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
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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