A smile, more teeth, eyes fierce in vivaciousness when he scoffs out the laugh, "No," blood not claimed, and perhaps Lan Zhan should wonder at a man who has denied pain as convincingly as Lan Zhan has, has suffered in the same chosen silences, has deflected and foregone, for if first blood is a convincing end, or if to the pain and to the satisfaction might have been better claims.
Please thrums through him, galvanizing when Lan Zhan comes, forward and sweeping in a graceful, tricky fall of a blade and a hilt that chases laughter in a brief, bitten off statement. An exhalation of surprised, enthralled amusement, Wei Wuxian barely sweeping himself away, and not fully free of impact. Bone will remind him, when he pauses to take stock, later. Not now, when a glancing brush means feet still for standing, and no flash to his following dash in, again pressing Lan Zhan's reach, rendering blades things of crossed natures and not the art of a blade, but the weight of it. Brute strength on a fulcrum, but not to endless press and pressure.
A ghosting grin, the jest in his words, "Like this?" Close enough to reach past themselves and bleed on swords, kiss of flesh and metal, blessing to presage the fight that follows, when they breathe into spaces between them, expanding like lungs. A circulatory system of echoed times, where Lan Zhan has learned the crass, the filth one can fight the world with, and Wei Wuxian, resurrected pebble by pebble, has hosted malevolence in his core.
Death be not proud. If only to be as prideless as that; but a lion knows little of grace in surrender, and Wei Wuxian slides into place, fall of his not-quite robes an extension of each movement, flowing, exaggerating. Flirtation with pain, because there is not, has not been intent to kill, and that dulls every blade. They know, having killed, what it is to fight for anything less than cessation; of a heart, a cause, a calamity. For now, his body responds as a song played through his empty core, filling him with air, light.
Fool's gambit: what Wei Ying has weaponised for decades, he can deflect. It strikes him, with forlorn inevitability, that this is why a master's tricks should not be turned against him, until they have been altered by innovation. Recognisable, they can only serve him. Lan Wangji rolls more than retreats, half worm and half man, and wholly, torturously clear-eyed that the next strike might well taste skin.
Wei Ying's sword cleaves beside him, too close to neck and shoulder and deep in the stab wound it deals waiting ground, thudded and slow, too weighted. This is not Qinghe, but Wei Ying has turned butcher, and he will pay for it — the weight he can never recover a disservice, when he must collect his sword again. It bides Lan Wangji breath, time.
Smear of flush on his cheeks, he comes to stand, dust swirled and heated at his feet, and he heaves, animalistic and vain, and next Wei Ying passes by him — close, too close — he does not parry, or seize, but simply catches Wei Ying, arms rounded and strapped over his chest and back.
He does not intend to slam them both against the nearest wall — barely remembers, at the last moment, to rotate them, so Wangji's core-defended body can absorb the better part of the offensive momentum. Hissing, he relinquishes Wei Ying to slam into the marble for the last of the impact.
...when he laughs, it's a strange, acrid thing, lung-splitting. He coughs too knife-like around it to curb the sound.
"Like... that."
Claim the kill. Slipping down the wall, mouth infected with mute laughter, he's too amused with his own wit to fight it.
The marriage of grappling is one he knows from childhood to adulthood, not
to pleasant gains at all times, but often enough as a child at least to
improving ones. He doesn't expect it of Lan Zhan, the surprise in his eyes
and the curl of his lips even as he would move, to disengage after the
crash, but it's dizzying, sword still held and angled away, and then
there's the wall.
The wall that Lan Zhan makes himself cushion for in his own outlandish
move, and he can't find it in himself to be insulted, treated fragile, when
it's as true that he's gained a specific tendency to collapse into Lan
Zhan's arms for no particularly flattering reason. Only a host of silly to
slighting to dangerous ones, and this, this is silly.
It's delight, warm sunlight raining down when the courtyard remains strewn
with cool shadow, echoes of smoke, further out muffled cries of the ongoing
revolution, such as it is, such as it was doomed to be from before they
arrived.
Air squeezes from his lungs, and he sinks down, stumbled and by Lan Zhan's
wheezing, silent mirthful form. Sword present, silent witness, as he sinks
down too, drives shoulder into shoulder.
"I don't believe," he says, grinning, eyes bright and voice laced with
laughter birthed out of surprise, "I've ever had anyone say that for the
purpose of giving me a very enthusiastic hug!"
Nothing of what's happened, but it's a different bleeding, a different
scoring. He is, frankly, still stunned. What wit, striking him witless.
His heart, hear it, the beat seismic, the rumble of his chest like quaking, rotten slabs of wood on the deck of a vessel stormed. He quiets himself, one and two and breathing, and laughter rippling through the strained stream of controlled exhalations.
"You tease now." And defend his flank and gravitate, organically, movements slated to preserve strength now that its fount has thinned down to rivulets. Trees grow, with time, to reinforce themselves, to fill out the negative space that surrounds them in strategic bindings of bridge and bone, so they might build on and onwards, to the sky and beyond. So too, Wei Ying.
We shot the sun down —
Their shoulders knock and slip in peaceful congress. Beside him, Wei Ying emanates warmth, the musk of a body exercised and his natural, grievous restlessness. Neglected, Lan Wangji's borrowed sword is raised to sit flat and greedy in wait on his thighs.
"Thank you." For the indulgence. The game of it, when Wei Ying draws no further benefit from practising the sword, beyond stretching his bones. "I accept Wei Ying's surrender."
"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.
Mmmmm, he agrees studiously, as if he is kin and kind to the countless archivists and librarians of Gusu Lan, who study the histories of the sects and fuss forcibly over the overstated relevance of the dryness of hay served to steeds, and how it changed the tides of war. "Much changed in error in the sixteen years spent without the Patriarch to guide us."
Yielding and first blood have become matter of whim. The peanuts have grown stale and ill salted. The packaging of robes and the mani-folded press of sashes has weakened and wars with precedent. The cost of inn fares has surged, thrice the going rate Wei Ying could not have scrambled to afford across ten days of begged alms, in the last of his days. Villages and nations have all eroded, without the Yiling Patriarch to steer them.
...so says the amiable, subtle perch of Wangji's brow, considering as Wei Ying insults Lan Wangji's fair and just conquest, for what is victory if not winning the final and definitive awe of your adversary?
Sweat beading his forehead, prickling the back of his robes, and the pleasant, sugar-watered lethargy of bones finding their place again, after sudden exertion. Treacherously, he wants to never move again, Wei Ying content beside him.
Must. He does not ask, fingers knotting with Wei Ying's, tugging up. "Come. Again."
They have a day of this, of tricks old and methods new, of orbiting each other like stars unwilling to accept subordination, begging the equal binds of a constellation. "You have not earned your feeding."
Again, until Wei Ying remembers himself, until the sword is an instrument cast aside because he deems it slow, inefficient and unworthy — but not estranged. They have time: a day, theirs to waste. And if it is selfish to claim hours of solace in the midst of revolution, he has never been kind, seldom caring.
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no subject
Please thrums through him, galvanizing when Lan Zhan comes, forward and sweeping in a graceful, tricky fall of a blade and a hilt that chases laughter in a brief, bitten off statement. An exhalation of surprised, enthralled amusement, Wei Wuxian barely sweeping himself away, and not fully free of impact. Bone will remind him, when he pauses to take stock, later. Not now, when a glancing brush means feet still for standing, and no flash to his following dash in, again pressing Lan Zhan's reach, rendering blades things of crossed natures and not the art of a blade, but the weight of it. Brute strength on a fulcrum, but not to endless press and pressure.
A ghosting grin, the jest in his words, "Like this?" Close enough to reach past themselves and bleed on swords, kiss of flesh and metal, blessing to presage the fight that follows, when they breathe into spaces between them, expanding like lungs. A circulatory system of echoed times, where Lan Zhan has learned the crass, the filth one can fight the world with, and Wei Wuxian, resurrected pebble by pebble, has hosted malevolence in his core.
Death be not proud. If only to be as prideless as that; but a lion knows little of grace in surrender, and Wei Wuxian slides into place, fall of his not-quite robes an extension of each movement, flowing, exaggerating. Flirtation with pain, because there is not, has not been intent to kill, and that dulls every blade. They know, having killed, what it is to fight for anything less than cessation; of a heart, a cause, a calamity. For now, his body responds as a song played through his empty core, filling him with air, light.
no subject
Wei Ying's sword cleaves beside him, too close to neck and shoulder and deep in the stab wound it deals waiting ground, thudded and slow, too weighted. This is not Qinghe, but Wei Ying has turned butcher, and he will pay for it — the weight he can never recover a disservice, when he must collect his sword again. It bides Lan Wangji breath, time.
Smear of flush on his cheeks, he comes to stand, dust swirled and heated at his feet, and he heaves, animalistic and vain, and next Wei Ying passes by him — close, too close — he does not parry, or seize, but simply catches Wei Ying, arms rounded and strapped over his chest and back.
He does not intend to slam them both against the nearest wall — barely remembers, at the last moment, to rotate them, so Wangji's core-defended body can absorb the better part of the offensive momentum. Hissing, he relinquishes Wei Ying to slam into the marble for the last of the impact.
...when he laughs, it's a strange, acrid thing, lung-splitting. He coughs too knife-like around it to curb the sound.
"Like... that."
Claim the kill. Slipping down the wall, mouth infected with mute laughter, he's too amused with his own wit to fight it.
no subject
The marriage of grappling is one he knows from childhood to adulthood, not to pleasant gains at all times, but often enough as a child at least to improving ones. He doesn't expect it of Lan Zhan, the surprise in his eyes and the curl of his lips even as he would move, to disengage after the crash, but it's dizzying, sword still held and angled away, and then there's the wall.
The wall that Lan Zhan makes himself cushion for in his own outlandish move, and he can't find it in himself to be insulted, treated fragile, when it's as true that he's gained a specific tendency to collapse into Lan Zhan's arms for no particularly flattering reason. Only a host of silly to slighting to dangerous ones, and this, this is silly.
It's delight, warm sunlight raining down when the courtyard remains strewn with cool shadow, echoes of smoke, further out muffled cries of the ongoing revolution, such as it is, such as it was doomed to be from before they arrived.
Air squeezes from his lungs, and he sinks down, stumbled and by Lan Zhan's wheezing, silent mirthful form. Sword present, silent witness, as he sinks down too, drives shoulder into shoulder.
"I don't believe," he says, grinning, eyes bright and voice laced with laughter birthed out of surprise, "I've ever had anyone say that for the purpose of giving me a very enthusiastic hug!"
Nothing of what's happened, but it's a different bleeding, a different scoring. He is, frankly, still stunned. What wit, striking him witless.
"You wrestle now."
no subject
"You tease now." And defend his flank and gravitate, organically, movements slated to preserve strength now that its fount has thinned down to rivulets. Trees grow, with time, to reinforce themselves, to fill out the negative space that surrounds them in strategic bindings of bridge and bone, so they might build on and onwards, to the sky and beyond. So too, Wei Ying.
We shot the sun down —
Their shoulders knock and slip in peaceful congress. Beside him, Wei Ying emanates warmth, the musk of a body exercised and his natural, grievous restlessness. Neglected, Lan Wangji's borrowed sword is raised to sit flat and greedy in wait on his thighs.
"Thank you." For the indulgence. The game of it, when Wei Ying draws no further benefit from practising the sword, beyond stretching his bones. "I accept Wei Ying's surrender."
no subject
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.
no subject
Yielding and first blood have become matter of whim. The peanuts have grown stale and ill salted. The packaging of robes and the mani-folded press of sashes has weakened and wars with precedent. The cost of inn fares has surged, thrice the going rate Wei Ying could not have scrambled to afford across ten days of begged alms, in the last of his days. Villages and nations have all eroded, without the Yiling Patriarch to steer them.
...so says the amiable, subtle perch of Wangji's brow, considering as Wei Ying insults Lan Wangji's fair and just conquest, for what is victory if not winning the final and definitive awe of your adversary?
Sweat beading his forehead, prickling the back of his robes, and the pleasant, sugar-watered lethargy of bones finding their place again, after sudden exertion. Treacherously, he wants to never move again, Wei Ying content beside him.
Must. He does not ask, fingers knotting with Wei Ying's, tugging up. "Come. Again."
They have a day of this, of tricks old and methods new, of orbiting each other like stars unwilling to accept subordination, begging the equal binds of a constellation. "You have not earned your feeding."
Again, until Wei Ying remembers himself, until the sword is an instrument cast aside because he deems it slow, inefficient and unworthy — but not estranged. They have time: a day, theirs to waste. And if it is selfish to claim hours of solace in the midst of revolution, he has never been kind, seldom caring.