( Pale, breezy, wintered. The light playfulness of a parent, toying with the affectionate exasperation of a wilful child. Once, he might have marked every day in increments of proximity to Wei Ying's milestones — a name day, one of assumption as patriarch of Yiling, one of conquest in Nightless City. His death day. Later, his rebirth. Later still, the cleansing of his name.
For a man whose personal possessions crowd in his greedy hands, he owns much of Lan Wangji's year, his past two decades. A pauper in belongings, his wealth stretching in time.
What are days here, counted? Not even a dulling of a dragon's scale, Lethe's own losses and tarnish insignificant. Have they kept tally of their maturity, between blood spilled, lives lost, fates wandered? Let Wei Ying name when he claims another year to his addition. Lan Wangji, more indifferent to the cost of weathering flesh, need not accuse a man yet completely mortal, absent the instruments to achieve immortality — of age. )
Then. Until chen shi.
( A fine waste of morning's pale, feverish light, and still far sooner than the indelicate wu shi when Wei Ying might stir himself to a natural awakening, left to his devices. )
( The seasons might be indication enough if he chooses to use those, but it's off and odd, in ways, and he doesn't register time passing here in the manner he does for the world they know. Too many regions, with their own climates and challenges, and he sighs, reaches one hand back to press against Lethe's hand, leaves the bound one to find Lan Zhan, coax from him anything to hold, while neatly sidestepping a cabbage kicked errantly and sent spinning between them all. )
Si shi. If it's to be for my name day, some unknowing time. And the once, you stingy husband.
( Still earlier than his late risings, on heels of his late nights, all blend and blended together in some half-chosen decision to forever wish to wake in light.
His voice carries nothing of rancour, and the light that dances in his eyes might not be lasting, but it tries. Fireflies to blink out as stars have already done, galaxies away, and he to hold his hands and succour the darkness where it curls, cold, and waits for the turning of cycles to be reborn again. )
( He has not laughed in so long, his mouth neglects the forms. Breaks, twists, realigns itself. A scoff exits him like a breeze, and Lethe imitates him, more to set him her righteous example.
He leans back, chasing comfort in the dregs of the dragon's staunchly lent strength, in how her tail absently starts and turns and captures his waist to give him balance. This, he knows, is the bond Wei Ying and she share, the kernel of care his husband's affection has won him from the beast.
Like a child, he chooses to depend on it. Sensing the shift in tension, Lethe snorts again. )
Si shi, and you may as well claim the day. ( Wastefully, like spoiled things and cats and children. Oh, but Wei Ying meets all these marks and more. ) The day of my birth is comes close to three moons' swells after Wei Ying's own.
( ...or precedes it, by nine such tides. But better to make the game one that can be won. Children, Lan Wangji has learned, are easily frustrated by odds they cannot defeat. )
A sennight from now. We will call Wei Ying's name day. Peace allowing, he may rest.
I'd claim the day, ( he says, as easy and breezing as if he were a spring's exhalation across a blooming meadow, flowers stirred to dipping heads and dancing shivers. lethe lends her support, but does not lend her indulgence to this: she exhales sharply enough to stir the loose hair at the sides of wei wuxian's face. some sly strands even catch in his beard, temporarily misbehaving. much like him, only more tractable as a whole. ) if I can get away with it. What of you? You're technically younger than I am, aren't you? More well lived, ( that same artful, deliberate ease, a nonchalance perhaps neither of them feel, and an ache that apologises to lethe and his husband unequally ) but younger? Or should I be calling you gege.
( amusement to the twist of his lips, and the faint awareness that it hardly matter to him either way. they move, lethe sinuous and space-filling in ways he knows but renders strange in their current environs. they're too close, and not close enough. had it ever mattered before, in the roads passing through village and city, with the calls of the living drowning out the demands of the dead while light hung in the skies. it's darker here, by nature and intent of design, and he sighs. steps forward, holding onto his husband, onto the dragon who breathes without the need for breath. )
Three moons after, yours. What would you wish for your name day, Lan Zhan?
( rest feels so far from possible, for he who sleeps to find nightmares and sightless eyes waiting, seeing through him and into the altered landscape of his mind. lan zhan sleeps well, but wei wuxian does not know if he necessarily rests so well; they share beds, and yet he cannot be sure, in their side by side slumber. just feels glad when his nightmares strike opportune, lan zhan left undisturbed, or only the light of day to greet him. he lifts a shoulder, trying to free the strands of hair caught upon his face from their hold, largely unsuccessful. )
( This is his part, then. Unbidden, ornamental. To drift his hand up to his lover's cheek and know the affection better earned than the status, and exorcise away each hair, each sliver of dishevelment that mars Wei Ying. One by one by one. Carefully, as if he does not attend to a former first disciple, an instrument of Nie Mingjue's war, a conqueror of Nightless City, a patriarch of a sect fresh-born, a revenant, death-made-man.
You could not tell it, for the fresh, revived softness of Wei Ying's cheek. Mo Xuanyu has spared you a wealth of weathering, years of physical maturity. At least this, that they have sixteen name days as a running advantage, to race towards the solution that will name the Yiling Patriarch a once and forever immortal.
It will happen, somehow, with or without a core. Certain miracles require Wangji's conviction to prove immutable. He does not ask for this now, with milling men and an exasperated dragon nudging their backs and flanks with its great, wet nose, so they might kindly move on and not stagger the queue. )
My son's laughter.
( Pretty, crystalline, moderate, restrained. Warm, for all of it, because diligence is the root and discipline the virtue, but blood too will tell, and he is Wen, he is Yiling. They could not amputate his vitality, for all Lan Wangji served him as model of indifference.
He aches, one day, to confess the sin of his failures. How he was present in body, but not sound of mind, never the father Lan Sizhui required until the midday of Lan Wangji's grief, until years on. Not today. He shudders, softens. )
( He shifts forward, only stumbling for the ache of it, and the ease of which he smiles when Lan Zhan coaxes hair by hair away from his face. There's no need to, nothing demands this, and because of that he wishes to lean closer, to still, to bask in a moment of inconsequence that carries his heart, buoyant, unexpected. )
I will.
( Under rabbits, even if he has to draw them himself, or find those with the skill of hands to show him how to craft them from rags, or find the delicate beauty of cloth dolls in their cotton softness to present to his son, their son, the one Lan Zhan claims. To bring joy to him, for sheer absurdity, because that is laughter delivered, and laughter Wei Wuxian knows how to coax from most mouths, let alone the generous one of Lan Sizhui. A-Yuan. Wen Yuan.
The failures of either as guardians, he can only know his own. Not suspect beyond his own understanding of the meaning of those scars across his husband's back, the ways a clan cares for its own, what parenting is and isn't in his eyes, his understanding. What it matters, in this time, where the sins of the parents are what the children forgive, not what they're burdened by.
Lethe behind them, steps before them, and he smiles, simmering into something not quite content, but easier than he had been, the distress compartmentalised and held for viewing later, when he might act. )
If you're not swift, I might bury you in their fluffy grace too!
( That's not a might. That's a promise, mischief acknowledged. )
( The dragon, despondent. His husband, mind merrily at play. The foreground of the customs points — crowded, sullied, slow. Tanned leathers and slate and tinny voices, and all earth, absent shine.
He suspects, even against a deeper, stronger sky, Wei Ying would have shone bright. Does not speak the words, does not presume. There is affection, and then there is arrogance, and here in the slippery territory of fawning over the man who has claimed the tatters of your heart and promises to stitch them whole lies the risk. )
Mark your words.
( He can be this, smile easily sketched, hidden when they pass under rusted eaves and lattices of pipework, when they're suffocating for the dozens of people around them, when Wei Ying's — their — dragon attempts but fails to create them a sheltered distance from the nearest man.
They'll head to whatever place this wretched world has named their 'home,' and he will pretend not to anticipate the disaster of Wei Ying's next ambitious attempt to locate, lure, tame and weaponise an army of beautiful, well-fattened, kindly rabbits. Pretend, but never succeed. )
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no subject
When do you anticipate a name day?
( Pale, breezy, wintered. The light playfulness of a parent, toying with the affectionate exasperation of a wilful child. Once, he might have marked every day in increments of proximity to Wei Ying's milestones — a name day, one of assumption as patriarch of Yiling, one of conquest in Nightless City. His death day. Later, his rebirth. Later still, the cleansing of his name.
For a man whose personal possessions crowd in his greedy hands, he owns much of Lan Wangji's year, his past two decades. A pauper in belongings, his wealth stretching in time.
What are days here, counted? Not even a dulling of a dragon's scale, Lethe's own losses and tarnish insignificant. Have they kept tally of their maturity, between blood spilled, lives lost, fates wandered? Let Wei Ying name when he claims another year to his addition. Lan Wangji, more indifferent to the cost of weathering flesh, need not accuse a man yet completely mortal, absent the instruments to achieve immortality — of age. )
Then. Until chen shi.
( A fine waste of morning's pale, feverish light, and still far sooner than the indelicate wu shi when Wei Ying might stir himself to a natural awakening, left to his devices. )
no subject
( The seasons might be indication enough if he chooses to use those, but it's off and odd, in ways, and he doesn't register time passing here in the manner he does for the world they know. Too many regions, with their own climates and challenges, and he sighs, reaches one hand back to press against Lethe's hand, leaves the bound one to find Lan Zhan, coax from him anything to hold, while neatly sidestepping a cabbage kicked errantly and sent spinning between them all. )
Si shi. If it's to be for my name day, some unknowing time. And the once, you stingy husband.
( Still earlier than his late risings, on heels of his late nights, all blend and blended together in some half-chosen decision to forever wish to wake in light.
His voice carries nothing of rancour, and the light that dances in his eyes might not be lasting, but it tries. Fireflies to blink out as stars have already done, galaxies away, and he to hold his hands and succour the darkness where it curls, cold, and waits for the turning of cycles to be reborn again. )
no subject
( He has not laughed in so long, his mouth neglects the forms. Breaks, twists, realigns itself. A scoff exits him like a breeze, and Lethe imitates him, more to set him her righteous example.
He leans back, chasing comfort in the dregs of the dragon's staunchly lent strength, in how her tail absently starts and turns and captures his waist to give him balance. This, he knows, is the bond Wei Ying and she share, the kernel of care his husband's affection has won him from the beast.
Like a child, he chooses to depend on it. Sensing the shift in tension, Lethe snorts again. )
Si shi, and you may as well claim the day. ( Wastefully, like spoiled things and cats and children. Oh, but Wei Ying meets all these marks and more. ) The day of my birth is comes close to three moons' swells after Wei Ying's own.
( ...or precedes it, by nine such tides. But better to make the game one that can be won. Children, Lan Wangji has learned, are easily frustrated by odds they cannot defeat. )
A sennight from now. We will call Wei Ying's name day. Peace allowing, he may rest.
( Peace, in fact, does not allow. )
no subject
( amusement to the twist of his lips, and the faint awareness that it hardly matter to him either way. they move, lethe sinuous and space-filling in ways he knows but renders strange in their current environs. they're too close, and not close enough. had it ever mattered before, in the roads passing through village and city, with the calls of the living drowning out the demands of the dead while light hung in the skies. it's darker here, by nature and intent of design, and he sighs. steps forward, holding onto his husband, onto the dragon who breathes without the need for breath. )
Three moons after, yours. What would you wish for your name day, Lan Zhan?
( rest feels so far from possible, for he who sleeps to find nightmares and sightless eyes waiting, seeing through him and into the altered landscape of his mind. lan zhan sleeps well, but wei wuxian does not know if he necessarily rests so well; they share beds, and yet he cannot be sure, in their side by side slumber. just feels glad when his nightmares strike opportune, lan zhan left undisturbed, or only the light of day to greet him. he lifts a shoulder, trying to free the strands of hair caught upon his face from their hold, largely unsuccessful. )
no subject
( This is his part, then. Unbidden, ornamental. To drift his hand up to his lover's cheek and know the affection better earned than the status, and exorcise away each hair, each sliver of dishevelment that mars Wei Ying. One by one by one. Carefully, as if he does not attend to a former first disciple, an instrument of Nie Mingjue's war, a conqueror of Nightless City, a patriarch of a sect fresh-born, a revenant, death-made-man.
You could not tell it, for the fresh, revived softness of Wei Ying's cheek. Mo Xuanyu has spared you a wealth of weathering, years of physical maturity. At least this, that they have sixteen name days as a running advantage, to race towards the solution that will name the Yiling Patriarch a once and forever immortal.
It will happen, somehow, with or without a core. Certain miracles require Wangji's conviction to prove immutable. He does not ask for this now, with milling men and an exasperated dragon nudging their backs and flanks with its great, wet nose, so they might kindly move on and not stagger the queue. )
My son's laughter.
( Pretty, crystalline, moderate, restrained. Warm, for all of it, because diligence is the root and discipline the virtue, but blood too will tell, and he is Wen, he is Yiling. They could not amputate his vitality, for all Lan Wangji served him as model of indifference.
He aches, one day, to confess the sin of his failures. How he was present in body, but not sound of mind, never the father Lan Sizhui required until the midday of Lan Wangji's grief, until years on. Not today. He shudders, softens. )
Bury him under rabbits.
no subject
( He shifts forward, only stumbling for the ache of it, and the ease of which he smiles when Lan Zhan coaxes hair by hair away from his face. There's no need to, nothing demands this, and because of that he wishes to lean closer, to still, to bask in a moment of inconsequence that carries his heart, buoyant, unexpected. )
I will.
( Under rabbits, even if he has to draw them himself, or find those with the skill of hands to show him how to craft them from rags, or find the delicate beauty of cloth dolls in their cotton softness to present to his son, their son, the one Lan Zhan claims. To bring joy to him, for sheer absurdity, because that is laughter delivered, and laughter Wei Wuxian knows how to coax from most mouths, let alone the generous one of Lan Sizhui. A-Yuan. Wen Yuan.
The failures of either as guardians, he can only know his own. Not suspect beyond his own understanding of the meaning of those scars across his husband's back, the ways a clan cares for its own, what parenting is and isn't in his eyes, his understanding. What it matters, in this time, where the sins of the parents are what the children forgive, not what they're burdened by.
Lethe behind them, steps before them, and he smiles, simmering into something not quite content, but easier than he had been, the distress compartmentalised and held for viewing later, when he might act. )
If you're not swift, I might bury you in their fluffy grace too!
( That's not a might. That's a promise, mischief acknowledged. )
no subject
( The dragon, despondent. His husband, mind merrily at play. The foreground of the customs points — crowded, sullied, slow. Tanned leathers and slate and tinny voices, and all earth, absent shine.
He suspects, even against a deeper, stronger sky, Wei Ying would have shone bright. Does not speak the words, does not presume. There is affection, and then there is arrogance, and here in the slippery territory of fawning over the man who has claimed the tatters of your heart and promises to stitch them whole lies the risk. )
Mark your words.
( He can be this, smile easily sketched, hidden when they pass under rusted eaves and lattices of pipework, when they're suffocating for the dozens of people around them, when Wei Ying's — their — dragon attempts but fails to create them a sheltered distance from the nearest man.
They'll head to whatever place this wretched world has named their 'home,' and he will pretend not to anticipate the disaster of Wei Ying's next ambitious attempt to locate, lure, tame and weaponise an army of beautiful, well-fattened, kindly rabbits. Pretend, but never succeed. )