If asked, would he ever allow the trespass of another's canines against his flesh, Wei Wuxian would laugh, who send cutting looks, would dance away from the topic with all the grace of a well-trained expert swordsperson, would have dismissed it like he dismisses the possibility of running into canines, lest he never enter towns. Now, his bride teethes on the flesh of his hand, and Lan Zhan is nowhere near the inebriated he's seen him before, nor does he teeter into sobriety as a rickety gondola, bereft of concern in waterways too shallow to have stealing depths.
There is no torture worse than the ones self-made, and Wei Wuxian allows his hands to be playthings, flinches at the pressure of teeth, shivers and frowns as an afterthought. No thoughts to chase down, not now, perhaps not ever, because if he understands they share marriage bed day after day bleeding into long weeks, months, hopeless millennia, nothing in that knowledge changes that it's just a bed, and they are just the people who've always slept upon it. Tethered to each other's rise and fall of chest, the pulse in their throats.
He teases one hand away from Lan Zhan's nose, then the other, moving to cradle either side of an angular face, feeling warmth and skin more smooth for cultivation than any care taken for it, especially. So many small tells for one of excellent cultivation, and yet it doesn't linger, doesn't necessarily link, to the vibrancy of the core so strong, born better capable, in Lan Zhan's chest.
"Sssh." What is it to hold anyone with some element of care? He'd placed himself into his shijie's hands, sought benediction at her knees, beseeched with eyes and ears and witticisms, all for love and understanding of a preciousness he'd never earned. Precious, cradling Lan Zhan's face, forcibly allowing him his breath, though who is he to say if it's wanted? "Hard to breathe when you suffocate yourself, Lan Zhan. I'm here."
In what sense, anchored to body of no milk and plenty, but of hollow bones, hollowed stomach, hollowed eyes seeking steadily to hydrate back into better memories of health. A slow battle, long in the fighting, and at times bolstered and at times undercut by Lan Zhan's single-minded drive for millet filling bowls to fill flanks, poorly. Wine poured, puddled between them, and his head lowers, hair falls, as he regards Lan Zhan's head, his crownless crown, ignoring the bite of the crafted one in his lap as it finds the flesh beneath his robes as he leans.
"You've been enough in red. Blues," he says, voice softening, "I'd like to see you in even more of those." Dressed as bride to death, once, and dressed in reds to panic, fleeing after tying knots and tying himself into more of them, memories strung together, beads to clack in hands that hold and forget what it is within their grasp.
"Come to bed, wife, you've fought hard today. The stones don't need to embrace you, let the sheets handle that much." Not that he moves them, not that he lifts either of them to stand, bound together in ways he thought he'd understood, but hadn't the idea of Lan Zhan's single-minded, single-sided additions; and it is good, he thinks, that he's died once, that Lan Zhan admits to it, to having been widowed.
Wei Wuxian would be as breathless, as drowning, if he'd needed to be the man he once was, a man buried and gone, fallen before Nightless City, morphed in the breakings and gildings of cracks that came before into someone no one had known, for he preferred it to be so.
Let the knowing arguments of marriage begin. Couldn't be too different, could it? (Awareness, however. A nod, a hint, that awareness chances things in ways he would only learn in time.)
no subject
There is no torture worse than the ones self-made, and Wei Wuxian allows his hands to be playthings, flinches at the pressure of teeth, shivers and frowns as an afterthought. No thoughts to chase down, not now, perhaps not ever, because if he understands they share marriage bed day after day bleeding into long weeks, months, hopeless millennia, nothing in that knowledge changes that it's just a bed, and they are just the people who've always slept upon it. Tethered to each other's rise and fall of chest, the pulse in their throats.
He teases one hand away from Lan Zhan's nose, then the other, moving to cradle either side of an angular face, feeling warmth and skin more smooth for cultivation than any care taken for it, especially. So many small tells for one of excellent cultivation, and yet it doesn't linger, doesn't necessarily link, to the vibrancy of the core so strong, born better capable, in Lan Zhan's chest.
"Sssh." What is it to hold anyone with some element of care? He'd placed himself into his shijie's hands, sought benediction at her knees, beseeched with eyes and ears and witticisms, all for love and understanding of a preciousness he'd never earned. Precious, cradling Lan Zhan's face, forcibly allowing him his breath, though who is he to say if it's wanted? "Hard to breathe when you suffocate yourself, Lan Zhan. I'm here."
In what sense, anchored to body of no milk and plenty, but of hollow bones, hollowed stomach, hollowed eyes seeking steadily to hydrate back into better memories of health. A slow battle, long in the fighting, and at times bolstered and at times undercut by Lan Zhan's single-minded drive for millet filling bowls to fill flanks, poorly. Wine poured, puddled between them, and his head lowers, hair falls, as he regards Lan Zhan's head, his crownless crown, ignoring the bite of the crafted one in his lap as it finds the flesh beneath his robes as he leans.
"You've been enough in red. Blues," he says, voice softening, "I'd like to see you in even more of those." Dressed as bride to death, once, and dressed in reds to panic, fleeing after tying knots and tying himself into more of them, memories strung together, beads to clack in hands that hold and forget what it is within their grasp.
"Come to bed, wife, you've fought hard today. The stones don't need to embrace you, let the sheets handle that much." Not that he moves them, not that he lifts either of them to stand, bound together in ways he thought he'd understood, but hadn't the idea of Lan Zhan's single-minded, single-sided additions; and it is good, he thinks, that he's died once, that Lan Zhan admits to it, to having been widowed.
Wei Wuxian would be as breathless, as drowning, if he'd needed to be the man he once was, a man buried and gone, fallen before Nightless City, morphed in the breakings and gildings of cracks that came before into someone no one had known, for he preferred it to be so.
Let the knowing arguments of marriage begin. Couldn't be too different, could it? (Awareness, however. A nod, a hint, that awareness chances things in ways he would only learn in time.)