inbox | eastbound

[downswing]

lan wangji
missives | encounters

Comments

[downswing]

Strange man. Half the heart of a poet.

[weifinder]

With you, a whole poet between us. We'll have our own verses to transcend the time beyond us, just you wait!

[downswing]

Uncle rightfully fears my doom.

I have married an artist.

[weifinder]

Even worse: an artist and an inventor. We shall paint the world in rabbits. And improvements to keep the frightening things from swallowing the less influential peoples whole.

[downswing]

We will starve.


( The most thrilled. )

[weifinder]

Only if we yearn for the same platform bed, night after night!

[downswing]

The thought does not trouble you. Truly?

[weifinder]

I'm not immune to it, but I also have faith it won't come to that. I refuse to live in that fear.

The one I can't shake is bothersome enough, ah? Not adding more, no, no! We shall be positive and sensible and, if need be, exchange services and goods for what we need when it comes to the dinner table.

[downswing]

( For this.

For running. For waiting. For stilling.

For wanting mere scraps and attention.

For companionship. For mercy. For understanding.

For care. )

I love you.

1/?

[weifinder]

( There's context he doesn't have, a thought process he finds hard to trace at times, because he is not Lan Zhan and Lan Zhan is not him. Wei Wuxian blinks, startled, pulling his head back and finding he has no words for a moment. Overwhelmed with a sense of embarrassment that colours his cheeks, his heart catching in his chest, his breath cloying in his lungs. Too much, and he feels it, in a warm and frightening rush, and he's glad for the moment that he doesn't need to speak using his mouth, his lips, his tongue.

If he did, he wouldn't have the words. As it is, this is painfully, exquisitely difficult for him to frame. His husband's brashness, his directness, his shamelessness in this (and no insult, but it startles, is shocks, it endears)... it exceeds anything he expects. Ever.

Wei Wuxian has to pause, to recall breathing. To feel warmth in his eyes as tears simmer and threaten, hurting as all good things learn to hurt. I am worth this, he can feel, and He's worth this, he can think. Can write, in the end. )

I'm tied to the wagon of us.

[weifinder]

No, wait! That came out wrong, I mean I'm tied to you like a wagon

[weifinder]

No, it's that a wagon, love is a wagon, and you find yourself hitched to it

[weifinder]

No, starting again, your love is the wagon I want to be tied to

[weifinder]

Forget I said anything about wagons I don't know how to explain this

[weifinder]

I care for you enough it frightens me. And I don't want, or ask, for anything else.

[weifinder]

I love you. I love you, Lan Zhan.

[weifinder]

You surprise me in the best of ways where I don't have words and you can say things even I don't know how.

end

[weifinder]

Thank you.

[downswing]

( He is the wagon. No, their bond. No, Wei Ying. No —

He cannot decipher.

There is a point past which Wei Ying devolves into childlike innocence, into the rushed inability to concoct the particulars of honest conversation. When he is at once an opaque, obscure scholar, too overwhelmingly intelligent for the audience who spectates him, and an utter fool.

This is that moment. Lan Wangji, who has worn patience like a mantle, dresses in it once more — and, after a pained few moments, turns on the video setting of the pendant to focus on his hand, where the clumsiest paper cart has been folded, the 'wheels' hanging on by literal thread. He pulls on it, the paper wheels shifting more left-right than in rotation. )

I shall carry you. ( But, by the looks of the wheel that unpeels off the string at the next tug, not too far. )

[weifinder]

( visual met with visual, and wei wuxian holds the pendant up to see, to better peer down, at the paper wagon and its swinging wheels. he smiles, throat too tight to speak at first, at length, his eyes wet and glistening. overflowing, as his heart, his chest, everything he is, condensed and contained in this moment. )

All of me, Lan Zhan? We'll have to stay close to both fit.

( attached and conjoined and held and led and leading, supporting and supported, burdened in tandem, loved and learning. always learning. always changing.

he is not a man who knows how to circumvent the need for change. )

[downswing]

Stop. Stop giving your waters.

You are not prettier for it.

[weifinder]

( that prods him into laughing, and he does swipe at the tears that manage to overflow at that. )

Maaah, Lan Zhan, since when do you call me pretty? It's handsome, handsome! I was third most handsome of our generation, once.

( it's words to fill in spaces, no actual heat or caring behind it but for the performance of it, and to distract, detract, from the warmth of these tears. )

[downswing]

Mmmm. Blind arbiter.

[weifinder]

( that has him laughing, genuinely. something he's needed to do for a while here, and it's been hard. )

Is that so? I'll believe you! They'd be equally blind to think you anything less than handsome, you know that, you should.

[downswing]

Did not partake of rankings.