Wei Ying, packaged and purposed and reduced to the shell and root and seed of himself, eroded — follows. Between them, the mountainous body of the dragon fills out and stretches the span of her wings, coils her neck and teases him with happy, warm-snouted kisses to the back of Wangji's silks, his collar. Here and there, she catches the scent of his hair, grips dark threads in his mouth. And he waits, patiently, until the roads rupture into thin paths that want a delicate step, or they stay their momentum to give rambunctious children passes in the square, while their mother blitzes by relieved, or there is a great, callous deluge, spilling at their feet, where the streets have overflown from last night's rains.
Then, he affords Lethe a gentle nudge and she retreats in fine form and at a respectful distance, allowing the length of the reins Wangji collects in a slack hand to pull, if never grow taut. And his soulmate drifts, as if his melancholy is the blood that leaves fresh wounds scored on patient, young skin. Fearless Wei Ying cannot learn fear.
In the ports, light dims and slouches like an old cat, base greens whispering back from waters across the filigree of bays. An impression of winter that he suspects never comes. And it shivers his back all the same, agony of white lattices and his scars weeping, Once you were worth more than the skins of my back.
Today, more than any limb Lan Wangji has sworn and sold to the Gusu Lan sect's use, already, Guanyin have and forgive him. )
What is loss to a death king?
( Only trails of sand ground and scattered between fingers, only dust motes for Wei Ying's hungering hands to regain. You push hard enough, any man will break, but Wei Ying stands royal, Patriarch and true. His will bends and chokes the unworthy. )
( he is quiet, and it is the quiet of a mind forcibly calmed. features that twitch and settle and smooth into noncommittal nuetrality, the soft back and forth with lethe an emotional battleground he's subjugated for his own sake. that he creaks open, a door with unoiled hinges like the ones of murial's house, to steel himself for what comes through.
it does not help, and yet it steadies. does not explain, and yet encompasses. he blinks, the smiles startled for children, laughter following a beat behind but there.
fingers tucked around the scale at his chest, and the warmth can't balance with the taste of death, or the sparks of wrong and gone sizzling only infrequently as they move. did he feel them, truly? are they imagined, pretended? )
A haunting
( the answer, direct and true, still what he feels now, processing day to day. )
The same as to anyone.
( regrets and grief and recollection, however poor in detail. )
The same as to the star who chases chaos, lighting up the way.
( There comes a turn, a time when every word is a private flaying, when he feels brutalised by the burden to reveal himself, to be known. How is it men release so many words upon words upon carelessness? It aches him. It burns. )
I am too small to fill your holes until they no longer leak your hurts, body and blood.
( Any man would be. The wraith of one, is Lan Wangji, pale and aggrieved and the long-hanging tragedy of his draped silks, scratching, hooking on barren earth, where the loose scrawl of port confinements seeps into pavement. The Mouse House is a sullen, dark, dusted thing, and its customs resemble it: no man queues. There is no order.
The waters of the desperate and the resigned well and ebb and tide, and Lan Wangji steers the dragon by heir reins to join the spumes, to wait untidily. Perhaps company should shame him. He is not his uncle's nephew.
He is not his father's son. )
I cannot stay, only sustain. You digest care. Churn it. Metabolise. Then bloom with spring.
( Be reborn, perhaps not sixteen years later. Sooner, hastened, with greed. He yearns, unambiguously, for reassurance: what is dead may not once more die. Wei Ying cannot give himself to his sorrow. A cruel, ambitious thing to ask. Wangji's mouth hungers, the turn of his hand when he reaches for Wei Ying's, searching blindly, steels. He squeezes a thumb, fingers. The knuckles whole. )
( They grasp after each other, the fading passing of silks and robes slipped past doorways and steps taken and failed, day to day, or achieved, hour to hour. He turns his hand, invites the scrabbling, responds to Lethe's inquiry with the rawness of himself. )
The only thing wanting is a choice. To stay, not to solve.
( There are too many, many things which require the individual to tend to, to resolve, to hope. )
Sleep with me.
( Let it digest and churn and live and provoke as it will, later, as what cannot be changed acknowledges the desire, the wish otherwise. He turns hand, fingers finding fingers, palm pressed to palm, wrist held. One pulse to match another, timed off their own breaths, that Lethe does not match, though listening. Learning. )
That is an ache you can choose to soothe.
( While they live, and breathe, and winter stalks closer, little by little. )
( A simple concession. What is a body, if not a shield? Courier of warmth, deteriorating vehicle of reassurance. The back of his hand scratches with the half-moons of Wei Ying's grazing nails and the prickling of Lethe's scales, rising to riot and falling silent to the tune of the dragon's artificial inhalations.
He wonders, more fool he, what is to come of this codependence they've spun between them like gold of spider silk. When they return — never if, there can be no thought of condition, not with Sizhui's future at stake — will Wei Ying concede him nights under the thinly mantled hospitality of Gusu Lan? Threadbare, their current arrangement, gossamer and whispered pledges at lilac dusk. He drags their bound hands to his forehead ribbon, Wei Ying's knuckles against the insignia, while too close, far too close, a man carrying legumes of import mutters about the acrobatics that some people perform in a crowded queue.
Lethe rewards the objection with a huff that descends a light breeze on the man, sweeping off his hat.
...ah, perhaps Wangji too can allow himself to be fond of her, permissive when she reaches to rub her great snout against his cheek. )
She is yours. Sworn to you, freely. A second soulmate. ( One who might yet avail herself of her commitments more expediently, tirelessly, resolutely than did the first. ) Wei Ying, if you wish her...
( He will not, cannot say, Claim her. But he will not damn. )
( Oh, to be perched with wings tucked tight, aware of what flight means, aware of what it is to stay. He and Lethe both a reflection of that concept, the dragon's bulk hemmed in by human carved design, his by similar antics, only loving what it is, what it was, to be part of the living world. Learning and challenging, solving and seeking, and here is Lan Zhan, granting the most he can in concessions and concerns.
He does not know that he can agree that Lethe is sworn freely, because the shape of Lethe's death and overwritten play of life are not yet transparent for their inner workings. Visible, from Magnus's efforts, tangible in the glow of a opalescent scale, touched as lie that begs for believing under his hands, his thighs, his life now.
There is a creature, both great and terrible, who remembers a sense of what living was, and should be. A spirit bound and bonded to flesh that no longer healed, could not grow, would not see in decades forward the great size of a martial beast, the depth of experience that was once potential. If Lethe, unwound, unravelled, will continue to exist, or beg for the release that the witches had, turned into weapons, creatures with no more hope but the purpose forced on them in pulling strings.
He'd ended them, and their suffering, grandfathers as ghosts in watching. Not too soon, before Five and Winnie in their carelessness led to the flood of chill power that froze and swallowed so much of Taravast, just as death swallows here, just as the consequence of erasing those boundaries swallowed Ellethia.
Lethe is beautiful, and Lan Zhan, his forehead band a brand of warm metal on Wei Wuxian's hand, is beautiful, contradictory, loved. The wash of that brilliant fury of it, the swell of affection he'd held on to with nervous laughter and twitching fingers, catapults him now. With the blanket left draping and dragging over Lethe's worthy shoulders, he slides, feet tapping ground and then stumbling into Lan Zhan, too much unchecked force.
It comes to Lethe, her head a balance behind Lan Zhan's shoulders, the carrier of legumes startled and cursing at the tumble of it all, to stall their progress down when Wei Wuxian slides his fingers, then his palm, past the climbing angle of Lan Zhan's jaw, roughly past his ear, into the half down hair at the nape of his neck. There's a graceless art to the press of lips to open mouth, the checked knock of teeth, the gratitude of apologies and want and one reedy voice in the queue warbling, do as you must, but keep moving, to accompany them in the moment.
And Lethe's amused disgust, if for their actions or the flatulence of the legume carrier in their dismay, no way to say. )
( He stumbles back. Catches his footing, caged and contained and Lethe sworn to right him, belt of her neck coiled against his waist. What is it that men are, when they unleash themselves?
Light like a sheen of bathing salts, diluted. Half whisper, half blinks of glittered fall. He delays to close his eyes, and the world is pallor and dark weed of Wei Ying's hair, slithered down, and violence, the tip of Wangji's head, and he does not know, cannot know, if he is meant to oppose, or move in same direction, if it will be as with animals and the first ride, and the truths of of collaboration reveal themselves.
The first kiss was a print on the universe, long tearing. Novelty pronounced a miracle, to live controversial in blasphemy. It was excused of form, of expectation. Now, Wei Ying claims the second — the first too, Wangji cannot be so brittle a maiden, goaded like thunder — and they meet, artlessly, at the intersection between the shame of incompetence and the enthusiasm of children. He remembers, from the many sightings at travelled inns where men and their road wives so often neglected a cultivator of Hanguang-Jun's stature would practise seclusion, and threw themselves and their passion at the nearest shared table, the loudest wall — he remembers and shutters his eyes, and drags his mouth until the fits rights and latches, tongue and teeth and kitten licks, and a queue of fine men, gawking.
One whistles. Another scoffs. A woman laughs, encouraging. They make spectacle of themselves, and yet Wei Ying wants it so, wants the madness of a moment to — ...divert himself. Lan Wangji is not a choice, only a sheltered, bought and paid for. The coin of Wei Ying's body shared.
He shudders, breaks free. Spiders out the fingers of his hand to bracket Wei Ying's temple, then steers the wet warmth of his mouth on the stretch of pulsed skin on the other side. Here sleeps the jewel of the land, a mind to sunder dark infinities. )
...how deep do waters run, where you are?
( Far, so very away from Lan Wangji, drifting amid tempestuous thoughts. Where Wangji cannot reach. When he kisses Wei Ying again, it's snow-soft and fleeting, one heartbeat and a nod. He knows. He knows what this is, he knows all it can be, there is a dragon, scales pin sharp, who bars his path. )
( There are chasms between them that neither see in full, only the fissures that might presage deeper splits to bridge over, time and again, when they're exposed by the storms of their existence. He laughs, and it is for once a lighter sound, the bubbling of a core warmth he forgets half as often as he remembers it.
He does not delight in the public's opinion, ignores it, has fostered the cost. But it does not bind him in much more than the belated acknowledgement of what he hears, and how from kisses consuming to light and sweet, he in turn shift, lets his crown come to rest against Lan Zhan's, the press of metal and silk between them as binding a kingdom as ever wanted. )
And if I want, ( he asks, dark eyes bearing hint of light within their core, stardust captured and reflecting in scattered ruin; ) for the greed of it, to drown in you...
( Eyes that hold open without blinking, ears that hear and dismiss the grumbling curses and the sweeter words of those who prefer a life that isn't wholly proscribed by the puritanically frightened, touch that feels the light and pulse of Lan Zhan's being, the quietude and heartsung lie of Lethe's reassuring bulk. He can taste on his tongue the air and the heat of Lan Zhan's mouth, not a sweetness, not a bitterness. Less bloody than the first, far more visible, shared, and stuttered. )
Am I allowed?
( Moments that fit like ill suited puzzle pieces, pulled and attracted without regard for timing or sanctity of privacy. Perhaps that's the truth of all regard, for him; that all he does is misaligned in the eyes of those who don't truly care, but would make of him the spectacle they assume, willfully blind to what acts define him step by step on less over-worn throughways.
Lan Zhan dips, allows, embraces what once he would not, could not have. He is himself, slow evolution, and it is a wonder, timeless, unaging, to hear anything more than no. To argue and not believe that means sloughing off each altercation as a necessary defeat, to instead learn and grow and tumble backward, the vine clinging to rock and drinking in sunlight and shadow in unequal measure.
There is the knife of his husband, the honed and sharpened blade, that knows now words of apology, that knows the want of softened touch, that steers towards the defenseless as it always has and hope to hold them safe. He who exists in the heart of chaos lives as twinned beat of Wei Wuxian's own, and peace, fragile and fleeting, is what he'd lay at his husband's feet. An eye of an ever moving storm, but true, tangible, a space between moments of fighting necessity and heartache and heartbreak in a world known for its callousness, and for no concept of honour or fairness.
He breathes in the ache that is his greed, of a want that is possessiveness without the binding urge to hold, to fetter, to hobble. To want the chosen return, to yearn for the companion whose twinned soul stands side by side with his own, as he does in turn.
The child, the dragon, the times to come. Death and life, life in spite of death. Theirs, until it cannot be, and that must, will, by soul decreed be decades forward, on the pathways of their own world's twisting roads. )
( Like like staccato more than crescendo, he feels the wave of lust like abandon, a childish and infinite joy, brimming, warm. Wei Ying is incandescent, and it strikes him like the difference between beholding light and tasting flame on his fingertips — before, two men on the road setting to right the wrongs done against Wei Ying's reputation, he had thought he had glimpsed Wei Ying's honest laughter. Now, his soulmate's delight is a wicked and impossible contagion, a force that suspended Lan Wangji's life before the war — reshaping it.
He bides his time, looks away with the bashfulness of a bride bereft the red of her veil, yet too modest still to accept the stalwart gaze of her husband. Lethe shudders behind him, head peering beneath his elbow, because there is a bond between them, this babe of lizard and death and passion for the sun, and she echoes her master's amusement. The strip of Wangji's headband droops light and frail in his hands, like a second skin.
Less said, sooner concluded: he wrestles Wei Ying's hand, fetters the ribbon tight until it nearly throttles the hard jut of bone. Not one to be lost or overlooked, ends of it flickering in the breeze, let loose like the moment, like their morals. )
The rice you have spilled cannot be picked after. ( But he absents heat or stains of a grudge. ) Wei Ying should remember his refusals.
( And before the Unwinding, both their mouths unstitched-torn, and Let me have you, unanswered. Perhaps one of them yet has the pride to sting. )
( Depths of meaning, wound around his hand now in Lan Zhan's ribbon, in a way claimed and knowing and public where this world barely blinks, and the whole of his husband's clan would shudder to a halt, eyes wide, understanding.
Perhaps more than he understands the words that flow after, grains of rice spilled, a tempering of heat more than joy. He cocks his head to the side, wiggles those bound fingers, still smiles with the pleasure of a man who feels he might. )
Refusals?
( Which stance taken and defended is his husband referring to now? Has there been one, on the boundaries of their bodies or appetites? Was he asked some morning before he woke, when the soft seduction of slumber leaves his tongue heavy and his eyes unwilling to creak open, greeting the dawn? )
Embraced death. Would choose to embrace life... ( he says, head still canted, studying Lan Zhan, feeling his dead dragon's amusement and concern, at him, at them, at nothing identifiable. ) ... and rest. I'm not opposed.
( The queue shifts, and Lethe lifts head, enough to peer through the moving group along their narrowed passage. Resettles wings to better fit, making of a dragon something more lithe than the wagon that, further ahead, restricted passage. Humanity, living in this instance, varied and brilliant, drips and flows forward, some voices left behind, others tended to in ongoing complaint. Winding deeper in, not to the trains, but elsewhere in the warren of the Mouse House, and Lethe, unhappy at the constraint but not unwilling to accept it, the pale ghost of a once living being's regard, carried forward in spite of the rot that stole all breath away. )
( He confirms it, hollowed like tree husk and brittle and soft, and Wei Ying warm beside him, precious. Firefly seeking flame, but he is close, so very close and readied, and what can Lan Wangji do but receive and treasure him, and his findling child?
...he brings, does Wei Ying, so many new offspring. This one, scaly and scattered and her eyes wet with the troubled shine of staring, without discrimination. He hesitates, but offers his hand again, and she is there, viscous or liquid or somehow taking form, surprising him with lent warmth and easy yield of her muscled neck, covetously seeking Wei Ying.
When his fingers drum and scratch, he thinks he hears her hiss her pleasure. )
Will you claim her? ( This, breezily, to no one. This, like an anchor pulling vessels aground, to Wei Ying. He has claimed them before, his innocents and his brothers, and Wen Ning first among them. Those who cannot elude death can join the precious court of a death king. )
( Wei Wuxian brings his bound hand up, letting his lips come to rest against the ribbon, the bracing sensation of his knuckles beneath. Refusals, and he can think of none of them, studying his husband from the corner of one questing eye. It simmers, the suspicion of it, and Lethe presses gentle inquiry and then a sense of scoffing disregard, projecting contentment as Lan Zhan obliges her seeking with the deft cleverness of his calloused fingers.
To think for any moment he could hold brief, passing jealousy of a dragon, and the dead, sets Wei Wuxian into startled inhalation, and the long, low laughing exhalation after. To be silly, by all means.
To feel there's a sense of allowance in it, if only for himself. )
She claims herself. If she wishes, then I would. If she seeks rest, then I will do as I can.
( A lifetime of divide between the young man who'd bound spirits to yin iron and forged from it a means to survive and control and demand what revenge had asked for, then what a war had cried after, what had been the reason for jealousy and fear from all those who looked upon him and his gifts covetously. His downfall, in each step taken alone, error of his ways the self-sacrificing foolishness of heroes, worlds over.
That man had lost everything, watched it slip between his fingers, and slipped himself through his soulmate's at the hope he'd spare him, spare his broken brother, having to choose. Wrong in that, too.
Wrong to hold what doesn't want to be held, and he'd known that, resurrected out of the abyss into the jest of another man's life, wearing his own face. Being his own self, in spite of the costs. )
A man can demand as he likes, and it doesn't make him right. He can ask, and he can assist. Or command for cessation, when a life hangs in balance.
( His demand in the temple, his cutting through resentments to save his nephew, to prevent Wen Ning's possession from leading to something total, impossible to return from.
That he pauses, one step out of alignment, then looks to his husband with furrowed brow of genuine surprise, is a different sort of discord. )
Wait, don't you claim me?
( Sadly, he remains unaware that Lethe is any particular sex. Completely... unaware. All hail ta. )
( This man, who has forged and tamed Yin iron whole, who sundered sect politics, who created new pathways of cultivation.
This man, who grew lotus flower in barren muck, who found a child to raise from ether, who created a clan.
This man, who sequestered his welfare amid threats to banish disrepute and reveal decades of conspiracy.
This man, who has here kept them whole and hale, alive and tremulously bartering their path home.
...this man, Lan Wangji decides between extensive, painstaking blinks, is a fool. Just as politely, he abandons Lethe without her indulgences — bear with it, beautiful girl, serpentine darling, already threatening him with scowls and petty glares and another choice nudge, for she is a conqueror of the skies and he only a peasant who owes her obeisance — and drifts to catch his husband's ribbon-bound wrist. To hold it up in pained, pointed, staring illustration, until one of the matrons left of Wei Ying in the interminable queue, takes this time to mutter, 'Ain't even gold, that.'
Truer than the sophisticated, studied artifice of Jin filigree, deeper than the thunderous cleaving of Nie, more intrusive than the deceptive artfulness of Yunmeng. Heart and soul and the emblem of the clan crowning the bindings of the sect, anointing Wei Ying's claim. )
You recognise no claim?
( There are deserts complaining of more humidity than his voice. )
( He gives his husband an exasperated, if fond, stare. )
With the number of times you keep tying my wrist, I'm concerned you don't.
( ... Lethe, exhaling in a sharper snort, returns to nuzzling at Lan Zhan's side. A dragon of white does not mind a lack of gold, unlike the matron, who laments that these days, people settle for so little, and not even one grand romantic gesture in the world.
Wei Wuxian studies his husband's face, brows lifted, lips quirking up in a slow smile. His eyes hold concern, for the one he studies, and for the family they build day to day, going forward. Lethe shakes her head, a shiver that runs up her neck and the hidden spores of her fungal demise, and it is a miracle of nature they don't shed and spread, coating them both, coating the depressed locals that trail along with them further along.
My cabbages, one man laments, holding up his wares in their wilting state. My cabbages! )
( Not a beat lost, no sun's heat, no crescendo. Only the gentle, tremulous perk of his brows and Wei Ying, ambivalent before him, a show of strength pillared by uncertainty. Lan Wangji thinks, not for the first time, he loves this man.
Thinks — distant collision of plagued cabbages rolling into each other, while their owner stumbles to give them catch — he fails so proficiently at expressing the twists and turns and high-oxygen burn of his affection.
Waiting in the yawn of the seeping, settling silence is clarity: that his uncle would name his youngest nephew's indulgence profanity. Then, childish conviction — he has kissed his soulmate under the watchful eyes of dozens of strangers, already. What difference, when he drags Wei Ying's bound hand close, passes his mouth reverently over the insignia his house, his clan, his people have dedicated to brothers of the blood and lovers true? )
No claim, past the first. ( They married, under duress, unilaterally. They married, and the vow held. ) When my heart overfills, I burden Wei Ying to carry it.
( And so, hours, if not — but they work, tirelessly, to inure the habit — days of loaned wear, until Wei Ying's wrist ripens red and proud around the sliver of silk that corsets it. )
( He points out, brows still quirked, no glance for the plight of man nor cabbages collecting themselves around other people's feet. Lethe is the presence unignorable in his mind, curious and nudging, then patient in her consideration of man and man, all too caught up in trappings that no dragon would concern themselves with.
She cannot know herself dead, only knows of a pain her bond feels with regards to her life, but she does know this: humans create for themselves the agonies of their affections. Dragons simply strive to pursue, to fight, to sort, and move forward. Lust or affection, anger or peace, they embody them all fully in each lived moment. Heartbeat or none.
Wei Wuxian knows a different certainty of his husband's peculiar with-holdings, and he sighs into a smile, shivers when Lan Zhan's lips meet ribbon and metal anchor of his clan's symbolism, for his rank within it, his purity of bloodline. A moot point by now, he supposes. Two men adopt children as willingly as their hearts accept them, and know neither continue a bloodline, only a family line.
The far more important one, in his estimations. )
For longer, and gladly. That's no burden, Lan Zhan. It's precious. A gift.
( His voice softened, the cantankerous complaints of others behind them in this moment, until Lethe's idly flex of wings stirs them back to grumbling acquiescence. Gratitude sent as pulse of emotion to her, met with acknowledged dismissal, and a snort from her worn out lungs. )
When you say such things, how am I to resist?
( Resist what, he doesn't name, but the warmth melds with heat in his gaze, and he stares at his husband as if he would kiss him, or fight him, or laugh with him and tug on his sleeve and murmur sweet nonsense with the serious gaze of a man who's forgotten what sweet nonsense words were, when they were meant, not idly spun for ease of interaction.
Shiver of exhaustion and want that can't bring themselves to rights, and he shifts in closer, holds to Lan Zhan's hand. )
One of these days, ( he says instead of so many other things, as they move forward, as Lethe is their rear and forward guard at once, with the reach of her neck; ) you will finally sleep in with me. Or pretend to.
( 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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( He leads.
Wei Ying, packaged and purposed and reduced to the shell and root and seed of himself, eroded — follows. Between them, the mountainous body of the dragon fills out and stretches the span of her wings, coils her neck and teases him with happy, warm-snouted kisses to the back of Wangji's silks, his collar. Here and there, she catches the scent of his hair, grips dark threads in his mouth. And he waits, patiently, until the roads rupture into thin paths that want a delicate step, or they stay their momentum to give rambunctious children passes in the square, while their mother blitzes by relieved, or there is a great, callous deluge, spilling at their feet, where the streets have overflown from last night's rains.
Then, he affords Lethe a gentle nudge and she retreats in fine form and at a respectful distance, allowing the length of the reins Wangji collects in a slack hand to pull, if never grow taut. And his soulmate drifts, as if his melancholy is the blood that leaves fresh wounds scored on patient, young skin. Fearless Wei Ying cannot learn fear.
In the ports, light dims and slouches like an old cat, base greens whispering back from waters across the filigree of bays. An impression of winter that he suspects never comes. And it shivers his back all the same, agony of white lattices and his scars weeping, Once you were worth more than the skins of my back.
Today, more than any limb Lan Wangji has sworn and sold to the Gusu Lan sect's use, already, Guanyin have and forgive him. )
What is loss to a death king?
( Only trails of sand ground and scattered between fingers, only dust motes for Wei Ying's hungering hands to regain. You push hard enough, any man will break, but Wei Ying stands royal, Patriarch and true. His will bends and chokes the unworthy. )
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it does not help, and yet it steadies. does not explain, and yet encompasses. he blinks, the smiles startled for children, laughter following a beat behind but there.
fingers tucked around the scale at his chest, and the warmth can't balance with the taste of death, or the sparks of wrong and gone sizzling only infrequently as they move. did he feel them, truly? are they imagined, pretended? )
A haunting
( the answer, direct and true, still what he feels now, processing day to day. )
The same as to anyone.
( regrets and grief and recollection, however poor in detail. )
The same as to the star who chases chaos, lighting up the way.
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( There comes a turn, a time when every word is a private flaying, when he feels brutalised by the burden to reveal himself, to be known. How is it men release so many words upon words upon carelessness? It aches him. It burns. )
I am too small to fill your holes until they no longer leak your hurts, body and blood.
( Any man would be. The wraith of one, is Lan Wangji, pale and aggrieved and the long-hanging tragedy of his draped silks, scratching, hooking on barren earth, where the loose scrawl of port confinements seeps into pavement. The Mouse House is a sullen, dark, dusted thing, and its customs resemble it: no man queues. There is no order.
The waters of the desperate and the resigned well and ebb and tide, and Lan Wangji steers the dragon by heir reins to join the spumes, to wait untidily. Perhaps company should shame him. He is not his uncle's nephew.
He is not his father's son. )
I cannot stay, only sustain. You digest care. Churn it. Metabolise. Then bloom with spring.
( Be reborn, perhaps not sixteen years later. Sooner, hastened, with greed. He yearns, unambiguously, for reassurance: what is dead may not once more die. Wei Ying cannot give himself to his sorrow. A cruel, ambitious thing to ask. Wangji's mouth hungers, the turn of his hand when he reaches for Wei Ying's, searching blindly, steels. He squeezes a thumb, fingers. The knuckles whole. )
But now is your winter. You must sleep.
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The only thing wanting is a choice. To stay, not to solve.
( There are too many, many things which require the individual to tend to, to resolve, to hope. )
Sleep with me.
( Let it digest and churn and live and provoke as it will, later, as what cannot be changed acknowledges the desire, the wish otherwise. He turns hand, fingers finding fingers, palm pressed to palm, wrist held. One pulse to match another, timed off their own breaths, that Lethe does not match, though listening. Learning. )
That is an ache you can choose to soothe.
( While they live, and breathe, and winter stalks closer, little by little. )
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I choose.
( A simple concession. What is a body, if not a shield? Courier of warmth, deteriorating vehicle of reassurance. The back of his hand scratches with the half-moons of Wei Ying's grazing nails and the prickling of Lethe's scales, rising to riot and falling silent to the tune of the dragon's artificial inhalations.
He wonders, more fool he, what is to come of this codependence they've spun between them like gold of spider silk. When they return — never if, there can be no thought of condition, not with Sizhui's future at stake — will Wei Ying concede him nights under the thinly mantled hospitality of Gusu Lan? Threadbare, their current arrangement, gossamer and whispered pledges at lilac dusk. He drags their bound hands to his forehead ribbon, Wei Ying's knuckles against the insignia, while too close, far too close, a man carrying legumes of import mutters about the acrobatics that some people perform in a crowded queue.
Lethe rewards the objection with a huff that descends a light breeze on the man, sweeping off his hat.
...ah, perhaps Wangji too can allow himself to be fond of her, permissive when she reaches to rub her great snout against his cheek. )
She is yours. Sworn to you, freely. A second soulmate. ( One who might yet avail herself of her commitments more expediently, tirelessly, resolutely than did the first. ) Wei Ying, if you wish her...
( He will not, cannot say, Claim her. But he will not damn. )
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He does not know that he can agree that Lethe is sworn freely, because the shape of Lethe's death and overwritten play of life are not yet transparent for their inner workings. Visible, from Magnus's efforts, tangible in the glow of a opalescent scale, touched as lie that begs for believing under his hands, his thighs, his life now.
There is a creature, both great and terrible, who remembers a sense of what living was, and should be. A spirit bound and bonded to flesh that no longer healed, could not grow, would not see in decades forward the great size of a martial beast, the depth of experience that was once potential. If Lethe, unwound, unravelled, will continue to exist, or beg for the release that the witches had, turned into weapons, creatures with no more hope but the purpose forced on them in pulling strings.
He'd ended them, and their suffering, grandfathers as ghosts in watching. Not too soon, before Five and Winnie in their carelessness led to the flood of chill power that froze and swallowed so much of Taravast, just as death swallows here, just as the consequence of erasing those boundaries swallowed Ellethia.
Lethe is beautiful, and Lan Zhan, his forehead band a brand of warm metal on Wei Wuxian's hand, is beautiful, contradictory, loved. The wash of that brilliant fury of it, the swell of affection he'd held on to with nervous laughter and twitching fingers, catapults him now. With the blanket left draping and dragging over Lethe's worthy shoulders, he slides, feet tapping ground and then stumbling into Lan Zhan, too much unchecked force.
It comes to Lethe, her head a balance behind Lan Zhan's shoulders, the carrier of legumes startled and cursing at the tumble of it all, to stall their progress down when Wei Wuxian slides his fingers, then his palm, past the climbing angle of Lan Zhan's jaw, roughly past his ear, into the half down hair at the nape of his neck. There's a graceless art to the press of lips to open mouth, the checked knock of teeth, the gratitude of apologies and want and one reedy voice in the queue warbling, do as you must, but keep moving, to accompany them in the moment.
And Lethe's amused disgust, if for their actions or the flatulence of the legume carrier in their dismay, no way to say. )
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( He stumbles back. Catches his footing, caged and contained and Lethe sworn to right him, belt of her neck coiled against his waist. What is it that men are, when they unleash themselves?
Light like a sheen of bathing salts, diluted. Half whisper, half blinks of glittered fall. He delays to close his eyes, and the world is pallor and dark weed of Wei Ying's hair, slithered down, and violence, the tip of Wangji's head, and he does not know, cannot know, if he is meant to oppose, or move in same direction, if it will be as with animals and the first ride, and the truths of of collaboration reveal themselves.
The first kiss was a print on the universe, long tearing. Novelty pronounced a miracle, to live controversial in blasphemy. It was excused of form, of expectation. Now, Wei Ying claims the second — the first too, Wangji cannot be so brittle a maiden, goaded like thunder — and they meet, artlessly, at the intersection between the shame of incompetence and the enthusiasm of children. He remembers, from the many sightings at travelled inns where men and their road wives so often neglected a cultivator of Hanguang-Jun's stature would practise seclusion, and threw themselves and their passion at the nearest shared table, the loudest wall — he remembers and shutters his eyes, and drags his mouth until the fits rights and latches, tongue and teeth and kitten licks, and a queue of fine men, gawking.
One whistles. Another scoffs. A woman laughs, encouraging. They make spectacle of themselves, and yet Wei Ying wants it so, wants the madness of a moment to — ...divert himself. Lan Wangji is not a choice, only a sheltered, bought and paid for. The coin of Wei Ying's body shared.
He shudders, breaks free. Spiders out the fingers of his hand to bracket Wei Ying's temple, then steers the wet warmth of his mouth on the stretch of pulsed skin on the other side. Here sleeps the jewel of the land, a mind to sunder dark infinities. )
...how deep do waters run, where you are?
( Far, so very away from Lan Wangji, drifting amid tempestuous thoughts. Where Wangji cannot reach. When he kisses Wei Ying again, it's snow-soft and fleeting, one heartbeat and a nod. He knows. He knows what this is, he knows all it can be, there is a dragon, scales pin sharp, who bars his path. )
Shameless thing, you will not drown.
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He does not delight in the public's opinion, ignores it, has fostered the cost. But it does not bind him in much more than the belated acknowledgement of what he hears, and how from kisses consuming to light and sweet, he in turn shift, lets his crown come to rest against Lan Zhan's, the press of metal and silk between them as binding a kingdom as ever wanted. )
And if I want, ( he asks, dark eyes bearing hint of light within their core, stardust captured and reflecting in scattered ruin; ) for the greed of it, to drown in you...
( Eyes that hold open without blinking, ears that hear and dismiss the grumbling curses and the sweeter words of those who prefer a life that isn't wholly proscribed by the puritanically frightened, touch that feels the light and pulse of Lan Zhan's being, the quietude and heartsung lie of Lethe's reassuring bulk. He can taste on his tongue the air and the heat of Lan Zhan's mouth, not a sweetness, not a bitterness. Less bloody than the first, far more visible, shared, and stuttered. )
Am I allowed?
( Moments that fit like ill suited puzzle pieces, pulled and attracted without regard for timing or sanctity of privacy. Perhaps that's the truth of all regard, for him; that all he does is misaligned in the eyes of those who don't truly care, but would make of him the spectacle they assume, willfully blind to what acts define him step by step on less over-worn throughways.
Lan Zhan dips, allows, embraces what once he would not, could not have. He is himself, slow evolution, and it is a wonder, timeless, unaging, to hear anything more than no. To argue and not believe that means sloughing off each altercation as a necessary defeat, to instead learn and grow and tumble backward, the vine clinging to rock and drinking in sunlight and shadow in unequal measure.
There is the knife of his husband, the honed and sharpened blade, that knows now words of apology, that knows the want of softened touch, that steers towards the defenseless as it always has and hope to hold them safe. He who exists in the heart of chaos lives as twinned beat of Wei Wuxian's own, and peace, fragile and fleeting, is what he'd lay at his husband's feet. An eye of an ever moving storm, but true, tangible, a space between moments of fighting necessity and heartache and heartbreak in a world known for its callousness, and for no concept of honour or fairness.
He breathes in the ache that is his greed, of a want that is possessiveness without the binding urge to hold, to fetter, to hobble. To want the chosen return, to yearn for the companion whose twinned soul stands side by side with his own, as he does in turn.
The child, the dragon, the times to come. Death and life, life in spite of death. Theirs, until it cannot be, and that must, will, by soul decreed be decades forward, on the pathways of their own world's twisting roads. )
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( Like like staccato more than crescendo, he feels the wave of lust like abandon, a childish and infinite joy, brimming, warm. Wei Ying is incandescent, and it strikes him like the difference between beholding light and tasting flame on his fingertips — before, two men on the road setting to right the wrongs done against Wei Ying's reputation, he had thought he had glimpsed Wei Ying's honest laughter. Now, his soulmate's delight is a wicked and impossible contagion, a force that suspended Lan Wangji's life before the war — reshaping it.
He bides his time, looks away with the bashfulness of a bride bereft the red of her veil, yet too modest still to accept the stalwart gaze of her husband. Lethe shudders behind him, head peering beneath his elbow, because there is a bond between them, this babe of lizard and death and passion for the sun, and she echoes her master's amusement. The strip of Wangji's headband droops light and frail in his hands, like a second skin.
Less said, sooner concluded: he wrestles Wei Ying's hand, fetters the ribbon tight until it nearly throttles the hard jut of bone. Not one to be lost or overlooked, ends of it flickering in the breeze, let loose like the moment, like their morals. )
The rice you have spilled cannot be picked after. ( But he absents heat or stains of a grudge. ) Wei Ying should remember his refusals.
( And before the Unwinding, both their mouths unstitched-torn, and Let me have you, unanswered. Perhaps one of them yet has the pride to sting. )
Today, he hunted death. Earned sleep.
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Perhaps more than he understands the words that flow after, grains of rice spilled, a tempering of heat more than joy. He cocks his head to the side, wiggles those bound fingers, still smiles with the pleasure of a man who feels he might. )
Refusals?
( Which stance taken and defended is his husband referring to now? Has there been one, on the boundaries of their bodies or appetites? Was he asked some morning before he woke, when the soft seduction of slumber leaves his tongue heavy and his eyes unwilling to creak open, greeting the dawn? )
Embraced death. Would choose to embrace life... ( he says, head still canted, studying Lan Zhan, feeling his dead dragon's amusement and concern, at him, at them, at nothing identifiable. ) ... and rest. I'm not opposed.
( The queue shifts, and Lethe lifts head, enough to peer through the moving group along their narrowed passage. Resettles wings to better fit, making of a dragon something more lithe than the wagon that, further ahead, restricted passage. Humanity, living in this instance, varied and brilliant, drips and flows forward, some voices left behind, others tended to in ongoing complaint. Winding deeper in, not to the trains, but elsewhere in the warren of the Mouse House, and Lethe, unhappy at the constraint but not unwilling to accept it, the pale ghost of a once living being's regard, carried forward in spite of the rot that stole all breath away. )
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Refusals.
( He confirms it, hollowed like tree husk and brittle and soft, and Wei Ying warm beside him, precious. Firefly seeking flame, but he is close, so very close and readied, and what can Lan Wangji do but receive and treasure him, and his findling child?
...he brings, does Wei Ying, so many new offspring. This one, scaly and scattered and her eyes wet with the troubled shine of staring, without discrimination. He hesitates, but offers his hand again, and she is there, viscous or liquid or somehow taking form, surprising him with lent warmth and easy yield of her muscled neck, covetously seeking Wei Ying.
When his fingers drum and scratch, he thinks he hears her hiss her pleasure. )
Will you claim her? ( This, breezily, to no one. This, like an anchor pulling vessels aground, to Wei Ying. He has claimed them before, his innocents and his brothers, and Wen Ning first among them. Those who cannot elude death can join the precious court of a death king. )
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To think for any moment he could hold brief, passing jealousy of a dragon, and the dead, sets Wei Wuxian into startled inhalation, and the long, low laughing exhalation after. To be silly, by all means.
To feel there's a sense of allowance in it, if only for himself. )
She claims herself. If she wishes, then I would. If she seeks rest, then I will do as I can.
( A lifetime of divide between the young man who'd bound spirits to yin iron and forged from it a means to survive and control and demand what revenge had asked for, then what a war had cried after, what had been the reason for jealousy and fear from all those who looked upon him and his gifts covetously. His downfall, in each step taken alone, error of his ways the self-sacrificing foolishness of heroes, worlds over.
That man had lost everything, watched it slip between his fingers, and slipped himself through his soulmate's at the hope he'd spare him, spare his broken brother, having to choose. Wrong in that, too.
Wrong to hold what doesn't want to be held, and he'd known that, resurrected out of the abyss into the jest of another man's life, wearing his own face. Being his own self, in spite of the costs. )
A man can demand as he likes, and it doesn't make him right. He can ask, and he can assist. Or command for cessation, when a life hangs in balance.
( His demand in the temple, his cutting through resentments to save his nephew, to prevent Wen Ning's possession from leading to something total, impossible to return from.
That he pauses, one step out of alignment, then looks to his husband with furrowed brow of genuine surprise, is a different sort of discord. )
Wait, don't you claim me?
( Sadly, he remains unaware that Lethe is any particular sex. Completely... unaware. All hail ta. )
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( This man, who has forged and tamed Yin iron whole, who sundered sect politics, who created new pathways of cultivation.
This man, who grew lotus flower in barren muck, who found a child to raise from ether, who created a clan.
This man, who sequestered his welfare amid threats to banish disrepute and reveal decades of conspiracy.
This man, who has here kept them whole and hale, alive and tremulously bartering their path home.
...this man, Lan Wangji decides between extensive, painstaking blinks, is a fool. Just as politely, he abandons Lethe without her indulgences — bear with it, beautiful girl, serpentine darling, already threatening him with scowls and petty glares and another choice nudge, for she is a conqueror of the skies and he only a peasant who owes her obeisance — and drifts to catch his husband's ribbon-bound wrist. To hold it up in pained, pointed, staring illustration, until one of the matrons left of Wei Ying in the interminable queue, takes this time to mutter, 'Ain't even gold, that.'
Truer than the sophisticated, studied artifice of Jin filigree, deeper than the thunderous cleaving of Nie, more intrusive than the deceptive artfulness of Yunmeng. Heart and soul and the emblem of the clan crowning the bindings of the sect, anointing Wei Ying's claim. )
You recognise no claim?
( There are deserts complaining of more humidity than his voice. )
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With the number of times you keep tying my wrist, I'm concerned you don't.
( ... Lethe, exhaling in a sharper snort, returns to nuzzling at Lan Zhan's side. A dragon of white does not mind a lack of gold, unlike the matron, who laments that these days, people settle for so little, and not even one grand romantic gesture in the world.
Wei Wuxian studies his husband's face, brows lifted, lips quirking up in a slow smile. His eyes hold concern, for the one he studies, and for the family they build day to day, going forward. Lethe shakes her head, a shiver that runs up her neck and the hidden spores of her fungal demise, and it is a miracle of nature they don't shed and spread, coating them both, coating the depressed locals that trail along with them further along.
My cabbages, one man laments, holding up his wares in their wilting state. My cabbages! )
Has my memory for good things ever been so poor?
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What name does the song bear?
( Not a beat lost, no sun's heat, no crescendo. Only the gentle, tremulous perk of his brows and Wei Ying, ambivalent before him, a show of strength pillared by uncertainty. Lan Wangji thinks, not for the first time, he loves this man.
Thinks — distant collision of plagued cabbages rolling into each other, while their owner stumbles to give them catch — he fails so proficiently at expressing the twists and turns and high-oxygen burn of his affection.
Waiting in the yawn of the seeping, settling silence is clarity: that his uncle would name his youngest nephew's indulgence profanity. Then, childish conviction — he has kissed his soulmate under the watchful eyes of dozens of strangers, already. What difference, when he drags Wei Ying's bound hand close, passes his mouth reverently over the insignia his house, his clan, his people have dedicated to brothers of the blood and lovers true? )
No claim, past the first. ( They married, under duress, unilaterally. They married, and the vow held. ) When my heart overfills, I burden Wei Ying to carry it.
( And so, hours, if not — but they work, tirelessly, to inure the habit — days of loaned wear, until Wei Ying's wrist ripens red and proud around the sliver of silk that corsets it. )
Bear it, half a shi more.
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( He points out, brows still quirked, no glance for the plight of man nor cabbages collecting themselves around other people's feet. Lethe is the presence unignorable in his mind, curious and nudging, then patient in her consideration of man and man, all too caught up in trappings that no dragon would concern themselves with.
She cannot know herself dead, only knows of a pain her bond feels with regards to her life, but she does know this: humans create for themselves the agonies of their affections. Dragons simply strive to pursue, to fight, to sort, and move forward. Lust or affection, anger or peace, they embody them all fully in each lived moment. Heartbeat or none.
Wei Wuxian knows a different certainty of his husband's peculiar with-holdings, and he sighs into a smile, shivers when Lan Zhan's lips meet ribbon and metal anchor of his clan's symbolism, for his rank within it, his purity of bloodline. A moot point by now, he supposes. Two men adopt children as willingly as their hearts accept them, and know neither continue a bloodline, only a family line.
The far more important one, in his estimations. )
For longer, and gladly. That's no burden, Lan Zhan. It's precious. A gift.
( His voice softened, the cantankerous complaints of others behind them in this moment, until Lethe's idly flex of wings stirs them back to grumbling acquiescence. Gratitude sent as pulse of emotion to her, met with acknowledged dismissal, and a snort from her worn out lungs. )
When you say such things, how am I to resist?
( Resist what, he doesn't name, but the warmth melds with heat in his gaze, and he stares at his husband as if he would kiss him, or fight him, or laugh with him and tug on his sleeve and murmur sweet nonsense with the serious gaze of a man who's forgotten what sweet nonsense words were, when they were meant, not idly spun for ease of interaction.
Shiver of exhaustion and want that can't bring themselves to rights, and he shifts in closer, holds to Lan Zhan's hand. )
One of these days, ( he says instead of so many other things, as they move forward, as Lethe is their rear and forward guard at once, with the reach of her neck; ) you will finally sleep in with me. Or pretend to.
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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. )
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( 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. )
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( 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. )
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( 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. )