nod, accepting the line of thought. )
The young and elderly often less suitable for congress.
( For lovemaking and the children born of it, for all men lack the rigidity of restrictions that time imposes on their female counterparts. Still, they are less likely to... complete the act to the satisfaction of seed sown in tender wombs. If the purpose is breeding, then —
He turns, bolting and bristling like a cat, yet stepping backward the way of the trodden path, where shadows graze and growl and consume them in the corridor to their quarter. The silence here feels less suffocating, more weighted. Present, but not cloying. Dense.
He cuts through it: )
Why did it not affect you?
( Lan Wangji, perhaps, a timid speculation: he has never lusted after women, for all he has appraised the likes of Emilia and Wen Qing and found them aesthetically pleasing, fundamentally, understandably attractive. But never to a peak of desire, where Wei Ying has more often been drawn to feminine persuasions.
Deep in the monastery's clutches, he feels it, all at once as Wei Ying does, reaction immediate — grasping for Bichen's hilt, nearly unsheathing, the clawing energies around them thickening. He circles, paces like an animal poorly restrained, all the way to their barred gate that screams out its rust, when he pushes it open, then closed behind them, locked and safe.
Even here, he nods for Wei Ying toward the gate — ward it — and carries on striding, unable to contain the sense of animal, predatory danger until, like a hand's stroke, it suddenly and inexplicably wanes. )
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( His slow look toward Lan Zhan bleeds incredulity married to amusement: to him, a non sequitur over particularities and jealousies having little to do with the present moment. )
Why did it not affect you?
( Chuckling to himself, shaking his head. Of all questions, really, isn't that silly? If it's based on overriding needs, possessions of sorts, they've yet to steep enough in the cause with defenses neglected. He doubts in the passing sense that desire, genuine desire, plays a part for any party left being in that feckless fornication forum amidst the flowers.
They retreat, strategic, locks less impervious than the wards he sets at Lan Zhan's nod and his own lingering amusement. Below the rumbling mechanisms of mountain mining, whatever exploitations in place a burr to the natural exhalations of such places.
The walls weep water. They bleed cool.
The weight drops off, and all he hears, he feels, is the thin trickling of water seeping through cracks in the carved and molded walls. )
You felt that.
( Confirmation: they both did. He slows outside their scant quarters, head tilting, considering. )
I wonder. ( Eyes traveling the ceiling, the walls, the floor. ) Just what they might have woken up, unknowing.
( Yet he heads inside, stretching as he goes, plaintive as he says: )
Couldn't be a mountain with convenient hot springs, could it?
( Ever the one to enjoy both the heat sinking into his bones, and the gasping refreshment of mountain fed cold spring waters. He pulls out think paper from their bags, shuffling through talismans until he finds what he seeks, casually and unconcernedly placing them on the walls, the ceiling with a hup and leap, the door. The floor, though in this the chicken finally finds limits, pecking at one in disgruntlement at being disturbed into waking at their entrance. )
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( He felt that. Nervous energies exuding off him like the aftermath of earth, quaking. Ripples and ripples and waves of tension, of nervous magic, crackling. Qi clinging to the air like an angry cat clawing fresh drapes. He feels — unmoored, stirred without being permitted the satisfaction of sating his bloodlust. Awakened to no purpose.
He pulls back, forcing himself to stillness, to obedience, to listening and recovering and remembering himself. To calming, just as the chicken dares to breathe beside him and huffs, throwing Lan Wangji savage, affronted glances.
Around them, the violent twists and turns and coils of Wei Ying's wards force peace and quiescence. He finds himself at ease, more for the pleasure of his husband's company, reinforced through his qi, than any delusion of danger truly extirpated. A mountain with hot springs, Wei Ying says wistfully, and Lan Wangji all at once understands that he is not a man to fail his husband so completely that he forgets the pangs of chills Wei Ying endures, absent the hold of a core.
Taking the knee, he whispers awake a fire talisman with a generous injection of his strength, watching flame burst, then transporting it to visit each of the strange little cell's five braziers. A little kindling, some residual coal, even incense. The cell, he suspects, was not recently fitted for guests.
He sits on the bedside, as warmth starts to quiver and bloom and the chicken, fastidiously woken, deigns to retreat back in its corner where it's staked humble territorial gains. It... will be an interesting night's cohabitation, to be sure. )
If it roosts, you deserve it. ( This to Wei Ying, who has hereby earned every last one of the chicken's tortures for befriending it in the kitchens. ) Likely, the... women pertained to the monastery. Cursed nuns. To speak to them of their... nocturnal occupation may grieve them.
( Surely, one of the many vows they break at night is chastity, after all. )
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( The glance of concern between Lan Zhan and the chicken is near immediate. )
Do they do that?
( He asks, but what is roosting anyway? Isn't that just sleeping? As many chickens as have come into their temporary ownership over the years, largely due to Lan Zhan's stubborn drunken single-mindedness, he can't remember any roosting, only feathers and cages and pecking after who knew what on the ground. This cave room, this cell, is bereft of any such mysterious ground targets, which is... worth noting, he comes to realise, last of his talisman wards placed. )
I'm not inclined to speak with them on anything other than pleasantries until we see that cave in daylight.
( He comes round, pulling from his rucksack inkstone, stick, and brush, blank slips tucked under an arm. When he settles near his husband, he's already in process of grinding the ink he needs, using water from a water pouch next to their things.
Work to be done, in his mind, when his husband is about to sleep. )
What did the one leader say, that they're up early? The unaffected at least. See what you hear first thing in the morning?
( Says the man wishing to approach mid morning rather than dawn, partly for his nature, partly because he wants to see if the danger feels any less present when they divide. Temporarily.
Far beneath, the mountain moans. )
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( His husband, this creature of prosperous mischief, of constant, unyielding terror — he coaxes his wits and his scant possessions beside him, teasing free the first lines of his thoughts to snag them on ideas, to give shape to revelation. It is art, sooner than scholarly pursuit, a man playing with inks. Bemused, half-smiling, impossibly fond, Lan Wangji allows it, retreating to a corner where the enclave leads into the confines of a narrow restroom to address his bare ablutions. Pale smears of blood clutching his hands, his ankles. Not his own. They will want proper baths with morning, come hell or river water. )
I shall, after a river bath at dawns.
( Duty hangs heavy and well attended between them, but even Lan Wangji must prioritise certain missions of the body. He does not defend the point, sees no purpose; only starts the work of removing the whims and regalia of Hanguang-Jun, the filigree, glistened gift of the guan his husband purchased him from this strange, new world. So much of him is no better than a spoiled concubine, now: before, the kept son of a foremost sect. Now, the spoiled soulmate of a man of better means. How fates twine and turn.
He returns, all but two of his silk layers dismissed and packaged, chicken haughtily paddling behind him, only the click of its claws and Lan Wangji's bare heels announcing their presence. In the dim, smokey haze of their quarters, he narrows his gaze to retrace the outline of Wei Ying's shape, the beautiful garden of his bones.
And stills, instead of the typical negotiation of intimacies that fastens so much of their nightly interaction, settling on — eyes, watching from behind their warded, barred doors. A spiderweb of them, eyes and eyes and eyes behind Wei Ying, fierce and feline and unblinking, pupils slim spears or suns blown. )
...Wei Ying. ( And the eye-web all at once nictates with membranes like galaxies bursting into deathliness, blinks away and dissipates, and in its wake lies only a clever mist of cloying, dark malice.
He staggers, mouth dry and face drawn, and in him a quiet certainty that what he has seen now was only for his eyes to withstand. A quiet collapse, back on the cold spread of their bed, beside Wei Ying — catching his hand without preamble, a shiver still subduing him. )
I do not think it best we part. I fear what dark design here wants you.
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( Stilling, he quirks his brow, fingers curling around the calloused strength of Lan Zhan's hand. This isn't as often the type of fear he sees his husband face, and while all beings possess irrationalities by the nature of their perfect imperfections, Lan Zhan rarely strays to fancies not sourced simply from vinegar jars.
Concern to heed, for all he doesn't know the sudden, burgeoning reason behind it. )
They may want us both, Lan Zhan. Likely do, given your strength.
( Yet he sets aside his everything for the moment, his nest beginning, left undeveloped. Leaning into Lan Zhan, turning toward him, he settles his weight against his husband, seeks peace in the sure and steady knowledge of his heart beating. The steadfast nature of his affection.
Such things are never meant to be taken lightly. Neither, in this case, should concern. )
You're going to have to carry me to your morning river, you know.
( Here he smiles, turns his gaze upon Lan Zhan, peering through lashes. Teasing as an outlet of emotion and duress never quite leaves him in full.
He sees no nictating, membraneous blanket of watching eyes. He feels the unease of this mountain, but he is in ways almost off a flavour with it: absent of innocence to the greater world, used to erosion, used to being used as convenient, fighting for what unwanted hopes he claims.
He closes his eyes, knowing sleep arrives late for him, and attempts to sleep.
He does. Then he dreams, of meadows walked barefoot in a summer's heat, but no, there is snow, brief and biting and beautiful, shocks of cold impact, but no, those are stars that fall, willing and weeping, crashing with earth shattering thuds into a dark mountainside, fires spiraling into gravid chaos, winds confused and garrulous, smoke thick enough he cannot breath, he is the hawk the deer the fox the beetle, he cannot breathe —he wakes gasping, coughing, hands at his throat with the taste of ash thick on his tongue, the side of their thin pallet still warm from Lan Zhan's rising.
Dreams hold little importance to him: he calms his coughing, waves off concern, and shoves the fraying mass of memories away as he lurches upward, seeking water to splash across his face. It's not enough of a shock, but it helps wake him better, does nothing to change the taste in his mouth. )
Think they'll have anything like tea?
( He asks, blinking in bleak, bleary confusion as the roster clicks, and clucks, and puffs out its chest. The thinnest, most warbly, astounding crow emerges from its beak. And goes on. And on. And on.
He stares, flabbergasted, before he at last breaks into laughter, coughing as the ash drives itself away, vanquished in the absurd reality establishing sway. )
What kind of call was that? Ah, Lan Zhan, what will we do with that ridiculous thing?
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( Late to the turmoil, the animal summons of Wei Ying's violent stirring, his quickening from dusk to dawns to demented agony; had strayed only for the petty start of his ablutions, retreating with the balmy wan licks of early day in their enclave to mend with trembled hand where travel tattered loose the mouth of his silks, the joining of Wei Ying's trousers at the mountainous jut of his hip. A seamstress, Lan Wangji will not rival, but the start of his narrow-eyed, quivering work will suffice.
Then, Wei Ying: an eruption of hiccuped, groveling sound, the unmistakable exhalations of panic — and Lan Wangji, numb and loose-limbed and fumbling to his feet, the chicken waddling behind him, until they are both mothering the bed's side, where the teeth of the steely frame eat at Lan Wangji's calves, and the chicken must lift futilely and plunge on a charitable corner.
He does not touch Wei Ying at first, does not wish him startled; only slinks instinctively to recover their rinsed dinner cups and replenish it with leftover, lukewarm tea, ill at ease with the thought of water torn from the belly of a mines' mountain. At least this will have been boiled, cleansed through steam. He offers out the drink, mouth all sickly sweet patience, treacle: )
...Wei Ying.
( Beautiful Wei Ying, great chasm of nightmares, and how Lan Wangji has failed him. They have an agreement between them: Lan Wangji cannot sleep alone for fear of what waking without his husband might deliver; Wei Ying cannot bear a bed unshared for what his nights will gift. He takes the knee, fingers dwelling slow circles of heat on his lover's thigh in mere phantom-reassurance that he is here, he waits.
The chicken is no where do discreet: what comes out of it, pathetic and timid and chalky, may well be an adolescent's public flaunt that he has, in fact, the finest appendage with which all maidens may be satisfied. Lan Wangji is first in awe, then aghast, then overcome with terror. And softly, as Wei Ying thaws into amusement: )
Your findling. Your son to marry off. ( A limp, thin, unambitious cock, spurting haphazardly in spittle of gravelly sound. Looking rather smug with himself, too, as he fluffs up in a full moon and nests on the bed's side. )
Tell me your stories, while I carry you to bathe. ( A sweeter solution than the simple asking after his husband's dreams. This, at least, gives him the pretense of dignity, allows Wei Ying to package and bind his fears and hauntings amid his gibberish at dawns, while Lan Wangji turns, knelt, to offer his back for climbing. )
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( Proffered tea cupped in hands, he settles uneasily back on the bed, murmuring thank you and nothing else for the moment it takes him to sip, then drain, lukewarm tea in one long swallow. His mouth almost feels his own again, and already the memories retreat, as most dreams do on waking. It takes him long moments to recognise the lingering unease as larger than himself, external. His husband's ministrations, the unexpected comfort of willing, kind contact, does more to center him than breathing, than clarity.
Certainly more than the chicken, who continues looking fatly proud with feathers fluffed, nestled in it's own hollow. )
Aren't the makes usually eaten?
( He asks, voice distracted, empty cup resting on his knee.
Looming pressure. Difficulty breathing. He's not ill, yet the thrumming certainty around him tells him something is.
Lan Zhan's offer, the kneeling and presentation of his back, jostle thoughts into a differing sort of chaos. The cup nestles in thin blankets before he leans forward, melts into the expanse of his husband's narrow shoulders. Neither of them are particularly broad men, and he finds little beyond mild amusement in that truth.
He allows, without reservation, the coddling this implies. No embarrassment anymore, no bracing himself internally for the cut to follow, no expectation of pain. Acceptance has been slow and fraught as far as self battles go, meaningful for the freedoms they buy from his own thought cage. He can be indulged. He can be spoiled. He allows it rarely, loving the possibility of it deeply, for the faith and trust it spins out of his aching, raw chest. )
Thank you.
( For this, for many things besides. His lips brush a familiar temple, and he settles in, holding with his thighs to Lan Zhan's narrow hips, quiet, subdued. Dreams now fully fled, instead he examines the pockets of silence as his soulmate moves. )
Was anything strange to you on waking?
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( A tenuous shift of balances, a hard climb. He carries Wei Ying on his back, arms braced to bracket his husband's thighs, as he might armour to battle once his wounds have bled deep, his legs worn. There is a drag to it, a measured, trickling resistance — not the weight of Wei Ying, which qi can compensate, but the prickling pains of bearing a body so precious, so close.
He is careful to tease open the screeching, rusted barred doors of their cell. Careful, to leave within a bowl of water for the chicken and last night's crumbs, and to release their dinner plates outside of the cell. Careful, to walk Wei Ying across the swollen, tired interstices of the barely waking monastery, which seems, for all its spartan discipline, unfond of an early waking.
Nothing disturbs them. No one. Silence, and the world is still. )
The hour of dawns rang twice. ( Mao-shi, jade rabbit coaxed to stirring and brewing the medicines of mother Moon. He knows this time as he knows his blood and his bones, and he wakes to it in perfect obedience — startled to it again, on this day, to pursue his duties. )
Their bells called, half a shichen apart. The same women walked the corridor with candles to set light to cell braziers.
( Their own, also, crackling and blossoming outside, sending wafts of fresh incense and timid warmth. Remembers when the same woman who had already traversed the corridor returned to scathe their brazier with fresh fire, licking her fingertips to spell the death of the existing flame. Then, she revived it, as if it were plain and foretold and of reason to repeat herself thusly.
He whispers, crossing close to the kitchens, where the first sounds of human commotion signal pots and pans stirring and the start of the fast-breaking meals — )
The women tightly bound, dressed for modesty. ( And softer: ) Their incense hides musk.
( He can tell, as any gentleman raised in the art of incense, with an appetite for sandalwood — and one who has experienced, also, far too much exposure to the departed Jin Guangshan, who alongside his companions at times joined feasts without undertaking ablutions, fresh from his sheets, doused in perfumes.
He can tell the scent of coupling, even as he ferries Wei Ying to the crisp outdoors in search of their river waters. )
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