If Lan Wangji has learned anything from his atonement for Wei Wuxian’s death, it is that patience is neither simple nor shallow. The virtue is not a lone bloom to nourish, as he had once thought, but a sprawling garden in need of the most tender-hearted of nurture. No floret can be overlooked; no weed left to sprout. Even in flourish, one must still go readily to their knees in the dirt and humble themselves before their beginnings.

It is this understanding that has unfettered him so that, when it comes time for them to part, Lan Wangji can walk alongside Wei Wuxian with certitude, until the Cloud Recesses are a blur on the horizon behind them and he can follow no further. He can farewell his inexorable, inscrutable companion with the conviction to not ask that he stay.

It is a grave and terrible burden that weighs on him, now, as he holds Wei Wuxian in his gaze, to know that he would stay for him if Lan Wangji weighted his ask. If he reached out, Wei Wuxian would reach back. But Lan Wangji has learned he cannot cup his palms around running water; he cannot ask a songbird to fly into a cage.

Lan Wangji lives again in a place and a time that they two can share. Cleansed of past regrets, his soul is left gentled enough that he doesn’t bite through his tongue when Wei Wuxian speaks of seeing what the world has to offer, and of making a home somewhere within it. Does not say how little the world he hasn’t seen will vary from what he already has; does not say that Wei Wuxian has a home, here, standing before him.

Long after the image of Wei Wuxian’s retreating back has disappeared over the roll of the mountains, Lan Wangji returns, and only leaves the jingshi twice in as many days. Though there are whispers when he resumes his duties, he is grateful he is not asked the questions he is unfit to answer, and is instead excused by the precariousness of the still early days, the muted rawness of all too recent wounds.

As the days yawn into weeks and sprawl into months, with no waking hour left idle, Wei Wuxian does not once slip beyond the distant apse of Lan Wangji’s thoughts.

The demands of his position all but subsume him, and in silence, Lan Wangji staunchly suffers his brother’s seclusion. He gives himself over to the needs of the people, his people, in purpose and penance both, and perseveres through the change of the seasons. Diligence is the root. It is all he can do to busy himself.

On occasion, fragments of Wei Wuxian’s goings will make their way to him. They come in whispered rumours from the Caiyi townsfolk, in animated exclamations from the Gusu Lan disciples when they return from night hunts. Some of them speak of him alone, others tell of him among company, followers ever-changing and eternally nameless. Lan Wangji gives each the due of his attention, no matter their brevity.

Once a month, when the night is at its most dark and his forbearance at its most threadbare, he writes to Wei Wuxian. He writes to tell him of what he is missing and to ask what he has found. He writes to see if Wei Wuxian, too, feels unwhole, pulled desperately thin and helplessly fraying.

When the ink is dry, Lan Wangji folds the letter over itself, each time, and holds it over a candle until the flame has licked up to his fingertips.

In winter, the river does not freeze over three feet deep in a single night. It is enough, he pleads to himself, hands shaking, breath latched in his throat. For now, it must be enough.

Lan Xichen returns in the following spring, the quietness of the affair owed to the clamour of a greater commotion gripping the sects, one that is as loud as it is petty.

He does not speak of Wei Wuxian, or any other such hurts, as he takes his place at Lan Wangji’s table, accepting the tea that is poured for him. Lan Wangji, in turn, does not speak of his brother’s redress, or the conditions of his now lapsed paucity.

“Have you been well?” Lan Xichen asks him, voice scraping from disuse, even with the tea soothing his throat.

Lan Wangji cannot lie to him, just as he cannot bear to speak the truth aloud. “Much has happened,” he says instead. “I would be grateful for your perspective.”

“Of course," is Lan Xichen’s reply, for he knows better than anyone not to pry.

Autumn has drifted near imperceptibly to the cusp of winter when Lan Wangji issues a summons to the sects. He ensures great efforts are undertaken to see that it reaches even the most obscure and far-flung, and affords each ample opportunity to arrange their attendance. Though the summit itself is slated for the beginning of summer, the hospitality of the Gusu Lan Sect is extended to anyone that arrives as soon as the forthcoming month.

Life and colour flood into the Cloud Recesses at midwinter, the tempering of the sect doctrines doing little to stifle the thrum of noise, the joyful chaos. It’s familiar to Lan Wangji in the way a persistent dream is upon waking; the sensation of brushing against a desire so deeply held and so wildly beyond reach.

So thin was the line between fantasy and nightmare that even yearning could riddle what was once pleasant with poison. Lan Wangji had once wanted so fiercely for Wei Wuxian to be the first to shape the Cloud Recesses into this, something warm and alight and just shy of forbidden.

Lan Wangji writes. Again, and again, and again— each revelation a mantra, a commandment, a prayer. The paper burns just as easily as the rest; ashes to herald the new year.

Lan Wangji learns that the Yunmeng Jiang Sect and the Lanling Jin Sect have arrived by the peal of Jiang Cheng’s voice cleaving through the mountainside, the haught of his tone enduring the distance his words cannot. It is not long after that Jiang Cheng finds him, appearing taken aback to see that the one at his side is Lan Xichen.

No amount of dread on Lan Wangji’s part can stave off the question that follows, ineludible as fate. “Where is Wei Wuxian?”

“He is not here,” answers Lan Wangji, all too careful and all too quiet.

“Not here?” Jiang Cheng jerks his chin as he scoffs, brow furrowing. “Well? When are you expecting him to grace us all with his presence again?”

“Sect Leader Jiang,” Lan Xichen ventures, delicate, when Lan Wangji only clenches his jaw in reply. “Master Wei is not here. He last left here shortly after the… events at Guanyin Temple. He has not returned since.”

Jiang Cheng’s mouth falls open with an unsightly splutter, his wide-eyed gaze rounding on Lan Wangji. “You—” he starts, stops. “Even you? You’ve not seen him?”

Lan Wangji feels his teeth creak. The hand tucked in the small of his back curls into a fist, nails biting at his skin in a futile effort to tame the storm of his thoughts.

“From what we’ve heard,” Lan Xichen says, “we can gather he is at least well.”

“Bullshit!” Jiang Cheng explodes, temper coming to boil with all the unwarned ferocity of a typhoon. “Bullshit he’s well! Hanguang Jun— you— nothing could separate you, but now you say you haven’t seen one another in two years? You haven’t spoken? How is any of that well?!”

“Jiang Wanyin,” Lan Wangji grits out in warning. The hiss of his voice is dangerously low, a horrifying portent to the violence he feels eroding his control. He says nothing more, but even in that, he has shown too much.

Lan Wangji turns his back on Jiang Cheng, and is not so proud to pretend that he doesn’t take to his own heels as he leaves.

In the summer, Lan Wangji declares to the gathered sects that they have two years to replace him as Chief Cultivator with a council. The Four Great Sects may each elect a representative of their choosing, who cannot already lead either their clan or their sect. The remaining minor sects will have jurisdiction over the election of the final three, with the same limitations.

Too few would choose to follow a fair man, the moment the righteous path turned hard. Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji had debated endlessly in the first two months of his return, challenging one another on every aspect of every viability so Lan Wangji could, at last, make the impossible choice. He could not change the nature of man, and could never hope to predict the evils that could be devised: he could only make it more difficult for such rot to take root.

When a protest rises from the crowd, Lan Wangji flicks out his hand to silence it. “Two years,” he repeats, cold. No amount of objection can roil him into saying more.

Lan Wangji is prepared for the tumult he has sown to reach its zenith, and has hardened himself to the lash of confrontations that will soon follow. He is not prepared, of all the cultivators converged upon the peaks, for the first to seek him out to be Nie Huaisang.

In the solitude of their shared secret, Nie Huaisang’s sorrow drifts close to his surface. He keeps a step ahead of Lan Wangji as they walk, displaying his sheer profundity in a manner that can so readily be mistaken for irreverence.

The truth of Nie Huaisang’s hand in all things had not mattered to Wei Wuxian, in the end, but it had mattered to Lan Wangji.

Lan Wangji does not revile him. If Nie Huaisang has descended the crooked path one hundred paces, for the profane gratitude he owes him, Lan Wangji is but fifty paces behind.

“You’ll never want for enemies after today, Hanguang Jun,” Nie Huaisang remarks softly, when they have at last walked far enough from the beaten path that they cannot be blindly chanced upon. “But this is not new.”

Lan Wangji answers with silence. Nie Huaisang’s expression shutters, and he inclines his head to conceal the shade of rue in his eyes, rapping his fan against his palm.

“To bait seven tigers to one mountain… you’ll force us all to choose who to be eaten?”

“Is there no one in the Qinghe Nie Sect left to choose from?” Lan Wangji asks, duplicitously measured. He does not need to drive that blade into Nie Huaisang himself; Nie Huaisang will see it and fall on it as if such an insignificant act could ever begin to count as recompense.

“Hah, maybe.” His smile is lip deep. “But two years is gracious. And things are becoming interesting in Qinghe, lately...”

Nie Huaisang examines Lan Wangji’s regard of him carefully as he trails off, as if to test the waters of his temperament. Lan Wangji does nothing to cloud whatever it is that Nie Huaisang seeks to derive.

“Some very familiar sightings,” Nie Huaisang ventures. “I may be overstepping—”

“—You are,” Lan Wangji interrupts.

Nie Huaisang’s mouth falls slack, leaving him naked before Lan Wangji’s callousness for a ragged breath.

“Ah,” he says. Then he smiles, unfailingly polite, as though he’s not just come apart from Lan Wangji’s asperity. “Thank you for your audience, Hanguang Jun. I should return you before you are missed.”

All of the sects leave the Cloud Recesses in much the condition they arrived, if some not more quietly sombre, as the nights grow shorter and begin to cloy with heat. Though the Yunmeng Jiang Sect is one of the last to depart, Jiang Cheng goes with an uncharacteristic and equally uncharitable quietude. They had not crossed paths a second time, a matter Lan Wangji suspects is owed to Lan Xichen’s intervention.

Each day passes as though it is a year. As Chief Cultivator, Lan Wangji is expected to mind every thread in the cloth, but to stay his hand when it begins to unravel. To only douse the flames that burn up as far as his doorstep.

The imposed idleness serves only to wound him further. Even his uncle treats him with a considered mildness in their sparing encounters, though their relationship has long since grown tepid, marred by an unableness to forget while forgiving.

Blemished jade is not broken, but Lan Wangji is only ungrateful to be treated as glass when others cut themselves in the handling.

Lan Xichen is the most egregious of the few still kept in his circle. In Lan Wangji’s more honest hours, he cannot help himself from wondering if Lan Xichen left seclusion all too soon; from suspecting the bloodying of his hands on Lan Wangji’s edges is a clever coalescence of self-castigation.

Just as a constant drip of water wears away the stone, Lan Wangji always learns what transpires within his home, even if it is his own brother who conspires to conceal it from him.

“Sect Leader Jiang is not known for his patience,” he observes, pointed, when the stay of his leniency has lapsed. It is a confrontation that can only happen within the jingshi, where Lan Wangji has lured him with the falsest of pretences, taking advantage of the one place where Lan Xichen’s vigilance weakens.

Lan Wangji wishes he remembered precisely when they had changed places, even though he understands just as much that knowing won’t dull how his brother’s expression rends through him. Lan Wangji feels unfit to be to Lan Xichen now what Lan Xichen has always been to him. Had Lan Xichen felt just as unworthy, when Lan Wangji had returned from the Burial Mounds, hollowed out by his grief?

“Wangji,” Lan Xichen whispers, voice cracking.

There is nothing Lan Wangji can say that will not be found wanting when measured, nor will silence confer any reassurance. When Lan Xichen parts his lips to speak again, Lan Wangji reaches across the table to press his fingers against the backs of Lan Xichen’s knuckles, muting him.

“No apology is needed.” Lan Wangji withdraws his hand, lowering his attention back to his guqin with an air of nonchalance.

Lan Xichen exhales, the soft sound shaking through his teeth. “Sect Leader Jiang may feel differently,” he says at last, the lightness of it almost believable, “for how long I’ve delayed in answering his invitation.”

“Mn.” Lan Wangji strokes the raised string on his guqin, the nod of his head absent.

One night, at the crest of the season, the humidity grows heady and perilous. Even Lan Wangji is not spared from languishing with paresis, unable to bring himself to light a candle inside the jingshi or wear anything over his middle clothes. Though he is quick to yield to his tiredness, he can barely sleep, discomfort straddling him in his bed, edging him between somnolence and senselessness.

Somewhere between nighttide and dayspring, Lan Wangji surfaces beneath the caress of a cooler breeze, tongue not so dry in the back of his mouth, breath not so thick in his throat. He opens his eyes, shying from the sting of the sweat clinging to his eyelashes, and turns, blearily, towards the source of his relief.

The shadow at his bedside shifts, lifting its face from the furl of its arms, and Lan Wangji slams his eyes shut again. He’s terrified to regard the sight too closely, as he is every other night this vision finds him, crawling out from the chasm of his chest to test his sufferance.

The mattress sags beneath a kneeling weight, and shy fingers ghost up the column of his throat, catching on his jaw. “Lan Zhan,” the shadow whispers. “You’re awake, aren’t you? Look at me. Unless…” The thumb circling his pulse stutters. “...You really can’t stand to?”

Lan Wangji opens his eyes. The moonlight that haloes Wei Wuxian makes his familiar features look all too angular, far too sharp; the smile that leaves him when their gazes meet splits his face apart. He looks older, wearier, the same. Lan Wangji inhales shallowly and blinks, slow, but Wei Wuxian doesn’t disappear, and he doesn’t wake.

“There you are.” His fingers tremble against Lan Wangji’s damp skin, and Lan Wangji watches his teeth graze his bottom lip to stifle the incomprehensible sound that chokes off in the back of his mouth. “It’s good to see you, Lan Zhan. It’s— really good.”

“Yes,” Lan Wangji answers. His voice scrapes around it, coarse, cracking. Wei Wuxian shudders, full-body, as he exhales, chin dipping to his collarbone, eyelashes fluttering. The sound of it is wrenched between a laugh and a sob, as if his heart cannot settle on which.

Lan Wangji lifts his hand from his side, tentative, his fingers stiff with tension, tight to the point of throbbing above the bone. He keeps his eyes on Wei Wuxian as he feels, blindly, until the heel of his palm finds its footing on the jut of Wei Wuxian’s elbow. The fabric rucks up as he closes his fingers, and he pins Wei Wuxian there without presumption, without pressure.

“Really, really good,” Wei Wuxian rambles, breathy. “I didn’t quite mean to wake you, but I’m not sorry I did.” The dart of his eyes across Lan Wangji’s body is frantic, his tongue tripping itself over his words. Lan Wangji pushes his thumb into the underside of Wei Wuxian’s elbow and kneads at the tendon in gentling, exploratory swipes, the rasp of crinkling cloth so loud in the quiet it almost swallows the relieved sigh he coaxes out.

“You shouldn’t be,” Lan Wangji assures him. There is so much more he wants to say and even more still that he cannot. This, at least, is certain enough to put to words.

“Ah,” Wei Wuxian says. He bites at his bottom lip again as though the cut of his teeth to skin is discipline, his stilled fingers resuming their meandering roam, tracing up Lan Wangji’s cheek, his temple. “Don’t you think you’re forgiving me too quickly?”

“There is nothing to forgive.” This, too, is certain enough.

“—Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian chokes out, “Lan Zhan, I miss you.”

His fingers slide across Lan Wangji’s headband, inching to the intricate setting. Lan Wangji does nothing but lay there beneath Wei Wuxian and allow it, granting him everything he must want but refuses to outright take.

“Will you ask me to stay?” Wei Wuxian continues, after an age of mapping Lan Wangji’s face with his fingertips in silence. In the dim Lan Wangji can see tears hemming his eyes, and Wei Wuxian’s other hand smooths up his chest to fan his neck.

“Do you want me to?”

Wei Wuxian sniffs. “No,” is his answer. His smile is humourless; harrowed. It’s as many parts truth as it is deception, desire warring with duty. Lan Wangji knows it well; the heft of a misery borne of devotion.

“Come here,” Lan Wangji says. Come back, he thinks.

Wei Wuxian leans back, weight pooling in his knees. He releases Lan Wangji’s face with reluctance, his rescinding touch scalding Lan Wangji down to the sinew as his fingers catch on the neck of his robe, on his chest, greedy and gluttonous for every scrap and inch of feeling even as he draws away. Bereft, Lan Wangji follows, and their fingers snag together at Wei Wuxian’s waist, hooking in his belt to untie it as one. Wei Wuxian parts his thighs, straddling Lan Wangji’s hips for purchase as he shrugs his outer layers away, and Lan Wangji doesn’t dare even to breathe, fearful that any motion could be mistaken for discomfort, could turn the tide of Wei Wuxian’s inner torment enough to send him into flight.

When he is at last stripped down to only his pants, Lan Wangji watches the hesitant flutter of Wei Wuxian’s hands. Sees how his thumbs dip beneath the waistband before they dart away, palms brushing across the flat of his stomach, unease guised as unrest. Wei Wuxian has always had a degree of surety about himself that Lan Wangji knows, now, that he’s always envied. He has always been a creature of contradictions, a beguiling fluctuation between extremes that gave rise to something certain and complementary.

Something has changed Wei Wuxian over the last three years to give him such a reservation when it is only the two of them, instilled a need to hide where there has never been one before. It has whittled him down in a way death and a decade of nonexistence never could, and Lan Wangji wants nothing more than to find the hand holding the knife, to bend it back at the wrist and drive the point of the blade through their eye. But he cannot help Wei Wuxian if Wei Wuxian does not want his help, and he cannot ask to be something that Wei Wuxian does not need to have.

“Come here,” Lan Wangji says again, instead.

Wei Wuxian’s fingers claw at his own hips, dimpling his skin. “It’s too hot,” he says, evasive, “it’s really no good.” Lan Wangji wonders how he expects to convince him when he can’t even speak as though he’s convinced himself.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, for a final time, with an intensity that allows for no dissent, “come here.”

Wei Wuxian does. He stalls, and he swallows, and he shudders, but his surrender follows when he appears to realise he has been allowed it; that Lan Wangji is serious. The heels of his palms slip against Lan Wangji’s sides as he lowers himself, hitching Lan Wangji’s robe up a searing inch. Fire licks across Lan Wangji’s sweat-damp skin in pursuit of Wei Wuxian’s fumbling caress, but even as he burns up from the inside out Lan Wangji holds himself steady. Still, save for the judder of his heart, which beats so violently against the cage of his ribs he thinks his bones might splinter and snap. He cannot hide it, not in this dark, not in this quiet; not when Wei Wuxian curls against him, cheek flush against his clavicle, fingers splayed across the span of his scarred pectoral.

Wei Wuxian urges his thighs apart with a slow, insistent press of his knee, his quaking breaths gusting against his throat, the hard line of Lan Wangji’s cock pinned against the seam of his hip. He says nothing at all about the slam of Lan Wangji’s heart beneath his hand or the surreptitious squirm of his thighs beneath his weight. Lan Wangji bids himself, not without an edge of fraught desperation, to banish any further thought on it; on how Wei Wuxian fits against him so perfectly, on how he feels every inch and doesn’t pull away.

Lan Wangji turns his head and tucks his chin against the crown of Wei Wuxian’s head with a tentativeness that is duly rewarded by a relieved sigh, by the wane of stiff tension in the wiry body blanketing him.

“Are you comfortable?” Wei Wuxian asks, soft.

“Are you?” Lan Wangji whispers back, the sound concomitant with his mouth grazing his hair, breath hot on his scalp. Wei Wuxian’s fingers twitch against his chest.

“Yes,” Wei Wuxian answers, the admission encouragingly effortless.

Lan Wangji lets the stroke of his fingers up the dip of Wei Wuxian’s spine speak for him in reply. With every catch of his nails on the slope of a new scar, Wei Wuxian sucks in a breath and holds it, straining with an expectation he won’t name and Lan Wangji cannot, for all the life left in him, interpret. He dwells on each of them only for as long as he needs to learn them by heart, before moving up to the next, and the next, and the next, until at last he is cupping the back of Wei Wuxian’s neck, arm bent at an angle awkward enough to accommodate it.

“Ah,” Wei Wuxian murmurs out, wry, “it really is no good. I can’t sleep like this.”

“Then don’t.”

He feels Wei Wuxian nose at him, head bumping against his chin. “It’s well past your curfew. And don’t you rise soon? I’m keeping you awake.”

“You’re not,” says Lan Wangji, thumbing idly at the wisps of hair tufting his nape.

Parted from the last of his arguments, Wei Wuxian gasps, and then relaxes, giving himself to the cradle of Lan Wangji’s body. Even with that, with Wei Wuxian whole and real and warm against him, Lan Wangji cannot trick himself into thinking that Wei Wuxian will not be gone by morning. He is a fool, but he is not foolish: Wei Wuxian is here because he is leaving for somewhere beyond where he has already left. It is fear that has summoned Wei Wuxian to Lan Wangji’s side, fear that he won’t come back from wherever he has convinced himself he needs to go.

Still, Wei Wuxian does not say goodbye. Lan Wangji can appreciate the need for the hope that leaving things unfinished can bring, when one is desperate for reasons to claw their way back from the brink. There is nothing he won’t forsake for Wei Wuxian, even his own consolation, his own closure. Every wound that has already been withstood before can be survived again, so long as Wei Wuxian returns from where he goes when Lan Wangji cannot follow.

Lan Wangji can yet bear more. For Wei Wuxian, he must. It is this truth that guides him to break the brittle silence that has settled atop them both. “Your brother was looking for you here,” he admits, quiet as kept.

Wei Wuxian’s chuckle is too wan to be taken as playful. “To be still like this… hah, that man. What a bother, really…”

“He seemed worried,” Lan Wangji presses.

Wei Wuxian lifts his face at that, resting his chin on Lan Wangji’s chest to regard him properly. The point of it digs down when he talks. “Worried I might irritate you so much you chase me all the way back to Yunmeng.”

“Not possible,” Lan Wangji replies reflexively, exhaling through his nose when he hears himself. Wei Wuxian’s answering chuckle is, at least, far more mirthful than the last.

“So you say,” he jests, “for now.” When he turns his cheek back to rest against him, Lan Wangji thinks of how deeply, in this moment, he wants Wei Wuxian to be here. He thinks of the countless moments before where he’s burned to keep Wei Wuxian at his side; of each passing breath and every lonesome year. Lan Wangji thinks of it, and he says nothing at all, eyes slipping shut as the silence stretches out between seconds.

He opens them again when he feels Wei Wuxian shift against him, an age later. Wei Wuxian hauls himself up onto his elbows, their legs still entangled, his hands bracing against Lan Wangji’s shoulders to steady his weight. Lan Wangji looks up, and Wei Wuxian looks down, his expression shaded by the dark, framed by the curtain of his hair. Lan Wangji feels Wei Wuxian’s breath brush against his mouth on each exhale; is all too aware of how his own works in tandem.

“Lan Zhan?”

“Yes?” When they speak, Lan Wangji feels their lips ghost against one another. A shiver would draw them together. His heart screams at him to move; his head pleads with him to stay.

Wei Wuxian does not breathe for what feels like an age, and neither does Lan Wangji. Eventually, he guards his expression with an elusive smile and lowers himself back in place, nuzzling against Lan Wangji’s chest. “Ah, nothing, nothing. Let’s sleep.”

Though Lan Wangji wishes to do anything but, between the hours that follow, he must sleep, for he wakes. When he opens his eyes, it is to sunlight, and he is alone in a bed that is too big for only him.

The senior disciples begin to complain amongst themselves of loud noises in the hills, some days later. Though their complaints never leave their circle, and are beneath Lan Wangji’s position to hear out all the same, Lan Wangji is heedful that their dormitories are the closest to where his rabbits gather and graze.

Lan Wangji recognises the source of the disruption the moment he descends the slope. While Lan Jingyi and Lan Sizhui can react quickly enough to his approach to leap to their feet and hide the sliced fruit in their sleeves, they can’t conceal the guilt that creeps into their expressions.

Lil’ Apple noses roughly at the small of Lan Jingyi’s back, who grimaces in defeat as Lan Wangji only tilts his head, taking in the sight for himself.

“Have you given the account of your night hunt to Sect Leader Lan?” he asks the both of them in lieu of a greeting. Lan Jingyi tips his head up to cast a despairing look at the sky, and even Lan Sizhui nibbles his bottom lip, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together where they subtly pinch his sleeve shut to stop his stowed food from spilling out.

“Hanguang Jun, we were on our way to do so,” Lan Jingyi pipes up, only to trail off and jolt upright as Lan Wangji begins to gradually descend the last few steps to meet them, unreadable and unrushed.

“We heard the others discussing a disturbance that arose here while we were gone, so we came to look, first,” Lan Sizhui finishes for him considerately, phrasing it with far more diplomacy than Lan Jingyi would have bothered with.

Lil’ Apple bumps against Lan Jingyi again, stamping her hoof, and he flinches before he starts fiddling behind his back, shaking out something into the palm of his hand to appease her. He and Lan Sizhui share a laden glance between themselves as Lan Wangji comes to a halt before them, kneeling down to gently take in hand one of the few rabbits that have not given the finicky donkey a wide berth. It nuzzles into the crook of his elbow, snuffling, and Lan Wangji cups its back as he rises, the small bundle balanced on the beam of his forearm.

“Is Senior Wei back?” Lan Jingyi blurts out, and Lan Sizhui nods to second his ask, the fervency of the gesture only barely subdued by his sense of politeness.

Lan Wangji shakes his head. Though their answering disappointment and worry are hefty, tangible, Lan Wangji feels— lighter. As if this sight and his experience in the jingshi some nights ago, the wonderful and woeful glimpse of Wei Wuxian that Lan Wangji has allowed himself to keep in his heart without introspection, have at last come together to lift some weight from his soul he can neither describe nor define.

Lan Wangji feels more relieved than he has in months, more hopeful than he has in years, and it must show on him, in the tremendous gentleness of his features as he holds his hand out to Lan Sizhui, for his and Lan Jingyi’s expressions turn complicated, but lose their concern.

Lan Sizhui plucks an apple slice from his sleeve and places it in Lan Wangji’s palm, and Lan Wangji reaches between them both to hold it out to Lil’ Apple. “After you have finished your report, gather cuttings of lian qiao, ba jiao, and shan cha hua from the gardens to plant here.”

Lil’ Apple gently takes the offered treat between her teeth and lifts her head, ears swivelling as she starts to loudly chew. Lan Wangji watches her attention snap back to Lan Jingyi, her nose keen and her belly bottomless, as he straightens and resumes the idle stroking of his rabbit’s fur.

“They will take some time and great care to grow,” Lan Wangji advises peaceably. He need not command them; of their own accord, they hang on his every word. “You will need to come here every day to keep the peace until they are tall, and after, to ensure they remain well-watered.”

“We can do that!” Lan Jingyi promises, inspirited. “Uh— we won’t let you down! Of course.”

Lan Sizhui’s smile is beatific as he nods again, another apple slice retrieved from his sleeve to slake Lil’ Apple’s appetite and attitude both. They must have plundered one of the pantries quite thoroughly in the brief lapse of time between their return to the Cloud Recesses and Lan Wangji finding them down here. It’s a commendable feat of the precise nature Lan Wangji, for his position, cannot acknowledge aloud. He can, however, appreciate it in silence.

“I will rely on you both for this, then,” says Lan Wangji. He begins to lift his rabbit free of his arm, unlatching its small claws from the weave when it insists on clinging to his sleeve, and calms it with the circle of his thumb behind its skull as he lowers it to the grass. “But later,” Lan Wangji continues, dismissing them without even sparing a parting glance. “It would be rude to continue to keep Zewu Jun waiting.”

Both of them must agree, for they bow to him before beating a hasty retreat up the stairs in a flurry of blue and white. Left to be the lone human in the grove, Lan Wangji takes his time in rising back to his feet, in no rush to proceed with his own day’s affairs.

In the last month of winter, Jiang Cheng arrives at the Cloud Recesses without a retinue. It is not, in itself, a remarkable occurrence. Jiang Cheng has made the journey more than once in the year since the conclave, with and without company, and he and Lan Wangji have long grown adept at a mutual avoidance of and apathy towards one another.

It is, however, notable as to how quickly Lan Xichen comes to find him after Jiang Cheng has been seen to. It is his brother solely who deals with the Yunmeng Jiang Sect when politics and civility dictate they must be accommodated by anyone of the Gusu Lan Sect who will not be seen as a slight. Similarly, it is he who travels to Lotus Pier when called on, or when circumstances and consequences require a formal appearance. If it is not a matter for the Chief Cultivator — and even, at times, when it is — there is no justifiable reason to involve Lan Wangji.

“Sect Leader Jiang is in the courtyard of the main hall,” Lan Xichen says. “He is requesting your presence.”

“He insists?” Lan Wangji does not even look up from his papers. It is an unnecessary question, but Jiang Cheng’s sudden imposition has inspired his churlishness.

“Wangji,” Lan Xichen admonishes, his frustration allowable and yet admirably mild, given its origin. “He is not here to quarrel. It would be remiss of you to bring a fight to him in the rare instance he has not brought his own.”

“You are right,” Lan Wangji says, suitably harangued by his brother’s reprimand. He places his brush in its pot to soak the bristles, caps his inkwell, and rises to his feet. He reaches for Bichen, but there is a moment’s hesitation before he takes its scabbard in hand. Only Jiang Cheng and his knack for finding reason to argue offence in any given action could complicate what is typically so straightforward enough that it warrants additional consideration.

Jiang Cheng is as easy to find in the courtyard as he is anywhere else in the Cloud Recesses, the colours of Yunmeng Jiang a dark stain that bleeds through the clean bright palette favoured by Gusu Lan. His muddled, troubled expression becomes all the more convoluted when he looks up from the gentians at the sound of Lan Wangji’s approach.

Lan Wangji does not greet him, and while he is not greeted in turn, it is Jiang Cheng that eventually elects to break the stalemate of their shared silence.

“It must be so easy for you, to know how to feel and what to say.” Though his mouth curves around the words in a sneer, there is none of the venom that comes when he truly means to be abrasive; instead, his jaggedness is recognisable to Lan Wangji as what Jiang Cheng wields when he feels at his most defenceless.

They had known one another in an indescribably intimate way, once upon a time, after all. Wei Wuxian had brought them together with the same intensity his loss had shattered them apart. Jiang Cheng has grown as a man, but in many respects, he has not changed. Lan Wangji imagines he is much the same.

“I don’t,” Lan Wangji replies. He has no need to rebuke any circuitous insult Jiang Cheng may mean by his statement; he answers to it as he does because it is the truth. Lan Wangji struggles to console his heart no less than anyone else; speaks for it and from it no better.

Jiang Cheng scoffs, his scowl spreading itself too thin over the shaky foundations of his composure. “I’m sure.”

“So be it,” says Lan Wangji. Jiang Cheng bares his teeth, and then begins to pace. His motions are aimless, displaced, his body roiling with the energy he can’t seem to expend, the emotions he can’t bear to express.

“What would you do, then, Lan Wangji, if you were in my position?” Jiang Cheng demands of him. “What would you feel? What would you say?”

There is but one matter in their wide world that Jiang Cheng can be referring to; there is but one response Lan Wangji can give. “I have no answer for that.”

Jiang Cheng’s laugh bounds from his chest like it’s been spat at Lan Wangji’s feet, as scathing as a curse. “Our great Chief Cultivator, speechless? Without wisdom to share?”

Lan Wangji feels the animalistic temptation to sink his teeth down into the bait, but he will not rise to give the occasion to Jiang Cheng that he expects. “I won’t profess to know what I can’t hope to imagine or begin to understand. I am not you. You are the only one with your answers.”

Jiang Cheng stops in place with a jolt, face jerking away, his expression unseeable behind the fan of his hair and the dip of his chin. The chain of Zidian draws taut when he fists his hand against the small of his back, the other keeping a timorous, white-knuckled clutch on Sandu’s sheath.

“And if I don’t?” Jiang Cheng asks, the fire and the fury of his wake all at once reduced to embers and smoke. “What if I don’t?”

Lan Wangji wisely weighs his words before he next speaks. “Then you don’t. With time, you will. Or you won’t.”

Jiang Cheng sighs out, his shoulders swooping low, the tension in his frame unfurling like a flower in bloom. He starts to move, no longer without purpose, and Lan Wangji thinks he means to leave when he sets off, only to be surprised when Jiang Cheng stops again, some several steps away, and casts him an expectant look.

Lan Wangji follows, but he does not fall into Jiang Cheng’s stride or join him at his side. The silence and distance between them are mutually upheld as they meander, passing through courtyards, gardens, enclosures, their movements not escaping the notice of anyone whose path they cross. If their scrutiny rankles Jiang Cheng, he does not show it in either the line of his back or the flex of his hands.

Jiang Cheng does not stop when he again elects to speak, far enough down the mountainside that they cannot see any of the buildings without craning their necks to the sky. He does, however, slow, so that his voice needn’t carry too far to reach Lan Wangji, pitched low enough for the breeze to lose hold of it before it can be swiped away.

“Wei Wuxian was here.” Jiang Cheng is careful with how he poses it: neither accusation nor question.

“He was.” Lan Wangji comes to a standstill, an arm’s breadth from Jiang Cheng, who, leashed in place by his pause, turns only his face to look at him past the slope of his shoulder, and no further.

“You sent him to Lotus Pier.”

“I did not,” says Lan Wangji, for he could no more send the sun to hang from the sky in the east than he could send Wei Wuxian anywhere to do anything. “I told him you sought him here. If you have then seen him, it is because he has chosen to go to you.”

Jiang Cheng breathes out through his nose, looking away with a shake of his head. “Then I won’t thank you for it.” His surliness is shallow, failing to suffocate the profound gratitude in the cadence of his voice.

Neither of them is allowed to dwell on it, at Jiang Cheng’s discretion, for he spins on his heel to round on Lan Wangji, features affixed in a convincing glower that belies little of his internal disorder. “He is fine,” he snaps brusquely, “since you won’t ask.”

To argue that it has not been his place between them to ask before this very moment would be a fool’s errand, so Lan Wangji averts his eyes instead.

Jiang Cheng sighs at him, or his honesty, or both, and Lan Wangji can see his throat bob as he swallows. “What even possessed you to let him go off alone?”

The return of this recrimination has none of the rage of its first instance, but there is still a sourness there, permeating Jiang Cheng’s desire to comprehend and barbing his query. Lan Wangji feels fit to address it now in a way he was not those years ago, and so he lifts his gaze again, bringing it level to Jiang Cheng’s own.

“I could not go with him, then.” It is a wretched utterance, but a candid one. “But I would not make him stay.”

Jiang Cheng’s acuity is honed by the whetstone of Lan Wangji’s volunteered assailability. “Unbelievable. I hope to never one day understand you, Hanguang Jun; a man who can seek something for years only to turn away from having it in seconds.”

“Then you hope to never understand yourself,” states Lan Wangji, steady in the mercilessness with which he turns Jiang Cheng’s strike back in on himself. “You searched for the same time and across the same distance, yet you too stood back to watch him walk away.”

Jiang Cheng’s mouth crimps from disgust, betraying just how deeply Lan Wangji’s words have plunged through his guard. “It’s not the same. We are nothing alike.”

“It is not,” Lan Wangji agrees, with the ease of an assured victor. “We are not.”

He sees Jiang Cheng’s realisation stain his face like blood soaking through linen. The caustic plume of his humiliated anger ricochets through his composure, and Lan Wangji watches it traverse him, as virulent and temporal as a clap of thunder heralding a distant storm. There is nothing for the spark to catch on, no tinder to set aflame, so it subsides as quickly as it rises, leaving Jiang Cheng armed with only his glare.

He is not the only petty man with his pride. If Jiang Cheng had expected no recourse for his presumptuousness from Lan Wangji, then he had no leverage to decry his disappointment to anyone but himself. Lan Wangji will bend his back to him, when the need arises, because Jiang Cheng is precious to Wei Wuxian, and Wei Wuxian is precious to Jiang Cheng. Though the thrawn ties that bind them both oft choke them and flay them in tempestuous turns, their brotherhood is sacrosanct, even to Lan Wangji. It is love and forgiveness and everything in-between, of a nature that is nothing like Lan Wangji’s.

But Lan Wangji will not bend his knee to him. That is an honour and a disgrace reserved solely for another.

Jiang Cheng need not bend his knee to him, or his back. Lan Wangji does not even want his respect, but he will demand Jiang Cheng’s courtesy, for it is one thing to cast aspersions on Lan Wangji, and another entirely to vituperate who he is to Wei Wuxian or who Wei Wuxian is to him.

“Looks like you had something to say after all.” The remark is as blunt as the blow of his shoulder as Jiang Cheng pushes past him, boots clapping against the stonework as he climbs the stairs. Lan Wangji allows it; stands tall in the impact, feels it wash over him.

“When you see him again,” Jiang Cheng calls out, somewhere from above, “tell him to go back to Lotus Pier and take responsibility for the business he’s left unfinished.”

Lan Wangji does not turn to look up at him, for he does not much care to. Nor does he make any promises, for there is no question that he will do exactly as Jiang Cheng has asked.

On the day of Lan Wangji’s retirement, the once ample space of the Main Hall quickly flips into a cup overflowing with bodies, a crush of eager eyes and gossiping mouths. With more and more representatives yet due to arrive, the logistics of adequate hosting force them to spill out into the courtyard.

It is farcical, but few things aren’t when it comes to polity and protocol. All ritual has its piece and its purpose, but as he has gotten older, Lan Wangji’s eyes have opened all the more to the preposterousness of the motions they all cling to.

Still, he has his part to play, and so he takes his place at the head of the gathering to partake in the performance.

When the sun has climbed to the highest point it can reach in the Cloud Recesses, slipping from the shroud of fog, Lan Wangji addresses them. “You have had two years to consider your choices. I will now hear how that time has been spent.”

Though the crowd is not hushed, even when he speaks, he needn’t shout to be heard. None of them can help but listen.

“Fine,” says Jin Ling, stepping out from the flank of his entourage to snatch the mantle when the conference fails to do anything but fall into inaction. His sharp eyes flick up to rest on Lan Wangji, his shaped brows raised, spreading his vermillion mark across his fair skin. “How would you have us do this? Just speak a name?”

Even now, grown tall and well in the years since Lan Wangji has last spied him, he is the picture of his uncle, save the absence of any antiquated resentment seething shy of his surface. Though he speaks with a confident arrogance, it is tempered with due deference. Lan Wangji nods to him in answer, and does not miss the gleam in his eyes, the tangible excitement that tugs at the corners of his mouth.

“Very well. Lanling Jin chooses Lan Sizhui.”

The shock of his revelation swells amongst the crowd for the longest second before it shatters, the conference descending into chaos. Lan Wangji looks to Lan Xichen, the closest to his side, and Lan Xichen looks back at him, his half-smile soft but nonetheless incredulous. They look at once to Jiang Cheng, who seems, strangely, the least surprised of them all, though in no way the least rambunctious as he verbally savages another sect’s delegate.

“What?” Jin Ling shouts above the clamour in challenge, unshaken. “On what basis can any of you protest? Hanguang Jun said nothing of being restricted to our sects, or clans, or even our territories.” He looks again to Lan Wangji. “Right?”

Lan Wangji nods again, cementing his backing. To have clarified that such a thing was acceptable would have brought it to the fore of everyone’s attention. He was dubious that any of them could arrive at such a conclusion on their own, but of all of them who could have surprised him in considering it, it is fitting that the merit is Jin Ling’s.

Lan Sizhui, for his part in all of this, is lost for words and choices both, his eyes wide and imploring as he looks between Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji. It is in seeing this that Jin Ling’s equanimity shows its frailty, however surreptitiously; though Lan Sizhui’s overwhelmed indecision temporarily blinds him to Jin Ling, Jin Ling is blind to everything and everyone else but Lan Sizhui.

“You are not bound by his nomination,” Lan Wangji confides, the guidance gentle, given without restraint. “But you will not be wrong in accepting it.”

“How can Hanguang Jun advise his own sect member like this?” calls a voice, deep from the belly of Laoling Qin’s gathered colours. “Does this not go against any spirit of neutrality?”

Though the voice is hastily silenced by the disapproving glower of Sect Leader Qin, the words spoken are not so easily dismissed. Lan Sizhui sets his jaw, mouth pinched, and Jin Ling bares his teeth in a snarl.

“What kind of idiot are you, to speak such stupidity, and so out of turn?!” Jiang Cheng bellows, the lash of his tongue as vicious as the bite of his Zidian into flesh. “Or can you not tell the difference between his speaking as a member of Gusu Lan, and in his capacity as our still as yet Chief Cultivator?”

There is agreement and argument both between the gathered, and though most remain ignorant to it, it does not escape Lan Wangji’s notice that it is allowed to remain as subdued as it is by the alleviation of Nie Huaisang, who leans close to Jiang Cheng and whispers something behind his fan.

“I accept,” Lan Sizhui speaks up, washing out the murmurs in the crowd stoked by Jiang Cheng. Jin Ling’s relief is palpable, and harshly suppressed when he catches Lan Sizhui’s eye, puffs out his chest, and returns to stand before his people.

“Baling Ouyang will choose next,” says Ouyang Zizhen, beaming where he stands at his father’s side, hands cupped before him in respectful salute. “If we are moving on.”

“We are,” Lan Wangji permits.

The conference again proceeds, however briefly, without incident, as the minor sects, largely corralled by Baling Ouyang and Meishan Yu, put forth their three councillors. It is only when the cavalcade turns to Yunmeng Jiang that the proceedings again stumble over a hitch.

“...Yunmeng Jiang has not chosen yet,” Jiang Cheng begrudgingly admits, clipped.

“Oh!” pipes up Nie Huaisang, fan pattering against his chest, “Qinghe Nie has no choice yet, either.”

It is an artful deflection; some of the bolder attendees laugh with mocking derision towards the antics they have come to expect from Sect Leader Nie. Nie Huaisang looks as unbothered by it as he always manages to, and wisely does not glance even once at Lan Wangji. Oddly, Jiang Cheng looks aggrieved on Nie Huaisang’s behalf.

“Gusu Lan, regrettably, must ask for additional time to consider our choice,” Lan Xichen concludes, tactfully abject. He bows humbly to Lan Wangji, and then the congregation.

Lan Wangji considers the results that have been yielded through the course of the past hours. Four of seven is not perfect. It is not ideal. But it is workable, so it will do.

“Sects Yunmeng Jiang, Qinghe Nie, and Gusu Lan will be allowed a reprieve of one additional year to elect their councillors before the succession is finalised.” It is a compromise that the outcome has twisted his arm to make him give, but Lan Wangji can’t, in good conscience, not give it. “During this time, should the councillors find themselves evenly divided on a matter, or abstentions warrant additional perspective, I will serve as the casting vote. Is this agreeable?”

“Agreeable!” Nie Huaisang calls out. Then, to Jiang Cheng, he adds, not all that much quieter, “Ah, it is so fortunate for us that Hanguang Jun is magnanimous.”

Jiang Cheng mouths something severe at him that even Lan Wangji cannot catch, and Nie Huaisang turns away, hiding his smile behind his fan.

It is as settled as Lan Wangji is duty-bound to leave it, and so he is the first to dismiss himself, turning away and departing the conference without another word.

Lan Sizhui seeks him out the next evening, just as Lan Wangji suspected he would. He follows Lan Wangji wordlessly as he is led across the jingshi, and kneels at the table with his hands fisting in his lap as Lan Wangji carefully wraps his guqin and puts it away.

“You are troubled,” Lan Wangji observes when he returns, flicking his sleeves out as he seats himself across from him. He reaches for the pot and pours them each a cup of tea. “Sect Leader Lan meant to choose you.”

They had not spoken of it before the conference, and had discussed it little after. Anyone who dared would have fielded accusations of collusion regardless of their truth or each of their irreproachability, but it was nevertheless something Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji had wordlessly agreed to keep from one another’s confidence. Lan Sizhui was a commendable choice even beyond the perspective of Lan Wangji’s predisposed preferentiality to him.

“I’m sorry.” Lan Sizhui takes his cup, but does not look up from it or make any move to drink it.

“Why?”

Lan Sizhui still has no answer to give him even after Lan Wangji has finished his tea, so he sets his cup down, idly pours himself another serve from the pot, and continues. “Do you regret your choice?”

“No,” Lan Sizhui answers, with all the haste of the helplessly honest.

“Would you have rejected Sect Leader Jin, in order to accept Sect Leader Lan?”

Lan Sizhui breathes out, slow, lifting his gaze to watch Lan Wangji from beneath his long lashes. “No,” he admits, tentative.

Lan Wangji meets his eyes. His visage is kept impassive for his purposes, but it is not inhibited by iciness. “If not for regret or for disappointment, what is there to apologise for?”

Lan Sizhui struggles with it, but Lan Wangji does not harry him to his reply. “I feel… like I should.”

“You shouldn’t,” Lan Wangji tells him.

He holds out his hand, the gesture congenial, complaisant. Lan Sizhui looks to the fan of his fingers, the slight cup of his palm, his teeth grazing the trepid twinge of his bottom lip, before he shuffles around the bend of his table on his knees, hand resting on Lan Wangji’s forearm. He withdraws his hand only when he is close enough to curl up against Lan Wangji’s side, his head coming to rest in Lan Wangji’s lap, and Lan Wangji lowers his arm to shelter him with the drape of his sleeve. His fingers smooth back the strands of hair that have come loose from their ties, and Lan Sizhui gratefully sinks into it, sighing out the pressure that his thoughts have built up in the dam of his chest.

“I miss A-Xian.” Lan Sizhui parts with the confession in a whisper, spoken so softly that Lan Wangji feels it more in the shift of his mouth against his thigh than he hears it. “No one has heard from him or seen him since— I’m—”

He silences himself, turning his face into Lan Wangji and squeezing his eyes shut, nails scraping down Lan Wangji’s robe as he gathers up the hem of it in a desperate hold against his neck.

It will bring Lan Sizhui no comfort to be told not to worry, and offer no reassurance to be told that Lan Wangji is terrified, too, of all that Lan Sizhui fears: that he will lose something cherished, so long thought gone only to be just again found. That he will be left alone, soul sundered and irretrievably encumbered with all that is yet unfinished and left unsaid.

The world had lost all colour and meaning when Wei Wuxian had died, and surviving it once had not softened the threat of that blow any less. But Wei Wuxian’s return had, if nothing else, taught Lan Wangji that the world was supposed to be right, that it was meant to make sense. A world without Wei Wuxian was a world uprooted from its soil, but given its time, its devotion, its care, it would replant itself. It would again make whole what was less, and return what was lost to be deservedly kept.

Lan Wangji closes his palm over the clutch of Lan Sizhui’s hands. “He will be back,” Lan Wangji says, sure of every word, the stroke of his thumb soft across Lan Sizhui’s knuckles. “Be patient with him for a while longer.”

While the conference is meant to last a week, Lan Wangji had never once intended to remain for its entirety, even back when he had called for it to be held. By the fourth day, he is almost prepared to leave, and means only to visit his rabbits and Lil’ Apple before he does, to check they all remain in good health and high spirits.

Voices rise to meet him from the back hills long before he can lay his eyes on their origins. Deep in the grove with his rabbits, the flowers Lan Wangji once asked to be planted now stand tall and point boldly to the canopies. They serve as both counterpoint and frame for the young men who have convened there, swathed in Ouyang red, Jin gold, and Lan blue, their motions animated and their conversation lively. Lan Wangji observes them, from above and from afar, as Ouyang Zizhen, sitting on the back of Lil’ Apple, gestures broadly with his hands and makes a declaration that is more volume than words, to the delight of the rest.

Though it is his space, Lan Wangji feels as though he is imposing upon it, that he is being made witness to something that is not meant for him to see. Lan Jingyi pegs ba jiao pods at Ouyang Zizhen from where he has bedded down in the litterfall, and Lan Sizhui laughs with such vibrance that his head is thrown back with the force of it, the arch of the rest of his frame held steadily in place only by the brace of Jin Ling’s hand on his elbow.

Lan Wangji steals another heartbeat’s worth of a glimpse at them all before he turns away, content to consider the final preparation for his departure made. There is no regret to be found in the hands everything is now left to, keeping him true to the promise he once made, before he made all others, those many years ago.

All is at last as it should be, except for one final thing.

Again, he searches for Wei Wuxian, although this journey is not the same as the first.

Back then, though Lan Wangji traversed the world, he took no part in it. It was surveyed at a distance, his body stepped aside, his soul in stasis. Everyone and everything moved past him and on without him, until it was only Lan Wangji left, bereft, at a torpid standstill in a dark nothing, the beholder of an existence eked out.

Now, Lan Wangji surrounds himself with it and lives as a part of it, embracing his place as a thread in the world’s ever-spanning tapestry.

It is lonely, still. It is always lonely, without Wei Wuxian. But in Wei Wuxian’s absence, Lan Wangji is no longer alone.

Even with the provinces more stable than they have been in a generation, there is still chaos to be quelled, and surprises to be found in amongst it.

“I’m fine,” Jin Ling grits out, “I don’t want help.”

Even washed out by the moonlight, his pallor is ghastly, and the gush of his blood through the bandage of his fingers against his inner thigh all the more concerning. No longer a matter of what Jin Ling wants but what Jin Ling needs, Lan Wangji drops into a kneel before him, Bichen lowered to the ground at his side.

It is not odd for Lan Wangji to coincidentally appear in far-flung places such as the outskirts of Buddha’s Feet, but Jin Ling lacks the luxury of that excuse. Still, Lan Wangji does not question it or question him, indifferent to any concern save stemming the weep of his wound and alleviating his pain.

“Be still,” Lan Wangji commands, not unkindly, when Jin Ling squawks in protest. He pulls Jin Ling’s hands away at the wrists, his limbs made pliable from the steady sap of his strength, and rips the fabric open wider from the tear made by the incision.

Jin Ling looks down, at the compress of Lan Wangji’s fingers, rapidly slicking with blood, and the hint of bone peeking out from beneath the rent flesh. He swallows down on a retch as he sways, eyelids fluttering, before he slumps back, skull thudding against the trunk of the tree holding him upright.

Lan Wangji pulls back, flecks of blood from his fingers splattering across the dirt and the skirt of his robe as he unbinds his guqin from his back and begins to strip away his beizi. He has torn half of the left sleeve free from its stitching at the shoulder when a third presence makes itself known by barreling into the clearing, Jin Ling’s eyes snapping open and his hand reaching out to clasp at Lan Wangji’s knee in warning.

So close to Dafan Mountain, it is hardly strange to encounter Wen Ning. It is stranger for Wen Ning to encounter Lan Wangji, let alone Jin Ling, but he is struck stupid by his surprise for only a false breath before he is astride them both, humbleness stowed at the sight of flooding red.

“Fuck,” Jin Ling hisses.

Wen Ning looks away from him guiltily, though he does not look entirely at Lan Wangji, either, when he speaks, black eyes instead settling against the branch of Lan Wangji’s collarbone. “My house is closer than the village... I have medicine there.”

Lan Wangji rips the rest of his sleeve free and bundles it around Jin Ling’s trembling thigh. “Where is the rest of your sect?” he asks, knotting both ends haphazardly above the crook of his knee.

“...Back at the village,” Jin Ling admits.

Lan Wangji feels the chastisement on the tip of his tongue, but he lets it slip away, dismissed back from whence it came as something entirely inappropriate. It is not his place to lecture anyone on the self-sacrifice of attempting to surmount impossible heights to spare anyone else from the climb, least of all the nephew of Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian.

“Take him,” he says to Wen Ning instead, rising to his feet, wiping his fingers as clean as he can with the remnants of his coat.

Jin Ling’s displeasure is plain on his face even through the agonised crumple of his features, but he sensibly gives no voice to it as Wen Ning takes him in his arms as though he weighs nothing, cradling him against his chest. Lan Wangji drapes his coat across him, tucking it beneath his armpits before he turns away, listening to twigs snap beneath Wen Ning’s boots as he leaps back into the treetops. He straps his guqin back across his chest and retrieves Bichen from the ground, dusting dirt from the hilt’s filigree.

It is not hard to find the Lanling Jin Sect escort in Buddha’s Feet. Though there are but a few of them, a small helping of Jin Ling’s most trusted, they are a bold affront to the blandness of the rest of the village, as blatant as a bruise on pale skin. Lan Wangji, with dried blood clinging to his nailbeds, the creases in his knuckles, tells them no lies but only few truths. That Jin Ling will be returned to them by morning is all they need to know; that it is Hanguang Jun relaying this and no more stops any of them from daring to press further.

It is harder to find Wen Ning’s house, after, but only marginally so. The firelight spilling through the windows is a glistening beacon within the skyline. Lan Wangji finds the door unlocked when he tests the handle, and so he opens it wide and steps over the threshold, offering no greeting beyond the noise of his arrival.

During the half-hour Lan Wangji has been gone, Jin Ling’s colour has returned, his cheeks rosy and his face slack with relief. The rise of his chest is even, settled, from where Lan Wangji can see it, his short frame buried beneath the blankets that have been heaped atop him.

Wen Ning looks up from the copper basin in his lap, the water dirty, streaked with the smoky tendrils of the blood he’s washed from his tools and his hands. It sloshes over the lip when he stumbles to his feet, dousing his knees and dotting the floorboards.

“He’s okay,” he stammers out, brow stitching together when he tips the basin forward on himself as he lurches forward, wetting his stomach. “It missed the bone. He’s resting now.”

Lan Wangji turns his back on him as he props Bichen up against the doorjamb. “And you?” he asks, intent carefully indiscernible, when he straightens again.

Wen Ning looks up with a start from where he is wringing out the belly of his robes into the basin, mouth ajar. “M—me?”

Lan Wangji glances, pointed, to the sleeping Jin Ling, then returns the fine point of his gaze to rest on Wen Ning.

“Oh,” Wen Ning answers, understanding. “Yes.” He pats his robes back into place, shaking his hands out. “Young Master Jin R— Sect Leader Jin is— he was… undifficult.”

“Very well,” says Lan Wangji, prying no further.

Wen Ning shuffles towards him, then skitters back, torn, before he finally finds his footing and takes a proper step. “Hanguang Jun, your hands are still dirtied. I will get some fresh water for you and put it to boil.”

“It’s not necessary,” Lan Wangji declines, emphatic but aptly courteous. Jin Ling was his sole reason for stopping here, and now he has no reason to stay. He hoists Bichen back up and slides the sheath into his sash, before his fingers busy with tightening the knot of fabric digging into his sternum, ensuring his guqin will remain securely slung between his shoulder blades. “Fetch it for him instead. I will follow you out.”

“Ah.” Wen Ning bows his head jerkily. “All right.”

It is an unseasonably cool night, the air crisp enough to sting Lan Wangji’s bare skin. He and Wen Ning walk neither together nor apart as they cross the modest garden that hems Wen Ning’s home; a crude wooden structure that reminds Lan Wangji of the ones that had once stood in the Burial Mounds, sheltering the Wen remnants from all but the test of fire and time. Wen Ning holds the rickety, makeshift gate open for him, and Lan Wangji closes it behind them both, flipping the latch.

A lone structure looms nearby, overshadowing even the evening gloom. Lan Wangji finds his footsteps stalling as he peers at it, Wen Ning tentatively toeing his way back into Lan Wangji’s periphery.

“Our cenotaph,” Wen Ning says in answer to the unasked question. “It still needs work, but… I’m not sure what yet.”

Lan Wangji tilts his chin downward, eyelids hooding, something heavy and indescribable taking root in his chest. “May I see it?”

Wen Ning balks. “Of— of course. Please.” He takes a half-step, inching towards it, before falling into a steady clip when he is sure Lan Wangji is following.

The stone has none of the remarkable craftsmanship of a master, but all of the beauty of a creation given life by the heart and hands of a loved one. Lan Wangji does not recognise most of the names chiselled into the face of it, but he, still, remembers some.

Lan Wangji steps forward, Wen Ning trailing alongside, and opens the small wooden box set atop the small altar, withdrawing two sticks of incense. Old ash stains the pads of his fingers as he places them in the handmade burners bookending either side of the stone, the scent of jasmine wafting out from the sputtering smoke when he summons flame to light them.

He sinks to his knees before them, beneath Wen Ning’s silent watch, and kowtows, body brought reverently low enough for the embossed setting of his headband to clink against the ground. When he makes to rise, Wen Ning’s fingers cuff his elbow, lifting him even as Wen Ning lowers in counterpoint, his free hand sweeping the dirt from Lan Wangji’s robe.

“Thank you,” Wen Ning murmurs, much later, when they are both standing tall, shoulder to shoulder, the night quiet around them save for birdsong and the sizzle of the incense.

Lan Wangji says nothing in return. There is nothing that need be said.

It is providence that sees Lan Wangji’s path cross with Luo Qingyang’s, the both of them converging on the trail of a shui gui that has surfaced to plague a landlocked village recently freed of a long drought by the seasonal rains. It is a strange case, and while it is a welcome distraction, Lan Wangji is glad for the company of someone both creditably familiar and comfortingly foreign.

“Hanguang Jun,” Luo Qingyang calls to him across the bog, after, the shui gui’s blood still warm on their swords. “You have no lodgings in the village, right? There is space in our room at the inn. I’ll ask the Auntie there to bring us more blankets.”

Drained to exhaustion and with his circumstances just as she states, Lan Wangji would only be spiting himself for no purpose to refuse the offer. They travel back to the village by foot, swords sheathed at their waists, and wash the mud and viscera from their hands and boots in the alley behind the inn with the bucket of water Luo Qingyang’s husband brings to them, their outer clothes stripped off and bundled up into his arms to be laundered.

Their daughter has sprouted like a beanstalk in the years since he and Wei Wuxian first saw her, the crown of her head level with her father’s collarbone as she peeks out at him. Her shyness flakes away like old paint as they make their way to the room, and by the time they are all seated around the table, Luo Qingyang spooning rice into each of their bowls, Mianmian is watching Lan Wangji avidly, her almond-shaped eyes alight with interest.

She opens her mouth trepidly, as if to say something, only to blink and fall silent when Luo Qingyang taps a fingertip to her lips, before sweetly flicking at one of her daughter’s pigtails. “No talking during dinner,” she instructs, heaping two fried eggs over Mianmian’s rice and piercing the yolks with her chopstick. “Hanguang Jun’s sect does not talk while they eat, and he is our guest, okay?”

She meets Lan Wangji’s gaze as she takes her place at the head of their table, the corners of her eyes crinkling as she smiles.

After their meal, as her father stacks their dishes, Lan Wangji turns to Mianmian. “You were very patient,” he compliments her, with every sincerity. To the ears of some, praising a young child for something thought to be so menial sounds wasteful, but Lan Wangji knows it is not so. He is well versed in the deep importance of the deceptively simple and oft-dismissable.

Mianmian bobs her head with a blush, her shyness resurging, and flees the table for the safe harbour of her father’s leg, clutching at his pants. Luo Qingyang laughs as she rises, beckoning Lan Wangji to follow her as she heads for the room’s lone window.

She cracks it open and climbs over the sill, dropping out onto the rooftop of the level below, head cocked up at Lan Wangji as he follows her down. “It’s not much,” she tells him when he joins her, “but thank you for humouring us.” The tenor of her whisper is pleasant, pleased.

“I am grateful for your hospitality," says Lan Wangji.

Luo Qingyang folds her arms behind her back, her shoulders squared. With such a bearing, it is all too easy to see her as the disciple of Lanling Jin that she once was; to remember their shared history, however brief. “I still remember that time,” Luo Qingyang says, “with you, at Koi Tower. After I seceded."

Lan Wangji does, too. Luo Qingyang hums under her breath.

“I do not wish this kind of life on you,” she continues, soft, “but I do wish for you to find this kind of happiness. I don’t regret refusing you."

Lan Wangji is silent for a long moment as he reflects on the kindness of what that means, and just how such happiness would look for him. “Thank you,” he finally replies.

They wake at the same hour he does, a product of their own habit as farmers, and insist on seeing him at the very least to the door of the inn. Lan Wangji cups his palm as he salutes to both Luo Qingyang and her husband, Bichen in hand, before he drops to a crouch in front Mianmian, who has been encouraged out from behind her father’s leg by Luo Qingyang’s gentle hand between her shoulder blades.

“As thanks,” Lan Wangji explains, holding the paper talisman he’s retrieved from the lining of his robe out for her to take. “For taking care of me.”

Her fingers brush against the corner of it, her neck craning to look to her parents for encouragement, before she accepts it, cupping it the creased parchment gingerly in her hands.

“Learn it well,” he tells her as he stands. “This is a talisman created by the Yiling Patriarch.”

Mianmian gasps and hurriedly cuddles it to her chest, her entire temperament blossoming into unbridled delight. It’s a wonderful sight to leave with, and Lan Wangji lingers just long enough to commit it to his memory.

One day, when he can, at last, retell this story, he wants to recall this one detail, if none of the rest, with perfect clarity.

When Lan Wangji first hears the sound, for a moment, for an all too long moment, he doesn’t move. He has to centre himself, has to feel the grasp of the earth beneath his feet and the gust of the wind through his hair, each proof to add to the tally, each lending credence to his conviction that he is still awake.

When he is sure he is right, when he is so sure that he knows if he does not move he will die from the weight of his hope and his want, Lan Wangji runs. He runs faster than he ever has in his countless nightmares; faster than he ever has save but twice before in his waking hours: when he reached for Wei Wuxian at the Nightless City, and when he was last alone and heard this very song reach for him. Lan Wangji runs, and he runs, and he runs, until all the air has burned out of his lungs and his legs scream from the exertion, until he is finally, finally there, breathless and spent, broken and built up again.

“Wei Ying,” he whispers, voice cracking apart.

The music stops.

For a heartbeat, for an age, for a lifetime, there is only silence, but Lan Wangji has been so patient for so many years already; for this, he can wait another eternity more.

Wei Wuxian turns to him, and Lan Wangji watches him release the breath he’s been holding, feels his own chest unclench in tandem as Wei Wuxian’s hesitant hopefulness melts away, gratified, all seven years of their shared sorrow departing with a single smile.

“Wei Ying,” he repeats, louder, sturdier. He takes a step forward, but within the pace of his one, Wei Wuxian seemingly takes twenty, and is before him in an instant, loose hair billowing about his angular features. His fingers quake around Lan Wangji’s wrists, and Lan Wangji turns his hands over in Wei Wuxian’s tender hold, thumb circling his fluttering pulse.

“Lan Zhan,” he chokes out.

“Wei Ying.” There are so many things, still, that Lan Wangji wants to ask him. Some of it, he knows, he someday will. Much of it, he knows as well, he never can. For now, he knows the one thing he must say. “How much of the world have you seen?”

Wei Wuxian’s voice breaks when he laughs, the sound crumbling in on itself, as if it has become such an unnatural occurrence that his body can’t cope with the strain of it. That will change, now, that he is back. Lan Wangji will make sure of it.

“Enough of it,” Wei Wuxian answers, “all of it. Ah, Lan Zhan… Lan Zhan.” He squeezes down, the edge of his grip turning desperate, the bitten-down crescents of his fingernails scraping Lan Wangji’s skin. “None of it compares.”

In the morning, Lan Wangji knows they will both have to make themselves known. Still, there are hours left in the night by the time they have both returned to the Cloud Recesses, and there is no question between them that those hours are theirs alone to keep.

“I wonder,” says Wei Wuxian, voice low, body pressed close to his side as they weave through the precarious pathways that provide more secretive passage through the back hills, “does this count as going out at night? Or an act of promiscuity? Hmm— ah, both?”

His boot slips out as his weight dislodges some of the looser stones, and Lan Wangji threads his arm around Wei Wuxian’s waist to steady him in place. “You recall the strangest things.”

Wei Wuxian touches the back of his wrist to his mouth to stifle his laugh, before he straightens, slipping out from the slack loop of Lan Wangji’s arm but not away from his side. “Oh? Strangest?”

Yes, Lan Wangji thinks to himself, for he does find it so very strange, even now, that Wei Wuxian can remember all of the rules of the Gusu Lan Sect that were scribed into being before he died, but not— “The things that matter the very least,” Lan Wangji replies.

Beneath Wei Wuxian’s faux scandal, there is a genuine shock. “The least? The— Lan Zhan, please warn me before you say such things. I really am so frail of constitution that to hear you say the rules of your sect matter the very least could be the final end of me!”

This, between them, this intimacy, this easiness, this complacency— it is nothing like what they once had. Lan Wangji knows this. And yet, in some ways, for all the trauma and terror and tolls that have been taken from and beaten into their bodies, what has been stolen from them, what has put them back together in a configuration all the more monstrous has served, too, to make them an all the more perfect fit.

“Then I’ll stop,” says Lan Wangji.

“Oh, no, no—” Wei Wuxian babbles, fingers walking up Lan Wangji’s forearm to tweak at his elbow, “my heart isn’t that weak. I could stand to hear more. A little more.” He bumps their shoulders together, back curved, bringing him low enough that he can peer up at Lan Wangji in picturesque pithiness. “I’ll tell you when it’s too much.”

Though they carry so much that is unspeakable and unimaginable, above all of it, above all else, they still — and will always — have this.

Lan Wangji looks down at him. “Do not make noise,” he instructs, “and do not laugh without reason.”

Wei Wuxian gapes at him. “I do not make noise!” he objects. “And I certainly do not laugh without reason.”

I agree,” says Lan Wangji.

It is wonderful to see Wei Wuxian made vulnerable when he does not fear for any harm to follow. His lips part delicately around a muted gasp, the skin of his throat mottled with red above the neck of his robe, his heated blush creeping up from his chest.

"Too much!" Wei Wuxian’s recovery is swift, and his voice bubbles with renewed laughter as he shoves at Lan Wangji’s arm in an ineffective show of demurral. "That’s too much.”

When they emerge from the underbrush, it is at the shore of the pond that runs beneath the patio of the jingshi. Lan Wangji leaps across the water in one elegant motion and turns to offer out the pillars of his forearms for Wei Wuxian to brace himself against as he follows him over the wooden railing.

Moonlight spills into the cracked open door after them as they slip inside, casting the room in a soft, ethereal wreath of silver-white. Wei Wuxian stands in the centre of the room, hands rubbing against his biceps to encourage warmth to circulate back through to his chill-tipped fingers. He cocks his head as Lan Wangji lights the candles, eyes darting to and fro, taking in what little has changed and all that has not.

“Ah, Lan Zhan, you really have been gone for a long time, haven’t you?” He holds out his hands as Lan Wangji approaches him, and plies Lan Wangji’s palms with his icy fingers the moment he is within range. “It’s so cold in here. Do you feel how I’m suffering?”

Lan Wangji strokes his thumbs along Wei Wuxian’s fingers nonchalantly, watching as something cryptic dances across Wei Wuxian’s expression before it settles back beneath the surface of his bright eyes and broad smile. “What do you need?”

Wei Wuxian perks up, the beast in him that loves to be pampered scenting weakness, his fingers crooking into Lan Wangji’s grip. “A bath.”

Lan Wangji accedes, his answering nod appropriately assuring that he’ll fulfil Wei Wuxian’s ask. It is not too difficult a thing, of all that Wei Wuxian can possibly request and Lan Wangji will all too readily permit, for Lan Wangji to fetch the wooden tub and carry it to the jingshi, to set it down and fill it with bucket after bucket of boiled water, all the while eyeing Wei Wuxian from beneath the furl of his eyelashes as he strips down, the pull of his bones and muscles beneath the scarred skin of his back indecorous, indecent.

Lan Wangji averts his eyes only when Wei Wuxian glances across his shoulder, choreographing his intent to turn back and show himself, and steps away from the bath, leaving it to him as he starts to shrug off his outer robe, the hems its wide-brimmed sleeves soaked through. He listens to the pad of Wei Wuxian’s footsteps and the slosh of the water as it takes the sinking stone of his weight while he hangs his robe over the corner of his partition to dry out and unclasps his hairpiece to set aside, before he turns around and preoccupies his hands with gathering up the scatter of Wei Wuxian’s shed layers.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian calls to him. Lan Wangji turns, Wei Wuxian’s middle clothes draped in the bend of his arm, and meets the display of Wei Wuxian leaning over the lip of the bath, chin tucked into the cradle of his folded arms, his skin and lips flushed pink. “I need more than water. I am not as effortlessly handsome as you, you know.”

“Mn,” says Lan Wangji, refraining from any further comment. Wei Wuxian does not seem terribly troubled to not have his teasing satiated, cheek rubbing against his bicep as his keen eyes track Lan Wangji’s anfractuous amble to his shelves, tucked in the far recesses of his room, past the sunken hearth and the small tables set aside for his guqin and his scripture. He withdraws a plain wooden box from a low shelf, expending no effort to hide his awareness of Wei Wuxian’s consideration of him as he carries it back and sinks into a kneel at the bath, the box coming to rest in his lap, the lid set aside.

Wei Wuxian reaches out, water dripping down the lean line of his arm to spatter Lan Wangji’s thighs. His fingers toy with the lids and caps of the various vials and containers within as he clicks his tongue. “You have so many,” he remarks, chuckling. “Ah, could it be— your looks are at least somewhat effortful?”

“Which would you like?” Lan Wangji asks.

Wei Wuxian’s lips curl into a moue, brow creasing. “Mm… which one does Hanguang Jun suggest?”

He cranes towards him, the bend of his torso over the edge of the wooden tub precarious, his head tilting as he gathers his hair into a bunched twist over the slope of his shoulder. The strands crescent against the collar of his throat, and his mouth shapes into a blatantly impish smile as he commands Lan Wangji’s gaze into place with his own.

It is a test, Lan Wangji recognises. Wei Wuxian is leaning himself into presupposed boundaries, mapping out Lan Wangji’s limitations, his reservations. He’s looking for what will cave beneath his varying pressures and what will resist his duress. Lan Wangji can neither direct him nor defy him; he can only hope that Wei Wuxian is not driven back by what he unburies.

Lan Wangji does not look away as he withdraws a vial from the box and then discards it, glass clinking together faintly as the remaining contents are jostled. When he reaches for the stopper, Wei Wuxian lunges for him, water splashing out onto the floor in a wave, his slippery fingers trussing Lan Wangji’s wrist. The motion causes Lan Wangji’s eyes to flick down to follow it, and Wei Wuxian realises all too late what he’s done, what privacy he’s forsaken.

Wei Wuxian’s fingers hold tight to the prize of Lan Wangji’s wrist, but he does not move to stop him as Lan Wangji reaches forward with his empty hand, the heel of his palm finding the gnarl of scar tissue low on Wei Wuxian’s chest, plaited over his dantian, where a core would— does sit.

Yaohe. The word springs from the font of his thoughts, unwanted and unwelcome. Lan Wangji’s fingers splay, wide, against Wei Wuxian’s breastbone, and he feels Wei Wuxian’s heart jump, watches his throat work around a swallow, juddering, like a rabbit kicking out against a snare.

"Don't," Wei Wuxian mouths. Please, he doesn’t add, but Lan Wangji hears it all the same, and so he says nothing of it, taking his hand away. The dam of Wei Wuxian's stricken expression breaks, flooding his features with relief.

"Later," Lan Wangji warns. That is the compromise he will take as payment. He trusts Wei Wuxian, and will allow him his secrets, but this is a burden too grave for only one of them to shoulder.

“Later,” Wei Wuxian agrees. He lets go of Lan Wangji’s wrist and lowers himself back into the bath, fingers curling around the rim of the wood as Lan Wangji opens the vial. When Lan Wangji leans towards him, fingers combing his hair back from his forehead, Wei Wuxian crooks his thumbs in the sleeves of Lan Wangji’s middle clothes, gently rolling them back to his elbows. The first slosh of fermented rice water on his scalp elicits a shiver, and then Wei Wuxian begins to quake, the tremors barely subdued beneath the pull of his skin, as Lan Wangji’s fingers reverently massage the mixture through his locks.

“Lan Zhan,” he murmurs out, the sound almost lost to the cross of his arms, his head bowed low, as if in prayer, while Lan Wangji’s nails scrape along his nape. “You really— is there anything I could ask of you, that you would refuse?”

“No,” says Lan Wangji. He has proved this to Wei Wuxian, already, that night at Guanyin Temple. But he has been certain of it for far longer, and will not tire of repeating it, spoken and shown, until Wei Wuxian knows it beyond all worldly doubt, too.

“Ah.” Wei Wuxian turns away, beneath the guide of Lan Wangji’s hands, pressed to his sternum and his spine, sealing him in place. He sags forward between his knees, submerging his head, palms sweeping down his skull, and surfaces to gulp, greedily, for air.

Wei Wuxian gives him no warning when he dives for him, grappling his shoulders, fingers clawing through his hair. Water overflows the bath, swelling with the surge of his body and flooding out onto the floor as Wei Wuxian slams their mouths together. It almost can’t be called a kiss, stripped of any softness or sweetness, barren of grace, the clack of their teeth knocking together ringing out like a death knell. It’s more— something heedless and unnamed, once forewarned and finally, at long last, fated.

Lan Wangji is swept out with Wei Wuxian’s tide, but he will drag Wei Wuxian underneath alongside him to drown. Of that, there can be no doubt. No being, earthly or heavenly or otherwise, can question Lan Wangji’s devotion, not with how he wraps his arms around Wei Wuxian’s ribs, fingers dimpling the bare skin of his back, raking nimbly over his scars. When Wei Wuxian turns his cheek to breathe, Lan Wangji follows with his teeth, nipping at his bottom lip, denying Wei Wuxian his retreat back across the bounds he’s crossed between them.

There is but one place Wei Wuxian can go, and so he goes into Lan Wangji’s lap, dragging the tangle of his legs out from the bath after him. He presses Lan Wangji back until the delicate arch of his spine is flattened against the floorboards, Lan Wangji’s knees parting to take the sway of his weight, his bare feet sliding through the water to kick the tub. When Lan Wangji curves up to raise himself from the floor, Wei Wuxian’s hands dig into his shoulders, the strength of his grip ringing hollow even as the command of his touch rings true, and Lan Wangji settles back obediently, breath caught in his lungs, his skin alight, clammy where the bathwater has drenched his robes, fabric sticking to his stomach, his thighs.

“Lan Zhan.” Wei Wuxian licks the kiss-bruised swell of his bottom lip, but the questions on his face stay where they are, the words to voice them tethered within his throat.

Lan Wangji raises his hand, stroking his fingertips along Wei Wuxian’s knuckles before he cups his palm over them. Where Wei Wuxian’s adjuration was unvoiced expectation, Lan Wangji’s is exigent physicality, the pull of his hand irrevocable as it leads Wei Wuxian’s fingers to dip underneath the rumpled collar of his robes. He does not release him, not until he has ushered Wei Wuxian’s hand to roam the bare plain of his chest, halting when his palm spans the brand of the Qishan Wen Sect’s emblem.

He feels Wei Wuxian’s fingers stumble against his pectoral as they fan out, taking in the ripple of scar tissue embellishing his skin and the rolling thunder of Lan Wangji’s heartbeat as it bounds within his ribcage. When Wei Wuxian next meets his eyes, it is in understanding.

“It’s been hard on you,” Wei Wuxian observes, his words subdued by sympathy, the pet of his fingers subtle.

“And you,” Lan Wangji rasps in reply, twinging as a nail catches on his nipple.

Wei Wuxian’s answering smile is a grateful one. “I’m here, now,” he continues, quieter.

“You are,” says Lan Wangji.

He holds himself in place, allowing Wei Wuxian to come to him, to fill in the space between their bodies as he stoops low and takes Lan Wangji’s lip between his own, the hand shackling Lan Wangji’s shoulder stroking up the column of his throat to bury in his hair, the other sliding back out from his chest. Lan Wangji cradles his face in both hands, his thumbs caressing the blades of Wei Wuxian’s cheekbones, his teeth parting around the pry of Wei Wuxian’s tongue. It slides into his mouth, and his cock throbs against his thigh, the crest of his need all at once overwhelming, all-encompassing, etching itself into every snapped and shredded nerve. The lap of Wei Wuxian’s tongue against the roof of his mouth and the scrape of his teeth across his lips is indolent, incongruous to the vicious wind of his fingers as he grips Lan Wangji’s cock through his clothes, his other hand pulling at Lan Wangji’s hair as Lan Wangji’s hips rut up.

“Hey, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, lips gliding down to ghost at his chin, his thumb feeling up the line of his shaft through the tented cloth to knead at his flared tip. The raggedness in his voice ruins the guise of his sly indifference, and yet Lan Wangji feels his shame run him through all the same. “I’m your guest, and yet you have me doing all the work— aren’t you going to touch me, too?” The pivot of his wrist as he strokes him is pointed, the pant of his breath hot on Lan Wangji’s skin as he feels him swell, scalding, in the circle of his fingers. Lan Wangji’s fingers scrabble against Wei Wuxian’s face, slipping down the jut of his jaw and the bared column of his throat to pool where his clavicle dips into the hills of his shoulders.

“Touch me,” Wei Wuxian says again, all composure peeled back to the bone, arrogance reduced to begging, and so Lan Wangji does, choking out a groan as Wei Wuxian squeezes his cock tightly, kneading at it, the swivel of his thumb dragging the cloth of his pants over his sensitive slit. Lan Wangji’s hands flutter along the lines of Wei Wuxian’s biceps, dip past the shuddering fan of his ribs to stroke down the ladder of his spine, urged on by the coax of Wei Wuxian’s fists, on his cock and in his hair, which reward him with a tantalising tug at his scalp and his shaft when his grip finally lands on Wei Wuxian’s hips.

“Is this your—” Wei Wuxian starts, mouth too fast for his sense to catch up, the question half said before he shakes it off, “—no, it’s not—”

“—It is,” Lan Wangji interrupts him, breathless, ears burning, and Wei Wuxian shudders, full body, at the revelation, eyes slipping shut, the line of his throat drawing taut as his head tips back and his hips snap forward, grinding into Lan Wangji’s lap. Lan Wangji follows the sinuous snarl of his body, the prostrating bow of his spine, gaze forced, helpless, to the junction of Wei Wuxian’s thighs, where his cock juts out, flushed red and swollen and straining. Precome beads at the tip; has already dripped down his shaft, wet, and smeared across the cuff of his hand around Lan Wangji’s clothed cock.

Wei Wuxian swears, something unholy and unrepeatable, his fingers untangling from Lan Wangji’s hair to caress his cheek, to smooth back the loose strands from his sweat-damp forehead. He leans forward, thumb tracing Lan Wangji’s temple, and his lips ghost between Lan Wangji’s furrowed brows, mouthing away the tension there, before they trace higher, placing a kiss to the setting of his headband, a pant gusting out when Lan Wangji jerks underneath him.

Lan Wangji’s back aches from the relentless press of the hard floor against his bones, but the hook of Wei Wuxian’s fingers in the waistband of his pants and the sear of his lips as he tilts his face to seal their mouths together are a panacea for any complaint. Wei Wuxian is good at that, good with him; has a Midas touch for all of Lan Wangji’s rot buried soul and sinew deep. He knows just what he needs to get his hands around and how to turn it inside out, until all Lan Wangji can feel is at ease, put in his rightful place.

The cool air is a shock on his cock as it is bared, and Lan Wangji snaps his hips up with a grunt, swallowed up by the gag of Wei Wuxian’s mouth against his, smoothed over with a crooning hush when Wei Wuxian pulls back.

“I should have done this then—” Wei Wuxian babbles in a breathless rush, mouth slack against Lan Wangji’s cheek as he takes both of them in hand, stuttering forward when the squirm of Lan Wangji’s hips almost unseats him, “—I felt how hard you were, and I couldn’t even kiss you.” He nips at the corner of Lan Wangji’s mouth as he reaches back to his hip, twining their fingers together and tugging Lan Wangji’s hand down to wrap around their cocks, moaning when Lan Wangji squeezes roughly without needing direction.

“Lan Zhan— ah, Lan Zhan, what should I do? I don’t—” he cuts himself off with a groan, chest heaving, as Lan Wangji, ever the quick learner, rolls his thumbnail against Wei Wuxian’s slit, precome dripping down the sloppy steeple of their fingers. “I don’t have the patience,” he finally manages, voice raw, throat run ragged by the moans that keep spilling out of him, over and over, high little sounds that keep catching in his chest and tripping over his tongue.

Lan Wangji wants to tell him that there is time, but all that comes out is a whimper, ripped out by the stroke of Wei Wuxian’s fist, his pace quickening, the pressure of his grip around them both flipped to punishing, the bracket of his knees clamping in on Lan Wangji’s sides, pinning him in place. His head swims, misting over as a surge of heat snaps up his back, breath struck from his throat, and his orgasm slams through him like a blow, come spilling over their hands and streaking up Lan Wangji’s stomach, bared by the ruck of his robes. Wei Wuxian’s palm slaps over his mouth to stifle his sob, the rest of him following after, his teeth burying into the backs of his knuckles with a whine as he fucks himself into the circle of Lan Wangji’s palm, his own hand untangling from the knot of their grips to reach between his legs.

“Good boy,” Wei Wuxian praises, the endearment reflexive, tumbling off his tongue and into the gag of his fingers across Lan Wangji’s mouth without thought. It’s left there without reflection as he replaces his hand with his lips, breath hissing out with a flinch as Lan Wangji bites down on his bottom lip, sucks it between his teeth. Wei Wuxian rocks his hips clumsily between the counterpoints of Lan Wangji’s tightening fist and the press of his fingers between his legs, his whole body rigid, brought to its breaking point. Lan Wangji licks at Wei Wuxian’s bruised lips, tanged with spit and blood, and braces his arm across the span of Wei Wuxian’s quaking back as he spills into Lan Wangji’s hand, face crumpling, expression strewn between pain and pleasure.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan whispers, his voice tattered, scraping itself out of his mouth.

Wei Wuxian shudders, beautifully, just from his name, and is too spent to shroud it with the semblance of anything else, nose brushing against Lan Wangji’s cheek as he presses a kiss to his jaw, lips leaving a damp imprint on Lan Wangji’s flushed skin in their wake.

“Mm,” he says, sounding as hoarse and wrecked to Lan Wangji’s ears as Lan Wangji undoubtedly sounds to his, “you are so rough, look at you.” He swipes his thumb along Lan Wangji’s skin and brings it to his mouth, the pink tip of his tongue darting out to lave at it. “Biting me so hard that I’ve bled on you. I was so gentle with you for your first time, and you weren’t even gentle with me for mine.”

“Unfair,” Wei Wuxian adds, features soft with delight, when Lan Wangji has not managed to do more than stare at him, awe-stricken, eyes wide. “How will you make this up to me?”

It had been nothing at all, to Lan Wangji, to have had and to have known no other before Wei Wuxian. It is all too much to learn that, for Wei Wuxian, it has been the same. He cups a palm around Wei Wuxian’s nape, tentative in its tenderness, and brings them back together, soothing the sting of Wei Wuxian’s lips with a kiss. “Every day,” he tells Wei Wuxian when they part, tilting their faces gently so that their foreheads touch and he can feel Wei Wuxian’s blooming grin through the scrunch of his brow, “I will do so every day.”

Lan Wangji wakes late into the morning, the sun already high in the sky, the other side of his bed empty.

No panic unfurls in the pit of his stomach; no worry pricks at his skin. Lan Wangji simply rises, in no manner of hurry as he washes his face and hands, no rush as he dresses. He does not need to stray far from the jingshi before he hears voices, raised to fever-pitch, engrossed with excitement.

“What do you mean, gift?” he hears Wei Wuxian shout, his affront exaggerated, childish, “Gift? I have been gone so long from you, and all you think to ask for is what I’ve brought back for you? What I’ve brought back for you is me!”

Lan Wangji approaches the stairs, and is greeted with the sight of Wei Wuxian, a dark-hued needle protruding from a swathe of Lan blue, the juniors — seniors, now — flanking him from all sides. Lan Jingyi spearheads the formation, Wei Wuxian’s sleeve pinched between his fingers, and at the sound of Lan Wangji’s boots against the stone, their heads all swivel to face him.

Lan Sizhui is not among them. He must be at Koi Tower, though he could be on a night hunt, or anywhere in between. The preciosities are of no matter: Lan Wangji will send a message to him, later, to ensure the good news is duly relayed.

Wei Wuxian grins at him, winks, then plants his free hand on his hip, puffing out his chest. “Good! Hanguang Jun is here now to witness how unfilial you all are.” The sea of disciples parts for Lan Wangji as he approaches, opening the path for him to step into his place alongside Wei Wuxian, his hand tucked in the small of his own back, his expression carefully curated. “Did you hear them? Not even a thought spared for where I’ve been. Shameless!”

They learned that from you, Lan Wangji thinks, irreparably fond.

“Senior Wei is framing us!” Lan Jingyi accuses, and Wei Wuxian has the audacity to gape as he shakes the young man’s hand free.

“They were so well behaved when I left them!” Wei Wuxian laments, before he promptly rounds on Lan Wangji, waggling his finger at him. “I think this is your doing. You have not been here to keep them in line. See how they’ve suffered for want of your good influence?”

Lan Wangji is not so resolute of a man that he can stop the subtle smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth, the shift slight enough to escape everyone but Wei Wuxian’s notice. He does not look at Wei Wuxian, but at his charges. “You are all late for drills. He will still be here after you are done.”

When they are alone, Wei Wuxian bumps their arms together, resting his cheek on Lan Wangji’s shoulder innocently when Lan Wangji turns to look at him. “On my name, I did not do anything to draw their attention. They are all far too smart for their own good. Have they all gotten taller?”

“Only some,” says Lan Wangji, then, “what would you like to do?”

“Hmm?” Wei Wuxian cocks his head, eyebrows raising. When Lan Wangji flicks his eyes to his mouth, he can see the scabs where his teeth broke through the skin, the faded smear of bruises from where he sucked too roughly on his lips. He glances back away, past the shell of Wei Wuxian’s ear, catching the pleased narrow of Wei Wuxian’s eyes as he observes him indulgently. “Eat,” he answers, then, “but quickly. I’ve missed a lot and you won’t tell me a word of it all until the meal is done.”

Of course, Wei Wuxian dares to sound inconvenienced by this. Lan Wangji does not mind it at all, but he cannot leave well enough alone, cannot let that be the note of their morning, so he presses on. “And then?”

Wei Wuxian does straighten his back, at that. “And then?” he prompts, and though his tone is appropriately questioning, the peer of his eyes is too keen, too knowing.

“After,” says Lan Wangji. He does not clarify further. He is certain, with Wei Wuxian, that there is no need to.

Wei Wuxian takes a half step forward, body turned towards Lan Wangji, before the two of them fall into a matching stride as they descend the stairs. “I’m not sure,” Wei Wuxian replies, after a moment’s consideration, “but as long as you’re close by, I don’t think it matters so much, do you?”

The lightness in his voice is a far cry from the gravity of his answer, to say nothing of the weight it lifts from Lan Wangji’s shoulders. “It does not,” says Lan Wangji, soft.

Lan Wangji feels the backs of Wei Wuxian’s knuckles brush against his elbow, and does not spare him a glance as he points it out from its tidy tuck against his ribs, making space for Wei Wuxian to slip his hand into place. If his fingers squeeze just shy of too hard when they loop into the crook of Lan Wangji’s elbow, neither of them speak of it.

Nor do they speak of this one conversation — this vow — ever again. There is no need to give words where none are needed, after all; no duty to speak what should rightly remain unspoken.