Wangji, Wangji

by WangjiBall

Summary:

According to Wei Wuxian, there is a dreadful thing at the heart of every nightmare.

But at the center of his own, Lan Wangji discovers a bold, bandaged version of himself -- and he doesn't seem dreadful at all.

“Your face is all screwed up when you sleep these days, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian said. “Ah, looking at you, I would swear we were fifteen again.” He smiled at Lan Wangji as he stretched into the early morning.

“Nightmares,” Lan Wangji said as he sat up, ears warming with the admission. It wasn’t only nightmares plaguing him but he left it unsaid.

“Ah,” Wei Wuxian said with a yawn. “Y’know, the incense burner is good for that. You go in, see what’s biting at you. I’ve done it a few times.”

Lan Wangji was not privy to any of these times. He was curious about what might have needled at Wei Wuxian enough to warrant intervention but Wei Wuxian did not clarify and so Lan Wangji did not question him.

Wei Wuxian liked to use the incense burner to pick and tease. He’d visit the teenage Lan Wangji and mess around until the boy shouted or threw him out of a window. He’d visit the Yiling Patriarch and square off with him for fun. On occasion he liked to spar or fuck (or spar and fuck) some version or other of Lan Wangji. The incense burner was a tool of playful exploration for him.

It simply had not occurred to Lan Wangji that Wei Wuxian might have used it for anything other than fun. Wei Wuxian certainly hadn’t mentioned it.

“I will think about it,” Lan Wangji said and got up to get ready for the day.

Lan Wangji’s bad dreams were centered on the Jingshi as it had been during his years of isolation. There were no flowers on its veranda and the life Wei Wuxian had breathed into the place was absent leaving a foreboding, haunted building in its place. The place was eerie. It pulled Lan Wangji to it and bade him enter. It asked him wordlessly to remember things.

If its pull stayed in the night, Lan Wangji might have pushed through it. A dream could only affect as much as it was allowed to. But the Jingshi of his dreams was determined to possess him: the soap scent of Wei Wuxian’s hair going medicinal in one moment; the clammy feeling of bandages he had not worn in decades overcoming him when he stood in the Cold Springs.

He sputtered over a cup of tea for the bitter soup it had become.

He kept the waking aspect away from Wei Wuxian but did tell him he had thought about his suggestion for nightmares. Wei Wuxian nodded and got the incense burner out of its chest and lit it carefully. He told Lan Wangji to picture exactly what his dream had shown him — every little detail he could remember. The goal was to land in the right place in the dreamscape and from there, find the source of Lan Wangji’s trouble.

Lan Wangji lay on his back and thought as he was told. The spice of incense tickled his nose and lulled him quickly into sleep.

According to Wei Wuxian, there was a dreadful thing at the heart of every nightmare — an object or a place or even a person. You will know it when you feel it, Wei Wuxian had told him, there is no mistaking it. Whatever it is, that dreadful thing, that is what is biting you.

Lan Wangji did not feel any dread when he opened his eyes in a dream. The Jingshi was there before him as conjured but it did not make him feel unsettled. It did not seem haunted, it asked no questions, this was simply the Jingshi as it had been: inanimate and stately.

It might have been that Lan Wangji had summoned the wrong dreamscape. He’d followed Wei Wuxian’s instructions exactly but dreams were not exact things to begin with. There was no dread here and no questions. Only calm and banality which was hardly a recipe for haunting.

This was not the Jingshi of his nightmares, Lan Wangji concluded.

He stepped up to the door of the residence and walked in, anyway. Curious.

Inside, the light that came in through the windows was soft and inviting. Sandalwood and rice mortar and wood oil made a homey bouquet in the tidy space. To speak of its tidiness, the room was so bare and white that it seemed empty compared to the version Lan Wangji called home.

There were no ghosts or corpses here. The dread Lan Wangji was feeling for was absent.

But there was someone very like a ghost there. And a feeling of foreboding that was very much like dread.

This was the Jingshi of Lan Wangji’s isolation, after all. There would be a younger version of himself lying in a stupor on his belly in the second room of the residence. It depended on when in Lan Wangji’s seclusion this dream had taken him to but the version of him in the second room would be anywhere between immobile with pain and deep in the long rests Lan Wangji would succumb to in the final days of his healing.

It was tempting to leave. To not witness suffering he had already endured.

But how deep under the him in the back room must be, Lan Wangji thought. How full of water that only came out in blood.

Lan Wangji gathered up a cool cloth and gathered up porcelain for the tea tray and gathered up his guqin and salve and medicine for sleeping. He dug through his sleeves looking for the wax wrapped candy he knew a younger him would enjoy without admission. Then he made his way slowly into the second room and paused at the scene before him.

It was early in his seclusion, after all.

The very first weeks had seen his bandages thick and his wounds angry; the figure before him looked wretched and wrapped in the exact way he had been.

The salve of the early days had been thick and odorous and now made its presence known loudly and pungently. It was concentrated on the sprawled out form in the bed that was breathing so slowly it might have been completely still.

If it wasn’t the breathing — slow in the way pain had taught Lan Wangji to breathe in the first weeks — or the bandages or the location it would be the faint spiritual power leaking off of the prone figure that would identify it to Lan Wangji. Lan Wangji had been too weak in the weeks after his whipping to even hold his power to his person. It was undignified of him and his uncle had been stern with him about it (even the youngest juniors can hold their power to their person!), but there was nothing to be done: a freshly whipped Lan Wangji leaked spiritual power uncontrollably.

Beyond any doubt, the form on the bed was the younger Lan Wangji in the flesh.

Lan Wangji had seen many versions of himself using the incense burner: younger, older, frailer, stronger. He had sparred with some and been put off by others. He had watched Wei Wuxian tease at more than he could count.

But he had never encountered one that made him pause so completely.

He thought it might have been dread — the dread — but it wasn’t that; Wei Wuxian said that that dreadful feeling was impossible not to know.

But Lan Wangji did not know what to call this. He knew all the flavors of sorrow and this tasted like none of them. It was not possible for it to be pity.

Whatever it was, it was alien to him in a way that made him want to leave but he crossed the room and put the tea tray down instead.

The younger him was laid so that he faced the far wall of the Jingshi — a blessing, Lan Wangji thought, for how strange it might be to see his own face in pain.

Lan Wangji stood still next to the bed until he was sure that this younger version of himself was deep in rest before kneeling down beside him.

He got to work pulling his younger self’s hair back over his shoulder before wrapping it neatly into a bun. The hair itself was tangled and in need of combing but Lan Wangji did not think he could do so without rousing the form before him. He was careful not to touch skin as he laid a cool cloth over that jade neck the way Lan Wangji had come to appreciate during his own recovery.

Lan Wangji hardly had time to assess the bandages on the younger him’s back when a hand grabbed his wrist and killing intent filled the room.

“Do not touch me,” the younger him’s voice came in a hiss. He turned his head toward Lan Wangji and squinted as if the effort pained him. His brow furrowed when he got a good look at Lan Wangji.

Some dream versions of Lan Wangji would assume that he was Lan Xichen. Some, that he had been cursed into their time. This one, searching all over Lan Wangji’s person and grabbing his wrist tighter the whole time, did not seem to know what to make of him at all.

“What are you?” His voice was demanding this time and laced with unease. When Lan Wangji’s gaze met those narrowed light eyes, he understood why people often remarked that he looked severe.

“Dreaming,” Lan Wangji said and gently pried his wrist from the younger him’s strong grip.

The younger him (who had to be awfully sore and half-awake at best) made a hand seal and beckoned the sword Bichen to his hand. Before it could reach him, Lan Wangji put out his own hand and caught it by the hilt.

It looked as his own Bichen did: a noble, peerless weapon that all but glowed in its perfection. As flawless as his own, it only missed the longer tassel that Lan Qiren had given him several years into his seclusion.

Lan Wangji didn’t have time to reminisce about it as his younger self attempted to use a body locking spell on him — a fruitless effort that Lan Wangji easily parried.

The younger him looked incensed. Lan Wangji set out tea calmly.

Typically, he and Wei Wuxian didn’t do much in the way of introductions when they used the incense burner. They more or less immersed themselves into whatever scene was before them, waving away questions and moving as one might any dream.

But this felt different. The floor beneath him was hard and solid. The startled breath of the young man before him filled the room with an alarming air.

“What would you have me call you?” Lan Wangji said. “We cannot use the same name.”

He’d thought of calling the younger him ‘Lan Zhan’ but thought better of it. His own family didn’t call him Lan Zhan, only one person in the world did and the Lan Wangji before him would still be reeling over that person deeply. ‘A-zhan,’ as he’d been called when he was very small, was out, too: there is no way the man before him would be amenable to such a darling address.

The two fell into an assessing silence. Lan Wangji let his eyes roam the bandages on Wangji’s back. He felt the younger him’s unsettling gaze trace over his robes, the embroidery of the overcoat that marked him as an elder disciple, the subtle and more obvious differences between them.

“You are still called Hanguang-jun?” the younger him asked.

It wasn’t only a whipping that had been considered for his punishment but the taking of his position in the clan, the sealing of his core, his ejection from the clan entirely. In the quiet hours he spent in the Jingshi, Lan Wangji would sometimes lay awake wondering what he might be called someday. Would he still be worthy of his sobriquet? Would he be reduced to some name of mockery and shame?

But in the end, he was still Hanguang-jun.

“Yes,” Lan Wangji answered and Wangji let out a near imperceptible sigh.

“Then I will call you Hanguang-jun,” the younger him said. He sounded wary but pleased. “Shufu and xiongzhang call me Wangji.”

“Then I will call you Wangji,” Lan Wangji said.

They were the same height and looked to be the same age regardless of the years between them. They were both lean with a width to them. To a layperson, they would appear to be two copies of the same person; but a cultivator would notice key things like Lan Wangji’s unnatural stillness, honed over years of cultivation, and the way he moved completely silently. His movements had a sureness and fluidity to them. He gave the appearance of an immortal whereas Wangji before him possessed the grace of a great — but still mortal — cultivator.

Their eyes met and neither of them spoke. They did not look away, either.

Lan Wangji was used to Wei Wuxian filling in the silences between them. He was used to being led into conversations, not starting them. But between the two of them present, Lan Wangji most certainly spoke the most on a daily basis — and besides, he was the intruder here — so he cleared his throat and began.

“There is an incense burner,” Lan Wangji said and offered a short explanation on how the burner worked. What it was, how he had come to stand in Wangji’s Jingshi. He left out where exactly to find it, though why he did this he could not say.

“But why did you come here?” Wangji asked, curiosity working to dull the sharpness of his tone.

“I dreamed of it,” Lan Wangji said. “In a nightmare. I am looking for a dreadful thing.”

“Mn,” Wangji said with a contemplative look on his face. “I think perhaps I am the only dreadful thing around here.”

Lan Wangji tamped down a small smile.

“It is not you,” he said. “I do not think it is here at all, what I am looking for.”

“You will leave, then?” Wangji said.

“Yes.”

“Will you be back?”

“I do not think so,” he said. There wasn’t reason to seek out what wasn’t there and this wasn’t a place nor time he and Wei Wuxian would adventure to together. It was somber here and heavy with hurt and healing — all things he and Wei Wuxian hardly spoke between them let alone made a point to explore in the dreamscape.

“Mn,” Wangji said and his eyes closed and his breathing steadied.

Lan Wangji settled the guqin Wangji in his lap and played a lengthy song of restoration. Wangji’s features softened in his sleep.

Before he left, Lan Wangji straightened the cloth across Wangji’s neck and set out the tea tray on the table closest to the bed. He allowed himself a last look at the bandages on Wangji’s back: neat and pinkened and holding in wounds that would not close for a very long time. He hoped that Wangji’s recovery would be easier than his own had been, if such a thing were possible.

He turned and headed to the front room and was about to step out of Wangji’s Jingshi and into his own waking life when Wangji’s voice sounded from the back room.

“Did the pain stop?” he asked and there was nothing sharp in his voice.

“Mostly.” Lan Wangji surprised himself with his answer. He’d never admitted it out loud that sometimes the scars were tight in the morning or that rainy weather could make them achy. To the world, he had healed completely and entirely, as well as he’d been prior to his punishment. His wounds were cosmetic, a reminder of the past, not a breathing relic of it.

But Wangji was himself. There was no harm in being honest. And so he was.

“I am sorry,” Wangji called, even softer than his question.

Admitting it felt surprising; to hear it acknowledged as a thing to be pitied in a voice that both was and wasn’t his own made Lan Wangji uneasy.

He said nothing. He only turned and made his way very quickly out of the door.

———

Lan Wangji opened his eyes in his own bed and stared at the simple ceiling above him. There was no medicinal smell here and there was no younger copy of himself. This was home as he knew it.

For Lan Wangji, the dreamscape proved a nice place to cultivate. He was always happy to join Wei Wuxian on his nocturnal adventures should he wish. They’d spy on their junior-aged selves and splash around in the Patriarch’s blood pool. But neither of them ever visited the Jingshi of his isolation. Neither of them breached its quiet and saw the wounds on Wangji’s back. They simply hadn’t thought to.

Wangji lay now lonely and pained. He was in for much more loneliness and much more pain. It was a journey Lan Wangji would not have wished an enemy go on and yet there was Wangji right at the start of it.

But it had only been a dream, Lan Wangji thought. Wangji was not in need. There was nothing to be worried over, he knew.

Lan Wangji’s face didn’t say as much, though: he was pulled out of his early morning thoughts by a thumb rubbing between his eyebrows.

“Lan-er-gege,” Wei Wuxian sing-songed at him as he worked. “You are so cute when you frown.”

Lan Wangji reached up to grab Wei Wuxian’s hand away from his face. He kissed Wei Wuxian’s wrist and pulled him up to lay on his chest. Wei Wuxian gave a contented sigh and tapped his fingers on Lan Wangji’s arm.

“Sometimes it takes a few tries,” Wei Wuxian said.

Lan Wangji wanted to know what had taken Wei Wuxian more than one dream visit to get through. What nightmare had he been navigating alone? When had it even occurred?

But he did not ask. Wei Wuxian did not ask details about his own dream and so he offered Wei Wuxian the privacy of his own. He also did not mention the way his dreams had bled into his waking life.

He did not put worry into Wei Wuxian’s lap. It was an unspoken mercy that they offered one another.

It was a form of grace, surely, but it did sometimes feel as if a wall sat between them: they did not speak of the ugly things. Wei Wuxian did not talk about his death. Lan Wangji did not speak of getting whipped. Wei Wuxian’s first time in the Burial Mounds was as mysterious to Lan Wangji as his own years in the jingshi remained to Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian had traced the Wen symbol on his chest a thousand times and yet to this day, he did not know of the night it happened. “I was lost to drink,” was all Lan Wangji offered and Wei Wuxian had not asked any more.

Surely, it was too late — but Lan Wangji found himself wishing for the first time that Wei Wuxian had asked more. That he had peeked his head over the wall and pried Lan Wangji’s secrets out of him. That it could be like when they were fifteen and Wei Wuxian would try to wheedle all he could out of Lan Wangji. Lan Wangji’s secrets were precious things for Wei Wuxian to dig at back then; now they sat undisturbed, their sanctity respected.

They did disturb him, though. Day after day, the Jingshi of his nightmares called and day after day, Lan Wangji ignored it. He ignored the ghastly place that featured in his dreams and the strange taste his tea would take. There was nothing in the Jingshi for him, he knew, only Wangji who he would not disturb.

He did think of him, though. He thought of Wangji and hoped that his healing was going well. That he was not too lonely. That he, like Lan Wangji, would endure.

A death smell invaded Lan Wangji’s senses a few days after he met Wangji.

It was not just any death smell — he was a cultivator who had gone on countless Night Hunts. He had fought a hundred battles during the war. He knew what the dead smelled like and this — there was only one place he had ever known to smell like death in this way.

He tried to push the thought out of his mind. It was unpleasant to think of certain times of his life.

Determined to not think of it, Lan Wangji set toward the rabbit field for a break under the trees. He let one of the fatter rabbits climb into his lap and patted absently at it.

He could feel shards of bone sticking him as he ran a hand through its fur.

Human bones.

Human bones that lay even now in a mass grave.

Lan Wangji could not ignore the call of this nightmare the way he had that of the Jingshi.

That night he lay in bed resigned to the knowledge of where his mind would take him. Wei Wuxian curled into his side, a sleepy picture of peace, as Lan Wangji thought.

There would be an unsettling feeling, he knew. It would be ghastly and beckoning. He would have no control of his senses or ability to run.

He wished then that he could just use the incense burner to explore whatever awaited him. He was quite sure he knew where to go. But he needed something exact to seek out — a time to go to, a nightmare image to focus on when he sought to conquer the dreamscape.

So Lan Wangji closed his eyes and opened them into a nightmare of the Burial Mounds.

The mass grave was as it once had been: burnt, dead, and barren. This was how the place had looked when he’d trekked to its wicked ground so many years ago.

The smell of rotted flesh was so pungent in the dream that Lan Wangji’s nose turned up. An uneasy feeling settled all over the empty place. Skeletal hands burst from the ground itself and grabbed at Lan Wangji’s ankles and his calves, clawed at the white of his robes and stained them grave-black. A single picture flashed in his mind then — Wangji’s screwed up in anguish.

Lan Wangji woke with a start. Wei Wuxian was still beside him warm and inviting but all Lan Wangji could feel was the cold and the desolation of the place he had just been. He got out of bed as quickly as he could and prepared the incense burner.

Wangji’s Wei Ying had died, he was sure. The siege had been successful and Wangji’s Wei Ying would be dead and Wangji would be on a ground made of corpses, reeling.

It hadn’t even crossed Lan Wangji’s mind to explore the dream for the source of his own nightmare. Only that he needed to go and see if Wangji was okay. He moved quickly and lit the burner and lay back in bed.

Wei Wuxian murmured in his sleep and moved over to cuddle. Lan Wangji wrapped his arm around him and thought of the Burial Mounds as he’d just seen them and settled back in to sleep.

He opened his eyes in a dream.

Lan Wangji had been right.

Wangji was in the Burial Mounds. His Wei Ying had died.

Wangji was on all fours in the dirt, fingers gripped around bones and dead earth. His head was down and Lan Wangji could not see his face. Silent and still, pink blossoming on his robes as his back wept with him, a man defeated.

Again, Lan Wangji felt something foreign and unsettling when he looked at Wangji. His spiritual power was closer to his person than it had been but even if it wasn’t Lan Wangji did not think it was the source of the strange and unnameable thing sat between them.

Lan Wangji pushed the thought out of his mind and gave his full attention to Wangji.

This time Wangji looked truly pitiful. Ribbon askew, hands dirtied, back wet with salve and fluid and blood. He looked wretched and Lan Wangji could not find words to offer him. Comforting was not his forte. It had been Lan Xichen who had rocked and doted on Lan Sizhui when he was very young. To this day, Lan Wangji would not have known where to begin.

He was thinking of Wei Wuxian and how he would know exactly what to say here when he heard a cracked, fevered whine sound from the direction of a small copse of black trees.

How could it have slipped his mind?

A-Yuan needed to be tended to.

Wangji remained still as if he hadn’t heard anything. He was frozen on the corpse-ground as if he had become part of it. Lan Wangji was uneasy to think of how long he had stayed like that in his own time. How long had A-Yuan cried before he came to himself enough to find and tend to him?

Lan Wangji did not wait for Wangji. He made his way over to a circle of trees nearby that had been burned thin and black. A single one had not been fully destroyed and it was in the hollow of this one that he’d found A-Yuan all those years ago.

A-Yuan was nestled exactly where he had been. Lan Wangji reached in and took the boy gently into his arms. He pushed aside the strangeness he felt at redoing what he had done so long ago — then frantic now calm — and assessed the half-awake toddler.

A-Yuan was small and dirty and his skin was hot to the touch. Lan Wangji remembered feeling his fever the first time and feeling relieved because it meant he did not have corpse rot. That had quickly turned to panic because back then, he did not know what to do with a fevered child.

Now, he reached into his sleeve for a bottle of herbal medicine and coaxed a few drops into A-Yuan’s mouth.

Lan Wangji cradled the boy close to him and made his way over to Wangji who remained frozen and on all fours on the ground.

“Wangji,” he said in the same voice he used to correct juniors. He thought for a moment that he sounded exactly like his uncle.

Wangji’s shoulders and back tensed up as if he thought the same. His fingers gripped tighter into the dirt. His head dipped even lower. There was something animal about him, cornered and weighing options, that begged not to be disturbed.

Wangji was repeating mantras in his head, Lan Wangji was sure, forcing chaos into quiet, unbecoming behavior into something presentable, settling the animal he had become. Lan Wangji turned and gave A-yuan another look over to give Wangji time to collect himself.

In a short while, Wangji stood and came to stand in front of Lan Wangji. He looked dignified and wretched.

“Hanguang-jun,” he said with a raspy voice and a stilted bow. He lifted his head and looked at the toddler in Lan Wangji’s arms with widened eyes. His breath hitched. He looked as if he wanted to say something, to speak or to shout or to sigh loudly in relief, to cry out tearfully, something. He composed himself in the same moment and Lan Wangji wished that he could tell Wangji to lose his restraint for just a moment — but how many times had Lan Xichen said the same to him? It had never worked. So he said nothing.

Wangji was transfixed on A-Yuan.

Lan Wangji could not remember his own thoughts upon seeing the boy when it was his turn to stare into the dead ground of this empty place. He had been full of grief and failure and pain and guilt at the time. The boy was an anomaly he hadn’t planned for, living proof that what Wei Wuxian had built in this mass grave had been real. He could not remember his thoughts and perhaps it was because there had been too many.

Wangji looked at Lan Wangji and then at A-yuan and then back at Lan Wangji seeking permission for something.

Lan Wangji lifted his arms to Wangji. Wangji grabbed A-yuan inelegantly.

Wangji held A-Yuan tightly and then turned so that his back was to Lan Wangji and his head lowered.

Now was the time to go.

Lan Wangji had made his way back to Gusu alone and so would Wangji. A-yuan would be safe. Wangji would get drunk and burn himself. Time would pass as it would.

Wangji would be fine. A-yuan would be fine. Lan Wangji did not need to stay to supervise and guide.

But he stayed anyway. And he guided Wangji to sit on the ground and he sat beside him.

Wangji held A-Yuan in his arms and shivered. Lan Wangji thought of holding the two of them but stopped himself before he did: Wangji was not used to touch and he himself was not used to comforting. So they sat there on the dead ground side by side identical to the untrained eye, quiet and still.

The bones here did not move to grab at them. There was nothing singularly dreadful about the place. There was silence and the presence of death and the weight of what had happened here.

“Wei Ying is gone, Hanguang-jun,” Wangji said after a long while. His deep voice was almost lost on the wind for how lowly he spoke.

“He is,” Lan Wangji said.

“A-yuan is here,” Wangji said.

“He is.”

A-yuan stirred and Wangji pulled him closer to him naturally. He patted his back and Lan Wangji wondered if he had been so easy with the boy in his own time.

Getting A-yuan back to Gusu had not been a pleasant adventure. Nothing about the night had been pleasant. Lan Wangji had been dizzy with pain the whole time, A-Yuan had been feverish, Lan Wangji had been fighting to stay awake after days searching a dead mountain. His heart had been so heavy it was a wonder he could stand upright.

Wangji was not in for a pleasant night. The least Lan Wangji could do is make it so that he wouldn’t have to fly back alone with a toddler held to his chest. He pulled Wangji’s Bichen from his waist and arranged it next to his own sword and put Wangji and himself and A-yuan all on the two of them and set off for Gusu.

The first night, Lan Wangji had laid A-Yuan in his own bed and himself on a cot next to it. He had let his mind spin thinking of how dirty the bed would be, how dirty his robes must be, how the stench of death and rotten bodies would not leave his nose. He managed to lower A-Yuan’s fever with a brush of spiritual power. He tried all he could not to think of Wei Wuxian. A-Yuan had woken up at a point and screamed so loud and so long that it was all Lan Wangji could do not to join him as he rocked the toddler and shushed him and kissed the top of his head same as his own mother had done to him. A-Yuan wailed and Lan Wangji paced the Jingshi and neither stopped for a long time. Lan Xichen had knocked on the door then.

“You should have brought him to me first thing, Wangji,” he had chastised him, pulling the wailing child into his own arms. “How are your injuries?”

Lan Xichen had the healer sent in to bathe him and re-dress Lan Wangji’s wounds. Once the healer was gone, Lan Wangji had left the Cloud Recesses in the dead of the night and made his way to Caiyi Town. He’d bought a flute and then lost it and then yelled at Lan Xichen about losing it. He bought Emperor’s Smile wine and drank it on the flight back home.

The rest of the night had been recounted to him. Wangji’s would be recounted to him, too. Lan Wangji felt a wave of sympathy as he flew the trio into the Cloud Recesses and settled Wangji into the Jingshi.

He pulled Wangji out of his outer robes while Wangji stood quietly and cradled A-Yuan in his arms. He pulled the guan and the pins from his hair so that Wangji would find it easier to sleep. He looked around for fresh bandages to replace the most soaked ones on his back — perhaps he could coax Wangji into changing them before he settled in for the night. He got hot water and small cups for tea.

As he made his way around the room, Wangji did not move at all. He only stared ahead and looked lost. His eyes were red and so glossy; he was in no state to watch over a child.

So Lan Wangji gathered up A-Yuan and rocked him until he was deep in sleep then wrapped him up and settled the boy into a large basket. He slipped out of the Jingshi and made his way to the Hanshi where he laid the basket right by the door and knocked loud enough to wake Lan Xichen. He scribbled out a note so that Lan Xichen would leave Wangji be until the morning then returned to the Jingshi.

Wangji had finally moved and was sprawled on the bed. He was half awake and paid Lan Wangji no mind.

He would fly all the way to Caiyi Town in this state if Lan Wangji didn’t do something.

Lan Wangji could not bear to think of Wangji leaving the Cloud Recesses like this so he stepped out of Wangji’s Jingshi and into one of his own. He crossed into the back room of that Jingshi and reached under the floorboards and pulled out two jugs of Emperor’s Smile. He rifled through Wei Wuxian’s things and gathered a poorly made bamboo flute.

He left one dream house for another and walked back into Wangji’s Jingshi and placed his spoils on the low table in the center of the main room.

Lan Wangji did not wish to watch the next scene play out. He did not wish to see what he only knew secondhand. He stood in the doorway of Wangji’s room watching him breathe and wishing there was something he could do to make it easier.

He wished he could comfort Wangji with the knowledge that Wei Wuxian would come back to him someday but the pain Wangji was in could not be soothed even if Wei Wuxian materialized in front of him — Lan Wangji knew this. Knowledge like that would do nothing for him. Wangji’s was water that had to come out in the action of healing, not only from blood wrung from punishment.

So he turned away from watching Wangji and made his way across the front room and once again out of the door of Wangji’s Jingshi.

When Lan Wangji opened his eyes, he pulled Wei Wuxian very close to him. He buried his head in Wei Wuxian’s hair and went very still and he did not cry.

Throughout the day, Wangji’s face remained at the front of Lan Wangji’s mind. Empty. Pitiful. Lost.

He wondered what Wei Wuxian would think to see it. What he might think of the blood-wet bandages. What he thought now of Lan Wangji’s own scars given what little he knew of their forming.

But the past was a settled thing between Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian. Its dirt required no overturning to bloom the flowers it did. The bleak memories they did not share, the shadows that lingered in their minds kept to themselves, contributed to the sanctuary they found in one another.

Lan Wangji could not say what it was for Wei Wuxian but for himself it was a pleasant way to be.

The past and its vestiges were bloody. The skin they touched in bed was clean. What Wei Wuxian thought of his scars had no bearing on the life they had built together and it was peaceful this way.

——

Lan Wangji could not stop thinking of Wangji. Sprawled on the bed, defeated and alone with no company in the world that could understand him.

He imagined Wangji’s skin searing the way his own had. The way lying on both his back and his belly must be terrible now. He thought of how Wangji would not know how to cry.

It was irrational, because of course Wangji would be alright — but he knew where his thoughts had been in the nights after Wei Wuxian died. How he’d wished that the Wen brand could burn all the way through him. Take him to a place where he did not have to feel at all.

Wangji would be okay. Lan Wangji knew this.

And yet, he did not wait until he had a nightmare this time. He was not seeking out a nightmare at all, in fact. Lan Wangji prepared the burner with urgent hands.

He thought deeply of Wangji’s Jingshi and willed himself into sleep.

Wangji was lying on his belly, same as he had been the first time Lan Wangji saw him. His bandages looked fresh. His face was serene.

Relief washed over Lan Wangji. A day’s worth of tension flooded out of him. The night he’d brought A-Yuan back had been the hardest of his isolation days. Wangji was okay. Wangji would be okay. He’d survived the worst.

Without speaking, Lan Wangji made his way about the Jingshi, filling a bowl with water, wringing out a cool cloth, finding a pin to pull Wangji’s hair up with.

In the corner of the room was a small prod with the Wen sun insignia on it — the same brand he himself had used all that time ago. The wine jars he had left on the table were missing.

He imagined that Wangji must be in a lot of pain to be laying on freshly branded skin same as he had — but the whole act had been a shameful memory for Lan Wangji in the months just after and so he offered Wangji the dignity of not asking after it. He only pinned Wangji’s hair up and placed a cloth against his neck and set out tea within reach of the bed.

Wangji might not have seen Lan Wangji at all for how he did not acknowledge him. It was only the way he braced when Lan Wangji’s fingers grazed his scalp that let Lan Wangji know he was even aware of his presence.

Lan Wangji did not take offense to it. He had been much the same when it had been him in Wangji’s place: there and not there, unresponsive, dazed.

But alive. And healing. Same as Wangji was now alive and healing.

But it did not feel like enough the way it had for him. Lan Wangji sat beside Wangji’s bed and took his hand into his own and Wangji didn’t brace this time at his touch.

The Jingshi had been so empty in those years. Lan Wangji hadn’t minded back then. He did not mind it much when he thought of his isolation in the waking world. He had always been a solitary man to begin with. But seeing Wangji here playing out the stretch of time that Lan Wangji had spent in this place, all alone and stagnant with no sparring and no role on the discipline committee and no one but the healers and his closest family as clipped company — to see Wangji breathing and staring into the nothing of it all made it realer than it had been when it was his turn.

He thought about holding Wangji, same as he had thought in the Burial Mounds. Of saying, I know. with his arms since he could not find the words with his mouth. Of comforting, no matter how inept he felt he would be at it.

But he didn’t hold him. He squeezed Wangji’s hand instead as he thought.

Neither he nor Wangji spoke for a long time.

And then Wangji let out a breath.

“He did not wish to come here,” he said in the deep voice they shared. “And I respected that wish.”

Lan Wangji heard the unspoken, I should have dragged him here. I should have hidden him away. My grace failed him. He felt it in the pit of his stomach, an ugly feeling. Wei Wuxian’s suffering, his own suffering, the lives of his clansmen lost — he thought of his father, how careful Lan Wangji had always been to walk away from the man’s example. But perhaps, in this one way, he had made his strides too long.

He surprised himself in his thoughts. He did not like that they surfaced, that here in this dream they surfaced poured out of a skin he had not worn in decades.

“I do not know if it hurt him,” Wangji said and broke him from his reverie. “There was not a soul there to ask.”

Lan Wangji swallowed and clenched the fist in his lap. It was something he did not know himself. It was something that sat beyond the sacred wall between he and Wei Wuxian. It was an unspoken thing he had taught himself not to need answers about.

He found as Wangji spoke that he did want to know, though. He hoped it had not been very painful. That Wei Wuxian’s suffering had not been protracted in any way. That between them, Lan Wangji had hurt the most in the end.

Lan Wangji had nothing to offer and so he said nothing and when Wangji’s eyes were fully closed and his breath steadied, he let go of his hand and got up and turned toward the door.

“Thank you.” Wangji’s voice followed him in a whisper.

Lan Wangji did not turn back, only said, “I will return,” and left.

—

Again, Lan Wangji did not wait for a nightmare or its waking vestiges to guide him. He did not go seeking answers or a sense of dread. He simply lit the incense burner and returned to Wangji as he said he would.

This time, music floated out of the Jingshi. Notes of an old composition came to him heavy and melodic. There was a precision to the sound that was hard to master but worth the effort it took to do so. This was skill and a respect for the craft at work.

Lan Wangji liked hearing Wangji play.

He stepped inside and then into the second room of Wangji’s Jingshi to find a half-dressed Wangji seated at his guqin. His wounds had healed enough for him to sit up comfortably but he still had thick wraps plastered all across his back.

He started up a new song then, Wangxian. Lan Wangji knew without asking that Wangji’s mind was elsewhere, his gaze low and his head tilted as much as he ever allow it to be.

Lan Wangji remembered being like this. His brother and the healers and his uncle in turn saying things like, “Wangji, you must think of other things.” “Hanguang-jun, you should be happy. A-Yuan is doing very well in his studies. He takes after you already.” “Wangji, you are acting like your father.”

Lan Xichen would bring A-Yuan by as if the timid little boy could ameliorate the haze Lan Wangji found himself in. Those times, Lan Wangji would busy himself as the little Wen boy poked nervously around the tidy Jingshi. Lan Xichen would smile as if he had done good and Lan Wangji would curse and then hate himself for cursing his brother.

So Lan Wangji did not speak to Wangji. He did not implore him out of the space that brought the notes of Wangxian to his fingers that day. He only sat down beside the younger version of himself and pulled his own guqin from his back. He laid the instrument out in front of him and plucked alongside Wangji. Identical tones made a haunting melody in the tidy space, jade fingers all plucking slender and light across the strings.

Wangji’s spiritual power was still leaking. It was less than it had been in the burial mounds but still there. His playing amplified the effect but he did not seem to make an effort to contain or apologize for it. Lan Wangji was pleased — he had always been so conscious of his own power back then, of being polite even as he healed, that it was nice to see Wangji broken out of that even if it was just in front of himself.

To speak of polite: it wasn’t polite to do in front of others unless playing a spiritual song — but Wangji was himself and so not an other. And even if he were, Lan Wangji would not have stopped himself from letting pricks of spiritual power into his playing. It was healing and calming and Wangji was so in need of healing and calming so Lan Wangji let the soft flow of his own spiritual power emanate as he played. Wangji stopped for a beat — surprise, perhaps, or indignation — before resuming his own playing.

They played like that a while, Wangji’s unbridled spiritual energy brushing up against Lan Wangji, Lan Wangji channeling his own power into his music, jade fingers in sync over strings. Still as statues except for their moving hands. It was a lovely scene — divine, some would say.

When they came to the last notes, Lan Wangji’s guqin trilled out with the sweetness of a sure, realized love. Wangji’s rang with a forlorn sound, beautiful and broken.

The Jingshi fell quiet. Lan Wangji made work of wrapping his guqin and putting it away.

He finally took a good look at Wangji and was taken aback. The whole expanse of Wangji’s bared chest was smooth, pale as the jade his name came from. There was no Wen brand marking him at all.

“What is it?” Wangji asked, light eyes finding Lan Wangji’s own.

“You are not branded,” Lan Wangji said.

“Branded?” Wangji said. “Are things different in your time?” The words came out tense and Wangji had tightened all over.

“It was I who did it,” Lan Wangji said quickly. “Not the Wen. They have not won in my time.”

Wangji loosened just a bit. He pinned Lan Wangji with his eyes so Lan Wangji kept speaking.

“The night I flew back from the Burial Mounds,” he started and found it difficult to continue. The words felt clunky in his mouth. “I could not settle A-Yuan in alone. And the wounds — “ he could not help but to look pointedly at Wangji’s middle and shoulders where some of the bandages could be seen. “ — had reopened. I had been irresponsible and had not slept nor eaten for days.”

Wangji swallowed.

“I left the Cloud Recesses in the night and found wine in Caiyi Town. In the morning, I found that I burned the Wen sun into my skin.”

Wangji turned toward the metal prod in his room propped up on the wall near the door.

“I did think of going into town that night. For wine,” Wangji admitted. “But there were already jugs here so I stayed.” His brow wrinkled. “You left them for me?”

Lan Wangji nodded.

“I did not drink them. I went to the library and found this — “ he gestured to the prod. “ — among the artifacts there.”

Wangji looked down at his own lap.

“It reminded me of him,” he said with a frankness Lan Wangji was not sure he possessed even now. “I did press it to my skin. If it had been hot it would have burned me,” Wangji said.

Lan Wangji could not help himself from looking at Wangji’s chest again. He had meant to save Wangji a brokenhearted trip into town. To make what he could of his night easier. He did not predict that such an act might leave Wangji’s skin unblemished entirely.

His own brand itched under his robes. What would have stopped him back then?

“I would like to see it,” Wangji’s voice cut into his thoughts.

They assessed one another. Wangji who looked curious and Lan Wangji who was taken by that curiosity.

“The brand. Your chest,” Wangji said slowly.

Lan Wangji’s gaze followed Wangji’s down to his own chest. The immaculate white layers that hid him away from the world.

But he bared himself in the cold springs. Wei Wuxian saw him naked every day. The two of them had ventured into salacious imaginings more times than could be counted.

It should be no large thing to show this version of himself the scar he’d made.

“Mn,” Lan Wangji agreed with his head still down, looking at his robes.

He stood slowly and Wangji stood with him.

Lan Wangji touched his belt a moment before pausing. The tips of his fingers felt strange. Anticipatory, even. They were the same person, yes, but preparing to bear the scar felt exposing after all, like the belly of a prey animal offered up to a predator.

Wangji did have the sharp eyes of a predator. Lan Wangji could feel them burning into his chest even as he thought.

After a moment, Lan Wangji worked at untying his belt. He shrugged off his most outer layer of robes, white and stiff, and folded it to lay on the bed. He undid a layer of his inner robes and then another and another until he stood in a single open robe with his broad chest exposed.

Wangji stood before him with widened eyes and a student’s scrutiny. He looked at the healed but unmissable mark just under Lan Wangji’s collarbone and for the first time in a very long time, Lan Wangji felt the need to cover it from sight.

“Does it hurt?” Wangji said before Lan Wangji could pull his robe back over it. Wangji leaned in close scrutinizing the mark.

Lan Wangji stepped back without thinking.

“It does not,” Lan Wangji said which was the truth. “It does itch at times,” he added, as if to fulfill some important curiosity of Wangji’s.

Wangji stared and then leaned back and looked at Lan Wangji’s robed shoulders. He looked to be thinking a moment before he went on.

“Can I see what it all looks like healed?” Wangji said. “The scars?”

Lan Wangji tilted his head the tiniest bit.

Wangji was him. Wangji would have these scars someday. Wangji deserved to see them if it is what he wished.

Lan Wangji pulled off the last robe he wore and folded it neatly over his arm. He pinned his hair on the top of his head and turned so that Wangji could see his future.

For all showing the brand had felt exposing, when he showed Wangji the thick scars crossed all over his back, Lan Wangji did not feel exposed. He could feel Wangji’s eyes on the landscape of his back taking in every ridge and valley but he did not feel bared.

He felt seen.

Wangji knew the sting of every lash. He had laid in the same bed, loved the same man. Their bodies moved the same, their hearts were one.

And Lan Wangji could feel Wangji’s heartbeat closer and closer, could feel the warmth of him as he approached his back. He imagined that Wangji was simply taking a closer look when he felt something gentle and wet at the base of his neck.

A kiss.

Wangji had kissed him.

Was kissing him. Warm, soft, eager kisses trailing from his neck to his shoulder. Each sent the urge to shiver through Lan Wangji. Each felt right in the way being seen by Wangji did — was it wrong to feel that way?

Before he got to thinking too much, Lan Wangji closed his eyes and let his mind go blank.

He felt Wangji’s hands snaking around his waist to hug him from behind. They were shaky. He felt Wangji move in closer until his chest was flush with Lan Wangji’s back, face rested lightly on Lan Wangji’s shoulder.

One of them swallowed and the other exhaled. No matter how much time would pass Lan Wangji would never know who did which.

He did know that one of Wangji’s hands was splayed open on his waist. And that the other was running up his front slowly, testing, still shaky, until it rested just at the base of his neck.

They stood like this, breathing. Going as still as mortal cultivators could.

There was the room around them and the touch between them and words that would not be said.

Wangji was so warm. Lan Wangji’s scars were numb most days but now, like this, he felt every bit of Wangji’s skin against them. The rise of Wangji’s chest, the fall of his exhaling. The heat he emanated. It was nice. Very nice. Lan Wangji might have stood here for a long time if he were a less disciplined man, taking in the drink of Wangji’s touch. A part of him wished that he could feel this version of himself molded into the scars they would share someday.

But Lan Wangji was a man of incredible discipline. Every moment that went by and every point they were joined at became a question. Wangji pulled Lan Wangji’s waist toward him and pressed his hips forward again and this time it was Lan Wangji that exhaled, Lan Wangji who wanted them to be even closer, Lan Wangji who wondered what it might be like to turn and caress Wangji or kiss Wangji or take Wangji right there. Questions spilled out of them everywhere.

“Hanguang-jun?” Wangji added to the pile softly.

“I must go,” Lan Wangji answered them all at once.

He pulled away from Wangji’s warmth and made a beeline for the door of his Jingshi.

———

When he woke, Lan Wangji did not open his eyes. It was impossible to do but he tried to feign sleep anyway. Time to think, time to ponder, time to…he wasn’t sure exactly. But time would be good to have.

“Lan Zhan,” came Wei Wuxian’s voice. Lan Wangji’s attempt was thwarted.

Lan Wangji could feel Wei Wuxian moving, sliding down his body and pulling at his sleep trousers.

“It seems the burner is doing something. You’re so deep in your sleep these days,” Wei Wuxian said and gently undid the tie of his pants.

Lan Wangji held his waistband firmly. He hadn’t been thinking at all, it was an automatic thing. He opened his eyes and saw Wei Wuxian’s confused expression.

“Mn,” Lan Wangji said, ears going red. He loosened his hands. Wei Wuxian ran a finger along the inside of Lan Wangji’s waistband, testing. Lan Wangji lifted up onto his elbows and nodded at Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian gave a wide smile and made quick work of freeing Lan Wangji from his clothes.

“It has been —“ Lan Wangji paused because he did not know what to say. What had it been, anyway? He did not know what Wangji’s eyes on him were, what the kisses along his shoulder had been. What had any of his visits been?

“I do not know,” he said, because he didn’t. His brow furrowed at the realization.

“Ah,” Wei Wuxian said distantly and kissed Lan Wangji’s bare hip. “There’s a lot to work out with the past. I’ve been there.”

Lan Wangji waited for Wei Wuxian to keep talking. He wanted to keep talking but Wei Wuxian didn’t continue so Lan Wangji did not talk either.

He would not know what to say even if they had spoken so perhaps it was best that they didn’t. He quieted his thoughts and leaned back and exhaled at the familiar heat of Wei Wuxian’s mouth on him.

—————

Days passed. Wangji holding him came to Lan Wangji’s mind more often than he liked. Then there was Wangji seeing him, feeling seen by him. Questions in the air that his heart had answers for. It was a dream, a construction of the mind, but there had been something so real about it.

Lan Wangji wanted to feel it again. To indulge in the feeling of being seen. But Wei Wuxian was the only indulgence he ever allowed himself; even with his rabbits, he did not dawdle or waste time. Overindulgence weakens the will of the mind. A rule his forefathers wrote and a tenet he lived his life by.

So he pushed his thoughts away gently as they came. The small ways the Jingshi of his nightmares bled into his waking life even settled, leaving his tea pleasant and his afternoons calm.

But then came a new nightmare. And this one could not be pushed out of his mind.

A small house surrounded by a haphazard patch of gentians. The urge to run, to hide, hot in his belly but his body could not be moved. He closed his eyes but kept on seeing. There, cast with gloom and bidding him to remember and enter was the Gentian House.

If each nightmare had at the heart of it some dreadful thing, Lan Wangji could not bear to risk finding what might be hiding in that house. There had been nothing so dreadful in Wangji’s Jingahi or the Burial Mounds conjured by Lan Wangji’s dreams — but what if the Gentian House were different? He had the distinct feeling that he might not survive dread that came from that place.

He did not use the incense burner to explore its walls.

So Lan Wangji dreamed each night of a terrifying, gentian skirted house. Every meal he took turned to flowers on his tongue.

He hoped one day that Wangji was not mourning their mother too hard these days.

It was that thought that finally put the incense burner back into his hand.

It was one thing for him to avoid the eerie call of that nightmare house but the thought that it could be affecting Wangji, that like in the Burial Mounds, Wangji might be there frozen, pushed Lan Wangji to action.

At Wangji’s age, Lan Wangji would not have visited the Gentian House since his childhood — and would not for many years. But he also had a Wen brand decorating his chest at Wangji’s age. He had gotten drunk and run amok in the Cloud Recesses and Wangji hadn’t.

Wangji very well could be at the Gentian House. Lan Wangji closed his eyes as spicy incense smoke filled his senses and he thought of purple flowers.

When Lan Wangji opened his eyes, he was in front of the Jingshi. Wangji’s Jingshi. Perhaps he would not find Wangji at the Gentian House reeling and bleeding after all. Relief flooded through him and he let out a large breath before stepping in.

Inside, there was a small bundle of neatly tied flowers on the center table in the room.

Wangji stood near the door in an inner robe and his sleep trousers. His hair was down and there was a contemplative look on his face that Lan Wangji read as boiling anger. When he saw Lan Wangji, Wangji closed his eyes — certainly he was angry.

Lan Wangji knew exactly what day this was and so he knew that the flowers had come plucked from the ground just outside of the Jingshi.

It had been a very angry day, to his memory.

Lan Wangji sat down and got to making tea. He gestured for Wangji to join him.

“There is something on your mind,” Lan Wangji said when Wangji was sat and settled.

“Mn,” Wangji said with his head tilted down, unbound hair hiding his face. He was quiet for a while but Lan Wangji did not push him to speak.

“I cannot help but wonder if shufu is seriously discontented with me. If perhaps he believes I should have been punished more gravely,” he said finally.

“Ah,” Lan Wangji said. He could not lie and tell Wangji that he had not thought the same at a point. That he had not wondered before if his uncle did not see his own brother’s face in Lan Wangji’s: a failure, a mark of shame against the clan, more useful dead than alive. The raised scars of his back were the work of the man — it was easy to wonder at his motives.

In the early years, there were many times when Lan Wangji was convinced that his uncle hated him.

“He will not grant me permission to visit Mother’s house,” Wangji said. “He has not in all this time I have been here secluded. But today, I thought that…” Wangji let his words dissolve into the air.

He didn’t have to finish, though. Lan Wangji knew this day. His mother’s birthday during the first year of his seclusion.

He’d wanted to take flowers to the Gentian House and sit in front of the door a while. Whisper apologies for the months he had not visited and promises to come by again as soon as he was able.

Lan Wangji remembered the hot feeling in his belly that day. Rage had ripped through him raw.

“Do you feel that he harbors something against you?” Wangji’s voice cut into Lan Wangji’s thoughts. He spoke out loud what Lan Wangji had never dared to, in those days or since. “Do you think that he hates you, too?”

“Shufu has never hated us,” Lan Wangji said and meant it. “He has not acted against us in all this time.”

Wangji looked at him with eyes of hot gold.

“Xiongzhang did not go with them,” Wangji said. “Xiongzhang did not confine me to this place.” Xiongzhang is not the one who struck me, Lan Wangji filled in.

In those days he had to be angry at his uncle so he would not hate his brother — his brother who so desperately tried to say and do the right things to comfort him but often left him reeling. Who would bring the little Wen boy by to disturb Lan Wangji’s peace. Who would preach to him about things he already knew.

Lan Qiren was a hand to Lan Wangji — steady, so practical and useful — but Xichen was his heart. In the rabid state of those days, Lan Wangji had felt that he could gnaw off a limb — but no matter how much one hurts, if they mean to live, they cannot seek to carve out their own heart.

It was only with time and reflection that Lan Wangji could see: a hand is a pragmatic thing above all. That is its nature. That is what it offers the body.

“Shufu would not have had to if xiongzhang had.” Lan Wangji looked down and sipped his tea.

Wangji went quiet. Still. Lan Wangji could not look up at him.

“I will take the flowers to Mother’s house,” Lan Wangji said. “If you would like.”

Silence in the room. Lan Wangji thought of how often he had answered with stretches of silence and wondered if it was always this heavy for those who had questioned him.

Wangji nodded his head the tiniest bit and said lowly, “Mn.”

The dreamscape is strange and its paths are shortened; in a few steps outside the Jingshi, Lan Wangji stood in front of the Gentian House. It was as he remembered it in those days, as it had been in all his days since his mother had left it empty — gloomy, haunting, barren.

He had not gone into the Gentian House often since his mother’s passing. He knew that Wangji meant to leave the flowers by the front door, did not mean for him to enter the space and yet — perhaps it was that it was a dream, perhaps because he could tell himself none of it was real, perhaps because it looked like a calm version of his nightmare, Lan Wangji stepped into the dark room.

Inside, the room was small and Lan Wangji wanted to leave it instantly.

The furniture had all been covered with white sheets and there was dust everywhere.

Whoever had placed the sheets had not moved the young Lan Xichen’s paintings. Nor did they remove Lan Wangji’s clunky baby poetry. Both sat undisturbed on the floor by the covered bed, just where he and Lan Xichen would sit and play and use ink while their mother told them stories.

There were his mother’s books. There were the vases whose flowers were long since desiccated.

And there on a covered table nearby sat a jade comb — the same comb their mother had used on their hair, shoulder length back then. Lan Wangji touched his head and it was as if he could feel his mother’s delicate fingers gliding through his hair even now.

Lan Wangji picked up the comb against his better judgement.

It was pretty enough but ordinary. He placed it into his sleeve. Perhaps he could give it to Wangji as a keepsake.

There was not much else to look at in the room but much to get lost in thought about so Lan Wangji turned around quickly and left the way he came.

He left Wangji’s flowers in a vase on the porch and walked to Wangji’s Jingshi without looking back.

This time Wangji’s inner robe was neatly closed. His hair was pulled up — his guan was missing but he still looked presentable.

He did not wear his forehead ribbon, though. It made Lan Wangji feel strange to still be wearing his own so he took it off and wrapped it neatly on itself before setting it on a table by the door.

Wangji’s sharp eyes followed his every movement. Not for the first time, Lan Wangji wondered if this is how he made others feel, so seen. Did Wei Wuxian spend all his days like this feeling watched?

“It is done,” Lan Wangji said.

Wangji closed his eyes and let out a breath.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Speak to shufu,” Lan Wangji said. “He will listen.”

Wangji’s face screwed into a look that said, he will not, but I will not backtalk a senior and say so.

Wangji sat down and did not speak as he poured out fresh cups of tea.

“He will,” Lan Wangji pushed.

“I do not know what to say,” Wangji admitted.

“Ask him about having the Gentian House cleaned,” Lan Wangji said and settled down at the table in the center of the room. The relief Lan Qiren had shown when Lan Wangji had asked it in his own time was palpable. It was as if he himself had been freed by Lan Wangji’s desire to transform that frozen place of mourning. “He will be amenable.”

“Perhaps it is different for you,” Wangji said and offered Lan Wangji a cup. “He does not like the House. I do not know that he will be moved by a desire for its upkeep. He did not even want me to visit after Mother passed.”

“He did not like how it felt to carry us back,” Lan Wangji said, surprising himself. Until this very moment, he, too, might have said that Lan Qiren did not like the House itself for all those years. But now, talking to Wangji, he found a truth buried under that supposed disdain.

Wangji shot Lan Wangji a sideways glance.

“Shufu did not allow me to go to it today.”

Lan Wangji tilted his head and gave Wangji a look over. He was much steadier than he had been when they’d first met. He seemed stronger, both physically and mentally. More robust. His spiritual power was pulled fully to his person.

And yet — there was a fragility to him, still. A weariness that could not be seen, only sensed. He was a porcelain dish with a thin crack running through it, a few touches away from breaking.

Perhaps it was because he had lived longer than Wangji. Or perhaps it was that he could see outside of himself now. But he could understand not wanting to drag him back from the Gentian House this time: the Gentian House has mementos and memories. A comb Lan Wangji decided right then not to give to Wangji. Spikes Wangji might cut his already bleeding skin on. Let him be angry here in the Jingshi, where he has already been angry and it is safe.

“He did not,” Lan Wangji said and left it there.

A silence fell between them as they sipped. Wangji’s shoulders lost their tenseness. His breath evened. Lan Wangji thought he seemed to relax — as much as a Lan Wangji could, anyway. It left Wangji so slightly sulky in an adorable way; Lan Wangji could not help but wonder if this is why Wei Wuxian had delighted in teasing him all of their lives.

But though his anger dissipated, Wangji’s mood remained low. He blinked more than he should and his breaths got deep.

It took only a glance for Lan Wangji to ascertain: Wangji was going to cry.

He did not want Wangji to cry.

Lan Wangji had cried very few times in his life. Tears were not something to be shed over things that can be thought of without them. But here like this, with his fists balled up and his head tilted over a tea set, Wangji was about to cry.

Perhaps Wei Wuxian had infused a softness within him. Perhaps Wangji was just hard to look at in that state. Whatever it might have been, Lan Wangji moved to sit close to Wangji and pulled him into his arms.

In the quiet space of the Jingshi, Lan Wangji wrapped his arms around his younger self and hoped it was enough to soothe him from the brink of tears. He made sure to be mindful of Wangji’s back which was healed enough for him to move about comfortably but still wrapped and tender. Lan Wangji lowered his face until it was above the crown of Wangji’s head and took in the heat and the sandalwood and the sweat there. He felt the urge to place a kiss there, the way his mother used to do to him when he was small, but he didn’t. He only held Wangji and hoped it was enough.

Wangji’s shoulders started to move under Lan Wangji’s touch.

It was not enough, after all.

“You should go, Hanguang-jun,” Wangji said and Lan Wangji could hear the strain of him fighting to hold it all in.

Lan Wangji tightened his arms a bit. He thought in any of the times he cried, it was only those where he was held tightly that he recovered from. Lan Xichen had held him when they were boys and their mother died. Wei Wuxian held him in a temple where his tears were joyful — but still existent.

“I will leave if that is your wish.”

Wangji did not answer. Lan Wangji did not expect him to. Wangji did not seem to want Lan Wangji to leave any more than Lan Wangji wanted to leave him.

So Lan Wangji kept on holding Wangji. And he did not leave him.

“I do not know if I did the right thing,” Wangji whispered. “Wei Ying died. I sleep on my stomach. Xiongzhang thinks of me as some breaking thing these days.”

Lan Wangji tilted his head up to the ceiling. He had come to terms with all these things years ago but to hear them raw out of Wangji’s mouth stirred up familiar pangs in him.

“Shufu does not talk to me the way he used to. We do not play Go anymore,” Wangji went on.

It made Lan Wangji think again: had he done the right thing grabbing Wei Wuxian out of Nightless City? He had told his brother that he wanted to bear some of the burden with Wei Wuxian but looking back that did not feel true. I could not bear to see him die, was the answer. Right or wrong and the burdens inherent to such had nothing to do with it.

Lan Wangji closed his eyes. He pulled Wangji in more. He felt Wangji’s quick breath warm against the collar of his robe, the slight shake of him as he tried to hold in tears and anger and water.

Lan Wangji thought of reassuring Wangji. Something like, “You will play Go with him again,” because he does play Go with Lan Qiren often. Maybe, “Someday it will not matter if it was the right thing or not,” because truly, it did not in the day-to-day.

But those things seemed like distant promises that Wangji — practical Wangji, stubborn Wangji, simmering over with heat Wangji — could not lean on. He needed something he could touch with his hands, something solid and real.

“What would have become of A-Yuan had you not gone?” Lan Wangji landed on.

Wangji paused. Lan Wangji could feel him thinking.

“A-Yuan,” Wangji whispered out after a moment. He leaned more into Lan Wangji’s chest then, resigned. “I do not think I am very kind to him.”

Lan Wangji thought it was astute of Wangji to think so. In his own seclusion, he had been so lost and reeling that he did not notice how he could be cold to the child. How he had not yet regarded him the way one regards a child, as something to be soft and easy with. He had not softened his expression when he looked at him. When Lan Xichen brought the boy by, Lan Wangji kept his hands busy and his attention on things like tuning his guqin or transcribing so that he would not have to truly face either of them.

It had been some time before Lan Wangji could admit to himself that he had not been very graceful in those days.

And here Wangji knew it now. That was good.

“That is something you can change,” Lan Wangji said because it was. It had been in his case. He let the boy sit next to him as he played. He spoke the rules to him softly in the simple words he had first learned them in. It hadn’t been difficult to do once he realized that he should. It would be even easier in Wangji’s case, he suspected.

Wangji nodded against his chest and gave a small sniff.

“I will,” he said.

Lan Wangji patted his back then and waited. He knew himself well enough to know that a plan for improvement — no matter how small or easy to manage — would occupy his mind for a while. Wangji would settle out of his wallowing and into something determined and ready.

In the meanwhile, Lan Wangji held Wangji. He rested his cheek on Wangji’s head. He pulled him in closer as his breathing slowed and Lan Wangji knew that he was falling asleep. He took in the surreality of it all. Unformed wishes flitted about his mind. He wanted something but could not conceptualize what it might be. So he held onto Wangji until Wangji fell asleep.

As carefully as he could, Lan Wangji laid Wangji on his stomach on the bed. He pulled a sheet just up to Wangji’s waist and no higher, the way he liked. He scooped Wangji’s hair from under him and wrapped it into a makeshift knot so it would not tangle in the night.

Lan Wangji had thought at first that it was a mark of vanity to find Wangji beautiful. But as he looked at him now, he thought that to see him as anything but would be to indulge in falsehood.

He leaned down in the silent way he did everything and placed the tiniest of kisses on the sleeping Wangji’s cheek.

Only Wangji had not been deeply asleep. And he turned his head just as Lan Wangji was pulling away from him. Their lips brushed. Their eyes met and this time, Wangji’s were so warm and golden. He reached out and placed a single finger on Lan Wangji’s lips. He ran it down Lan Wangji’s chin and then tucked his hand under Lan Wangji’s jaw as if to pull him in.

Lan Wangji pulled back entirely. The wishes in his head had begun to take shape. He closed his eyes against them, against Wangji, against the dream in its entirety. And then he was gone.

——

Lan Wangji woke in his sleeping robe. He had no pockets or qiankun sleeves in which a hair comb could be hiding but he patted himself down beside the sleeping Wei Wuxian anyway. When he dressed, he rummaged through all the compartments and crannies of his outer robes looking for a comb he knew he would not find because it existed in a dream.

A dream. A construction of the mind. Dreams and nightmares alike — they all existed in the mind.

A medicinal scent — salve, no doubt — hung in Lan Wangji’s nose as if to taunt him.

Wei Wuxian took some of the juniors down to Caiyi Town, leaving Lan Wangji to grade papers and mull over his thoughts. But his thoughts were hazy and the words on the page slipped unread through his mind and that damned scent was more and more overwhelming; around mid-day, Lan Wangji put his work away and decided to cultivate alone for some time.

He picked a small cave near the Cold Springs and kneeled on the ground.

If he had a goal, and he wasn’t sure that he did, it was to push what belonged to his dreams into his dreams and to keep his waking life separate. None of Lan Wangji’s dreamwalking had turned up a dreadful thing to confront no matter how awful the nightmares themselves were and so he thought to try something new. He was a cultivator. Control of the mind was paramount to his training. There was a solution to the hijacking of his senses, he just hadn’t discovered it yet.

Traipsing the locales of his nightmares while asleep had turned up nothing so Lan Wangji thought to envision the spaces in his mind’s eye while awake. He set his hands neatly in his lap and closed his eyes and breathed in the way he had been taught to when he was young.

He worked backward, imagining first the Gentian House as it had appeared in his nightmare. Though he could see its gloom, he could not feel the ugly pull it had on him in his nightmare. He approached the house in his mind’s eye and let himself in; again, there was the furniture in a small room and papers with he and Xichen’s baby scrawls on them. The jade comb that had sat on the table was missing. He checked his robes and again found nothing.

Next was the Burial Mounds. Skeletal hands reached up out of the filthy ground to grab at his robes once again. He kicked them away gently and walked around the scorched earth. He made his way over to the tree A-yuan had been hidden in and found it empty.

Now, Wangji’s Jingshi.

Lan Wangji frowned a bit and considered leaving it unexplored. To not envision it at all, to leave the cave entirely and go back to grading papers. But he held to his mission and conjured up the Jingshi of his nightmares decked in doom and gloom. The sky above it was dark. Everything around it was dreary.

Lan Wangji braced himself and stepped in.

It was as tidy as it always was — even more so, really. There was no tea set to be found and the desk was clear of books and ink. There was no guqin on the guqin stand and no swirl of incense smoke in the corner. Lan Wangji stepped into the back room and was at once relieved and concerned to find no Wangji there. Not the smell of medicinal salve wafting off of him, not the bandages plastered onto his back, not even the sheets he laid in could be found on the bed. This Jingshi might as well have not been occupied for the lack of life there was to be found in it.

Lan Wangji looked around the room once more and then the front room. Nothing stuck out. He closed his eyes tightly and opened them to the early-evening air of the cave.

And there was Wangji sat before him.

Dressed pristinely and looking so real right in front of him.

Lan Wangji was surprised but he did not jump. He wanted to speak but did not open his mouth. With Wangji, there were always unsaid questions and Lan Wangji answered none of them.

But some of his own did flood into the mix: would Wangji come to his Jingshi with him? Was this apparition before him as solid as the Wangji of his dreams? What would he think to know that Wei Wuxian was alive?

Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji thought. What would Wangji think of Wei Wuxian?

As Lan Wangji pondered this, Wangji looked down and reached into his sleeve. He rummaged around a bit before pulling out a jade hair comb. He passed it to Lan Wangji who took it as if it were as delicate as sugar glass.

In his hands, the comb appeared as it had in his dream. Seeing it again made him think of his mother. He looked up to finally say something to Wangji only to find that he had disappeared. He looked down and found that his hands were empty, the comb gone too.

He stood up slowly and made his way out of the cave quickly and all but flew back to his own Jingshi. Were he a weaker man, his hands might have shook as he reached to assemble and light the incense burner but he was Lan Wangji so they didn’t. None of him did. He was bright and full of energy and it was all directed toward one thing: a need to see Wangji.

——

No sooner than he had closed his eyes did Lan Wangji open them to the facade of Wangji’s Jingshi. He climbed the steps of the veranda quickly and opened the door.

It seemed Wangji had felt the same need to see him. He flew into Lan Wangji’s arms as if he had been waiting just on the other side of the door for this very moment. Lan Wangji hardly had time to take anything in: all of his vision and all of his senses were filled up by the man before him. Wangji was wide eyed and his breathing was fast, Lan Wangji could tell, and he seemed determined and a bit scared and Lan Wangji found out why when Wangji grabbed his face and kissed him.

This was an eager kiss. A hungry kiss. Lan Wangji could feel against his mouth the searching optimism he had once directed at an unwitting Wei Wuxian. Wangji worked with unpracticed passion and Lan Wangji could feel his lips trembling as he found the nerve to keep going.

It felt right. Welcoming in the way that coming home does; personal the way bathing does; familiar in the way Wangji’s scent and energy and the tone of his voice and the specific knot he used to tie his ribbon all were. Lan Wangji closed his eyes and opened himself and softened into the kiss.

Wangji was Lan Wangji’s height and about as wide as him which was a novel feeling. He kissed fast and wetly. The hands he gripped on the sides of Lan Wangji’s face were curled in just a bit too tightly, fingers starting to dig into the soft behind Lan Wangji’s ears. He pressed himself forward the whole time as if kissing were a practice in force and not attraction.

He was new and wild and shaky and lost.

And it was beautiful the entire time.

Lan Wangji was on the verge of losing himself — in the sensation, in the surreality of it all, in the sense of rightness that flowed through him as they kissed. He imagined them becoming one being, thought then that they were one being, stopped thinking and let himself bask in touch and warmth and belonging. His tongue was steady where Wangji was sloppy. He breathed in all of the pants that wracked Wangji's frame. He covered Wangji's hands with his own and gently pried them away from his face.

He pulled Wangji close to him. In that moment he felt that it was only right that he should pull all of Wangji's entire being into him. It proved impossible to do and so he only kissed Wangji deeper, hungrier, fuller, wanting something he had not known it was possible to want.

And while it was a dream (because that is what it was: a dream), Lan Wangji felt that he had to say something before they continued. It didn’t feel fair not to.

He broke away from Wangji and put a hand on his chest to steady him.

They spoke at the same time, Wangji saying, “I was waiting for you—” dreamily and Lan Wangji coughing out, “Wei Ying comes back,” gracelessly.

Lan Wangji had never blurted anything in his life but here his words came out urgent and clumsy.

Wangji looked dazed. He blinked a few times as he came back to himself and looked at Lan Wangji confusedly.

“Wei Ying?” he said and Lan Wangji nodded in confirmation.

"Yes," Lan Wangji said. His brow crinkled a bit. “You said you were waiting?”

Wangji shook his head.

“It was not for very long. What do you mean about Wei Ying?”

There was a lot that Lan Wangji meant and nothing that he could find the words for.

“I can show you,” he answered instead.

Wangji looked confused but nodded anyway.

Lan Wangji straightened out his robes and made his way to the inner chamber of the Jingshi.

Wangji stood at the entrance of the room, brows knit. The smell of medicinal herbs hung pungent in the air here.

Lan Wangji stood before the largest window at the back of the room and made a wide arc with his hand in front of it. There was a rush of air into the room and the light that had been streaming into the place dimmed and the smell of sandalwood incense grew stronger.

Lan Wangji opened the paper curtain over the window.

He gestured for Wangji to join him at the window.

The courtyard outside of the Jingshi was gone and replaced by a room that looked like the one they were standing in except that there were shelves on the walls and little trinkets here and there. A set of black robes was sprawled on the floor with a red ribbon swirled prettily on top of them.

There was a bed and two figures wearing sleeping robes lounging in it.

Lan Zhan was reading out loud to Wei Ying. Wei Ying was twirling a strand of Lan Zhan’s hair in his fingers. Wei Ying smiled and whispered something to Lan Zhan who shook his head and offered a soft admonishment along with a tiny smile. It was a scene that might have been plucked from any night of Lan Wangji’s life these days and he looked at it fondly.

Wangji did not say anything for a long while. Lan Wangji watched for any reaction he might have to the domestic scene before them.

“That is him?” Wangji finally asked in a whisper. His attention did not break away from the window for a moment.

“Mn,” Lan Wangji answered.

“Was it very painful, then?” Wangji asked. “When it happened?”

Lan Wangji thought for a moment and gathered at what Wangji was asking about.

“I do not know,” he said honestly. “It is not something we have shared."

Wangji nodded in thought. He looked on a while and said in a voice so low it had to be to himself, “He will tell me.”

As the Wangjis peered in, the couple’s movements shifted from domestic and comfy to lithe and suggestive. Lan Zhan’s hand grazed over Wei Ying’s hip. Wei Ying leaned into his touch and whispered something low that made Lan Zhan turn all his attention on him.

Wei Ying looked up at the window directly at Lan Wangji and gave a sly wink. Lan Wangji breathed out sharply and relished the prick in his heart the gesture gave him.

Wei Ying crawled on top of Lan Zhan slowly. Teasingly. He let his sleeping robe fall off of his delicate shoulders. He made a show of stretching his arms above his head, hair caught in his fingers so his neck was left exposed and enticing. Lan Zhan looked up at him the way Lan Wangji always looked up at Wei Wuxian: reverent and needy.

The couple began to kiss and touch greedily. Lan Wangji’s ears went warm at the sight.

He could have given a wave of his hand then. Ended the scene. He should have, really. He had shown Wangji what he’d meant to, which was that Wei Wuxian does come back and is alive and that they are together and happy.

But beside him, Wangji kept on staring at the couple on the bed.

Wangji did not turn away as he should have.

Lan Wangji was making note of this when Wangji looked up and their eyes met and it was as if Wangji were looking to be corrected.

But Lan Wangji offered no punishment, no chastisement, no correction of any kind — only silent permission. He turned back to the window and Wangji did the same, peering in cautiously at first and then greedily. Wangji’s eyes went wide and then softened, his attention at once rapt and indulgent.

Wei Ying let out a high sound — Lan Zhan had pinched him, Lan Wangji was sure — and Wangji gasped to hear it. Wei Ying undressed himself and Lan Zhan entirely and Wangji’s lips parted over a sharp intake of breath, his breathing quickening.

Wei Ying licked his hand and rubbed it somewhere between him and Lan Zhan. He leaned down and muttered something that made Lan Zhan’s brows knit with lust. Wei Ying lifted himself up and lowered down slowly. The pair was still a moment, taking one another in, breaths moving through their bodies in anticipation. They wanted each other, it was clear. They had each other, naked and touching and connected. Lan Zhan lifted his hands and held Wei Ying’s waist, slid his hands up to touch his chest and his shoulders, ran a delicate finger along the whole of his collarbone.

Wangji breathed out softly, as if he were the one being touched.

In that moment, Lan Wangji thought about touching him.

Wei Ying whined Lan Zhan’s name and rolled his hips in a big slow circle. Lan Zhan’s toes curled and his hips lifted off the bed. Wei Ying smiled and rolled another circle, smaller and faster this time, then lifted and sat himself down again and again.

Lan Wangji watched Wangji, who had a rapturous expression all across his face. Lan Wangji watched as Wangji drank in the skin and the moving and the moans that filled up the space. Lan Zhan was silent, as expected, but Wei Ying was noisy enough for the two of them and when he came, he trilled out a moan and the melody of it was so sweet. Wangji’s lips closed and opened. His breathing had shallowed and his ears were red.

Lan Zhan flipped Wei YIng to be under him. He kissed Wei Ying’s forehead and whispered something low and deep into his ear before he moved his hips slow at first, precise at first, building into something deep and wild and rough and animal. Lan Wangji’s cock twitched. Wei Ying’s back arched and his eyes shut and his mouth was such a pretty little o.

Wangji looked away from the window and turned to Lan Wangji.

He looked as if he did not know how to say what he wanted to so Lan Wangji prodded him, "I will answer any question you have." He thought Wangji might want to know why Wei Wuxian looked different or how he had come back at all but Wangji's question surprised him entirely.

“Do we ever….” Wangji paused and looked down. His brow was furrowed and his ears were bright red. “Do we ever — like that? The way he — the way Wei Ying was — is — “

“No,” Lan Wangji said and finally felt his own ears heat. It wasn’t something he’d ever imagined for himself and while he was not prudish, the thought felt vulgar to have.

“He seems to enjoy it,” Wangji said and turned back to the window, drinking in.

Wei Ying’s face was flush with pleasure, desire spilling out of his mouth in strings of curses Lan Wangji knew the taste of. Lan Wangji felt a pang in his chest to think of his husband — he wanted to see him again, to make his face match the one he played voyeur to now, to be as deep inside him as Wei Wuxian always demanded he go.

“He does,” Lan Wangji said.

A moment passed between the two Wangjis. Wei Ying's high whines cut into the space. Wangji’s attention was once again fixed on the scene beyond the window.

His face was studious. Jaw set. His posture more impeccable than usual. The red of his ears was spreading down his neck and was the only visual tell that he was affected.

He might have been watching a building being erected for all an outsider could have assessed.

But because Lan Wangji was Wangji, had been Wangji, he knew what Wangji was thinking. He could hear Wangji’s heartbeat and the want mixed in with it going thump, thump, I want, thump, I must, thump, thump. So the two were like that, Lan Wangji watching Wangji and Wangji watching Lan Zhan go deeper and rougher by the moment. Wei Ying sang filth into the air until the pair on the bed were spent and panting.

Wangji said nothing. Lan Wangji did not expect him to.

He also didn’t expect for Wangji to turn and crowd into his space. To reach up and cradle Lan Wangji's face — still clumsy but careful this time — and lean in to give him a single soft kiss.

Gone as soon as he placed it, Lan Wangji heard very clearly the message of that kiss: I would enjoy it, too.

Lan Wangji blinked. His mind was empty. He had the feeling that his mind should not be empty but it was. Wangji gave him a small smile that he could not return because his mind was too empty.

Wangji didn’t seem to mind and looked happy as he walked to the front room.

Lan Wangji did not follow him. He gathered up what few thoughts he could. He cleared his throat. He straightened out his robe. He did not follow Wangji. Instead, he crawled into the window in front of him, crossed Lan Zhan’s Jingshi, ignored the squeal Wei Ying sent his way, and stepped out of the front door of that Jingshi.

———

Lan Wangji woke up to a warm, heavy weight on top of him. He reached up to wrap his arms around a husband who all but purred at his touch.

“And what were you up to in your dreams tonight, er-gege?” Wei Wuxian’s voice was low in his ear.

He rubbed Wei Wuxian’s back absentmindedly, orienting himself bodily in this Jingshi. He felt warm. Half-awake. Wanting. His thoughts were jumbled and he did not try to straighten them.

Lan Wangji opened his eyes to see Wei Wuxian above him breathing quickly. His face was flushed. Lan Wangji felt a hand wrapped around the base of his cock.

“You’re so hard,” Wei Wuxian said.

Lan Wangji breathed in sharply as Wei Wuxian squeezed him, wanting to buck into the touch and pull away from it at once. He started to speak (to say what, he could not be sure of) when Wei Wuxian pressed in and cut him off with a kiss.

“Make me feel why,” he whispered when he pulled back. “I want to feel it.”

“Feel it,” Lan Wangji echoed, a hand squeezing Wei Wuxian’s waist. Wei Wuxian was smaller than Wangji, narrower, his shoulders not as broad. Lan Wangji squeezed tighter and repeated, “You want to feel it.”

Wei Wuxian nodded. His eyes were glazed and he pressed his hips down, chasing and inviting.

And Lan Wangji could never deny Wei Wuxian so he made him feel it. He flipped them over so that Wei Wuxian was on his back and he kissed him all over and thought of Wangji. He ran his hands down Wei Wuxian’s side, his ass, he pinched him and thought of Wangji. The high-pitched whines he drew from Wei Wuxian’s mouth were so sweet, so like the Wei Ying he had seen in his dream, his dream where Wangji had stood there blushing, lips parted, wanting.

Wangji.

He fucked his why into Wei Wuxian. He thought of Wangji. Wei Wuxian’s splayed hair and the nonsense he spouted and the way he spread himself wide, body always asking for more, the tight heat of him, the sounds Lan Wangji dug out of him all mixed with shoulders as wide as Lan Wangji’s own. Unblemished skin paler than his own. A mouth so honest it scared him. Sharp eyes in a stone-set face that was less pretty than it was striking. The feeling of that last kiss pressed so lightly to his lips — he came deep inside Wei Wuxian just to think of it.

He lay panting on top of Wei Wuxian. Eyes closed, face buried into his hair. He breathed in sandalwood. He wanted to kiss the top of Wei Wuxian’s head. He rolled off of him and stared at the ceiling instead.

There was a moment in the cave with Wei Wuxian after Nightless City where Lan Wangji felt his life crack into two eras. A line crossed with no way back. Nothing had even happened yet: the elders hadn’t found them, he had not been whipped, Wei Wuxian had not died in the siege. He hadn’t even spoken his heart yet, only settled Wei Wuxian in as best he could. But in that moment, that protracted quiet before the storm, he knew. Something had changed in the world. Something had changed about him.

Days passed and then weeks. Every time he made love to Wei Wuxian, he thought at least briefly of Wangji. Wangji beneath him, Wangji playing voyeur. A kiss that said, “I would like it, too.” He wondered what would have happened if he had reached out to touch the Wangji in the cave by the Cold Springs.

In time, the waking aspects of Lan Wangji’s nightmares disappeared altogether. In their place were reminders of Wangji and his Jingshi.

The taste of medicine on his tongue had given way to the sweet taste of Wangji’s mouth. It was the smell of his sterile Jingshi that came to Lan Wangji, not that of the dead. What had once been dreadful imaginings had become beckons to the pleasantness of Wangji’s company.

Lan Wangji pushed them aside gently. He did his work and he cultivated and he curled up with Wei Wuxian. He did not use the burner in this time — Wangji would be well. There was no new nightmare to contend with.

Going to Wangji now would be nothing but indulgence.

While Lan Wangji found himself calmer physically now that his senses were no longer suffused with rot and medicine, the library pavilion was not as quiet as he needed it to be. The sandalwood of the modern Jingshi was too mixed in with other scents. He wobbled while doing handstands. No matter how he tried, Lan Wangji could not settle himself.

But Wangji’s Jingshi would be quiet. Its sandalwood clean. Lan Wangji knew beyond a doubt that he would find peace there.

And he wanted to see Wangji again. Deeply. To sit beside him in that subdued Jingshi sipping tea. To hear things he had never said out loud, to seek again that place where those things could be said, the mouth that said them kissed.

Indulgent, yes. But it is what he wanted anyway.

And so Lan Wangji gave into himself and chased this want back to Wangji.

—————

Lan Wangji closed his eyes and took in a breath. Sandalwood and rice mortar and wood oil. Quiet. The promise of peace. He could have lived in that moment but chose to open his eyes instead.

Wangji was seated at his desk with his brush in hand. The white of his robes glowed in the soft light of the room. His wrist moved delicately, the brush in his hand inking the page sharply. He was a portrait. Lan Wangji would have liked to paint him if he could.

Wangji looked so focused and at peace that Lan Wangji reconsidered — he did not want to disturb him. To intrude on his space. Lan Wangji had been in such a daze of wanting to be in the dream beside him that he had not considered that he might be imposing on Wangji at all.

But all of his fretting melted away when Wangji looked up at him and gave the tiniest of smiles. The look of concentration melted out of his brow into something softer. He glowed alongside the white of his robes now and he laid his brush carefully on his desk before standing and crossing the room.

He did not speak. Only wrapped his arms around Lan Wangji’s middle and pressed his forehead onto his shoulder.

Lan Wangji held him back. Wangji was easier with touch than he had been at his age. He didn’t tense or jump. Lan Wangji closed his eyes and hoped that it boded well for Wangji in life.

“Hanguang-jun,” Wangji said into the crook of his neck and Lan Wangji felt every deep tone of his voice ring through him. “You were right.”

Wangji sounded uncharacteristically pleased. When he pulled back, a smile had brightened up his face. He was beautiful at all times but now, happy like this, he looked divine.

“Right about what?” Lan Wangji asked and wondered if he looked as dazzled as he felt.

Wangji did not answer with words but reached into his sleeve. He dug around and pulled out a long white tassel identical to the one affixed to Lan Wangji’s own sword.

Lan Wangji was taken aback.

“Where did you get this?” he asked slowly.

“Shufu,” Wangji said and his brow wrinkled. “Did he not give you yours as well?”

Lan Wangji nodded because Lan Qiren had given him the tassel. But it had taken years into his punishment for that to happen. By then he was all but healed and looking forward to begin teaching alongside Lan Qiren. What had broken between them in the years prior had begun to heal.

It was too early, much too early, for Wangji to have it. Wangji still had bandages on his back. The room still had the orientation it did in the first year of his healing.

Lan Wangji did not say as much.

“He did,” was all he offered.

Lan Wangji lost himself a moment in his thoughts. The day Lan Qiren had told him, “You have done well,” and handed him a parcel of wrapped paper came to him. Hurrying to the Jingshi as much as he ever allowed himself to hurry and opening the package with curiosity. He had been so desperate those days to hear his uncle’s praise again, to know that he had not been forever lost to the shadow of his gaze.

And there had been the tassel. Typically reserved for elders who had demonstrated the utmost excellency within the clan and Lan Qiren had given one to him.

Lan Wangji’s eyes felt pressured and his throat felt funny to think of it.

If Wangji noticed, he said nothing. He only wrapped the tassel back on itself and tucked it carefully into his sleeve.

“Shufu says it is time that I help write lessons again,” Wangji said, a muted and pleased tone snaked through his voice.

Lan Wangji nodded. Another thing come early — but he thought it was good for Wangji. He could not say whether the length of his suffering by way of fracture with his uncle had done him good.

“This is good,” Lan Wangji said in congratulations. “Do you know when you will begin?”

It had been the winter for him; it looked to be the spring outdoors, yet another difference in their journeys.

“I do not. But I do know that I would like to drink wine,” Wangji said boldly. “To celebrate.”

“We are in the Cloud Recesses,” Lan Wangji said automatically.

Wangji pulled a jar of wine from out of a basket and set two small cups on the table.

“We are in a dream,” Wangji corrected. “You have said this yourself.”

“Mn,” Lan Wangji said and looked around the room. Maybe he was looking for bits of the room that were blurred, books marked with characters that didn’t make sense. But the place was solid and real and Wangji was solid and waiting and holding out a small cup filled with clear wine.

He thought of a silent Wangji handing him a jade comb.

“And if this is not a dream?” Lan Wangji said and took the cup.

“Why would it not be a dream?” Wangji asked.

“I do not know,” Lan Wangji said. It was nothing he could be sure of.

“In that case, It is best to assume of what is known than to assume of what is unknown,” Wangji quoted a line from one of Lan An’s personal journals. “It is a dream.”

Lan Wangji smiled. Wangji pushed a cup toward him.

“It will be the first time I taste wine,” Wangji said. “I would not like to drink alone.”

“Mn,” Lan Wangji said. He picked the cup up gracefully and gave a small sip.

He still did not like the taste of Emperor’s Smile but it did not make him sputter the way it did Wangji. Wangji coughed inelegantly into his sleeve and muttered apologies as he gathered himself. Lan Wangji made a motion with his hand and floated a jug of water across the room. He poured a small cup for Wangji and handed it to him with as much of a teasing look on his face as he could manage.

Wangji looked at Lan Wangji accusingly.

“You have drunk wine before,” he said, as if rediscovering the fact.

“Yes,” Lan Wangji humored him.

Lan Wangji could not help but to think of his own first time drinking — or rather, to think of what happened around it. He could not remember much of any time he’d ever drank and most especially the first time. He knew that he’d been alone. He knew that he’d tilted the jar back full of grief and woken up with a stomach of acid and anger. He knew his first time wasn’t with company, wasn’t here in the peaceful air of the Jingshi with good company.

So he shared Wangji’s first drink with him. And his second. He stopped them before a third because dream or not, they were still bound by Lan tolerance.

The whole time they did not speak. They looked at their hands and each other. They took neat sips. Wangji cleared his throat once and Lan Wangji cleared his twice.

Soon the second cups were emptied and a soft haze had filled the room.

Wangji stood and stretched and was a looser version of himself. His ears were pink and he had the tiniest, pretty little smile on his face. Lan Wangji watched as he walked a circle and then another around the room before spinning on his heel and falling onto the bed in sleep.

Lan Wangji waited a few moments and then moved to unpin Wangji’s hair so that he could lay more comfortably. He looked so beautiful in sleep, all the stiffness of his face melted into something soft and open. Lan Wangji hoped that he was having good dreams. He deserved good dreams, Lan Wangji thought, he deserved all the good the world has to offer.

Lan Wangji undid Wangji’s belt and folded it neatly. He started to pull off the stiff outer layer of Wangji’s robes when Wangji sat up and looked at him with eyes so beautiful and shiny.

A heartbeat between them. Another. Wangji licked his lips and Lan Wangji remembered the taste of them.

“Let us cultivate,” Wangji said. He stared at Lan Wangji straight on. Boldly.

“Yes,” Lan Wangji said in a breath.

To do so would be good, Lan Wangji thought. Cultivating pulled impurities out of the blood. They were not too drunk but there could be no harm in removing what they had imbibed. And it would have been so long since Wangji had cultivated in the vicinity of anyone, so long since he had trained spiritually with any company, it would be good to —

“Together,” Wangji added, eyes pinning Lan Wangji to the spot. “Let us cultivate together.”

And in that moment two cups of wine felt like three.

“Yes,” Lan Wangji said because there was no other answer he could give.

Dual cultivation was the closest of intimacies — so much so that even cultivation partners of many years might not have tried it. Your cores had to be very compatible, you had to be very in tune with yourself and even more in tune with your partner — and you had to be very comfortable in being explored so deeply.

More than that, it lowered the inhibitions. Desire became a guide in its wake. For this reason, It wasn’t common among the ascetic Lan; the young were naturally curious about it but by the time they reached the age to try it, they were wary of its nature and what it can do to a sense of control.

And here was this version of himself daring to ask for it. Lan Wangji had not been so bold at his age.

Lan Wangji had been different than Wangji in a number of ways when he’d been his age. He didn’t ask as much. He let the wounds on his back subdue him.

To speak of the wounds — Wangji had laid on the bed easily. He got to his feet easily. There is no way they’d be fully healed but certainly they were farther along than Lan Wangji’s had been in the spring of that first year.

Lan Wangji looked at Wangji’s back as Wangji made his way into the second room. As if he might see through his robes, find answers to the questions bubbling up in him.

Wangji looked back at him when he got into the second room. Lan Wangji followed him wordlessly.

Wangji picked a place and lowered himself to the floor; Lan Wangji followed and sat across from him. The pair straightened their postures as if it were possible to sit straighter than they already did naturally.

Lan Wangji took off his forehead ribbon. Wangji took off his.

Lan Wangji took a breath. Wangji took one too.

Lan Wangji breathed out. Wangji did too.

They breathed like this for a while, one after the other. They moved the same with Lan Wangji forming seals with his hands and Wangji following. Lan Wangji led and Wangji followed, light eyes never moving away from each other.

Wangji’s pupils began to dilate. Lan Wangji was sure his own had, too.

Still: they kept breathing. They kept looking.

And then, the space between them flooded with spiritual energy all at once. A golden pool of light splashed between them and light colored threads reached out of it connecting to their cores.

Power moved through the circuit of them.

Lan Wangji could feel Wangji’s spiritual power coursing through him river-like and steady as his own. It was wonderful to feel it again and he closed his eyes and let the feeling wash over him.

There was spiritual power around and in him and there was Wangji in front of him. He reached out for Wangji, then, felt for him with his own power, instinctively reaching for Wangji’s core. He slid power through Wangji’s meridians, followed the flow of him there to his center.

Wangji gasped loudly.

There, nestled and powerful and cupped in Lan Wangji’s power was Wangji’s core. So beautiful and right and —

Lan Wangji’s breath hitched and the spell broke. Wangji blinked several times as if he had been pulled from a trance. Lan Wangji cleared a throat that did not need clearing. Bit by bit, the glow between them faded and the spiritual threads tying them together dissipated.

It was just the two of them, then.

Quiet, the Jingshi, and them.

Wangji moved first.

He shifted and crawled forward clumsily until he was on all fours with his face level with Lan Wangji’s.

He was beautiful and eager, eyes shiny, lips parted just so, expression so open and wanting. Lan Wangji was all want and need: to feel inside of Wangji again in any way he could, to consume him in every way, to meld the two of them into one being, to be the being they are.

Lan Wangji reached up a hand and grabbed at Wangji’s face gracelessly, pulling him into a hungry kiss.

Their lips met and Lan Wangji could swear he felt Wangji’s power flooding him again. They were so close it felt like there was nothing between them, like there should be nothing between them.

Lan Wangji lifted up onto his knees and Wangji followed, chasing Lan Wangji’s mouth with his own. Lan Wangji kept one hand on Wangji’s cheek and used the other to pull his outer robe off of his shoulders. Wangji caught the message and shrugged off his own outermost layer before moving on to his belt. They moved messily and needily, desperate not to part for even a moment, until they were both down to their trousers.

Wangji leaned back. He put a hand on Lan Wangji’s bare chest just under the brand that marked him.

His hand was shaky and cool and Lan Wangji shivered under his touch. It was light and teasing.

Lan Wangji wanted more of that touch.

He leaned in and Wangji traced a finger softly across his chest, tendrils of pleasure shooting through Lan Wangji at every catch of his fingertips. Lan Wangji was intoxicated, enchanted, dazed under the working of that single finger and his eyes fluttered as Wangji trailed a finger down his middle.

Lan Wangji was nothing but the skin beneath that finger. His whole world became what Wangji touched.

He melted into it. He let this feeling of being wash over him. The Jingshi had the air of a sanctuary then. Lan Wangji played supplicant taking what it offered gladly.

Wangji paused just above Lan Wangji’s waistband. His head was tilted down, eyes pinned to Lan Wangji’s lower half.

Lan Wangji needed his touch. He needed to be more.

Lan Wangji pulled Wangji’s wrist toward him and guided his hand down. He curled Wangji’s hand over his clothed cock. Wangji’s hand was warm through the fabric and Lan Wangji bucked into its touch.

Wangji gasped when he felt how hard Lan Wangji was. He squeezed and Lan Wangji bucked again. He splayed out his fingers so that his palm was flush against fabric and pressed this way, let his fingers explore that way. Lan Wangji’s ears were hot. A hungry look crossed Wangji’s face and he stroked Lan Wangji through his trousers, his thumb pressing just under the head where Lan Wangji liked.

It was intoxicating and felt so good but Lan Wangji knew he wouldn’t get off like this. He was so used to fucking Wei Wuxian roughly that this wouldn’t do. But he was sure he could make Wangji come and wasn’t that such a delicious thought?

He pulled Wangji into a kiss gently. He kissed his soft lips and teased at his mouth with his tongue until Wangji’s hand stilled and slackened, Lan Wangji’s cock forgotten in his grasp.

Lan Wangji moved them to the bed and moved gently as he pulled off Wangji’s trousers. Wangji watched him with the studiousness he had watched Lan Zhan and Wei Ying and Lan Wangji felt a thrill at it.

Soon Wangji was completely naked and sitting on the bed. He cut a beautiful figure. Smooth and unmarked skin and lean muscle. The bandages peeking their way around his shoulders and waist did nothing to detract from the perfection of him. He was tall in a graceful way; his face eternally contemplative and striking for it.

Lan Wangji might have spent hours looking at Wangji if he were a man more prone to indulgence.

Instead he tapped Wangji’s knee and nudged his legs apart. He ran a hand over Wangji’s thigh and laid the other just below his navel, testing. Wangji’s erection pressed at the back of his hand then, full mast. Lan Wangji pushed into Wangji’s space until he had leaned back to rest on his elbows.

Wangji watched him with predator eyes the entire time.

Lan Wangji kissed just under Wangji’s ear and then down his neck, hand teasing the space below his navel the whole time. Wangji pulled in a breath and grabbed at Lan Wangji’s wrist, guiding him down impatiently. Lan Wangji kissed his cheek and kept his hand where it was, teasing.

Lan Wangji nuzzled Wangji’s neck and when he tilted his head back as Lan Wangji knew he would, Lan Wangji licked a long stripe up it before dipping his head down to Wangji’s chest. Wangji’s fingers tightened on Lan Wangji’s wrist; still, Lan Wangji teased and did not give in.

He did kiss all along Wangji’s collarbone. He let himself be greedy with his skin. He flicked his tongue over a nipple and felt Wangji tense, heard the pretty exhale he let out.

“Hanguang-jun,” Wangji said in a breathy whisper.

And as if that was what he had been waiting for, Lan Wangji finally took Wangji in hand. He cupped him fully and listened to Wangji’s breath go quick. He pressed a thumb right at the base of Wangji’s cock, right where we liked, and Wangji moaned for him. He dragged fingers up Wangji’s shaft before squeezing the head gently and Wangji melted for him. He circled a thumb over the head of Wangji’s cock over and over and took in every shiver it drew out of him.

He kept his hand loose enough for Wangji to buck into his hand as he touched him. Wangji moved clumsily to meet that touch, his brow furrowed, glazed eyes looking down, blushed skin so so pretty.

Everything Wangji did jolted through Lan Wangji — every gasp, every movement, every little shift of his hips.

Shifts that had Wangji spreading his legs wider. And pushing down on Lan Wangji’s wrist again, guiding him downward.

Lan Wangji pulled away from Wangji’s chest to seek his gaze. His hand did not stop and he got to see every tiny little shift in Wangji’s expression every time his thumb pressed just there.

He could have stayed there like that watching and stroking for so long. But Wangji’s eyes were hazy and soft and seemed to be asking for something.

I would like it, too.

Without a thought, Lan Wangji lowered his hand down until his fingers found Wangji’s hole. He pressed a single one forward. Testing.

Wangji let out a breath and moved toward that finger, wanting. Lan Wangji swirled it around the hole, teasing again. His eyes did not leave Wangji’s as he worked and when he pressed in finally, Wangji’s brow wrinkled and his eyes squinted and he lost the battle he’d been waging to stay quiet as his body jolted and pretty sounds squeaked out of him. Lan Wangji only moved his fingers in two, three, four times before Wangji’s fingers dug into his wrist.

Wangji gave a high pitched whine and spilled white all over his belly.

He collapsed off of his elbows wincing a tiny bit at his back. He lay there with half lidded eyes and quickened breath and fell fast into sleep.

Lan Wangji got up and collected their robes. He splashed himself with water and pulled his hair up and looked for fresh sheets. When he came to nudge Wangji so he could re-dress the bed, he could not help but be taken by the sight of him.

Wangji was so beautiful like this. Spread and open and easy. Lan Wangji thought of his face in the heat of pleasure, how his brows knit together into an almost frown. Those brows going even closer, frown deeper, Wangji’s face deep in pain flashed across Lan Wangji’s mind. It would be so easy to overpower him like this. Lan Wangji’s dick twitched at the thought. He could bully his way in. Wangji hasn’t done this, he could be rough with him, he could see what it is like when he screams.

Lan Wangji’s eyes widened at the thought. He felt a tightness in his chest and almost coughed out blood.

He hadn’t thought like that unbidden in many years.

His mind flooded with thoughts, dreams, instances, of Wei Wuxian tied up beneath him, his teeth sinking into Wei Wuxian’s flesh, his forehead ribbon binding him, knowing that what he was doing would bruise him. Wei Wuxian’s eyes filled with tears in his teenage dreams, overpowered, Lan Wangji overpowering. The raw light that would flow through him replacing all aspects of his senses so that he was nothing but urge and want.

Lan Wangji was not a man of indulgence. He was a man of complete control. He kept the well of his desire in check at all times.

But this was a dream —

Lan Wangji gathered up his things and left before he could finish the thought.

——

Wei Wuxian was still off traveling with the juniors so Lan Wangji woke with a start to an empty bed.

It was easier to think alone in the waking world but right now Lan Wangji wished it wasn’t.

Thoughts flooded him: a chorus in his mind going, “More. More. More!”; an old hunger nestling on the back of his tongue; he imagined his forehead ribbon burning to a crisp even as it was tied across his skin. He had not wanted so deeply and unbounded in so long he thought himself incapable.

He felt more in his skin than he had in years.

He was vibrant and buzzy. He felt unlocked and reckless of mind — and none of this was acceptable.

Not for a Lan disciple and especially not for him.

Lan Wangji assigned himself two hours of kneeling at the Wall of Discipline. Reflection among the rules that shaped his life always centered him. Afterward he would copy out the section of the precepts on the sanctity of the mind — all the things he had been formally taught about maintaining control of oneself. It would take him until the early afternoon to finish. Wei Wuxian should still be away by then and Lan Wangji would have time to tend to the tasks he had planned to get to today before his return.

But Wei Wuxian came back early. Lan Wangji was deep in copying and willing his mind toward disciplined thought when the door opened.

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian said and bounded over to Lan Wangji’s desk. He plopped down in front of him and watched Lan Wangji expectantly.

Lan Wangji finished the line he was writing and put his brush down slowly.

“Wei Ying,” he said and looked up at his smiling husband.

“You’ve been bad, Lan Zhan.” Wei Wuxian leaned in. He looked down at the page Lan Wangji was copying.

Lan Wangji’s eyes widened. For a moment, he felt too seen. Had Wei Wuxian read on his face the ugliness that had bubbled up in him? Did he know that even now, thoughts flowed through his mind like an aphrodisiac river, his libidinal curiosity come back to drown him?

Wei Wuxian’s face stretched into a smile and he laughed loudly.

“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan! Your face!” he said. Lan Wangji’s ears went hot. “Did you sneak too many sweets? This is the section on self-discipline, what was it, were you up too late missing your husband?”

“I did sneak sweets when I was young,” Lan Wangji said. “All the time.”

Lan Wangji thought of his uncle chastising him as a child — he’d found a pile of hidden wax wrappers and told Lan Wangji about discipline of the mind and body. Lan Wangji stopped hoarding candies then but he never did stop eating them.

Wei Wuxian reached out a finger and touched Lan Wangji’s nose.

“So cute, Lan Zhan! Tell me, did you —“

“What you do in a dream — it is a reflection of you, yes?” Lan Wangji cut him off. He grabbed Wei Wuxian’s hand away from his face and held his hand between them on the desk.

Wei Wuxian’s smile faded. A wrinkle formed between his brow.

“You can’t worry too much about that, yeah? None of it is real.” He brought Lan Wangji’s fingertips to his lips and gave them a small kiss. “You Lans. How can you be bad for what you think? It’s what you do that counts, you know that.”

Lan Wangji must not have looked convinced because Wei Wuxian pressed on:

“Tell me, Lan Zhan, if you eat too many sweets in a dream, will your real belly get soft?” Wei Wuxian asked.

Lan Wangji shook his head.

But want was not like doing. It is easy to say that what is done in one place cannot affect the other; but what about want? Could what he wanted, even in a dream, be tempered?

And underneath the precepts and the punishment — did he want it to be?

“Now, how about we do something like —“ Wei Wuxian pulled Lan Wangji out of his thoughts. He smirked as he pushed aside Lan Wangji’s papers. He untied his belt and almost knocked over Lan Wangji’s ink when he crawled onto his desk.

Lan Wangji didn’t have time to think before Wei Wuxian was in his lap, heavy and warm.

——

But reflection and an afternoon inside of his husband could not stave off the itch that had made its way into Lan Wangji’s skin. There was a version of himself begging to be picked at and returned to, an unlocking that beckoned him back to it.

Lan Wangji ignored it as he could. He went to the cold springs when it felt like he couldn’t.

He slid into the icy pool and looked down at his reflection. The rippling water distorted it just enough that he could pretend it was the face of a stranger.

All his life his looks had been lauded. He’d been described as beautiful and divine and having the air of an immortal. Immaculate and flawless. But the stranger with his eyes looked very strange to him. Ugly, even.

He was not beautiful the way Wangji was beautiful.

Lan Wangji splashed at the water. It did nothing to change his face.

And it did nothing to stave off the desire that had bloomed in him.

He wanted to be unbridled. He wanted to go back to that moment where Wangji was so open and pliable and feed the beast that had risen in him then. He wanted candy. He wanted what he dug into Wei Wuxian’s wrists all those years ago on Phoenix Mountain. He wanted to taste the dream they’d watched together that had changed nothing between them.

But beyond the pull of Wangji’s skin begging to be marked, tears licked, face bitten, beyond the heat that burned low in his belly, the need and desire and uncheckable hunger, beyond all that was the balm of Wangji’s Jingshi.

It was quiet there. There was nothing that needed to be said because Wangji was him and the Jingshi was them. Lan Wangji fit right into its familiar space. There was no hiding in its rooms and more, there was nothing he wanted to hide.

He felt revealed. He liked feeling revealed. He did not like what had been revealed. He did not like how deeply its claws dug into him.

His mouth tasted like tea the way Wangji made it. The clear sandalwood of Wangji’s Jingshi came to him as he brushed his hair for bed. Pleasant beckons to Wangji’s Jingshi that he put aside over and over again.

They weren’t disturbing the way the waking aspects of his nightmares had been but Lan Wangji would have to find a way to quell these beckons, anyway. Searching for the dreadful thing had not worked. Meditating took away the images in the night but did nothing for the bleed of sensations into his day.

If he was to maintain control as he had done all these years, he would have to get rid of the somatic reminders that called him away from that control.

Lan Wangji crept out of bed and headed to the library before Wei Wuxian woke.

Quickly, he found a book on dreams. He rifled through its pages and thought that it was silly to have not done this earlier. Wei Wuxian’s advice was always good when it came to the spiritual but perhaps something else was needed.

When he found what he’d been looking for, he resolved to put an end to it all: the bleed, the need to meditate to stave off the images in the night, the itch that had made a home of him. He would miss it dearly, he would miss Wangji — Wangji, Wangji, Wangji! — he would miss the home he’d found in his dreams.

But he would be in control.

He would light the incense burner one last time.

———

That night, he moved determined. He kissed Wei Wuxian to sleep and lit the elephant shaped burner. He lay on his back in the perfect position and fell asleep.

This would be the last time.

But then his eyes were open and he was staring at the door of Wangji’s Jingshi. And he stepped into it so eagerly and he felt the embrace of it, took in its ever-calm air, and almost teared up for the relief it brought him.

And then there was Wangji, standing in front of him, stone face softening the moment he saw Lan Wangji. And the room around them was so empty and serene. And there was Lan Wangji and there were his arms open and beckoning and then wrapped tightly around Wangji.

Whatever he had read in the library fell out of his head. Any determination to regain a sense of control left him. This was where he belonged.

How right it felt to be wrapped around Wangji. How right it felt to be in this tidy space where his wounds were a shared thing.

This would not be the last time, Lan Wangji decided. It could not be.

“Hanguang-jun,” Wangji whispered and gazed into his eyes. “I have waited for you.”

“Wangji,” Lan Wangji said into his mouth as he pulled him in for a kiss. He breathed out into his mouth so low it could not be heard, “I am here.”

This kiss was familiar and hungry. They both pressed their faces forward this way, both tilted their head just so. They dropped to the floor in a bloom of robes and need and Wangji pushed into Lan Wangji’s space and straddled his lap. Lan Wangji pulled him down closer. Wangji gasped and Lan Wangji spread his legs wider and made space for Wangji to settle into. Wangji gazed down at him with warm gold in his eyes. Lan Wangji pulled Wangji down even closer into his lap. Wangji went happily. He ground down enough for them to ascertain that they were both hard and then kept rocking, pressing them as close as he could. Lan Wangji kept a grip on Wangji’s hips as he worked.

Wangji slowed and looked down at him softly. An understanding passed between them — what was about to happen, what they were about to do, what they wanted, what was coming.

They did not speak. Lan Wangji tapped Wangji’s hip. Wangji got the message and stood and made his way to the bed, pulling his robes off as he went. Lan Wangji followed, taking in the jade of Wangji’s shoulders where they were visible between his bandages. He pulled off his own robes, conscious of the brand that marked his chest.

Wangji turned to face Lan Wangji and sat on the edge of the bed in his trousers. Waiting.

In the back of his mind, Lan Wangji thought he should go slower. He should pepper Wangji with kisses, he should let his hands entice and his fingers make space for him. He should take him in with the reverence he was so worthy of. Worship him. But the moment he leaned in to kiss Wangji became the moment he had him on his back became the moment he pulled Wangji’s trousers off with one hand. There was an urgency in him, then, a need to be in Wangji the way he had felt around his meridians, to feel inside of him a different, more carnal way. Wangji was frantic, too, pulling him down, spreading himself open wide, letting his hands tangle in Lan Wangji’s hair as he gripped his head and pulled him closer.

On a single hitched breath, Lan Wangji lined himself up with Wangji and pushed in.

He felt drunk. On the heat of them, on Wangji, on the dream. On the way it felt so right to be in Wangji this way, to be so deep he might have pushed himself all the way inside him if only it were possible.

This is what he had been so pulled toward. This was who Lan Wangji was and what he wanted to be.

Wangji held Lan Wangji’s shoulders as he worked. He gasped and his pale face flushed pink. He looked so soft and undone and open and wanting and Lan Wangji so wished he could capture this moment somehow.

They were one and it was unmistakeable. Lan Wangji moved inside Wangji and they were one. They kissed, their hands laced, their bodies moved into each other, taking one another in. They were sweat and spit and movement and the whole time: they were one.

Wangji’s breath came in quick and out in bitten noises Lan Wangji had never heard from his own mouth. He wanted to hear every one of them, to know how high it was possible for Wangji’s deep voice to go, how desperate he could make him sound this way. He grabbed Wangji’s hips and thrust faster, fucking out all the pretty little noises he could and still wanting to hear more.

He was vaguely aware of their spiritual power unrestrained and mixing around them. Moving through them, even. It was as if Lan Wangji could feel the color gold as easily as he could see it in the half-lidded eyes gazing up at him.

And it was so surreal and dreamy and warm and it was like looking down at a mirror, like being inside a mirror, inside Wangji who was failing to bite back a single sound, Wangji, Wangji, Wangji blushed down to the chest, eyes glazed, body squirming looking so divine and powerful and the moment felt like what he looked, just so —

“Beautiful,” Wangji said.

And it was.

Wangji reached up then and cradled Lan Wangji’s face.

Lan Wangji looked down at him and thought he might never look up again. He moved as if he could press his whole self into Wangji, as if filling him up entirely would mean he never had to.

The moment he heard Wangji’s breath shorten and felt Wangji’s legs tighten around his waist and his chest rise up, back arched toward him, the moment Wangji let out a high whine of, “I —” and bucked all over with pleasure, Lan Wangji came deep inside of him.

Neither moved except to hold the other tighter. They stayed connected like that with Lan Wangji on top of and still inside Wangji until Lan Wangji dozed.

When he woke, Lan Wangji turned in his sleepy state and kissed Wangji — only it wasn’t Wangji, it was Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian’s mouth on his, Wei Wuxian’s hand tracing down his chest, grabbing at his cock, and pulling back just enough to go, “You’ve been naughty, Hanguang-jun.”

“Mn,” Lan Wangji said.

“I see you did not let your worries stop you from exploring in your dreams,” Wei Wuxian teased. He swirled a finger through cum that was pooled on Lan Wangji’s belly.

Lan Wangji, as before, opened his mouth to speak, to say something, anything, about his visits to the Jingshi when Wei Wuxian cut him off.

“Don’t tell me,” Wei Wuxian said. “It’s more fun not knowing! But —“ he got a sly look on his face. “I can tell you what I did last night.”

There was something grounding about Wei Wuxian and the way he told stories. Lan Wangji was grateful. He felt himself come down from the high of his dream to the sound of Wei Wuxian going on about his latest adventure while he played lazily with Lan Wangji’s cock.

When they were done, Wei Wuxian grinned at Lan Wangji and touched a finger to his forehead and encouraged him to keep exploring.

——

Encouragement would come in the form of scent of Wangji’s Jingshi. It followed Lan Wangji through the whole of the day and he did not ignore it. He rolled it around on his tongue. He let it soothe him into the evening.

He let it guide his hands as he lit the burner and wrap around him as he fell into sleep.

Again it was as if Wangji had been waiting by the door for Lan Wangji’s arrival. Lan Wangji opened the door and Wangji rushed into his arms.

The pair of them did not speak. They pulled at robes and ribbons and kissed and held and made their way to Wangji’s bed a graceful step at a time.

This time, Lan Wangji lavished Wangji with all of the softness and kisses he could. He touched him in ways Wangji did not yet know he would like. He read every whimper and pressed in, finding every last bit of Wangji he could.

After, they lay holding one another in bed. The clear scent of the Jingshi mixed in with the oil of Wangji’s hair and the heat of his skin and the strong sandalwood that wove through the space.

Wangji wanted to cultivate and so they did. They sat on the floor in inner robes and no ribbons with Wangji straddled in Lan Wangji’s lap. Lan Wangji let his teeth rest slightly open on Wangji’s shoulder, his neck, his collarbone, little not-nibbles meant to comfort and ground. He pulled Wangji closer and closer to him as if he could meld two parts of himself together that way. Their spiritual power lit up the whole of the room and every bit of Lan Wangji’s soul.

From then, there came a pattern: Lan Wangji would find himself accompanied by some sensual reminder of his dreams — the taste of Wangji’s mouth, the scent of his hair — and when he could no longer take it, he would light the burner and return to Wangji.

Sitting in that dreamy space with Wangji, so known and seen, was intoxicating. Lan Wangji did not think of the indulgence of it. There were rules he should have counted broken that he pushed out of his mind. There was only the settled feeling of being inside that space.

Sometimes he and Wangji talked. Sometimes they did not. Sometimes they fell into bed the moment Lan Wangji stepped in the door all hands and gasping, kissing and touching in all the ways they could think of. Sometimes they sat opposite one another and let their hands move across their guqins. Gold would meet gold, and two shades would become one.

They cultivated together. Spiritual energy would fill the air unrestrained and they would know each other this way. Lan Wangji would hold Wangji until he fell asleep.

They passed nights like this.

In the mornings, Wei Wuxian would pounce on Lan Wangji.

“It’s so exciting, isn’t it Hanguang-jun?” Wei Wuxian said one day.

“Mn,” Lan Wangji said because it was and there was nothing else to say.

Once or twice, Lan Wangji combed Wangji’s hair.

This is what they were doing when Wangji tilted his head to the side and laid it on Lan Wangji’s knee.

Lan Wangji pulled a jade comb — the jade comb — through Wangji’s hair gently. Wangji was kneeled in front of him on the floor while Lan Wangji sat on the bed.

“Hanguang-jun,” Wangji said.

“Mn,” Lan Wangji answered.

“Why do you come here when you do?”

Lan Wangji paused, the comb stopped mid-strand.

There were many answers. All seemed true. But Lan Wangji was Wangji, knew Wangji, thought as Wangji did and so knew what the actual question was and exactly what answer to give.

“Sometimes it is as if I am haunted by here,” Lan Wangji said and pulled the comb gently to the ends of Wangji’s hair. “And so I come.”

“Mn.” Wangji nodded his head against Lan Wangji’s thigh. “I think I am what haunts you.”

Lan Wangji thought of a silent Wangji kneeling in a cave. Wangji’s face reflected back at him in the water of the cold spring.

“When I would like to see you, sometimes it is as if I am able to call you,” Wangji said. “You come the same night sometimes and days later, others.”

Ghost wine sat on Lan Wangji’s tongue being savored for days. The clear aroma of salve and sandalwood washing over him as he woke.

Those little reminders he’d let sit for days at a time.

“When you call me,” Lan Wangji said and parted a new section of Wangji’s hair. “I will come.”

——

And Wangji did call and Lan Wangji did come. He would prod about Lan Wangji’s life and Lan Wangji would answer easily.

“Do you take him like this?” Wangji asked once with his face screwed up.

One leg was propped over Lan Wangji’s shoulder and Lan Wangji was fucking him deeply.

“Yes,” Lan Wangji said and offered no quarter, only lifted Wangji’s hips up just so so he could fuck him deeper, rougher. He was always trying to make he and Wangji one and because he could not, he took him as deeply as he could, was inside as much of him as he could, feeling as much of Wangji wrapped around him as he could.

Wangji closed his eyes. His beautiful face screwed up more. Lan Wangji wanted to see how deeply it could contort. He wanted to watch tears flow down Wangji’s face, his hands gripping the bed for purchase he would not find. He wanted to push until he had his fill, to win a battle he had started between them, to be so selfish inside of him.

He wanted raw light coursing through him.

Wangji would know exactly how this felt.

“What do you want to do with him?” Lan Wangji leaned down and whispered in Wangji’s ear. Wangji said nothing, only let out those melodic sounds Lan Wangji thought he could never get enough of so he coaxed, “Speak, Wangji.”

“I want to hold him down,” Wangji said and rolled his hips in a way that stole Lan Wangji’s breath. “I want to take him like this,” he bit out as Lan Wangji went deeper and deeper. “The way you take me.” Wangji’s ears were red and his face was flush.

“Mn,” Lan Wangji said and bit the shell of Wangji’s ear so gently, a contrast to what he was doing to him down below.

Wangji let out a breath.

“Is that all you want to do?” Lan Wangji said.

“I want to make him cry,” Wangji said. “I want to bully him the way he used to bully me. I want to take him until he cries and not stop no matter how much he begs.”

Lan Wangji got harder at that. He leaned down and kissed Wangji’s neck and pressed himself in as deeply as he could. He nosed under his jaw and felt the shiver of his breath.

“You get to,” Lan Wangji said. “Every day.”

“Every day,” Wangji said dreamily. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back just so.

“And he likes to cry for us. For you,” Lan Wangji spoke into the bottom of Wangji’s neck right at the center of his collarbone. He pushed up then and looked down at Wangji’s pretty face. He slowed his hips to a near still. “But if he didn’t like it, you wouldn’t stop would you?”

Wangji’s eyes flew open, wide and alarmed.

“I would!” he said as if accused.

“But you would not want to,” Lan Wangji said.

Wangji’s face only changed minutely but Lan Wangji could read it all — there was guilt, there was denial, there was indignation, there was arousal. He could not help but to pick up his pace while Wangji thought and finally shook his head and whispered out a confession: “I would not.”

And something about the ugly desire, the speaking of it out loud, ignited something in Lan Wangji who looked down at Wangji with a sort of awe.

It ignited something in Wangji, too, and he reached up to grab Lan Wangji’s face and pull him down into a kiss that was urgent. Open. Grasping. Bodies moving frantically, mouths open in breathy, wordless conversation, Isn’t this ugly of us? It is, it is.

Every moment then felt like relief and release. Every noise they made absolving, each time their hips met cathartic.

He held a sleeping Wangji later and kissed the top of his head.

——

He woke to Wei Wuxian naked and riding him.

“Ah, Lan Zhan,” he breathed out. “You were leaking again, you know that? So hard…”

Lan Wangji rubbed his hands on Wei Wuxian’s thighs. His eyes were still closed and the sharpness of this Jingshi came to him sound by sound, touch by touch. Wei Wuxian whimpering as he bounced; his fingers curling into Lan Wangji’s chest as he moved.

Lan Wangji felt one of those fingers pressed to his lips. He gave it a small kiss and caught it lightly between his teeth and nibbled.

He thought distantly that he would like to devour Wei Wuxian in total, too. He thought of Wei Wuxian melting against a tree so many years ago at his mercy — how he had not wanted to stop, how he’d dreamed many times of what would have happened if he did not.

You would not want to, echoed his own voice in his mind. I would not, came Wangji’s, pained and hot.

But Lan Wangji did not say as much. Wei Wuxian came and Lan Wangji gave his finger a last soft peck and got up to begin the day.

What he could say to one was not what he could say to the other. Wei Wuxian was the man he loved. Wangji was himself.

———

A self that was healing so much faster than Lan Wangji had.

Wangji stood before Lan Wangji with his back bared. His bandages were completely off and the wounds were raised and thick. They were no longer angry as they had been and were more scar than wound.

They were a wretched sight but even they could not detract from his beauty.

Now was still in the first year of Wangji’s healing — mid-Autumn now, if Lan Wangji’s judgement was correct. It had been over two years before Lan Wangji would get his bandages off and even then, his back was still an open wound in places.

Wangji healed faster. And Wangji knew what he wanted and asked for it.

And Lan Wangji always obliged him.

The whole time he was inside of him, Lan Wangji could not take his eyes off of the scars running jagged across Wangji’s back. Wangji was tight and hot around him and he felt dizzy and lusty and there spread out before him was a crowd of scars — scars they shared, scars that had brought them to this place.

Lan Wangji did not consider his own scars much. For one, he could not see them. He felt them when he bathed but it had been so long with them that it was like touching his own foot. They weren’t emotional for him anymore.

But here under him — these were Wangji’s scars. Wangji would live with these for the rest of his life. Marked for his transgression. Reminded any time he touched his own shoulder or waist.

He did not mention the scars unless Wangji brought them up because he remembered how much they had taken over in his own time. It was as if he were his scars the way everyone fretted over them. Wangji gave him a place of peace and he offered Wangji the dignity he had not been offered in kind.

But here, Lan Wangji couldn’t help himself. He pulled out and pushed Wangji gently so that he lay flat on his stomach. He looked down at the ropey skin below him and leaned in to kiss Wangji’s scars. He started at Wangji’s shoulder. He kissed the base of Wangji’s neck. He shifted down to place his lips at the dip of Wangji’s back.

The whole time Wangji breathed in jagged breaths and balled his hands into fists. Wangji was on the verge of crying and so was Lan Wangji. Tears blurred the scene before him and Lan Wangji tried to blink them away.

“Oh, A-Zhan,” Wangji whispered sadly and that name, that name he had not heard in so many years, unlocked something in Lan Wangji. The dam burst and he cried freely.

Lan Wangji pressed his cheek to the middle of Wangji’s back, tears spilling out and wetting the rough skin beneath him.

It was Wangji who shifted them so that he was curled around Lan Wangji and holding him tight.

“It’s okay, A-Zhan,” he whispered and kissed all over Lan Wangji’s face and head. He did not touch Lan Wangji’s own scars once, letting his hands pull through his hair and rub his arm instead.

They did not speak. They didn’t cry for long, either. They lay and Wangji held Lan Wangji in his embrace and they breathed.

Lan Wangji wished that they could stay like that past the night but they could not.

—-

When Lan Wangji opened his eyes to his own Jingshi, he blinked away tears. Wei Wuxian was still sleeping which he was glad for — he did not want to worry him. He did not want Wei Wuxian asking after things. He did not want to cry and have Wei Wuxian see it.

——

The next time Wangji called him to the Jingshi — this time with the brush of calloused jade fingertips across his cheek — Lan Wangji lay in bed with him relaxed. Wangji lay with his head on Lan Wangji’s chest and Lan Wangji could feel on his body each place Wangji’s eyes looked: his navel, the jade of his chest, his nipple, the brand. Wangji stared at the brand a long while; Lan Wangji wondered if he had fallen asleep when Wangji’s voice came, whispery,

“It hurt.” Not a question.

“It did.” Lan Wangji answered anyway.

Wangji tilted his head up.

“Do you wish that it had not?” he asked.

“No,” Lan Wangji said because he didn’t. It was part of his story. It was the pain he had rotted in in those days. Heartbreak made one with his skin. And what did he have of those days but heartbreak? He’d needed that pain. Needed to have felt it then and to know that he felt it now.

“What does Wei Ying think of it?” Wangji asked, eyes attached to the raised and darkened skin.

“He does not know the circumstances of it,” Lan Wangji said.

Wangji knitted his brow at that but nodded in acceptance.

“Ah,” Wangji said and let a finger trace the edges of the healed Wen symbol. “Perhaps I should have done it too.”

Lan Wangji shook his head a bit.

“It was very painful,” Lan Wangji said. “It is good that you did not feel the pain of it, also.”

Wangji’s brow crinkled further that.

“There are pains you have had that I have not,” he leaned down and placed a feather-light kiss on Lan Wangji’s scarred flesh. “Perhaps I could visit your dreams. I would make you tea.”

Lan Wangji slowed his breath. His head felt a bit light for a moment. Waters not yet tread kissed at his ankles.

If he didn’t know better he would say he felt uneasy.

“We are already in a dream,” he said, to both himself and Wangji. “And you already make me tea.”

Lan Wangji felt Wangji smile wide against his chest. He wanted very dearly to see such a rare smile. He thought that it was very good that he couldn’t.

“We are,” Wangji whispered out sleepily. “And I do.”

Lan Wangji held Wangji and stroked his arms until he fell asleep and woke up with his hands tangled in Wei Wuxian’s hair.

He pulled Wei Wuxian close to him, tightly. It was not possible but he imagined the skin of his brand burning just behind Wei Wuxian’s shoulder, enough to make Wei Wuxian ask about it. Enough to make Lan Wangji tell him.

——

A few days later, Lan Wangji felt a strange sensation run down his back. He knew somehow that it was Wangji but he did not soften at his call the way he usually did.

Wangji had never called him this way before.

He thought to ask him about it but when he entered Wangji’s Jingshi that night, Wangji rushed him over to the center of the room where his guqin was set up.

“I want to play for you,” Wangji said and this was not unusual but what was unusual was the composition Wangji played.

It was light and springy and joyful. It was nothing like anything Lan Wangji had ever written.

It was a song Lan Wangji had never heard before.

He sat stiffly and listened as Wangji played, uneasy.

“Do you like it?” Wangji asked when he was finished.

“It is well composed,” Lan Wangji said because it was. “It is a happy melody.”

“It is a happy day. Shufu thinks it is time to end my seclusion,” Wangji said as he wrapped his guqin up. “I do not know if I will yet but it does mean I am likely healed enough to train. And that is a happy thing.”

It was a very happy thing. Wangji’s healing was so much faster than Lan Wangji’s own — what had taken him years had taken Wangji a fraction of the time. To think he may be working his way back into the clan soon was lovely.

He did not have to suffer as long as Lan Wangji did. He would not be so confined, either.

“It will be good to leave seclusion,” Lan Wangji said. “I found contentedness this way. You will, too.”

“I am content,” Wangji said and set about making tea. “I have you,” he said matter-of-factly.

A tense quiet fell between them for the first time since their meeting.

Lan Wangji paused.

An unsettling feeling snaked through his belly. He became very aware that where he stood, this dreamy place, had begun with a nightmare.

He was in a dream.

Wangji was so real but this was a dream.

“Xiongzhang is here. Shufu is here. You have them,” Lan Wangji said as if he could push away this realization with speech. “A-Yuan is here. Wei Ying will be back someday.”

“This is true,” Wangji said and turned to Lan Wangji. “And I have you. This is also true.”

The awareness spread through Lan Wangji cold. It was hard to breathe.

What was unsettling revealed itself to be something bolder and uglier: dread.

“You will know it when you feel it,” Wei Wuxian had told him. And here it was, unmistakable. So sudden, too, like Lan Wangji had been hit with a paddle of knowledge that spelled out boldly,

Wangji must leave the Jingshi.

A dark miasma — dread, he knew instinctively — poured all out of Wangji at once and Lan Wangji had to brace himself against the wave of it. He looked at Wangji’s face and saw the Jingshi and the Gentian House and the Burial Mounds at once. His scars felt tight. His chest was tight. The pin holding his hair up felt as if it had been placed in too tight.

Wangji. The dreadful thing at the heart of his nightmares wrapped in dread itself.

Lan Wangji looked down at his own feet and saw that the dreadful miasma had collected around him, too.

“There are disciples to be taught,” Lan Wangji said as if bargaining away the feeling. “And common people who will benefit from your skills.”

“There are,” Wangji agreed and put a teacup in Lan Wangji’s hand. He didn’t seem to notice that anything out of the ordinary was happening. “I do not think languishing a little while will be detrimental. You said yourself it took years for you to heal; things were fine until then. They will be fine until I am ready, too.”

Lan Wangji might have asked Wangji when he would be ready, begged him to be ready if only to stop the awful feeling that was now spreading from his chest into the whole of his body but he already knew what Wangji’s answer would be. Stubborn Wangji, beautiful Wangji, Wangji who wanted to wait for him in a dreamy Jingshi. He would ask and Wangji would answer and he knew how Wangji would answer.

Wangji would not leave the Jingshi so long as Lan Wangji gave him reason to like it so much. He would not venture away to other towns and the countryside so long as he had the anchor of Lan Wangji’s company. Wangji was Lan Wangji — one heart they shared — and so Lan Wangji knew more than anything that one person was enough for Wangji.

The Jingshi they shared was full to him.

Wangji would not leave the Jingshi until he felt about it the way Lan Wangji had come to: it was a place to be left. It was a place without others. A static place in which life does not move forward. Wangji would not move forward. Wangji would keep being the dreadful thing Lan Wangji had sought all this time. Wangji would sit in this room with his small smiles waiting and content and dreadful if Lan Wangji did not act.

Wangji had to leave the Jingshi. Wangji had disciples to guide. Wangji had to find his Wei Ying on a mountain in a strange body and solve all the mysteries they would together.

And Lan Wangji knew what he had to do but he did not want to do it and this made it all the more apparent to Lan Wangji that the time had come.

Wangji could not be stagnant. He had pain to grow through. Lan Wangji could not remember what moment it had been in his own time where he realized this. Where he made it a goal to leave the Jingshi. It must have happened, though. The pain must have apexed. He must have laid there alone someday and decided, “No more.”

He could not ease Wangji through that. He could not comfort his way out of the pain of the past.

Wangji looked at Lan Wangji funnily, as if he knew what was coming next.

“If you would visit me, I ask that you do not come until you have found it with Wei Ying. Used it with Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said and told Wangji where to find the incense burner. “He will play our composition. That is how you will know,” he said and gave him the barest of tidbits that would make his journey with Wei Wuxian smoother.

“He remembered?” Wangji sounded in awe, as if it were most surprising of all Lan Wangji said.

Lan Wangji nodded.

“And you will not be back?” Wangji’s voice was small. The miasma gathered thick around him and the thinness of his voice made him seem like a ghost.

“I will not,” Lan Wangji said.

Wangji blinked and stared as if there were something only he could see. He was quiet and so was Lan Wangji.

Lan Wangji wished he could take the dazed look out of Wangji’s eyes. That he could unsay everything and visit him every night, the two of them in this dreamy space. But there was ice running under his skin and besides, he had done enough already. Even with nothing pushing him, he would never have wanted to contribute to Wangji’s stagnation.

For his part, Wangji seemed to understand all that Lan Wangji could not say. He nodded after a time and let out a breath.

Wangji moved to sit in Lan Wangji’s lap and wrapped his arms around him. A gift. A promise to do as asked: to leave the Jingshi, to wait for Wei Ying, to only come to see Lan Wangji when he had already explored the dreamscape with Wei Ying.

The moment they touched, the miasma around them cleared some and Wangji returned to his beautiful self. Lan Wangji wondered if it were possible to stay like this but knew before the thought finished that he wouldn’t: Wangji needed to leave the Jingshi.

They held one another for a long while, sat still in the soft light of the Jingshi. Breaths matched, hearts beating as one, spiritual energy settled like a blanket around them and settling the dread into something tolerable. When Wangji turned his head for a kiss, Lan Wangji met him. Open and lazy, mouths talking for them, You have taught me. To hold you felt so free. This has been important. This will always be important.

Lan Wangji did not turn this time to leave the Jingshi. He kept his eyes open and on Wangji. He saw the tiny smile slipping wistful across Wangji’s face. He raised his own hand in a wave and watched it all, Wangji, the Jingshi, the table for tea, the bed they had laid in so many times, fade away before him.

He looked then at the ceiling of his own Jingshi, dark in the pre-dawn morning.

He lifted a hand up in front of his face. No miasma clung to it. His Jingshi smelled of sandalwood and Wei Wuxian’s inventions.

—

Lan Wangji threw himself into copying precepts and increased his meditation. He lengthened his handstands. All the time he could not figure what it was for. He felt something unnameable, something in the neighborhood of guilt and loss, and it was so fitting: he could never name exactly what his feelings were about Wangji, not from the moment he saw him laid and bleeding in the Jingshi.

Wangji’s Jingshi. He pushed it away from his mind.

But he could not push Wangji out. He played back and forth in his mind — what if there had been no dread? Would he even realize that Wangji had grown stagnant? How could he have not realized the whole time? Was it guilt or loss that was smothering him?

Was Wangji the only one who needed to leave the Jingshi?

He found himself in the infirmary one day, unharmed but seeking salve. He spread it thick over his brand and as well as he could on his back.

The smell wafted from his robes and sat around him all day.

——

In the cold springs, Lan Wangji looked down and saw the same beautiful face everyone else did. Vanity is forbidden but so is denying the truth. He thought then that he looked like Wangji. It made sense that he did, of course.

He moved his hand across the surface of the water. This time the ripples of the water could not take his beauty away.

Everything that would follow Lan Wangji around in his daily life dissipated. The stenches and the tactile sensations of his nightmares and the calls from Wangji alike became nothing. Lan Wangji did not have nightmares anymore. Or dreams that left him hard and pulsing or waking up smiling or frowning — he slept as still and unreadable as he always had before.

Wei Wuxian surely noticed it. Lan Wangji did not wake up to his concerned eyes or Wei Wuxian’s hands all over him, mouth open and panting. But Wei Wuxian did not mention it because it was not their way, and so Lan Wangji did not either.

Again, in their way: Wei Wuxian did not ask. Lan Wangji was not sure that he wanted him to.

Wei Wuxian still used the incense burner from time to time — sometimes he’d insist on using it together and sometimes he didn’t. Times where Wei Wuxian wandered into the past alone, Lan Wangji found himself wondering about Wangji and the Jingshi they’d shared sometimes but never allowed himself to conjure up the place.

Wangji did not enter Lan Wangji’s dreams on his own, though Lan Wangji had offered him the means to. Lan Wangji found this to be a good thing: it meant that Wangji had ways of soothing outside of Lan Wangji. Lan Wangji had not become a crutch for him — he must have moved on.

Lan Wangji smiled to think of it.

A season passed and Lan Wangji packed Wangji into a box of fond memories.

He was a part of the past and Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian did not dive into each others’ pasts so Lan Wangji did not speak of him.

He did find that he let less settle into the past, though. He said, “I think,” and “I want,” more. He coaxed Wei Wuxian to evade less when something bothered him. He talked more than he ever had, eager to make things open and up for conversation.

He did not say how he got his brand but he told Wei Wuxian that it itched sometimes. His wounds on his back felt tight on occasion and Lan Wangji asked Wei Wuxian to rub salve on them to soothe them.

——

Things went on like this a while, months, almost a year when Wangji and Lan Wangji met again.

This time, Lan Wangji was dreaming and Wangji came to him.

Lan Wangji opened his eyes to the rabbit field. He was sat under a large tree at the center of the field.

Clear and sharp, he knew at once that this was unlike other dreams. There was something waiting for him here, something alive and breathing.

A heartbeat filled the air and matched the rhythm of his own.

Wangji appeared then before him and it was if he’d always been there.

Beautiful, beautiful Wangji. The soft glow of daylight made a home of his skin.

There was nothing dreadful about or around him.

Before Lan Wangji could stand to greet his younger self, Wangji crowded into his space. He dropped a handful of wax wrapped candies next to Lan Wangji before settling in on his lap.

Lan Wangji looked at the candies a moment before turning to Wangji.

Wangji looked good. He was heavy on Lan Wangji’s lap and he looked good. Open. The dread that had suffused every part of him the last time Lan Wangji had held him was gone, replaced by something nice and invigorating.

“Hanguang-jun,” Wangji said breathily and cupped Lan Wangji’s face in his hands.

Lan Wangji could only look into those gold eyes and see why Wei Wuxian loved them.

“He came back.” Wangji smiled and it was like seeing a reflection of how he’d felt to get Wei Wuxian back in his own life.

“He did,” Lan Wangji said.

“It has been lovely,” Wangji said wistfully. “It is — “ he looked to the sky as if searching for words. “ — it is a lot of talking. And it is like having the contents of your heart walking around outside of your chest.”

Lan Wangji rocked Wangji gently from side to side as he spoke.

“He keeps my secrets,” Wangji said. “And I, his.” He looked down at Lan Wangji then and gave a tiny smile.

Lan Wangji could only stare at Wangji. He had become so light.

“I have missed your company,” Wangji said softly.

Lan Wangji tightened his arms around him. They were identical in size and build and it was nice to be reminded of that. The man on top of him was strong and solid and beautiful and he loved him.

Lan Wangji breathed in and took in the smell of Wangji. The feel of his robes under his fingers. Memories of a Jingshi that had been their own, of pale, jade, unmarked skin, blushed face and gold eyes looking up at him. Fingers over guqin strings, spiritual power bathing them in light.

Lan Wangji pulled Wangji down to him and kissed him sweetly. Wangji pressed himself down and close and Lan Wangji could feel Wangji’s want to be one because he wanted it, too.

And so he laid Wangji in the grass, gently. He pressed kisses all over and across that beautiful face. He untied all their layers and took in Wangji squirming in want beneath him.

A kiss and Wangji gasped for him. A hand guiding his legs open and Wangji bit back a moan. Lan Wangji pressed deep into him and joined them. One being, the way they belonged, the way they always were, and there was Wangji in his Lan Wangji’s ear crying tears of joy.

They lasted as long as they needed to.

Familiar quiet settled over them like a blanket. The blue of the sky was light and the clouds were thick and rolling.

“It only hurt for a moment,” Wangji broke the moment to say. “He did tell me.”

Lan Wangji went still. It was not something he had broached with his own Wei Wuxian in all this time. He was glad to hear that the pain of his death was only momentary, though. He wanted to hug his own Wei Wuxian just from hearing that.

“He wants to meet you,” Wangji said. He had a small flower in his hand and ran it along Lan Wangji’s collarbone. “My Wei Ying.”

“Mn,” Lan Wangji said. He looked up at the leaves and the sky beyond them. He took in the grassy smell of the day. He thought the field felt dreamier than their times in the Jingshi — there was more air here, the light was softer. Wangji’s hair slipping through his fingers felt like the finest of silks.

“Yes,” Wangji lifted up more and looked Lan Wangji head on. “He knows everything. He knows about us. About you. How much you’ve meant to me all this time. And he wants to meet you. I want you to meet him.”

Lan Wangji looked at Wangji’s expectant face. Wangji, who was asking for something wide eyed and boldly. Whose Wei Ying knew all his secrets and was even eager to know more.

Wangji, who lived inside of him, too.

And Lan Wangji thought of bringing his own Wei Wuxian. He thought of hearing the hidden truths he longed to pour out of Wei Wuxian’s mouth. He thought of pushing ever so slightly, just as much as he needed to, and telling Wei Wuxian things — the brand, maybe. The long, crazed nights with A-Yuan in the beginning. All the things he had learned from Wangji. And Lan Wangji could not help but smile at the thought of all this and Wangji smiled down at him and grabbed his face in that way he did and leaned down for a kiss.

Wangji’s kiss. That light, sweet, freeing thing.

“I will meet him,” Lan Wangji said when they pulled apart, small smiles dancing on the jade and gold of their faces. “I will bring my Wei Ying, too.”

And Wangji’s smile widened into a beautiful thing. And Lan Wangji’s followed it until he heard himself laughing. Wangji leaned down and nuzzled their noses together and laughed a deep, bell-rung laugh alongside him.

Lan Wangji woke up smiling, then.

“Wei Ying,” he tapped the sleeping form next to him until Wei Wuxian stirred and mumbled something in response. “Wei Ying, I have something to share.”

Notes:

Thanks for reading :)