The air is thick and heady with iron and hibiscus, with the blighting luminescence of song in dappled gold of groaned, ungainly earned translucence. Where filth sleeps, cleansing is colour, and Wei Ying calls it close, refracted, coils it, then unspools the spindle.
And Lan Wangji knows his part: the second instrument in this, cacophony of shrieks and distraction, the guqin suave for any man whose ear's never been scratched by snake's hiss. Behind his eyelids, violence flickers: the wrench of energy, of flesh bleached of resent, and Wei Ying's play soft for it like slip of silk before it twines and knots the noose, careful to extricate rot but leave the bodies unscathed.
He amplifies. It is his due, fingers gelid, but sliding, lending the burn of sandalwood, of true qi ablution. If Wei Ying is sea water, he is salt, and the wound of their anger weeps and weeps until the well dries, until the sting cauterizes.
And what lives in the wake of it? Precious little impressions, only the imprecations of merchants brokering the same trade as before, only easing. Clasps quieted. Smiles turned strat-laced, more than predatory. The immensity of the change, suffocated into nuance.
A simple thing, to dismiss the zither. Simpler still to blindly seek Wei Ying's hand, to round his grip on the known bite of his wrist bones, and — tug, less for Wei Ying's own sake, than that of Wangji. Alive. Alive, undisturbed, undispered. In his ear, This was our land first.
"You want wine," he rasps, and his tongue's dry, teeth tendered. Wei Ying wants his wine, or it would please a lost ache in Lan Wangji's soul to supply it. To find relief on the whetted edge of another man's gladness. "Come."
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The air is thick and heady with iron and hibiscus, with the blighting luminescence of song in dappled gold of groaned, ungainly earned translucence. Where filth sleeps, cleansing is colour, and Wei Ying calls it close, refracted, coils it, then unspools the spindle.
And Lan Wangji knows his part: the second instrument in this, cacophony of shrieks and distraction, the guqin suave for any man whose ear's never been scratched by snake's hiss. Behind his eyelids, violence flickers: the wrench of energy, of flesh bleached of resent, and Wei Ying's play soft for it like slip of silk before it twines and knots the noose, careful to extricate rot but leave the bodies unscathed.
He amplifies. It is his due, fingers gelid, but sliding, lending the burn of sandalwood, of true qi ablution. If Wei Ying is sea water, he is salt, and the wound of their anger weeps and weeps until the well dries, until the sting cauterizes.
And what lives in the wake of it? Precious little impressions, only the imprecations of merchants brokering the same trade as before, only easing. Clasps quieted. Smiles turned strat-laced, more than predatory. The immensity of the change, suffocated into nuance.
A simple thing, to dismiss the zither. Simpler still to blindly seek Wei Ying's hand, to round his grip on the known bite of his wrist bones, and — tug, less for Wei Ying's own sake, than that of Wangji. Alive. Alive, undisturbed, undispered. In his ear, This was our land first.
"You want wine," he rasps, and his tongue's dry, teeth tendered. Wei Ying wants his wine, or it would please a lost ache in Lan Wangji's soul to supply it. To find relief on the whetted edge of another man's gladness. "Come."