( On the way to midday and polite hours for Wei Ying, who would by now often have written a note with his Lan Liang's latest adventures, but is instead silent — )
As ever, he lingers, impossibly disciplined and instinctively too ill at ease to surrender the remains of their dinner for cleansing without carefully covering them with a cloche and setting them outside of their door by the porch, where the evening guards and the grounds watchers will retrieve them for the kitchens. Then, he returns once more to fuss at their son, trying his forehead for fresh fevers, his flank and hind for wet or shivers.
"He sleeps restfully," he calls out with shallow heat, careful not to shower Liang with enough loudness to wake him. The odds are in his favor, even as he drags the crib behind him, sitting Liang's bed parallel to their own.
Then, Wei Ying slinks behind him, the scent of his husband bound with the borrowed sandalwood, and Lan Wangji allows himself to feel, to scent, go be. He tips back just enough to tease Wei Ying with warmth but not inconvenience him with the burden if Wangji's weight — until Wei Ying fleetingly excuses himself to write to their son.
After, long after, slipped into their bed and courting patience, he taps the empty side as if to bid his lover close. May Wei Ying at long last afford him the gift and honour of his presence. "Is it that you write your lovers, so secretively?"
“I hope not,” he answers with a laugh, “I’m sure Lan Shufu is handsome enough to women of his generation but we wouldn’t be compatible. Well, maybe if he shaved his beard and I lost my vision and sense of smell, I might think it’s you from a distance.” He isn’t trying to stir up Lan Zhan’s jealousy. He thinks the idea is absurd enough not to trigger anything.
Once he’s finished writing, he makes his way to their bed and climbs in on his side. He faces Lan Zhan at first, turning his back to their son for a handful of selfish moments. He wraps an arm around his husband’s middle and closes the distance between them. “Let me be close for just a little while,” he requests. They’ve been more or less avoiding anything too intimate since he’d come home and he misses it. With the baby behind him, he will try his best to behave himself.
“He’s asleep?” He asks, glancing down at Lan Zhan’s lips briefly. “I want to kiss you, but I’m scared I won’t want to stop. If you think you can be both our will power, maybe it won’t be so dangerous.”
Would it be fair to put that on Lan Zhan’s shoulders? Just because he grew up repressing his wants and needs doesn’t mean he should have to repress them now. But if he doesn’t, they shouldn’t consider kissing at all.
His... uncle. For once, the thought of Wei Ying with another man — this man — startles, sooner than enrages him, mind swiftly mired in the convolutions of such obscenity. He flinches, instinctively appalled by the possibility of glimpsing shufu bare, partaking of carnal pleasures alongside the supple, bewitching beauty of Wei Ying.
With a cough barely shielded by the back of his hand, he looks away, just as Wei Ying slithers beneath their covers and burrows in. The flush that assails his face may well burn it, brandishing him with shame in perpetuity.
"Asleep," he ventures with barely a fledgling glance, taking in the the tepid tremors of Lan Liang's blanket that announce the rise and fall of his tender breath. Surely, exhaustion has claimed the child to such a peak of bodily surrender that even a young infant must commit to being sleepy and sedate.
For a few moments still, he only nods as Wei Ying speaks his tempting proposition, rolling inward and mussing the pale stretches of their rippling sheets as he covers his lover from each side and burrows into the nook of his shoulder. Then, softly, "You can never ask me to be what keeps you at distance."
He rolls pliantly onto his back, hands curving around Lan Zhan’s well-defined waist in a loose hold. He hadn’t expected Lan Zhan to be so bold with their baby so close, but his whole body responds to it. From the pink flushing his cheeks to more noticeable changes down below.
He’s too attracted to his husband for his own good and he merely pouts at him because of it. With one hand, he wanders it up Lan Zhan’s side and across his shoulder to cup his husband’s cheek. He lifts his head up and leaves a butterfly’s touch between their lips as he whispers. “If you can’t stop and I can’t stop, maybe we shouldn’t.”
It may feel like it’s ‘just once,’ but it’s not a precedent he feels comfortable setting alone. But boy does not being able to get what he wants when he wants it just makes him want it even more!
He sighs and lowers his head back down to his pillow and looks up at Lan Zhan. “Maybe I should go splash around in the river. I feel like you might let me put us in an awkward place against your will.” He strokes Lan Zhan’s cheek with his thumb, looking at his lips again for emphasis this time.
Warm, receptive, readily pliant, engaging and embracing Lan Wangji — Wei Ying is more than an enchanter or a sophisticated artist of the fleshly pleasures. He is simply born to answer, a breed of brimming, tireless want. For a few heartbeats, when Lan Wangji's own body all but melts down to fill out the negative spaces of his husband's lines — pressing him in to steal even more of Wei Ying's accidental, brushing touch.
Like this, they are nearly too tightly close for anything more than the shared musk and comfort of their bodies, leaving hardly even the space for breath, let alone arousal. Then, all at once, his husband a wonderfully sweet prey beneath him, Lan Wangji rises again to tumble on his side, forcibly rolling Wei Ying on his flank so that his serpentine, bony spine might press against the rumbling heat of Wangji's core.
At least this way, an arm over his waist, Wei Ying can complain of neither the abandon of distance, nor an uncharitable and ultimately fruitless act of teasing.
"If you go to the river, you will touch yourself," he says with the heavenly patience of a Buddha and the simultaneous grudge-bearing of a child.
He rolls onto his side willingly, starting to press his butt against Lan Zhan’s hips. Only when he opens his eyes, he sees the innocent form of their baby still resting sweetly a mere two steps away from the edge of the bed. It’s disrespectful to their son and to each other to carry on like this.
With a sigh, he puts his hand on Lan Zhan’s arm. “I love you too much,” he admits. He’s got enough of his faculties to control himself but that doesn’t mean he isn’t in an uncomfortable position.
“It would help me fall asleep,” he tries. “You can watch A-Liang for me and then I can watch him for you. That way we can both relax completely.” He doesn’t know why Lan Zhan encourages him to touch himself when they’re apart but won’t tolerate it when they’re together.
“We could kiss for a while and work ourselves up, first,” he tries to look over his shoulder, giving up when the angle is all wrong. “But I guess you want me to meditate it away or something.”
"No," he concedes in a weathered breath that wrestles and punches its way out of his lungs, his aching throat. Now that he has allowed himself to recline, he begins to feel every lick and promise of the fatigue that sprawls within it, the bloom of hurt that batters his temples, the exhaustion of travel building in his joints. He half clings to Wei Ying, half drapes over him, hold turning gelatinous and loose.
"You may take a candle and visit our study or go to the river's bank." His single requirement: a flicker of light, for Wei Ying's safety and convenience. No man would presume to set his hand on the Yiling Patriarch in the confines of Cloud Recesses, but animals yet wander, feet slip and trip. Whether their abandoned room or the great outdoors, Wei Ying can only benefit from illumination.
Quietly, voice half muffled as he presses his head and mouth into Wei Ying's hair, he murmurs, "Let me hold you, first."
It should startle him, perhaps — will, with morning — that he is once clingy, increasingly hanging onto Wei Ying as if a life rope. It is no good, he knows. It spells only disaster.
“Really? You wouldn’t mind?” He asks, thumb and forefinger strumming against Lan Zhan’s arm like he’s playing the guqin. He smiles a little, relaxing against Lan Zhan. For some reason, the permissiveness gives him pause and all at once he feels like he’s taking advantage of Lan Zhan by wanting to escape somewhere to love himself and leave Lan Zhan to watch their son when he is wholly exhausted.
He wiggles until he notices how loosely he’s being held, then he turns around to face his husband again. He wants to wrap his arms around him, so he does, and he pulls himself closer. “You can hold me as long as you want,” he decides, pressing his lips to Lan Zhan’s. Instead of hunger, he kisses for comfort and reassurance. If he needs to see to his physical needs, he’ll do it later. In the study, maybe, so he’s still there in case Lan Liang takes a turn for the worst. For now, he’ll satisfy himself with being close to his husband.
He sighs, breaking their kiss so he can look up at Lan Zhan. “You look more tired than I do,” he says, cupping his cheek again. “If you fall asleep, it’s okay. If A-Liang’s temperature changes, my talismans will let us know. If he wakes up feeling uncomfortable, he’ll led us know.” He doesn’t add that the temperature alarm will trigger if their son’s warmth decreases, too. It seems as logical as it does morbid and he doesn’t want to trigger anymore worry.
Wei Ying turns. Their mouths meet. He blinks and breaks their kiss and tips his head back into it again, and they fall together like beads on a string, colliding. Kiss upon kiss upon the disaster of their breaths mingling with gasps, the crackling heat of their bodies. There is no passion in it, only animal reassurance, the quiet guarantee of Wei Ying's presence alive and well and beside him.
"You must be strong, Wei Ying," he whispers and knocks their mouths in a kiss again. He speaks as if he might sob, but refrains at the last moment. As if he aches. "Everyone hurts me through their frailty."
A selfish thing to say, to think. As if poor Lan Liang, who wants nothing but to please and laugh and love had purposefully entertained the notion of turning himself ill. And yet, Lan Wangji cannot help himself.
"You must strengthen and fatten and never take sick." This, to Wei Ying, the only person who has betrayed him with thirteen years of deathly distance. "And never die again. You cannot do so to me again."
He starts insist that he’ll be as strong as Lan Zhan needs him to be, but the words are devoured by their kissing and he resolves himself to address it later. He has a husband to kiss and reassure and he falls into that duty willingly.
When their mouths separate, he stays close and strokes Lan Zhan’s cheek and neck and shoulder. “It would take the whole cultivation world to take me down,” he says, brushing their lips together when he does. “And I don’t see that happening again.”
He’s making light of Lan Zhan’s concern, isn’t he? His natural impulse to joke around isn’t what his husband needs from him right now.
He sighs and shakes his head. More solemnly, he adds, “I’m working on my forms so I can cultivate the traditional way and I have demonic cultivation in case things get serious. I make sure to eat at least twice per day and three times most days. I have you and our family to protect. I’m not going anywhere, Lan Zhan. I promise you that I’ll be here with you every day.”
This time when he leans in to kiss his husband, he aims for his forehead, then his nose. “I love you, Lan Zhan. I’ll take care of myself even when I don’t feel like it because you love me and want me safe and healthy.”
"I would fight them to a man." Again, he does not say, and this calamity, the source of all of Lan Wangji's sins within the sects, sleeps long and dark and brooding between them — a constant specter alluded to by Uncle during his stormy days, unforgiven by a clan betrayed by its foremost progeny. The same blood that runs in his veins once stretched onto his hands, and his sins were countless, careless, known... and unrepented.
For this man, he would commit them again, to one. For this man, everything.
As if to mark a point unmade, he curls quietly around Wei Ying, tightening his hold minutely like every snake that envelops a victim before the killing bite. He hears Wei Ying out, and perhaps that is what saves them both, as Wangji's hand finds his husband's oil-glistened hair in calming, easing strokes, stilling only to allow his lover to spread litter on his face. He bears them all with determined discipline, like the rabbits who tolerate the presence of their giant stewards and know they must survive.
"I know. Forgive me." For doubting, for insisting. There is nothing more that Wei Ying can do that he has not offered or fulfilled already. To hound and hound and hound him is cruel. "You do enough. Have done enough."
He fills the diminutive space between them, coiling his legs with Lan Zhan’s and holding him as close as possible. If he could seep into Lan Zhan’s skin and make a home there, he would in a heartbeat. Since that’s impossible, this will have to satisfy their need for each other.
“I’m a work in progress,” he concedes, taking the time to squeeze Lan Zhan if his husband relaxes his hold even a little bit. “I don’t need the reminder today, but maybe I’ll need one tomorrow or some day next month or whenever I have another bad day. I really did try to eat when I got kicked out of the doctor’s house, but I could only get down a few bites. My stomach felt like I had eaten a stone.”
He relaxes his hold, but he doesn’t move away. He likes being held like this and Lan Zhan seems to need the reassurance. “It’ll be okay, Lan Zhan. A-Liang will get better. I’ll crack this immortality thing without the demonic cultivation component and we’ll live to see our great great grandchildren get married and have kids of their own.”
"We will," he echoes emptily, but seems to at least ease long enough to allow Wei Ying some degree of mobility, so that their twisting and turning, combined, can release his husband from entrapment and into a more comfortable configuration. His mouth finds the crown of Wei Ying's head to bless it with unbidden kisses, increasingly relaxed.
"Will surround Wei Ying with sound and gladness. His house will be a headache of joy." At times, he thinks he speaks such words less to reassure his lover than to entreat this future into prophecy — as if, once he has unlocked this outcome, he can finally hope to never question his husband's joy.
"You will never wish to leave, then." He does not now, some part of him knows, has been told repeatedly. And yet, he smarts at the mere possibility. "You will cook your meats, drink your wine unhindered. Jinlintai will not compare."
“Not too much of a headache for Lan Zhan?” He asks, but smiles to himself. Nurturing a baby together is not something that comes naturally for him, but playing with children is a different story. He finds it easy to entertain little ones and teenagers alike. Madame Yu would say it’s because he’s as responsible and mature as a five-year-old and that’s why he gets along with them. There might be something to that.
He gradually relaxes his hold on Lan Zhan, letting his muscles rest from all that squeezing. He likes it in his husband’s arms and if he stays there too long, he’ll only make Lan Zhan happy that he’s managed to fall asleep. He hopes he’s not the only one of them to sleep tonight. He doesn’t have to make an appearance and do all the sect leader work Lan Zhan is responsible for.
“I already wish to stay by your side forever and ever,” he speaks it against Lan Zhan’s neck. “I wouldn’t rather be anywhere with anyone else. All I need is my husband and our kids and everything else is extra.” He nuzzles his nose against his husband’s throat.
“What about you, Lan Zhan? Do you see yourself happy? In a year, we’ll be in the new house and it’ll just be us and a handful of servants for a while. You won’t miss living in the jingshi?”
"I shall," he admits without heat or urgency, as if this private reality is one with which he has long made his peace. In truth, the mathematics of their transition away from the jingshi were never simple: whatever its symbolism, the house was secure, established, known. The disciples on duty were taught the paths to reach and service it unfailingly. The sentries of Cloud Recesses accounted for it in their patrols and wards. Their new home will be more distant, foreign, unexplored.
Still, he finds himself wistfully awaiting it, grateful they will begin their new lives in a space to call their own. "But will prefer it. Miss Sizhui."
For all that their son may soon excuse himself from his sect duties as a whole and withdraw his presence completely. Still, this will be his home until such a time that he chooses otherwise.
"Lan Liang, too, will require his own quarters shortly." The infant is barely due to celebrate his first anniversary, but toddlers want space, and young children more so. And should they proceed with enlarging their family... "A house alone is not a home. The jingshi is as nothing without family."
His fingers graze over the expanses of his husband’s skin. Sometimes through cloth and others directly as his hands wander Lan Zhan’s body. He doesn’t mean to entice, but if he does, he won’t feel bad doing it. “We’ll have family there. You, me, A-Liang, Sizhui. All of us will bring love into the house so that it will become home soon after we move in. I was just wondering if you’ll miss your childhood home. I used to miss Lotus Pier, but I miss it less these days. I saw it again a couple times since I came back and it’s just too different now.” And even though Jiang Cheng is there, it doesn't feel like he has family there.
He knows Sizhui might choose to stay where he’s at instead of moving somewhere less conveniently located. Even when he’s relieved of learning the role of an heir, he’ll still have cultivation classes and lectures to attend. Wei Wuxian won’t force the issue, but he wants Sizhui to claim a room in their house. Whether he sleeps there one day or hundreds of days doesn’t matter. He’ll always be welcome in their home.
“A-Liang deserves his own room. I hope he’s not one of those kids that claims their parents’ bed because he’s scared of shadows,” he sighs, sulking at his imagination of them being interrupted when they’re loving each other. That would be a way to scar a child!
"He might," he offers warmly and hides the sunbeam of his smile against Wei Ying's hair, far too readily amused. In truth, has Wei Ying not brought this upon himself? "He loves you jealously."
In other words, Lan Liang might terribly and wickedly and deservedly reward his doting mother with his undivided, intrusive attention. What a tempestuous, beloved child. Lan Wangji, shivering under Wei Ying's touch, cannot bring himself to begrudge their young tyrant king. But then, a sliver of that amusement fades, and he allows himself to understand Wei Ying's trepidation, to feel it. And, testing the waters:
"You fear our children will compromise our intimacy?" No. That implies a degree of willfulness, malice and strategy that no child of theirs could possibly possess. Even at his most intemperate, Lan Liang is merely fussy, while Sizhui tends toward silent sullenness. They are mannered for their respective ages, keen to be agreeable. Still, children can blossom to occupy as much time as their parents have available. "Have I perhaps neglected you, my love?"
All fears have their root, and it is seldom irrational.
He sighs when Lan Zhan mentions how much A-Liang adores him. Even between him and the nursemaid, Lan Liang always brightens when he sees Wei Wuxian. It makes him happy most times, but he does want Liang to learn to share him with Lan Zhan without being upset by it. He only has so many hands and one mouth for holding and kissing, after all.
“You haven’t,” he insists. Tonight is an outlier, stemming from an acute illness so it doesn’t count. Though it is probably why he’s thinking about it now. “I guess I don’t want him to see anything he shouldn’t see. Once he’s walking, I’ll have to set up some talismans to trigger when he comes too close to our room just in case he does interrupt something between us.”
If their intimacy is not interrupted, it won’t be so bad. He sometimes sleeps close to Lan Liang when Lan Zhan is out overnight, which is probably going to backfire on him soon enough.
He moves back just enough to look at Lan Zhan’s face again. “It’s my fault if he ends up too dependent on my presence. I just hope it doesn’t affect our intimacy later, you know? I love you too much and too selfishly to want to share!”
A low hum, approving, appreciative, as deep as a seismic rumbling in his chest. It feels at once strange and suitable to inject levity in these scant few moments between them, when the day's threat has scattered and wholly gone. Laughter teases his mouth, warms it.
"We may pledge celibacy until the last of our children is wedded." A mere twenty summers to go, and Lan Wangji has experience already with suffering for more than half of that duration. It will be Wei Ying's hardship to bear, as much, if not more than his own. "We will take our gladness solely from witnessing their growth."
Keeping their tacky paws off each other, and only respectfully, modestly and virginally appreciating one another with the barest press of sweet mouths on cheeks. What a strange, challenging existence, when they have come to depend on their ability to seek each other out at will, to tumble in bed and bask in the brilliance of their lovemaking without delay or disruption.
He snorts when Lan Zhan starts talking about celibacy. He knows that his husband’s hungers are equal to or greater than his own and that celibacy isn’t something either of them would choose when it comes to their relationship. He can imagine it, though. The pristine couple whose hands never wander when they hug and the only kisses they share are chaste one.
“If the only way I can be with you is chastely, then that’s what I’ll do,” he answers, nuzzling his nose against Lan Zhan’s. “That doesn’t mean I’d like it. To be so close to you and not be able to have my way with you would be challenging for a day,” is challenging now, “But for decades? That is would be torture.”
Not to say that platonically loving Lan Zhan is a hardship. Before they got together, he toyed with the idea of staying by Lan Zhan’s side forever even if he had to do it as just friends. Fortunately, Lan Zhan shared his romantic feelings.
“I think you’d have it harder than me,” he teases, “Having me right there within your grasp. You’d be driven mad trying to keep your hands to yourself. Like when I bend down in front of you to pick up a toy from the floor. You’re telling me you wouldn’t need to at least take a little grab of my pretty little ass?”
He laughs, cannot help himself, the light trembling rumbles of his chest propeling him those precious few slivers closer and pushing their mouths together. They are kissing for comfort, for assurance, out of habit. Because they can. Less to start, than simply not to end.
"I would. I would, beloved. You would tempt me like water does desert walkers." And he would not hold himself back, would not be kept at bay, would not insult Wei Ying's offer or his own outlandish, hungering appreciation. He starves for this man, loves and adores him. Aches and bleeds and desires him, above all. May the heavens strike him, but what celibacy? What modesty? They broke that dam, and the waters will not stay.
He kisses Wei Ying's mouth, his cheeks, his forehead. "Look at you. Who may fault me? Look at you."
He pours himself into kissing Lan Zhan, but holding back just enough. Usually his kisses are urgent before they’ve slept together, but this is more possessive and desperate to maintain closeness. It’s the sort of kiss they share after their bed play.
His hand rises to cup the back of Lan Zhan’s neck and he holds him steady even as he pulls back to speak so that their breaths are trapped between them. Look at him, Lan Zhan says like Wei Wuxian is the very model of masculine beauty. He laughs, pressing a few kisses across Lan Zhan’s face. “You think I’m cute,” he teases, twirling some of Lan Zhan’s hair between his fingers.
“I’m irresistible, hmm?” He asks after a moment of appreciating Lan Zhan’s handsome face. “So how are you laying here next to me, resisting?”
Months ago, he might have ruined the moment by asking which of his forms Lan Zhan thought was sexiest. It would have put Lan Zhan in a bad position where there would be no acceptable answer. Either Lan Zhan prefers his first body and he’ll forever be a merely acceptable replacement or he prefers him as he is now and he’ll have to concede that his original body is less attractive than Mo Xuanyu’s. He realizes now that it doesn’t matter which Lan Zhan would prefer because it doesn’t change anything. Lan Zhan loves him now and Wei Wuxian will be spending more of his life in this body than he had in his first one in another roughly twenty-five years.
"I think you are beautiful," he corrects, and leans in to play into the tug of Wei Ying's fingers, the mute luster of his tresses roping his beloved's hands. Would Wei Ying have been so playful, so accepting in a first life? Surely not. Not when his last breath condemned the clans and spurred Cloud Recesses. Not when he might have had his pick and his fill of maidens, of young fools, of accomplished cultivators.
"I resist you only to watch over my son," he murmurs it as if it is an excuse unworthy, as if Wei Ying misunderstands. Surely, out of everyone, Wei Ying would not presume to judge him on this count. Their child and their welfare are sacred, and for all this little one coos and snores blissfully beside them — they cannot assume the risk, now.
He raises a hand to wander it over Wei Ying's cheek, the cut of his jaw. He kisses it, then his husband's lips.
"Would we have had this in another life?" What difference does it make? Why must he spoil their evening so? "Would you have had the patience, the stillness for family?"
“Our son,” he says gently, nudging his nose against Lan Zhan’s. This little game they’re playing will just stoke the fire between them. Eventually, they’ll both be feeling uncomfortable. Lan Zhan has his restraint and Wei Wuxian could learn to use some himself. He realizes Lan Zhan doesn’t resist him out of disinterest but out of respect for their recovering child.
“You won’t have to resist me tomorrow,” he says optimistically, hoping their son’s ailment will be gone come morning. He thumbs at the side of his husband’s throat, thinking about kissing him there. No, it would be cruel to do that to Lan Zhan tonight.
His cheek follows Lan Zhan’s hand, and he feels good. Relaxed and loved and wanting more but understanding why he can’t always have everything he wants.
“Any life,” he says, turning his head to kiss Lan Zhan’s palm. “Maybe if there hadn’t been a war, you could have come to Lotus Pier. I was being serious when I invited you back then. If I trusted your motives when you asked me to come with you to Gusu, we could have found each other then. If the Lan sect was willing to take in the Wens, I might have considered it.” But no, everyone was following whatever Jin Guangshan decided. It would have been considered an act of aggression to host them all.
Our son, he mouths after Wei Ying, as if to beg forgiveness, careful to curve his hand around Wei Ying's cheek and reward him with slow, tender strokes that do not breach into seduction. They can respect and honour and care for one another without teasing past the point of no return — surely.
"You might have," he agrees whimsically, wistfully, knowing all too well that Wei Ying's cooperation was a tentative proposal back then, when options roamed aplenty. Scarcity played a part to position Lan Wangji as the best and finest choice for his husband as a long-time, devoted partner. He does jest in this: of course a son of Gusu Lan is an acceptable consort, when all others cower away from the Yiling Patriarch.
True love sweetened an already practical arrangement. They are fortunate in this.
"Come sleep, beloved," he whispers and finally relinquishes his hold of Wei Ying only to grasp him tighter by his arms and nestle him in. "Rest."
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"He sleeps restfully," he calls out with shallow heat, careful not to shower Liang with enough loudness to wake him. The odds are in his favor, even as he drags the crib behind him, sitting Liang's bed parallel to their own.
Then, Wei Ying slinks behind him, the scent of his husband bound with the borrowed sandalwood, and Lan Wangji allows himself to feel, to scent, go be. He tips back just enough to tease Wei Ying with warmth but not inconvenience him with the burden if Wangji's weight — until Wei Ying fleetingly excuses himself to write to their son.
After, long after, slipped into their bed and courting patience, he taps the empty side as if to bid his lover close. May Wei Ying at long last afford him the gift and honour of his presence. "Is it that you write your lovers, so secretively?"
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Once he’s finished writing, he makes his way to their bed and climbs in on his side. He faces Lan Zhan at first, turning his back to their son for a handful of selfish moments. He wraps an arm around his husband’s middle and closes the distance between them. “Let me be close for just a little while,” he requests. They’ve been more or less avoiding anything too intimate since he’d come home and he misses it. With the baby behind him, he will try his best to behave himself.
“He’s asleep?” He asks, glancing down at Lan Zhan’s lips briefly. “I want to kiss you, but I’m scared I won’t want to stop. If you think you can be both our will power, maybe it won’t be so dangerous.”
Would it be fair to put that on Lan Zhan’s shoulders? Just because he grew up repressing his wants and needs doesn’t mean he should have to repress them now. But if he doesn’t, they shouldn’t consider kissing at all.
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With a cough barely shielded by the back of his hand, he looks away, just as Wei Ying slithers beneath their covers and burrows in. The flush that assails his face may well burn it, brandishing him with shame in perpetuity.
"Asleep," he ventures with barely a fledgling glance, taking in the the tepid tremors of Lan Liang's blanket that announce the rise and fall of his tender breath. Surely, exhaustion has claimed the child to such a peak of bodily surrender that even a young infant must commit to being sleepy and sedate.
For a few moments still, he only nods as Wei Ying speaks his tempting proposition, rolling inward and mussing the pale stretches of their rippling sheets as he covers his lover from each side and burrows into the nook of his shoulder. Then, softly, "You can never ask me to be what keeps you at distance."
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He’s too attracted to his husband for his own good and he merely pouts at him because of it. With one hand, he wanders it up Lan Zhan’s side and across his shoulder to cup his husband’s cheek. He lifts his head up and leaves a butterfly’s touch between their lips as he whispers. “If you can’t stop and I can’t stop, maybe we shouldn’t.”
It may feel like it’s ‘just once,’ but it’s not a precedent he feels comfortable setting alone. But boy does not being able to get what he wants when he wants it just makes him want it even more!
He sighs and lowers his head back down to his pillow and looks up at Lan Zhan. “Maybe I should go splash around in the river. I feel like you might let me put us in an awkward place against your will.” He strokes Lan Zhan’s cheek with his thumb, looking at his lips again for emphasis this time.
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Like this, they are nearly too tightly close for anything more than the shared musk and comfort of their bodies, leaving hardly even the space for breath, let alone arousal. Then, all at once, his husband a wonderfully sweet prey beneath him, Lan Wangji rises again to tumble on his side, forcibly rolling Wei Ying on his flank so that his serpentine, bony spine might press against the rumbling heat of Wangji's core.
At least this way, an arm over his waist, Wei Ying can complain of neither the abandon of distance, nor an uncharitable and ultimately fruitless act of teasing.
"If you go to the river, you will touch yourself," he says with the heavenly patience of a Buddha and the simultaneous grudge-bearing of a child.
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With a sigh, he puts his hand on Lan Zhan’s arm. “I love you too much,” he admits. He’s got enough of his faculties to control himself but that doesn’t mean he isn’t in an uncomfortable position.
“It would help me fall asleep,” he tries. “You can watch A-Liang for me and then I can watch him for you. That way we can both relax completely.” He doesn’t know why Lan Zhan encourages him to touch himself when they’re apart but won’t tolerate it when they’re together.
“We could kiss for a while and work ourselves up, first,” he tries to look over his shoulder, giving up when the angle is all wrong. “But I guess you want me to meditate it away or something.”
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"You may take a candle and visit our study or go to the river's bank." His single requirement: a flicker of light, for Wei Ying's safety and convenience. No man would presume to set his hand on the Yiling Patriarch in the confines of Cloud Recesses, but animals yet wander, feet slip and trip. Whether their abandoned room or the great outdoors, Wei Ying can only benefit from illumination.
Quietly, voice half muffled as he presses his head and mouth into Wei Ying's hair, he murmurs, "Let me hold you, first."
It should startle him, perhaps — will, with morning — that he is once clingy, increasingly hanging onto Wei Ying as if a life rope. It is no good, he knows. It spells only disaster.
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He wiggles until he notices how loosely he’s being held, then he turns around to face his husband again. He wants to wrap his arms around him, so he does, and he pulls himself closer. “You can hold me as long as you want,” he decides, pressing his lips to Lan Zhan’s. Instead of hunger, he kisses for comfort and reassurance. If he needs to see to his physical needs, he’ll do it later. In the study, maybe, so he’s still there in case Lan Liang takes a turn for the worst. For now, he’ll satisfy himself with being close to his husband.
He sighs, breaking their kiss so he can look up at Lan Zhan. “You look more tired than I do,” he says, cupping his cheek again. “If you fall asleep, it’s okay. If A-Liang’s temperature changes, my talismans will let us know. If he wakes up feeling uncomfortable, he’ll led us know.” He doesn’t add that the temperature alarm will trigger if their son’s warmth decreases, too. It seems as logical as it does morbid and he doesn’t want to trigger anymore worry.
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"You must be strong, Wei Ying," he whispers and knocks their mouths in a kiss again. He speaks as if he might sob, but refrains at the last moment. As if he aches. "Everyone hurts me through their frailty."
A selfish thing to say, to think. As if poor Lan Liang, who wants nothing but to please and laugh and love had purposefully entertained the notion of turning himself ill. And yet, Lan Wangji cannot help himself.
"You must strengthen and fatten and never take sick." This, to Wei Ying, the only person who has betrayed him with thirteen years of deathly distance. "And never die again. You cannot do so to me again."
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When their mouths separate, he stays close and strokes Lan Zhan’s cheek and neck and shoulder. “It would take the whole cultivation world to take me down,” he says, brushing their lips together when he does. “And I don’t see that happening again.”
He’s making light of Lan Zhan’s concern, isn’t he? His natural impulse to joke around isn’t what his husband needs from him right now.
He sighs and shakes his head. More solemnly, he adds, “I’m working on my forms so I can cultivate the traditional way and I have demonic cultivation in case things get serious. I make sure to eat at least twice per day and three times most days. I have you and our family to protect. I’m not going anywhere, Lan Zhan. I promise you that I’ll be here with you every day.”
This time when he leans in to kiss his husband, he aims for his forehead, then his nose. “I love you, Lan Zhan. I’ll take care of myself even when I don’t feel like it because you love me and want me safe and healthy.”
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For this man, he would commit them again, to one. For this man, everything.
As if to mark a point unmade, he curls quietly around Wei Ying, tightening his hold minutely like every snake that envelops a victim before the killing bite. He hears Wei Ying out, and perhaps that is what saves them both, as Wangji's hand finds his husband's oil-glistened hair in calming, easing strokes, stilling only to allow his lover to spread litter on his face. He bears them all with determined discipline, like the rabbits who tolerate the presence of their giant stewards and know they must survive.
"I know. Forgive me." For doubting, for insisting. There is nothing more that Wei Ying can do that he has not offered or fulfilled already. To hound and hound and hound him is cruel. "You do enough. Have done enough."
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“I’m a work in progress,” he concedes, taking the time to squeeze Lan Zhan if his husband relaxes his hold even a little bit. “I don’t need the reminder today, but maybe I’ll need one tomorrow or some day next month or whenever I have another bad day. I really did try to eat when I got kicked out of the doctor’s house, but I could only get down a few bites. My stomach felt like I had eaten a stone.”
He relaxes his hold, but he doesn’t move away. He likes being held like this and Lan Zhan seems to need the reassurance. “It’ll be okay, Lan Zhan. A-Liang will get better. I’ll crack this immortality thing without the demonic cultivation component and we’ll live to see our great great grandchildren get married and have kids of their own.”
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"Will surround Wei Ying with sound and gladness. His house will be a headache of joy." At times, he thinks he speaks such words less to reassure his lover than to entreat this future into prophecy — as if, once he has unlocked this outcome, he can finally hope to never question his husband's joy.
"You will never wish to leave, then." He does not now, some part of him knows, has been told repeatedly. And yet, he smarts at the mere possibility. "You will cook your meats, drink your wine unhindered. Jinlintai will not compare."
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He gradually relaxes his hold on Lan Zhan, letting his muscles rest from all that squeezing. He likes it in his husband’s arms and if he stays there too long, he’ll only make Lan Zhan happy that he’s managed to fall asleep. He hopes he’s not the only one of them to sleep tonight. He doesn’t have to make an appearance and do all the sect leader work Lan Zhan is responsible for.
“I already wish to stay by your side forever and ever,” he speaks it against Lan Zhan’s neck. “I wouldn’t rather be anywhere with anyone else. All I need is my husband and our kids and everything else is extra.” He nuzzles his nose against his husband’s throat.
“What about you, Lan Zhan? Do you see yourself happy? In a year, we’ll be in the new house and it’ll just be us and a handful of servants for a while. You won’t miss living in the jingshi?”
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Still, he finds himself wistfully awaiting it, grateful they will begin their new lives in a space to call their own. "But will prefer it. Miss Sizhui."
For all that their son may soon excuse himself from his sect duties as a whole and withdraw his presence completely. Still, this will be his home until such a time that he chooses otherwise.
"Lan Liang, too, will require his own quarters shortly." The infant is barely due to celebrate his first anniversary, but toddlers want space, and young children more so. And should they proceed with enlarging their family... "A house alone is not a home. The jingshi is as nothing without family."
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He knows Sizhui might choose to stay where he’s at instead of moving somewhere less conveniently located. Even when he’s relieved of learning the role of an heir, he’ll still have cultivation classes and lectures to attend. Wei Wuxian won’t force the issue, but he wants Sizhui to claim a room in their house. Whether he sleeps there one day or hundreds of days doesn’t matter. He’ll always be welcome in their home.
“A-Liang deserves his own room. I hope he’s not one of those kids that claims their parents’ bed because he’s scared of shadows,” he sighs, sulking at his imagination of them being interrupted when they’re loving each other. That would be a way to scar a child!
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In other words, Lan Liang might terribly and wickedly and deservedly reward his doting mother with his undivided, intrusive attention. What a tempestuous, beloved child. Lan Wangji, shivering under Wei Ying's touch, cannot bring himself to begrudge their young tyrant king. But then, a sliver of that amusement fades, and he allows himself to understand Wei Ying's trepidation, to feel it. And, testing the waters:
"You fear our children will compromise our intimacy?" No. That implies a degree of willfulness, malice and strategy that no child of theirs could possibly possess. Even at his most intemperate, Lan Liang is merely fussy, while Sizhui tends toward silent sullenness. They are mannered for their respective ages, keen to be agreeable. Still, children can blossom to occupy as much time as their parents have available. "Have I perhaps neglected you, my love?"
All fears have their root, and it is seldom irrational.
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“You haven’t,” he insists. Tonight is an outlier, stemming from an acute illness so it doesn’t count. Though it is probably why he’s thinking about it now. “I guess I don’t want him to see anything he shouldn’t see. Once he’s walking, I’ll have to set up some talismans to trigger when he comes too close to our room just in case he does interrupt something between us.”
If their intimacy is not interrupted, it won’t be so bad. He sometimes sleeps close to Lan Liang when Lan Zhan is out overnight, which is probably going to backfire on him soon enough.
He moves back just enough to look at Lan Zhan’s face again. “It’s my fault if he ends up too dependent on my presence. I just hope it doesn’t affect our intimacy later, you know? I love you too much and too selfishly to want to share!”
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"We may pledge celibacy until the last of our children is wedded." A mere twenty summers to go, and Lan Wangji has experience already with suffering for more than half of that duration. It will be Wei Ying's hardship to bear, as much, if not more than his own. "We will take our gladness solely from witnessing their growth."
Keeping their tacky paws off each other, and only respectfully, modestly and virginally appreciating one another with the barest press of sweet mouths on cheeks. What a strange, challenging existence, when they have come to depend on their ability to seek each other out at will, to tumble in bed and bask in the brilliance of their lovemaking without delay or disruption.
"You would suffer so, beside me?"
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“If the only way I can be with you is chastely, then that’s what I’ll do,” he answers, nuzzling his nose against Lan Zhan’s. “That doesn’t mean I’d like it. To be so close to you and not be able to have my way with you would be challenging for a day,” is challenging now, “But for decades? That is would be torture.”
Not to say that platonically loving Lan Zhan is a hardship. Before they got together, he toyed with the idea of staying by Lan Zhan’s side forever even if he had to do it as just friends. Fortunately, Lan Zhan shared his romantic feelings.
“I think you’d have it harder than me,” he teases, “Having me right there within your grasp. You’d be driven mad trying to keep your hands to yourself. Like when I bend down in front of you to pick up a toy from the floor. You’re telling me you wouldn’t need to at least take a little grab of my pretty little ass?”
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"I would. I would, beloved. You would tempt me like water does desert walkers." And he would not hold himself back, would not be kept at bay, would not insult Wei Ying's offer or his own outlandish, hungering appreciation. He starves for this man, loves and adores him. Aches and bleeds and desires him, above all. May the heavens strike him, but what celibacy? What modesty? They broke that dam, and the waters will not stay.
He kisses Wei Ying's mouth, his cheeks, his forehead. "Look at you. Who may fault me? Look at you."
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His hand rises to cup the back of Lan Zhan’s neck and he holds him steady even as he pulls back to speak so that their breaths are trapped between them. Look at him, Lan Zhan says like Wei Wuxian is the very model of masculine beauty. He laughs, pressing a few kisses across Lan Zhan’s face. “You think I’m cute,” he teases, twirling some of Lan Zhan’s hair between his fingers.
“I’m irresistible, hmm?” He asks after a moment of appreciating Lan Zhan’s handsome face. “So how are you laying here next to me, resisting?”
Months ago, he might have ruined the moment by asking which of his forms Lan Zhan thought was sexiest. It would have put Lan Zhan in a bad position where there would be no acceptable answer. Either Lan Zhan prefers his first body and he’ll forever be a merely acceptable replacement or he prefers him as he is now and he’ll have to concede that his original body is less attractive than Mo Xuanyu’s. He realizes now that it doesn’t matter which Lan Zhan would prefer because it doesn’t change anything. Lan Zhan loves him now and Wei Wuxian will be spending more of his life in this body than he had in his first one in another roughly twenty-five years.
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"I resist you only to watch over my son," he murmurs it as if it is an excuse unworthy, as if Wei Ying misunderstands. Surely, out of everyone, Wei Ying would not presume to judge him on this count. Their child and their welfare are sacred, and for all this little one coos and snores blissfully beside them — they cannot assume the risk, now.
He raises a hand to wander it over Wei Ying's cheek, the cut of his jaw. He kisses it, then his husband's lips.
"Would we have had this in another life?" What difference does it make? Why must he spoil their evening so? "Would you have had the patience, the stillness for family?"
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“You won’t have to resist me tomorrow,” he says optimistically, hoping their son’s ailment will be gone come morning. He thumbs at the side of his husband’s throat, thinking about kissing him there. No, it would be cruel to do that to Lan Zhan tonight.
His cheek follows Lan Zhan’s hand, and he feels good. Relaxed and loved and wanting more but understanding why he can’t always have everything he wants.
“Any life,” he says, turning his head to kiss Lan Zhan’s palm. “Maybe if there hadn’t been a war, you could have come to Lotus Pier. I was being serious when I invited you back then. If I trusted your motives when you asked me to come with you to Gusu, we could have found each other then. If the Lan sect was willing to take in the Wens, I might have considered it.” But no, everyone was following whatever Jin Guangshan decided. It would have been considered an act of aggression to host them all.
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"You might have," he agrees whimsically, wistfully, knowing all too well that Wei Ying's cooperation was a tentative proposal back then, when options roamed aplenty. Scarcity played a part to position Lan Wangji as the best and finest choice for his husband as a long-time, devoted partner. He does jest in this: of course a son of Gusu Lan is an acceptable consort, when all others cower away from the Yiling Patriarch.
True love sweetened an already practical arrangement. They are fortunate in this.
"Come sleep, beloved," he whispers and finally relinquishes his hold of Wei Ying only to grasp him tighter by his arms and nestle him in. "Rest."
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