( The half-hearted squirming of Lan Zhan and his caress of the word pretty prods Wei Wuxian into laughing, light and low. He moves the leaf up a touch, then down again, creating a more obvious artificial wind to bear down on his husband, just as he bears down temporarily on his legs. )
Alas, you've been condemned to a handsome one. Ribbon?
( One hand, reaching out, collecting the ribbon in loose fingers. Sliding it free, before he flicks upward with the leaf, leaving enough room for him to pitch forward in a calculated fall, press lips in brief to the sweat banded above where the ribbon lay, central of Lan Zhan's forehead. )
Thank you.
( Then the grunt of effort as he hauls himself sideways, less dismounting and more rolling off to flop at Lan Zhan's side for the moment, leaving the cooling leaf over Lan Zhan alone. He holds up the claimed ribbon, arm circling to encourage a loose looping around. He tugs at his held wrist, to see if it might be freed to address this necessity, the winding and tying of ribbon around arm. )
Need your outer robes next. For cleaning. And I brought you new ones! Blue ones.
( Clean ones is the point, and cooler for it in the moment, but also the guided reasoning, the steps toward logical excuse for fewer layers, in the relative privacy of their grotto and his husband's inequity before the demands of the heat, sticky, close, and nowhere near as endearing as a child of similar temperament. )
( Romantic, on any other day. Sweet. Tender. Welcome.
...but he is still unpleasantly, stickily molten, limbs heavy and weighted like molasses. He unpeels himself off the stone floor in increments, then wilts back after.
It feels... cruel to ask more of him, even blessed by blinks of glimpsing Wei Ying's wrist heavily bound. He clings to the leaf as if it were his blanket. )
( Layer by layer, this unwrapping of his husband, and now he kneels at his feet, reaching for his boots to but strip them bare. )
No, no, that won't do at all. We'll just have to take care of the heat, ah?
( Tugging... socks... off too, once boots are set to the side. Unfortunate how things cling to skin from damp of sweat and humidity, but fingers are clever and more stubborn than not. )
Could make it two leaves. I was going to originally, but the pair of them ate the second leaf, and so there's the one that survived.
( He gestures, smile wry, to the leave coddled as a blanket against Lan Zhan's self. Nibbles at corners make it as evident it, too, has seen rabbit attentions, albeit lightly. )
They keep crawling into blankets and napping, have you seen it? With everything so hot, how.
( ...ah, his beautiful youngest children, the darlings of his withered heart. Even defiled in plain daylight, his flesh increasingly exposed, his ankles obscenely visible —
He cannot summon the will and energy to stir. It is too late for him. The hour long gone, his moment done.
As Wei Ying toils to unpeel the last of his socks, Lan Wangji blindly pats his arm, his shoulder, whatever parts of his husband come within reach without requiring the exertion of a stretch. Then, somberly: )
( Another laugh as the second sock is folded and set aside, Wei Wuxian patting Lan Zhan's forearm in return. )
You can't nurse them, ( he says, the pretense of a serious expression flitting across his features, ) at least not off your body, and they're a bit old for that, aren't they?
( He's already on his feet and moving away, outer robe and socks and even boots going with him, laughter lingering behind. By the basket with the clean robes, Wei Wuxian sets down his burden and pauses. An odd... movement? The small furrow of his brows marries the equally small frown on his lips: he reaches out, twitching back the blue.
His eyes widen. His head whips around, staring at his splayed out husband, crushed beneath the heat of the world, communing with a leaf. )
Lan Zhan! Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan!
( Wei Wuxian is, approximately, squeaking. He makes a waving motion, and then pauses, and waves off the prior motion. One familiar furry face pops up over the side of the basket, and he gives up, leaning down to scoop the basket into his arms and shuffle-scurrying toward the human shaped defeat draped on stone.
The mixture of excitement and tension and concern on Wei Wuxian's face isn't sweet, perhaps, not with an unknown, but he's kneeling next to his defanged, death seeking husband, the twin to his soul's light, and all but settles the basket between them.
Again, one familiar face pokes up and over, sniffing the air, long ears twitching. Wei Wuxian's staring past her, into the basket. He says, voice filled with disproportionate wonder: )
Preserve water, energy and the dregs of comfort. Be and continue as one with stone and soil.
He's on the cusp of achieving this perfect union when Wei Ying turns away — gasps — says — )
Sizhu — ( And Lan Wangji bolts up, as if serpent-struck, clutching the front collar of Wei Ying's robes in one greedy hand, hovering over the basket, and...
...stilling. Abruptly. Entirely. Without heat or moderation. Simply... breathing, caught in the deluge of beauty before him. )
( Said with a smile that softens from a grin, viewing the small, dark striped bean shaped creatures nestled into the fur clumps and remains of the second leaf, rendered useful as a rabbit doe's preference in nest building. Likewise evident, the second rabbit — both, he finally understands in a way he'll remember, indelibly female — with a tiny haunch visible beneath, nursing and flicking dismissive ears their way.
He has no concept of a count. How many nurse on the one, and oh, the second rabbit returning to settle over her babies, her little ones, her whatever they're properly called. The joyful mess of all this nestled in silk, the speed at which this has occurred, tenders a sense of awe, a sense of sweet fondness that surprises him in the moment.
He holds the basket steady for his husband's gaze. )
Lan Zhan, they're so small. Aren't they small? And their fur hasn't come in. You sneaky ladies, you just gave birth, didn't you?
( The wonder in his smile, in his eyes lifting and searching across Lan Zhan's face in its stillness, and he offers: )
I love you.
( ... these unexpected words, where he had thought he might say anything else. Only he's not embarrassed, can't be, secure in his affections and attractions and the privacy of Lan Zhan's cooling cave, the precious constancy of precocious existence displayed without fanfare, without justification.
The dregs of what hesitation his heart harbours for the small, quiet fear he may never be enough, not as himself, loosens its last root and drifts away. All for the sake of that emotion in his husband's eyes, gazing down at the blind, milk seeking wonders of their rabbits tending to their heirs of the body, safe and soft and trusting without inhibition or doubt. The pure smile that continues to frame his face births statement: )
( Stricken by two catastrophes of the heart: first, the sight before him, the two — mother, both? — rabbits calling close their litters, young dark-haired spotted beads strung around their bodies, full. The pulses and quakes of their young limbs, swaying. And Wei Ying —
Distantly, he gives a soft, muted hum of approval. A new robe, so be it. Seven layers for seven gifts of blessing, to the youth that grace them. May this be his tribute.
And, I love you, a strange lightning's glimpse of a moment, fissured and slithering between them. He turns, eyes dripping fondness, and draws a hand over Wei Ying's nape to pull him in and bring their foreheads together. I love you, also.
One of the rabbits coos. It occurs to him, belatedly, discarding every urgency to never move again, to start the long fishing for leftover, stray leaves. They must hunger. It is so with nursing. )
...apologies. ( It was not asked. ) I allowed them to roam freely, beside me. With Clara.
( All of which is hardly to say that Clara impregnated the rabbits. And still, he shivers, coursed by choked rivulets of fear. He is a man made great by brutality, the coarse force of qi only polished through copious exercise and dilution. Hanguang-Jun earned his name through slaughter. )
( Ask him what it takes to care for another, for the small and helpless, for the enduring fragility of life, and he can list... enough ways, with them old enough, guess close enough, he who has never held any newborn or newly to this world before now. Yet he is asked, and he applies what intelligence seeking outside the boundaries of their own comfort to the exquisite dilemma of small, fur-cradled creatures nestled under their mothers, as they're wont to do )
We feed their mothers, keep them all warm and safe. Not too warm, but warm. No fur yet, they could get cold when the ladies eat.
( His eyes closed for that moment of forehead to forehead greeting, the silent response that filled cracks in his chest, glinting in bright molten light now. The low laugh and parting of lashes so that he might see Lan Zhan, the sweaty, heated, distressed version of him ignoring his own melting in favour of these small, unanticipated lives. )
So that's when they had a chance. How bold of them, to seize that moment and make it theirs.
( The slow smile, eyes still speckled with wonder, stars across a galaxy, but not a universe. )
No apologies. It's in their nature, and brings no harm.
( More considerations of food and safety and, ah. Contraptions built to carry and hold, for the growing legions. )
( No apologies. And, it is in their natures. And more, so much more, a deluge of words whole that Lan Wangji cannot contain or truly fathom, entirely consumed by the task of balancing his robe between two tentative hands to create the beautiful creatures their cradle.
He sets the burden down, Astrov — or is it now, Astra? — rising up to nose at the dripped heated print of his hand, to bop his thumb as he forces restraint back in his bones. She wants him near, he supposes. Or at a great and formidable distance, a force once protective, now petrifying.
Shivered, his touch — repugnantly coarse — cannot help. He is too large, too overwhelming. A force. )
( Relieving them of a certain burden of thought: he admits his best thoughts are for human children. He'll keep those in reserve, knowing their hearts and tendencies. )
Yes, yes, why not ask them all? More inspiration across that many imaginations.
( After all, Astrov and Vanya have lived long, respectable lives, barring a rare incident of — he flinches with inevitability — birthing out of wedlock. )
Unless Wei Ying prefers the honour. ( As the mother, so on. )
( not bothering to hold back his laughter, he waves his hands twice, over the carefully attended basket. one furry head lifts and a scoffing huff follows, along with sniff sniff sniffing, and he makes to stand )
As you say, as you say! I'll find more for our little mothers to eat, you speak to Zewu-jun and Clara, ah?
( But loving and desperately fond and sweet, yet rounding his hands to cup the litter's catch and bring it up, lovingly, and inhale its presence. He is never letting go of these young ones again —
For the next two, three minutes, before their mothers turn around to mind them. )
Wei Ying. Thank you for giving me grandchildren. ( By gifting him their furred daughters to start. )
( Knees bent, halfway towards, and he leans close, another kiss to the top of Lan Zhan's head, easy as he continues rising. Room for the small bodies cupped and held, room for the hearts in their expansive chests, beating and pricked by tiny kitten claws in fondness. )
To fill every corner of your heart until bursting. I'll be swift.
( There, the care light smile, the easy fondness, and he's to the entrance and out into grasping heat once more, to find the sweetest, safest, most nourishing of greens... and a little fruit, too.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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( This... is simultaneously the best and worst he has felt in some time, relieved of heat and gently finding his legs cremating.
He tries, valiantly, to curl and dwindle his exposure. Finds his legs entrapped instead. The horror. )
Mmmmm. Pretty servants. ( With the gentle and wistful lilt of a man expressing he has somehow blindly wedded a hog, a slimeball, a bear's left foot. )
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Alas, you've been condemned to a handsome one. Ribbon?
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( ...ribbon. Gemtly unwound, with a clumsy hand. A shrivel of heat, undone off his wetted forehead.
And held forward. )
Mercy. ( So says the loser of any duel. )
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( One hand, reaching out, collecting the ribbon in loose fingers. Sliding it free, before he flicks upward with the leaf, leaving enough room for him to pitch forward in a calculated fall, press lips in brief to the sweat banded above where the ribbon lay, central of Lan Zhan's forehead. )
Thank you.
( Then the grunt of effort as he hauls himself sideways, less dismounting and more rolling off to flop at Lan Zhan's side for the moment, leaving the cooling leaf over Lan Zhan alone. He holds up the claimed ribbon, arm circling to encourage a loose looping around. He tugs at his held wrist, to see if it might be freed to address this necessity, the winding and tying of ribbon around arm. )
Need your outer robes next. For cleaning. And I brought you new ones! Blue ones.
( Clean ones is the point, and cooler for it in the moment, but also the guided reasoning, the steps toward logical excuse for fewer layers, in the relative privacy of their grotto and his husband's inequity before the demands of the heat, sticky, close, and nowhere near as endearing as a child of similar temperament. )
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( Romantic, on any other day. Sweet. Tender. Welcome.
...but he is still unpleasantly, stickily molten, limbs heavy and weighted like molasses. He unpeels himself off the stone floor in increments, then wilts back after.
It feels... cruel to ask more of him, even blessed by blinks of glimpsing Wei Ying's wrist heavily bound. He clings to the leaf as if it were his blanket. )
Leave me to perish.
( He's not moving. )
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( Layer by layer, this unwrapping of his husband, and now he kneels at his feet, reaching for his boots to but strip them bare. )
No, no, that won't do at all. We'll just have to take care of the heat, ah?
( Tugging... socks... off too, once boots are set to the side. Unfortunate how things cling to skin from damp of sweat and humidity, but fingers are clever and more stubborn than not. )
Could make it two leaves. I was going to originally, but the pair of them ate the second leaf, and so there's the one that survived.
( He gestures, smile wry, to the leave coddled as a blanket against Lan Zhan's self. Nibbles at corners make it as evident it, too, has seen rabbit attentions, albeit lightly. )
They keep crawling into blankets and napping, have you seen it? With everything so hot, how.
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( ...ah, his beautiful youngest children, the darlings of his withered heart. Even defiled in plain daylight, his flesh increasingly exposed, his ankles obscenely visible —
He cannot summon the will and energy to stir. It is too late for him. The hour long gone, his moment done.
As Wei Ying toils to unpeel the last of his socks, Lan Wangji blindly pats his arm, his shoulder, whatever parts of his husband come within reach without requiring the exertion of a stretch. Then, somberly: )
They may have the waters of my body.
( This man is not being dramatic. )
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( Another laugh as the second sock is folded and set aside, Wei Wuxian patting Lan Zhan's forearm in return. )
You can't nurse them, ( he says, the pretense of a serious expression flitting across his features, ) at least not off your body, and they're a bit old for that, aren't they?
( He's already on his feet and moving away, outer robe and socks and even boots going with him, laughter lingering behind. By the basket with the clean robes, Wei Wuxian sets down his burden and pauses. An odd... movement? The small furrow of his brows marries the equally small frown on his lips: he reaches out, twitching back the blue.
His eyes widen. His head whips around, staring at his splayed out husband, crushed beneath the heat of the world, communing with a leaf. )
Lan Zhan! Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan!
( Wei Wuxian is, approximately, squeaking. He makes a waving motion, and then pauses, and waves off the prior motion. One familiar furry face pops up over the side of the basket, and he gives up, leaning down to scoop the basket into his arms and shuffle-scurrying toward the human shaped defeat draped on stone.
The mixture of excitement and tension and concern on Wei Wuxian's face isn't sweet, perhaps, not with an unknown, but he's kneeling next to his defanged, death seeking husband, the twin to his soul's light, and all but settles the basket between them.
Again, one familiar face pokes up and over, sniffing the air, long ears twitching. Wei Wuxian's staring past her, into the basket. He says, voice filled with disproportionate wonder: )
We're grandfathers!
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( Do not move. Do not flinch. Do not breathe.
Preserve water, energy and the dregs of comfort. Be and continue as one with stone and soil.
He's on the cusp of achieving this perfect union when Wei Ying turns away — gasps — says — )
Sizhu — ( And Lan Wangji bolts up, as if serpent-struck, clutching the front collar of Wei Ying's robes in one greedy hand, hovering over the basket, and...
...stilling. Abruptly. Entirely. Without heat or moderation. Simply... breathing, caught in the deluge of beauty before him. )
...when? How?
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In the usual way of things, I suppose.
( Said with a smile that softens from a grin, viewing the small, dark striped bean shaped creatures nestled into the fur clumps and remains of the second leaf, rendered useful as a rabbit doe's preference in nest building. Likewise evident, the second rabbit — both, he finally understands in a way he'll remember, indelibly female — with a tiny haunch visible beneath, nursing and flicking dismissive ears their way.
He has no concept of a count. How many nurse on the one, and oh, the second rabbit returning to settle over her babies, her little ones, her whatever they're properly called. The joyful mess of all this nestled in silk, the speed at which this has occurred, tenders a sense of awe, a sense of sweet fondness that surprises him in the moment.
He holds the basket steady for his husband's gaze. )
Lan Zhan, they're so small. Aren't they small? And their fur hasn't come in. You sneaky ladies, you just gave birth, didn't you?
( The wonder in his smile, in his eyes lifting and searching across Lan Zhan's face in its stillness, and he offers: )
I love you.
( ... these unexpected words, where he had thought he might say anything else. Only he's not embarrassed, can't be, secure in his affections and attractions and the privacy of Lan Zhan's cooling cave, the precious constancy of precocious existence displayed without fanfare, without justification.
The dregs of what hesitation his heart harbours for the small, quiet fear he may never be enough, not as himself, loosens its last root and drifts away. All for the sake of that emotion in his husband's eyes, gazing down at the blind, milk seeking wonders of their rabbits tending to their heirs of the body, safe and soft and trusting without inhibition or doubt. The pure smile that continues to frame his face births statement: )
Lan Zhan, you'll need another robe!
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( Stricken by two catastrophes of the heart: first, the sight before him, the two — mother, both? — rabbits calling close their litters, young dark-haired spotted beads strung around their bodies, full. The pulses and quakes of their young limbs, swaying. And Wei Ying —
Distantly, he gives a soft, muted hum of approval. A new robe, so be it. Seven layers for seven gifts of blessing, to the youth that grace them. May this be his tribute.
And, I love you, a strange lightning's glimpse of a moment, fissured and slithering between them. He turns, eyes dripping fondness, and draws a hand over Wei Ying's nape to pull him in and bring their foreheads together. I love you, also.
One of the rabbits coos. It occurs to him, belatedly, discarding every urgency to never move again, to start the long fishing for leftover, stray leaves. They must hunger. It is so with nursing. )
...apologies. ( It was not asked. ) I allowed them to roam freely, beside me. With Clara.
( All of which is hardly to say that Clara impregnated the rabbits. And still, he shivers, coursed by choked rivulets of fear. He is a man made great by brutality, the coarse force of qi only polished through copious exercise and dilution. Hanguang-Jun earned his name through slaughter. )
How do we care for them?
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( Ask him what it takes to care for another, for the small and helpless, for the enduring fragility of life, and he can list... enough ways, with them old enough, guess close enough, he who has never held any newborn or newly to this world before now. Yet he is asked, and he applies what intelligence seeking outside the boundaries of their own comfort to the exquisite dilemma of small, fur-cradled creatures nestled under their mothers, as they're wont to do )
We feed their mothers, keep them all warm and safe. Not too warm, but warm. No fur yet, they could get cold when the ladies eat.
( His eyes closed for that moment of forehead to forehead greeting, the silent response that filled cracks in his chest, glinting in bright molten light now. The low laugh and parting of lashes so that he might see Lan Zhan, the sweaty, heated, distressed version of him ignoring his own melting in favour of these small, unanticipated lives. )
So that's when they had a chance. How bold of them, to seize that moment and make it theirs.
( The slow smile, eyes still speckled with wonder, stars across a galaxy, but not a universe. )
No apologies. It's in their nature, and brings no harm.
( More considerations of food and safety and, ah. Contraptions built to carry and hold, for the growing legions. )
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( No apologies. And, it is in their natures. And more, so much more, a deluge of words whole that Lan Wangji cannot contain or truly fathom, entirely consumed by the task of balancing his robe between two tentative hands to create the beautiful creatures their cradle.
He sets the burden down, Astrov — or is it now, Astra? — rising up to nose at the dripped heated print of his hand, to bop his thumb as he forces restraint back in his bones. She wants him near, he supposes. Or at a great and formidable distance, a force once protective, now petrifying.
Shivered, his touch — repugnantly coarse — cannot help. He is too large, too overwhelming. A force. )
The family must know.
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( A nod, no, several nods, just slower and wondering. )
Yes. You?
( One hand steadying on the basket, watching his husband more than the rabbits, the way he moves, the way he holds within himself. )
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( Please, a tender hand — Wei Ying's... largesse with his affections for rabbits is both petrifying and renown.
Lan Wangji need not witness such terror again. )
It is the duty of the father. ( A beat, then, shuddered: ) The grandfather.
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( Pray for his gentled hand with the very young, and the firm surety handling those that squirm.
Again a nod, and a sound of: )
Of course. So me then?
( Yet his lips twitch into a grin, and he grants the tease and it's rebuttal all at once. )
Who's granting them names?
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( Ah, what a laughing and most joyous husband Lan Wangji has. Allow that playfulness to be retaliated with a blank, honest and earnest stare. )
They are sons and daughters of a sect. ( And concei — ) Manifested under Clara's watch.
( ...better. ) Perhaps the twain. Sizhui. The group.
( It does, after all, take a village. )
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( Relieving them of a certain burden of thought: he admits his best thoughts are for human children. He'll keep those in reserve, knowing their hearts and tendencies. )
Yes, yes, why not ask them all? More inspiration across that many imaginations.
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Yelena chose fortuitously.
( After all, Astrov and Vanya have lived long, respectable lives, barring a rare incident of — he flinches with inevitability — birthing out of wedlock. )
Unless Wei Ying prefers the honour. ( As the mother, so on. )
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We child name then Little Milk One, Little Milk Two, Little Milk Three...
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Sadness afflicts brother and Clara. The naming will distract.
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( not bothering to hold back his laughter, he waves his hands twice, over the carefully attended basket. one furry head lifts and a scoffing huff follows, along with sniff sniff sniffing, and he makes to stand )
As you say, as you say! I'll find more for our little mothers to eat, you speak to Zewu-jun and Clara, ah?
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( But loving and desperately fond and sweet, yet rounding his hands to cup the litter's catch and bring it up, lovingly, and inhale its presence. He is never letting go of these young ones again —
For the next two, three minutes, before their mothers turn around to mind them. )
Wei Ying. Thank you for giving me grandchildren. ( By gifting him their furred daughters to start. )
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To fill every corner of your heart until bursting. I'll be swift.
( There, the care light smile, the easy fondness, and he's to the entrance and out into grasping heat once more, to find the sweetest, safest, most nourishing of greens... and a little fruit, too.
But just a little. )