( Collections of environment, scents and sights and sounds, the powerful evocations of memory. He has his own, and it's the sound of dogs, the flash of teeth, the scent of blood and terror in his tiny lungs. It hurts, thinking A-Yuan lived through some form of this, and his heart constricts within his chest, then he breathes regardless.
Closes his eyes at the hand in his hair, the fingers entangling firmly with the length of his parent's gift to him, the devotion he shows as any person does from home, not stripping himself of the body his parents gave him, as none of them do. Filial piety in the wearing of form, the way they grow without contestation, and he sighs, a soft sound swallowed by the susurrations of the sea, down the hill, cloaked in fog.
This is not a touch to lean into, not the rake of nails and fingers, blunt, against scalp, not the cupping of a head, or cheek, or jaw. Lan Zhan is both here, immediate, and distant, the anchoring of a river creature in the water weeds, the strain of waters pulled through tangled roots, strangling. He doesn't feel strangled now, and that perhaps is part of the ease in his bones, why he laughs and he sounds close to carefree.
He's not, not in the waking sea of dead. Not carefree, but perhaps, in part, lightened. )
Do you think this one will like me any better?
( And they no, no, it will not, that no animal rises ready and easy to his touch, but that people, spirits do, that which can be charmed in word or song. He is not a man given to quiet and stillness and silence by nature: he coaxes children, where the rabbits, looking for calmer spirits, shy. Where the donkey, seeking its own way, butts head with one equally independent, and slightly liable to spoils of free feeding along the way. )
This is the truth of him, startled and stone, given to stubborn resistance: to persist, hands claws and sundering Wei Ying's hair again like waters, picking out strands as if they were his noose. How would Lan Wangji die of him, of Wei Ying?
Grit and gravel scrape his knees through granules of sand, shifting, and the world transforms, and he is still this — an anchor, still fixated on Wei Ying, still hollowed, still an accessory. The lace trim on Wei Ying's sleeves, his doubled collar. This is Lan Wangji, flickered beat adorning his soulmate's pulse. He wants to scent him — take, this is what means to own, the capacity to singularly and indifferently shatter.
Does not. He releases (again), withdraws (again), reconsiders (again). Fear is damp and lichen, the silvered edge of his smile, deceptive. )
You are a terrible man.
( Selfish, whimsical, breezy. Possessed of strange and eerie righteousness. Utterly, painfully, wickedly impulsive. Prone to brilliance, to laughter, to sacrifice. To cleaving Wangji's innards and glistening them with their fats over fire. To being, as ash is, dispersed in wind, one moment contained the next coagulated, the heartbeat after gone.
A mystifying, glorious creation. Yiling Patriarch, first disciple, Wei Ying. )
It will know. ( As Lan Wangji knows, a man complicit. One who leads into blindness by example. He thinks, if Wei Ying's hair flies free in the wind spell, it will yet tempt him. Starts, gently, to braid it and leave the ends loose. ) You have no more truths solely your own.
( He laughs, quiet at first, then deeper, richer, returning to a spontaneity he has almost forgotten. Kitten claws pressing into his heart, prickling and painful and sweet, as Lan Zhan attempts his braiding. He could move away, part of him saying he should, but no.
They are themselves, as flawed and terrible and great as that might be, and it might eventually be enough. Choosing what are, and what they do; choosing whom they're with and how and why.
One ribbon wrapped around a wrist, and the red should draw his eyes, but he knows it, has tasted it. Might not be moved to taste it better but were it painting Lan Zhan's lips, and he lets that thought go too, on the same wind that slips past them, thick with the scent of the sea and its natural decay, denying the dead beneath its surface. )
What about you, Lan Zhan? Any other hidden truths to share?
( A reach out, fingers hooked into the skirts of his robes, tugging once. Here. )
( There is a trick to this, as with weighing an unbalanced sword, with teasing it tip-blade-edge close: an art to the clasp of a wrist more bone than softened meat, to drawing Wei Ying near and dear and smear of his shadow dragged on hard land.
There is no kindness in him, for this. No distinction between where the feral appetite to claim begins and the diplomatic one to conquer without bloodshed ends. Greed is a continuum, possession a foregone semantic conclusion. No hunting thrills like that of man.
Slipped, his fingers dip until he clutches Wei Ying's hand in his own and only wrestles his thumb in, serpentine, to sketch out warm snags of ruined rhetoric on his palm, a fluttering candle of communication poorly traded. What you know, you know. He writes easily, terribly, conveniently, the rushed trill of his countless secrets in the aching code of Gusu Lan private correspondence intended only for the sect.
And reedy in the way of leaves thieving trickle under moonlight: )
( That he tries making sense of the tracings on his palm, the thick brush of the pad of Lan Zhan's thumb forming characters that lack definition, if not certainty, has his mind tugged and distracted while his eyes focus on Lan Zhan's features, his brow, the line of his nose and its dip toward shadow, the shape of his lips. His teeth, when bared.
This is not a matter of fairness, not even justice; this is not sixteen years stretched between them, two very different men standing on either end of it. This is a negotiation between people, whole and fractured and reknit on their own.
Will he? He doesn't need to. Whatever ribbons tied around wrists, Lan Zhan hadn't expected him to wait, to accept, to take in one selfishness in exchange for another, unknowing then known. To choose, daily, what it is they are for each other, what form of support that takes, what demands they make, what they refuse or accept. They, unlike the watery dead, are not bound to singular truths, to clawing ends. What they drown in is, so far, a choice.
His hand closes around that thumb, stilling it, lips curved enough to suggest a smile without dedicating to one. )
I'll wait. For now.
( But not forever, because in nothing can be promise something as impossible as that. Yet to not demand secrets from a man who takes pleasure in declaring Wei Wuxian no longer has any? Oh, pride would say, this is no level playing field, but wisdom notes it never was.
He will learn, or he will not. What matters more is what they learn together... more or less. )
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Closes his eyes at the hand in his hair, the fingers entangling firmly with the length of his parent's gift to him, the devotion he shows as any person does from home, not stripping himself of the body his parents gave him, as none of them do. Filial piety in the wearing of form, the way they grow without contestation, and he sighs, a soft sound swallowed by the susurrations of the sea, down the hill, cloaked in fog.
This is not a touch to lean into, not the rake of nails and fingers, blunt, against scalp, not the cupping of a head, or cheek, or jaw. Lan Zhan is both here, immediate, and distant, the anchoring of a river creature in the water weeds, the strain of waters pulled through tangled roots, strangling. He doesn't feel strangled now, and that perhaps is part of the ease in his bones, why he laughs and he sounds close to carefree.
He's not, not in the waking sea of dead. Not carefree, but perhaps, in part, lightened. )
Do you think this one will like me any better?
( And they no, no, it will not, that no animal rises ready and easy to his touch, but that people, spirits do, that which can be charmed in word or song. He is not a man given to quiet and stillness and silence by nature: he coaxes children, where the rabbits, looking for calmer spirits, shy. Where the donkey, seeking its own way, butts head with one equally independent, and slightly liable to spoils of free feeding along the way. )
no subject
This is the truth of him, startled and stone, given to stubborn resistance: to persist, hands claws and sundering Wei Ying's hair again like waters, picking out strands as if they were his noose. How would Lan Wangji die of him, of Wei Ying?
Grit and gravel scrape his knees through granules of sand, shifting, and the world transforms, and he is still this — an anchor, still fixated on Wei Ying, still hollowed, still an accessory. The lace trim on Wei Ying's sleeves, his doubled collar. This is Lan Wangji, flickered beat adorning his soulmate's pulse. He wants to scent him — take, this is what means to own, the capacity to singularly and indifferently shatter.
Does not. He releases (again), withdraws (again), reconsiders (again). Fear is damp and lichen, the silvered edge of his smile, deceptive. )
You are a terrible man.
( Selfish, whimsical, breezy. Possessed of strange and eerie righteousness. Utterly, painfully, wickedly impulsive. Prone to brilliance, to laughter, to sacrifice. To cleaving Wangji's innards and glistening them with their fats over fire. To being, as ash is, dispersed in wind, one moment contained the next coagulated, the heartbeat after gone.
A mystifying, glorious creation. Yiling Patriarch, first disciple, Wei Ying. )
It will know. ( As Lan Wangji knows, a man complicit. One who leads into blindness by example. He thinks, if Wei Ying's hair flies free in the wind spell, it will yet tempt him. Starts, gently, to braid it and leave the ends loose. ) You have no more truths solely your own.
no subject
They are themselves, as flawed and terrible and great as that might be, and it might eventually be enough. Choosing what are, and what they do; choosing whom they're with and how and why.
One ribbon wrapped around a wrist, and the red should draw his eyes, but he knows it, has tasted it. Might not be moved to taste it better but were it painting Lan Zhan's lips, and he lets that thought go too, on the same wind that slips past them, thick with the scent of the sea and its natural decay, denying the dead beneath its surface. )
What about you, Lan Zhan? Any other hidden truths to share?
( A reach out, fingers hooked into the skirts of his robes, tugging once. Here. )
no subject
There is no kindness in him, for this. No distinction between where the feral appetite to claim begins and the diplomatic one to conquer without bloodshed ends. Greed is a continuum, possession a foregone semantic conclusion. No hunting thrills like that of man.
Slipped, his fingers dip until he clutches Wei Ying's hand in his own and only wrestles his thumb in, serpentine, to sketch out warm snags of ruined rhetoric on his palm, a fluttering candle of communication poorly traded. What you know, you know. He writes easily, terribly, conveniently, the rushed trill of his countless secrets in the aching code of Gusu Lan private correspondence intended only for the sect.
And reedy in the way of leaves thieving trickle under moonlight: )
Forgive me. Will you wait for them?
no subject
This is not a matter of fairness, not even justice; this is not sixteen years stretched between them, two very different men standing on either end of it. This is a negotiation between people, whole and fractured and reknit on their own.
Will he? He doesn't need to. Whatever ribbons tied around wrists, Lan Zhan hadn't expected him to wait, to accept, to take in one selfishness in exchange for another, unknowing then known. To choose, daily, what it is they are for each other, what form of support that takes, what demands they make, what they refuse or accept. They, unlike the watery dead, are not bound to singular truths, to clawing ends. What they drown in is, so far, a choice.
His hand closes around that thumb, stilling it, lips curved enough to suggest a smile without dedicating to one. )
I'll wait. For now.
( But not forever, because in nothing can be promise something as impossible as that. Yet to not demand secrets from a man who takes pleasure in declaring Wei Wuxian no longer has any? Oh, pride would say, this is no level playing field, but wisdom notes it never was.
He will learn, or he will not. What matters more is what they learn together... more or less. )