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It’s a gentle sort of seclusion. It helps that they’re married, so “seclusion” is, by definition, not an entirely accurate description. A-Yuan comes and goes, but mostly he’s either trailing after Wen Qionglin, asking Lan Wangji every question he can think of, or screaming in delight as Wei Ying gardens. The screaming is mostly because Wei Ying keeps tossing him in the air, teaching him how to ride on Suibian, burying him among the flowers, and teaching him about the bugs they find.
But the summer of building the Wen village has faded into a fall that sees Cloud Recesses settling into a new era of peace has given way to an especially harsh winter.
He tries to give Wei Ying space where he can. Wei Ying hasn’t asked him for space, but he’s taken the change in location hard — he’s no longer banned from Lotus Cove, not in this life, but the sects are watching him with suspicion and a fair bit of disdain after his slaughter at Nightless City. And as winter has set in, it has been harder to make the trip to the Wen village and back during the day.
Lan Wangji often weighs the things they have gained against knowing what their loss feels like. He finds himself waiting for the catch, listening to his brother’s stories and uncle’s teachings and A-Yuan’s cheerful babbling and Wen Qing’s sharp with a desperate focus. If he can just be present enough, attentive enough, there will be no losing them. These things he loves will find a way to stay if he tends them like Wei Ying now tends the gentians in their garden.
He finds himself frozen through with the loss of it all, sliding, frictionless, through whole days, warming himself with company that he pretends to not seek out.
But Wei Ying is a being in constant motion. He sleeps fitfully, eats voraciously, laughs during sex, learns to juggle within his first month in Cloud Recesses, and his brain runs even faster than his legs. The jingshi is cluttered with talismans, notes on potential tweaks to cultivation techniques, leads on cleansing rituals, A-Yuan’s toys and things that used to be toys and are now monstrosities that A-Yuan swears he loves and Lan Wangji just hopes aren’t sentient.
It all feels like atonement, or punishment.
Neither sits quite right with Lan Wangji, especially as Wei Ying begins to write less. To move less. Winter in the mountains has always been difficult for his husband. The darkness, the cold, the howling winds that wake him, that bring him yet more whispers of the dead that he’s never managed to fully shake. He watches the sunsets wistfully and curls tighter into Lan Wangji’s arms and as the season bears down on Gusu, Lan Wangji falls into the familiar routine of holding Wei Ying tighter in turn, building constant fires to keep his husband warm, making soups and teas and refusing frustration when they go half-wasted.
It’s an old routine, and not one he minds. It feels like a vow between the two of them, sacred. Lan Wangji will drag Wei Ying through the winter with every bit of warmth he has. Wei Ying will pour it back into him as the seasons change. They are a scale without a need for balances or tallies.
This year feels different.
It had been gradual, this stillness. Wei Ying had gone out less, eaten less, drank less after the Sunshot Campaign. But now he has withdrawn, informally, to the jingshi. Even the family dinners he’s so adamant about dragging himself and A-Yuan to once a week at minimum start to slip.
Lan Wangji does not make apologies for him to his family or sect.
The juniors enquire after him often and stare pensively in the direction of their home. He tells Wei Ying of this when the juniors are being especially pathetic (which is … often). It does seem to cheer his husband up a bit. Other than that, though, he keeps his silence, and goes about his normal duties in the sect during the day. He won’t crowd Wei Ying, won’t force him to smile and laugh the way he tries to when Lan Wangji comes home at night. He presses on enough with energy he doesn’t have when A-Yuan is around.
He kisses Wei Ying’s forehead for his efforts, and makes sure to comb his hair out, to gently bully him into taking a bath and changing into clean robes.
He does not need Wei Ying to be happy. Wei Ying is his husband, he left behind the Yunmeng sect in two of his past lives and he no longer needs to attempt the impossible. But Lan Wangji would settle for Wei Ying to be content, for him lose the haunted and hungry look that’s shadowed him recently.
He begins leaving Wei Ying small things to keep him entertained. He asks him to look after the bunnies, to plant carrots for them in their back yard, away from the prying eyes of the juniors. Gives him a new calligraphy brush. (Well, Wei Ying steals his constantly, so in effect, he’s gotten himself a new calligraphy brush. They’re married, so it’s semantics anyway.) He asks A-Yuan to draw pictures and little notes for Wei Ying — terribly composed, the writing nearly illegible, strokes uneven, the words adoring and adored in turn — that A-Yuan glows to be asked for.
Wei Ying gives him a wan smile each time.
Lan Wangji begins to make lists of things that Wei Ying likes.
It is … a short list, after he takes out the things that he has already tried, the things that Wei Ying cannot do right now. (It includes teasing A-Yuan and his friends, making Lan Wangji buy him things at the market, annoying elders, and going on night hunts. Wei Ying is … very social.)
He goes to the market, hoping inspiration will strike.
It does, or does by proxy. A woman is selling richly embroidered robes. It is exquisite. He asks for her name, so that he can drag Wei Ying back to her to buy a present for his family at some point in the future, and retreats quickly back up the mountain.
Wei Ying had used to love to draw. Had loved to paint.
He isn’t sure either of them remembers the last time Wei Ying had made something just because he could. Had drawn something because he wanted to make something beautiful.
Lan Wangji knows that Xichen used to paint as well, and asks him for advice on what to buy, how much to get, what he would need. It is easier than he thought it would be to get everything together. It’s maybe too easy, because he finds himself weighted down on a foggy morning with a load of supplies.
If it reminds Wei Ying that he’s loved, even if he never uses it, it’s worth it.
Wei Ying is just waking up when he begins arranging the supplies on the low-slung desk in the corner of the jinghsi that Wei Ying has mostly taken over these days.
The mess makes Lan Wangji’s heart warm and squeeze. Wei Ying has always filled up the emptiest spaces in his life.
“Lan Zhan?” Wei Ying asks, keeping the blankets tucked around him even as he sits up. He always looks so cold these days.
“Wei Ying.”
“What’s … what is this?”
“Supplies. If you wanted to paint. Or draw.”
Wei Ying’s face flickers through several emotions before settling on an unhappy little smile. “That’s kind.”
Lan Wangji walks over to sit on the edge of the bed and cups Wei Ying’s face. He stares at him for a few moments, running a hand through Wei Ying’s frizzy hair. He wants to say this right. Has been wanting to say this right for so long.
“Wei Ying does not have to like the things I bring. Or use them. Or do them. Only, if Wei Ying wants to be alone, he can be. But I do not want Wei Ying to feel alone.”
Wei Ying’s face crumples, and he tips forward to bury his face in Lan Wangji’s shoulder. “Lan Zhan, ah, Lan Zhan. You’re too kind to this one.”
“Not. Just love you.”
He holds Wei Ying a little longer, until the sun starts to shift above the mountains to the south. “Need to go get breakfast. Will bring it back.”
“Mn.” Wei Ying nods. He still looks tired, but he’s no longer trying to fake a smile for Lan Wangji.
He counts it as a win, and goes about their usual routine for the next few days. He fetches breakfast, and they eat in silence — or, Lan Wangji eats, and Wei Ying picks at his. He leaves Wei Ying’s leftovers on the table and takes his own empty dishes back to the kitchen. He teaches morning lectures, attends meetings for sect business, checks on A-Yuan at lunch before Wen Ning bundles him back up to return to grandmother, eats dinner with his uncle and brother while a disciple drops off food at the jingshi. He returns to find the food picked at and Wei Ying meditating.
On the sixth day, something feels charged. The air around Wei Ying feels firmer, and his eyes look more resolute. Lan Wangji kisses him on the forehead in goodbye in the morning and leaves as usual, unwilling to press.
As the sun sets, he follows Xichen back to the hanshi and settles in for a few cups of tea.
They are different now. Things between them feel more honest and more unsettled than they ever have. It’s difficult to navigate, as freeing as it is. Lan Wangji is glad to have an excuse to spend more time with Xichen every few days, giving Wei Ying his space at night, even though he knows Wei Ying would encourage it if he were himself right now anyway.
Lan Xichen is funnier than he remembers, and it’s strange to see him without crows feet creasing his glittering eyes. They still drink their tea the exact same way. And it’s fun to tease him over the strange dance Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue have been doing around each other, even if it goes nowhere and only gets him exasperated looks.
It’s close to his bedtime by the time he returns to the jingshi. When he slides open the door, it’s to find Wei Ying at the desk, staring into the middle distance. A talisman burns overhead, casting just enough light to see by.
On the desk lies two sheets of paper, a nearly-empty cup of tea, and the old calligraphy set.
Lan Wangji sidles closer when Wei Ying only blinks at him in acknowledgement, then drops his eyes to the page. Lan Wangji follows his gaze.
He takes a carefully controlled breath even as he tries to make sense of what he’s seeing.
It’s angry, that much he can see. Bleak, and stark. Wei Ying hasn’t touched the paints, only used ink and what looks like the dull brown of the tea to color in one of the pictures.
He kneels next to Wei Ying and stares. The one to Wei Ying’s left, the one he’s clearly finished with first, is a back. Just a back, with the suggestion of arms just off the edge of the page, the small of the back curving into hips, and a slash of spine. He traces the lines splashed over most of the empty space.
It’s … his back. From before.
Once he realizes it, it clicks. He hadn’t had much occasion to see the mess his back had become, without wanting to look in mirrors or the reflections in water overmuch. But Wei Ying has traced those scars on his back so many times: the deep gouge slashed horizontally at the widest part of his rib cage, where the most strokes had fallen; the one that curved onto his hip and had made bending hell for so long; the flicks that crossed slightly onto his upper arms.
He swallows and steels himself to look at the one in front of Wei Ying.
This one is more obviously a body. It’s from the front, the outline of a neck and torso, shoulders with no arms. The skin clings to each bone underneath, but instead of slender eroticism, it looks like a war crime made flesh. The ribs jut out like bony claws. The collarbones look like gouges left by a wild animal.
The valleys where a curve is suggested are hollowed out by the dark, watery brown of the tea. It pulses out like a bruise from the upper belly, right where a golden core would sit. The neck is choked by a deep tea stain, drops dribbling down to pool at the dip between the collarbones.
Wei Ying does not talk about how it felt to be the Yiling Lazou. He rarely talks about those days at all, and when he does, it is about Fourth Uncle’s antics, Grandmother’s sharp wit that rivaled even Wen Qing’s, about A-Yuan being the darling of them all and Wen Ning’s favorite especially. He complains about cold nights and hot work farming radishes and he does not, ever, linger on the madness that had seeped his strength and gnawed on his mind.
But Lan Wangji can infer. He slowly, so slowly, stretches his hand out until it’s in Wei Ying’s line of sight, then carefully brings it up to his shoulder. When he’s met with no resistance, he slides it over to Wei Ying’s far shoulder in a light embrace.
“Wei Ying,” he says, keeping his voice steady.
“Lan Zhan?” Wei Ying asks, voice small. He looks at Lan Wangji with mournful eyes. “Lan Zhan, I think I’m —” He breaks off to gasp with all the force of a man who realises he’s just been stabbed. He takes a desperate breath, another, and clutches at his chest. “Lan Zhan?”
One time, not terribly long after Lan Wangji had been allowed and able to return to Cloud Recesses proper, A-Yuan had run around the courtyards, clambering over the rocks and had fallen into one of the reflecting pools. Lan Qiren caught him as he’d splashed unhappily, trying to wade out and whining about the small cuts on his hands and knees from the fall. He’d been forced to kneel and had his hands hit with a rod.
By the time Lan Wangji stormed up, Lan Qiren was losing his patience and A-Yuan was sobbing inconsolably, screaming out for Wei Ying, for Wen Qing, that he’d be good. It was a moment of childish forgetfulness. It had been years since he’d seen either of them. But he’d been inconsolable, still adjusting to the strict rules of Cloud Recesses after the freedom of the Burial Mounds and the affection so easily given there.
Whatever Lan Wangji had thought of his heart before then, he was proven wrong. There was still enough of it to shatter as A-Yuan tried his best to stop crying, to be as good as he promised, to remind himself that his family, his parents and the people that had adopted him wholeheartedly, were dead.
Lan Wangji had glared at his uncle and moved between the two of them, dropping to his knees in front of A-Yuan, pulling him into a tight hug. His brain had shut down so completely, his throat closed tight and eyes burning with how hard he was fighting to remain impassive. And A-Yuan had latched on, crying harder, getting snot and tears on his robes, little hands grasping furiously at him, tight enough he couldn’t be ripped away.
The way Wei Ying cries now feels the same.
It’s desolation. Raw, and unstoppable, the kind that Lan Wangji can’t begin to hold with his two hands, can’t carefully pack away and portion out for him. He can only sit there, pulling Wei Ying closer, giving him a shoulder to hide in, whatever shelter he has to offer, as Wei Ying dissolves into heaving, shivering sobs.
He pets his hair, runs soothing hands down his back. Cradles his head and, when Wei Ying starts to breathe more regularly, he begins to hum. It’s an old lullaby, one he’d unearthed when trying to find more information on parenting when he’d realized that he needed to do his best by A-Yuan. And A-Yuan had been too old to really benefit from it, but he’d carefully memorized it just in case.
It’s a gentle melody. It suits his range. And Wei Ying has never been one to turn away coddling when it’s from someone he loves.
Wei Ying sniffs when Lan Wangji finishes the tune, then nearly chokes on his own snot.
He looks so confused and indignant, like a bunny that’s grown too fat and can’t understand why it can’t squeeze through a small gap in the bushes. Lan Wangji wipes at his nose with a sleeve and gives him a soft squeeze when that sets off another round of quiet shaking.
“Lan Zhan, I don’t know how to survive being this sad.”
“Mn.”
He chuckles. It comes out garbled from his tears. “I never … I never really had to stop to deal with it. We always just kept moving through it. There was always something else to do, some new thing to deal with. When there wasn’t … there was no one left. My family was gone. Lan Sizhui couldn’t remember me all that well. There was so little to remind us of what came before.
“But I can’t escape any of it now. It’s just here, all the time. Our families, the dead and the people who should be dead. And even the things I learned to live with are gone. My core is so hot it feels like I’ve swallowed all the snow in Gusu, sometimes. I get so worried about your back aching in this weather, I forget that my sister is alive until she sends a letter. I can’t … any of it, I can’t …” He trails off again, breathing hard.
Lan Wangji presses a kiss into his hair. “We can leave, if you need.”
Wei Ying gives a pained little cry at that. No to absconding then, for the moment at least. “I don’t know how to live through this. I don’t have a good track record of it, really.”
“Wei Ying,” he says, and pauses to collect his thoughts. “Wei Ying can be sad for as long as Wei Ying needs. I will be here for it all. Even if you do not live with it well. Even if it is always like this.”
“You’re too good to me,” Wei Ying protests without lifting his head.
He considers that. “Not too good.” Lan Wangji is as good as he has learned to be, for his family’s sake. He inhales, exhales. “It is good to see you acknowledge how much you have survived.”
Wei Ying lets loose an ugly sort of laugh. “Good? Good for me to fall apart? To become … this?” He gestures blindly around their home.
Lan Wangji just nods. “Wei Ying has been through too much. Been used, and died, and been killed. Has outlived his family, and been outlived.” He presses his lips together, not sure how to say what he means. “It hurts me, what I have gone through. What we have gone through. It’s only right that it hurts you too.” He taps at Wei Ying’s cheek. “It is only right that Wei Ying gets to feel this, even if feeling this is painful.”
“I deserve to hurt?” Wei Ying asks. It’s not quite a question, even if he does sound surprised at Lan Wangji’s boldness in saying it.
“Yes. you were hurt. By many. You deserve to feel anger. And fear. Sadness. Anything else that you feel, it’s only right. You have been through too much, and have not let yourself feel it for too long. You can feel whatever you need to, around me. I will stay when you need me to stay, and leave when you need me to leave.”
Wei Ying chokes again, clutching at his own chest and sniffling.
They don’t say anything else for a very, very long time.
| | |
Their home stays quiet that week, and the week after that.
Lan Wangji expected this. Wei Ying has always struggled with winter in Gusu.
Instead of dwelling on it, he presses forward.
The juniors keep sighing, cow-eyed and bereft, when Lan Wangji continues to show up alone for morning lessons, where Wei Ying has always slipped in halfway through the lessons to liven them up. He reminds them that the best way to impress Wei Ying upon his return is to have made advancements worth noting in their studies, which does wonders for their concentration.
Lan Xichen finds this hilarious, when Lan Wangji offers up a story about it over their nighttime tea break.
“Does Wei Wuxian know that the juniors are all besotted with him?”
Lan Wangji makes a disgruntled noise. “He says he does. He also believes everyone else is mistaken in thinking that the juniors lack focus in lessons”
“Do they behave for him?”
“Even Luo Hua sits still when Wei Ying is present,” Lan Wangji tells him gravely, watching as Lan Xichen’s eyebrows bounce up in shock. Luo Hua is a very small hurricane of a child, and is a contender for biggest troublemaker in his generation.
Xichen hums consideringly and tilts his head. “Perhaps we should ask him to take over a class in the future.” A beat, and then, “An afternoon class, of course.”
Lan Wangji nods. “He enjoys working with young children. It would be good, in the spring, to ask him.”
“That is … unexpected, I’ll admit.”
He takes a sip of his tea at the same time Xichen does. “He likes to pinch their cheeks and scare them into respecting the sect rules he likes.”
Somehow, that makes Lan Xichen laugh instead of frown the way it would their uncle. He suspects that means that Wei Ying will get his new class of baby Lans to teach in a month or two, if things go well.
“And you?” his brother asks after another comfortable silence.
“Me?”
Xichen runs a finger over the rim of his teacup, a relaxed fidgeting that he’s only ever seen his brother do when it’s just them, and just late at night. Lan Wangji follows the motion with his eyes and drinks in the peace of the room, of planning a future for his family, with his family.
“What would you like to do?”
It’s not a question he’s contemplated before.
He has always been the Second Jade of Lan. He always will be. Once, he was a widower without a widow. He had been thrust into the role of Chief Cultivator after cultivators panicked at the loss of stability in all the major sects. He’s been a teacher and Hanguang-Jun and a traitor to his sect.
He thinks about A-Yuan, growing so fast. About the Wens, carving out a new life for themselves. There are already two babies on the way and a marriage in the works for some of the younger members, Wen remnants who’d joined from more distant branches of the family and escaped the worst of the war to find solace in what’s left of their clan.
About Wei Ying, refusing to let go again. Stubbornly accepting their new life and old hurts.
“I would like you to ask me in a year.”
Xichen smiles at him. “Just a year?”
“Mn.”
“Take all the time you need, Wangji. We’ll all be here when you’re ready — the both of you.”
He lets himself smile, just a little, at his brother, his eyes relaxing into an expression that Wei Ying has assured him is basically an outright grin if you know how to look. “Mn,” he acknowledges. There is nothing else to say. The only thing left is to live.
They talk for a little longer, about lighter things. Xichen waves him off finally with a solid hand on his shoulder and a reminder to tell Wei Ying that he sends his regards.
On the way back to the jingshi, Lan Wangji slows to a stroll. He watches the moon overhead, and breaths in the crisp air. It’s been softening, these past few days. The air feels less like a knife to the lung, the days staying for longer.
It’s a pleasant surprise to turn the final bend on the well-worn path to the jingshi and see the gentle light of a lantern on the patio.
Under its buttery glow, Wei Ying is curled under Lan Wangji’s warmest cloak and holding a steaming cup of tea. In front of him is a tray with a few pastries and a teapot, warming charms lining the edges.
He blinks when Lan Wangji makes his way to sit beside him and offers him a sip of the tea.
Lan Wangji takes it — it’s the blend Wei Ying favors, the one that Lan Wangji usually prefers when he’s at his most relaxed. He breathes in the steam for an extra moment before handing it back, their fingers brushing in silent reassurance.
They stare out into the distance together. The trees rustle companionably, blurring together in the distance.
“Lan Zhan, being so tired is exhausting.”
“Mn.”
“Do you ever get this tired?”
“Not anymore,” he answers honestly. He doesn’t like to talk about the years he spent in mandated seclusion, trying to keep himself from swinging between a deep depression and a belligerent denial.
“Do you get tired of me being this tired?”
Lan Wangji puts a hand on Wei Ying’s knee without looking at him. “Not tired.”
Wei Ying snorts. “No?”
“There is no joy in your unhappiness. But nonetheless, I enjoy taking care of you when you let yourself need it.”
“I … Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says, and leans his head on Lan Wangji’s shoulder. “I think it’s a bit more than that.”
“It is,” he agrees. Wei Ying is as bleak as the winter in the cold months, and denying it is worse than disrespectful. “But still, I find myself grateful that I am the one you let see you like this. The same way that you are the one who pulls me away from crowds, the one who eats all the meat on my plate when we eat at inns on night hunts, and the one who wakes up early to accompany me to morning lessons for the juniors. “
“Those aren’t hard to do,” he protests. “Not really, at least.”
“Then why don’t you do them for everyone?” When Wei Ying is silent, he squeezes his knee again. “I like to do what I can for you when you are like this for the same reasons you do these things for me. Whether they are difficult has little meaning. I have left my life twice now, to build a new one with you. There is no measure of hardship between soulmates that could make a difference to who you are to me, and how I feel about you.”
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says quietly, reverently.
“Wei Ying,” he says back, just as earnestly.
“Lan Zhan, I think I’m warming up again. Isn’t that funny?”
“Mn.” He tugs on his cloak, still draped firmly over Wei Ying. “And if you are not, you have me.”