( 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
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. )