wuding | Why is it Always Meditation?

Why is it Always Meditation?

The ride home gives him time to think and overthink everything they’ve been talking about. There’s a substantial side of him that wishes he could somehow take back everything that they’d been speaking about. He doesn’t want to face his demons. He wants to snuff them out completely and never think about them again.

But now that he’s let Lan Zhan in on it, he can’t see a way to get out of it. He feels exposed after sharing some of his inner workings and there’s plans set in motion to expose more. He hadn’t been lying about trusting Lan Zhan with that side of himself, but he hadn’t been thinking about how much it would hurt Lan Zhan to know about it.

By the time he reaches Cloud Recesses, he’s feeling more than a little frazzled. He leaves Little Apple near the stables where she can have the finest grasses in Gusu to appease her royal senses. He even gives her an apple he’s only had a couple bites of before he finishes the trek back to the jingshi on foot.

Luckily for Lan Zhan, there are only a few people loitering around outdoors so he isn’t flagged down to stop and chat with anyone. Carrying Liang around in public always tends to invite conversation.

He pauses outside the door and shifts Liang in his arms to free his right hand so he can open the door. “Lan Zhan, I’m home!” He doesn’t know what to expect after everything. The thing he looks forward to the most is being in Lan Zhan’s arms, and he can only hope that things haven’t become awkward between them. “I rode as fast as Little Apple could carry me. We should bring some more fruit down for her.”

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It’s silent between them for several moments. He can tell Lan Zhan is harmed by what he’s said and he wants to take it all back and both of them forget he’d ever mentioned anything. He shakes his head, looking down at their hands again.

“Make my own sect?” That gets a short laugh out of him despite the gravity of the situation. The thought of him becoming a sect leader isn’t really something he’d ever considered. Sure, he knows about the rumors that he was creating a sect of necromancers back when he’d been trying, and failing, to protect the remnants of the Wens. “Lan Zhan, I can’t ask you to leave Gusu Lan. These people are your family. Our family. I’d be putting a target on all our backs doing something like that.”

He brings their hands up to his chest and holds them there. “I don’t really know what I’m talking about,” he admits. “I know I love you and the kids more than anything else. And I know that sometimes I… feel bad for no reason at all. Sometimes it’s the nightmares or the memories, and sometimes it just hits me out of nowhere when I’m feeling otherwise contented. The only thing that really works is to be too busy for it to get to me.”

Wei Ying fiddles, his natural restlessness compelling him to discover and make weapon of a toy. Even now, Lan Wangji's hands slack and obedient, he drags them to his chest, and Wangji permits it, only pulsing a rare squeeze in answering kind.

He drifts in to catch Wei Ying's mouth and tease him, after the inevitable confession of... uncertainty. Puzzle. Wei Ying's constant, bone-deep sorrow, a grief that Lan Wangji had thought he'd staked claim on, but finds himself unable to answer in his husband's shape. Death did not do this, he knows, exhaustively; it was life and its people and their countless, careless betrayals.

"We cannot... neglect hemorrhage, beloved. You will only perish of it." And this hurt, this depressive idleness only ever deepens. "You are not happy. You survive, but do not thrive. What does your heart desire, however selfishly?"

He cannot say how or when, but he will see the deed done.

The corner of his mouth turns up as their lips meet. The kiss is too short, but he only chases Lan Zhan’s for a moment. He figures his husband will insist on talking through this, too, before bedding him and kissing more would only make their conversation harder to focus on.

“What I want the most… other than Lan Zhan and the kids,” he starts, nuzzling his nose and cheek against their hands. “Give me some time to think about it. I expect you’re asking about things that are possible to give or fulfill.” The first thing that comes to his mind is his sister, but that’s impossible and it would be unfair to saddle Lan Zhan with the burden of an answer that can’t be delivered.

“I’m sorry, Lan Zhan. You should be enough. You make me so happy when we’re together until I find myself in the dark again and ruin it like I’m doing now.” He squeezes Lan Zhan’s hands.

"You ruin nothing." Life decimated Wei Ying's odds and plans, made a mockery of him and his prospects. This man, trembling and lost in Lan Wangji's hold now, might have been brilliant, once. This man, so beautiful, so despairingly brilliant.

And he murmurs, like a wrenching of him, a gutting of his innards to show his virtue to the heavens. "I am not enough."

He had anticipated the ache would paralyze him, would leave him sullen and still, at a loss for his own prospects in the wake of no longer serving his husband. Instead, he finds he is galvanized, given purpose. If he has failed before, he can rectify it now. He can build, he can grow. He can bloom and gain importance.

"I need not be your worth or your world." Better, if anything, that Wei Ying should have multiple points of focus, of gladness.

He wants to tell Lan Zhan that he’s enough, but everything he’s just said would make it too easy to argue otherwise. He kisses his husband’s hands once more, then lets go of them to cup Lan Zhan’s face between his palms again. His thumbs rub at the height of his lover’s cheekbones just under his eyes before leaning in to give him a firm kiss on the lips.

“You are both for me,” he insists as he moves back. “You and the kids. I just need to find out how to extend that feeling to me, too.” It will be an uphill battle given that he’s never put as much value on himself as he does with those around him. Not since he was too young for it to be necessary. Maybe it was Madame Yu that killed that part of him, but he thinks that he’d already felt that way shortly before meeting the woman.

The urge to fall into the comfort of physical affection is annoyingly strong when he’s trying not to give in to it. He leans forward and kisses Lan Zhan one more time, then stays close this time. “You can help me through this, Lan Zhan. If I can’t do it by myself, I know I can do it with you.” He can learn to value himself through Lan Zhan.

He is kissed and soothed and beloved, and it should sting and bruise him that Wei Ying feels the compulsion to treat him as if — ...a child. Another dependent in need of protection. No matter. Later, when he is secluded and alone in the mellow whites of early morning, he will allow himself a moment to analyse his feelings, their consequences. The inevitable, striking context.

"I only wish you hale and whole." And well and gladdened and happy. And perhaps kissing Lan Wangji again, even as his forehead dips to cradle in the nook of Wei Ying's collar and to breathe, breathe him in.

"A warning." This, offered without further thought or indication, will not in fact prove enough to warn Wei Ying. Irrelevant. "You are formidable, beautiful, incomparable. Strong, in cultivation and soul. Generous. Loving. There is nothing in you that is wanting."

He wraps his arms around Lan Zhan’s neck and brings him in closer. He likes the way the warm puffs of air feel against his throat. His Lan Zhan. His love and life is right here with him and he can take comfort in that. So what if he’s still lost? This moment feels good and that’s what he wants to focus on.

“I will be,” he assures, closing his eyes and letting one of his hands wander softly over silk clad skin. He’s not intentionally trying to seduce his lover, but he wouldn’t be disappointed if it does. “I’ll bare the darkness of my soul and if… when you love me anyway, I’ll take comfort in it. I’ll learn from it.”

He only freezes a moment when Lan Zhan gives him a warning. Expecting worse, he’s relieved that it’s mostly compliments. But why would that be a warning? “You mean I’ll still be the same person after we do all this work. Nothing will change except you knowing me more intimately. And, hopefully, my own perceptions of myself. But when it comes down to it, I’ll have to learn to accept the bad parts with the good.”

If. When. Yes. Yes. Wei Ying has learned, if not to understand him, then at least to mimic that outcome, arms folding to envelop Lan Wangji and draw him close. There is a moment of unbridled gratitude between them, of liveliness, of being whole.

"Wei Ying wished to be warned ahead of flattery." Nearly laughing, tenderly. "His heart cannot bear it."

Or so Wei Ying so often claims, for all they both know he basks in the brilliance of compliments, like an old cat sunning. But far from Lan Wangji to betray his husband by speaking of his flaws when he feels climbed and captured like a seaside stone by invasive weeds.

"He is but young, as innocent as Lan Liang." Hardly, by the sudden trajectory of his hands, sending shivers across Lan Wangji's spine, as Wangji retaliates with a rapid pinch of his lover's rump.

He can feel the heat rush to his face. So that’s why Lan Zhan had warned him! He’d been focused on the subject of their conversation that he hadn’t even realized. Regardless of the intention of Lan Zhan’s warning, it helped him look at things from another, more charitable direction. Still, he groans and covers his face by pressing it between Lan Zhan’s cheek and shoulder.

“I should have known that,” he sulks playfully, interrupted by a pinch that makes him yelp in surprise. “Lan Zhan, don’t bully your poor husband!”

It feels like some barrier between them has shattered. They’ve reached a tentative understanding about the work they’ll be doing together and now they’re back to teasing each other and smiling about it. Nothing’s changed, but it feels different somehow. He feels just a little bit lighter for it.

Wei Wuxian nuzzles Lan Zhan’s shoulder, pressing his lips to it for a kiss through his robes. “Love you,” he says, squeezing him as close as he can without it being uncomfortable for either of them. “My wonderful, patient, loving, irresistibly sexy husband.”

And just so, the air lightens. Wei Ying clings and nuzzles, Lan Wangji retaliates with slow puffs of air in his husband's air, then light bites after, when a sweet mouth lays claim of his shoulder's perch. He rocks Wei Ying fleetingly back to gaze in his eyes and set him to right:

"Your husband of questionable merits," he corrects, because certainly Jiang Wanyin would not agree with any length extolment of Lan Wangji's alleged virtues. "Ruthless. Past youthful age. Cold."

The more he thinks of it, the more it appears Wei Ying has settled beneath his virtues and his station and most forever suffer as a virginal victim of the wretched Hanguang-Jun. Truly, his fate most wretched and sealed.

"You were tricked at the marketplace for a poor husband." Turn him back in.

His body may as well be made of water, fluid in the way it moves along with Lan Zhan’s. He laughs a little at the gentle bites, but he doesn’t pull away from them. They aren’t so deep that they cause marks. At least, not yet. There’s still a smile on Wei Wuxian’s face when he’s rocked back. It dips slightly at his words, though.

“Shh,” he hushes, leaning in to kiss him gently on the lips. “No one can talk about my husband like that,” his voice is still playful as he says it. “You’re mine and I love you just the way you are. You’re handsome, righteous, loving, affectionate, loyal… and you’re the only one who believed in me when the whole world waged war against me. There’s no one else I’d rather be with.”

He gives another kiss, this one lingering for a few delicious moments before he breaks this one, too. “I know you’re older than me, stubborn as a mule, but you’re actually pretty warm. If you weren’t, I would have to sleep wearing socks.”

"A wise reason to remain wedded," he concedes, instinctively leaning in to catch Wei Ying's mouth when he withdraws himself, in awe of his lover's wisdom. Yes, no plan sounder than that of heavens-blessed matrimony in the name of politely warmed ankles. Wei Ying, a consummate icicle, has found his target and shamelessly annihilates his resistances. Already, a shiver walks up Lan Wangji's legs, fearful of the terror waiting.

"Please take pity on this husband," he whispers as if a lowly civilian begging succor in the face of a cultivator's overwhelming attack. How often have they not glimpsed this bemused terror, meant to impress upon assailants the injustice of their cause? "Spare his calves on this night."

Even as he begs and chases, he tips his forehead to touch Wei Ying's, their noses brush, their intimacy cleverly forged. His sweetheart, his lover true. "Take pity on this unworthy one, with your frigid ankles and pointy elbows."

He plays the game of kissing Lan Zhan whenever he comes close enough. Little kisses meant to make him smile rather than ones to convey his eagerness to move onto their marital duties. A giggle escapes him at his husband’s pleading. Usually Wei Wuxian is the one to beg and plead for mercy and it amuses him that their roles are reversed.

“But without your noble sacrifice, how am I going to sleep with cold feet?” He drags his hands along Lan Zhan’s back as he pulls partly away to get a good look at him. And to continue the journey of his fingers by running them down his lover’s chest to find the sash around his waist. “Okay, I’ll show mercy tonight, but you’ll have to let me keep my socks on all night after our bath.” His fingers slip towards the knot of that sash and untie it.

“We’re good, right? I’m not feeling upset now. What about you, Lan Zhan?” He’s prepared to just bathe chastely with Lan Zhan if that’s what it takes, but that doesn’t mean he’d prefer it.

They're good, he supposes.

If not perfectly coordinated and in balance, then at least on the brink of that synchrony. His hand chases Wei Ying's, seeks the back of his head, draws him in so that Lan Wangji might rain another gallery of sweet kisses on his cheek.

"Tired." But that is not the question. "Not upset." No. They have pledged each other disclosure and sincerity, and Wei Ying needs him to hold true. The curling, souring chasm in his belly has mellowed but not completely abated. His voice sounds drawn to himself, too quieted. He feels, not for the first time, entirely on the backfoot.

"Your recovery appears shapeless to me, now." What will it entail? Over what time? Surely, it cannot be as simple as mere talk, yet Wei Ying seems substantively more relieved after exchanging mere words. "I am uncertain how to assist."

Wei Wuxian’s fingers work the knot free, releasing the bind and relaxing the folded silk at Lan Zhan’s middle while Lan Zhan answers him. Once he’s done with that, he draws the robe open and wraps his arms around Lan Zhan’s middle again.

“I don’t know what it’s going to look like, either. We’ll just have to take it as it comes,” he suggests, nestling himself close again. “I feel tired, too. I didn’t have a long, boring day like you, but all this serious talk is pretty draining. I doubt it’s going to get any easier, but that’s for another day to worry about, right?”

He rests his chin on Lan Zhan’s shoulders and takes a deep breath, letting it out as a sigh. “You want to plan how we’ll do it, huh? Since we’re dual cultivating every third night, we can schedule it around that. One night we cultivate, one night we talk through something that hurts, and one night we can just enjoy each other’s company without any of the hard stuff.”

The leech, his chilly husband, propels himself toward Lan Wangi's core-fueled, warmed waist, and low laughter sputters from his throat as he rounds his waist to receive him. To draw him further in, a welcome and beloved addition.

"No," he pronounces, but dips in to nip at the nearby shell of his husband's ear, to show through playfulness that this is not refusal born of anger or rejection. He bides his time, nibbling at leisurely pace.

"Wei Ying would iron his tongue and hold against speaking of his hurts on days unscheduled." He has learned, somehow, to give that breezily, as if choice whimsy. He has learned, they have both learned, how to tackle Wei Ying's inconsistencies and self-harmful behaviours. "Better we agree to ask each night, before the start."

If they must postpone either love play or dual cultivation as a result, so be it.

He sucks in a sharp breath as soon as Lan Zhan starts to nibble his ear. Startled and stimulated, he tilts his head to give his husband as much access to him as he’d like. He takes the opportunity to run his fingers over the small of Lan Zhan’s back, slow and teasing strokes.

“Before we start then,” he agrees, though he prefers his way because of the exact reason his lover gives. “You know me best,” he sighs and turns his head enough to kiss along his Lan Zhan’s throat. “And you want me to wake you if I have trouble sleeping or nightmares, too.” It’s going to be a rough few months or however long it takes to bare his soul without censor.

He’s not completely convinced this will help him feel better in the long run, but he hopes it will. Even if it doesn’t, anything that brings him and Lan Zhan closer together is worth doing.

“You’re warm,” he says with a smile, “I could stay like this all night, but we should move to the bath soon. Unless you want a trip to the bed, first.”

He is warm and welcoming and far too vulnerable to the pattering of Wei Ying's questing fingertips, expediting shivers of pleasure through his raw nerves. All at once, Lan Wangji comes to attention, oversensitive and aware of their surroundings, of the faint propagation of sandalwood in the air, of their numerous silk layers rustling with every fresh fold.

Before he knows so, he is tipping his head to allow Wei Ying greater access to his throat, where flesh bumps already line the trail of his lover's hungry mouth. And yet —

"I do not wish to bed tonight," he offers, not unlike an apology.

It strikes him, thunderously, that he has never outright rejected his husband's advances, however gently. That even at the peak of their strife, they would retreat silently in the miasma of their anger, seeking their rest apart or pointedly ignoring one another in the confines of the same bed, without never needing to communicate their abstinence.

Perhaps it is because he is at ease that he feels tranquil speaking a refusal. That he can trust Wei Ying not to misunderstand.

He’s just starting to get into kissing Lan Zhan’s neck when he drops the line about not wanting to sleep together tonight. He can’t help but make a connection between his honesty and the decision to forego bed play. It’s such a rare thing for them. He can count on his hands how many nights they’d spent married and together that they don’t perform their marital duties.

He stops the kissing and the caressing, but he doesn’t move out of his husband’s arms. If anything, he clings onto him tighter. “Is it because of what we’ve been talking about?”

He can always wait until Lan Zhan goes to sleep to take care of his physical need, but he’s worried that it will always be like this. If he has to choose between being honest with Lan Zhan or sleeping with Lan Zhan, he knows he’d choose the latter almost every time.

Another squeeze later, he moves away so he can give Lan Zhan space. If they’re not going to sleep together, then it would just be cruel riling him up.

Wei Ying withdraws himself, and the reaction is violent, instinctive — reaching out to loosely catch his husband's nape and draw him in again, settling Wei Ying's sweet head on the perch of Lan Wangji's shoulder.

"...feel unmoored," and so the physical reminder of Wei Ying and their ongoing connection grounds him. "Restless."

Impossibly lively in the quiet, dead husk of his flesh. His fingers itch, eyes bright, mouth at once sated and hungry. "My mind would not be on Wei Ying."

An insult and injury greater than any single other one he can imagine doling out. Throughout their matrimony, their countless conversations, he has been earnestly devoted to Wei Ying, resolute in his interest. To deny him now would be a wretched, strange thing.

"It is the sum, not the parts," he offers, limpid as shallow waters. Breath loiters in his lungs, struggling in transit. "The day. Our conversation."

He has been thoroughly useless, continuously helpless. It does not suit him. Reduces and constricts him, and he is — discontent.

He doesn’t fight being pulled closer again, finding comfort in the proximity. He closes his eyes and lets Lan Zhan speak his heart without too many interruptions. The hurt he’d been feeling dims the more he listens, and he knows trying to push and tease Lan Zhan into sleeping with him anyway would be doing a grave disservice to both of them.

His arms, now on the outside of Lan Zhan’s robes, rub soothing circles on his back. “It’s okay,” he tells him, finally resting his chin on Lan Zhan’s shoulder again. “Let me know if you need space to think or meditate.”

Had his confessions shaken the foundation between them? Will it grow stronger because of it or will it crumble around them, he wonders.

“Is bathing together okay? I can go after you if it matters. I won’t try to seduce you or anything if we bathe together. I know we didn’t have our duel, but I can wash you and dry you, then comb out your hair when we’re done,” he suggests. If Lan Zhan wanted those things as a prize, then he wants to deliver. Maybe he’s just scared that his husband will drift away from him without the constant physical reminder of his presence.

"Do not wish to part extensively from Wei Ying tonight," he murmurs by way of refusal, at once child-like and hostile against a prospect that the dimming light of Wei Ying voice suggests his husband is already ill at ease to consider. They are so very foolish with each other, prickly and stubborn and proud, but irrevocably tender and readily harmed if they are parted.

His grip on Wei Ying lowers to his lover's back, its curve. He pulls him back in, half to straddle Lan Wangji's own knees, to a point of what he can only assume will evolve into selfish discomfort. Forgive him, he will bear them parted, soon. Not now.

"May I make love to you with morning?" It will pass, he means to say. This strange peculiarity of his mood, no better than an ill-loved season. "Wake my husband with my mouth, my hands."

“I’m not going anywhere,” he promises, nuzzling the side of his face against Lan Zhan’s. Guided until he’s sat with Lan Zhan between his thighs, he wonders why his husband would want to put them in such a position if he isn’t interested in sleeping together. Wouldn’t it just lead to discomfort? “I just wanted to give you some space so you don’t go to sleep… uncomfortable.”

Really, it’s Wei Wuxian who is feeling a little uncomfortable. It’s in his nature to want something that has been labeled as unobtainable. If it were something mundane, he’d weasel his way into getting it, but it feels wrong when it’s intimacy with Lan Zhan.

And then Lan Zhan goes and makes it worse!

“I want you,” he says, moving back again, just far enough to look at his husband. “But I’ll wait until tomorrow morning when you’re ready. You don’t mind if I take care of myself after you fall asleep?”

He fingers the edge of Lan Zhan’s robe, feeling all kinds of conflict in himself. Maybe he had been trying to rush being okay during and after their conversation. He’d felt better, but now that he’s been denied love making, he can’t help but think of all the things he’d admitted to. It was just a nightmare. No, it was memory, too. Why are the darkest memories the ones with the most detail? Why can’t he remember his sister that well?

"I mind," he says sweetly, for all he would not bear witness, for all that Wei Ying might cheat him of his abstinence and Lan Wangji would only know it from the syrupy relaxation of his body, come morning. Peering into the molten silver of Wei Ying's eyes, he nods only to bring their noses closer, refusing the possibility of distance, while Wei Ying's fingers dance shivers of excitement wherever his flesh kisses the trim of his robes

"Wait for me," he instructs patiently, reining in the impulse to neglect his instincts and proceed with love making, for all his mind and body are misaligned. How difficult can it be to stoke his appetite from embers? Surely, Wei Ying has never failed to excite him, to trigger or ensure his yearning. In this, they have been perpetually, tirelessly matched.

But no. If he forces his desire, it will only mellow, then extinguish, as if to defy his heart. He will disappoint them, and doubtlessly kindle Wei Ying's fears that he has neglected to enthrall his husband.

"Wait until tomorrow," he repeats. As Wei Ying did once, postponing his satisfaction on the very cusp of pleasure to taste it doubly, delayed. "Shall take Wei Ying as he lies soft and sleeping, sparing him discomfort."

“But what if it keeps me awake?” He asks, starting to sulk about it. If Lan Zhan wants to go to sleep unsatisfied, why does he have to, too? And Lan Zhan wants to stay close like this, so he’s going to inevitably want more the longer they stay close.

But it’s important enough for Lan Zhan to deny him even his own touch.

He pouts, but nods his head slowly. The petty side of himself considers telling Lan Zhan that if he has to wait to be bedded then Lan Zhan will have to wait to be kissed. He knows if they start kissing, he’s going to end up hard and then he really will have trouble falling asleep and it won’t just be because of his freshly kindled self-doubt.

“It’s because of the socks, isn’t it?” He asks, trying to lighten his own mood. Sleeping together tonight would have had him nude except for socks since he’d agreed to have mercy on his husband’s ankles for once. He knows that wouldn’t be enough to deter Lan Zhan under normal circumstances and he’ll be wearing the socks in the morning anyway.

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