No other bride. A man changed like the butchered passing of seasons. You played sixteen years of door games alone. Did you win?
Here, this body, the man who occupies it. Clasp clammy, the rope of his silks collaring him a noose. Teeth seed back blood into his winter-watered lips. Pain breathes itself.
Here, this body, he despises it. A house hollowed and brittle, and he cannot fill it, cannot make of himself something viscous and vast, cannot suffuse all his tissue, bind the splinters of his bones. Who he is does not suffices himself. The thrummed stirrings of his body haunt him in syncopation.
He is not himself, drifting to sprawl on hard ground, meandered, easy in places he typically turns labyrinthine against himself. The edge of awareness blur and gasp, less for the drink — too gasped, too little even for him, for his weakness, the foolishness of his privileged habit, his innocence to wine. The euphoria of a hundred old hurts sustains him. Curled in the cradle of his whites, he shifts, turns the bridge of his forehead to burn bright against the thick shield of Wei Ying's knee. The trickle and drip of candle wax drowns the room.
"I wore your red at Nightless City." For the blood of Wei Ying, of his enemies. What more can Wei Ying ask, can be asked of him? He tugs once. Collapses his fingers on Wei Ying's, mould against the wiry edges of his knuckles. Rushes the mad, tinkered-smooth planes of Wei Ying's palms to cover Lan Wangji's face, flat and broad, close and closer like a muzzle, a rooftop against the world. In the interstices between Wei Ying's fingers, the sophisticated, manicured crimson of his thick gown fabric is a corpse gored.
"...can't breathe." The soft spill of Wei Ying's skin inundates him, rips and stitches him back in punishments of kindness. Feverish, Wangji's thumbs arch in, steel their grip and graze the ridges of Wei Ying's palms in minute sketches of scratching. Too slow. Futile rattle. He burrows his nose in the fold of Wei Ying's hands, remembers grey days and a groaning abyss, and how he laughed after, how they laughed at the filth of his robes, how grief mutated the debris of Wei Ying's hundreds of unnamed graves into lace and finery. Then, no. Soft and coarse. He needs —
His teeth flicker sharp at the edges, when he rakes the meat of Wei Ying's left palm with them, bites in and in and blood won't spill, can't spill, he keeps the clench clean. Nuzzles once, still sweet and soft and fresh-snowed, nothing of the battering he'd felt before, sixteen years ago, a lifetime. And he murmurs again, "I cannot breathe."
no subject
Here, this body, the man who occupies it. Clasp clammy, the rope of his silks collaring him a noose. Teeth seed back blood into his winter-watered lips. Pain breathes itself.
Here, this body, he despises it. A house hollowed and brittle, and he cannot fill it, cannot make of himself something viscous and vast, cannot suffuse all his tissue, bind the splinters of his bones. Who he is does not suffices himself. The thrummed stirrings of his body haunt him in syncopation.
He is not himself, drifting to sprawl on hard ground, meandered, easy in places he typically turns labyrinthine against himself. The edge of awareness blur and gasp, less for the drink — too gasped, too little even for him, for his weakness, the foolishness of his privileged habit, his innocence to wine. The euphoria of a hundred old hurts sustains him. Curled in the cradle of his whites, he shifts, turns the bridge of his forehead to burn bright against the thick shield of Wei Ying's knee. The trickle and drip of candle wax drowns the room.
"I wore your red at Nightless City." For the blood of Wei Ying, of his enemies. What more can Wei Ying ask, can be asked of him? He tugs once. Collapses his fingers on Wei Ying's, mould against the wiry edges of his knuckles. Rushes the mad, tinkered-smooth planes of Wei Ying's palms to cover Lan Wangji's face, flat and broad, close and closer like a muzzle, a rooftop against the world. In the interstices between Wei Ying's fingers, the sophisticated, manicured crimson of his thick gown fabric is a corpse gored.
"...can't breathe." The soft spill of Wei Ying's skin inundates him, rips and stitches him back in punishments of kindness. Feverish, Wangji's thumbs arch in, steel their grip and graze the ridges of Wei Ying's palms in minute sketches of scratching. Too slow. Futile rattle. He burrows his nose in the fold of Wei Ying's hands, remembers grey days and a groaning abyss, and how he laughed after, how they laughed at the filth of his robes, how grief mutated the debris of Wei Ying's hundreds of unnamed graves into lace and finery. Then, no. Soft and coarse. He needs —
His teeth flicker sharp at the edges, when he rakes the meat of Wei Ying's left palm with them, bites in and in and blood won't spill, can't spill, he keeps the clench clean. Nuzzles once, still sweet and soft and fresh-snowed, nothing of the battering he'd felt before, sixteen years ago, a lifetime. And he murmurs again, "I cannot breathe."