"Tease with purpose," he agrees, mild enough, lips curled up and remembering the lightness of when this was something else, some other test. Not Lan Zhan, with a sword to his throat. Not Lan Zhan, asking what they all did, why do you not carry your sword? Not Lan Zhan, handing to him Suibian, carved sheathe a heartache in his hands, blade beautiful, singing when pulled, and silenced again as the scars tightened their invisible lines across his heart.
Suibian was an easy way to feel a shift. The dead steel now, the sword that lay at his side, while he leans against Lan Zhan, let himself cool off in brisk air and watching the puff of clouds birthed with his exhalations, cannot make the same pleas. Cannot call out to him.
He's used to the silence. He's not used to it at all, and yet, like with all scabbed over things, the flesh beneath is not the same each time the scab comes pries free.
"Oh? Hah! So I'm the one who surrenders, ah, and you're the one who bleeds? Very strange," he says, smiling and summoning a look of mock outrage he aims at Lan Zhan, followed by the brush of his wrist against his forehead, smearing salt and water and effort below his hairline. "Very strange interpretation of first blood we have now, Lan Zhan."
Another tease, and what once would have been competitive in the way of bared teeth and glinting blood on bone has softened, steadied into something tempered.
"You're welcome." The considered pause after, and his own words, fingers stroking idly over the pommel of the borrowed sword, eyes slipping down to linger on the steel across Lan Zhan's thighs. "Thank you."
For accepting the offering of peace, for leaving Bichen in her sheath, for consenting to something that can draw them more as equals for greater than the five minutes he might last, and the wreck of himself to come after if he pushed further, drained himself fully, and failed to remember Lan Zhan would already know the truth when night fell and his exhaustion, his depletion, had nowhere else left to hide but at his side, disgruntled and in bed. Rather like a grumpy cat, he thinks, or the fat rabbits that...
Truly, where in the world were Lan Zhan's fat rabbits at present? A mystery. The chickens, at least, were oddly accounted for.
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Suibian was an easy way to feel a shift. The dead steel now, the sword that lay at his side, while he leans against Lan Zhan, let himself cool off in brisk air and watching the puff of clouds birthed with his exhalations, cannot make the same pleas. Cannot call out to him.
He's used to the silence. He's not used to it at all, and yet, like with all scabbed over things, the flesh beneath is not the same each time the scab comes pries free.
"Oh? Hah! So I'm the one who surrenders, ah, and you're the one who bleeds? Very strange," he says, smiling and summoning a look of mock outrage he aims at Lan Zhan, followed by the brush of his wrist against his forehead, smearing salt and water and effort below his hairline. "Very strange interpretation of first blood we have now, Lan Zhan."
Another tease, and what once would have been competitive in the way of bared teeth and glinting blood on bone has softened, steadied into something tempered.
"You're welcome." The considered pause after, and his own words, fingers stroking idly over the pommel of the borrowed sword, eyes slipping down to linger on the steel across Lan Zhan's thighs. "Thank you."
For accepting the offering of peace, for leaving Bichen in her sheath, for consenting to something that can draw them more as equals for greater than the five minutes he might last, and the wreck of himself to come after if he pushed further, drained himself fully, and failed to remember Lan Zhan would already know the truth when night fell and his exhaustion, his depletion, had nowhere else left to hide but at his side, disgruntled and in bed. Rather like a grumpy cat, he thinks, or the fat rabbits that...
Truly, where in the world were Lan Zhan's fat rabbits at present? A mystery. The chickens, at least, were oddly accounted for.