inbox | eastbound
lan wangji
missives | encounters
lan wangji
missives | encounters
un: nutcracker, voice. a day after the thread in her inbox
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snowcleave
2022-08-04 04:37 am (UTC)(link)
[ She's told Xie Yun she would send her regrets for her behavior so that he doesn't have to, and Fei isn't the sort of person to go back on her word, even if she isn't the most forthcoming with a standard, polite apology.
And so, delivered with all the gentility of an elderly person who doesn't know if their phone call has connected– ]
Lan Wangji?
And so, delivered with all the gentility of an elderly person who doesn't know if their phone call has connected– ]
Lan Wangji?
Xie Yun has explained. You are not my husband.
[ Maybe if you didn't have that face this all could have been avoided Wangji, at least, that's what she's going with. Still, credit where credit is due. ]
You have done a favor to me, my gratitude for fighting alongside Xie Yun while I was not here to do so myself.
[ Maybe if you didn't have that face this all could have been avoided Wangji, at least, that's what she's going with. Still, credit where credit is due. ]
You have done a favor to me, my gratitude for fighting alongside Xie Yun while I was not here to do so myself.
I have told you more than once that I was.
[ Then, a sigh, because she knows why she's doing this. And so, for the sake of her actual husband, Fei starts again, quietly, petulantly. ]
I will not make this mistake again. Xie Yun says you a decent and trustworthy. I spoke unfairly to you.
[ Surely that's enough of an apology right? ]
[ Then, a sigh, because she knows why she's doing this. And so, for the sake of her actual husband, Fei starts again, quietly, petulantly. ]
I will not make this mistake again. Xie Yun says you a decent and trustworthy. I spoke unfairly to you.
[ Surely that's enough of an apology right? ]
( hey look we're all back in town and well over a month later, here is wei wuxian, in a tired break between working mccoy's situation with everyone else and the nightmares wrath and buddies discovered, tied right into the mystery of the crashed airship...
he is here, draping an arm across his husband's shoulders, and asking in a low murmur: )
Xiao Bichen, mm?
he is here, draping an arm across his husband's shoulders, and asking in a low murmur: )
Xiao Bichen, mm?
( ...ah, but for that lone antidote against routine, that one riotous condiment, the ginseng of his life —
Stone weight on his shoulder, his husband. Lo, behold. The true Bichen, strip of frost pallor born and stretched, turning beneath Wei Ying's throat — never tasting past insinuation. )
Xiao.
( ...brows perched, amusement fettered. Truly. )
( Not even a flicker of a lash on his lovely eyes (he can describe them so, in jest or honesty, but jest is what flicks through his mind), no skipped beat of his pulse. His weight, not enough, but present and warm and accounted for, leans more, his fingers climbing to tap, tap, tap, slide a nail along Bichen's naked bright length, almost singing under the contact.
He licks his lips, blinks slowly, meets the sideways gaze of his husband with the cat-like smile of a man who has played coy to the pointed end of never delivering on it, and lets his eyes, his lashes, flicker lower. )
Compared to this, yes.
He licks his lips, blinks slowly, meets the sideways gaze of his husband with the cat-like smile of a man who has played coy to the pointed end of never delivering on it, and lets his eyes, his lashes, flicker lower. )
Compared to this, yes.
( His sword is... transgressed against. Ungainly and immodestly molested. Drip of Wei Ying's fingers staining the flat of her spine.
In the name of her dignity, his hand wavers on Bichen, nearly tempted to withdraw — column of Wei Ying's neck tender white beneath her teeth. )
Seek out chilled waters.
( Temper your thirst, man. )
( Says he, who thirsts without end for Suibian, loyal length that draws only to Wei Wuxian's hand and the careless pull of Jiang Cheng's, wielded in trust and faith and honour by Wen Ning, that is the past which clings, wraith like, to Lan Zhan's slowly fraying hems.
He can fix that, he knows. Mostly as he's been keeping up with a dead man's cloak, keeping Asgeirr in tattered dignity, until such a time as the scholar wishes to go.
That isn't on his mind, less than a flittering thought, and his voice drops lower, the murmur for Lan Zhan and anyone else with hearing far too acute for their own good: )
Will only remind me of seeing you.
( Flirtation, yes, but the weight of the word, the choice, to see and to have seen the scars that stretch hidden underneath the touch of robes and the chest of his with its beating heart; the branding on Lan Zhan's breast near aching, immaculate twin to his own.
Seeing, seen, wanted, wanting. It's been a long time for Wei Wuxian to come to terms with all these, and to hold them collectively in his palm.
The timing, however, is as unfortunate as most in his life, so he embraces it with the same expectation.
... Which is to say, none past being a pest to his soulmate, also four time going on five husband, and the man fed in luxuries by Wei Wuxian's creative exploits in making coin. For his son, their son, too, but that is not presently on his mind. )
He can fix that, he knows. Mostly as he's been keeping up with a dead man's cloak, keeping Asgeirr in tattered dignity, until such a time as the scholar wishes to go.
That isn't on his mind, less than a flittering thought, and his voice drops lower, the murmur for Lan Zhan and anyone else with hearing far too acute for their own good: )
Will only remind me of seeing you.
( Flirtation, yes, but the weight of the word, the choice, to see and to have seen the scars that stretch hidden underneath the touch of robes and the chest of his with its beating heart; the branding on Lan Zhan's breast near aching, immaculate twin to his own.
Seeing, seen, wanted, wanting. It's been a long time for Wei Wuxian to come to terms with all these, and to hold them collectively in his palm.
The timing, however, is as unfortunate as most in his life, so he embraces it with the same expectation.
... Which is to say, none past being a pest to his soulmate, also four time going on five husband, and the man fed in luxuries by Wei Wuxian's creative exploits in making coin. For his son, their son, too, but that is not presently on his mind. )
( Seeing Lan Wangji, part and whole, glimpse of his body a window into the soul of the Wen war, and who are they, but stray marks of an emperor's time, passed? But the footprints of Wen Ruohan's passing?
He knows himself, stitched and woven and the sum of his scars, knows the dark earth of Wei Ying's gaze, churning. How he anticipates, Lan Wangji's fight and his flight and the propriety of his clan, chaperoning every talk turned tryst.
His mouth feels dried, burning with white fever. When he twists his hand, Bichen does bite, shallow as gossamer and lent qi sufficient to satisfy the recovery, when it comes, soon, soon. It will come. Heavens help him, but he steps in. )
Stop me.
( Take a sword, forge a talisman, devise retreat or retaliation. Be menace, because cruelty is a careful game, red of it known. This, here, only drips and dregs of it, the fluidity of Wei Ying's make-believe patience like watered venom. )
( Flesh parts as easily as lips to breathe; he doesn't even feel the sting, so much as the qi that follows, the kiss that never came after the bite of crueler hands, crueler weapons. Oh, this is flirtation, it's danger, it's neither of them knowing how and under a pressure that only expands and extends, and so, and so, and so.
His fingers there, and he catches them in his blood. It's a simple talisman, used infrequently, a trick, not a treat.
It is drawn against Lan Zhan's exposed wrist, each moment of it fluid and an offering of end this, you or I, or we see what happens next, and the talisman, roughshod and red against pale skins, means but this:
Wei Wuxian leans in further still, rough cheeked with the beard that's filled in as he's filled in time here, the mysteries abounding, mannequins and coal necrosis and manufactured disasters and waking up, and he says, command talisman writ in his blood, on his husband's body: )
Stop.
( Steps in, the nature of this temporary, the command behind it once an invitation to drink that was expected to be turned away, now turned to: )
And remember, always, to breathe.
( This is no talisman to hold beyond that moment, to compel more than the pause it might with the blood drawn from his neck, red ties woven between them. Even still, even yet, it's a moment caught and frozen, because one shift closer, and he'll try claiming lips with all the finesse of a man as parched as his husband claims come across clean waters in a dead land, while a sword breathes hot against his neck.
Not a man who chooses all his moments. A man who lives within the moments he finds himself in, maddeningly. )
His fingers there, and he catches them in his blood. It's a simple talisman, used infrequently, a trick, not a treat.
It is drawn against Lan Zhan's exposed wrist, each moment of it fluid and an offering of end this, you or I, or we see what happens next, and the talisman, roughshod and red against pale skins, means but this:
Wei Wuxian leans in further still, rough cheeked with the beard that's filled in as he's filled in time here, the mysteries abounding, mannequins and coal necrosis and manufactured disasters and waking up, and he says, command talisman writ in his blood, on his husband's body: )
Stop.
( Steps in, the nature of this temporary, the command behind it once an invitation to drink that was expected to be turned away, now turned to: )
And remember, always, to breathe.
( This is no talisman to hold beyond that moment, to compel more than the pause it might with the blood drawn from his neck, red ties woven between them. Even still, even yet, it's a moment caught and frozen, because one shift closer, and he'll try claiming lips with all the finesse of a man as parched as his husband claims come across clean waters in a dead land, while a sword breathes hot against his neck.
Not a man who chooses all his moments. A man who lives within the moments he finds himself in, maddeningly. )
( The burned bruise of Wei Ying's mouth on his, talisman-roused paralysis dissolving. There is a great, stalwart pressure that grows inside him, sixteen years of another man's want, the ghost he was, soul without body. Now he feels a consummate fever, a man incarnate — wrist answering first in rapid rotation, to summon Bichen from her fall, when he inevitably loosens his hold on her to restrain the blade from biting Wei Ying's throat.
All at once, he feels known, unknowable, invincible. One hand drifting to Wei Ying's nape, drawing hair, turning it, turning the stubble of his fine, hunger-sharpened jaw to scratch Wangji's chin, to rake him. Wei Ying's chest and the cracked rush of his breath, and the round moan of Wangji, fighting the fury of fast reconnaissance, of the aridity that are Wei Ying's lips, blistered beneath his.
He bites, tongue hunting after, teeth like straits thinned by rivulets of fricative breath between them. Raking.
When he peels back, mouth glistened red with Wei Ying's wet, thread of his blood ribboned between them, eyes swept dark between huntsman's desire and trembled stupor — he is silent. Not the disciplined, learned suspense that Cloud Recesses practises, but the gasped muteness of anticipation.
He is learning himself, learning Wei Ying. Learning the steep, abyssal distance between them. )
Like this, then?
( Blood on his wrist, residue of Wei Ying's qi electric between them. Wangji's mouth torn, Wei Ying bitten down. Violence between then. Bichen in sullen gloat. )
( Heat, the clash of them, the suddenness of joining mouth to mouth and no, nothing about it breathes out poetic, but it tips, it tilts, it's the first slide of rocks down a sheer mountain path. He can hear it, the cascade of possibility unformed but breathing in the silence beyond wet noises, neglected grunts of minor impact, the involuntary sound of appreciation when fingers tangle in his hair.
Feel it against the thrum of Lan Zhan's chest, even layered and caged as it is, his own mouth the invitation for more without needing it framed in hows and whys. His eyes, open, lashes peered through as sly flirtation fanned wider, heeding, bear down into Lan Zhan's, and he swallows, tongue tracing over his lips, the ache, the taste of copper he's known so well, so often, scents now on both of them in small, defensible, understandable ways.
Like this, then? There are rivers whose blockades he's seen give under the weight of a storm's onslaught. A violence, a magnificence, that stirs and awes, quick to come, quickly gone, leaving behind its muddy wake. Which he stands, whom dams for whom, what moment it pours over shivers through his veins, expecting. Adrenaline, not unlike when meeting blade to blade, but utterly unlike it in the same shivering, indrawn breath. )
In the moment, ( he says, voice dropping lower, convulsive swallow of his throat followed by the running of his tongue over his teeth, invitation: ) yes.
( In this moment, in so many moments, he doesn't know what this is without the grounding weight buried inside the violence: a call to spar, to meet with purpose, to cut small wounds and lick them clean again in the aftermath. Kindness undoes him too fast; gentle touches are an unmaking he's yet to learn. To press forward, to flow in, to nip at a jawline too smooth in comparison, raked teeth and roughed lips wet and pressing, momentarily there then drawn back, eyes to eyes, nose to nose, breath come faster.
Thrill, then, to fall forward into a trust that balances against his own expectation of defense. To fight, to surrender, no, to meet with terms: )
Lan Zhan.
( Not so little now. )
Feel it against the thrum of Lan Zhan's chest, even layered and caged as it is, his own mouth the invitation for more without needing it framed in hows and whys. His eyes, open, lashes peered through as sly flirtation fanned wider, heeding, bear down into Lan Zhan's, and he swallows, tongue tracing over his lips, the ache, the taste of copper he's known so well, so often, scents now on both of them in small, defensible, understandable ways.
Like this, then? There are rivers whose blockades he's seen give under the weight of a storm's onslaught. A violence, a magnificence, that stirs and awes, quick to come, quickly gone, leaving behind its muddy wake. Which he stands, whom dams for whom, what moment it pours over shivers through his veins, expecting. Adrenaline, not unlike when meeting blade to blade, but utterly unlike it in the same shivering, indrawn breath. )
In the moment, ( he says, voice dropping lower, convulsive swallow of his throat followed by the running of his tongue over his teeth, invitation: ) yes.
( In this moment, in so many moments, he doesn't know what this is without the grounding weight buried inside the violence: a call to spar, to meet with purpose, to cut small wounds and lick them clean again in the aftermath. Kindness undoes him too fast; gentle touches are an unmaking he's yet to learn. To press forward, to flow in, to nip at a jawline too smooth in comparison, raked teeth and roughed lips wet and pressing, momentarily there then drawn back, eyes to eyes, nose to nose, breath come faster.
Thrill, then, to fall forward into a trust that balances against his own expectation of defense. To fight, to surrender, no, to meet with terms: )
Lan Zhan.
( Not so little now. )
( What is this hunger, the greed to own so much of another that you must hollow him, must claw and ribbon out his being and replace his flesh with your inner self, pulsing alive beneath his skins? That you must wish the twain destructively bound, colliding, coalescing in union?
The better, wiser, kinder half of Lan Wangji is repelled by the possibility of Wei Ying harmed, least of all by his hand, his teeth. The Yiling Patriarch, a rhetoric of ruin, crafted to the shape of man. And then there's the mould wickedness of Lan Wangji, black and all-reaching and fungal, and it stretches out to want again — the word that could unmake this man, the learning, the gestures.
He does not flinch when Wei Ying irritates the stretch of his jaw, when it blooms to redness that forecasts bruising. When Wangji retaliates with the clever cruelty of every man who is possessed of crude strength, of opportunity: dragging both hands down Wei Ying's flank, Bichen cold and cradled now on hard ground — and bullying, as only predators do, his husband against the flat of the long wall.
There are spring books that depict this in tales of submission, men who find pleasure in their capture. He knows, because Wei Ying's once-upon-a-time stolen masterpieces attested it. And it's his heart that trembles, with the wall in synchrony, it must be, barely contained strength of his arms and their impulse and Wei Ying's weight sending the structure of the room to quiver — )
Let me have you.
( A simple, brazen, proposition — routine among husbands of sixteen, seventeen years, soulmates of decades, and surely the time is ripe for them, shiny and terrible like the blood smear crowning Wei Ying's lips, surely they are owed the satisfaction of —
...the walls, the windows
the world
rattling, shattering, surging, breaking
Lan Wangji's mouth a tired, fissured gasp
floors beneath shifting like stormed seas
and instant, visceral collapse, as reality starts
Unwinding. )
( They are not their best selves; they are want, consuming, violent, they are the thrum of desire that plays across the cords of their veins and sends heat rushing, running, rampant. He's had books and illustrations and enough of all kinds to know the extent of creativity and none of its application. Craves to be closer, without cracking open the casing of their selves to curl up within, coming as close as one might still breathing through one's lungs.
Lust needn't be poetic, but affection and want weave together into a secondary string as Lan ZHan's hands burn trails down his sides, his back, until the wall shifts to meet them and the air evacuates his lungs in a gasp, eyes locked on Lan Zhan's face.
His hand moves, and it feels like falling, as if the wall gave way under his weight and Lan Zhan's bearing down. These walls aren't the termite-devoured ones of the island village, and it's wrong, it's
shifting
Lan Zhan's lips move and
the roaring crash of a formless tide
the drop of his stomach, the air ripped from his lungs
and the fall, complete, as reality's coil winds down. )
Lust needn't be poetic, but affection and want weave together into a secondary string as Lan ZHan's hands burn trails down his sides, his back, until the wall shifts to meet them and the air evacuates his lungs in a gasp, eyes locked on Lan Zhan's face.
His hand moves, and it feels like falling, as if the wall gave way under his weight and Lan Zhan's bearing down. These walls aren't the termite-devoured ones of the island village, and it's wrong, it's
shifting
Lan Zhan's lips move and
the roaring crash of a formless tide
the drop of his stomach, the air ripped from his lungs
and the fall, complete, as reality's coil winds down. )
( the wind is audible, and then muffled as he cups around the pendant to speak, having reached out to his husband. hard to have much nuance in tone against that backdrop, so here are the words, louder to be heard, windstruck. )
Lan Zhan, we return within half a shichen. Meet me in port. Please?
Lan Zhan, we return within half a shichen. Meet me in port. Please?
Edited 2022-10-10 21:52 (UTC)
( There is a sense in him of misplaced wonder — as if the sand particles of Wei Ying's intimate understand slip threadbare between his hungering fingertips. He should catch them, he should hold — )
The port.
( And he makes rapid time: there, stalwart, coarse but serviceable blanket loaned from the Mouse House, for how can a man with an amputated core find flight anything but disagreeable? Dancing the few steps back to allow Wei Ying's great ungainly beast to find her footing on thudding, growling descent down.
He waits until she has settled, a destructive and gargantuan force between rows of indifferent, milling passers-by. Now and then, the port hoots with the spewed bile of approaching vessels and long, slithering carriages confined to tracks.
He waits until Wei Ying eases down to spread the blanket taut in hand. )
Be welcome. ( And speak on Wei Ying's own time. )
( Lethe can understand and not understand the grief and ache and apology that comes from Wei Wuxian, the sorrow and anger, and with Five popping out like he pops in, it's Wei Wuxian, in his riding leathers and furs, who slides down, pats his dead dragon's nose, and seems oblivious to the blanket held up like some strange sort of net.
He's awkward about affection. He knows it. He expects hands to reach for his throat first, particularly with men. His husband's face, all the minute expressions that tell him what he feels, what he thinks, what concerns he has and which ones evade him, they're familiar. And he remembers a voice that kept speaking when the tongue had long grown overheavy, in the middle of an ice storm, holding him steady, flying them away.
He supposes he has learned something, and he ignores the faces around them just as readily as they ignore him. Ignores Lethe's great head lifted and turned toward him, sadness in the infinite depths of hollowed, sky-stained eyes.
Lifts his arms and crashes into the blanket and his husband beyond it, wrapping arms around his neck, stepping hard into all resistance to stand equally resisting, stone meeting stone, remembering to be bone and flesh and sinew and hot breath by Lan Zhan's ear as he exhales, voice lacking inflection outside of what's necessary for intonation to carry meaning correctly, a man who knows his words: )
Magnus found an eye. ( Of a dragon, calcified and horrific and true. ) Lethe has not breathed since before we arrived.
( Death has echoed and haunted and felt in his mind with an intimacy he's run from, danced around and between, called on, sung for, commanded. But not indelibly linked, not swaying his emotions where his defenses have not grown, not the tears of distress of the dead hatchlings, dead children, dead parents, and so he speaks into his husband's ears, his almost, only lover: )
Scales tip and tell.
He's awkward about affection. He knows it. He expects hands to reach for his throat first, particularly with men. His husband's face, all the minute expressions that tell him what he feels, what he thinks, what concerns he has and which ones evade him, they're familiar. And he remembers a voice that kept speaking when the tongue had long grown overheavy, in the middle of an ice storm, holding him steady, flying them away.
He supposes he has learned something, and he ignores the faces around them just as readily as they ignore him. Ignores Lethe's great head lifted and turned toward him, sadness in the infinite depths of hollowed, sky-stained eyes.
Lifts his arms and crashes into the blanket and his husband beyond it, wrapping arms around his neck, stepping hard into all resistance to stand equally resisting, stone meeting stone, remembering to be bone and flesh and sinew and hot breath by Lan Zhan's ear as he exhales, voice lacking inflection outside of what's necessary for intonation to carry meaning correctly, a man who knows his words: )
Magnus found an eye. ( Of a dragon, calcified and horrific and true. ) Lethe has not breathed since before we arrived.
( Death has echoed and haunted and felt in his mind with an intimacy he's run from, danced around and between, called on, sung for, commanded. But not indelibly linked, not swaying his emotions where his defenses have not grown, not the tears of distress of the dead hatchlings, dead children, dead parents, and so he speaks into his husband's ears, his almost, only lover: )
Scales tip and tell.
( At Nightless City, scraps of tendon and splinters of bone crafted Wei Ying and the strength to condemn a sect whole to execution. Here, Lan Wangji does not allow himself the wonder — how Wei Ying, slip of nothing and the jagged turn of a knife-smile, can assail him, send him staggered steps back until he negotiates, finally, his footing and a hand on his soulmate's back.
The blanket draws with his arm, first over Wei Ying's jutting hips, then his ribs, then the soft crown of his head, to shepherd him free of the settling chills, defended from searching eyes and the gasps of the nearest port passer-by, who protests the jump. Lan Wangji's gaze settles — hard, dismissive, dour — on each stranger, until the berth has widened, and he can shift Wei Ying up, nudge him climbed in the cradle of a welcoming arm, at Wangji's side.
Once, I raised a son, and he straddled me so. In name, for all his brother, his uncle, the long and mourning village of the Lan preoccupied themselves with the rearing. )
Hello.
( Their foreheads brush-bridge, neat tautness of Wangji's ribbon pushed in to cast imprint — and he hears Wei Ying. Knows him, the round gravid shape of his hurt, swelling beneath skin. Death dances long and limber between them.
An artless thing, to shift and carry Wei Ying on his side and reach out until the warm weight of Lethe's muzzle answers him. He waits. Feels the slowed, trickled puffs of her breath and greedy inhalations. Dances his fingers on the rim of her lips, teases the brush of fang, until the dragon nips in playful, slow reverence.
His hand withdraws. )
She appears yet living. ( Soft, absent the heat of contradiction. Appearances embellish without defining reality. ) You sense death stirrings within her?
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