Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Ah, stop complaining, we’re almost there,” Wei Wuxian says, pleading, to the donkey he’s currently dragging up a winding, step-laden path. “You love it when we visit; the juniors spoil you endlessly. I know about the apples. Don’t pretend like you hate this! What do you want me to do, carry you?”

He’s anxious to get up the mountain after all this time away, and it’s almost as if, sensing this, Little Apple has decided to draw out the journey as long as possible. He huffs and pulls and cajoles a little desperately, struggling with her for several yards more before finally rounding the bend that puts them in view of the gate.

“Wei-gongzi,” says one of the guards, bowing as they approach. Her flawless Lan disciple’s robes gleam even in the shade. “We didn’t know to expect you.”

Wei Wuxian flashes a lopsided smile and pulls his jade token out of his belt. “That’s alright, I hardly know when to expect myself.” He pauses, then, uneasy. “There’s no...problem, is there?”

The guard glances at the token, then resumes her stiff, straight-ahead stare. “No.”

The relief this sends through Wei Wuxian’s frazzled nerves expels itself as a poorly-concealed sigh while he tugs Little Apple through the wards. Even with his token, he’s always half-sure his welcome will be rescinded between one visit and the next. It’s an irrational fear with Lan Zhan in charge, but he’s learned not to take any allowances he has in this world for granted.

Inside, the Cloud Recesses are as tranquil as always. The clip-clop of donkey hooves cuts through the sounds of gently rustling leaves and distant, running water. Wei Wuxian sees almost no one as he makes his way down rarely-used paths toward the clearing that has become Little Apple’s personal pasture whenever they pass through, which is just as well. He’s sure word of his arrival will reach Lan Zhan whenever it’s convenient for him, and he’s happy to wait.

He’s always happy to wait, actually. For a short while now, and for the long months in between his little visits. He’s found that in his second life, it is one of his greatest privileges to wait for Lan Zhan. The payoff is well worth the time spent away—for go away he must. It’s not that he feels unwelcome here, exactly. There is still a bit of distant unease about his presence in most of the Lan seniors, which he feels is well-earned given their shared past, but it’s inconsequential in the face of the welcome he does receive. And it’s not that he thinks Lan Zhan’s fondness for him is fragile—he’s not so hard-hearted as to believe that.

But there have been sixteen years of absence in which that fondness has grown in peace, and he doesn’t wish to uproot it all at once. Not if he can help it.

He learned a long time ago that his presence has a tendency to do more harm than good—to his relationships with people, and to how the people around him are seen by others. So if this whole showing up at random intervals unannounced thing has become something of a habit in the year Lan Zhan has been Chief Cultivator, well. The guards always let him pass in their stony, disapproving way, but the juniors swarm him for stories if they’re around, and he does his best to make sure Lan Zhan doesn’t mind hosting him. For now.

Today, however, he’s less swarmed than grudgingly acknowledged by a rather stormy-looking Lan Jingyi. The boy is scurrying toward the path to Lan Zhan’s house when he spots Wei Wuxian, does a double take, and makes an aborted move toward the bushes. As if he thinks, for a split second, he can hide. Wei Wuxian raises an eyebrow at him.

“I’m honored you’re so happy to see me, Lan-gongzi,” he calls. He’s more bemused than stung—Jingyi’s usually pretty excited to see him, but his moods are strong and somewhat unpredictable.

Jingyi rolls his eyes and stomps over, a dark little cloud on a sunny day. “You have the worst timing, Wei-qianbei,” he says, snatching Little Apple’s reins away, not even bothering to greet him or bow.

Wei Wuxian snorts. “I won’t argue with that. But what have I done that’s so dire you can’t even spare the time to respect your elders?”

Sighing and slouching, Jingyi executes a sloppy salute. “This humble one apologizes to Wei-qianbei. I was going to see Hanguang-jun. But of course I’ll take Little Apple to her pasture and have your rooms made ready. Welcome back to the Cloud Recesses,” he adds, sounding both as if he’s reciting a boring section of a lesson and alarmingly like he’s on the verge of tears.

Wei Wuxian doesn’t quite know what to do with that. “Ah ah ah, don’t get so upset,” he says, extending his hands as if this alone could soothe such tumultuous energy. “I’ll find someone else to take Little Apple, you just...come see Hanguang-jun with me, alright?”

Jingyi looks repelled by this idea, and frowns. “I’ll go see him later. He’ll be in a better mood anyway until—how long are you staying this time?”

The sudden change of subject leaves Wei Wuxian lost. He hasn’t really thought about leaving yet. He’s been so focused on arriving.

“I don’t know. A week?” That seems like a normal, average amount of time to visit a friend. It’s a little shorter than he’s stayed thus far, but if his goal is to avoid wearing out his welcome, it can’t hurt.

Jingyi nods glumly, running his fingers through Little Apple’s mane. He still looks...off. His eyes are shining ominously, and there’s a bit of a wobble to his lower lip. Wei Wuxian wonders if there’s something he should be doing to make him feel better, but the boy seems content to pet the donkey and frown at the ground.

“I’ll tell Sizhui you’re here,” he says after a moment.

“Okay,” says Wei Wuxian. “I… appreciate it.”

Jingyi nods again and plods off with the donkey in tow. They make quite the pair. Wei Wuxian watches them for a moment, bewildered, before making his way down the path alone. It’s a lovely day, almost perfect, and he can’t help the spring in his step or the way he walks faster the closer he gets to the little house with the bamboo gate.

“Lan Zhan,” he calls from the courtyard, awkward encounter forgotten as soon as he enters. Just saying that name gives birth to a small but powerful sun that nestles between his lungs. It hurts, if he thinks about it, so he doesn’t. He lets it paint a smile across his face instead. “Lan Zhan, gue—”

He appears in the doorway then, stately and serene with one hand folded behind his back. A vision in pale blues and dazzling whites. His hair is still pinned high with his most elaborate guan, his forehead ribbon crisp and perfectly centered. In his hand, incongruous as always, is a jar of Emperor’s Smile.

Wei Wuxian shakes his head, unable, for the briefest moment, to form any more words. He doesn’t know how Lan Zhan manages to predict his sporadic visits with enough accuracy to buy him wine, but he’s getting very used to this particular type of reception. It warms him straight through to imagine Lan Zhan thinking of him while he’s out in the world, thinking of him back. In two very different ways, of course, but he does like to think that the light in Lan Zhan’s eyes and the softness to the set of his mouth are at least a little bit because of him. In fact, he knows they are. Small miracles.

He wags a finger and tries to turn his manic grin to something more rueful. “You’re going to spoil me if you just keep indulging me whenever I manage to turn up, Lan Zhan,” he says.

Lan Zhan doesn’t so much as blink, unrepentant. “Good.”

Wei Wuxian shakes his head again, exasperated and impossibly fond. This man. He has no idea what he does to Wei Wuxian’s poor heart. Of course he shouldn’t know, has no reason to, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

“Alright, well, since you’ve already bought it,” he says, forcing himself to mount the steps slowly, as if it’s a hardship, instead of leaping at him like some uncaged animal. “I suppose I can’t refuse.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says once they’re level on the deck. The sound of it grabs hold of something deep inside Wei Wuxian and pulls, and it takes effort not to stumble toward him. “Welcome back.”

His face is—well. The expression on his face is what keeps Wei Wuxian coming back again and again. Not only out of impatience to see it, which is a constant struggle every day out on the road, but because even he can’t deny the evidence it presents that he really is, as Lan Zhan says, welcome. It’s not a feeling he gets most places. He’s helpless not to smile like an idiot once more in return.

“It’s good to be back.”

They stare at each other for a long moment. Too long, Wei Wuxian thinks rather dizzily. He’s been staring too long. But there’s something… not different. Something tense. Or tired, about his face. Or maybe the set of his shoulders. It’s hard to pin it down, but he looks a little… strained. Wei Wuxian keeps staring, keeps drinking him in, trying to pinpoint what it is, to read the story of what’s got him standing so stiffly.

But Lan Zhan looks away first and goes back inside, leaving Wei Wuxian to follow. He does, of course, would follow him anywhere, but he takes his time looking around, soaking up the familiarity of Lan Zhan’s space, which hasn’t changed at all in the months since he saw it last. Lan Zhan isn’t big on change, he thinks, grinning to himself, considering his signature white wardrobe. And it’s...good. To know someone this way. To have someone so constant to come back to, even if he has to drag himself away again every time.

“Oh, I saw Jingyi a moment ago,” he says, in need of something to break the silence. “He was coming to see you, but didn’t seem to want to do it with me here. He seemed upset?”

Lan Zhan hums, unsurprised, as he settles at the table and sets out their cups. His deliberate grace is, as always, mesmerizing. Wei Wuxian watches, rapt, as he prepares tea and composes his words.

“They are at that age,” is all he says.

Wei Wuxian raises an eyebrow. “What age is that?”

“Emotional.”

Wei Wuxian blinks. Jingyi was coming to see Lan Zhan about something to do with emotions? ...Lan Zhan? He has a sudden image of his stone-cold, youthful face and almost laughs.

“Were you?” Wei Wuxian asks instead. “I couldn’t… I didn’t know you very well, back then.” He thinks about it sometimes, this regret, that he hadn’t paid attention to the right things about Lan Zhan when they were young. That he hadn’t spent more time learning him properly before the days when his memories lost that golden edge. “I know I made you angry—I made everyone angry—but. Other than that. Was the Second Jade of Lan just as moody as the rest of us, underneath that cool exterior?”

Lan Zhan levels him a look which he now knows to decode as ‘amused,’ and says, “I was.”

“Ah, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, sitting down across from him eagerly, “what sorts of juicy dramatics did you get into that I never heard about?”

After a brief, unimpressed glare, Lan Zhan goes back to his tea. Wei Wuxian frowns at him.

“Boring, Lan Zhan,” he says. “It’s all fun and games till it’s your embarrassing past, eh? Maybe I’ll just ask Lan-zongzhu when I see him next.” He pauses to gauge Lan Zhan’s reaction, sees just a flicker of a frown. He softens, adds, “Soon, I hope. Is he well?”

Long hands fold neatly in a white lap. “As well as can be expected.”

Wei Wuxian takes in his downcast eyes, his careful posture. “I’m sure he must be improving, with you looking after him.”

Lan Zhan takes in a deep breath and pauses as if to use it for more words, but the hitch stretches out too long. He lets it out in something akin to a sigh as he begins to pour, and says nothing at all.

Wei Wuxian smothers the pang of disappointment, of uneasy disconnection, and accepts the first of hopefully many cups of wine. He lifts it in a toast.

“To warm welcomes,” he says, painfully sincere. He can’t help it that here, with him, is the only place where the months of restless urgency in his bones finally settle, finally fade away.

Lan Zhan smiles, then, in that small, private way of his. It’s achingly lovely, but doesn’t look quite as easy as it has so far, in Wei Wuxian’s second life. “To long-awaited returns.”

Wei Wuxian smiles back. It’s a good day, a wonderful day; he really could not possibly ask for more. He nods, and he drinks his wine, but the alcohol is not the only thing burning his throat.

The next day, Wei Wuxian visits Lan Zhan for dinner after a day full of leisurely strolls and a long catch-up with Sizhui. The boy really is a marvel, and the bright, sometimes too-sharp joy of getting to know him again is one of the best things about life after death. The other best thing is just inside the house before him, and he’s eager to get to him again, even if it hasn't been long at all since they parted. But as he approaches, he sees another figure inside.

It’s Jingyi. Wei Wuxian changes course away from the door, not wanting to ruin the poor kid’s day twice in a row. He considers simply leaving and coming back later, but his curiosity gets the better of him and he creeps up the steps, carefully silent. He sidles up to the door and listens.

What he hears is sniffling. Very loud, post-sobfest sniffling. Concerned, he peeks inside.

Lan Zhan has one big hand on Jingyi’s shoulder as the boy gets a hold of himself, wiping at his tear-streaked face.

“Mn,” says Lan Zhan. “Do not forget. All will be well.”

Jingyi nods quickly. Then, time seems to slow as Lan Zhan pulls him in and wraps his arms around him, one hand cradling his head, the other making slow, lulling patting motions between his shoulders. It is gentle, and sweet, and Jingyi dissolves into it with the force of someone who’s been holding it together by a thread for some time.

Wei Wuxian’s eyes go so wide they feel liable to fall out of his head. Lan Zhan is hugging someone. Hugging! It’s… well, it’s unprecedented, for one thing. And Jingyi, of all people? Why would Jingyi be the lucky—

Jingyi is not lucky, Wei Wuxian realizes abruptly. Jingyi is but one of many people Lan Zhan has certainly hugged over the course of a lifetime. Of course Lan Zhan hugs people. You don’t get a kid like Sizhui without hugging. That’s obvious, almost painfully so. What a stupidly monumental shift in perception to have after knowing someone this long, he thinks. Lan Zhan has hugged people a lot of times, probably, like most human beings. Just never Wei Wuxian.

But this isn’t important. Something truly terrible must have happened for Jingyi to seek comfort this way, and for Lan Zhan to deem it acceptable to give it. It casts yesterday’s interruption and Jingyi’s sour reception in a different light. Wei Wuxian should probably make it up to him, but how? He could...take him to catch fish down at the river? He’d probably like that sort of thing.

After a moment that lasts forever in Wei Wuxian’s mind, Jingyi lets out a long, shaky, pent-up breath, and Lan Zhan gently releases him.

“Go and eat with your friends,” he says.

Jingyi salutes neatly, already drawn back up into that Lan composure. He really is one of them, as much as he tests the bounds of propriety on his more feisty days.

“Yes, Hanguang-jun. Thank you.”

Wei Wuxian barely pulls out of sight before Jingyi scurries past, thankfully unaware of the eavesdropper plastered flat against the house. He waits until Jingyi leaves the courtyard to so much as breathe, then goes inside.

“What’s up with him?” He asks, bracing himself for tragedy.

Lan Zhan doesn’t so much as look up at him. “He is fine.”

This gives Wei Wuxian pause. Lan Zhan wouldn’t lie, and Jingyi had seemed more or less fine when he’d left, but the blatant avoidance of the subject only leaves Wei Wuxian puzzled. He’s just asking after a kid’s well-being, is that really so wrong? He tells himself it’s mere curiosity that has him desperate to figure out what on earth Jingyi has undergone to receive a hug from Lan Zhan, and resolves to ask Sizhui tomorrow. For today, he drops it, content to hoard yet more precious seconds of Lan Zhan’s time.

As the two of them settle at Lan Zhan’s low table yet again, Wei Wuxian carefully catalogues his every move. The lovely, elegant angles of his fingers, the attentive bow of his head. He has to drink deeply, on these visits, if they’re to sustain him during the long droughts between. After a moment, Lan Zhan takes the sort of breath that means he’s about to speak.

“How long will you be staying with us?”

Wei Wuxian does not deflate. He does not frown, or pout, or do any of the things he feels like doing. Instead, he shrugs. “About a week.”

Lan Zhan pauses so briefly anybody else might have missed it. But Wei Wuxian is still watching him. He can almost see him decide not to say something else before nodding and going on with his task. Wei Wuxian tries not to wonder if he wants to know what he almost said. Tries not to be hurt that he decided not to say it.

Two days later, Wei Wuxian is walking Lan Zhan back to his house to steal more time with him under the guise of lunch when Sizhui approaches them and bows.

“Hanguang-jun, Wei-qianbei,” he says, smiling brightly. He really is the best kid. “There is a ghost-infested forest on the way toward Lanling. Jingyi and I have been asked to assist in cleansing it. May we go?”

“Assist whom?” Lan Zhan asks.

Sizhui ducks his head.

Wei Wuxian just barely stops himself from clutching at the pang in his chest. It’s not a remarkable question, but seeing the two of them speak this way, almost like...like a kid and his father. It makes Wei Wuxian want to laugh, or cry, or hug them both until they can’t breathe. He stares between them, both of them pristine and lovely in the sunshine, resisting the urge to pinch himself. That he should be lucky enough to see this is more luck than he strictly thinks he deserves.

“Jin-zongzhu and Ouyang-gongzi,” Sizhui says, “but we would all be very much obliged if Wei-qianbei and Hanguang-jun would accompany us. We have much to learn.”

Wei Wuxian can’t stop grinning. He hasn’t been on a nighthunt with Lan Zhan in ages. They’d gone once or twice on his first couple visits, just to take some novices on their earliest outings, and the memories of those nights are shining, precious things that he sometimes takes out late at night when he’s feeling especially lonely. Just to turn them over in his hands, to feel their weight, their realness, to look back on how well he and Lan Zhan still worked together. To remind himself he’s not alone, not really, because even if Lan Zhan doesn’t look at him with the same bottomless hunger that Wei Wuxian feels every time he sees him, they’re still zhiji. They’re still two of a kind, rare in this world.

But Lan Zhan pauses before answering. “Wei-qianbei will accompany you if he wishes,” he says slowly. “I have important matters to attend to in the morning.”

As Wei Wuxian’s heart drops down through the bottom of his stomach, Sizhui’s smile folds down smaller, his excitement turning to something more gentle. Almost knowing. He nods and bows.

“Yes, Hanguang-jun,” he says. “Wei-qianbei, I will see you this evening?”

Wei Wuxian nods, watches him go, and plasters a smile on his face. He tells himself it would be ridiculous to expect Lan Zhan to drop everything just to hang out with him and a bunch of kids. He’s Chief Cultivator. That’s the choice he’s made, and Wei Wuxian isn’t a part of that life, no matter how much he might wish otherwise.

“You’re so important, Hanguang-jun,” he teases as they resume their walk. “What urgent matters await you tomorrow?”

“Nothing of interest,” Lan Zhan says, that odd tension he’s been carrying more visible now. “Tell me of your time in Lanling. Will you return there, when you leave?”

“Ah,” says Wei Wuxian, keeping the false smile firmly in place. He’s not sure if he should take the question as a subtle reminder that he is expected to go. That he shouldn’t get too comfortable. “It was alright. I don’t think I’m quite ready to go back to all that gaudy grandeur, though.”

“Where will you go?”

He grimaces. He can’t help it. “Here and there, like always,” he says.

Lan Zhan nods. “I am glad,” he says. “That you have found a life you enjoy.”

Wei Wuxian’s heart constricts violently in his chest. If he weren’t so accustomed to the feeling, he’d almost think he was dying. But he’s not. That’s just how it feels when Lan Zhan says something simultaneously so sweet and so very wretched.

Chapter Text

That night he sets off as merrily as he can with Sizhui and a still-dour Jingyi for a ghost-infested forest. It’s simultaneously the most fun he’s had and the worst he’s felt in a long time, but he stays determined in his cheer for the journey. They meet Ouyang Zizhen and Jin Ling on the road there.

“Wei-qianbei!!!!!” Zizhen shouts upon catching sight of him. He rushes up and flings his arms around him for a brief but enthusiastic embrace, then pulls away, looking slightly pink.

Wei Wuxian fights hard not to laugh, and exchanges an amused glance with Sizhui. “Ow, ow, be careful,” he says, gingerly patting his chest. “How can you be so aggressive with an old man like me?”

Chastised, Zizhen bows properly. A’Ling crosses his arms.

“Old?” He says. “How can you be called old? Are you even that much older than us, not counting the years you were dead? We can barely call you qianbei.”

This is rather more aggressively irritating than A’Ling has been with him in a long while. Wei Wuxian nods, frowning, eyebrows raised.

“Alright. If I’m not your senior, then I’m sure you won’t need me to come to your rescue once all one hundred and eighty-four restless spirits in that forest come shrieking for your blood.”

A’Ling blinks and looks quickly between the trees and Wei Wuxian. “One hundred and—you can’t know that,” he challenges.

Wei Wuxian taps Chenqing against his head and shrugs. “Take your chances. I’ll just wait out here, shall I?”

“Wei-qianbei, ignore him,” Zizhen beseeches, while Jingyi splutters. “You know how he is, don’t leave us to the ghosts just because he’s insufferable.”

The thing is, he does know A’Ling, and he seems quite a bit more grumpy than usual this evening. He wonders if he needs to be worried about him and Jingyi on this night hunt. He waves away Zizhen’s pleas.

“I know, I know.” He claps his hands together. “So. Tell me what we do first.”

The nighthunt goes smoothly, the boys broken off into teams while Wei Wuxian wanders between them, one eye on the bits of starry sky visible through the dark canopy in case of distress flares. It’s a nice night out there, beyond the hazy bounds of this resentment-heavy wood, and it’ll be a nice night in here too by the time they’re finished. It’s satisfying work, if lonely. He pointedly does not dwell on this thought. He could, of course, speed things along, but the kids need to build their stamina, so he stays on reserve until they need him.

He’s making his way back over to Sizhui and A’Ling when he catches a snippet of their conversation.

“...told you what he said. Don’t be rash,” says Sizhui, placating.

“I don’t understand why I should wait,” A’Ling pouts. “There’s nothing stopping me now.”

Wei Wuxian ducks behind a tree. He doesn’t mean to make a habit of eavesdropping, but rarely does he get the chance to hear such interesting conversation and actually know the people involved.

“You care about him, yes? That’s the whole point?” Sizhui asks.

“Shut up.”

“A’Ling, I’m trying to help.”

A long pause. “Yeah.”

“Then you need to take his feelings into account. He only got to talk with Hanguang-jun two days ago, he’s not in a place to move on just yet.”

Jingyi spoke with Lan Zhan two days ago. Are they saying...A’Ling cares about Jingyi? As more than a friend? It is either the sweetest or worst idea Wei Wuxian has ever heard, and a sadistic part of him can’t wait to find out which it’ll turn out to be.

“I still can’t picture Hanguang-jun giving you guys all this advice,” A’Ling muses. “I can’t picture any of our grown ups talking like that, they’re all so...repressed.”

Wei Wuxian is almost affronted when he remembers that A’Ling’s main adult is Jiang Cheng. He can’t argue with that. But he also suddenly doesn’t want to hear where this turn in the conversation takes them. He steps into the clearing and claps his hands.

“So? Progress?” Wei Wuxian asks.

They scramble to recap the work they’ve done, and Wei Wuxian struggles to contain his pride. He has no right to it, not really. But these two...ah, he can never quite get a grip on his wayward emotions when it comes to them.

“Well done,” he says when they’ve finished. “You make a good team.”

He leaves them then, before he goes all misty-eyed. Because all these years and twists of fate later, they do. That this should be so, and that he of all people should be allowed to not only bear witness but to...to guide them? To help them along this strange path? He wipes at his eyes as he goes and shakes the melancholy wonder out of his head. They have a job to do.

A little while later, Wei Wuxian finds himself hiding behind another tree, listening to another private conversation. He hates himself a bit for it, but it turns out his curiosity becomes absolutely overwhelming at any furtive mention of Hanguang-jun, so here he is. Zizhen and Jingyi are a few yards away, swords at the ready, scanning the ominously seething canopy.

“You have to switch jobs with someone,” Zizhen is saying. “If you keep going into town twice a week, you’re going to keep seeing her, and then you’ll never get over it.”

“But I want to see her, even after—”

“Believe me, I know,” Zizhen interrupts, slashing at a dark cloud of resentment, “but so does Hanguang-jun. And he was right! Once I got some distance, and took some time, it was a little better. At first just because I didn’t want to like, annoy her, you know? By hanging around. But it was also just better for me, not to constantly be put in that position.”

Jingyi sighs. “I understand the purpose of it,” he says, and spins, executing an impressive double strike. “But it’s hard.”

“You don’t have to never see her again,” Zizhen pants, leaning on his sword for a moment. “Obviously. Just, like, go easy on the both of you for a while. Right?”

Jingyi throws his sword, cutting a swath of light through the shadows, then catches it when it returns. “I guess.”

Wei Wuxian leaves them to it, more bemused than ever.

The hunt comes to a close quickly after that, and Wei Wuxian gathers the four of them to lead them out of the trees.

“You did well,” he tells them. “It was a big job, and you did most of it yourselves. Are you two coming back to the Cloud Recesses to recover your energy?”

He doesn’t miss A’Ling’s shy look at Jingyi, nor the way Zizhen’s head jerks up, hopeful as a puppy who’s heard the word ‘treat.’

“Zizhen,” says Sizhui warningly, “if you fake a breakup just for a hug, Hanguang-jun will know.”

“Yeah and he won’t be impressed,” adds Jingyi. “You can’t abuse the hug privilege. It’s just wrong.”

“Okay,” says Wei Wuxian, finally cracking. The idea of even Zizhen being hugged by Lan Zhan is the last straw. “What—what is...what are you talking about? Hug privilege?”

Four heads swivel to level four slightly guilty gazes at him. He feels like he’s going insane.

“You’re saying Hanguang-jun just...gives out hugs to sad teenagers? Like some...like some free public service?”

Jingyi frowns. “What, like you don’t think he’s a kind person? Like he can’t give good advice? Huh? Just ‘cause you don’t want him to hug you doesn’t mean—”

“Jingyi,” Sizhui admonishes. “We all know Hanguang-jun is kind. Wei-qianbei has just never needed that kind of help.”

Wei Wuxian gapes at the both of them. It appears Jingyi’s attitude has not improved since his Hanguang-jun hug, and for some reason he’s decided to make it specifically Wei Wuxian’s problem. He doesn’t remotely know where to start with any of it, least of all Sizhui’s attempt at a defense.

“Never needed...I’ve been sad before, do you think I’m some—”

“Heartbroken,” Zizhen clarifies. “That’s his expertise.” His gaze goes faraway, admiring. “And it is unmatched. A true giant in the field. I mean, imagine—”

“Zizhen!” Sizhui cuts him off, looking harried. He glances furtively at Wei Wuxian. “We don’t need a recitation of your interpretation of events just now, thank you.”

Wei Wuxian begs to differ. Maybe not on the front of fanciful monologues, but he would very much like to be caught up, here.

“Expertise,” he repeats. “In heartbreak.”

A’Ling and Jingyi give him twin looks, and Wei Wuxian suddenly does not need to see them actually team up, thank you very much. He shudders at the thought.

“Not just heartbreak,” Sizhui says, bright-eyed and reassuring. “Life after rejection. He’s the best at that, isn’t he obviously? It’s so helpful, to hear from someone who really understands how to...how to be happy anyway. Happy with what you have, with what really matters. Because he is, you know. Happy.”

It’s still not sinking in. An oddly kinetic, uncomfortable thing is roiling in the back of his mind, growing louder by the minute.

“Rejection,” he repeats. “Heartbreak.”

Slowly, like falling through a vat of sap, he accepts that this is one of those painful moments in which he is learning something about Lan Zhan that changes the landscape of their friendship. That he is being forcefully made aware of a side of him that he had, probably subconsciously purposely, ignored. That Lan Zhan has parts of himself that he still keeps secret, hidden away from Wei Wuxian’s curious, unwelcome eyes. And to learn in the same moment that Lan Zhan has not only loved and bared his heart, but that it has been so thoughtlessly stepped on by some sad excuse for a human being, is on its own too much.

Suddenly, it snaps into place. The weary way Lan Zhan has been holding himself is suddenly cast in a new, much more distressing light. Somebody is responsible for it, a real live, horrible, blind, atrocious person. The combination of guilt, sadness, and anger that sets in all at once is hard to contain. Lingering wisps of resentment that remain from the night-hunt flock to him, like calling to like.

All four boys stare at him with wide eyes.

“Wei-qianbei,” Sizhui says. “You look...um…”

“Scary,” Zizhen breathes, beaming.

“Who has rejected Lan Zhan?” Wei Wuxian asks.

They all look at each other, apprehension turning to blank confusion. None of them seem to know what to say.

“Who?” he demands.

“You, you idiot,” A’Ling says, crossing his arms. “Duh.”

“Yeah, like, many, many times,” Jingyi adds, crossing his arms as well. They roll their eyes in tandem.

All the jealousy and indignation go out of him in an instant, a snuffed candle flame. In their place unfurls confusion.

“Excuse me? Why would you think that?”

“Because people were there, jerk,” says A’Ling. “I was there.”

Wei Wuxian shakes his head to clear it of the buzzing disorientation. He’s shuffling through his memories of the past year and a half, trying to think what on earth could have been misconstrued this way. “You think you saw me...reject—”

“The rejection is implied,” Zizhen cuts in, “because, well, you’re not married. But I have several thoughts on how that might’ve—”

“Sizhui,” Wei Wuxian says, desperate to hear sense. “Can you...explain. Why they seem to think this?”

Sizhui’s face scrunches up, apologetic and a little bit concerned. “Because it’s true?”

“Kids,” says Wei Wuxian, feeling truly as if he has tripped and fallen into an alternate universe, “I assure you, Hanguang-jun has never given me anything to reject him about.”

They stare at him again.

“I just said,” says A’Ling, deeply annoyed. “We’ve all seen it.”

“When?” Wei Wuxian challenges.

“Uh, lets see,” says Jingyi, holding up fingers as if to count.

“That time at Jinlintai,” supplies A’Ling. “In front of everyone, ugh, it was so gross—”

“Romantic!” Zizhen insists.

“Whatever,” says Jingyi, one finger down. He keeps talking over Wei Wuxian’s objections. “The first time you came back to visit, and Hanguang-jun offered to let you live in his house but you were like,” he affects an unflatteringly bubble-headed voice, “‘oh no, Hanguang-jun, I simply couldn’t impose,’ and he was all,” he stands straighter and adopts a deep, melancholy tone, “‘very well.’”

Wei Wuxian gets caught halfway between a sneer and a frown. “Neither of those are—”

“Last time you visited, when he offered to step down as Chief Cultivator and travel instead,” Sizhui says softly. He meets Wei Wuxian’s eyes with that quiet determination of his. “You laughed, and told him to do whatever makes him happy.”

“That...that had nothing to do with me,” Wei Wuxian tells him, crestfallen. He’s shocked that Sizhui would take it that way, he remembers that night. The pleasant atmosphere of the three of them dining together, the way the suggestion had lit him up inside, and how he’d had to drink a whole cup of liquor before answering to make sure he didn’t say anything too stupid. Had he managed to mess it up anyway? “He was just…”

But Sizhui is looking down at his feet. Jingyi is glaring at him. Zizhen is watching, rapt. And A’Ling is staring off into the woods, as if he might simply will himself not to be here. Wei Wuxian turns away from them to pace, disbelieving, then stops. He needs to sit down. He whirls, looking for a rock or a stump, and then freezes.

“You all just think that I would reject Lan Zhan. That I would—” He stops before he says too much. He’s talking to a bunch of gossippy teenagers. He doesn’t know why he’s bothering to take any of this even remotely seriously.

A’Ling shrugs. “Literally nobody has ever understood why, but like. Who understands you?”

“Aside from Hanguang-jun,” Jingyi mutters.

“Okay, fair,” concedes A’Ling.

“Nobody?” Wei Wuxian repeats. “Who is nobody?”

“Look, everyone knows all of this. It’s common knowledge,” says Jingyi. He shakes his head. “I used to be so mad about it.”

“He was, he was so mad at you,” Zizhen cuts in.

“I mean, Hanguang-jun! How could you—and you’re so shameless about it! You touch his forehead ribbon like, all the time! Don’t try to deny it, we’ve all seen it—”

“Yeah, it’s disgusting,” grumbles A’Ling.

“And like, you know what it means. Don’t pretend you don’t, you never touch mine or Sizhui’s or anyone else’s. But he lets you, because, obviously—”

“Obviously,” agrees Zizhen.

“And you just! Let him let you! And I—I was saying how I used to be mad because Hanguang-jun told me it wasn’t your fault that you didn’t feel the same way, but now I’m getting mad again because it just, it just—now I know how it feels, and I can’t believe he’s had to live like this and it is your fault and I can’t—I can’t—I can’t even look at you right now.”

Wei Wuxian watches numbly as he turns around to face away, cheeks flushed with some mix of embarrassment and actual anger. Zizhen pats him comfortingly on one hunched little shoulder.

“You really can talk, once you get going, can’t you,” Wei Wuxian says, dazed.

Sizhui, who has been eyeing him warily, steps forward and takes his arm, turning him down the road toward the Cloud Recesses.

“Let’s get you home, Xian-gege,” he murmurs, too low for the others to hear. “You seem a little bit tired.”

“A’Yuan,” Wei Wuxian whispers back, his heart warm and melty even as it thuds with adrenaline. “Has he...has he said that he...ah…” He can’t make himself ask, it’s too stupid, too ridiculous.

“Hanguang-jun has made things as clear as he knows how,” says Sizhui. “So if you don’t already know how he feels, then I really think it’s time to ask.”

He says it like it’s simple. Like it would be easy. Like Wei Wuxian hasn’t spent every minute of every day trying not to broach the topic, trying not to push too hard in the wrong place and get himself sidelined or banished from Lan Zhan’s life. But Sizhui is watching him with a small, hopeful smile.

“You’re very certain, aren’t you,” Wei Wuxian realizes.

“Mn,” Sizhui says with an endearing little nod.

Wei Wuxian sighs. He’s going to have to settle this, and soon. It doesn’t do to have rumors of Hanguang-jun’s many rejections at the hands of the Yiling Laozu flying around, tainting the air. And it doesn’t do to have Lan Zhan walking around as a known specialist in the field of heartbreak, either. Especially not if it’s true. Not when Wei Wuxian loves him so very much.

Back at the Cloud Recesses, the juniors head back to their rooms to sleep for the morning. Wei Wuxian really should at least attempt to do the same, but he’s full of an anxious, restless energy that won’t let him even so much as think of trapping himself within four walls.

For a long time, he walks. He treads familiar forest paths as the sun comes up, as it rises in the sky, as the bell rings distantly for the morning meal. He doesn’t bother to return to eat—he knows Lan Zhan is busy with his meetings and his important inter-sect business, and he doesn’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity while he’s still busy. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he crossed paths with him. Something wildly embarrassing and possibly inappropriate, most likely.

And that’s the thing, the question that keeps him pacing mindlessly even as his legs tire and his feet ache.

What is he going to do?

Confess on the spot? Interrogate him about all these supposed rejections? Fling himself bodily at him and hope for the best? None of these options seem...wise. So the morning passes, as does lunch, and suddenly Wei Wuxian can’t stand being alone with his endlessly circuitous thoughts any longer. He makes his way back to Lan Zhan’s house, which is closed, empty, as he knew it would be: Lan Zhan teaches in the afternoons if he can fit it in. He sits down on the wooden deck, exhausted, and two days of being awake and active catch up with him at once. His breaths deepen in that bone-deep way only a lack of sleep and a sense of security can cultivate, slowing his nervous heart and quieting his limbs. Gradually, without consciously deciding to, he allows the warmth of the afternoon sun to lull him to sleep.

Chapter Text

When he opens his eyes, Lan Zhan is there bending toward him, a soft look of almost-concern on his face, fading light glinting off his fancy guan.

Wei Wuxian smiles. “Good morning,” he says, stretching.

Almost edges closer to actual concern. “It is evening.”

“I know,” says Wei Wuxian, taking the hand offered to him without thinking, letting himself be pulled up.

He pauses, then, Lan Zhan’s hand in his hand. Big and warm and solid, offered freely and yet still so rare to feel this way, palm to palm, fingers wrapped securely all the way up to his wrist. He thinks it should feel different now that it’s possible there is actually something more between them on both sides, but it doesn’t. It’s always felt like this.

Lan Zhan doesn’t take his hand back, but he is watching him closely, as if he’s still trying to decide whether or not to worry. Wei Wuxian laughs lightly, and lets go.

“Have you eaten?” Lan Zhan asks.

“Ah,” says Wei Wuxian, reluctant to admit how little food and sleep he’s gotten in the past two days. “...No.”

The stare this earns him is more chastising than any speech or dramatic gesture could hope to be. “Come in and eat.”

Wei Wuxian casts a glance at the sky: the sun is much lower than when he’d fallen asleep, its traces almost entirely faded from the sky. When he follows Lan Zhan inside, the whole house is suffused in the pale gold of candlelight, catching those pristine white robes and making them glimmer. He sits politely at the table and waits while Lan Zhan gathers tea leaves and a plate of buns kept under a cloth, and brings them to the table.

“Are you well?” Lan Zhan asks, once he’s settled.

“Yeah, I...yeah, don’t worry, Lan Zhan,” he says. “We had a long night, that’s all.”

Lan Zhan purses his lips, as if he wants to press for details but isn’t sure if he should. Or maybe isn’t sure if he can?

The thought hits Wei Wuxian like an avalanche, fast and inescapable and seismic. The possibility that any of these little moments of holding back, of Lan Zhan keeping things to himself, might be the result of some sort of boundary that Wei Wuxian has unconsciously thrown up between them is...well, heartbreaking.

“I am happy you were able to spend time with them, before you go,” Lan Zhan says at length. Wei Wuxian wonders if he’s imagining the note of regret in his voice. “Eat.”

Wei Wuxian stuffs a bun into his mouth before he can say anything rash. Lan Zhan blinks at him, and he tries to smile reassuringly around the mouthful. It doesn’t work. He drinks the tea Lan Zhan passes him, using it to wash the bun down little by little until he can speak again.

“The kids told me you’re the heartbreak expert,” he says, too tense and ashamed to find another way around to the subject. “I’m dealing with some of that myself, at the moment, so I was wondering if you’d be kind enough to share your wisdom.”

He misses the exact changes that make Lan Zhan suddenly look older, even more tired, sad, but the regret at letting his mouth run ahead of him is sharp and immediate as a knife.

“That which is mine is yours, Wei Ying.”

The knife twists deeper.

“Ah, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, “don’t...don’t look like that. I’m not...I don’t know how to say this. The kids, they seem to think you’re heartbroken over me, like I’ve...rejected you somehow, and maybe it’s stupid, but they were so sure about it and I let them get into my head and now I can’t stop thinking about how wrong that would be if it’s true.”

Lan Zhan is searching his face, but is otherwise completely still. “If it is true,” he repeats.

“Yeah, if, I’m not going to take four hormonal teenagers’ word for it, not when it’s...not when it’s the most important thing in the world, not when it’s you.” He offers a weak grin. “So that’s...that’s my story. Either I’ve been breaking your heart without knowing it all this time or...well. Either way, I’m a fool. What’s your advice on that?”

“How—” Lan Zhan stops, gives a minute shake of his head. Wei Wuxian has never seen him voice less than a full thought before, at least not sober. “The juniors should not have been so blunt. I will be certain to make them aware of the distress they have caused.”

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, and yes, ‘distressed’ certainly is a word for how he feels. “You think I’ve rejected you?”

Lan Zhan’s gaze lowers sharply to the table. “Perhaps that is too strong a word. There is no need to—”

Wei Wuxian rushes around the table and throws himself to the ground beside him, taking both his hands. Lan Zhan tenses and blinks at him, wary, but doesn’t snatch his hands away.

“I...Lan Zhan, I...I haven’t. Rejected you. I didn’t know...it’s not fair, that you felt—how about you reject me? Right now. Just so I don’t feel so awful about it.” He can’t stop talking and he can’t start making sense. He’s rubbing the backs of Lan Zhan’s hands with his thumbs, staring down at them, hoping Lan Zhan will stop him before he loses his last shreds of dignity. “Go ahead. Reject me, tell me you’ve...that you couldn’t possibly want...”

Lan Zhan’s fingers tighten around his.

“I haven’t rejected you,” he finishes, finally out of steam. “I didn’t know.”

“You,” Lan Zhan says, strangely soft. He clears his throat. “Wei Ying.”

Wei Wuxian recognizes it for the question it is, and nods.

Gently, Lan Zhan extricates one of his elegant hands from Wei Wuxian’s grip, then slowly raises it. Wei Wuxian watches its progress like a butterfly he doesn’t want to startle, waiting for it to land on his face in that shocking moment of serendipity, that simple joy of being seen as a safe harbor for such a delicate, beautiful thing. When it does, it does so lightly, still uncertain. Wei Wuxian leans into it with his whole heart.

“Lan Zhan,” he says, and finally meets his eyes.

He looks frozen in all his pale statuesque glory, fragile, as if the slightest tap might shatter him into small pieces. But the hand on Wei Wuxian’s cheek is warm. Despite the overwhelming desire to kiss him, he feels a vehemently protective responsibility to be exceptionally careful in what he does next.

“Can I kiss you?” He asks, entirely uncertain of the answer. Love can be many things, and he wants any of them, any at all, so he refuses to assume. “Is that something you’d want?”

Lan Zhan’s gaze falls heavily to Wei Wuxian’s mouth and stays there. Very, very slowly, he nods.

“Okay,” says Wei Wuxian, more to himself than anything.

He sits up on his knees and leans forward, telegraphing his movements for fear of overwhelming Lan Zhan in this strange, mesmerized state. Lan Zhan’s eyes stay on his mouth until they slip closed, and Wei Wuxian’s chest fills with a buzzing, unnameable thing, pressing insistently against his lungs and his heart to make room. Gently, he fits their mouths together. Lan Zhan doesn’t so much gasp as suddenly start breathing again, and Wei Wuxian has a stab of recognition, because yes, that is what this feels like. It feels like breathing for the first time.

After just the shortest moment of breathing together, of the loveliest, softest press, Wei Wuxian pulls back to check that this is still alright, that Lan Zhan has not, indeed, shattered all over the dark wood floor. But he doesn’t get far at all before the hand on his cheek slides into his hair and pulls him in again. He goes, breath catching, and their mouths collide harder this time, emphatic, and he has to fight down the hysterical laugh that tries to bubble up and out of his throat. It escapes instead as a soft gasping sound, and Lan Zhan seizes the opportunity to catch Wei Wuxian’s lower lip between his own, sucking lightly, a damp shock of pleasure.

Wei Wuxian snaps. His mind goes blank and he falls against him roughly, clutching at his shoulder, his robes, deepening the kiss, surprising Lan Zhan such that they both go down just a little too hard to the ground. But Wei Wuxian can’t stop at this point, not now, not when Lan Zhan’s mouth has opened wider and welcomed his tongue, not when they’re licking into each other, blood-hot and desperate and finally, finally, finally here. He braces on a forearm, trying to shift the angle, and his hips and his growing hardness move against Lan Zhan, who freezes. Wei Wuxian hurries to look at him, to see what’s happening on his beautiful face.

His eyes are closed, shut tight now, and his breaths have gone slow. Measured, but shaky. His mouth is slick, kissed to a vivid pink, and it takes great effort for Wei Wuxian to not simply dive back in.

“Didn’t...didn’t mean to do that,” he says hoarsely. “I got carried away. Let’s just...go at your speed, Lan Zhan.”

He strokes fingertips along a high cheekbone, thumbs across a sharp jaw, and Lan Zhan’s eyes blink open, guarded.

“My speed.”

“Yeah,” Wei Wuxian says. “I…” He sighs a rueful laugh. “I didn’t mean to be so forward. I wasn’t thinking, but...I shouldn’t have. Shouldn’t have made you uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable.”

Wei Wuxian huffs. “Lan Zhan, are you just going to repeat everything I say? I want you like crazy, I feel like I’ve been waiting for...but it doesn’t matter, I only want what you want. Nothing…” he goes a bit breathless, saying it, “nothing is more important. So you set the pace.”

For a long moment Lan Zhan just stares at him, a rare inscrutable expression on his face. The longer it goes on, the more certain Wei Wuxian becomes that he’s making some sort of decision, but he can’t for the life of him imagine the stakes. When Lan Zhan moves to sit up, he fears he’s ruined things already with his impatience, and opens his mouth to apologize once more. He shuts it again when Lan Zhan unties his forehead ribbon and sets it carefully on the table. When he turns to look at him, his gaze has gone dark, and Wei Wuxian’s stomach goes bottomless like it had the first time he’d managed to ride his sword into the sky.

“Are you certain?” Lan Zhan asks.

“Of course—oof—oh—”

Lan Zhan flips him over, sudden and effortless, to straddle him and hold him bodily to the ground. Hips snug against hips, chest hard against chest; his hot, wet mouth open against the sensitive skin beneath Wei Wuxian’s ear. Wei Wuxian grips Lan Zhan’s robes and tries to press up against him harder, more, to move—

“Lan Zhan,” he breathes. “This is your pace?”

In answer, Lan Zhan grinds down against him, his arousal obvious, and nips at his throat. “Yes,” he says, low and breathy.

The inside of Wei Wuxian’s brain melts down to hot, churning ore. He fists a hand in Lan Zhan’s hair and tugs until their mouths clash again, open and wet and awkward. Perfect. They kiss that way, messy and breathless, until Wei Wuxian feels like he's used too many experimental talismans on himself and he might just qi deviate, go mad, or explode.

"What," he breaks away to ask, "what do you want, Lan Zhan, because I...I…"

Lan Zhan stares down at him, the heat in his gaze doing nothing to quiet Wei Wuxian's desperation.

"The book you once teased me with," he says, the hesitance of his voice at odds with their situation, with the look in his eyes, "when we were young. I...have you ever…" he glances away, then back. "Have you ever practiced that?"

Wei Wuxian knows he's making an unattractive face akin to that of a dying fish, but can't gather his faculties to stop. "Lan Zhan, I really hate to say this, but I don't actually remember what was in that book. But...I mean. Given. Given your question, I'm going to assume that would involve something other than, ah. I'm going to have to say, probably not. But I am...so willing to practice, right now, whatever it is, I swear, I just wasn't expecting any of this to happen let alone for there to be homework before—"

Lan Zhan kisses him with a faint, low growl that plucks gooseflesh up the back of Wei Wuxian’s left thigh.

"Study later," he says. "For now, a demonstration."

Wei Wuxian’s faculties short out for a second, but he gets with the program once Lan Zhan has his leather belt unbuckled. He pushes at Lan Zhan’s robes in turn, fumbling for the edges of the fabric, the ties, his fingers weak and shaking with the pounding of his heart, the flood of adrenaline. They both end up disheveled and tangled, and Lan Zhan makes an annoyed sound before pulling Wei Wuxian to his feet and pushing his clothes off properly, letting them fall to the floor in a heap. Only then does he reach up to take out his hair ornament, his robes still half-open and crooked, and he looks so bizarrely, cutely mussed. So familiar, so young that Wei Wuxian has to lean in and steal a quick kiss like he always wished he had when they were kids.

Lan Zhan freezes and stares at him, as if he hadn’t expected it. As if he forgot, in the mere seconds of tearing off clothes, that they might kiss each other, that Wei Wuxian would kiss him, now. Wei Wuxian smiles, suddenly sheepish and blushing, ducking down to untangle the mess he’s made of the layers of pale robes. Lan Zhan pulls him back up, kissing him soundly, deeply, and Wei Wuxian gets carried away by the soft, intimate rhythm of it, the way it makes their lungs work in time. But it doesn’t overshadow his body’s extremely pressing needs. He can’t quite bear getting distracted again. He pulls back.

“This,” he says, yanking at seemingly endless fabric, “off. You, do that,” he says nodding at the hair ornament. “Demonstration.”

Between the two of them, they manage to get all one hundred layers of Lan Zhan’s robes off, and then Wei Wuxian is pushing down his own trousers and stepping out of them without so much as thinking about it. But when he reaches out to Lan Zhan, he finds him staring intently down. Wei Wuxian fights the urge to cover himself, his face going hot. He swallows hard.

“Ah…oh—Lan Zhan?”

Very suddenly, Lan Zhan is on his knees in front of him. He braces warm hands on Wei Wuxian’s thighs and sways forward as if entranced before looking up, his eyes round, and dark, and questioning. It’s a look that feels disconcertingly familiar, as if...as if this is not the first time Lan Zhan has looked at him this way, has wanted him this way. It throws him off balance.

“You…” Wei Wuxian feels the need to say something, but doesn’t know what.

“I want to.”

The low, soft-edged sound of it almost sends Wei Wuxian stumbling.

“Okay,” he breathes.

And then Lan Zhan is leaning forward with purpose, tilting his head, opening his mouth and skimming it along the side of his cock. Wei Wuxian lets out an unsteady breath at the shock of wet heat just before Lan Zhan closes his lips around the head. He reels with the unfamiliar, mind-blanking pleasure of it, not wanting to fall or pull away but needing an anchor to hold himself upright. Lan Zhan catches one of his hands and brings it to the side of his head.

“Fuck,” Wei Wuxian says, overwhelmed.

It stuns him like a blow to the head, the way it feels, the fact that it’s happening. The slick furnace of his mouth, and the fact that Lan Zhan wants him in it. Wei Wuxian can’t look away, can’t tear his eyes off that mouth, that perfect, plush, haunting mouth wrapped so tightly around him, but if he keeps looking he thinks he might not ever recover. His fingers tighten in Lan Zhan’s hair, and he hums a low, pleased sound in response that makes Wei Wuxian’s knees go weak. He catches himself on Lan Zhan’s shoulder.

“Lan Zhan,” he says around heaving breaths, “if this is the demonstration, then, fuck, I am...I am all for it, but if it isn’t then, ah, you should probably pick one or the other because…” Lan Zhan moves his head forward and drags his tongue up the length in his mouth, “oh, fuck, I...Lan Zhan…”

Wei Wuxian pleads senselessly, leaning heavily on him, and Lan Zhan works his mouth a little farther along before pulling off and looking up at him again. His gaze is open. Unprotected. His mouth is even redder than before, and shining with spit. Wei Wuxian touches it wonderingly and shakes his head.

“Whatever you decide, I’m not gonna last long, Lan Zhan,” he says. “You’re...you’re too…” Wei Wuxian can’t pick a word. He can’t pick a single one, for the life of him. Beautiful? Perfect? Unbelievably hot? None of them get at the heart of this, not even close. He stands there, staring down at him, trying to think, and then gives up. “You’re too you.”

A breathless pause, and then Lan Zhan dives forward again, tonguing him, taking him into his mouth and sucking. Wei Wuxian loses all concept of time and place, everything but Lan Zhan’s mouth stops existing as he hangs, suspended, in the extended half-second before his orgasm. He doesn’t have the breath to warn him before he’s coming with a short, strangled grunt. Lan Zhan chokes just slightly and pulls back, his shining, bruised mouth open, his tongue extended delicately as he tries to catch what he couldn’t swallow. It makes Wei Wuxian’s throat close up, makes his knees shake, and he’d come again on the spot if he could.

Lan Zhan’s gaze meets his, wide-eyed but far from shy, as he wipes a drip of come from his cheek and licks it off his finger. Wei Wuxian hauls him up by the arms to kiss him, and Lan Zhan puts his tongue directly into Wei Wuxian’s mouth, aggressive and hungry, before wrenching away and pulling him toward the bed, leaving him to follow unsteadily. He strips off his trousers before Wei Wuxian can even blink, and crawls onto it. Wei Wuxian’s throat goes entirely dry at all this smooth, pale skin, the sweeping lines and angles of him, the odd dark freckle or softly tinted vein. An uncomfortable stab of regret, of sorrow, of distant anger lances through him as his eyes settle on the latticework of scars that stretches from his hips to his shoulders, curling around his waist possessively. But he refuses to let it take root, or to let itself show on his face. They’ve done their damage, and they’ll do no more. He sets one knee on the bed and waits to see what Lan Zhan will do next.

He watches as Lan Zhan pulls up a far corner of the bedding and retrieves a bundle of cloth before turning. Pausing. Wei Wuxian doesn’t mean to ogle, but the hard lines of muscle on his stomach draw his eye down, and the way they cut inward between his hips naturally pulls his gaze. He swallows hard. Beautiful is not a word he’s ever thought before about this particular piece of anatomy, but there simply is no other word for it. He can’t stop staring. It’s elegantly curved in its hardness, about the same length as his own if a bit thicker. He has to swallow again, and it wakes him up to the fact that he is actually physically salivating. He viscerally understands Lan Zhan’s earlier impulse, he wants him in his mouth possibly more than he has ever wanted anything in his mouth. He can’t remember ever feeling anything approaching this level of wanting, when it comes to things and putting them in his mouth.

But when he glances up to ask Lan Zhan if he can, he finds him looking away, suddenly far more self-conscious than he has seemed since this all began. Wei Wuxian shuffles over to him and touches his forearm lightly, in question, in invitation. Lan Zhan grips his hand. He squeezes back and leans in to kiss him, trying to put everything into it that he doesn’t know how to say.

“There’s no rush,” he does say eventually, hushed and close. “We can just...we can just do this. It’s...”

Lan Zhan shakes his head, an achingly familiar stubbornness taking over his face, and pushes him down. He kisses him again as he lies beside him, then lies back, his hands in Wei Wuxian’s hair keeping their chests flush even as his body twists, keeps kissing him as Wei Wuxian lies over him, weight on one forearm, a hand on his waist. His fingertips brush over the tail ends of his scars and he digs them in harder, imagining his hand as a brand, burning out any evidence that anything has ever touched his skin with less love than this.

He’s so involved in the deep slide of their mouths, in the willing of his heart into his flesh, that he hardly notices when Lan Zhan lets go of him, when his kiss becomes slower, quieter, less focused. He pulls back and follows his glance down to where he’s opened a small jar, watches as he pours oil over his fingers. He blinks. His thoughts, already hazy and blurred, screech to a halt. Then Lan Zhan reaches down and back, slicked fingers pressing into the cleft of his ass, and Wei Wuxian’s mouth drops open on a ragged exhale. Even in possession of all his faculties, he would not have guessed that this would be what Lan Zhan meant to demonstrate.

“Lan Zhan,” he breathes, staring at the sharp bones and tendons working in his wrist. “You...practice this?”

Lan Zhan’s wrist curves and his breath hitches. Wei Wuxian feels a stab of arousal so violent he curls in on himself, his forehead hitting Lan Zhan’s chest.

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says.

For a long, dizzy moment, Wei Wuxian stays there, eyes shut tight, trying to keep his thoughts inside his brain instead of scattered into space. But he can hear Lan Zhan’s soft breaths and the way they catch as his fingers move, and it’s difficult, so difficult to calm himself even a fraction.

“I think of you,” Lan Zhan adds, quiet. Hesitant.

“Lan Zhan,” pleads Wei Wuxian, as his cock gives a mighty twitch, “you can’t...you can’t say that kind of thing with no warning. I’m...I...are you trying to make me come again without even touching you?”

“Touch me, then,” Lan Zhan dares softly.

Those words in that voice do indeed have him entirely, almost painfully hard again. This hasn’t happened since he had a highly-developed core. He kind of can’t believe it, but then, everything about this has been beyond belief. He takes a steadying breath and raises his head to meet Lan Zhan’s heavy-lidded gaze.

“Do...do you mean…” he glances at the jar of oil.

Lan Zhan licks his lips, hesitant again. “If you would like.”

“Fuck,” Wei Wuxian says, fumbling with the jar.

He tries to be careful, but manages to spill some anyway. He’s not sure how much to use, or how many fingers to coat, or of anything at all really, but he’s suddenly consumed with the need to know what it would feel like to touch Lan Zhan, this way. To sink into the close, private heat of him and stay there while he shifts and pants. Still clutching the jar in his other hand, he reaches around Lan Zhan’s hips and tentatively, blindly searches. He touches down against the backs of his knuckles, follows the path of one finger, and lightly traces the ridge beyond which it disappears. Lan Zhan’s breath hitches again, and Wei Wuxian looks at him. His mouth is just slightly open as he watches him back, his eyes almost closed but still burning, burning. Wei Wuxian keeps eye contact, increasing pressure, rubbing along that edge until his finger slips inside and Lan Zhan gasps softly, his eyes snapping up toward the ceiling.

“Wei Ying,” he breathes.

Wei Wuxian swallows hard, pushing his finger deeper alongside Lan Zhan’s. It’s so hot, and so tight, and he feels it as if it’s constricting his entire body. His cock jumps again, and he bites his lip.

“Is that alright?” He asks, his voice breaking.

“Yes,” Lan Zhan whispers to the air above.

His finger begins to move, and amidst the hot, slick confusion of muscle, Wei Wuxian manages to follow suit, to match the way it extends and curves, until the tightness feels less taut, less liable to snap at any moment.

“Wei Ying,” says Lan Zhan. He’s breathing just slightly faster now, his skin glowing with just the slightest sheen of sweat. Solemn and refined, even like this.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian murmurs, “are you always so quiet? When you...do this?”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says, cut off on another sharp inhale. He closes his eyes when Wei Wuxian presses in deeper.

“Does it feel good?” Wei Wuxian asks, still pumping in and out as Lan Zhan showed him, though Lan Zhan’s own finger has gone still. His eyes are shut, his mouth falling a little farther open.

“Yes,” he breathes. “Wei Ying.”

Wei Wuxian hums. “Good,” he says, and licks into his open mouth, sucks at his plump bottom lip, just because he can, and wants to, and it’s the most wonderful thing he’s ever been allowed to do in his life. “I want to make you feel good, Lan Zhan. Better. Better than you’ve ever felt, I want—”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan breathes against him, his hips canting back.

“Fuck, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, driving his finger deeper.

Lan Zhan gasps a little bit louder at that, his eyes shutting tighter, and Wei Wuxian suddenly needs to put his lips on him again, that strange, wild wanting that makes his mouth water. He ducks down and mouths at his throat, scrapes his teeth across straining tendons, and Lan Zhan clutches his free hand in his hair.

“Wei Ying,” he breathes again, ragged.

“Mm,” agrees Wei Wuxian, and does his best to suck a mark into his lovely, soft skin, still working his finger, his palm pressed flat and hard against one perfect cheek.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, and it’s still soft but it’s almost—it’s almost a groan, and that’s—

Wei Wuxian shoves his finger deep and bites down, and Lan Zhan’s body curves beautifully as he voices a small, desperate, ah. The sound makes the entirety of the surface of Wei Wuxian’s skin simmer as if he’s been caught out in a lightning storm.

“Oh, fuck,” he says against his throat, as an epiphany dawns.

He wants that. More of that. Desperately. He doesn’t know if it’s okay to want to make Lan Zhan moan, if it’s okay to want to make him absolutely lose it. He doesn’t really know what Lan Zhan wants or how he wants it, but fuck, fuck he wants to. He wants to watch him come apart.

“Lan Zha—” He begins, intending to attempt to express, respectfully, his desire to completely destroy him. But Lan Zhan cuts him off with a shove to his chest.

“Lie back,” he says, breathy and rushed, pushing him over.

Wei Wuxian goes easily, startled and wide-eyed, momentarily confused. But then there’s a warm, slick hand on his cock, and his head falls back to the bed with a groan. Lan Zhan kisses him, bruising and filthy.

“May I?” He says, a low, rough rumble that buzzes against his lips.

It doesn’t matter at all that Wei Wuxian has absolutely no idea what he’s asking. He simply wants.

“Yes, of course, please, Lan Zhan, I—”

Lan Zhan pushes upright, then gracefully swings one leg over Wei Wuxian’s hips, and Wei Wuxian shuts up. He’s stunning, kneeling upright above him, naked and bathed in warm light. Determined still, and hungry, but also vulnerable, naked in more ways than one. Wei Wuxian wants to grab him, to hold on, but he’s paralyzed by that split-open, consuming gaze. He watches, dumbstruck, as Lan Zhan reaches down to touch him, to hold him in place, and then begins to slowly, slowly sink down on his cock.

“Lan Zhan,” he says, gripping the bedding so hard it digs painfully into the creases of his fingers. It’s too much, he wasn’t ready, actually he’s certain nothing could possibly have prepared him for this, and he’s trying so, so hard to hold still, to keep from doing anything that might hurt him, but he doesn’t know how long he’ll hold out. It’s so good. It’s so good. “I...ah, I, Lan Zhan, you, oh fuck—”

He shuts his eyes against the sight of him: chest heaving, waist curved back, brow furrowed in effort, taking his cock. He can’t feel this and see it, he can’t, his hips want to move, and he’s trying—

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan murmurs, strained, above him. “Are you alright?”

The sound that escapes him verges on hysterical. “Am I—yes, fuck, Lan Zhan, I, I’m just trying to,” he takes a ragged breath. Two. “Trying to let you do this...slowly.”

A large, shaking hand touches down on his stomach, making him flinch and gasp. He uncurls a fist from the bed and presses it tighter, holds it to him, to anchor them both. After what feels like an eternity of fighting himself, of not thrusting up, and up, and up, he loses track of things until he feels soft skin against his hips, and squeezes his eyes more tightly shut.

“Lan Zhan,” he says, fully enveloped in the slick heat of his body. “Lan Zhan are you...is this okay?”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says softly. His other hand comes down to grip Wei Wuxian’s hip. His breaths are deep and labored. “You feel...you feel…”

He trails off. And then he moves. A small, deliberate shift of hips atop hips, just the slightest friction. Wei Wuxian groans.

“Look at me, Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan pleads suddenly.

Wei Wuxian looks. Lan Zhan is there, eyes wild and defenseless, pink staining the tops of his cheeks. He is the most beautiful thing Wei Wuxian has ever seen. But he looks almost afraid.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, his voice thick. “Lan Zhan, it’s just me. I’m here.”

Lan Zhan’s eyes fall shut, and his head tips back. “Wei Ying,” he breathes, lifting up just a little and then gradually sliding back down. He says his name like a prayer as he slowly fucks himself on Wei Wuxian’s cock.

The blush deepens on his cheeks as his chest rises and falls, as his stomach contracts. His own cock is flushed several shades darker now, jutting up from the apex of wantonly spread thighs. Wei Wuxian runs his hand up one of them, squeezing the lean muscle, reveling in the ragged catch of breath in response.

“You feel so good, Lan Zhan,” he tells him, desperate for him to understand that this is the best moment of his entire lives. “Does it...does it feel good?”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan hums, rising up higher.

He pauses for a split second, and Wei Wuxian’s body can’t register the interruption, can’t bear the halt in rhythm. His hips snap up, hard, and Lan Zhan makes an absolutely unprecedentedly shocked, wounded noise, bracing hard against his hands on Wei Wuxian’s body.

“Fuck, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, clutching at him, trying to hold him steady, “I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“Again,” Lan Zhan cuts him off, gasping. “Wei Ying. Again.”

Wei Wuxian gapes at him. “I—”

Lan Zhan cuts him off with a hard squeeze to his wrist. His mouth is open, eyes beseeching, sweat beading at his temple and the base of his throat. Wei Wuxian braces his heels on the bed and drives up into him, eliciting that same startled exclamation, only this time, Wei Wuxian recognizes that it isn’t a sound of pain, but one of pleasure. One that echoes his own.

“Oh, fuck,” he groans, and thrusts up again.

It jolts Lan Zhan forward and Wei Wuxian grips the slim dip of his waist, half to keep him upright and half for more leverage. He pulls down as he fucks up into him, and Lan Zhan’s head snaps back on a short, broken groan.

“Lan Zhan, that’s good?” Wei Wuxian asks, senseless with the unbelievable, burning wonder of being the thing to make him make such a sound. “Is that good? That’s what you want?”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says, his hands drifting listlessly for something to hold onto as Wei Wuxian fucks him with short, hard thrusts. “Wei Ying.”

Wei Wuxian has never heard this pleading tone in his voice. A fresh wave of adrenaline sweeps through him, and he sits up, holding on tight so as not to jostle him, and kisses him with more force than finesse.

“Can I—”

“Yes.”

The answer is immediate. Imploring. Wei Wuxian wraps an arm around him and turns, flipping him onto his back as quickly and smoothly as he can with his every muscle pulled taut. Lan Zhan’s breath punches out, soft but percussive, his hands gripping Wei Wuxian’s shoulders. They kiss again—deep, needful—and when Wei Wuxian straightens his arms it’s so easy, instinctual, to roll his hips. Lan Zhan makes a sharp-edged, helpless sound, and his knees curl up to press against the sides of Wei Wuxian’s ribs.

“More,” he says, urgent. “More, Wei Ying.”

Wei Wuxian adjusts his hands and his knees, then draws out almost entirely before fucking back in, deep. His own groan almost masks Lan Zhan’s, and he bites his lip hard to keep quiet. He wants to hear this. He wants to hear every hitched breath, every guarded, sudden sound Lan Zhan will give him. He fucks him slowly, as deep as he can, and Lan Zhan lies beneath him, falling apart.

“Lan Zhan,” he says, sweat dripping from his nose to Lan Zhan’s heaving chest. He shifts, moving a hand toward Lan Zhan’s straining, weeping cock. “I don’t know how long I can—”

“No,” Lan Zhan interrupts, gripping his hand and pulling it away. “I want—please. Wei Ying, I…”

“What do you need?” Wei Wuxian asks. “Tell me how, do you want—should I—”

Lan Zhan shakes his head weakly, brow furrowed. “I...please—”

Wei Wuxian braces himself and fucks him harder, and Lan Zhan moans. The sound goes straight through to his hips, spurring him on, and Lan Zhan does it again, louder and longer.

“Wei Ying,” he groans, “oh, Wei Ying—”

He breaks off as the breath is punched out of him, his head tipping back, and he comes. Wei Wuxian fucks him through it until Lan Zhan sucks in a tight breath and his hands twitch against Wei Wuxian’s skin, then, with painstaking effort, stops. He moves to pull away, to give him some space, some time, but Lan Zhan wraps his legs around him tightly, his ankles crossed at the small of his back. Unable to do anything else, Wei Wuxian carefully leans down to kiss his lax, open mouth. He revels in the opportunity to suck, to bite, to taste while Lan Zhan lies still and lets him, his only responses a lazy slide of tongue and the small, thoughtlessly pleased sounds in the back of his throat.

It’s almost too much. Wei Wuxian suppresses the insistent urge to overthink, to panic, to flee. Is it even possible for fate to be this kind? It certainly hasn’t been his experience thus far, and he’d resigned himself to it. To the dusty, open, lonely road and the endless, blank horizon. To the avoidance of things that crack him open this way to prevent the raw hurt that follows. But here, with Lan Zhan so close, it feels safe. And he’s not the only one cracked open, exposed.

“I can’t quite believe any of this,” Wei Wuxian murmurs against Lan Zhan’s soft, swollen lips. “Is this real?”

Lan Zhan traces qin-calloused fingertips over the bones of his face, his eyes glinting. “Believe it.”

Wei Wuxian huffs and nuzzles into his throat to hide whatever ridiculous emotion his face is no doubt showing.

“What now, Lan Zhan?” His cock is aching, still held tight by Lan Zhan’s body, but this all feels so fragile. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. “What do you want me to do?”

“Like this,” Lan Zhan says, a low scrape that vibrates right into Wei Wuxian’s chest. “Keep going, I…”

We Wuxian blinks, but doesn’t raise his head. “You?”

A pause. Then, dark and thick with desire and something Wei Wuxian can’t parse: “I want to feel you finish.”

After a shaky breath, Wei Wuxian nods. “Okay. Tell me if it’s...if you…”

“Mn.”

He takes another breath and rocks into him, experimentally. To see how Lan Zhan reacts, so soon after coming. It’s just a change of pressure, a fitting tighter of hips, but it makes him groan with how badly he wants more, how much waiting has intensified every sensation. Lan Zhan sighs into his hair, and he wants...he thinks he should be gentle, in this. Lan Zhan is so sweetly pliant, curled around him this way, he doesn’t want to break the moment. He rocks forward again, biting back a desperate sound.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, pulling him up by the hand in his hair. There’s some quiet, unnameable emotion in his eyes. “I will not break.” He kisses him. “Fuck me properly.”

Wei Wuxian’s jaw drops, and he splutters weakly through his shock, through the way the words make his cock jolt, still seated firmly inside him. Lan Zhan is running his hands over his shoulders, through his hair, and a small, self-satisfied smile relaxes his features. Wei Wuxian laughs breathlessly and kisses that smile, learns the shape of it with his mouth, before drawing back to do as he’s told.

He braces up and fucks into him the way his body is begging him to, groaning once more. Lan Zhan’s hands tighten on his arms, and he does it again, and again, but it’s not enough, he needs more, he needs leverage. He pushes up to his knees and tries it that way, but struggles to hold Lan Zhan up where he needs him. He casts about and takes the bolster from the side of the bed to shimmy it under Lan Zhan’s hips, then pauses. Lan Zhan is breathing hard, staring at him, hands fisted in the sheet.

“Is this—”

He nods jerkily, his calves tightening over the curve of Wei Wuxian’s back, which, in this state, is all the reassurance he needs. He fucks him, first in a shallow, easy rhythm, trying to learn the angle, learn how his body wants to move, but before long his control frays. He can’t stop himself from fucking in hard and deep and fast, shoving Lan Zhan up the bed. Lan Zhan gasps, loud and high in his throat.

“Wei Ying,” he breathes, ragged, almost a question. He looks shocked as Wei Wuxian fucks him, keeps fucking him, and his hands drag up above his head to the slats of the bed frame. First just a bracing press, then a white-knuckle grip as he gasps and bites back a moan, shutting his eyes and turning his head away as if to protect his sight from too-bright light. “Wei Ying, I—oh—”

The small of his back arches, flexing his hips against Wei Wuxian, who then notices he’s hard and leaking again. Or still? Wei Wuxian doesn’t know, he’s been so busy drinking in the lovely expressions flitting across Lan Zhan’s face, he hasn’t so much as glanced down. But now that he does know, a sort of primal, animal satisfaction courses through him, and he wants more than anything to make him come again like this, to come with him like this.

“Lan Zhan, I, fuck, it’s so good, it’s too good, but I need—ah—I need…” He trails off, panting as he thrusts, his thighs burning. “Come with me, Lan Zhan, let me feel you come again, it felt so good, let me—how can I—”

Lan Zhan’s face is contorted as if in pain, his mouth hanging open, “Please,” he begs, and his next breath is a sob.

The sound goes straight to Wei Wuxian’s cock. He’s so close. He can’t last like this, but he’s desperate—Lan Zhan knocked his hand away before, so he hasn’t so much as touched his cock once, and he wants to, fuck, he wishes he could fuck him and suck him at the same time, but he doesn’t know if he even wants to be touched at all.

“Please, Lan Zhan, can I touch—”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan sobs again.

He’s sweating properly now, flushed red right down his chest, and as much as Wei Wuxian wants to put his mouth on that too, he has both a mission and permission now. He swipes his hand through the still-warm mess of Lan Zhan’s first climax and fists his cock with it, pressing tightly with his thumb, and Lan Zhan lets out a strangled noise, his entire body arching up off the bed in slow motion.

Wei Wuxian can feel it, it’s so close, it’s building up behind his skin, huge and almost terrifying, inevitable, but Lan Zhan is almost there, almost, so he strips him faster, fucks him harder. Even Lan Zhan’s neck arches, his whole body one long, taut bow, only the top of his head touching the bed. His muscles are straining and he starts to moan, desperate and soft, then growing louder, louder, until the tension snaps and he jolts. The way his body clenches down around Wei Wuxian tips him over the edge, a long, slow fall that seems never-ending, and he keeps moving, keeps fucking him as it thunders through him like a sudden waterfall. He keeps fucking Lan Zhan, and Lan Zhan keeps coming, writhing and crying out as thick stripes of white shoot across his chest with each wild thrust of Wei Wuxian’s hips. Then, all at once, the tension and energy bleed out of Wei Wuxian, and he stills.

For a moment, neither of them move, chests heaving. There’s a sharp, almost whining edge to Lan Zhan’s every breath as he collapses back down, and he’s trembling hard enough for Wei Wuxian to not only feel it, but see it. He pulls out slowly, carefully, but it still makes Lan Zhan wince. He sits back on his heels for a moment, thunderstruck, trying to catch his breath. He squeezes the hand still resting on Lan Zhan’s thigh, wants to ask if he’s alright, but doesn’t think he can. Doesn’t know if he can speak, yet.

As his brain slowly begins working again, he thinks vaguely that they’ve made rather a mess. He glances around, but Lan Zhan stirs, then, and rolls to the side. He takes up the cloth that had contained the jar of oil, shifts off the bolster so that he can face him, sitting up on one hip, and reaches out toward Wei Wuxian.

“Ah,” Wei Wuxian says, taking hold of his hand, easing the cloth from his shaking fingers.“Lan Zhan, let me.”

“Wei Ying,” he admonishes, trying to take it back, but Wei Wuxian just grips his hand tighter.

“Please?”

Lan Zhan glances up at him, then away, but doesn’t fight him. Wei Wuxian puts a hand to his shoulder to ease him back, then uses the cloth to gently wipe Lan Zhan clean: chest, stomach, hips, thighs. Each touch makes Lan Zhan flinch just slightly, or hiss in a breath, as if any touch is too sharp. But he doesn’t otherwise move.

Once they’re both relatively clean, Wei Wuxian cautiously lies down beside him, arms just barely touching. He reaches out, skims the backs of his knuckles along his cheek, and finds it damp.

“Lan Zhan,” he murmurs, dismayed. “Are you...did I…”

Deliberately, Lan Zhan turns and drops his weight onto Wei Wuxian, pinning him to the bed. He pushes his face into the side of his neck, his breath shuddering against his skin. Wei Wuxian wraps his arms around him and holds him tight, concerned, but trying not to be alarmed. It feels...it feels like everything he’s ever wanted, holding this trembling body in his arms. His eyes sting and he presses a kiss to his hair, rubbing soothing shapes onto his scarred back, tracing them with all the impossible warmth now banked in his bones. Eventually, Lan Zhan’s breaths even out, and his trembling subsides.

“Lan Zhan…” Wei Wuxian starts, not knowing how to finish.

Lan Zhan sighs heavily. “Sleep,” he says, squeezing Wei Wuxian’s arm and pressing in close.

“Alright.” It is late, now, and Wei Wuxian can feel post-sex exhaustion dragging at his lungs. But it’s a dismissal, too, of Wei Wuxian’s attempt to understand, to comfort. It would sting, if he weren’t so hazy, if the worry for Lan Zhan weren’t the only thing his brain has room to process.

He sighs, and tries to put aside this worry until Lan Zhan is awake, and he can see his face, and they can understand each other again, in the way they’re meant to do. In the way he thought they would, once he cleared up the whole... misunderstanding. He gestures vaguely, and the candles go out. He’s more comfortable than he has been in...well. He can’t think of a time he’s ever felt this warm, this content. So he holds Lan Zhan close, and lets sleep take him.

Chapter Text

Wei Wuxian awakens the next morning groggy and confused, bright sunlight in his eyes and a warm weight on his back. His limbs are heavy with use, but he feels warm and complacent despite the odd circumstance. After a moment of drifting and a very large yawn, the bed beneath him shifts. And he remembers. And realizes that it is not a pillow he’s curled around. He lifts his head.

“Lan Zhan,” he says, blinking in the daylight. Lan Zhan is lying beneath him, one arm around his waist, their legs interwoven. He looks down at him out of the corner of his eye, as if wary. Wei Wuxian can’t for the life of him think what to say. “What are you doing still in bed?”

Lan Zhan shifts again, and looks away. For a moment Wei Wuxian thinks he’s not going to answer, but then he draws in a breath, and opens his mouth.

“You are leaving tomorrow,” he says softly, as if it makes sense, as if it answers his question.

Wei Wuxian has a jolting moment of dissonance wherein his life before last night, and his life after try to merge in his mind. It’s...confusing. First, his chest fills with a liquid approximation of the sunlight streaming into the room at the thought that Lan Zhan would stay in bed so late just to be with him. But then all his certainty of the night before dissipates.

“...Am I?”

Lan Zhan’s eyes snap back to his, but he says nothing. Wei Wuxian pushes up on his elbows to better take in his expression. It’s guarded again, just the slightest frown on his lips, his eyes angled away. So at odds with the way he had looked at him last night. For a horrible, gut-wrenching moment, Wei Wuxian thinks he’s changed his mind.

“You think I should?”

There’s a silence in which Lan Zhan closes his eyes and swallows visibly, then begins to move to get up. “You should do what makes you happy,” he murmurs.

It dawns on Wei Wuxian then what seems to be happening, what old habit Lan Zhan is repeating despite everything. He catches Lan Zhan’s shoulder and pushes it back to the bed, pinning and straddling him. Lan Zhan’s eyes go wide, but he doesn’t make a move to dislodge him. The blanket is caught around and between them, but there’s still more than enough skin on sleep-warm skin to make Wei Wuxian blush despite his determination.

“Then I’ll stay right here,” he says. He means for it to be brash and proud, but it isn’t. It comes out almost embarrassingly tender.

Lan Zhan stares at him, and stares at him. He’s silent for so long Wei Wuxian begins to doubt again, but he doesn’t move away.

“Don’t you want me to?” He finally asks.

“Yes,” Lan Zhan says immediately. “Of course.”

“Then why would I go?”

“I—” Lan Zhan breaks off, dumbfounded. “I have always wanted you to stay.”

“Ah, Lan Zhan, but I didn’t know that before,” says Wei Wuxian, shaking Lan Zhan’s pinned shoulders. “I thought...I thought I was supposed to go away, because you had things to do that I couldn’t help with. I thought visiting was the most I could get of you, that the way I felt was just me. I had to go or I’d lose my mind from all the stupid one-sided lovesickness but I told you, I told you last night, I get it now. I’m sorry. Are you angry with me?”

Lan Zhan’s face, tinged with unease before, has now gone slack with shock. “One-sided what?”

Wei Wuxian frowns. “What?”

“What you said,” says Lan Zhan, as if in a trance. “You would...lose your mind from…”

“From...oh,” says Wei Wuxian, thinking back. “Lovesickness? I suppose it’s my own fault, from what everyone seems to think. I just sort of...I really didn’t think someone could...well. Love me back.”

Lan Zhan’s hands are suddenly gripping his thighs. “Wei Ying.”

His face is...he looks...terrified and overjoyed at once. It’s the most emotion Wei Wuxian has ever seen on him, and it scares him.

“What,” he asks, pressing a palm to his cheek, “Lan Zhan, what is it?”

“You...you feel,” he trails off, and his eyes are bright with unshed tears. Wei Wuxian feels a sympathetic pricking in the corners of his own. “That way. For me.”

There’s a moment of confusion wherein Wei Wuxian simply strokes Lan Zhan’s face. “That...yeah,” he says at last. “I...I said.” He tries to think back to what he had actually said the previous night. “Didn’t I say?”

Lan Zhan haltingly shakes his head.

“Oh. Well, but then…” Wei Wuxian glances down at the state of them both. “I thought it was...obvious. Wasn’t—what—what did you think, then?”

“I. I thought you only wanted...this,” Lan Zhan says, glancing down as well.

Wei Wuxian’s jaw drops. “Lan Zhan! How could you—! You’d let some man just...just do...this? You—you’d—how could you—”

One of Lan Zhan’s eyebrows twitches. “Not ‘some man,’ Wei Ying, and I did not let you.”

Still heaving with the horrible realization of all the things he’d done to Lan Zhan without ever letting him know how deeply he was loved and wanted, Wei Wuxian stares. “Lan Zhan. I’m sorry, I...”

“No,” says Lan Zhan, reaching up to press his fingertips against Wei Wuxian’s mouth. “I did what I wanted to do. And I would let you do anything you wanted with me, regardless of the feeling behind it.”

A strange, vertiginous slide of emotions too many and too loud to sort through makes him fold down tight against Lan Zhan’s chest, cheek to his sharp collarbone. “Don’t say that, Lan Zhan,” he rasps. “Don’t say that.”

“Why not speak the truth?”

Wei Wuxian holds him tighter, which is an ineffective way to shut him up, but a very effective way to feel as close as possible.

“Because you—you deserve to...ah, Lan Zhan. All this time you’ve thought...I can’t bear it. You deserve to know, you, you should never accept anything less than...than what you deserve.”

“Which is what?”

His hands are pressed hard against Wei Wuxian’s back, keeping him there. The question, somehow, heartbreakingly, is genuine.

“Everything,” says Wei Wuxian, trying to press the knowledge of this fact into him with his body. “Everything you want. More. Everything in the world.”

There is a long pause in which Wei Wuxian savors rising and falling with Lan Zhan’s breath. Then, rueful and achingly honest, Lan Zhan speaks.

“I only want you.”

Wei Wuxian presses his face to his throat, tries to fit into him so snugly it would take a force of nature to break them apart. “You have me, Lan Zhan, all of me, I should have said it ages ago, I just didn’t think it mattered.” He’s breathing hard suddenly, as if he’s run a great distance or fought a great battle. “I only...I only wanted to keep as much of you as I could get. But you’ve been hurting. I should have been braver, more honest, I should have…”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, wrapping his arms around his shoulders, his middle. Wei Wuxian knows that tone, knows it’s meant to be fortifying, but there’s a shaky, unstable edge to it that makes him want to wail. “Hush.”

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian tries, but it comes out wet. He realizes with horror that he’s crying, and Lan Zhan’s hand tracks a soothing circle over his skin. He lets out a soggy laugh. “I did it,” he says, tight past the lump in his throat. “I got a heartbreak hug from Hanguang-jun.”

“No heartbreak,” says Lan Zhan. “You deserve everything you want. Everything in the world. You deserve to be loved back, always.”

Wei Wuxian shuts his eyes tight, tight, and just breathes until he can get himself under control again. Then he rolls off of him, trying to wipe the wet from his face surreptitiously.

“Ah, Lan Zhan, you’ve wasted so much of your day on me, don’t you have things to do?”

Lan Zhan follows, bracing over him, his face unbearably soft. The light in his eyes is not new, but it is brighter. Unshielded. Wei Wuxian simultaneously wishes he could just lie here basking in it forever, and wants to kick himself for ever having made him feel the need to dampen it. But Lan Zhan brushes a thumb across his cheek, his mouth, then leans down and presses kisses against his damp eyelashes.

“No time with Wei Ying is wasted,” he murmurs, and kisses his mouth, plush and unhurried.

They stay like that for a long time, learning the caverns and contours of each other’s mouths, learning the way their hands fit against each other’s sinew and bone. There is truly no hurry, and the change, the difference between this and the way they had fallen together so frantically the night before threatens to stir Wei Wuxian’s guilt once more.

“Lan Zhan,” he says at length. “You really do have responsibilities, I know you do. Not that I don’t want to keep doing this—I would never stop, given the option—but we have...we have time. Don’t we?”

Lan Zhan’s face is relaxed and open, and he blinks slowly, softly, as his lips curve into a small smile. “Mn.”

Wei Wuxian can’t help but smile back. “Then stop lazing about, or everyone will call me a bad influence,” he says, knowing full well that is the only thing anybody has called him for a very long time. “I’ll still be here when you’re done.”

Lan Zhan blinks again, and the smile drops. “You will,” he says, as he realizes it. Wei Wuxian smiles wider.

“I’ll go get my things right now, and invade your space properly while you’re out, how about—”

He’s cut off by another kiss. It takes them some time to get out of bed.

Half a day later, Wei Wuxian is shuffling through some spare papers that constitute the last of the straggling mess that had become of his guest quarters. He’s never certain how he manages to spread out so much with so few things in so little time, but he’s vowed to himself that he won’t make chaos in Lan Zhan’s home. He’s fairly certain he loves him enough to figure out how to keep tidy even when his mind is occupied by some new idea.

He’s walking fast—he keeps getting sidetracked, and it’s almost around the time Lan Zhan should be finishing up and heading home. He wants to be there, waiting for him, as he’d promised. It had been offhand, not a literal guarantee, but he can’t stop thinking about seeing those doors slide open from the inside, seeing Lan Zhan’s face when he sees him there, in his home, a part of it. He’s been picturing it all afternoon, and the closer it gets, the more anxious his whole body grows, restive with expectation. But as he turns down the path out of the center of the Cloud Recesses, he glances up and sees Jingyi walking toward him.

He slows, slightly wary after their last meeting, but Jingyi’s head is bowed, a look of chagrin on his face. When it becomes clear he is indeed approaching him specifically, Wei Wuxian stops and waits. Jingyi halts a few steps from him and glances at his face before bowing deeply, the height of propriety.

“Jingyi apologizes to Wei-qianbei for his atrocious conduct.” He glances up again, then hurries to add, “Sincerely. Sincerely apologizes.”

Wei Wuxian huffs and rolls his eyes. He catches movement out of the corner of his eye and turns to see the other boys crowded off to the side on the intersecting pathway. Sizhui and Zizhen have the grace to pretend not to be watching, but A’Ling just raises an eyebrow at him. Wei Wuxian shakes his head.

“Apology accepted,” he says, in a hurry to be on his way again. “You weren’t wrong but you were rude, which is just as bad in this world, you know. Don’t say I never taught you anything.”

“I wouldn’t!” Jingyi says, straightening, wide-eyed. “I—I really mean it, you know. I’m not just apologizing so you don’t get mad and leave again, and not even just because it would upset Hanguang-jun, we really like having you around! We...you...you teach us a lot! And—”

“Alright, alright, enough,” says Wei Wuxian, grimacing. “Stop it. I already accepted your apology, stop torturing me.”

He shudders and frowns, but Jingyi is looking past him, distracted. He executes another perfect bow, and Wei Wuxian turns just as Lan Zhan comes to a halt at his side, stately and immaculate. He smiles, his plan forgotten in the face of simply laying eyes on him again. He’s so impossibly lovely. Something squirms in his stomach, excited and nervous and altogether unworthy.

“Hanguang-jun,” Jingyi greets him respectfully.

Lan Zhan nods at him, and then looks pointedly over at the other three where they stand frozen, staring at their shoes.

Jingyi splutters. “We—I—I mean we were, um, just on our way to...to…”

Lan Zhan does not save him. Wei Wuxian snorts. He loves him so much.

“Go on, I told you, apology accepted,” he says, waving Jingyi away. He knows he’s starting to lean into Lan Zhan, but he can’t seem to keep standing up straight. There’s a force acting on some essential part of him that can’t be counterbalanced.

Jingyi looks alarmedly between them at the mention of an apology. Lan Zhan blinks.

“Apology?”

“It’s nothing, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, fighting a grin at Jingyi’s resigned horror and Lan Zhan’s arch disappointment. He almost can’t stand it, how good it feels to know people who are so funny, and to be a part of their little world. “Remember last night, how I told you—”

At the mention of last night, Lan Zhan’s focus snaps to him, immediately an order of magnitude greater in intensity. Wei Wuxian becomes aware he’s stopped speaking, and clears his throat.

“I told you they, ah. Spoke with me. You know.”

Lan Zhan doesn’t appear to be listening anymore. His eyes flick down to Wei Wuxian’s mouth, then drag back up. Wei Wuxian takes in a breath to say something else, but it loses its way halfway between his mind and his mouth. He gets about halfway across the already-scant distance between them before he freezes. This is Lan Zhan—private, stoic, proper Lan Zhan. He can’t—he shouldn’t take liberties—

His thoughts are cut off abruptly by a warm hand on the side of his neck, a thumb beneath his jaw. It pulls him in, and their mouths meet in a soft, chaste kiss. He breathes into the surprise, the sharp, relieving warmth that lances up through his chest. They part. Smile at each other.

The loud but hesitant clearing of a throat brings their attention back to their surroundings. As one, they turn toward Jingyi, whose face is shocked pink. He’s staring openly at them, his mouth hanging open. Wei Wuxian snorts.

“Guess I should be thanking you,” he says with a shrug.

Jingyi goes from pink to red. Wei Wuxian follows his glance to the side and is treated to the sight of the other three, frozen in various states of shock. Sizhui looks happy. Zizhen looks like he might swoon. Even A’Ling looks gobsmacked. Wei Wuxian laughs outright.

“It is dinner time,” Lan Zhan proclaims.

Jingyi jumps to dip his bow before scurrying off, eyes wide.

“Who knew Hanguang-jun would be so bold in public,” Wei Wuxian says, turning back, a bloom facing the sun.

“Is it boldness?” Lan Zhan runs his fingers down a stray lock of hair over Wei Wuxian’s shoulder, but never looks away from his face. “If you give me no choice but to kiss you, can the blame be laid upon me?”

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, grinning widely. “We’re going to break about a hundred rules if we don’t get out of the open right now.”

Lan Zhan considers him just a little bit too long, as if he’s really thinking about it.

“Mn,” he says, and sets off at a brisk pace, his hand warm on the small of Wei Wuxian’s back.

Wei Wuxian laughs, delighted, buoyant with impossible happiness. He doesn’t know what the future will bring, but he knows it will have Lan Zhan in it. He knows he doesn’t have to leave him tomorrow, or the next day, or maybe ever. He knows that he is seen, and he is known, and that somehow, incredibly, against all odds, he is loved.