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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As close as two people can be, if not closer. Stitched together, coalescing, melting as one. Wei Ying urges him away from gentleness, and he shakes his head in minute, slowed gestures, less to reject once more than simply to signal he has exhausted the last of his stamina; there is no more.

He nibbles as Wei Ying's fingers interject between them, catching one between his lips to give it suckle, as he dares a hand between his husband's robes, slow in final, indelible parting. Under his palm, sweet, supple skin, little bruised or touched by sword hardships and only privy to the despair Mo Xuanyu encountered at his family's hand.

"How are you so unafraid? You barely wept on my account."

Short work, in the midst of it: pushing down his own sleeping trousers, undoing the fine lacings of Wei Ying's own. Leaning absently, after, to capture the much coveted, freshly replenished swell of their salve jar, nearly tipping it across their bed in the effort to drag it close.

He is nervous, he understands suddenly. No. Excited, for all he had thought himself hollowed of such an impulse earlier.

Moaning at the feeling of Lan Zhan sucking on his finger, he lewdly moves the digit in and out of his husband’s mouth. His body remembers that mouth around something else and his hips rise again. He strains for some contact but Lan Zhan hasn’t dubbed it time for that quite yet. In some ways, it’s more maddening than quarrel to be promised euphoria but denied it by gentle teasing.

“Afraid of you?” He asks, leaning his head back to look up at his husband. His finger is still dipping in and out of Lan Zhan’s mouth and his eyes keep glancing down to track what’s going on. While he would love to have Lan Zhan’s mouth around him, he wants to feel him inside even more. “I’d never be scared of you, Lan Zhan. You love me too much to hurt me in ways that aren’t fun.”

He lifts himself up so Lan Zhan can pull his trousers down past his knees and expose him. His knees part again, not just inviting but demanding more attention.

“I love you,” he reminds, slipping his hand from his lover’s mouth so he can cup Lan Zhan’s cheek. “So much, Lan Zhan. If I were drowning, you would be my first breath of fresh air.”

If Wei Ying were drowning. But he isn't, will never be permitted. Persists, a tempting creature of an eerily wild night, unraveled before Lan Wangji, permitting himself known. The skin of his trousers is shed obediently, and Lan Wangji peels it off him to reveal the ivory of his pallid legs, the heat of his pretty, swollen arousal.

His own garments fall just open enough to allow them tender friction, marked by a slow, cresting sigh whenever he shifts only so, gasps only so, tips his head only so to slip the roundness of his cheek into Wei Ying's head. So often they pretend Lan Wangji controls their relationship, between his silver, his status, the pride of his sect. But it is Wei Ying who draws and retains him in orbit, who settles him, as if an animal well tamed.

Between moans, he prevails to gather to coax the debris of his attention to himself, wetting two fingers in salve, before searching between Wei Ying's legs to hunt the trail to his hole and dip in once, to spread the wetness. More balm meets skin, loosening open the rim, sweetening its yield. For a man untouched for less than a day, Wei Ying is already impossibly, alarmingly tight and disobedient.

"I thought earlier I might have scared you."

His husband’s name is on his lips, hips rising once more to meet Lan Zhan’s halfway. He pushes Lan Zhan’s robe to the side, drawing one of his hands downward across his chest, abdomen, lower. His hand finds Lan Zhan’s cock and guides it along side his own for a handful of desperate thrusts until Lan Zhan decides to move onto the next step.

“I was only scared you’d leave,” he admits, “For the night or however long you needed space. I was never scared that you’d strike me or do anything else to hurt me.” Not physically, at least. Their words are another story, but he’s typically more worried that he’d be the one to say something he couldn’t take back than Lan Zhan.

He gasps when he’s entered, spreading his legs wider to give his husband more room to loosen him. To distract himself from the vaguely uncomfortable sensation, he curls a leg around Lan Zhan’s and works both of their cocks at the same time. He could probably get off just doing this, but he wants to feel his husband inside him before he’ll be able to sleep.

“Besides, if I ever pissed you off enough to actually attack me, I’m confident I could avoid injury long enough for me to calm you down,” he says a cockily. He’s not Lan Zhan’s equal, but he suspects his husband would be too subconsciously worried to hurt him that it wouldn’t be a problem.

For a few moments, the work of his hand stutters, as his eyes shutter close and he stills completely. Then, he thaws, hips lulled into a gentle sway to ease Wei Ying's strokes. His husband's hand, tight and warm around him. Their lengths, suffocated in a tight ring of delicious friction. His lover's skin everywhere, the honeyed notes of earlier blooming thick and heady when Lan Wangji's forehead dips into Wei Ying's collarbone.

Helplessly, he ruts his hips into his husband's grip, fleetingly forgetting everything except a heated litany of, "Wei Ying. Wei Ying."

In the end, he only resists being overwhelmed to a point past return for their evening by turning his head aside and — recalling enough of Wei Ying's previous disturbance to avoid his skin — biting into his own arm. The tremors of pain stir him back to focus, and he stays his pace, drawing a hand to loosen Wei Ying's off his length and kissing the mountain chain of his husband's disobedient knuckles.

"You tempt me to shame myself, beautiful thing." For all they've both visited the ways in which they can bring one another to cusp without penetration.

“That’s it, Lan Zhan,” he coos, doubling his effort to pleasure them both, momentarily tempted to take them both to completion. It would be rushing things and neither would get what they really want, but having his husband melt against him in bliss is a delicious thing. His moans echo Lan Zhan’s as they slide together in his hand.

Until Lan Zhan comes to his senses and interrupts, at least. He loosens his grip and grins at his husband. “Got too distracted listening to you,” he explains, curling his fingers to slip them past Lan Zhan’s lips. “I could get off just listening to you.”

He spreads his legs a little wider and pulls Lan Zhan down for another kiss. When he reaches down this time, he takes just Lan Zhan into his hand and guides him to his destination.

“Love you,” he reminds him, leaning back so he can look up and into his lover’s eyes. He’s feeling impatient to hear Lan Zhan coming undone inside of him. He wants the reassurance that everything is going to be okay between them. That their bodies and souls still sing for one another.

He wants to bite Wei Ying.

He wants to bite Wei Ying and make him squirm and pierce him on his length and see him cry and cry and cry and plead limpidly for mercy, and that urgency to own so much that he can destroy nearly consumes him. His moan's gravelly, buried in the locking tomb of his lungs, as he yields to his husband again, Wei Ying's hand guiding him in position. He would miss, he knows with bashful boyishness, without the assistance, far too overwhelmed by animal instinct and quiet fever.

Then, he enters his husband, tip to smooth thrust to complete, agonizingly sweet insertion, and his mouth crashes onto Wei Ying's, swallowing the last of his lover's confession. Yes and yes and home.

And, I love you. He has been scant with his words since their quarrel, as if sweetness costs him. Even now, tattered and made fragile by reuniting with Wei Ying's body, sweat beading down his brow, he feels — too overcome, again.

He forces himself to remove himself nearly completely out of Wei Ying, before pushing back in, once, again, again. A constant, thrilling periodicity. He won't last long, he knows already, truly prone to shaming himself. He won't last long, and yet he knows Wei Ying will not think less of him for it.

"I love you. I love you, soulmate, my soulmate. I love you."

His hips rise off the mattress when Lan Zhan pushes into him. It’s always uncomfortable at first and this time is no different. “That’s it,” he coaxes, willing himself to help his husband go deeper as he lowers himself back down.

He cups Lan Zhan’s face between his hands and grins at him. There’s nothing more reassuring than their lovemaking. It’s a balm to his soul as much as kissing, which he responds to with an encouraging moan, toes curling into their bedding as he gets used to the push and pull of their bodies.

His hands explore Lan Zhan’s skin, fingers pausing to pinch at a nipple, rolling it between his finger and thumb. He hopes it gives Lan Zhan the same sort of jolt between his legs as it gives him.

“Lan Zhan, I know. I know you love me as much as I love you. You’re so good, Lan Zhan. Feels good. I love you so much.”

He knows Lan Zhan must be as tired as Wei Wuxian feels. This will be one of those times where they’re so desperate for each other that they aren’t taking their time drawing things out. That’s fine with him. They know how to efficiently get them both off. It won’t be a world stopping orgasm, but it’ll be enough to solidify their union in spite of the pain of conflict earlier.

Feels good. It does, glimmers of pleasure stabbing his gut, spreading liquefied through his limbs while the push and pull of their body settles into a deep-thrust routine.

"Vixen," he hisses when the pinch of his nipple spills lightning through him, eyes briefly dripping closed while a shudder consumes him. He breathes, retaliating against Wei Ying with careless nips of his jaw, his ear, whatever comes within reach. "Another night, have your fill."

He is not adverse to allowing his lover the reins of him for an evening, the chance to explore his body in bites and pinches, if it satisfies this yearning Wei Ying always manifests to pay his dues. To bring as much pleasure as he receives, if not more.

Already, they are reliably competent at base fucking, attentively learned and thoroughly rehearsed, and though it should worry him that they have reduced lovemaking to a predictable — there is nothing pedestrian about their reunion, nothing perfunctory or bored when one of Lan Wangji's arms bends to bracket to the right of Wei Ying and pillar Wangji above. The other hand, unbidden and sly, slips in between them to remember Wei Ying's pretty length and cup it as if a precious gift, falling in between tight strokes, rolls and squeezes.

"For me. Will you? For me." As if Wei Ying has ever strived to reach orgasm for another man. As if he would presume to admit this truth, if he had.

He giggles and tilts his head back, both backing away from and also inviting more little bites. It thrills him to know he’s pushed his husband that far, but he obediently moves his hand to cup the back of Lan Zhan’s neck to hold him close. It’s been a while since Lan Zhan marked him in a place where anyone might see, either by tooth or suction.

“I’ll keep you up all night,” he warns. They’ve slept together so many times now, but there are still so many things they can uncover about each other when they take the time to savor their bed play.

His hips buck against Lan Zhan’s hand, a moan catching deep in his throat. He clings onto his husband with both arms and legs, “For you,” he promises, grinding his backside against Lan Zhan’s front to chase the spark that ignites every time they move just so.

“For you, Lan Zhan. Almost got it. Just a little more. Faster.” He’s usually good about speaking in complete sentences even while they’re sleeping together, but now that Lan Zhan’s loving him from both sides, the ability fails him.

With a few more thrusts, he squeezes Lan Zhan close and rides that last thrust as the first wave of his climax hits him. With it, he lets go of all that stress that had built up over the course of their evening. Things are all as right as can be as far as he’s concerned.

Inevitably, climax finds him shivered, barely in control of himself, chasing Wei Ying's lips until his mouth lands on his husband's throat with hungry inevitability.

He suckles, hand still mean over Wei Ying's arousal, pulling his pleasure as if wresting hard-won victory and readying him for fresh pinnacles of satisfaction. He isn't: it comes, like Lan Wangji's own stuttered, lowly moaned climax, too careless and quick and coarse, and he cannot help himself, hard grinds hunting the last trickle of that same fruition.

He thinks he spills into Wei Ying for a short eternity, the last few thrusts like stabbings meant to gut both of them. Angrily, shamefully, he inches harder into Wei Ying even his body has peaked into overstimulation, and he is tired, tired and worn and licking and kissing his husband's throat in apology, where a mark welts.

"...apologise. I apologise." But he is not pulling out still, not giving Wei Ying that relief, as if only like this, connected in body and soul, can they court true honesty. "I am sorry you are not wholly happy."

They move together, wrenching every last drop of pleasure and then keep going for several moments after just in case they miss some. When they’re both finished, he lays back on the bed and runs his fingers through Lan Zhan’s hair and down his shoulders and back. Touch feels nice after sex and he wants to share the intimacy.

“Shhh, no need for apologies,” he tells him gently, bringing his hands to cup his husband’s cheeks. “I’m happy in this moment. And you make more of my moments happy than they would be without you.”

He’d been worried that confessing his unhappy moments would trouble Lan Zhan and it’s bittersweet to know he was right. He’d never been honest about the existence of that part of himself to anyone, not even his sister. He’d rather smile with the ones he loves, but Lan Zhan isn’t just that to him. He’s half his soul, half his heart, half his life.

“I love you so much, Lan Zhan.” That’s why fighting with him hurts so much. If it were any other person, he wouldn’t take it to heart. Sure he might sulk a little, but that’s because he likes getting his way, but it doesn’t hurt.

After some time, he knows, Wei Ying will strain and ache beneath him, suspended in a state of discomfort. Lan Wangji will have to roll over him. In a few heartbeats, but not now, and he clings to that certainty, that they can rebuild themselves as a unit no matter the grave, slippery hardships of their evening gone.

And he murmurs, far too close to Wei Ying's ear, "I wanted... thought. If I gave you everything I had, everything I am... you would be happy."

As if Wei Ying is a child to be so readily satisfied, as if he must accept all that Lan Wangji directs, unbidden. As if he, like Lan Wangji, does not host and home his struggles, his wants, his needs, his challenges.

"But it is not enough." Lan Wangji and what he can provide are not enough. And he had thought he was at peace with this, thought himself healed of that hubris, but the sting spreads and burns and leaves him breathlessly, impossibly sedate.

He allows himself what he rejected when he was still of sober mind, urging Wei Ying to find a world greater than Lan Wangji. "I wish it were. I wish I were."

He aches for his husband, arms wrapping around him and holding him close. Sure, it’s a little strange feeling to have Lan Zhan still inside him for so long after their love making, but he can endure it for a little while. It feels important to be as close as he can be to Lan Zhan, hoping it will coax everything painful out of him.

“I am happy with you, Lan Zhan. You make this world tolerable just by being here with me. You make me feel loved even when I don’t feel like I deserve it,” he explains, drawing nonsense over Lan Zhan’s back with his fingertips.

He doesn’t have the words to explain the feelings in him. He doesn’t know what he can say for Lan Zhan to believe he’s a benefit in his life and not a detriment. How can someone explain to another that he’s depressed and sad sometimes but overall he’s happy? That if he weren’t with Lan Zhan now, he’d probably be hiding out all alone in Yiling and feeling sorry for himself from the moment he wakes until the moment he falls asleep.

He hugs Lan Zhan closer, squeezing him as tight as he can. “You’re the best parts of my life. I couldn’t do all of this… any of this without you.”

"I know," he murmurs, still wet against the stretch of skin of Wei Ying's throat, still heady, still needy. "I know."

And he loves Wei Ying for it, part and whole, loves the the candor and domesticity and kindness that compel Wei Ying to yield and reassure him. The truth, as they surely both know it: Lan Wangji has failed him. Has proven insufficient. Must work harder, faster, more consistently to find an answer that progresses his husband from luxurious futility to a sense of worth and urgency.

He melts altogether into the warmth of Wei Ying's arms, drawn into an embrace that all but dissolves him. Their breathing synchronizes, limbs entangling. He lets himself be, as close to Wei Ying as flesh and skin will allow them — then pulls out, drifting to settle at his husband's left and finally allow him comfort.

"...should bathe you again." He cannot possibly be asked to rise again.

He doesn’t rush Lan Zhan, holding him for as long as he wants to be held and murmuring all sorts of ‘I love you’s and the like while they just exist together. The longer it goes on, the sleepier he starts to feel. He usually doesn’t fight against sleep unless he’s busying himself on a project that catches his attention, but he fights it tonight because he wants to be there for his husband just like Lan Zhan was there for him earlier.

He grunts when Lan Zhan finally exits him, melting into the new feeling of emptiness. He rolls onto his side to follow his lover, laying with one arm pinned between them and the other draped over Lan Zhan’s chest.

“We can bathe in the morning,” he coaxes, wiggling just enough to find the most comfortable position. And if he ends up laying on top of his husband, it won’t be the first or the last time. “Let’s stay like this for a little while longer.”

The fight's fled him, drained syrupy from his flesh and bones. He languishes, accepting Wei Ying stumbled over him like a tattered flag, nearly weightless for how small he remains, despite ongoing, assiduous efforts to heal him of his thinness. He noses, haphazardly, landing first in Wei Ying's hair, then his collarbone.

"You smell of me," he fumbles the words, strung along by more stubbornness than proper enunciation. "Smell of mine."

And he does, their musk combined, for all their intimacy hardly lasted enough to warrant an afterthought in the annotations of the most generous love poet. Truly, he laughs, stifled and strange, mouth caressing Wei Ying's ear in passing. "This is not the bedding of which to tell the washerwomen."

As if Wei Ying ever succumbed to such gossip, as if he would share the secret of his husband's intimacy, like all the pretty young girls who chatter and tout their trysts. Still, the thought amuses.

“That’s ‘cause I am yours,” he says, stifling a yawn shortly after. He always ends up feeling so sleepy after sex, but he’s still doing his damnedest to stay awake until Lan Zhan falls asleep before him.

He knows he must have seen Lan Zhan more exhausted than he is in this moment. Either when they were in the Xuanyu of Slaughter’s cave or in the Burial Mounds following the massacre at Nightless City, but he doesn’t remember the former clearly or the latter much at all. The battles of today were only words, but the injuries are just as real.

Surprised by the sudden laughter, he lifts his head up so he can look down at his lovely husband’s face. It would take a truly broken person to not smile back, and he’s only got a few cracks here and there. “I’m not complaining,” he answers, stealing a quick kiss. “It did what we needed it to do.” They both finished and he feels like the pain from earlier is well on its way to healed.

"Will make it up to this neglected maiden," he pledges, thieving a second kiss from Wei Ying's laughter-warmed mouth. There, right there. He has captured the essence of his husband's beauty and instead to keep it for his own, enshrined in perfect, crystalline memory. "Will make you biddable with silks and sweets."

Like a perverted older man who cannot satisfy his bride with his flesh and must instead depend on the wealth of his coin purse. How convoluted, how strange. He draws Wei Ying to himself, to his chest, calling his lover to spread over him as if a second blanket, while shifting so the covers might better house Wei Ying beneath.

"My love is stubborn on this night." Whimsy, playful, as if he is only an observer to Wei Ying's fine habits and not his foremost instigator. "Eludes the sleep that should have long claimed him. What distracts him?"

He's laughing when Lan Zhan kisses him, rubbing his cheek across his husband's shortly after. "You haven't neglected me. I'm satisfied by my husband's performance. But... I won't say no to being spoiled. I had my eye on a black robe with red and silver dragon scales embroidered into it, but decided not to buy it today." And he stifles another big yawn by pressing his face against Lan Zhan's chest.

When he lays his head back down on Lan Zhan's chest, he can hear the comforting sound of his heart beating strongly. He smiles to himself, remembering the first time he'd seen Lan Zhan drunk. When was it that he fell in love with Lan Zhan? It must have been before that at some point. Why else would he have not been alarmed by his own reaction?

"Hmm?" Ah, so Lan Zhan noticed. If anyone could, it would be him. "Just want to spend as much time with you as I can." No, that's not the whole thing. "You wanted to be held tonight. I want to make sure I'm holding you until you fall asleep."

It blooms a certain satisfaction in him, to hear Wei Ying speak material desires with whimsy and confidence — as if he no longer fears rejection, no longer dreads the look of Lan Wangji pondering his request. As if he is entitled, and he is, oh, he is. To this and more than the cultivation world can ever fruitfully deliver him.

"Have a fresh garment cut for you of the same cloth, sooner than refitted," he chastises, and does not speak the truth they both know: that Wei Ying's instinct has still taken him to the cheaper merchant stalls and houses, where pieces of clothing are cut already to a broad size. A premium seller would never presume to create a garment without taking the buyer's measure.

Lan Wangji's hand stumbles in Wei Ying's hair, fishes out knots and loosens binds. The strokes, the kissing, the carefully obsessive attention are, inevitably, by-products of care he has never learned to direct at anyone, anything else.

"You already hold me. Wei Ying is my blanket." Beneath another cover that stretches above them all. "He may sleep."

He hums an agreement about the robe. Having the display fitted or being measured for a new one would have taken precious time out of his outing with the kids. It works out in his favor this time since he’ll follow Lan Zhan’s instructions to get fitted for a new robe instead of one already produced for a quick sale. He has to remind himself that he isn’t tragically poor now. He has access to more than enough money to live lavishly and a husband encouraging him to do so.

“Might go back and commission one,” he murmurs, snuggling close. His knee ends up between Lan Zhan’s now and his arms bracket his husband between them. Lan Zhan’s heart’s steady beating is just one more comfort drawing him towards sleep.

“Love you,” he insists, turning his face just enough to kiss husband’s chest just under his collar bone. “Don’t stay up too late.” It won’t be long now before he lets himself drift to sleep.

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Why is it Always Meditation?

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