( having worked on a few talismans he wants to test next chance he has, he reads this. rubs his face. )
I'm not always going to have pleasant things to say. Not even out of spite.
Lan Zhan... I care for your brother. He's a good man, as much as he can be. He always strives toward broader considerations. He was made to see his blindnesses in a soul fracturing way. I understand. I've been there.
I don't speak to disparage him. I acknowledge, and accept. Can you understand that?
( long, his answer in coming. he takes part challenge, part appeasement, has little preparation, plenty of charming words. until he does, finally, answer with the vision of himself, instead of the words of his authorship alone. lips red, crimson, lurid compared to his complexion, which has more colour to it now than it had in serthica. that will change again, soon enough.
for now he smiles, and it's a small, genuine thing, undercut by the nervous lathe of his tongue over his lower lip. these are not the simple, quiet brooks he leapt across as a young man. these rivers run deep, these waters run long, and their boat is only as steady as their hearts and minds are, harmonising. )
( the answer, before he ceases the pendant's communication, is a smile. a lower of his gaze. the challenge.
then, absence.
he runs, masking his self much as he can, and runs in the manner of one not seeking the attentions of the workers here, or the ghosts, or most particularly his brother, some things need not be known. even while they're known. )
( There are places he will not touch: the woods here, with their dire wolves and dire threats to his sanity; resting places of the dead which stir and shift under their own whims and cacophony of hauntings; wings of merchants and celebratory not-yet-brides.
No. With the creatures below the ice contained once more to their prison, he stands instead there, footsteps the staccato heartbeat of his motion, his robes layered, red, and red, and white, and white, and white. Black for his shoes, and they settled too in white, the snow of the landscape fallen fresh and new and infant, and he, and he standing in it, blood red lips, night black hair, the shades of life spread thick inbetween.
Find me, he thinks. Wind shudders and chills through him, caresses his hair, sends it framing and flailing past his face, his shoulders, and settles again, whipping it back, then whirling away, roaring. Find me. )
( Find him. The instinct, itch unscratched, low burning. Prickled skin and the saccharine, read pulse of spreading infection. The wind whistles, reedy, and in white-cold he comes alive, like candle light, keening.
Wei Ying did not invite this, did not wake the animal who livens his bones. Knows better. They both ever know better, that there lives beneath Lan Wangji's skins a monster with his father's face. But Wei Ying, too, did not refute him.
Underfoot, husked branches crackle and coo and break, when his step heavies, then lightens, flitting from corner to corner. Hunting, more than searching. Easy, easy, fast. He sees him like a fragment of light breaking, Wei Ying bride-ride and his mouth blooded. No, smeared. No, asking.
They crash. He collides them — knocks Wei Ying down, Lan Wangji's hand to his nape, cushioning to break the petty abrasions of the fall. Other elbow to Wei Ying's belly, pushed in, chaining down, Lan Wangji's own weight his foremost weapon. Crisp flash of his teeth is bright gleaming. )
Yield. ( But they're rolling, fumbling, fallen. Down. )
( Down, and he, married to pain years before he knew the contours of Lan Zhan's face, dismissive of it as long, arches up, continuing the motion, cleaving close to the cutting edge of Lan Zhan's force. Yield, a word, and not one he's ever been graceful about but for the sake of those he loves, and here it comes to cross purpose of competition and one predator's recognition of another, an unwillingness for complacency. )
Why?
( The problem inherent with bucking into his husband is, of course, the placement of limbs, the lack of intent to injure or dislodge, and the equal intent to not stay pinned. The shift and planting of a foot against ice and snow and the sleet made between both, the slick slip, the corrective jerk, trying to offseat and reverse position.
The unintentional marriage of knee and nethers, lo and behold, the man need sire no daughters, no sons, so helps us all. So help us. )
( — skinny, knobby, bony joints. Hard extensions. The knee.
It latches, snags, hits. Dull bruise of his recognition is this: the moment when Wei Ying transforms from bird bones and wilted limbs to feral thing, all hiss and spittle, clawing. When strategy simmers in slow boil to instinct. When he strikes —
...and really, what's a man to do but stare down, stunted, breath stilted, as if confronting his groin with his indignation will erase the reality of the attack? It — troubles him, first. Before pain bolts in, and he could be a gentleman, could grit his teeth and bear it no worse than a stabbing, but this is Wei Ying returned to his Yunmeng form, and wisely, Lan Wangji rolls over, back sunken in cold ground.
Cultivation has accelerated many wonders. Not immunity from the worst prank of the play grounds.
He does not grip himself. There is dignity. Only, suddenly, impossibly, confounded by betrayal — erupts in tectonic, heady, first harsh laughter that thins reedy, and convulses on. They are not under his uncle's roof, his skies. He may, hands clutching against fair snow, before releasing the weight of it in aimless spatters over Wei Ying's cheeks, his neck. Hoarse: )
You will die like snow on mountain's peak.
( Untouched, untarnished, virginal. Entirely and wholeheartedly uncorrupted
...which means, with resigned inevitability, that Lan Wangji will suffer the same fate. Most unfortunate. Another handful of snow dropped on Wei Ying's mouth, for good measure. You animal. )
( The realisation comes to Wei Wuxian late, where bone and cartilidge and sinew met flesh unresisting but for layered robes to halt the motion from unintended brutal efficiency. Frozen in mirrored moments, eyes widening in fractions, and there goes Lan Zhan, to his side, and he rolls that way too, hefts up on an elbow. Is greeted with his husband's ragged laughter, thin and birdboned, and snow speckling his cheeks. )
Lan Zhan, are you—
( Aching, okay, terribly unmanned in a moment that reminds Wei Wuxian, with sudden clarity, of tumbling wrestling as a child, and unplanned blows that landed and left stomachs sick and pain harrowing, a narrowed world to dwell within until breathe returned to lungs. His mouth is filled, snow melting and bitten down, and he half swallows, half spits it out. Collapses with a groan and sudden loss of all bone to support the angles of his body. Limp, wet mouthed, dry eyed, he whines apology. )
Books make this all sound so easy. Are we just broken? Do we just not understand bodies that aren't fighting? Lan Zhan, I'm sorry.
( He flicks a touch of snow at his husband's torso, no lower, no higher. Reaches out one cold hand, hovering it near his husband's face. Husband, he tells himself. )
Want me to kiss it and make it better? Or blow the pain all away.
( The twitch of his lips, because apologising more for what he didn't intend, or for his apparent guaranteed chastity while his husband bedded his brother relentlessly in his death, seems about apt for what life he never imagined surviving to see. )
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Just recall all you've said of mine.
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You speak too freely.
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You can always divorce me, you know. You'd have to do it six times for it to stick, but it's possible.
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1/2
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Positioning me between two equal loyalties, to enjoy when my step fall towards you.
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But I don't ask, or demand, division.
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( ... aaaand then he was done, off on a task of his own making, as so many were. )
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I cannot fit dishonesty.
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I'm not always going to have pleasant things to say. Not even out of spite.
Lan Zhan... I care for your brother. He's a good man, as much as he can be. He always strives toward broader considerations. He was made to see his blindnesses in a soul fracturing way. I understand. I've been there.
I don't speak to disparage him. I acknowledge, and accept. Can you understand that?
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And he is silent for the better part of a half-shi. Grief borrowed. )
Paint your mouth red.
( Peace. )
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for now he smiles, and it's a small, genuine thing, undercut by the nervous lathe of his tongue over his lower lip. these are not the simple, quiet brooks he leapt across as a young man. these rivers run deep, these waters run long, and their boat is only as steady as their hearts and minds are, harmonising. )
Do you want lamp light to cherish the fading red, Lan Zhan?
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Wet the fingertips burned on that flame.
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Consumed and consuming, reborn anew from ash.
( as he has been. as both their homes have been. )
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...run.
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then, absence.
he runs, masking his self much as he can, and runs in the manner of one not seeking the attentions of the workers here, or the ghosts, or most particularly his brother, some things need not be known. even while they're known. )
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Of course, this man gives chase. )
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( There are places he will not touch: the woods here, with their dire wolves and dire threats to his sanity; resting places of the dead which stir and shift under their own whims and cacophony of hauntings; wings of merchants and celebratory not-yet-brides.
No. With the creatures below the ice contained once more to their prison, he stands instead there, footsteps the staccato heartbeat of his motion, his robes layered, red, and red, and white, and white, and white. Black for his shoes, and they settled too in white, the snow of the landscape fallen fresh and new and infant, and he, and he standing in it, blood red lips, night black hair, the shades of life spread thick inbetween.
Find me, he thinks. Wind shudders and chills through him, caresses his hair, sends it framing and flailing past his face, his shoulders, and settles again, whipping it back, then whirling away, roaring. Find me. )
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( Find him. The instinct, itch unscratched, low burning. Prickled skin and the saccharine, read pulse of spreading infection. The wind whistles, reedy, and in white-cold he comes alive, like candle light, keening.
Wei Ying did not invite this, did not wake the animal who livens his bones. Knows better. They both ever know better, that there lives beneath Lan Wangji's skins a monster with his father's face. But Wei Ying, too, did not refute him.
Underfoot, husked branches crackle and coo and break, when his step heavies, then lightens, flitting from corner to corner. Hunting, more than searching. Easy, easy, fast. He sees him like a fragment of light breaking, Wei Ying bride-ride and his mouth blooded. No, smeared. No, asking.
They crash. He collides them — knocks Wei Ying down, Lan Wangji's hand to his nape, cushioning to break the petty abrasions of the fall. Other elbow to Wei Ying's belly, pushed in, chaining down, Lan Wangji's own weight his foremost weapon. Crisp flash of his teeth is bright gleaming. )
Yield. ( But they're rolling, fumbling, fallen. Down. )
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( Down, and he, married to pain years before he knew the contours of Lan Zhan's face, dismissive of it as long, arches up, continuing the motion, cleaving close to the cutting edge of Lan Zhan's force. Yield, a word, and not one he's ever been graceful about but for the sake of those he loves, and here it comes to cross purpose of competition and one predator's recognition of another, an unwillingness for complacency. )
Why?
( The problem inherent with bucking into his husband is, of course, the placement of limbs, the lack of intent to injure or dislodge, and the equal intent to not stay pinned. The shift and planting of a foot against ice and snow and the sleet made between both, the slick slip, the corrective jerk, trying to offseat and reverse position.
The unintentional marriage of knee and nethers, lo and behold, the man need sire no daughters, no sons, so helps us all. So help us. )
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( — skinny, knobby, bony joints. Hard extensions. The knee.
It latches, snags, hits. Dull bruise of his recognition is this: the moment when Wei Ying transforms from bird bones and wilted limbs to feral thing, all hiss and spittle, clawing. When strategy simmers in slow boil to instinct. When he strikes —
...and really, what's a man to do but stare down, stunted, breath stilted, as if confronting his groin with his indignation will erase the reality of the attack? It — troubles him, first. Before pain bolts in, and he could be a gentleman, could grit his teeth and bear it no worse than a stabbing, but this is Wei Ying returned to his Yunmeng form, and wisely, Lan Wangji rolls over, back sunken in cold ground.
Cultivation has accelerated many wonders. Not immunity from the worst prank of the play grounds.
He does not grip himself. There is dignity. Only, suddenly, impossibly, confounded by betrayal — erupts in tectonic, heady, first harsh laughter that thins reedy, and convulses on. They are not under his uncle's roof, his skies. He may, hands clutching against fair snow, before releasing the weight of it in aimless spatters over Wei Ying's cheeks, his neck. Hoarse: )
You will die like snow on mountain's peak.
( Untouched, untarnished, virginal. Entirely and wholeheartedly uncorrupted
...which means, with resigned inevitability, that Lan Wangji will suffer the same fate. Most unfortunate. Another handful of snow dropped on Wei Ying's mouth, for good measure. You animal. )
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Lan Zhan, are you—
( Aching, okay, terribly unmanned in a moment that reminds Wei Wuxian, with sudden clarity, of tumbling wrestling as a child, and unplanned blows that landed and left stomachs sick and pain harrowing, a narrowed world to dwell within until breathe returned to lungs. His mouth is filled, snow melting and bitten down, and he half swallows, half spits it out. Collapses with a groan and sudden loss of all bone to support the angles of his body. Limp, wet mouthed, dry eyed, he whines apology. )
Books make this all sound so easy. Are we just broken? Do we just not understand bodies that aren't fighting? Lan Zhan, I'm sorry.
( He flicks a touch of snow at his husband's torso, no lower, no higher. Reaches out one cold hand, hovering it near his husband's face. Husband, he tells himself. )
Want me to kiss it and make it better? Or blow the pain all away.
( The twitch of his lips, because apologising more for what he didn't intend, or for his apparent guaranteed chastity while his husband bedded his brother relentlessly in his death, seems about apt for what life he never imagined surviving to see. )
(no subject)