( 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. )
( Companionable nods and the wave of fingers marks his greeting those they pass, his mind puzzling over the changes, the way things seem normal in a genuine manner, not the secretive of the night. Even the nuns so bound in fabric their faces couldn't be easily discerned moved without furtive awkwardness, leery in the normal way of insular persons to outsiders.
The scents of human hubris and sex bother him less: the brothel that first held them safe remains deeply impressionable in the quagmire of his memory. )
It's possible that's what their incense always did.
( Hid musk, hid whatever else was not meant for discussing, only polite pretense. )
No one's commented on you carrying me. That's even more interesting.
( He says, sing song with his words as the trees part, crisp scent of water on the air. Almost burningly clean, carrying a chill that draws near the morning fog, ephemeral and soupy around them.
He tenses, listening. Closing his eyes and breathing. Nothing but they move in the fog, the river burbling, the leaves stirring in an errant breeze. Yet no birds sing. No insects buzz, and they're upon the water in those heartbeats before the sounds of living begin again, at a distance. Away from the reach of the benevolent haze. )
What do you feel?
( He asks, low and familiar. It's not the fog, singing dangers and welcome. The small shiver he allows himself to feel travels to settle in his pelvis, heavy. Thrumming. )
Have any of the nuns come this way that you've seen?
( No chatter chases them, no tattered whispers, no shrapnel of sharpened glances.
He steels himself for the reprobation of their scrutiny, the quiet condemnation of too men so intimately interlocked that they presume to indulge in their domestic affections where the downcast eyes of nuns might chance upon them. No such misfortune. In truth, and Wei Ying speaks it blunt-edged as they step into the forest, to air so astringent, it may well bleed them
No, not so. Only cleansed, stripped of cloying incenses, of their mind-muddying bite. Perhaps that is the truth of things, as he settles down in perfect, permeating silence that stretches out like a young cat after the wakening, to fit in its brittle bones. The forest overfills with quiet. )
They have not. ( He cannot decree it with certainty, not when their cell faces north-wise, but the corridors all open to the same hall, great like a bloated belly, before the gates spill. He thinks, had anyone but they attempted to depart — and he dips down, one knee and the next, to allow Wei Ying to unseat himself by the river's bed, where wafts of chill tickle their ankles and Lan Wangji's knuckles, frost-torn — he would have known, would have heard. )
Wei Ying. I do not believe our answers lie with them. ( They are less than people, more phantasms crawling from one edge of the monastery to the next. Tangentially, peripherally livened. ) After our ablutions, we seek the mines. Lest you sensed differently?
( And a pause, before tersely: ) Bathe thoroughly ahead.
( Easy and cooperative, his feet slip out of his husband's grasp to rediscover the ground, reassuringly organic beneath him. He misses already the shared warmth, stands tall and stretches to hear the cracking of bones in his back, a hip, a knee. It sounds so much worse than he feels in the aftermath, and he chuckles, more to himself than to Lan Zhan, amazed at the reality of age, amazed still he has the pleasure of witnessing it beyond the encompassing, consuming dark.
He still doesn't know if one can perish in such an abyss. Suspended, one might well live forever, losing their mind.
Yet he blinks, looks to the waters, then to his husband, eyebrows lifting higher and higher, wrinkling his brow further. Ablutions this hour of the day aren't as much his purview, and he supposes there's a certain pleasure in instant cleanliness. Balanced against that is the sheer cold. )
Right now?
( Is the whine that trickles out of his mouth, the cold waters, the brisk sharpness of the air and clarity of the forest after the cloying incense of the monastery and the shuttered thickness of its presence.
Fat and swollen, this river, this creek, this burbling water that jumps and flows and rasps past, and he shudders. )
Do I need to?
( The whining continues, his hands coming to rest at the lapels of his outermost robe. )
( Wet of cold water is a spidering ache, spreading paralysis. He knows the surprise of it, the tremors of trepidation a body experiences upon the encounter, as if traversing first shock, then denial, sorrow, then resignation. Lies do not wet his tongue: he will not speak any now to pretend he has not lived these hurts himself prior.
And he will lead, even in this by example, starting the pained process of stripping away his outer layers, one by one, skins peeled and carefully folded and packaged and weighed down by Bichen's scabbard. A fine deterrent from any watching thieves, until he is but flesh and bone and the single layer modesty still commands of him — daring his toes to taste the turbulent, spumed waves that spill from the river's bed, before he dips in.
It stabs, that first bite of the cold, when he walks and walks and walks and stills, and the waters prickle his ankles, claw up his knees, dance on his hips. Pain pressures and blooms, and in its wake only the relief of survival. He shivers, still. )
We must. We came bearing the scents of travel and men. ( Musk, sweat, grime. The tacit emissions that accompany a male body surrendered to performing sword forms each day. ) The nuns will not entrust us. And we must speak to their prioress.
( A pause, then his hand goes out silently, calling, coaxing. ) Come alone, or be plunged.
( He could, of course, listen to what Lan Zhan asks: or he could, as he intends, hear what Lan Zhan means, and in the course of understanding, allow what he can. Relief. Here there is lingering darkness, crude and cruel underpinnings, a rot to be cleansed bot by themselves so much as the collective around them.
It isn't their masculinity, their scent, their virility that offends or concerns, truly. There's no trust even were they female, waltzing in smelling of spring rains and peonies, in his estimate. What gnaws and yearns here is endemic, is isolated and concentrated, and anything other is not meant to be taken to heart unless fully, wholly consumed.
So he pouts. Gives Lan Zhan the big eyes, out-thrust lower lip, the expression that has nothing of serious displeasure in it, knowing full well this isn't meant for those kinds of moments. Levity, yes. A breath in the cleaned air before they tumble back into the cloying, clotting wound that is the monastery and its missing persons. )
You wouldn't!
( Absolutely, positively, he knows Lan Zhan will. )
Wei Ying. ( And he speaks it in the fatherly way of a man overcome studiously, explicitly and at thorough length by all the petty inconveniences of the world, many ancestral and some freshly devised to torture him.
He is all discipline, a vision of peace and summoned patience. Until, calmly, like a great and basking jellyfish for the grace of his spreading silks — he comes closer to the river's shore. Chin jutting, water crystalizing in cutting droplets that weigh down his lashes, cascade across his cheek.
At first, only silence, mesmerized. He is a beautiful thing, his husband at dawns, made sweet by his theatre. Lively, strong. Desirable.
And, in the fit of that appreciation, Lan Wangji snags his fingertips on the nearest crags, to drag wet red on his sleeve's spread in familiar characters that burst out a — binding talisman, serpentine and plunging to attach itself to Wei Ying's wrist, sparing Lan Wangji the need to exit the waters.
His right eyebrow perks up, first incredulous, then daring. )
When I do it, all your silks will soak cold. ( Better to surrender and remove them now, but for the one required for bathing. ) Count of ten.
( He is, faultlessly, mesmerised. He knows and has always known that Lan Zhan is an objectively, and subjectively, beautiful man. Handsome, delightful, delicious, whatever words one wanted to use, paired with significant ones such as collected (hah), elegant, reserved. Aloof, perhaps, to anything which he doesn't believe concerns him. There used to be more such things in the worlds. These days, in Wei Wuxian's estimate, there are less.
Water traces features he's come to know by eyes and hands and mouth and tongue and slide of skin against skin as much as the nestling, lazy contentment of an evening passed too hot against a body as prone to producing excess heat as his own.
Perhaps that's part of the distracting contrast, seeing Lan Zhan damp, seeing the cold waters consume the warmth of a man whose heart beats larger than many in their particular, peculiar, and cruel sort of righteous world. Or perhaps it's any memory, of words spoken, or silences applied as balms, which leads him into that moment of hazy bewitchment, the urge to tease a quiet voice in the back of his skull.
Until the binding, bonding qi at his wrist, and he smiles then, tugging back on it to see Lan Zhan's arm move a touch. )
Then you'll have to warm me, won't that be a waste of time?
( Yet he's not protesting the impending plunge, or the countdown that proceeds unimpeded: he speaks throughout, his fingers fast, his hands practiced, and unlike the modesty of his husband he does not leave his innermost robe on, the darkest blues and whites sloughed off in haphazard piles under the threatened time-limit.
There's nothing impressive with his standing there nude before the man he's married repeatedly, even unaware of said man's intent. Hard to be anything but reactionary to physical reality with no barrier to the chill air, the spray of colder waters. Gooseflesh ripples down his arms, fine hairs across his body standing on end, nipples contracting like breathing lungs, along with less lauded parts, and he knows it's all preparatory for what happens the moment his husband makes good on his promise.
Hence he's smiling, brows quirked, when Lan Zhan reaches the end of his count.
Because he definitely plans on tackling him after. This day, he suspects, is going to be a long one. They may as well have this moment to themselves, without restriction. )
( He is beautifully pristine, this wayward husband, skin lessened of its scarring in a second life that abided the Patriarch scarred only by his misfortunes. Pretty, were the needle-eye's width of his waist more girlish, the soft roundness of his gaze doe-eyed. Handsome does not yet suit, bones unrefined by age that never lived them. He exists somewhere on the liminal cusp between tender juvenile youth and maturity, a constant reminder that Lan Wangji's interest was snagged by a boy raised to a man only by duty. )
Three... two... ( A heartbeat, echoing and dark. ) One.
( Grit of his teeth clumsy and tight, as if he suffers with Wei Ying's suffering — but he tugs all the same, qi sweetening his strength to drag his husband in just as the river's waves swell, low-humming, and crash and burn to crisps with cold and smears of spume that give Wei Ying's welcome.
He does not hesitate: covers ground, wades in waters, traverses to accept Wei Ying in both arms, to silently bring up cupped streams and descend them on the brittle, narrow bridge of his lover's shoulders, the crown of his head. In between, a minor indulgence: to unfold the span of his headband and bind it, half to his own wrist, half to Wei Ying's and have them impossibly, familiarly wedded, as every river demands of them. )
Good morning.
( Then calmly, saccharine and honest and true, and his sword arm never wavering —
He sets both hands on Wei Ying's shoulders and dunks him down to submerge him in the river's depths. If it were an abyssal cliff, you would have long ago fallen. Ah, but they are not so bittersweet yet, so intimate with their tragedies. )
( The bracing rush of air and water that leads to his yelping, more in the suddenness of the temperature shock than anything remotely like pain, marks his entrance into the waters. Lan Zhan is there, hands warm and cold and water pouring over his shoulders, then clasped, then down, and he catches scant breath before he's under the surface of the stream, the river, whatever body of water moves past, carrying intent and history and self away in unequal measure.
Down, beneath the water, he slides his legs between Lan Zhan's, all but sitting on the smooth-rocked bottom, digging in his heels and hooking his hands behind wet-robed knees. Pulling. Strong, qi-fed, and aware he's inviting the fall into kneeling...
... over himself, even as his head breaks the surface of the water and he laughs, black hair plastered over his face, rendering him incapable of clearly seeing anything, even if there were legions beyond the whites and pale pinks of his husband's robes.
Birds resume chattering in trees, insects buzzing, though they still avoid the expanse over and around the flowing water: something in their play, raucous yet sincere. Further easing of the pressing burden of the mountain and its denizens settles into something closer to peace while two grown men all but attempt to drown each other in their morning ablutions.
In the distance, a hawk cries. Soars around, then aims away, shadow dancing across them both as they find cold skins and warm hearts in the shallow depths of the spring-fed river. )
Peace, peace!
( Wei Wuxian says eventually, laughing, flapping and clinging to Lan Zhan in turns. )
( Peace, yet he clings to Lan Wangji as if a noose, drawing, dragging, tight and steeled, and Lan Wangji falls with it and with him, gravity despairing of him. There is no grace to silken agglomeration of layers huddling, thick and weighted down, in the sharp jut of Lan Wangji's knee sculpting off the veneer of the river's bottom, in the old wound of his leg simmering in stubborn pulses.
He catches himself on his arms, then flings them around Wei Ying, and sounds dies a heady, rounded death as the waters trouble under the armored panoply of etiolated weeds. Their mouths meet — first, he lies to himself, because the transfer of breath will assist this writhing fool, his husband. Cold, cunning, more beady-eyed eel than man now, slippery. Transformed, sooner than reduced.
Then, when they break water, and Wei Ying pleads his peace — he thinks, perhaps, to persuade his husband into deeper affections in this one nook of seclusion where the conceit of privacy doesn't gasp, stillborn.
This is no time, no place for love-making. Wet of Wei Ying's hair drags on his cheeks and winds like moulding filigree, catches on his shoulders like ink smearing. And behind him, where Lan Wangji stares transfixed, a great bloom of sparrows erupts in the forest skies with gutted shrieks, as the tail end of dozens of birds plunges back down of own volition, as if scythed down. )
...violence. ( He is quick in this, at least: the loosening of his headband from Wei Ying's arm, the silent, subtle nudge to depart their waters. A brisk bath today, it seems. )
( Violence, he thinks, done to his heart in the wake of a cold embrace and lips against his, air and water and qi and everything else that flows between them, impeded and otherwise. To flush and chill at the same time is an interesting, albeit not unexpected experience. Were Lan Zhan not unknotting his headband from Wei Wuxian's arm, moving already towards whatever sent the sparrows fluttering in a burst of activity then called him to the same. Would have preferred to find how much heat between them it takes to counteract the cold of the mountain spring, the river, the water, the edification of a moment's pleasure in a lifetime of precious seconds spent as one wished, no simply as one was expected.
Instead he hefts himself upward, slipping on rocks before he catches himself, sloshing through water to the shoreline and his tumbled robes, drier for the moments before his hands catch up his innermost. He's racing already after his husband, barefoot and dripping, yet dripping less than the beautiful expanse of Lan Zhan's legs, chest, thighs, back — on what merit was Wei Wuxian meant to concentrate, with his husband dressed only in wet robes of white ahead of him?
The merit of further dressing, perhaps, but he's past now, light and quick on his feet, breathing in, listening, catching himself on a tree trunk with a hand settling on a branch: there. Dark for the dwelling of shadows, a behemoth of form lurching forward, snuffling.
At first he wonders if it isn't some massive boar. The hunching, the snuffling, the sounds and weight of it seems like it might, but as the morning's light catches the creature in spears that cut between tree limbs to touch the forest floor, such notions are banished.
He's never seen a large cat move like this, but he finds that belief also mistaken: what he first thought was fur turns out to be a pelt, worn by an individual crawling along without using their knees. Hence the back arched too high, the weight to every movement. A dirty face, bedraggled hair, hands and feet with nails grown long and then ragged from use and breakage, the person, who he suspects might be male, continues to slink along. Snuffling.
Pausing, as they catch a scent, slowly craning their head towards a nearby bush. Then with sudden, incredible speed, the hunched crawler pushes forward and away, crashing through the bush with a strangled sort of howling yowl.
Wei Wuxian looks to Lan Zhan, a frown pressing his lips into a thin line. Here they witness a hunt, while witnessing also a human's debasement into something other than themselves. Not that humanity fails to sink low on its own initiative. This simply seems... excessive.
He nods towards where the figure disappeared, to the sounds of shivering flora, heavy hands as paws on the forest floor. )
Modesty. ( He hisses it out, but Wei Ying is blitzing across the forest glade in brazen, thorough nudity, sparing no care for Lan Wangji's petulant griefs or the colour of his concern. Thorns, needles, rocks and prickling branches. There is a wealth of torturous possibilities lining the woodland floors, prone to teething on Wei Ying's fresh-skinned soles, the choked width of his ankles. Not to speak of his bird bones.
No time to waste, not with the monastery's world in decadent fragility. Lan Wangji only hesitates to collect the bundle of their combined silks, like brittle, shed snake skins — and calls Bichen from where she sleeps, flying to hand. Then, the hard run, quickening hunger in him, the yearning to hunt.
They arrive, Lan Wangji less delicate in his descent, the excess of his speed carrying a weight of momentum, on a crown of branches. Huddle, and witness... true debasement, a man deprived of wit and the will to raise himself from the primitive state in which curse and misfortune have arrived him. Defiled, dirtied, starved. And possessing, somehow, of enough qi or derived magic to have called a ward of semen and spittle and urine on the ground, netting birds that cannot lift themselves further. Disgusting, if efficient.
Their... intruder kills his prey with a stick, little sharpened, or crushes their throats with his hands, and binds them with hemp rope to slink back in the depth. He is fast, at least, with his work. Timid, almost, if not terrorised: as if fearing he will be caught, scolded and banished, but not injured. He scuttles away.
And Lan Wangji, faced with his own bare barbarian, politely extends the mountain of their layers, unfolded on his arms, for Wei Ying to have his pick, once they drop down. Only then: )
Assuredly. ( Then, measured, attempting and perhaps failing not to seem every piece of him a privileged gentleman assessing the less fortunate as if he were an animal: ) Unless... he is lesser in the ranks, turned to domesticity. If they are all — ( And there must be more. ) — in such state, they are as if... cattle. Kept.
( For... nightly congress? Strange, if not the first distortion he has witnessed of men to passion. Why should women be any better? ) We must take fire within.
( One layer is modest enough! Thin, yes, not terribly protective, yes, as the welts visible on his lower legs indicate, but he's at least not fully bared. More or less. Perched in a tree makes that a matter of discussion even if he were in all layers. He does not, generally, wear pants.
A situation his husband has been woefully slow to find advantage in, if he were asked, but he isn't, and so he's accepting handed robes and shrugging into them. It's not gracious, the way he moves, but it is clever, gaining no vestiges of tree himself in the process, what with it's proximity, well within arm's reach. )
Assuming there are ranks. It's as possible the whole monastery always used some form of body-linked magic, such as what that was, and it'd explain something about the readings in chicken entrails.
( Intimate, basic, and mixing of similar compliments to what this cursed man used just now. )
True fire, or illuminating fire alone?
( Waistband coming last, he finally has himself in rights enough to go trekking into unpleasantly musky caves. He pauses, listening to the wind, the river, the resuscitation of the natural world around them, but for a persisting blank spot where the body-magics had been cast. When he leaps down, it's with a feline grace and qinggong to keep his landing lighter than feathers brushed against a lover's bared skin.
Damp hair gathered back over his shoulder and pulled carelessly off his face, he looks to Lan Zhan, gesturing ahead, then moving, stalking through shadows with greater finesse than that which had come snuffling out of them. )
He lacked permission to hunt. Whose?
( Barefoot still, refusing his boots for the moment for the lack of socks that can stay dry, he simply walks. Robes catching with his movements, stuck to skin then free again; hair a heavy drape, but less so than if they'd tended to it fully and properly. He is young in that moment, the daring fool who threw himself with abandon into the waters of Gusu and came out, smiling, fish in hands.
Shadows cross his face, and he is again his age, thinner and yet not so thinned, marked by tiredness and yet still vivacious, vividly alive. Appealing, attractive, engrossing, and why are his eyes so inexorably drawn to his husband? Likewise wet, likewise cavorting around with the evidence of their interrupted brief exchange? )
( This matter burdens him with consideration, mouth first slack then tersely pursed, before pronouncement, haphazard: )
True fire. ( Warmth, a secondary weapon, often overlooked. Shadow recedes before light, but heat cauterizes, gifting ablution. They cannot neglect their cautions, and the talismans of Wei Ying's design are remarkably adept at preserving qi: minimal consumption for boisterous flame.
He concedes Wei Ying's fleeting penchant for juvenile play, sequestering his husband's boots in one hand, twinned together with their upper bindings. A moment, coming down after, to attend to his own person, wrapping six further silken layers across his body with gritting teeth that gratefully mark the arrival of fresh comfort when he places a warming talisman beneath his collar. Another, held slack-wristed toward Wei Ying —
Only to find his husband enraptured, always on the cusp between graceful and gaunt, between elegant and ethereal. Alert, in ways nearly feline. Truly, the grounds have been marked with folly. )
The monastery secludes them. ( A filthy secret, sheltered away from the day's light. He nods once towards the cave. ) Break fire.
( An unkindness, perhaps, to call on the one with scanter qi resources to spare to produce their talismans, but Wei Ying is the better hand of it, and Lan Wangji has long tired of paying obeisance to his vulnerability when the man himself begrudges it. Let him wear himself down, let him begrudge Lan Wangji's supply.
Steps closer, the mouth of the cave is diminutive, cramped. Barely held together by wishes and stones and a frailty of infrastructural wood, pillars crumbling. The mines must have been ancient when Wei Ying and Lan Wangji were mere dreams in their grandfather's resting hours. Now, they scream their years. Worse still, to enter, they must bow their heads, walking bent, if not crawl — surrendering the natural advantage of having all limbs at the ready. He hesitates: )
We risk ambush. Proceed through here, or infiltrate through the monastery? ( There must be a hole there, surely. ) The cat-women must have their corridor.
( There's a lazy assuredness to how he moves forward, the talisman between his fingers, the branch he has surreptitiously procured in their drift through the forest, cast down from its lofty perch in one of the old, tall trees lingering the mountainside over. A torch of a kind, without embers, burning slow for the delays written in, flickering as any true fire does.
Wood already likes to burn. Slowly, the branch sparks, then simmers. Light throws short in the brilliance of the sunlit shadows, but the cavern ahead looms voracious, little visible even to their enhanced eyes within the shadow-thick interior. )
Up. See there?
( A turn of his wrist and his fingers flick towards the thin lip of a ledge, high up to the side. A perch barely visible without squinting, a different degree of dense darkness to those surrounding shadows, swallowing light that dared touch.
He doesn't wait after the indication, gathering qi in the simple, efficient ways of a man long used to pulling the most from the least. His balances, and he likes to believe them more fruitful these days than when he first awoke with his core transferred, are keen. Sharp as his bladework with Suibian had once been.
Two steps, leaping up the side of the entrance, and he finds the ledge: moves in far enough as he lands and sinks into a light crouch, heat and light of the torch gentle above and before him. Beneath is darkness, as expected, and musk that rises, among other scents he can name and thus feels no inclination to. None of them yet are out of place. Only the something metallic without being blood does.
He waits for his husband's attendance, presuming on Lan Zhan's arrival much as he presumes on stars to brighten in the night skies the further into the mountains they rise. )
Feathers. Bones. Small ones. There's a trail down there, leading to the right. If their noses are at all strong, do we want to anticipate confusing them?
( There are means for being quiet they can do, already do, but there are others to mark the scents of healthy cultivators, of perfumes and incense preferred and used. Less concerning with their present state of affairs, but wet bodies carry scent better than dry, and neither of them are yet parched as the deserts they've recently traversed. )
( Either way, they must enter as rats do: on their knees or with the stench. If their noses are at all strong, they will catch whiff of wet and spumes and weeds, of mould and the tragedy of crisp, teeth-gritting freshness that accompanies the cold. Worse still, they will smell of nothing, but moving, incite the passions of prey-driven animals.
They will be hunted, he supposes, instincts glass-sharp and flaring, for all they think of themselves as warriors and the fiercer men. No matter. Ferocity is a matter of despair, sooner than technique. They must merely wish victory dearer than their opponents do.
He nods, tranquil, although he offers no strategy, no word of encouragement. Only walks like winter wind, casting a breath of white behind him, silks dangling as he bows his back or makes himself small or twists or turns or perverts his flesh away from its natural geometries — to make advance. Slow progress, after, his every step measured, and the flame lighting his path from behind, until he finds the choked corridor finally erupts in a broader gateway that feeds into...
Stairs crudely constructed against a decrepit wall and a large, cavernous pit below. In it, at a far distance, dozens of men of strength, youth and marrying age have curled around each other, borrowing the heat of each other's limbs to grapple with the cold as they persist, largely clothed. In the middle of the circle, a crude net of captured sparrows, and shimmering blood and the bones of feasts old. On their arms and legs, dirt, crusted blood, the fur of likely downed animals, semen. He suspects, if they were to catch the smell, chicken entrails.
They sleep, he notices, flinching through the dim, crepuscular light. No — they doze. And to Wei Ying, murmured behind himself, at ease and safeguarded by the many floors of distance that divide them from the crowd: )
( A part of his heart breaks at the sight, the sound, the smells. These are not well people. These are not people kept in a healthy state even for the animals their tendencies seem so similar to, and this, he thinks, is the "cure." Abandoning them to live in a way unfit for any reality, but trying regardless to live in any way they can.
Palpable as well, an oppressive air, a force of presence behind it that hovers over all the men arrayed below, features distorted by ears and tails and fur that may be the clotted coverings of their bodies, or may be sprouted from their skin true. He narrows his eyes, lifting his gaze to the dark ceilings, letting his senses extend further. Concentrated purpose, not so much dark as feral, uncaring, wild, thrums along with the deeper thumping of the mountain. Of... ah. The mining. The tunnels here might not be directly linked, not in a way to move between, but the sounds of it, the cranking rumbles of rock and ore brought out, the striking of metal against stone.
His fingers curl towards his palms, nails biting into skin. Blood, he knows, has sway here, and not just from the bodies of the men or birds or other paltry hunted creatures below. More than what runs in his veins, or his husband's, or every human shaped being on this mountain.
The talisman he coaxes free is simple, old: following the source of a negative qi. He holds it up, for him and Lan Zhan to see in their flickering light. )
I have a feeling they were closer to the source, but that the infection's spreading. Feeling up for this hunt?
( Turning his head, serious and sincere. There's mishaps enough that can happen under the weight of this much mountain, and he won't make that call for the both of them. Not right now, and hopefully not in the future. )
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no subject
( 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. )
no subject
( 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. )
no subject
( 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. )
no subject
( 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.
no subject
( 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?
no subject
( 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. )
no subject
( 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?
no subject
( 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. )
no subject
( Companionable nods and the wave of fingers marks his greeting those they pass, his mind puzzling over the changes, the way things seem normal in a genuine manner, not the secretive of the night. Even the nuns so bound in fabric their faces couldn't be easily discerned moved without furtive awkwardness, leery in the normal way of insular persons to outsiders.
The scents of human hubris and sex bother him less: the brothel that first held them safe remains deeply impressionable in the quagmire of his memory. )
It's possible that's what their incense always did.
( Hid musk, hid whatever else was not meant for discussing, only polite pretense. )
No one's commented on you carrying me. That's even more interesting.
( He says, sing song with his words as the trees part, crisp scent of water on the air. Almost burningly clean, carrying a chill that draws near the morning fog, ephemeral and soupy around them.
He tenses, listening. Closing his eyes and breathing. Nothing but they move in the fog, the river burbling, the leaves stirring in an errant breeze. Yet no birds sing. No insects buzz, and they're upon the water in those heartbeats before the sounds of living begin again, at a distance. Away from the reach of the benevolent haze. )
What do you feel?
( He asks, low and familiar. It's not the fog, singing dangers and welcome. The small shiver he allows himself to feel travels to settle in his pelvis, heavy. Thrumming. )
Have any of the nuns come this way that you've seen?
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( No chatter chases them, no tattered whispers, no shrapnel of sharpened glances.
He steels himself for the reprobation of their scrutiny, the quiet condemnation of too men so intimately interlocked that they presume to indulge in their domestic affections where the downcast eyes of nuns might chance upon them. No such misfortune. In truth, and Wei Ying speaks it blunt-edged as they step into the forest, to air so astringent, it may well bleed them
No, not so. Only cleansed, stripped of cloying incenses, of their mind-muddying bite. Perhaps that is the truth of things, as he settles down in perfect, permeating silence that stretches out like a young cat after the wakening, to fit in its brittle bones. The forest overfills with quiet. )
They have not. ( He cannot decree it with certainty, not when their cell faces north-wise, but the corridors all open to the same hall, great like a bloated belly, before the gates spill. He thinks, had anyone but they attempted to depart — and he dips down, one knee and the next, to allow Wei Ying to unseat himself by the river's bed, where wafts of chill tickle their ankles and Lan Wangji's knuckles, frost-torn — he would have known, would have heard. )
Wei Ying. I do not believe our answers lie with them. ( They are less than people, more phantasms crawling from one edge of the monastery to the next. Tangentially, peripherally livened. ) After our ablutions, we seek the mines. Lest you sensed differently?
( And a pause, before tersely: ) Bathe thoroughly ahead.
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( Easy and cooperative, his feet slip out of his husband's grasp to rediscover the ground, reassuringly organic beneath him. He misses already the shared warmth, stands tall and stretches to hear the cracking of bones in his back, a hip, a knee. It sounds so much worse than he feels in the aftermath, and he chuckles, more to himself than to Lan Zhan, amazed at the reality of age, amazed still he has the pleasure of witnessing it beyond the encompassing, consuming dark.
He still doesn't know if one can perish in such an abyss. Suspended, one might well live forever, losing their mind.
Yet he blinks, looks to the waters, then to his husband, eyebrows lifting higher and higher, wrinkling his brow further. Ablutions this hour of the day aren't as much his purview, and he supposes there's a certain pleasure in instant cleanliness. Balanced against that is the sheer cold. )
Right now?
( Is the whine that trickles out of his mouth, the cold waters, the brisk sharpness of the air and clarity of the forest after the cloying incense of the monastery and the shuttered thickness of its presence.
Fat and swollen, this river, this creek, this burbling water that jumps and flows and rasps past, and he shudders. )
Do I need to?
( The whining continues, his hands coming to rest at the lapels of his outermost robe. )
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( Wet of cold water is a spidering ache, spreading paralysis. He knows the surprise of it, the tremors of trepidation a body experiences upon the encounter, as if traversing first shock, then denial, sorrow, then resignation. Lies do not wet his tongue: he will not speak any now to pretend he has not lived these hurts himself prior.
And he will lead, even in this by example, starting the pained process of stripping away his outer layers, one by one, skins peeled and carefully folded and packaged and weighed down by Bichen's scabbard. A fine deterrent from any watching thieves, until he is but flesh and bone and the single layer modesty still commands of him — daring his toes to taste the turbulent, spumed waves that spill from the river's bed, before he dips in.
It stabs, that first bite of the cold, when he walks and walks and walks and stills, and the waters prickle his ankles, claw up his knees, dance on his hips. Pain pressures and blooms, and in its wake only the relief of survival. He shivers, still. )
We must. We came bearing the scents of travel and men. ( Musk, sweat, grime. The tacit emissions that accompany a male body surrendered to performing sword forms each day. ) The nuns will not entrust us. And we must speak to their prioress.
( A pause, then his hand goes out silently, calling, coaxing. ) Come alone, or be plunged.
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( He could, of course, listen to what Lan Zhan asks: or he could, as he intends, hear what Lan Zhan means, and in the course of understanding, allow what he can. Relief. Here there is lingering darkness, crude and cruel underpinnings, a rot to be cleansed bot by themselves so much as the collective around them.
It isn't their masculinity, their scent, their virility that offends or concerns, truly. There's no trust even were they female, waltzing in smelling of spring rains and peonies, in his estimate. What gnaws and yearns here is endemic, is isolated and concentrated, and anything other is not meant to be taken to heart unless fully, wholly consumed.
So he pouts. Gives Lan Zhan the big eyes, out-thrust lower lip, the expression that has nothing of serious displeasure in it, knowing full well this isn't meant for those kinds of moments. Levity, yes. A breath in the cleaned air before they tumble back into the cloying, clotting wound that is the monastery and its missing persons. )
You wouldn't!
( Absolutely, positively, he knows Lan Zhan will. )
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Wei Ying. ( And he speaks it in the fatherly way of a man overcome studiously, explicitly and at thorough length by all the petty inconveniences of the world, many ancestral and some freshly devised to torture him.
He is all discipline, a vision of peace and summoned patience. Until, calmly, like a great and basking jellyfish for the grace of his spreading silks — he comes closer to the river's shore. Chin jutting, water crystalizing in cutting droplets that weigh down his lashes, cascade across his cheek.
At first, only silence, mesmerized. He is a beautiful thing, his husband at dawns, made sweet by his theatre. Lively, strong. Desirable.
And, in the fit of that appreciation, Lan Wangji snags his fingertips on the nearest crags, to drag wet red on his sleeve's spread in familiar characters that burst out a — binding talisman, serpentine and plunging to attach itself to Wei Ying's wrist, sparing Lan Wangji the need to exit the waters.
His right eyebrow perks up, first incredulous, then daring. )
When I do it, all your silks will soak cold. ( Better to surrender and remove them now, but for the one required for bathing. ) Count of ten.
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( He is, faultlessly, mesmerised. He knows and has always known that Lan Zhan is an objectively, and subjectively, beautiful man. Handsome, delightful, delicious, whatever words one wanted to use, paired with significant ones such as collected (hah), elegant, reserved. Aloof, perhaps, to anything which he doesn't believe concerns him. There used to be more such things in the worlds. These days, in Wei Wuxian's estimate, there are less.
Water traces features he's come to know by eyes and hands and mouth and tongue and slide of skin against skin as much as the nestling, lazy contentment of an evening passed too hot against a body as prone to producing excess heat as his own.
Perhaps that's part of the distracting contrast, seeing Lan Zhan damp, seeing the cold waters consume the warmth of a man whose heart beats larger than many in their particular, peculiar, and cruel sort of righteous world. Or perhaps it's any memory, of words spoken, or silences applied as balms, which leads him into that moment of hazy bewitchment, the urge to tease a quiet voice in the back of his skull.
Until the binding, bonding qi at his wrist, and he smiles then, tugging back on it to see Lan Zhan's arm move a touch. )
Then you'll have to warm me, won't that be a waste of time?
( Yet he's not protesting the impending plunge, or the countdown that proceeds unimpeded: he speaks throughout, his fingers fast, his hands practiced, and unlike the modesty of his husband he does not leave his innermost robe on, the darkest blues and whites sloughed off in haphazard piles under the threatened time-limit.
There's nothing impressive with his standing there nude before the man he's married repeatedly, even unaware of said man's intent. Hard to be anything but reactionary to physical reality with no barrier to the chill air, the spray of colder waters. Gooseflesh ripples down his arms, fine hairs across his body standing on end, nipples contracting like breathing lungs, along with less lauded parts, and he knows it's all preparatory for what happens the moment his husband makes good on his promise.
Hence he's smiling, brows quirked, when Lan Zhan reaches the end of his count.
Because he definitely plans on tackling him after. This day, he suspects, is going to be a long one. They may as well have this moment to themselves, without restriction. )
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( He is beautifully pristine, this wayward husband, skin lessened of its scarring in a second life that abided the Patriarch scarred only by his misfortunes. Pretty, were the needle-eye's width of his waist more girlish, the soft roundness of his gaze doe-eyed. Handsome does not yet suit, bones unrefined by age that never lived them. He exists somewhere on the liminal cusp between tender juvenile youth and maturity, a constant reminder that Lan Wangji's interest was snagged by a boy raised to a man only by duty. )
Three... two... ( A heartbeat, echoing and dark. ) One.
( Grit of his teeth clumsy and tight, as if he suffers with Wei Ying's suffering — but he tugs all the same, qi sweetening his strength to drag his husband in just as the river's waves swell, low-humming, and crash and burn to crisps with cold and smears of spume that give Wei Ying's welcome.
He does not hesitate: covers ground, wades in waters, traverses to accept Wei Ying in both arms, to silently bring up cupped streams and descend them on the brittle, narrow bridge of his lover's shoulders, the crown of his head. In between, a minor indulgence: to unfold the span of his headband and bind it, half to his own wrist, half to Wei Ying's and have them impossibly, familiarly wedded, as every river demands of them. )
Good morning.
( Then calmly, saccharine and honest and true, and his sword arm never wavering —
He sets both hands on Wei Ying's shoulders and dunks him down to submerge him in the river's depths. If it were an abyssal cliff, you would have long ago fallen. Ah, but they are not so bittersweet yet, so intimate with their tragedies. )
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( The bracing rush of air and water that leads to his yelping, more in the suddenness of the temperature shock than anything remotely like pain, marks his entrance into the waters. Lan Zhan is there, hands warm and cold and water pouring over his shoulders, then clasped, then down, and he catches scant breath before he's under the surface of the stream, the river, whatever body of water moves past, carrying intent and history and self away in unequal measure.
Down, beneath the water, he slides his legs between Lan Zhan's, all but sitting on the smooth-rocked bottom, digging in his heels and hooking his hands behind wet-robed knees. Pulling. Strong, qi-fed, and aware he's inviting the fall into kneeling...
... over himself, even as his head breaks the surface of the water and he laughs, black hair plastered over his face, rendering him incapable of clearly seeing anything, even if there were legions beyond the whites and pale pinks of his husband's robes.
Birds resume chattering in trees, insects buzzing, though they still avoid the expanse over and around the flowing water: something in their play, raucous yet sincere. Further easing of the pressing burden of the mountain and its denizens settles into something closer to peace while two grown men all but attempt to drown each other in their morning ablutions.
In the distance, a hawk cries. Soars around, then aims away, shadow dancing across them both as they find cold skins and warm hearts in the shallow depths of the spring-fed river. )
Peace, peace!
( Wei Wuxian says eventually, laughing, flapping and clinging to Lan Zhan in turns. )
Peace, Lan Zhan!
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( Peace, yet he clings to Lan Wangji as if a noose, drawing, dragging, tight and steeled, and Lan Wangji falls with it and with him, gravity despairing of him. There is no grace to silken agglomeration of layers huddling, thick and weighted down, in the sharp jut of Lan Wangji's knee sculpting off the veneer of the river's bottom, in the old wound of his leg simmering in stubborn pulses.
He catches himself on his arms, then flings them around Wei Ying, and sounds dies a heady, rounded death as the waters trouble under the armored panoply of etiolated weeds. Their mouths meet — first, he lies to himself, because the transfer of breath will assist this writhing fool, his husband. Cold, cunning, more beady-eyed eel than man now, slippery. Transformed, sooner than reduced.
Then, when they break water, and Wei Ying pleads his peace — he thinks, perhaps, to persuade his husband into deeper affections in this one nook of seclusion where the conceit of privacy doesn't gasp, stillborn.
This is no time, no place for love-making. Wet of Wei Ying's hair drags on his cheeks and winds like moulding filigree, catches on his shoulders like ink smearing. And behind him, where Lan Wangji stares transfixed, a great bloom of sparrows erupts in the forest skies with gutted shrieks, as the tail end of dozens of birds plunges back down of own volition, as if scythed down. )
...violence. ( He is quick in this, at least: the loosening of his headband from Wei Ying's arm, the silent, subtle nudge to depart their waters. A brisk bath today, it seems. )
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( Violence, he thinks, done to his heart in the wake of a cold embrace and lips against his, air and water and qi and everything else that flows between them, impeded and otherwise. To flush and chill at the same time is an interesting, albeit not unexpected experience. Were Lan Zhan not unknotting his headband from Wei Wuxian's arm, moving already towards whatever sent the sparrows fluttering in a burst of activity then called him to the same. Would have preferred to find how much heat between them it takes to counteract the cold of the mountain spring, the river, the water, the edification of a moment's pleasure in a lifetime of precious seconds spent as one wished, no simply as one was expected.
Instead he hefts himself upward, slipping on rocks before he catches himself, sloshing through water to the shoreline and his tumbled robes, drier for the moments before his hands catch up his innermost. He's racing already after his husband, barefoot and dripping, yet dripping less than the beautiful expanse of Lan Zhan's legs, chest, thighs, back — on what merit was Wei Wuxian meant to concentrate, with his husband dressed only in wet robes of white ahead of him?
The merit of further dressing, perhaps, but he's past now, light and quick on his feet, breathing in, listening, catching himself on a tree trunk with a hand settling on a branch: there. Dark for the dwelling of shadows, a behemoth of form lurching forward, snuffling.
At first he wonders if it isn't some massive boar. The hunching, the snuffling, the sounds and weight of it seems like it might, but as the morning's light catches the creature in spears that cut between tree limbs to touch the forest floor, such notions are banished.
He's never seen a large cat move like this, but he finds that belief also mistaken: what he first thought was fur turns out to be a pelt, worn by an individual crawling along without using their knees. Hence the back arched too high, the weight to every movement. A dirty face, bedraggled hair, hands and feet with nails grown long and then ragged from use and breakage, the person, who he suspects might be male, continues to slink along. Snuffling.
Pausing, as they catch a scent, slowly craning their head towards a nearby bush. Then with sudden, incredible speed, the hunched crawler pushes forward and away, crashing through the bush with a strangled sort of howling yowl.
Wei Wuxian looks to Lan Zhan, a frown pressing his lips into a thin line. Here they witness a hunt, while witnessing also a human's debasement into something other than themselves. Not that humanity fails to sink low on its own initiative. This simply seems... excessive.
He nods towards where the figure disappeared, to the sounds of shivering flora, heavy hands as paws on the forest floor. )
Did they come from the caves?
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Modesty. ( He hisses it out, but Wei Ying is blitzing across the forest glade in brazen, thorough nudity, sparing no care for Lan Wangji's petulant griefs or the colour of his concern. Thorns, needles, rocks and prickling branches. There is a wealth of torturous possibilities lining the woodland floors, prone to teething on Wei Ying's fresh-skinned soles, the choked width of his ankles. Not to speak of his bird bones.
No time to waste, not with the monastery's world in decadent fragility. Lan Wangji only hesitates to collect the bundle of their combined silks, like brittle, shed snake skins — and calls Bichen from where she sleeps, flying to hand. Then, the hard run, quickening hunger in him, the yearning to hunt.
They arrive, Lan Wangji less delicate in his descent, the excess of his speed carrying a weight of momentum, on a crown of branches. Huddle, and witness... true debasement, a man deprived of wit and the will to raise himself from the primitive state in which curse and misfortune have arrived him. Defiled, dirtied, starved. And possessing, somehow, of enough qi or derived magic to have called a ward of semen and spittle and urine on the ground, netting birds that cannot lift themselves further. Disgusting, if efficient.
Their... intruder kills his prey with a stick, little sharpened, or crushes their throats with his hands, and binds them with hemp rope to slink back in the depth. He is fast, at least, with his work. Timid, almost, if not terrorised: as if fearing he will be caught, scolded and banished, but not injured. He scuttles away.
And Lan Wangji, faced with his own bare barbarian, politely extends the mountain of their layers, unfolded on his arms, for Wei Ying to have his pick, once they drop down. Only then: )
Assuredly. ( Then, measured, attempting and perhaps failing not to seem every piece of him a privileged gentleman assessing the less fortunate as if he were an animal: ) Unless... he is lesser in the ranks, turned to domesticity. If they are all — ( And there must be more. ) — in such state, they are as if... cattle. Kept.
( For... nightly congress? Strange, if not the first distortion he has witnessed of men to passion. Why should women be any better? ) We must take fire within.
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( One layer is modest enough! Thin, yes, not terribly protective, yes, as the welts visible on his lower legs indicate, but he's at least not fully bared. More or less. Perched in a tree makes that a matter of discussion even if he were in all layers. He does not, generally, wear pants.
A situation his husband has been woefully slow to find advantage in, if he were asked, but he isn't, and so he's accepting handed robes and shrugging into them. It's not gracious, the way he moves, but it is clever, gaining no vestiges of tree himself in the process, what with it's proximity, well within arm's reach. )
Assuming there are ranks. It's as possible the whole monastery always used some form of body-linked magic, such as what that was, and it'd explain something about the readings in chicken entrails.
( Intimate, basic, and mixing of similar compliments to what this cursed man used just now. )
True fire, or illuminating fire alone?
( Waistband coming last, he finally has himself in rights enough to go trekking into unpleasantly musky caves. He pauses, listening to the wind, the river, the resuscitation of the natural world around them, but for a persisting blank spot where the body-magics had been cast. When he leaps down, it's with a feline grace and qinggong to keep his landing lighter than feathers brushed against a lover's bared skin.
Damp hair gathered back over his shoulder and pulled carelessly off his face, he looks to Lan Zhan, gesturing ahead, then moving, stalking through shadows with greater finesse than that which had come snuffling out of them. )
He lacked permission to hunt. Whose?
( Barefoot still, refusing his boots for the moment for the lack of socks that can stay dry, he simply walks. Robes catching with his movements, stuck to skin then free again; hair a heavy drape, but less so than if they'd tended to it fully and properly. He is young in that moment, the daring fool who threw himself with abandon into the waters of Gusu and came out, smiling, fish in hands.
Shadows cross his face, and he is again his age, thinner and yet not so thinned, marked by tiredness and yet still vivacious, vividly alive. Appealing, attractive, engrossing, and why are his eyes so inexorably drawn to his husband? Likewise wet, likewise cavorting around with the evidence of their interrupted brief exchange? )
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( This matter burdens him with consideration, mouth first slack then tersely pursed, before pronouncement, haphazard: )
True fire. ( Warmth, a secondary weapon, often overlooked. Shadow recedes before light, but heat cauterizes, gifting ablution. They cannot neglect their cautions, and the talismans of Wei Ying's design are remarkably adept at preserving qi: minimal consumption for boisterous flame.
He concedes Wei Ying's fleeting penchant for juvenile play, sequestering his husband's boots in one hand, twinned together with their upper bindings. A moment, coming down after, to attend to his own person, wrapping six further silken layers across his body with gritting teeth that gratefully mark the arrival of fresh comfort when he places a warming talisman beneath his collar. Another, held slack-wristed toward Wei Ying —
Only to find his husband enraptured, always on the cusp between graceful and gaunt, between elegant and ethereal. Alert, in ways nearly feline. Truly, the grounds have been marked with folly. )
The monastery secludes them. ( A filthy secret, sheltered away from the day's light. He nods once towards the cave. ) Break fire.
( An unkindness, perhaps, to call on the one with scanter qi resources to spare to produce their talismans, but Wei Ying is the better hand of it, and Lan Wangji has long tired of paying obeisance to his vulnerability when the man himself begrudges it. Let him wear himself down, let him begrudge Lan Wangji's supply.
Steps closer, the mouth of the cave is diminutive, cramped. Barely held together by wishes and stones and a frailty of infrastructural wood, pillars crumbling. The mines must have been ancient when Wei Ying and Lan Wangji were mere dreams in their grandfather's resting hours. Now, they scream their years. Worse still, to enter, they must bow their heads, walking bent, if not crawl — surrendering the natural advantage of having all limbs at the ready. He hesitates: )
We risk ambush. Proceed through here, or infiltrate through the monastery? ( There must be a hole there, surely. ) The cat-women must have their corridor.
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( There's a lazy assuredness to how he moves forward, the talisman between his fingers, the branch he has surreptitiously procured in their drift through the forest, cast down from its lofty perch in one of the old, tall trees lingering the mountainside over. A torch of a kind, without embers, burning slow for the delays written in, flickering as any true fire does.
Wood already likes to burn. Slowly, the branch sparks, then simmers. Light throws short in the brilliance of the sunlit shadows, but the cavern ahead looms voracious, little visible even to their enhanced eyes within the shadow-thick interior. )
Up. See there?
( A turn of his wrist and his fingers flick towards the thin lip of a ledge, high up to the side. A perch barely visible without squinting, a different degree of dense darkness to those surrounding shadows, swallowing light that dared touch.
He doesn't wait after the indication, gathering qi in the simple, efficient ways of a man long used to pulling the most from the least. His balances, and he likes to believe them more fruitful these days than when he first awoke with his core transferred, are keen. Sharp as his bladework with Suibian had once been.
Two steps, leaping up the side of the entrance, and he finds the ledge: moves in far enough as he lands and sinks into a light crouch, heat and light of the torch gentle above and before him. Beneath is darkness, as expected, and musk that rises, among other scents he can name and thus feels no inclination to. None of them yet are out of place. Only the something metallic without being blood does.
He waits for his husband's attendance, presuming on Lan Zhan's arrival much as he presumes on stars to brighten in the night skies the further into the mountains they rise. )
Feathers. Bones. Small ones. There's a trail down there, leading to the right. If their noses are at all strong, do we want to anticipate confusing them?
( There are means for being quiet they can do, already do, but there are others to mark the scents of healthy cultivators, of perfumes and incense preferred and used. Less concerning with their present state of affairs, but wet bodies carry scent better than dry, and neither of them are yet parched as the deserts they've recently traversed. )
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( Either way, they must enter as rats do: on their knees or with the stench. If their noses are at all strong, they will catch whiff of wet and spumes and weeds, of mould and the tragedy of crisp, teeth-gritting freshness that accompanies the cold. Worse still, they will smell of nothing, but moving, incite the passions of prey-driven animals.
They will be hunted, he supposes, instincts glass-sharp and flaring, for all they think of themselves as warriors and the fiercer men. No matter. Ferocity is a matter of despair, sooner than technique. They must merely wish victory dearer than their opponents do.
He nods, tranquil, although he offers no strategy, no word of encouragement. Only walks like winter wind, casting a breath of white behind him, silks dangling as he bows his back or makes himself small or twists or turns or perverts his flesh away from its natural geometries — to make advance. Slow progress, after, his every step measured, and the flame lighting his path from behind, until he finds the choked corridor finally erupts in a broader gateway that feeds into...
Stairs crudely constructed against a decrepit wall and a large, cavernous pit below. In it, at a far distance, dozens of men of strength, youth and marrying age have curled around each other, borrowing the heat of each other's limbs to grapple with the cold as they persist, largely clothed. In the middle of the circle, a crude net of captured sparrows, and shimmering blood and the bones of feasts old. On their arms and legs, dirt, crusted blood, the fur of likely downed animals, semen. He suspects, if they were to catch the smell, chicken entrails.
They sleep, he notices, flinching through the dim, crepuscular light. No — they doze. And to Wei Ying, murmured behind himself, at ease and safeguarded by the many floors of distance that divide them from the crowd: )
I believe we have the evening's grooms.
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( A part of his heart breaks at the sight, the sound, the smells. These are not well people. These are not people kept in a healthy state even for the animals their tendencies seem so similar to, and this, he thinks, is the "cure." Abandoning them to live in a way unfit for any reality, but trying regardless to live in any way they can.
Palpable as well, an oppressive air, a force of presence behind it that hovers over all the men arrayed below, features distorted by ears and tails and fur that may be the clotted coverings of their bodies, or may be sprouted from their skin true. He narrows his eyes, lifting his gaze to the dark ceilings, letting his senses extend further. Concentrated purpose, not so much dark as feral, uncaring, wild, thrums along with the deeper thumping of the mountain. Of... ah. The mining. The tunnels here might not be directly linked, not in a way to move between, but the sounds of it, the cranking rumbles of rock and ore brought out, the striking of metal against stone.
His fingers curl towards his palms, nails biting into skin. Blood, he knows, has sway here, and not just from the bodies of the men or birds or other paltry hunted creatures below. More than what runs in his veins, or his husband's, or every human shaped being on this mountain.
The talisman he coaxes free is simple, old: following the source of a negative qi. He holds it up, for him and Lan Zhan to see in their flickering light. )
I have a feeling they were closer to the source, but that the infection's spreading. Feeling up for this hunt?
( Turning his head, serious and sincere. There's mishaps enough that can happen under the weight of this much mountain, and he won't make that call for the both of them. Not right now, and hopefully not in the future. )
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