Chapter Text
The taxi jolts to a stop at the base of Cloud Recess University's dormitory steps and Wei Wuxian can’t help but press his nose to the window like a kid. His breath fogs the glass as he stares up at the pristine white and completely ancient buildings etched against the hilltop like a palace carved into clouds. The architecture is impossibly elegant. Expensive. Unreachable.
A security guard eyes him warily as he hauls his suitcase and cheap duffel out of the trunk. It's not subtle: the worn edges, the patched corners, the way his name is sharpied across the side. He clearly looks exactly like he feels: unbefitting of this place.
"Name?" the guard asks gruffly.
"Wei Ying," he says automatically, then remembers himself with a sharp stab of pain, "Sorry, I mean—Wei Wuxian. I go by that now. Here’s my letter." He fumbles out the now crumpled admission packet, still smelling faintly of jasmine and ink.
The guard scans it briefly. “Scholarship student. Right.” He waves him through.
Wei Wuxian smiles tightly and hoists his bag back up. As he walks, every student he passes seems like they were born in pressed collars and with good posture. He tries not to fidget. Or slouch. Or look like someone who’s only here because he tested too well to be ignored. Or someone with a background pitiful enough to be accepted as this year’s charity case.
The campus is too quiet. Too orderly. Even the wind feels curated. He’s starting to wonder if he’s made a mistake, if he’s wandered into the wrong reality, when he nearly walks straight into someone. Someone tall. Immaculate. Stern.
Wei Wuxian stumbles back, eyes catching on the pale blue clothes, the silver pin at the throat, the expression like carved marble. He isn’t used to looking up at someone, despite not eating enough he has surpassed both Jiang Cheng and his adoptive father in height, easily towering over them by now.
“Sorry!” he blurts abruptly. “I wasn’t—wasn’t looking. My fault. First day. A bit overwhelmed, obviously. Did I mention sorry?”
The man blinks slowly. “You are Wei Wuxian.”
“Uh. Yes?” He straightens, warily. “Should I be concerned you know that?”
“You are my assigned project partner.”
Wei Wuxian gapes and notices abruptly how truly beautiful this man is before he is promptly sidetracked by the other’s toneless answer. “Wait, you’re—”
“Lan Wangji.”
Oh no. This is the top student everyone talks about in hushed tones. The Lan heir. The absolute academic weapon with a perfect GPA and a permanent stick up his—
“Cool,” Wei Wuxian says, overly bright, the forced cheer second nature to him after years of practice. “Looking forward to working with you.”
☆☽☾☆
The project is part of a core course in the Folklore and Cultural Studies track, one of the more intense offerings at Cloud Recess University. The assignment: to trace the evolution of one specific regional ritual practice, analyse its socio-political function within the community, and create a multimedia presentation that includes both a written paper and an interpretative artifact—performance, reconstruction or visual model.
It’s a nightmare of a project: research-heavy, interpretative, creative and academic, with a sixty-minute presentation at the semester’s end. Most students form pairs with friends, but Lan Wangji submitted his preference to work alone. The faculty insisted all first years pair off and his brother and uncle secretly worried about his tendency to isolate himself from his peers too much to throw their weight around for his wish to work alone.
Wei Wuxian was the only other student without a chosen partner due to his late admittance and the only one who marked “open to creative reconstruction” with a smiley face.
So now they’re assigned to work together.
☆☽☾☆
Group Chat: "Jiang Sibs 🌶️🐾🔥 "
👑 Jiang Yanli:
Did you eat something that wasn’t instant noodles, A-Xian?
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
i had a banana with Nutella
does that count
🔥 Jiang Cheng:
No.
That doesn’t count.
You’re going to get scurvy.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
literally saw you pour hot sauce into ramen
and call it “a balanced meal” but okay
👑 Jiang Yanli:
Boys 😔
I will bring you lotus pork soup tomorrow.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
BEST SISTER 💕
🔥 Jiang Cheng:
I’m also your sibling.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
sure but can you make soup that tastes like love and safety??
exactly. sit down.
👑 Jiang Yanli:
😊
☆☽☾☆
The Lan archives are beautiful in the way that temples are beautiful: cold, quiet, intimidating. The kind of place that makes you whisper even when alone. Wei Wuxian doesn’t even dare to breathe deeply here.
The sleeves of his washed-out red sweater are pushed to the elbows, and his notebook is already filled with doodles in the margins: possible ritual scenes and one highly unflattering caricature of Lan Qiren with his hair in a halo and steam rising off his head labelled “Saint Iceblock of Judgment”. He’s halfway through adding a halo when he glances up – and promptly forgets how to breathe.
Lan Wangji sits across from him, utterly still, the pale curve of his cheek touched by sunlight through the high windows. His long fingers turn the page of a heavy, thread-bound manuscript gracefully and carefully like it might bruise. His posture is straight, almost inhumanly so, but it doesn’t look forced. It looks right. His clothes are once again cloud-white with faint silver embroidery near the collar, and his delicate jewellery like the little hoops in his ears glitter prettily when he moves.
Wei Wuxian finds himself staring. Like an idiot.
It’s not fair. People that beautiful should be slightly clumsy or bad at math. Or rude. Or all of the above.
Lan Wangji is none of those things.
He’s quiet. Precise. Ridiculously smart. At first, Wei Wuxian was still on the fence about the rude thing. But Lan Wanji is not rude, just careful with his words and blunt. Wei Wuxian has almost come to appreciate it. He speaks in short, carefully chosen sentences that make Wei Wuxian feel like a noisy windchime next to a monolith.
And he’s beautiful too?
Unacceptable.
Wei Wuxian slouches further in his chair, annoyed with the entire situation. It’s not like he wants to think Lan Wangji looks like he walked out of an ink painting. It’s just... a fact. Like gravity. Or how every time Lan Wangji blinks, Wei Wuxian has to remind himself to look away.
Lan Wangji looks up. Their eyes meet.
Caught. Caught staring. Panic rises up in Wei Wuxian’s chest like fizzy soda.
“Do you understand this passage?” Lan Wangji asks, tilting the book slightly toward him.
Wei Wuxian blinks; realizes it’s written in pre-Modern script and internally panics again.
“Oh. Yeah. Uh—probably. Let me just—” He flips his notebook open to a blank page and starts to copy the characters like a man escaping out the side window of a bad date. “Totally got this. Love historical linguistics. Big fan of ritual inscriptions. So sexy.”
Lan Wangji frowns faintly. “Ritual inscriptions are not ‘sexy.’”
Wei Wuxian groans and buries his face in his sleeve. Lan Wangji does not smile but his eyes are amused if one knows how to spot it. But he does slide the book a little closer, so that they can both read it more easily. Their elbows almost touch. Wei Wuxian pretends not to notice. And absolutely does.
☆☽☾☆
Group Chat: "Cloud Recesses Academic Outlaws"
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
remind me why i thought uni was a good idea
🌺 Wen Qing:
Because you’re not too stupid, reckless and deeply in need of adult supervision when researching?
🍵 Wen Ning:
You said, “I want to study ghost rituals, punch the bourgeoisie and never wear an apron again.” after that one shift at the coffeeshop.
📘 Nie Huaisang:
which is still the most relatable mission statement i’ve ever heard
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
thank you for your emotional support
also since we’re talkin about adult supervision who wants to help
me test a haunted mirror theory at 2AM
🌺 Wen Qing:
No.
🍵 Wen Ning:
I’m free!
What should I bring?
📘 Nie Huaisang:
how haunted are we talking. Like cursed haunted or just vibes haunted?
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
vibes, mostly.
but there’s also talk about a whispering face in the glass.
minor detail.
🌺 Wen Qing:
You’re all going to get possessed. I’m not doing an exorcism without snacks.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
i’ll bring spicy dumplings
🌺 Wen Qing:
Fine. I’m in.
☆☽☾☆
They’re sitting in the corner of the student commons study hall, surrounded by notes and manuscripts, illustrating two very different research philosophies. Lan Wangji’s half of the table is a perfectly arranged array of books with tabs, cross-referenced dates and a tentative outline for their module assessment. Wei Wuxian’s half looks like a creative hurricane blew through – ink stains, diagrams, dramatic arrows pointing between post-its and one chart titled “Did They Or Did They Not Eat The Demon-Crab.”
“The sect did not include exorcism rituals in this period,” Lan Wangji says, voice calm and cool as he underlines something in a primary text. “The references are metaphorical.”
Wei Wuxian throws his hands in the air. “Or! They are metaphorical, yes—and also literal. Because what if they thought the crabs were possessed? Have you seen a crab up close? Unholy. These things are not mutually exclusive.”
Lan Wangji looks up, long-suffering. “There is no textual support for the demon-crab theory.”
“There’s no textual support against it either!”
“That is not a valid academic standard.”
Wei Wuxian makes a strangled noise and leans back in his chair, glaring at the ceiling. Whatever happened to the methodological approach of falsification? “You know what’s not a valid academic standard? Refusing to even consider the more creative lens. This isn’t a math problem. We’re allowed to have interpretations.”
“You mistake creativity for carelessness.”
That one stings.
Wei Wuxian stills, blinking fast. Lan Wangji realizes it immediately – and blinks too. His mouth opens like he might say something softer, something apologetic even, but he closes it again. Wei Wuxian doesn’t know how to hide this sudden hurt. Always hurt, so prideful, always getting his hopes up. He just thought that with Lan Wangji his heart and pride would be safe.
“Fine,” Wei Wuxian mutters, standing and grabbing his notes. “I’ll just—take my demon-crab theories elsewhere.”
“You are overreacting. You misunderstand-”
Well, if it must be like this. Wei Wuxian scoffs and interrupts. “And you are narrow-minded and a jerk.”
He storms out. The chair rocks in his wake. Lan Wangji stares at it for a long time, then very quietly whispers: “I did not say your theory lacked merit.”
☆☽☾☆
Wei Wuxian doesn’t do what he would have done in the past. (He does not get drunk.) Instead, he does what he always does lately when it gets too much or when he has to hide from Jiang Cheng’s (Madame Yu’s) violent temper, he stays too late in the library.
It’s after midnight when he finally stops scribbling. He’s curled in a corner with his annotated copy of Regional Rites in Post Cultivation-War Qishan, surrounded by three empty coffee cups and one very sad protein bar wrapper. He is just so tired. His head nods once. Twice. It is just so hard to sleep on the soft mattress (without the ever-present threat of danger and the constant background noise of Madam Yu’s terrible moods). He nods of the third time and then lands softly on his folded arms atop the table.
Lan Wangji finds him like that when he comes to (look for him) return a reference volume.
He pauses.
Wei Wuxian is frowning in his sleep, a slight crease between his brows like he’s still mid-argument. His fingers are ink-stained, his notebook is open to a page filled with a web of ideas – and in the margin, the tiniest sketch of two students glaring at each other, labeled Me & Iceblock Wangji: Crab Edition.
Lan Wangji stands there a long time. Then – carefully, quietly – he sets his book down. Walks to the staff shelf. Retrieves one of the emergency study blankets in the Lan library colours (cream and pale blue). He drapes it gently around Wei Wuxian’s shoulders. Wei Wuxian stirs, murmurs something like “...demon crabs…” and sighs.
Lan Wangji watches him for a beat longer. His expression is unreadable, but his hand lingers at the edge of the blanket – just for a moment. Then he turns and leaves.
☆☽☾☆
Group Chat: “Do Not Microwave The Bone Samples”
🌺 Wen Qing:
Wei Wuxian.
Why is there a microwave manual in the container for hazardous waste.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
...contextual relevance?
🌺 Wen Qing:
It’s sticky. Why is it sticky.
🍵 Wen Ning:
He tried to reheat dumplings in the lab again, didn’t he?
🌺 Wen Qing:
I’m going to take away your lab privileges.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
you wouldn’t
you love me
🌺 Wen Qing:
I tolerate you out of sheer cosmic obligation.
☆☽☾☆
Wei Wuxian doesn’t expect Lan Wangji to apologise. But two days later, he finds him sitting in their study nook in the library – same neat stack of books, same blank expression. Only this time, there’s an unopened bottle of his favourite cold tea and an almond bun (also his favourite, how could he have known?) sitting on top of Wei Wuxian’s untouched mess of notes.
He stops. Blinks. Can’t help the little smile. Ah, Lan Wangji, the man you are. “Is this an apology bun?”
Lan Wangji doesn’t look up, but his ears blush a truly lovely shade of red. “You are not careless. I am sorry. I was frustrated because I could not follow your argument sufficiently. I will do better in the future.” His voice is soft, almost hesitant.
Wei Wuxian stays frozen for a moment. This beautiful, impossible man. Then he walks over, slowly, slides into his seat. His fingers toy with the edge of the pastry paper. He is rather hungry. While his scholarship would probably cover cost of living, he can’t fight the instinct to squirrel away food or simply forget that his body needs more that caffeine to survive.
“I don’t like being talked down to,” he offers because this feels important, significant somehow. He tries to be honest, tries not to hide it. “Everyone here already thinks I got in because of pity or luck or... that I’m just the weird scholarship kid.”
“You are not.”
Wei Wuxian looks at him then, startled by the decisiveness of it, how quickly Lan Wangji said it when he so often takes his time arranging words to his liking.
“Then why does it feel like I have to fight to be taken seriously every time I open my mouth?”
Lan Wangji is quiet for a long time. “Because you are loud,” he says at last. “And brilliant. People do not expect both when it is often just one or the other.”
Wei Wuxian stares at him. His mouth opens, then shuts again. Happiness like sunlight floods his heart. “...Did you just say I’m brilliant?”
Lan Wangji blinks slowly. “Your metaphorical analysis of sect folklore indicates a strong conceptual framework.”
“Oh my god. That’s a yes.”
Lan Wangji takes a long sip of tea. Wei Wuxian grins, half-giddy. “Wait until I tell everyone you think I’m smart.”
“Please don’t.”
But the corner of Lan Wangji’s mouth twitches. Just slightly. And Wei Wuxian can’t help but stare in rapt attention and promptly realizes something.
☆☽☾☆
Wei Wuxian is falling hopelessly, irrevocably in love with Lan Wanji who barely tolerates him.
The realization folds itself into the double helix of who he is at a cellular level and it changes everything.
☆☽☾☆
Lan Wangji has reluctantly brought Wei Wuxian to the sacred sanctum of the Cloud Recesses library – one of the places where Lan Xichen, head student archivist, reigns supreme. He hopes his brother will be lenient. He is wrong. Lan Xichen sits behind the large desk like an emperor of books. His gentle smile barely conceals his amusement.
“So this is the Wei Wuxian I’ve heard so much about,” Lan Xichen says mildly and with his signature gentle temperament, marking a ledger. “You have three overdue books, two noise violations, and a ban from the third floor for arguing with Professor Wen about the laws of thermodynamics.”
Wei Wuxian, utterly unrepentant, grins. “It wasn’t an argument. It was a friendly disagreement.”
Nie Mingjue, student council head and boyfriend of two years of Lan Xichen, appears behind him like a towering mountain. “You called him a fossil.”
“…a wise fossil,” Wei Wuxian amends quickly.
Lan Wangji is stiff with mortification. Lan Xichen gives him a knowing look, then leans over to quietly slide a visitor’s pass across the desk to Wei Wuxian. “Try not to get us all expelled, Wei Wuxian.”
Later, Nie Mingjue and Wei Wuxian discover a shared love of spicy snacks and student protests. By midnight, they’re comparing notes on how best to rig a projector and prank the economics department while two brothers, one appalled and one amused, watch on.
☆☽☾☆
One day, Lan Zhan notices with horror that Wei Wuxian is limping. It’s not obvious – he hides it with his usual swagger, with jokes, with louder laughter. But Lan Wangji notices. Of course he does. After class, he pulls Wei Wuxian aside. Doesn’t ask. Just looks.
Wei Wuxian rolls his eyes. “I’m fine. You should see the door. It came out worse.”
Lan Wangji frowns. Wei Wuxian flippantly adds, “Madame Yu and I had a little disagreement. Mostly about my mouth. Again.”
Silence.
“She’s your mother,” Lan Wangji says at last.
Wei Wuxian snorts. “She’s Jiang Cheng’s mother. I was just the ghost they shoved into their house.”
He pushes off the wall and walks away, but Lan Wangji watches the faint purple bloom of bruises near the curve of his shoulder as his shirt slips. His hands curl into fists at his sides.
Later that night, Wei Wuxian finds tiger balm and arnica tucked into his desk drawer. No note. He knows who it’s from.
☆☽☾☆
Group Chat: “Hot TAs Cry During Office Hours”
📘 Nie Huaisang:
WEI WUXIAN
why are there two first years from your tutorial in the library following me I did NOT summon them
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
Did you take my annotated field notes without asking?
📘 Nie Huaisang:
yes but in my defense, I’m afraid of you
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
then you deserve the kids haunting you
🦊 Jin Zixuan:
This chat is for organising the tutorials only. Please stop.
📘 Nie Huaisang:
Zixuan it’s your fault for joining
you knew the risks
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
also I told those kids to guard my copy of “Love, Death and Cursed Marriage Pacts” with their lives so if they kill you that’s on you
🦊 Jin Zixuan:
That’s not a real book.
📘 Nie Huaisang:
Not with that attitude
☆☽☾☆
Professor Lan Qiren has been teaching students in different positions for thirty-five years. He has survived idiocy, disruption and all sorts of disgraceful emotional displays. He has mentored students of talent, discipline and even – rarely – insight. But he has never, ever, encountered anyone or rather anything quite like Wei Wuxian.
“Mr. Wei,” he says for the third time in one lecture. “Please sit down.”
“I’m illustrating a point!” Wei Wuxian insists, having somehow found chalk and begun sketching a very dramatic stick figure exorcism on the portable blackboard that he pulled out of his very unorderly tote bag.
Lan Qiren exhales through his nose. He glances at the other students. Jiang Cheng, sitting as far away as humanly possible from his stepbrother, looks like he wants the floor to open up beneath him. Lan Qiren briefly marvels at himself for being involved enough in a student’s private life to be able to notice that. The performance of the son of Mr. Jiang of the Lotus Pier Foundation in this class, that the youth had chosen as a supplementary course to his business degree, has been disappointingly unremarkable until now.
Lan Wangji is watching attentively Wei Wuxian and there is a glint in his eyes that seems almost enchanted. Lan Qiren has a foreboding feeling about this. Jin Zixuan is blinking like he can’t quite process what’s happening from beside Jiang Cheng, stiff and confused. Lan Qiren hoped for the Jin heir to show a little more academic talent but alas his wish has yet to be fulfilled.
“Mr. Wei,” Lan Qiren allows. He is against his better judgment interested in what this utterly unruly student proposes., “I will give you twenty seconds to explain the relevance of this… spectacle.”
Wei Wuxian beams. “Right! So – if you consider the folk traditions surrounding the temple ghost marriages in this region-” He points to the little chalk drawing with a flourish. “-it directly intersects with mourning rituals and exorcism rites, creating a liminal narrative space!”
Lan Qiren blinks. And then – very quietly – he says, “Continue.”
In a spectacle that Lan Qiren chooses to ignore, Jiang Cheng almost falls out of his chair when Wei Wuxian breaks out into a hurried, disorganized and frankly brilliant explanation. After class, Lan Qiren reviews the essays. He finds Wei Wuxian’s near the bottom. The handwriting is chaotic. There are doodles in the margins. One page is smudged with ink and what appears to be coffee residue.
And yet–
It is one of the most original, incisive and daring pieces of analysis he’s read in all his years teaching at Cloud Recesses University. Lan Qiren stares at it for a very long time.
Then he writes at the top: 9.8/10. Inappropriate formatting. Excellent argumentation.
And underlines his first comment twice.
☆☽☾☆
Group Chat: "LQR’s Inner Circle (we wish)"
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
BREAKING: professor lan qiren snorted at my pun today
everyday I grow closer to God
🌙 Luo Qingyang:
He said it was allergies.
📘 Nie Huaisang:
that’s what he wants you to believe
but we know the truth
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
one day he will tell me he’s proud and i will ascend like a ghibli ghost
🌙 Luo Qingyang:
I’m proud of you right now. Your pun was very clever.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
mianmian 🥺
📘 Nie Huaisang:
sniff it’s what he deserves
☆☽☾☆
They’re gathered around a low table covered in takeout boxes and annotated drafts. The lighting is warm. There’s laughter. A fight breaks out over the last baozi and ends with Wei Wuxian trading it for a red pen that definitely isn’t his. Wen Qing rolls her eyes but lets him keep it. Wen Ning, as always, offers to make tea for everyone and ends up in a detailed discussion with Wei Wuxian about whether ghosts can haunt a kettle. (Wei Wuxian says yes. Wen Ning is unconvinced. Lan Wangji, who was dragged along to this so called “post-study-hang” by Wei Wuxian, has followed the debate in silence, is quietly in Wen Ning’s corner.)
Wei Wuxian gestures when he talks – arms wide, expression vivid, voice animated. His energy fills the room like sunlight flooding through an open window. And Lan Wangji just… watches.
He watches the way Wei Ying listens, the way he teases Wen Qing without ever crossing a line, the way he reacts to Wen Ning’s stuttered contributions like they’re Nobel-worthy. He watches Wei Ying beam at them as if this little mismatched group of outliers and outcasts is the most precious thing he’s ever seen.
He’s wearing a shirt that says I’d Rather Be Summoning Spirits Than Watch the News, and there’s glitter on his cheekbone from his markers.
Lan Wangji thinks, You are sunlight.
And he doesn’t say it. Not yet. But he files the moment away like something sacred.
☆☽☾☆
Wei Wuxian isn’t nervous. He’s not. Not really.
He’s just been waiting outside Professor Lan Qiren’s office for fifteen minutes, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, holding the most carefully rewritten paper he’s ever produced in his life. Something in him is screaming to just rip it apart or dunk it in chili oil or do something else that banishes all assumptions that he may have for the first time ever actually tried. No doodles. No candy smudges. No dramatic titles like Exorcism Is Just Divorce But for Ghosts. If Wei Wuxian was more honest with himself, which he very much tries not to be, he would admit that his chaos is natural but also carefully curated. He is not supposed to be better (or rather even good) at anything. Madam Yu would- Well, historically speaking, Madame Yu did not tolerate him even breathing.
Trying to rip of this metaphorical band aid, he knocks hesitantly.
“Enter,” comes the deep voice from within.
Professor Lan’s office is terrifying in the way old libraries and courtrooms are terrifying: bookshelves stacked with meticulously labelled tomes, scrolls so ancient they seem to breathe and a single pot of tea in a beautiful ceramic. The only splash of colour is a picture of Lan Zhan and Lan Xichen standing in a field of gentians in a tasteful picture frame on his desk. Wei Wuxian decides not to let his eyes get stuck on tiny Lan Zhan’s chubby cheeks or the adorably serious expression on his face and instead steps up to his professor to hand over his revised paper. “You said I could rewrite it for partial credit.”
Lan Qiren takes the pages without comment. Begins reading. Wei Wuxian stands there. He tries not to bounce. Or fidget. Or collapse from lack of oxygen.
After a full minute, Professor Lan says, “Your ideas were not the issue.”
Wei Wuxian blinks. “Sir?”
“Your arguments were without fault. They were just obfuscated. By your own performance.”
He opens a drawer. Withdraws the previous draft. “You wrap sound arguments in noise. Humour. Wit. Misdirection. I suspect you are afraid of being seen as sincere.”
Wei Wuxian’s breath catches.
“I…” He tries to joke, but it fails. “Old habits, I guess.” He can’t supress the bitter tenor to his voice.
Lan Qiren regards him for a long moment.
“You are not just clever,” he says, and his oh so frosty demeanour seems to almost thaw. “You are good. And if you apply yourself fully, you may become great.”
Wei Wuxian opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. His throat feels tight. Somehow, he feels close to breaking or maybe close to a crossroad. Professor Lan adds, almost gently, “I will write you a letter of recommendation if you apply for the summer seminar in Nanjing.”
Wei Wuxian lets out a stunned laugh. “...I think I’m gonna cry.”
“You will not.”
“I’m already crying.”
Professor Lan sighs. But his pen is already moving across the page.
☆☽☾☆
Group Chat: "LAN-ciao, I Think I’m In Love"
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
help
i just said “spectrally significant manifestations” and then
choked on my coffee mid-seminar
🌺 Wen Qing:
That’s because your body knows you shouldn’t be that pretentious before noon.
🍵 Wen Ning:
I thought you sounded very confident!
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
i was channelling old man lan
i made eye contact with him during the sentence and i swear he almost smiled
🌙 Luo Qingyang:
He told the class afterwards that it was “not an entirely foolish turn of phrase.” High praise.
📘 Nie Huaisang:
you got a compliment from lan qiren?? you must be hallucination and close to being dead. when’s the funeral, I’ll wear white
☆☽☾☆
Lan Wangji is returning a book. That is all. Nothing unusual. A very standard volume on traditional cleansing rites. He certainly isn’t lingering in the hallway outside the student lounge. That would be improper. The door is open a crack. He hears voices. Wei Wuxian’s voice to be precise which would have given pause to his thoughts (and legs) in any case. When it turns out that he himself is the topic of conversation, Lan Wangji resigns himself to eavesdropping.
“Well, he’s just weird,” says a familiar voice – Jiang Cheng, his tone dismissive and smug, Lan Wangji is not surprised by the arrogant student’s verdict. He knows what the other students say about him. “Lan Wangji barely speaks. I’ve never even seen him smile.”
“He does smile,” comes Wei Wuxian’s voice – bright, half-exasperated. “And just because someone doesn’t talk all the time doesn’t mean they’re cold.”
“Come on,” Jiang Cheng scoffs. “He’s like a damn princess in a cashmere sweater with that arrogant and self-important expression on his face.”
“Actually,” Wei Wuxian says, and now there’s a sharpness beneath the teasing, “he’s one of the only people who takes group work seriously without making anyone feel stupid or dragging his weight. He listens. He never interrupts. He helps without making it a performance.”
There’s a pause. “And if you think kindness has to look like me, that’s your problem.”
Jiang Cheng mutters something, but Wei Wuxian cuts him off with a laugh. Always laughing. Not always genuine, Lan Wangji has come to learn, but even his sharp insincere smiles are breathtaking to him. He shies away from his own thought so much that he flinches.
“Seriously, Jiang Cheng. He’s just shy. Let him live. I like him like this.”
Lan Wangji stays very, very still. The book in his hands suddenly feels warmer. Or maybe that’s his chest. He turns. Leaves. And forgets entirely to return the volume.
☆☽☾☆
Group Chat: "LQR’s Inner Circle (we wish)"
📘 Nie Huaisang:
shit wei wuxian i just saw lan qiren SMILE
a full, visible smile
🌙 Luo Qingyang:
He was pleased with Wei Wuxian’s paper outline.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
i have moved him to joy
i am unstoppable
📘 Nie Huaisang:
he looked so proud
I’m not crying YOU’RE crying
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
i’m going to embroider the research question he liked on a pillow
and then die peacefully
☆☽☾☆
Wei Wuxian isn’t spying. He’s simply walking into the east courtyard at just the right time to witness something extraordinary: Lan Wangji, sitting under the gingko tree near the koi pond, eyes on a book in his lap and the barest curve on his lips. A smile. Not an accidental mouth-twitch. A real, actual, genuine smile.
Wei Wuxian stumbles and falls right into a bush.
“Are you alright?” Lan Wangji asks, utterly calm, as though Wei Wuxian hadn’t just made a noise like a startled goose when he had stumbled over to him with leaves and twigs in his curly long hair.
“I’m fine,” Wei Wuxian says, emerging from his bout of bewilderment with a manic look in his eyes. “Are you alright?! Because I think I just witnessed a cosmic event.”
Lan Wangji blinks once. “I was reading.”
“That’s not reading. That’s... That’s smiling while reading. What could possibly be in that book?! Is it smut? Is it poetry? Is it smutty poetry?!”
Lan Wangji closes the book slowly. It’s a volume on ancient talisman theory. Absolutely devoid of innuendo. He does not answer. Wei Wuxian squints at him, dramatically suspicious. “Lan Zhan, you smiled. That’s illegal. It should be punished, no protected from this one’s undeserving eyes.”
“It is not.”
“You have a reputation to maintain! The Unsmiling Menace of Room 5C!”
“Unfounded.”
“I’m going to have to report this to the student council. The balance of the universe depends on your smile remaining a secret for eternity.”
Lan Wangji says nothing. But he doesn’t stop smiling either and his eyes are fond and maybe even a little indulgent.
☆☽☾☆
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
hi :)
🧊 Lan Wangji:
Hello.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
when i waved at you just now
are you ignoring me or is that just your normal vibe?
either way it’s hot
🧊 Lan Wangji:
I was in lecture.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
so was i
you were the lecture.
🧊 Lan Wangji:
...
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
i can see your ears turning red from here hehe
☆☽☾☆
A message sits drafted and unsent in Wei Wuxian’s phone.
To Jiang Yanli: "Did you know she hit me? I know she hated me, but – did you see it? Did you ever try to stop it?"
He stares at it. Deletes it. Writes a different one:
“Hope A-Cheng’s presentation went well. Tell him I said congrats.”
Hits send. Receives no reply. Later, he dreams of the old house and wakes up with clenched fists and damp cheeks.
☆☽☾☆
Jiang Yanli notices it first in the small things. The way her beautiful, stubborn brother’s shoulders loosen ever so slightly when Lan Wangji enters a room. The way Wei Ying’s voice – so often pitched to entertain or deflect – drops into something deeper and steadier, something more real, when he speaks directly to the other boy. It’s not sudden, this bond. It grows like ivy, silent and slow, until it wraps itself into something that holds up whole palaces.
She sees it when they work together. Lan Wangji nods, once, and her little A-Ying lights up like Lan Wanji’s praise is the oxygen filling his lungs. And when he mutters something self-deprecating, Lan Wangji simply looks at him – long and level – and says, “That is not true.”
She sees it in how her brother eats more on the days they study together. In how he walks taller. How he fights less (or more) with Jiang Cheng. Jiang Yanli is no fool. She knows her family’s failings. She has bandaged Wei Ying’s bruises, mediated too many silences for long years and will carry this guilt until the day she dies. But now there is someone else who holds that thread of care. Someone unafraid to call her brother brilliant to his face without fear of a mother’s cruel repercussions or a father’s cowardice.
One day, when she brings them soup during a marathon project session, she finds them sitting side by side, their knees nearly touching. Wei Ying is explaining something – too fast, too animated for her to even try to follow his point. Lan Wangji doesn’t interrupt. He listens. When he responds, it is thoughtful. Precise.
And when she sets down the soup, her beautiful little A-Ying grins up at her and says, “A-jie, look. He gets it.”
Lan Wangji, without smiling, looks at Wei Ying like he’s the sun.
And for the first time in years, Jiang Yanli breathes a little easier.
☆☽☾☆
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
do you ever regret being my project partner?
🧊 Lan Wangji:
No.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
even when i spill coffee on the manuscripts? :/
🧊 Lan Wangji:
You have not done so yet.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
YET??
🧊 Lan Wangji:
I am prepared. I carry tissues with me.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
...i think that might be smart
☆☽☾☆
Lan Wangji looks up from his manuscript. Outside, birds chirp. Inside, there is… suspicious silence. That is unusual. Wei Wuxian had bounded in earlier with the energy of a raccoon on three shots of espresso and declared, “I had an idea!” before vanishing into the corner where he proceeded to drop a questionable amount of string, cardboard and googly eyes.
Now, there is a low fizzing sound.
“Lan Wangji,” comes the ominous sing-song voice from behind a stack of chairs, “do we have any regulations about installing an indoor trebuchet?”
Lan Wangji blinks once.
“Wei Wuxian.”
“Yes?”
“No.”
“Even if it’s for purely pedagogical reasons?”
A pause.
“Which class,” Lan Wangji asks, already regretting it, “would require a trebuchet?”
“Urban Legends of Warfare!” Wei Wuxian’s head pops out, eyes wide and wild. “We’re simulating siege warfare to better understand medieval community resilience!”
Lan Wangji exhales. “No siege warfare in the department.”
“You’re no fun.”
“I am ensuring building safety standards.”
Wei Wuxian narrows his eyes. Then he grins. “I’ll build it smaller. Just a mini trebuchet. For educational purposes. I’ll find and cite five sources.”
Lan Wangji closes his eyes briefly. “One hour.” Wei Wuxian gasps. “Is that permission?!”
“It is a time limit.”
☆☽☾☆
Wei Wuxian stares at the screen, the message glowing blue and cold under the single desk lamp:
From: Madame Yu
You always did take and take. I hope you’re enjoying the life that wasn’t yours to begin with. Just remember who gave it to you.
Lan Wangji finds him curled up with a bottle of baijiu two hours later, the room reeking of alcohol and something too close to despair. Wei Wuxian just smiles at him, too bright, too sharp.
☆☽☾☆
The door to the library annex slams open at precisely 2:03 AM on a Sunday night. Wei Wuxian yelps and knocks over an ink pot. Lan Wangji, ever the picture of serenity, quietly pushes their half-finished essay out of the spill zone. Both of them turn in unison – Like terrified raccoons, Wei Wuxian thinks amusedly – toward the imposing figure of Lan Qiren.
“You are aware,” Lan Qiren intones in the way people say You are doomed, “that curfew was three hours ago.”
Wei Wuxian opens his mouth.
“No,” Lan Qiren cuts in and Wei Wuxian must be delirious because is that fond exasperation on the old man’s face? “Do not attempt an excuse.”
Wei Wuxian closes his mouth. Lan Wangji rises slowly to his feet and bows. “It was my idea to stay late. I accept responsibility.”
“We accept responsibility,” Wei Wuxian blurts, scrambling up beside him, because this just wouldn’t do. Lan Wangji is not allowed to defend him or be self-sacrificing, that is Wei Wuxian’s thing. “We were working on the essay about the binding array and didn’t want to lose the thread, and – okay, no excuses, right.”
Lan Qiren pinches the bridge of his nose like his student’s rule breaking has caused him a considerable headache. “You will both write a letter of apology. In verse. Classical form. Submit it tomorrow at noon precisely.”
Wei Wuxian looks like he’s been told to dig his own grave with a calligraphy brush. Lan Wangji, with utmost gravity, says: “I understand, uncle.” Lan Qiren huffs and turns to leave before throwing an almost teasing gaze over his shoulder at the pair.
“And Wei Wuxian – no rhyming couplets about how rules are prisons designed to stifle the academic soul.”
Wei Wuxian grins unrepentantly and Lan Qiren steals himself at the softening of his heart and presses his lips together to keep the smile of his face at his student’s answer.
“...Okay, but now I have to write that one on my own time.”
Lan Qiren storms off in a flurry of robes and judgment. They stare at the closed door for a beat. Then Wei Wuxian turns to Lan Wangji and whispers, “Did you really just try to take the blame for both of us?”
Lan Wangji gives him a look that somehow says, Of course but you were already covered in ink.
Wei Wuxian stares at him, heart thudding. “Lan Zhan, I- ugh, no, don’t make me get sappy. Let’s write our punishment poems before my soul leaks out of my ears.”
But that night, in the quiet dorm room, as they sit at adjacent desks drafting slow, painful verses, Wei Wuxian glances over at the still, calm figure beside him and wonders if maybe breaking the rules together, being punished, doesn’t feel like failure at all.
Maybe it feels like something beginning.
☆☽☾☆
🧊 Lan Wangji:
Rest.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
can’t
brain fast
🧊 Lan Wangji:
Rest. I am bringing soup.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
wait what
like actually?
🧊 Lan Wangji:
Yes. Do not argue.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
ok but i am going to cry about the lack of spices in a
sexy tragic gothic way just so you know
🧊 Lan Wangji:
Understood.
☆☽☾☆
It’s raining the night Jiang Cheng finds them walking back from the library, sharing a single umbrella. Wei Wuxian’s shoulder is soaked, but he’s laughing at something – head tilted coquettishly, eyes bright. Lan Wangji seems content beside him. Jiang Cheng’s stomach turns with a hot ugly emotion. They have been seeing each other less and less since Wei Wuxian was accepted into the summer program with Lan Qiren’s recommendation. Jiang Cheng hates Wei Wuxian’s happy smile and that ugly something, something of Madame Yu, rears his head in his chest.
A few days later, in a hallway between classes, he corners Wei Wuxian. It's not even subtle.
“You’re spending a lot of time with him.”
“Who?”
“Don’t play dumb. The Lan. The silent one. The one who looks at you like you invented APA citation or something.”
Wei Wuxian shrugs, defensively, his hackles already rising. And Jiang Cheng responds with his own anger to the new tension between them. Why isn’t Wei Wuxian laughing with him about the stupid stick-in-the-mud. He is supposed to be on Jiang Cheng’s side. He is his brother- he is his-
“We’re project partners. Maybe even friends.”
“Bullshit.”
Wei Wuxian’s eyes cut to him, his smile gone.
“You want me to stop hanging out with the one person who doesn’t treat me like I’m a burden?” The words come sharper than Jiang Cheng is used to and he rears back as if struck by a hand. “Sorry if it messes with your image of me as a permanent fuck-up.” Wei Wuxian presses out between his teeth. This is going all wrong, Jiang Cheng just wanted- He just wanted-
“You’re twisting things—”
“No, I’m finally untwisting them, Jiang Cheng.” His voice cracks and to Jiang Cheng’s horror his grey eyes gain a suspicious shine to them. “He treats me like I’m smart. Not like I’m lucky to be here. Not like I’m barely tolerable.” The Unlike you is not spoken but seems to echo around them all the same.
There’s silence. Rain ticking at the windows.
Jiang Cheng grits his teeth. “Why him?”
Wei Wuxian looks at him – eyes raw, tired – and says, “Because he sees me and listens.”
Jiang Cheng doesn’t answer. He can’t. He can’t- Just storms off, jaw clenched, fists curled.
That night, Wei Wuxian sits alone for a long time. Lan Wangji finds him on the roof of the dormitory, curled into himself with his arms wrapped around his legs. He looks so small like this when usually he fills every room. They don’t speak at first. Then: “Jiang Cheng- We argued,” Wei Wuxian whispers brokenly. “It always ends like this.”
Lan Wangji, after a beat, says quietly, “You are not wrong to ask for more.”
Wei Wuxian doesn’t look at him. “It still hurts.”
“I know.”
They sit side by side in the dark, the rain gentling into mist. And for the first time, Wei Wuxian leans his head against Lan Wangji’s shoulder – and Lan Wangji does not move away.
☆☽☾☆
Wei Wuxian’s phone buzzes.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
He glances down and sees: “Madame Yu (Don’t Answer)” Twelve missed calls. A voice memo. He mutters a curse, silences the screen, and tucks the phone facedown under a stack of journals. Across the room, Lan Wangji glances up from his annotated volume of Han Dynasty funeral rites and tilts his head in question.
“You are distressed.”
“I’m fine,” Wei Wuxian says. He flashes a grin that’s too quick, too bright. “Just familial love and well-wishes, you know? The usual: ‘Why haven’t you done more?’ ‘Have you no shame?’ ‘Jiang Cheng is working twice as hard – why can’t you be more like him?’”
Lan Wangji frowns. Wei Wuxian shrugs. “Typical Thursday.”
He doesn't tell him that the voice memo began with:
"I hope you're not drinking again like your failure of a mother." and ended with "At least Jiang Cheng knows how to honour his name. You're just a burden."
He doesn’t listen to it again. But he doesn’t delete it either.
☆☽☾☆
The lecture hall is quiet, filled with the hum of tension and fluorescent lights. Students murmur in anticipation, some fiddling with their notes, some looking at the graph already projected on the screen. In the front of the room, Wei Wuxian glances sideways at Lan Wangji, who stands perfectly still in his spotless white shirt, hands folded behind his back. He tries not fidget, lest he wrinkles the dress shirt he has borrowed from Lan Wangji for the occasion.
“I can’t believe you’re not even sweating,” Wei Wuxian mutters.
“No need. We have prepared sufficiently.” Lan Wangji replies calmy, always so calmly, without turning.
Wei Wuxian rolls his eyes but doesn’t argue. The laptop screen that Wei Wuxian has set up in front of them flickers – just for a second – and then dies entirely. There’s a long silence.
“No,” Wei Wuxian breathes. “No, no, no– this thing was fine ten minutes ago, I swear on all the cursed objects in my flat–”
“Proceed without it,” Lan Wangji says, already stepping forward to close it so that Wei Wuxian doesn’t throw it out of the window in frustration. Wei Wuxian whispers tensly. “Are you joking? The whole theoretical framework–"
“You remember it,” Lan Wangji answers simply.
And somehow… he does.
Wei Wuxian finds himself moving, words tumbling out of his mouth – eloquent, bright, impassioned. He gestures, explains, fills the room with sound and fire. And beside him, Lan Wangji adds quiet brilliance: equations drawn in chalk with impossible precision, philosophical implications spoken like a poet crafting lines from air. By the end, the hall is silent. A guest professor raises a hand to ask something sharp – intended to cut, to test, to humiliate. Wei Wuxian braces himself.
But Lan Wangji speaks first, his voice quiet and cold as winter.
“The methodology clearly addresses that,” he says. “Page 17, footnote 4.”
Wei Wuxian can only blink. Later, as they step off the podium, breathless, Lan Wangji murmurs, “You did well.”
Wei Wuxian, stunned by the warmth hiding in that quiet voice, can only whisper, “So did you.”
☆☽☾☆
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
you SMILED at me
don’t pretend it didn’t happen
i saw it
nie huaisang saw it
three people fainted
🧊 Lan Wangji:
It was well-deserved. I liked your conclusion.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
:o
🧊 Lan Wangji:
You are smart, Wei Ying.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
you can’t just say that casually over TEXT you absolute menace
i’m going to combust in the library
🧊 Lan Wangji:
You may do so after editing the footnotes I marked.
☆☽☾☆
Lan Qiren does not like students. He respects diligence. He rewards scholarship. But he does not like them. And he certainly did not plan to like Wei Wuxian. He stands in front of the faculty board, hands folded behind his back, frown etched deep. A senior lecturer raises a sceptical brow. “We are concerned about his background and lack of decorum.”
Another adds, “His attitude is – flippant. Undisciplined.”
“He is disruptive,” the last mutters. “And too clever by half.”
Lan Qiren exhales slowly. “Wei Wuxian has outperformed the top five students in every rubric this term. His project with Wangji was the only one to receive full marks. He has volunteered and proceeded to translate three forgotten texts for independent study in his free time. And he corrected a mistranslation in my lecture.”
Silence.
“He is unconventional,” Lan Qiren admits and adds without hardship, “but so was his mother once.”
He doesn’t say you would have failed her, too, but it lingers like a reprimand.
Later, in his office, Lan Qiren finds a note left under a paperweight. Wei Wuxian’s handwriting, chaotic as ever: Thank you. I won’t make you regret it. A hand-drawn bunny smiles in the corner. Lan Qiren sighs… but files the note in his drawer where he keeps Lan Wangji’s first composition and Lan Xichen’s first essay.
☆☽☾☆
The table is quiet. Too quiet. Madame Yu sits at the head, eyes sharp as ever. Jiang Cheng beside her, tense, arms crossed. Jiang Yanli places a bowl of lotus root soup in front of Wei Wuxian with a small, nervous smile.
“Thank you.” he says softly.
Then Madame Yu clears her throat.
“I see your department hasn’t managed to discipline you yet,” she says. “Still loud? Still turning every class into a comedy hour?”
Wei Wuxian laughs – it comes too easily and he hates that. “Well, the folklore professor did say my analysis of goat-sacrifice rituals was ‘unhinged’”
“That’s not a compliment.”
“I thought it was.”
She sets her chopsticks down a little too hard.
“Your whole life is one long joke, Wei Wuxian. Maybe you should stop embarrassing your family for five minutes and try behaving like a scholar.”
He wants to shout. Or leave. But he doesn’t. Not ever. He eats the soup. Silently.
☆☽☾☆
The sunlight spills across the table where Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji sit, each with a steaming cup of tea in hand.
“You’ve been distracted,” Xichen says gently.
Lan Wangji doesn’t look up. “I am not.”
“You corrected your own translation three times yesterday.”
A pause.
“…I was ensuring accuracy.”
Xichen smiles. “And what does Wei Wuxian have to say about your newfound perfectionism?”
Lan Wangji stiffens. “He is intelligent.”
“And charming. And infuriating. And brave.” Xichen’s voice is soft with laughter.
“He is reckless,” Lan Wangji mutters, but he can’t stop the smallest quirk of his lips.
“You like him.”
“I respect him.”
“You like him.”
Silence.
Lan Wangji says nothing. But in the quiet, Xichen sees the truth: the way his brother’s gaze lingers on brilliant laughter and laughing brilliance. The way he listens more than he speaks. The way something in him has started to thaw.
“Good,” Xichen says. Rising, he lays a gentle hand on his younger brother’s shoulder when passing him on his way to the door. “Then don’t let your pride get in the way. Some things are worth bending the rules for.”
Lan Wangji watches the sunlight glimmer over white rooftops and thinks, Perhaps so.
☆☽☾☆
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
how are you real
🧊 Lan Wangji:
...?
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
i mean it
you’re so calm and kind and beautiful and you bring me tea and let me be ridiculous and you never once made me feel like i didn’t belong here
🧊 Lan Wangji:
You belong.
With or without me saying it.
But I will say it.
As many times as you need.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
ok well
now I’m crying
you’re my best friend
🧊 Lan Wangji:
I will bring tissues.
☆☽☾☆
Wei Wuxian is elbow-deep in dust and regret when Lan Wangji walks (glides) in.
Technically, they’re in the Cloud Recess library archives, trying to track down a rare set of folklore texts lost somewhere in the “miscellaneous” section – which turns out to be several unlabelled cabinets, a dead spider and a lot of scrolls held together by desperate hope. Lan Wangji kneels beside him silently, long fingers precise as he lifts a fragile volume and turns the page as if it might fall apart at the slightest motion.
Wei Wuxian watches him for a beat too long. It’s not new – he’s noticed Lan Wangji’s hands before. And his posture. And his cheekbones. And his lips (not that he’s ever said that out loud). But this is different. This is noticing something… quieter.
Lan Wangji looks tired. Not in the way most students are – gritty-eyed and sleep-deprived – but in the way someone is when they’re used to holding the whole sky alone. Shoulders too straight. Mouth always tight. And Wei Wuxian wants so desperately take this weight of his shoulders. He wants to apply all his supposed genius to solve the problems Lan Wanji is facing. Wants to make it all go away – Lan Wanji should never have to feel heavy, never have a reason to go quiet except when he wants to be. Wei Wuxian has learned all of his silences. His sad and heavy ones. His embarrassed and affronted ones. His shy silences after Wei Wuxian has said something truly scandalous. His silence when he is concentrating. When he listens.
Oh, how he listens. He really listens. Even when Wei Wuxian’s jokes are only half-meant. Even when his ideas are spoken out loud like he’s daring someone to laugh at them.
And he never laughs. He just tilts his head, frowns slightly, and says, “Explain.”
Not prove it. Not justify it. Just tell me more.
Wei Wuxian startles when a scroll tumbles off the shelf and lands at his feet. Lan Wangji bends to pick it up at the same time, and their hands brush – brief, electric. He feels like a character from those period dramas Jiang Cheng secretly likes to watch.
Wei Wuxian says, “Oh.”
Lan Wangji stills. He meets Wei Wuxian’s gaze. Wei Wuxian’s heart stutters.
He’s smart. He’s annoying. He’s awkward. He’s never even kissed anyone. And suddenly he wants to kiss Lan Wangji more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life.
Lan Wangji clears his throat. “This one,” he says, still holding up the scroll. “It is what we were looking for.”
“Right,” Wei Wuxian croaks. “Yeah. That’s… cool.”
Lan Wangji nods. Wei Wuxian tries not to scream into his own ribcage.
☆☽☾☆
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
i cannot concentrate
your margin notes are too hot
🧊 Lan Wangji:
My margin notes say “revise sentence for clarity.”
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
exactly
tell me to revise anything again and i might just throw myself at your mercy
🧊 Lan Wangji:
If that is your process, I will not stop you.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
you. absolute. menace.
🧊 Lan Wangji:
You started it.
Paragraph 2.
“Throw myself at your mercy” is vague. Revise.
☆☽☾☆
He pulls a letter out from the mail slot. It's on expensive cream stationery, sealed in red wax – Madame Yu’s usual dramatic flair. Inside: A news clipping. Jiang Cheng giving a lecture at a conference. Highlighted: “Jiang sect heir leads innovation in martial history studies.”
Underneath, in ink:
"You could have done this. If you had any discipline. Don’t you dare to steal his spotlight or you will suffer the consequences."
No greeting. No signature. Wei Wuxian stands frozen in the hallway of his dorm building for a moment. Then carefully folds the letter into quarters and drops it into the recycling bin. Wen Ning brings him boba that afternoon. He doesn’t ask. He just sits beside him and turns on a nature documentary about jellyfish.
Wei Wuxian leans against him. Silent.
☆☽☾☆
Jiang Yanli finds him on the roof of the dorms, sitting with his knees hugged to his chest and a bottle of plum wine dangling between his fingers. She releases a sigh of relief when she sees that the bottle has remained unopened (for now). He and Jiang Cheng fought again, they have been fighting all their lives, but recently their fights have changed. They fight differently now, their arguments more vicious but also fairer since Wei Ying has started defending himself and Jiang Yanli is all the gladder for it.
Technically, she is not allowed in the boy’s dormitory, especially after curfew. But there is no rule, Jiang Yanli would not break for her little brothers. So what if it’s not really allowed, neither of them care. She sits beside him without asking, the kind of silence that only siblings can share.
For a while, the only sound is the distant hum of crickets and the occasional shout from someone getting chased off library grounds by one of those pesky campus geese the university staff pretends to still have under control. Then, softly, Yanli says, “You don’t have to talk to Jiang Cheng anymore.”
Wei Wuxian sighs, bitter and tired. “He would still talk at me. It wouldn’t change a thing.”
“You’re still carrying it,” she concedes. This time, he doesn’t pretend not to understand.
“It’s not exactly light.”
“You always made it look that way.”
He swallows. “If I didn’t… who else would’ve?”
Jiang Yanli takes the wine bottle from his shaky hands and sets it down. “A-Ying.”
The nickname, rarely used, engulfs him like a warm blanket and he shivers, some of the tension unravelling.
“You’re not responsible for other people’s peace,” she says like she should have said much sooner. “Not at the cost of your own.”
He laughs, short and sharp. “I don’t think I’ve ever had peace.”
She looks at him – really looks. “You have it, a little. When you talk about your work. When you laugh with that Lan boy.”
Wei Wuxian blinks, surprised.
“He looks at you like you hung the moon,” she continues warmly. “Like he’s already chosen you and is just waiting for you to catch up.”
Wei Wuxian doesn’t answer. His throat is tight. The night air smells like the jasmine from her shampoo.
“You are brilliant,” Jiang Yanli says. “But more than that, you are worthy and deserving of happiness even without your brilliance. You always have been.”
He wipes his face with his sleeve, sniffling and cursing quietly. She hands him a handkerchief without a word and strokes his hair when he buries his wet face in her neck. And for the first time in a very long time, Wei Wuxian tries to believe her.
☆☽☾☆
He doesn’t know why he takes the call. He shouldn’t have. The moment Madame Yu’s voice cuts through, it’s like a switch flips in his brain. He stands straighter. His mouth moves in tight, polite tones. He doesn’t argue, not even when she implies that he’s “corrupting” Lan Wangji by association. Not even when she says “You’re nothing without our name.” Lan Qiren sees him after in an empty classroom, hands trembling. He doesn’t say anything, just stands guard outside the door until the shaking stops.
☆☽☾☆
Wei Wuxian is the last one in the study hall – again. The room is empty except for the low hum of the lanterns and the occasional sigh of old floorboards. He’s curled over a stack of notes and his third (cold) cup of tea (since Lan Wanji has started to regulate his caffeine intake, he is not allowed coffee or energy drinks after 10 pm), cross-referencing texts, sketching out a hypothesis that’s probably terrible, but also… maybe works? He doesn’t hear Lan Wangji until a soft clink sets a second teacup beside him, so engrossed in his work. The tea is fresh. Still steaming.
Wei Wuxian startles. “Lan Zhan?” Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan. Since he’s been allowed to say it, he can barely stop himself from shouting it from the rooftops. Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan.
Lan Wangji considers him critically. “You forgot to eat again.”
“I-” He opens his mouth to argue and then sighs. “Yeah. Okay. Fair.”
He takes the tea. Their fingers don’t quite touch this time, but the air between them feels charged anyway. Lan Wangji doesn’t sit, just watches. “You are overworking yourself.”
Wei Wuxian shrugs. “Isn’t that the whole point of being a scholarship kid? Overperform or get swallowed?”
Lan Wangji frowns. “You have already proven yourself.”
Wei Wuxian huffs a laugh. “Yeah, well. I don’t exactly have a safety net.”
The silence stretches between them, and Wei Wuxian braces himself for something. For what he does not quite know, but this is one of Lan Zhan’s profound silences that stretch before an earthquake of an answer shakes Wei Wuxian’s very foundation.
Lan Wangji’s voice lowers. “You have me.”
The quiet that follows is different this time. Not awkward nor heavy. Just weighted with meaning. Wei Wuxian stares up at him disbelievingly because he simply does not understand. “Lan Zhan, why are you… like this? With me?”
Lan Wangji tilts his head, seemingly confused about Wei Wuxian’s resistance. “You are worth it.”
And maybe it’s that he’s exhausted, or maybe it’s the tea, or maybe it’s the way Lan Wangji’s eyes soften – not pitying, but something steadier, warmer, like trust forged over time – but Wei Wuxian smiles. Not the one he throws out to distract or deflect. A real one. An almost as quiet one as Lan Wanji gifts him sometime. A secret special smile just for Lan Zhan.
“Okay,” he says quietly. “Then I’ll try for you.”
Lan Wangji nods again. “Good.”
Wei Wuxian sips his tea and thinks maybe – for the first time – that he might not end up so alone.
☆☽☾☆
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
did you mean it when you said my closing slide was “devastating”?
🧊 Lan Wangji:
Yes. I meant it academically.
And otherwise.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
...i have to go lie down
preferably on your chest
🧊 Lan Wangji:
I will be there in ten minutes.
☆☽☾☆
It all comes crashing down on a random Tuesday afternoon. The fight isn’t loud. That’s what surprises Jiang Cheng the most. They’re standing in a quiet corner of the campus garden after a mandatory “family dinner” that Jiang Yanli insisted on, which went about as well as expected: stilted silence, a few jabs disguised as questions and Wei Wuxian’s smile getting thinner by the minute. Now Jiang Cheng is fuming, again. Anger is easier than the alternative.
“You’re embarrassing yourself – and us – running around with your head in the clouds and your new pet Lan like he’s going to save you.”
Wei Wuxian crosses his arms. “Lan Zhan doesn’t need to save me.”
“Oh, really? What do you call it then? You think just because you’re clever, you kiss your way into all perfect grades and an academic career by flirting with that Lan?”
Wei Wuxian’s jaw tightens. “No, I think I earned it. Through actual work.”
“Through sleeping our way up-”
“Stop.” Wei Wuxian’s voice cuts like glass.
And Jiang Cheng flinches. The silence that follows is insurmountable, stretching between them like the Mariana Trench. Instantly, regret fills every corner of his heart, and he opens his mouth to apologise; to beg for forgiveness but no sound escapes his lips.
“I am done,” Wei Wuxian says, not even looking at Jiang Cheng anymore. Look at me. Please just look. I am sorry. Look- “I am done pretending that your bitterness is love. That your resentment is my responsibility. I did everything I could to keep your family together, even when it broke me.”
Jiang Cheng says nothing, he is frozen. Wei Wuxian steps forward, expression steady. “You want to be angry? Fine. Be angry. But you don’t get to drag me back down just because I’m finally learning to breathe.”
A quiet sound from behind them. Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji stand near the path, silent sentinels. Not interrupting – but present. For the first time in a long time, Wei Wuxian feels someone at his back. He turns and walks right up into Lan Wangji’s usually so impenetrable personal space bubble who wraps an arm around him in comfort. Lan Wangju who is glaring at Jiang Cheng and making sure he sees it. Sees them. Sees that Wei Wuxian is no longer alone. No longer his alone-
He opens his mouth, closes it and storms off, tears prickling at his eyes.
Wei Wuxian lifts his head, and Lan Wangji meets his gaze, then slowly caresses his wet cheeks, stroking a warm callused thumb over soft flushed cheeks. Just near.
“You did not yell like we talked about,” Lan Wangji says gently.
“I didn’t need to,” Wei Wuxian murmurs, eyes stinging.
Lan Xichen, beside them, offers him a quiet smile. “Sometimes strength is knowing when not to shout.”
Wei Wuxian lets himself breathe out. Lets the weight fall off his shoulders one feather at a time. Then he says, half-teasing, “So… do I get points for emotional maturity?”
Lan Wangji inclines his head. “Ten points. And jasmine tea.”
Wei Wuxian laughs, choked but real. “You’re such a sucker for positive reinforcement.”
“I learn from the best,” Lan Wangji replies. And for once, Wei Wuxian doesn’t look away. He lets himself be seen.
☆☽☾☆
Wen Qing notices it too – just beneath the collar, peeking out when he bends to pick up a book someone dropped.
“It’s nothing,” he says too quickly. “I fell. You know me.”
But Wen Qing knows him too. And she trades glances with Wen Ning, whose knuckles go white around his thermos. Later, Wen Qing sends Lan Wangji a text that reads: “Keep an eye on him. Yu Ziyuan’s temper isn’t just verbal.”
Lan Wangji already knows. He just didn’t have proof before. Now he does. He carefully collects them.
☆☽☾☆
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
if i dropped my pen and dramatically bent over to pick it up, would you look
🧊 Lan Wangji:
Do not.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
so that’s not a no
🧊 Lan Wangji:
You are testing me.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
always and i’ll keep testing you until i get a grade
🧊 Lan Wangji:
A+.
Sit properly.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
did you just sext-grade me??
🧊 Lan Wangji:
This is the last time I respond.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
remains to be seen mr. lan
☆☽☾☆
Wei Wuxian doesn’t even realize it’s happening at first. It starts small. A thermos left beside his laptop in the library, with perfectly warm oolong and a note in Lan Zhan’s neat brushstrokes: Drink this. It is not optional. A second set of pens when his inevitably explode mid-manic scribble. A spare charger that magically appears in his satchel when his phone hits 2%. He rolls his eyes every time and says something flippant and deflecting like, “Lan Zhan, you know I’m not helpless, right?” but always makes sure to thank him. With words. With a squeeze of joint hands.
But he drinks the tea. And starts sleeping at night. And one day, without even thinking about it, he shows up to class only two minutes late with organized notes, a clean shirt and breakfast.
Lan Wangji glances up when he slides into the seat beside him, brows raised just slightly.
Wei Wuxian smiles brightly. “Surprise. I’m functioning.”
Lan Wangji’s lips twitch minutely. “Well done.”
Wei Wuxian preens. “You’re a terrible influence. I used to be feral.”
“You still are.”
“Excuse me–”
But he’s laughing. And when he gets his essay back with a full score and the professor writes “your arguments are deeply original – please consider publication,” something blooms in his chest he doesn’t recognize at first. Pride. That isn’t survival-mode ego or exhausted defiance.
He turns to Lan Wangji, clutching the paper like a lifeline.
“You saw this coming, didn’t you?”
Lan Wangji regards him, steady. “You are brilliant. I only helped you believe it.”
Wei Wuxian swallows. “That...” For once, he decides to be sincere. “That means more than you know.”
Lan Wangji inclines his head. “Then I will keep reminding you.”
Wei Wuxian looks down at the essay again. Maybe being cared for doesn’t make him weaker. Maybe it gives him space to be more dangerous than ever –just in a different way.
☆☽☾☆
It’s just supposed to be another study session. They’ve done this before – holed up in the quiet of Lan Zhan’s dorm room with their laptops, old texts, three kinds of tea, and entirely too many sticky notes. The dormitory is silent except for the distant murmur of midnight life, a soft wind brushing the windows and rattling the shutters.
They’re working on the final presentation for their joint project: Ritual Symbolism and Cultural Memory in Contemporary Folk Practices. Which means long tangents, heated debates and Lan Wangji patiently typing footnotes while Wei Wuxian rants and gestures like a possessed academic gremlin. But tonight… something’s different.
Wei Wuxian is pacing in his second pair of fuzzy socks that he has left at Lan Zhan’s place because his feet always get so cold, reading a section of his analysis aloud, when Lan Wangji interrupts gently. “You skipped a connection. Between the third ritual and the mirror motif.”
Wei Wuxian stops mid-ramble. “I– shit, you’re right.” He stares at his notes, stunned. “How did I miss that?”
“You were rushing,” Lan Wangji says kindly. “But your insight was strong.”
Wei Wuxian lowers himself to the floor beside Lan Wangji’s chair, suddenly quiet. He leans his head against Lan Wangji’s thigh, suddenly bone-deep tired. It is always like this. Once he stops, he tends to lose all momentum.
He murmurs, “You always listen. Even when I don’t make sense.”
“You always make sense,” Lan Wangji replies, his hand softly caressing his hair. “Sometimes you just think faster than you can speak.”
Wei Wuxian looks up. Lan Wangji is already looking at him. He has taken off his cashmere sweater, sleeves of his white undershirt rolled, his half-updo of long luscious hair slightly loosened from hours of study. He looks human and ethereal and painfully, impossibly beautiful. Wei Wuxian says, softly, “Lan Zhan, can I ask you something stupid?”
“Yes.”
“Why me?”
Lan Wangji doesn’t hesitate as if he has waited for this question. His words are careful and seem – not practiced per se – but so steady and sure.
“Because when I look at you, I see someone who never stops trying and is always kind. Who creates beauty even in struggle. Because your mind is the most radiant thing I have ever encountered.”
Wei Wuxian swallows and blinks rapidly. “That... That’s not fair.”
“Why?”
“Because I am already in love with you. How can I love you more after each minute we spend together?”
Silence. Breathing. The soft creak of a floorboard under shifting weight. Then Lan Wangji leans forward, voice low.
“Good. Because I am also in love with you.”
Lan Wangji leans down and takes his face in his warm hands. Their lips meet like something inevitable, like gravity, like a thesis proven after a thousand hours of research. Soft at first, then desperate – relief, awe, belonging, love.
When they part after minutes, hours, an eternity spent kissing, Wei Wuxian leans his forehead against Lan Wangji’s knee again, laughing breathlessly. “You’re gonna ruin me.”
Lan Wangji smiles into his hair. “Then I will help put you back together.”
They fall asleep on the floor, surrounded by books, teacups and the quiet hum of love between them.
☆☽☾☆
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
thinking about your hands holding books is ruining my workflow
🧊 Lan Wangji:
Then I will wear gloves.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
NO THAT’S WORSE?!??
that’s like forbidden sexy librarian level 9000
🧊 Lan Wangji:
...
I will not wear gloves.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
god
you’re so kind
and evil
i think i love you
🧊 Lan Wangji:
Weak argumentation.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
...
lan zhan
🧊 Lan Wangji:
Yes?
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
I LOVE you.
🧊 Lan Wangji:
Correct.
☆☽☾☆
Wei Wuxian isn’t expecting Jiang Cheng to show up.
They’ve seen each other in passing – department events, a few terse text exchanges and the occasional photo from Jiang Yanli. But it’s been weeks, months even, since they talked. Not the clipped, guarded exchanges they’ve done in front of others. No, real talking.
But there he is. Standing at the edge of the university gardens in a sharp blazer and sneakers, looking like he hasn’t slept. Looking simultaneously more mature and more like his beloved younger brother, barely six years old who had cried in his arms after Madame Yu had taken her anger out on Wei Wuxian, than he has in years.
Wei Wuxian doesn’t run. Doesn’t flinch. He walks up and says, “If you’re here to fight me, I’m way too emotionally evolved now.” He goes for humour, and it does not fall all the way flat, but it also does not work like it used to before… all this.
Jiang Cheng snorts. It’s almost a laugh. “Relax. I am not here to fight.”
That earns him a puzzled smile from Wei Wuxian. They are slowly but surely chartering new waters. “What then?”
Jiang Cheng looks at the stone bench, then at Wei Wuxian. “Can we sit? Just for a second?”
They do. In silence, for a moment. It’s spring. The breeze smells like jasmine and freshly photocopied course packets, people hurrying from campus building to lecture hall to the library and archives, passing by their small quiet bubble. For once, Wei Wuxian feels no need to fill the silence with chatter. Jiang Cheng finally says, “I am a shitty brother.”
Wei Wuxian opens his mouth, but Jiang Cheng lifts a hand.
“No. Let me say it. Please. I want to say it. My therapist made me practise. Let me try to say it. I was angry, and scared, and jealous. Not because you were better – but because you kept going. Even when they tore you down. Even when they – when I – did. Fuck,”
Wei Wuxian doesn’t move. Just listens.
“I let our parents’ cruelty become my own. I thought I was protecting you, but really, I just didn’t know how to love you properly.” His voice cracks, just barely. “And you still became this person. This – ridiculous, brilliant, insufferable person.”
Wei Wuxian’s chest aches with something terrible tender. He just loves this little angry grape. Loves this angry man he has grown into with all his broken tender heart.
“I’m sorry,” Jiang Cheng whispers. “I’m so sorry, A-Xian.”
Wei Wuxian doesn’t cry. He has cried enough tears in recent weeks. This shall be a time for smiles and healing and kisses, he decides. Wei Wuxian just leans sideways and bumps their shoulders together. And then he does something he has never done before and wraps his arm around his stupid little idiot of a brother to rest his head on him. Letting him take a small part of the weight of his past.
“Thanks, A-Cheng,” he says. “You’re still an idiot, though.”
“Yeah,” Jiang Cheng says, smiling wetly. “But I’m your idiot.”
They sit there for a while longer, like they’re kids again. Like things are still messy, but no longer hopeless.
☆☽☾☆
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
wen qing
i have made a terrible mistake
🩺 Wen Qing:
It’s literally always you. What now.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
lan zhan yawned in our library booth today and i saw a sliver of his collarbone
a sliver
and now i’m spiraling
🩺 Wen Qing:
Are you seriously messaging me at 1 a.m. about a man’s collarbone
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
not a man
THE man
The Academic Wet Dream
The Patron Saint of Pinned-Up Hair and Cashmere Cardigans
🩺 Wen Qing:
Go to sleep or so help me I will prescribe you actual tranquilizers.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
can’t sleep. every time i close my eyes i see his hands turning a page
🩺 Wen Qing:
I hate you.
☆☽☾☆
Lan Xichen does not interfere. He observes. He sees the change first in Wangji’s posture – looser, not lax. Calm in a way that suggests peace has been earned, not feigned. He sees it in Wei Wuxian’s stride, his voice in his seminars, the way he is starting to wear his name like something he chose instead of something he was given.
And he notices – always – how they move around each other.
Lan Xichen waits until Wei Wuxian visits the library late one evening, looking for an obscure volume on ritual transference. He’s humming under his breath, eyes bright. Tired, but alive. So similar and yet so different to Lan Xichen’s beloved brother. Lan Xichen steps beside him and hands him the correct volume before he can even ask.
Wei Wuxian blinks. “How do you do that?”
“I’m the Head Archivist,” Lan Xichen replies mildly, like he always does. “And I know my brother’s love because I know my brother.”
Wei Wuxian swallows. “Is it-”
“It’s good,” Lan Xichen says softly. “You are good. For him. And I believe, if you allow… he is good for you.”
Wei Wuxian’s eyes are growing wide. Lan Xichen offers a small smile. “We don’t always choose how healing comes. But we can choose to let it stay.”
Wei Wuxian ducks his head. “Thank you.”
He leaves with the book, but Lan Xichen stays for a moment, watching the doorway. He’s not worried. They’re exactly where they need to be.
☆☽☾☆
The night is one of those quiet ones, silver-lit and heavy with unspoken things.
They’re still in the lecture hall, long after everyone else has left and breaking curfew again, the dim lights humming softly overhead. The whiteboard is still half-covered in wild scribbles – brilliant, chaotic thoughts of Wei Wuxian’s that have somehow become the beginnings of a thesis outline. A candle flickers on the windowsill. Lan Wangji, who would never allow fire hazards, has lit it anyway. For the atmosphere, he had said. Or maybe because Wei Wuxian had said it helped him think.
Wei Wuxian is leaning back on his elbows on the long seminar table, hair pulled into a loose bun, a pencil tucked behind his ear and glitter pen stains on his fingers. He’s tired and exhilarated and still vibrating with the aftershocks of inspiration. He turns to say something – probably a joke, probably too much – but it never makes it out of his mouth.
Because Lan Wangji is smiling.
Not the neutral curve of faint amusement. Not the almost-there press of lips that appears in quiet approval. This smile is-
The moon catching on still water.
A beam of sunlight breaking through mist.
The sudden bloom of white magnolias in early spring, when you weren’t looking.
Wei Wuxian suddenly wishes that he studied poetry so he would have the slightest chance to be worthy of trying to describe this smile.
It tilts Lan Wangji’s features, loosens his gaze. The corners of his mouth lift slowly, with reverence and no hesitation. His golden eyes – so often cool and unreadable – glow with a warmth that belongs in the stories they sometimes read together. He looks at Wei Wuxian like he’s seeing something he’s waited for his entire life. Wei Wuxian forgets how to breathe.
It is devastating, is what it is. Shattering in the way beauty sometimes is, when it slips under your skin and makes a home in your ribs. And for a moment, he’s completely still. Then, soft and stupidly helpless, he says, “Oh.”
Lan Wangji’s smile – that smile – deepens. So sure of his affection now. So rightfully sure of his own affection being returned tenfold.
The candle flame flickers. The ink on the whiteboard gleams.
Wei Wuxian stares, stunned, lips parted like he’s about to say a prayer or confess a secret. His heart is loud in his chest. He swears every future version of himself will be rewinding to this moment, over and over, for the rest of his life.
“Lan Zhan, you’re smiling again,” he says, voice too loud in the quiet room.
“You make it easy,” Lan Wangji replies, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
And Wei Wuxian doesn’t fall in love – not exactly. Because he already has, a hundred times over. But he falls deeper.
☆☽☾☆
Group Chat: “Chaos Trio”
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
he held a pen today and i blacked out
🎨 Nie Huaisang:
again?? you are chronically down bad
👻 Wen Ning:
Was it one of those fountain pens? He does have very elegant handwriting…
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
he. annotated. a. margin.
he underlined something and i felt it in my spine
🩺 Wen Qing:
Wei Ying.
It’s ink.
You’re attracted to ink.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
no no no
not just ink
lan zhan’s ink
his sexy, precise, devastating ink
🎨 Nie Huaisang:
Can I be at your wedding or is it going to be just you and a pile of his syllabi?
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
you joke
but i’d marry a syllabus with his notes on it rn
☆☽☾☆
Wei Wuxian doesn’t even try to be surprised when the moment they officially disown him arrives. After his fight with Jiang Cheng, he told his sister that he wasn’t going to the family’s winter gala. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t pretend to be grateful for their cruelty anymore.
Later, he receives a single message:
“Don’t ever show your face again.”
So he won’t, he decides. Lan Qiren finds him sitting alone in the research library two days before New Year’s. The older professor clears his throat, then gently places a red envelope down in front of him.
“A symbolic gesture,” he says awkwardly. “No one should be without family during the holidays.”
Wei Wuxian stares at it for a long time.
“…Thank you,” he says. Quietly. Like it aches.
☆☽☾☆
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
are you awake
🧊 Lan Wangji:
Yes.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
do you want to come over and cuddle
🧊 Lan Wangji:
Yes.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
sometimes i want to crawl into your hoodie and live there
🧊 Lan Wangji:
It has room.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
shut up that’s illegal
🧊 Lan Wangji:
Not according to university housing policy.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
LAN ZHAN
☆☽☾☆
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
what are you going to do after graduation
🧊 Lan Wangji:
Continue research. Possibly apply for the assistant lectureship. Be with you. Remain here.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
you’re going to stay?
🧊 Lan Wangji:
Yes.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
do you think i could stay too?
🧊 Lan Wangji:
I hope so.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
you’re so bad at emotions and still manage to make me feel like i swallowed a sun
🧊 Lan Wangji:
That is not a medical condition.
🌶️ Wei Wuxian:
you know what is a condition? being in love with you 24/7
☆☽☾☆
Lan Wangji places a cup of tea beside Wei Wuxian’s elbow. The room smells of ink and cold coffee. Wei Wuxian doesn’t look up from the notebook he’s been furiously scribbling in for the past four hours.
“Drink,” Lan Wangji says.
“No time,” Wei Wuxian mutters, flipping to a fresh page. His handwriting is messier than usual. There are ink smudges on his wrist. His eyes have gone sharp, glittering in a way that’s for once more fever than brilliance. Lan Wangji stands still for a beat too long. Then, quietly:
“You haven’t eaten.”
Wei Wuxian laughs. It’s not a nice laugh. “Oh, fantastic. Add that to the list of my failures. Right between ‘uses sarcasm as a defense mechanism’ and ‘can’t stop talking even when he’s clearly not wanted.’”
Lan Wangji’s brow furrows and his chest suddenly grows tight. “That is not what I said.”
“No, but it’s what you think, right? Sloppy, impulsive Wei Ying. The scholarship fluke. The pity case. The unwanted child from Lotus Pier who talks too much and never shuts up—”
“Enough.” Lan Wangji’s voice is not raised, but it cuts through the air like a blade. Wei Wuxian’s pen hits the table with a sharp clack. He stands so fast his chair screeches.
“Don’t tell me what to do! You don’t get to manage me like I’m some charity case you’ve been assigned to fix!”
“I am not trying to fix you.”
“Bullshit,” Wei Wuxian snaps. His hands are shaking, though whether it’s adrenaline or low blood sugar, he couldn’t say. “You look at me like I’m a problem to be solved. Something messy you regret being forced to work with.”
Lan Wangji’s gaze doesn’t waver. “I look at you because I admire you. Because I love you.”
Wei Wuxian actually flinches.
There’s a beat of silence. His breath comes shallow, too fast. “You shouldn’t.”
“I do.”
Another silence. This one thick, unbearable. Wei Wuxian sits again, slow this time. The anger in him deflates like a punctured balloon. He suddenly looks… small. Hollowed out.
“I didn’t mean to yell,” he says, voice cracking. “I just- I haven’t eaten since yesterday. And I didn’t sleep last night because I thought I had to finish all of this before you decided I was dead weight. That if I didn’t keep up, you’d stop… I don’t know. Seeing me.”
Lan Wangji steps forward. “That will never happen. I will always see Wei Ying.”
Wei Wuxian looks up. His eyes are red. Not from crying – yet – but from everything else.
“Will you?”
“Yes,” Lan Wangji says softly. “When you shine. When you spiral. When you care too much. Now.”
Wei Wuxian lets out a shaky laugh, rubs his hands over his face. “God, I’m so tired.”
Lan Wangji places the tea back in front of him. “Drink.”
This time, he does. They sit in silence for a few minutes. The night is quiet, the library filled only with the sound of porcelain against wood and the deep, rhythmic breath of something slowly calming.
“…Do you really admire me?” Wei Wuxian asks, so quietly it might be mistaken for thought.
“I do,” Lan Wangji says. “You are so good. And kind. You frighten me, sometimes.”
Wei Wuxian startles. “Frighten you?”
“You make me want to reach toward you constantly. And I do not always know how.”
There it is: that raw, open honesty Lan Wangji wears like armour. Not loud. Not dramatic. But devastating in its sincerity. Wei Wuxian stares at him. He blinks. “I’m still mad at you.”
“That is allowed.”
“I still think you’re a smug, rule-following, smart bastard.”
Lan Wangji’s mouth quirks. “That, too.”
“…but you brought me tea. And sat through that tantrum like I wasn’t actively exploding.”
“You were imploding. I remained unharmed.”
Wei Wuxian huffs, half laugh, half disbelief. “Okay. Okay. But if I keep working on this chapter, will you make sure I eat actual food later?”
“Yes.”
“And maybe sleep?”
“I will carry you if I must.”
Wei Wuxian’s eyes narrow teasingly, and Lan Wangji breathes easier at the familiar sight. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you.”
Lan Wangji says nothing. But there’s the barest, flickering lift at the corner of his mouth. Wei Wuxian glares, but it’s mostly show. “Fine. But only because I want you to admire me with food in my stomach.”
☆☽☾☆
Lan Wangji stays with him until he finishes, way past his bedtime and Wei Wuxian hurries. On the way back, they don’t speak at first.
The path down from the library is made of smooth stone. Moonlight paints it silver, their shadows long and companionable on the gravel. The quiet is no longer heavy or tense – it hums like a lullaby, like the calm that only follows something breaking open when the pressure has been released.
Wei Wuxian walks a little slower than usual. Lan Wangji matches his pace without a word.
His tea-warmed hands are tucked into his sleeves now, and there’s something loose in his shoulders, like the tension had been wrung out and left in that quiet room with the spilled ink and half-finished coffee cups.
“…I’m sorry I said all that,” Wei Wuxian says at last. “Or at least the yelling part. The rest of it – well, I guess it was already in me. You just happened to be standing in the blast zone.”
Lan Wangji hums in acknowledgment. “You are hurting.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t have to make it your problem.”
“You are not a problem.”
Wei Wuxian turns to look at him. He’s always been a little too good at reading people. “You believe that now. But will you still believe it the next time I go nuclear over one of my many insecurities?”
“Yes.”
“Even if I threaten to quit the project and renounce academia and become a chaos bard?”
“...Yes.”
Wei Wuxian grins despite himself. “You don’t know what a chaos bard is, do you?”
“No.”
“That’s okay. You’ll learn. We’ll get to playing some kickass D&D with Huaisang eventually.” He kicks a pebble off the path. Watches it bounce down the hill. “You’re too good to me, Lan Zhan.”
“You deserve kindness.”
Wei Wuxian looks down at his hands. “Still not sure about that.”
“I am.”
That stops him in his tracks. Lan Wangji turns too, calmly waiting for him to catch up. There’s something about the way he stands in the moonlight, unflinching and still, as if rooted to the earth in a way Wei Wuxian never learned how to be.
“Lan Zhan,” he says, voice quieter than he meant it, “why do you keep choosing me?”
Lan Wangji looks at him, then takes a step closer. Close enough that their sleeves brush.
“Because you are worth choosing.”
The wind rustles the bamboo. A single leaf drifts past.
Wei Wuxian exhales like it hurts. Like maybe it heals something, too. Then: “You’re going to make me cry.”
“Then I will stay until you don’t need to.”
And he does. They walk the rest of the way in silence. Just before the dorms come into view, Wei Wuxian reaches out and takes Lan Wangji’s hand in his, casual but deliberate. He doesn’t look over, but he smiles to himself when he feels a soft squeeze, barely there, a promise. He doesn’t pull away. He vows quietly to be brave and always take the hand that Lan Zhan is reaching out to him.
☆☽☾☆
Wei Wuxian bursts through the sliding door of the campus infirmary like a tornado in human form, carrying a satchel, a scowl, and two buns in wax paper. His hair is messy, one sleeve half-rolled and his voice too loud for the otherwise peaceful hour.
“I told you never to use the stairs in building C! They’re so cursed. What were you doing there – chasing an evil spirit? A rogue squirrel? Your own damn sense of responsibility?”
Lan Wangji, flat on the mat with his leg propped up and wrapped in precise bandages, looks at him like one might regard a slightly violent sunrise. Calm. Resigned. Inconveniently fond.
“I am fine.”
“You have a broken leg.”
“It is set.”
Wei Wuxian marches over, drops his satchel with a dramatic thud and kneels beside him. “You’re lucky it’s a clean break. Wen Qing says no weight on it for at least six weeks. You’re not to carry your own bags. You are not to sit it the uncomfy library chairs. You are not to even carry your own tea kettle. I will be doing all that for you. In fact-” He fumbles in his bag and pulls out a small box. “I brought you breakfast.”
Lan Wangji looks at the buns. “They are both veggie.”
“Yes.” He pauses, then mutters, “They’re not even spicy.”
Lan Wangji takes the offered bun, expression almost a smile. “Thank you.”
Wei Wuxian doesn’t sit. He hovers. Then fusses. Then carefully rearranges the pillow beneath the injured leg. Then fluffs it. Then checks the bandages even though they were wrapped by a trained doctor an hour ago.
“You’re not in pain, are you?”
“No.”
“You’d tell me if you were?”
Lan Wangji hesitates. Which is, in Lan Wangji terms, a full confession of guilt.
Wei Wuxian squints. “You are in pain. You’re just being stoic about it. Typical.”
He moves with unexpected gentleness, setting the tray aside, reaching into the satchel again. He pulls out a tiny vial of pale golden oil. “Okay. Hold still. Wen Ning helped me make this. It’s pain-relieving. Non-sedative. Smells like oranges.”
Lan Wangji blinks. “You made this?”
“Helped. Supervised. Was present.” Wei Wuxian unscrews the cap. “Okay, Lan Zhan. Pants.”
Lan Wangji looks at him. Wei Wuxian winks. “Kidding. Just the ankle.”
With exaggerated care, he rolls up the white linen trousers to the shin, then presses his fingers just above the bandages with the barest touch. Lan Wangji doesn’t flinch, but Wei Wuxian feels the faint tension beneath the skin.
He rubs the oil in carefully. No teasing now. Just slow, steady warmth. He’s quiet for once. Focused. Lan Wangji watches him.
“Ah, so handsome, Lan Zhan, I don’t deserve you.” Wei Wuxian says softly, without looking up.
“You are wrong,” Lan Wangji replies immediately, it has become habit.
Wei Wuxian snorts. “Is that so?”
“Yes.”
He finally meets Lan Wangji’s eyes, and whatever joke he had dies there.
“Then... thank you. For letting me stay. For trusting me. Even like this.”
“You are always welcome,” Lan Wangji says, and it sounds like a vow. They sit in the warm silence, the faint scent of oranges and sandalwood between them. Wei Wuxian finally settles beside him, back against the wall, close enough to lean if either of them had the courage to against Wen Qing’s orders.
“I’ll stay,” he says, voice fading to a whisper. “Just for a bit.”
He does. Lan Wangji falls asleep first.
“Forever, if you’ll let me.”
Wei Wuxian watches the sunlight crawl across the wall and over the sleeping form of his heart outside of his body and thinks, Maybe this is what home feels like.
☆☽☾☆
Wei Wuxian stands at the front of the seminar hall, shoulders square, hands white-knuckled on the podium. Behind him, the screen is aglow with the title of his thesis: “Disruptive Ritual: Liminality, Hauntings, and Resistance in Folk Histories of the Burial Mounds.”
Beneath it, smaller – almost like a whisper:
Wei Wuxian
Advisor: Professor Lan Quiren
The room is full. Overfull. Standing-room-only kind of full, where someone (Nie Huaisang) might’ve bribed a janitor to unlock the side doors early so friends could sneak in before the committee arrived. Lan Qiren sits at the table like he’s been carved from stone, perfectly petrified principle. The other evaluators – Dr. Zhou from Cultural Anthropology, Dean Wen from Historical Theology and Dr. Luo of the Esoteric Rites Department – glance between their copies of the Master’s thesis and the young man staring them down with the confidence of a man who’s already lost too many hours of sleep to be afraid anymore. He has passed the point of exhaustion and tries to ride this wave of adrenalin until after the presentation.
Wei Wuxian tries not to wiggle in his fitting black dress pants and the maroon blouse with billowing sleeves that his wondrous boyfriend had produced from somewhere when he had lost his mind about his outfit a few hours ago. For once, his curly hair is in a neat braid and Lan Zhan had even applied some powder, blush and mascara so he feels fairy confident that the committee cannot actually see that he is sweating through his clothes right now.
He lets his eyes wander over the crowd of spectators. He sees his friends Nie Huaisang, Wen Qing, Wen Ning and Mianmian holding what appears to be signs with slogans such as “the w in wuxian stands for absolute academic weapon” and “king of rituals, you’ll murder this thesis defense”. He cannot supress his large grin at the sight of his beautiful sister and idiot of a little brother where they are sitting at the very front, having arrived at the seminar hall even before Wei Wuxian himself. Jiang Cheng looks flushed and bright-eyed his posture full of emotion and pride but the good kind. The kind of pride that is dedicated to someone, to him, to what he has accomplished, and Wei Wuxian is so fucking proud of his sour-faced brother for trying, for going to therapy and really trying.
And then of course, his eyes find Lan Wangji.
Naturally, Lan Wangji is in the audience. Third row. Still. Perfect. Hands folded over a leather-bound notebook. Unreadable to anyone but the person who has watched him for two years with near-religious reverence. He looks confident. Sure of his success and Wei Wuxian’s next breath comes a little easier.
He looks at the room, takes a breath so deep it echoes off the walls, and begins.
“I’d like to start by saying that I wasn’t supposed to be here and that I have a lot to be thankful for, a lot of people to thank.”
Murmurs. A tilt of heads. He continues.
“My life didn’t set me up to be here talking about rituals, ghosts and the essence of what makes human history and culture. I grew up with enough ghosts to learn not to name them. I had to teach myself the languages, the structures, the systems. I came into this field with a different kind of knowledge – lived experience. Which meant that to survive, I had to translate my whole life into academic grammar.”
He lets that hang in the air.
“Now I think I’m finally beginning to become fluent.”
And then the fire starts.
Not literal – yet – but rhetorical, rhythmic, alive. Wei Wuxian leaps into the body of his presentation like he’s conducting a symphony of a thunderstorm: exorcist chants in peasant dialects, funeral patterns hidden inside folk dance, oral histories coded in ghost stories, resistance smuggled through centuries in the shape of mourning rites.
He ties together fieldwork in the Outer Marches with obscure primary sources only he had the patience to translate and then digitize. He reads a footnote aloud in a long forgotten rural dialect of ancient Chinese, then immediately translates it. Like this, he builds his argument – information and conclusions coming together like instruments in an orchestra. Raw, elegant, complex.
He does not lose the room. He seduces it.
Dean Wen nods along, eyebrows raised in increasing awe. Dr. Luo mumbles something about “revolutionary method.” Lan Qiren narrows his eyes – and then, to everyone’s shock, smiles and writes something down.
He ends with a quote.
From his mother’s last paper before her death: “To be haunted is not to be weak, but to carry the memory of those who dared to live.”
The silence after his final slide is immense.
And then the first to clap is Jiang Cheng. Loudly, thunderously and with proud, unashamed tears in his eyes. Jiang Yanli joins. She is, as always, graceful – quiet hands, misty eyes, the picture of composed pride. But the sound echoes like thunder. And slowly, the rest join in.
Nie Huaisang whistles. Wen Ning claps delicately. Wen Qing is nodding with that particular brand of approval that means You made me proud and look how proud I am.
Lan Qiren clears his throat when the applause doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon. “We will now proceed with questions.”
They’re brutal, of course. It’s a Lan-advised thesis, which means rigor is part of the deal. Wei Wuxian is grilled about methodology, comparative theory, epistemology, ghost historiography. Dean Wen even throws in an ethics curveball about fieldwork in culturally sensitive regions.
And Wei Wuxian does not falter.
He explains. He laughs – gently, when appropriate. He pauses, acknowledges when he doesn’t know something with grace, then links it to an area for future study. He praises his sources, credits his translators, notes the contributions of other students. Lan Wangji smiles privately and is, as always, utterly charmed. Wei Wuxian is, for the first time in a long time, entirely himself.
And that is brilliant.
When the questions are finished, the committee withdraws.
Fifteen long minutes of whispered chaos break loose in the seminar room.
Jiang Yanli rushes over with a small tin of sweets, not caring about academic decorum. She joins him for his waiting at the front. “In case they make you wait too long, A-Xian. I made lotus candies. Good for nerves!”
Jiang Cheng is hovering like he doesn’t know whether to hug or hit him. He chooses to hug him. Lately, he always chooses hugs. Wei Wuxian melts. “You… you didn’t say it was this good. You speak Old Chinese, you-”
“I said that languages come to me easily.”
“Not like that! They – they were moved!”
Jiang Yanli slides a hand into each of theirs and squeezes. Her eyes are shining. Before he can say anything more, the committee returns. Wei Wuxian has a brief vision of being kicked out of university against his better judgment but the borderline warm gaze of his advisor keeps him centred when old man Lan Qiren walks over to him.
Lan Qiren clears his throat. “Wei Wuxian.”
Wei Wuxian straightens.
“Your thesis is unanimously accepted with distinction.” A beat. “The committee wants also to propose your nomination for the University Prize in Innovative Student Research.”
“And,” Dean Wen adds, having joined their conversation with his unnervingly young-looking features arranged in a smile. “we have received a formal request from Professor Lan Qiren to recommend you for immediate entry into the doctoral program – should you choose to accept.”
Wei Wuxian sways. “Wait. What?”
Lan Wangji rises.
“Included,” Lan Qiren continues calmly, “are three years of funding, teaching responsibilities in undergraduate ritual studies, and access to the restricted archives. I will act as your supervisor. If you wish.”
Wei Wuxian makes a noise that might be a squeak or a sob or the last gasp of a man stunned by grace. Lan Wangji takes his hand and his smile transforms his face to something so tender, so warm, so loving that Wei Wuxian wants to stay in this moment forever.
“Wei Ying.” His boyfriend murmurs to him, somehow transporting sonnets and libraries of meaning, of love, with only his name.
Wei Wuxian bursts into laughter – bubbling, stunned, breathless laughter – and nods. “Yes. Yes, I accept. Of course I do. I-”
Lan Wangji’s eyes soften even more, molten golden pools of happiness.
“You are brilliant,” he says simply, like he has hundreds of times before. “The department would be fortunate to have you.”
And when the committee readily agrees, Wei Wuxian nearly dissolves on the spot.
☆☽☾☆
The restaurant is a tiny, lantern-lit place two blocks from campus that Nie Huaisang insisted on and almost definitely bribed into opening early just for them. The sign on the door says “Closed,” but inside it’s alive with noise – clinking glasses, sizzling pans, someone yelling “who gave Wen Ning the soju bottle?!” and a warm buzz of voices that fills every corner.
There are dumplings everywhere.
Someone (probably Wen Qing) ordered six types. Someone else (definitely Jiang Yanli) brought a lotus cake. The server has stopped trying to count how many times Wei Wuxian has shouted “I’m a master now! Master Wei!!” while dramatically posing with a scallion pancake like it’s an award statue.
Wen Ning, a gentle menace on his third glass of rice wine, is teaching Jiang Cheng how to fold dumplings properly while the latter mutters threats under his breath and blushes when praised. Lan Xichen is here too – quiet, luminous presence in a corner booth, sipping tea and watching with clear affection as Lan Wangji attempts to be subtle while peeling an orange for Wei Wuxian, who is too busy gesturing wildly at a reenactment of his thesis defense to notice. Nie Mingjue is bullying his little brother into his fourth spicy dumpling, laughing uproariously from his place at Lan Xichen’s side.
“-and then Lan Qiren just came up to me, and I thought, well, guess I’m hallucinating from sleep deprivation, but no! He just casually upended my whole life plan in public with a job offer.”
“He basically offered you a tenure-track career with a straight face,” Nie Huaisang says, grinning over his hot pot. “That man is in love with your brain. He wants your brain baby.”
Wei Wuxian chokes on a dumpling.
“Ew– he doesn’t–”
Lan Wangji places the peeled orange slice gently on Wei Wuxian’s plate and takes his hand without a word. He is, very intentionally, close enough for their knees to touch.
Wei Wuxian goes very quiet.
Around them, the chaos continues: Wen Qing lecturing Huaisang about accurate citation formatting (“You cannot cite a haunted house as a source, I don’t care if it moaned at you.”), Lan Xichen smiling as Nie Mingjue tries to defend himself from Jiang Yanli handing him another piece of lotus cake without success, and Wen Ning pulling out a sparkler from somewhere and setting it alight in the middle of the cake.
Eventually, when the food is mostly gone and the wine has slowed everyone’s momentum to a warm, content haze, Wei Wuxian is suddenly hit with such profound emotions that he has to step outside to not burst into tears.
The night air is cool and soft. The moon hangs low and kind above the street.
He leans against the railing, dumpling-drunk and a lot overwhelmed – not with sadness, not anymore. With joy. With the feeling that somehow, despite everything, he has ended up here: not just surviving, but surrounded by people who love him, who saw him and made space for him to grow.
A quiet step behind him.
Lan Wangji. Always his Lan Zhan. Just a step behind.
He doesn’t say anything. Just stands next to him, silent and steady. They both look up at the stars. Wei Wuxian tilts his head toward him. “You always knew I could do it.”
Lan Wangji turns. “Yes.”
A beat.
“And you – you’ve been there the whole time. Even when I was unbearable.”
“You were never unbearable.”
“Lan Zhan.” Wei Wuxian’s voice catches. “Thank you.”
Lan Wangji hesitates. Then: “You were extraordinary today.”
Wei Wuxian looks at him. Really looks at him. His face is golden in the lamplight. His eyes – warm, open. Wei Wuxian cannot believe that he found the other unreadable once. Right now, there’s something blooming there. Something fragile and bright.
“I think,” Wei Wuxian says softly, “you might be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Lan Wangji’s breath hitches. He reaches for Wei Wuxian’s hand. Their fingers interlace – slow, deliberate, sure. And under the wide, generous sky, surrounded by the faint echo of laughter and the scent of sweet rice wine and chili oil, Wei Wuxian leans forward and kisses him.
It is gentle. And devastating.
Like the first time sunlight falls on something long buried.