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.)
In the sugar-spun string of a moment that stretches and thins between them, he watches Wei Ying's face for its hidden youth and finds, not for the first time, no sign of the absent Mo Xuanyu. No inclination. The Jin weep and bleed gold, and so they paid death in handsome full.
A wife. Lan Wangji, Hanguang-Jun, second Jade of Lan, chief cultivator, has worn enough names to dress each season. In this room, Lan Zhan. The rustle of flame and the curtains, creased, and their weight dancing. Time betrays itself in the plasticity of its erosion. Each hour is born with its grain, polished down to an even patina. A wife knows the way of the cleansing work, of cloth and tinkered smoothness, of destructive friction. Wangji's touch has not whispered on wet rags since Cloud Recesses burned, and every man who could bend the knee or bear weight attended the reconstruction. It will come to him, like the coy, ink-clotted stroke of an ambitious character in calligraphy. He will remember the ways in which servitude is pleasing.
"Stay," he contradicts Wei Ying, at first for the sake of voicing an objection. Wives rule every household, he will not be gainsaid. Hissed, the lift of his body; he is ill roused, no better than the worms that crush as slick beneath Wei Ying's feet. Squirming, he banishes the stabbing shape of his gifted crown from Wei Ying's lap with an abrupt sweep, and substitutes it with the weight of his head, uninvited. He will not beg this, the intimacy of a hand in his hair, the traditional boon mothers give their children — white glint of his teeth sharp and his eyes at dark sunset, he will anticipate it. He breathes, and lets his bones fill the negative spaces of grooves and crannies in rigid wood beneath him. Remembers the months when he last failed to greet sleep on his back, for the spider's web of gashes that crisscrossed his spine.
"Stay, Wei Ying." Oh, but it's a drawled thing, gnashing. There is a knowing in his teeth, a fond and beastly sickness. Rabid, he wonders if the nearby stretch of Wei Ying's thigh would be as lean and mean under a cautious bite, as was the swell of his palm. Throned on silks and Wei Ying's limbs, Lan Wangji learns to be a generous king. Sleep woos him from his crown. "Water is enough."
He will sleep here, to morning. Ache stiff and lost and bound, guilt-stricken enough to question if he condemned Wei Ying to discomfort on drunken whim. Let him.
Even the child that a-Yuan had been did not so quickly claim the expanse of
his lap, perhaps wise to the bony nature of it, perhaps inclined to cling
and be embraced, held by everyone, until there'd been no one at all. It's
no memory of his mother that brings his hand up, that sends questing,
uncertain fingers stroking down, over, through hair as dark as midnight's
silence. It's his shijie, her memory and care leading the way, decades
since she's passed. Less than a year for how he feels it, and the time
passing did not create for him acceptance.
Still, he knows this, and with Lan Zhan claiming his lap as a domain of
restiveness, of comfort in spite of it's lacks, his hand strokes, caresses,
follows the curves of his soulmate's head as faithfully as he's followed
his blade.
And he hums, quietly, no song of summons, no song of power, but a lullaby,
and it will be the water that feeds them, empty bellied and gaunt, until
they learn to fatten on love's largess. Full of aches and pains and knees
that won't remember straightening, backs that fail the same, but limbs gone
quiet with meditation, this is how they'll stay
Until morning, or the end of the world Whichever arrives first
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.)
no subject
A wife. Lan Wangji, Hanguang-Jun, second Jade of Lan, chief cultivator, has worn enough names to dress each season. In this room, Lan Zhan. The rustle of flame and the curtains, creased, and their weight dancing. Time betrays itself in the plasticity of its erosion. Each hour is born with its grain, polished down to an even patina. A wife knows the way of the cleansing work, of cloth and tinkered smoothness, of destructive friction. Wangji's touch has not whispered on wet rags since Cloud Recesses burned, and every man who could bend the knee or bear weight attended the reconstruction. It will come to him, like the coy, ink-clotted stroke of an ambitious character in calligraphy. He will remember the ways in which servitude is pleasing.
"Stay," he contradicts Wei Ying, at first for the sake of voicing an objection. Wives rule every household, he will not be gainsaid. Hissed, the lift of his body; he is ill roused, no better than the worms that crush as slick beneath Wei Ying's feet. Squirming, he banishes the stabbing shape of his gifted crown from Wei Ying's lap with an abrupt sweep, and substitutes it with the weight of his head, uninvited. He will not beg this, the intimacy of a hand in his hair, the traditional boon mothers give their children — white glint of his teeth sharp and his eyes at dark sunset, he will anticipate it. He breathes, and lets his bones fill the negative spaces of grooves and crannies in rigid wood beneath him. Remembers the months when he last failed to greet sleep on his back, for the spider's web of gashes that crisscrossed his spine.
"Stay, Wei Ying." Oh, but it's a drawled thing, gnashing. There is a knowing in his teeth, a fond and beastly sickness. Rabid, he wonders if the nearby stretch of Wei Ying's thigh would be as lean and mean under a cautious bite, as was the swell of his palm. Throned on silks and Wei Ying's limbs, Lan Wangji learns to be a generous king. Sleep woos him from his crown. "Water is enough."
He will sleep here, to morning. Ache stiff and lost and bound, guilt-stricken enough to question if he condemned Wei Ying to discomfort on drunken whim. Let him.
no subject
Even the child that a-Yuan had been did not so quickly claim the expanse of his lap, perhaps wise to the bony nature of it, perhaps inclined to cling and be embraced, held by everyone, until there'd been no one at all. It's no memory of his mother that brings his hand up, that sends questing, uncertain fingers stroking down, over, through hair as dark as midnight's silence. It's his shijie, her memory and care leading the way, decades since she's passed. Less than a year for how he feels it, and the time passing did not create for him acceptance.
Still, he knows this, and with Lan Zhan claiming his lap as a domain of restiveness, of comfort in spite of it's lacks, his hand strokes, caresses, follows the curves of his soulmate's head as faithfully as he's followed his blade.
And he hums, quietly, no song of summons, no song of power, but a lullaby, and it will be the water that feeds them, empty bellied and gaunt, until they learn to fatten on love's largess. Full of aches and pains and knees that won't remember straightening, backs that fail the same, but limbs gone quiet with meditation, this is how they'll stay
Until morning, or the end of the world Whichever arrives first