wuding | a home.

a home.

They fall together, like fresh snow off the mountaintop: first, in measured, patient, cultivating reunion after an extended dinner at their inn. Then, with passion. Then, syrupy and slow, with morning. In a rare, turn, after bathing, Lan Wangji denies himself the rigors and discipline of morning and coaxes them back abed, to hold his lover throughout his rest near sunrise, until halfway to midday.

He stirs them, inevitably, when the blinding bright white of the day overwhelms, and they must set for the road to make good pace to Cloud Recesses while still enjoying their stroll. They arrive, meandering, in the depths of a trickling, golden afternoon, when much of the clan is distracted with the latest lecture of a visiting hermit — they say, an aspiring immortal — and neither Uncle nor Sizhui can be politely parted from his wisdom. First, a brief stop with Liang. Secondly, for Lan Wangji, yet slowed by his fading wounds and bruises, to test the recovery of his disciples.

Lastly, facing the dregs of an afternoon together with no duties, no assignments, no occupation — curiosity wins over. With the packed necessities of a quick meal in his qiankun pouch, he steers Wei Ying to walk the winding, if peaceful path toward the peripheral territories, past the liminal, isolated quietude of the jingshi and into the periphery of Lan Wangji's inherited grounds.

A short walk, yet they may have breached the threshold of a brave new world. He had chosen the space for its proximity to river water, cunning, lively spikes of rice stabbing the field, alongside feral flowers. Already, the builders and architects have marked a path to make a road, but they have yet to set down wood or stone for steps. These, he knows, are still young days for their home, Wei Ying's house, rising on strong, sprawling bones that stretch out over a considerable territory: a number of rooms, some superfluous, including an isolated study for Wei Ying's pleasure and a music chamber. A large kitchen, for all much of the house yet misses its roof. A segment for the archery post Lan Wangji had bidden. The house, designed to host an inner garden, even boasts the allocated space for a pond men had been digging until mere hours prior, when their toil ended.

"To grow lotus," he murmurs, nodding ahead where the pond is yet to glisten and crest, where its waters are short of rising. And he does not ask, Do you like it, what it can be? But his gaze flickers between Wei Ying's face and the home in desperate, hungry study.

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He stares at Lan Zhan for a moment, misunderstanding what he’s done to upset him. If Lan Zhan wants to insist on his children being strictly vegetarian like their father, he’ll accept it. As long as he’s still able to eat fish and the occasional chicken or other meat, he'll manage. “Okay, no fish for A-Liang.” Are his own carnivorous tastes so disgusting? He’s not sure he has it in him to only eat vegetables.

He takes their son automatically, setting him down on one of his knees and he offers a finger’s worth of one of his side dishes that hasn’t been enhanced by spice. Liang seems to tolerate it if it means having his chew toy back.

“Before we move, right?” He asks, brow knitting. “I like the house a lot but it would be too lonely living there without you.” Sure, he’ll have all the servants to become friends with and the neighbors just down the path, but his bed would be cold. And so would Lan Zhan’s in the jingshi. Knowing that his husband sometimes panics when he awakens alone makes his heart ache just thinking about it.

...ah. The very moment Lan Liang is captured by Wei Ying, he concedes, all the fight bleeding out of him, his manner changed. He is tempered, sweet, accepting. He even thoughtfully nibbles at Wei Ying's finger, as if it has never once occurred to him to be a fussy or provocative thing. Lan Wangji cannot help the slight perking of one eyebrow, incredulously reviewing his son's change in behaviour. The audacity. Truly.

But then, Wei Ying touches upon the crux of the matter, and Lan Wangji dithers, hand unsteady as he reaches for his chopsticks and collects the finest, most spiced piece of slow-cooked marinated mushroom and brings it up as an offering by Wei Ying's mouth. Perhaps a distraction. A bribe.

"As a family, we must do what is best for our children." A large house, room to play in unencumbered or stifled by the responsibilities cast upon the prospective heirs of the sect. "Liang's core has not been tested. If he..." No. He must speak the words, must accept the possibility. "If he is without, better he dwells where he is not each day reminded of differences."

Uneasy, he takes the offered bite of food, but his eyes stay on Lan Zhan. He can sense the discomfort in his husband’s face and body language; he’s had more than a year of being so close and so intimate that Lan Zhan may as well be an extension of himself, so it’s only natural that he can read his expressions.

“That’s not fair,” he blurts out, startling the baby in the process. Liang whines, clearly distressed by the sudden chance in his mother’s demeanor. “You think I’d just abandon you to a face a fate you don’t even want on your own? You said it yourself that we don’t know if Liang can form a core yet, so why are you making plans for him already?”

He soothes Liang by rubbing circles on his back when the child reacts to the sudden agitation by acting nervous and confused.

“If you asked me to move out on my own because you want space for yourself, I’d understand. I’d be unhappy about it, but I’d move out. But there’s no way I’d just abandon you here if you still want me with you. So which is it?”

"Wei Ying." Cautioning, slightly alert, some part of him scolding. Their child, already sensitive to Wei Ying's temperament, is naturally responsive to the spasms and adjustments in his behaviour. He sours, only falling back into ease when Wei Ying settles a warm hand on his back, and even then gazes balefully at Lan Wangji with a look between infantile disdain and growling anger.

He withers to behold it, gaze cast askance and instantly away.

"...I have not yet spoken to Xichen." They need not face one another and quarrel before that particular decision bears taking in the here, the now. Perhaps, it strikes him, he delays the inevitable, and his brother is destined to refuse his title and its calling. Perhaps too, he underestimates and misjudges Zewu-Jun, who has ever been foremost of his people.

And perhaps Wei Ying tires of him, of his constant wavering, his restraints.

He cannot say.

He clamps his mouth shut, looking down at Lan Liang who is still agitated despite the soothing touches. He takes a slow breath like he would when he’s meditating and releases it out directly on Liang’s cute little head, fluffing fine hairs. He’s still feeling defensive and angry that Lan Wangji would consider living in separate houses. The only time they have to themselves regularly are in the evenings after Liang goes to sleep and before Lan Zhan does the same.

What’s he supposed to do? Just travel back and forth between the jingshi and the house every day for whatever crumbs of affection Lan Zhan can muster through the exhaustion of being sect leader? It’s one thing if he has to suffer, but Lan Zhan and the kids deserve better than that.

“You’re the one that brought it up,” he points out, bending down to kiss Liang’s forehead. “And you,” he says to the baby, “Mommy’s not upset with you, little one.” He pinches the tip of their baby’s nose softly, avoiding looking at Lan Zhan for the moment.

No. Mother is upset with this unworthy husband. But he cannot inflict the dregs of his guilt on Wei Ying in this moment, when he must already contend with a difficult child and the inevitable shocks and demerits of Lan Wangji's proposal. He is the one who has poisoned their evening, who gazes upon Wei Ying with sharp, earnest but undeserving longing.

...when was it Lan Liang began to resemble Wei Ying so closely? Perhaps it is mere proximity, constant and encouraging, or Lan Wangji's propensity to think of them as one. But he thinks somehow the little babe's eyes are as dark and daring as his mother's. As punishingly unforgiving, when they sit on Lan Wangji, now.

He finds himself quickly expending a talisman piece to summon the dissolving light of a message butterfly that heads toward Lan Liang to deliver his father's kisses. Of course, he is too young to read, to understand such language — but old enough to laugh, distracted, by the shiny, flying thing. At least this much, even Lan Wangji can do.

Then, bowing his head low over the table, "I apologise."

He focuses most of his attention on Liang, having lost his appetite for dinner. Maybe there’s some merit to the rule about not speaking while eating after all. He knows there’s no point to keep bickering over a hypothetical situation, but it’s not like he can just forget about it, either.

The thought of living in that palace of a house without Lan Zhan there with him hurts. He’d rather demolish the whole thing and forget they ever talked about it than to stay there alone with the kids.

Maybe Zewu-Jun will take up the mantle of sect leader again. This whole situation could never come to pass. And now he’s leaning towards contacting Lan Xichen behind Lan Zhan’s back all over again. It could be their secret. Lan Zhan wouldn’t need to ever know about it.

He looks up when he sees the fluttering wings Lan Zhan’s summoned and their son’s excited wonder at it. He kisses Liang’s head again and breathes in his clean baby smell, then he catches the butterfly and holds it out so Liang can get a closer look. Which means touching it and trying to put it in his mouth.

“What part are you apologizing for?” It’s a cruel question and he regrets asking it as soon as the words are out of his mouth.

...it is an unkindness, to ask such a thing across the abyssal distance of a table's spread, with their child in Wei Ying's grasp. The isolation numbs, aches, stabs. He watches Wei Ying, a world away. Watches and withers.

As if sensing discontent, Liang coos thoughtfully, for the first time this evening extending Lan Wangji half of the adoration he'd devoted to Wei Ying alone. His finger flickers out for the child to catch and shake clumsily with both fists.

"Drawing you into a marriage of responsibility," he murmurs, in stinging contrast to the loving sight before him. He feels somehow colder now than in the river, voice crisp yet removed. "With a man who can only be half your own, half his sect's. I have wronged you."

That’s not the answer he’d been expecting. And in his ears, it sounds like Lan Zhan is apologizing for marrying him in the first place. That stings more than the thought of living in separate houses.

No, Lan Zhan loves him and he loves right back. It’s not the marriage that’s the problem, it’s the sect and Lan Zhan’s role in it. It would be one thing if Lan Zhan wanted the title of sect leader, but he doesn’t.

He kisses the back of Liang’s head, then he lifts him up and across the table again to pass him back to Lan Zhan. As soon as his hands are free, he picks up the bottle of wine from before and takes another drink straight from the bottle.

“Don’t say you’re sorry for marrying me,” he tells him, looking down at the mouth of his jar to check the remaining volume. He won’t get drunk off of one jar, and he’s tempted to finish this one and grab another. “That’s the one thing I don’t want to hear when we’re already talking about living separately. What is it that you want. Not what’s good for the sect or what’s good for the family.”

At once, this is the worst of them: Lan Wangji, stubbornly shielding behind the cooing, comforting, squirming body of his son, who nestles into his chest with sudden enthusiasm. Wei Ying, retreating into drink.

For a momemt, he holds himself still, only attending mechanically to pacify his son and rock him against his person. To take shallow solace in his warmth and the hunting grip of his chubby fingers on Lan Wangji's hair. He cannot force himself to meet the true challenge before him. Sighs, as if a broken thing.

This home, so much smaller than their option in development, was never meant to house strife. There is no breathing room, no opportunity to walk away and calm themselves.

"I would wish this matter not our own to resolve." Soft, strained. Liang peers up, dark eyes bright and all-consuming, like a summer night. He presses his mouth to his son's forehead. "Should it come to be, I would return each day to you."

A slight against any honoured visitors, perhaps, not to share their encampment — but a compromise.

“That’s enough for you? To travel all that way to and from just to spend a few short moments together before going back to a cold bed and no children? It’s not good enough,” he empties the last few sips of wine and sets the jar down on the floor next to the table. “I don’t want to raise our kids alone. I don’t want to go to sleep every night wishing I were somewhere else.”

He looks over to where they store the wine and erotica. They’ll have to start keeping something heavy on top of it soon to keep Liang from poisoning himself with drink.

It’s strange arguing with Lan Zhan like this when they’re close enough to touch and read body language. Part of him wants to hold his husband and mourn for the (possible) loss of their marriage bed together. At the same time, he wants to grab his shoulders and shake some sense into him.

“I’d rather be here with you. That’s more important to me than some house. I wish you could see that,” he says, pushing himself back from the table and going to fetch that second jug of emperor’s smile. It also gives him some time to maintain his composure.

It's not good enough. And then, Wei Ying heads for more wine.

He thinks, fleetingly, to follow and stay his hand, to bring him back and plead. But there is a child who has barely calmed, spread sweetly over Lan Wangji's chest, the puffs and crisp inhalations of his fragile breath following a slow, known beat. It gives him power, somehow, both arms now cradling his son, wishing Sizhui too were beside him.

There is no wait, no equivocation. No use in negotiations Wei Ying has already called to a draw. Lan Wangji only pronounces, after him:

"...very well." It is not well. It shall be days before they achieve anything close to balance. This is the trouble with carrying out their disputes in person, in the absence of a filter of correspondence: there is no one else to blame. They must face the inevitability that the man who causes hurt is the same each would wish close and cherished, for kisses. "The constructors will stop work."

Lan Wangji himself will tell them so, incurring their curiosity, frustration and confusion. So be it. And if it comes to nothing, if Xichen does not wish to abdicate —

They must see then.

This is what he wanted, isn’t it? For Lan Zhan to see his side and take it seriously. For him to accept that he’d want to sleep next to him every night, even if it means that they’ll stay in the jingshi until someone else takes up the sect leader title and frees his husband from that burden. So why does it make him feel worse?

He rubs the back of his wrist across his eyes, then he breaks the seal on the second jug and tosses back a few gulps. He doesn’t usually drink this heavily other than when they argue. It’s a bad habit because it makes something he otherwise enjoys feel tainted.

“Talk to Zewu-Jun first,” he suggests after a moment. He makes his way back to the table, pinching Lan Zhan’s sleeve between two fingers and his thumb when he passes. “This could all just be hypothetical until we know what the future will bring.”

He sits down across from Lan Zhan again, subdued and still unhappy. He’s only just now thinking about Liang’s role in this despite Lan Zhan mentioning it earlier. If Lan Zhan is forced to lead the sect and if Liang doesn’t have the capacity to form a core, they may have to compromise their living situations anyway.

More drink, and this time he flinches, watching Wei Ying gravitate towards his single remedy with hawkish, unfaltering interest. He wishes to clench the jar of drink and shatter it.

Does not. The child. The child, perfectly arrested in sleep against his chest, murmuring in tongues Lan Wangji cannot wait for him to graduate. Soon, he will make his wishes and mind known. Soon, he will be a force beside them. Lan Wangji withdraws, instinctively, feeling protected in the mist of dark barely broken by their candles, incense and brazier — before finally rising, the child yet with him.

Then softly, "I shall cleanse."

Unspoken between them, he will take Lan Liang, also, to deposit to his crib. If Wei Ying intends to drink himself to a stupor, there is no need for their son to bear witness.

He glances up at Lan Zhan when he stands, not flinching away from the look on his face. He merely nods when Lan Zhan announces his next task. Usually, they’d bathe together but he gets the feeling that it wouldn’t be welcome just now.

“I’ll take a walk,” he says after a moment. Drinking is against the rules, so he’ll just have to go outside the gate (or over the wall) where he can imbibe without bringing any attention to himself.

Their marriage should be stronger than this. It will be once they can get over this hurdle. He’d hoped that by agreeing to let him stay in the jingshi with him would be enough, but the subject of the argument had been only the surface of the problem. There are too many legs of it spreading out in different directions.

He stands, still showing his usual amount of grace. For now. Once he finishes the second jug of liquor, that will likely change. He can only think of one thing that might make himself feel marginally better. “Sorry, Lan Zhan. I didn’t mean to ruin our evening.”

A walk. As if they do not both see Wei Ying's fingers casting a deep web over the wine jar, clutching tight. The line of his mouth tightens, paralyzed midway to the small quarter where Liang unofficially resides, the infant strapped against his chest. He frowns unambiguously, without apology.

It will be a dark evening, if it comes to this, if he does not intercede. As is his habit of self sacrifice and limitless excesses, Wei Ying will drink himself sick. Perhaps he deserves it. Perhaps, too, it does not fall on Lan Wangji to keep him in hand.

"Take a blanket." Far from Wei Ying to trouble himself with proper clothes, but the absence of a core to defend him will tell. "Your sickness would benefit no one."

Least of all Lan Wangji, who would then have to attend the needs of a furious infant, a self-pitying husband, a love-stricken elder son and his brother, likewise reduced by troubles of the heart. This entire family is condemned to pining, and for once it is Lan Wangji who wishes them all returned to their senses.

He’s torn between wanting to leave the jingshi and wanting to make amends and accept whatever stupid ideas Lan Zhan has come up with for their living arrangements. Surely having Lan Zhan visit him daily with his heart full of love for him would be preferable to the emotional sludge they’re both wading through.

But that can’t take back words that have already been said and feelings that are already sore.

“Okay,” he says, eyes falling away from Lan Zhan’s. He fixes the robe he’s wearing so that it covers his chest again, slotting Chenqing on one side and Suibian on the other. Then he walks to the bedroom to fetch a clean blanket to throw around his shoulders.

“How long do you want me gone?” He could stay in Cloud Recesses if it’s a short time or he could fly to the skeleton of a house they’d both been so excited about just a short time ago. Or, if Lan Zhan doesn’t want to see him for the rest of the night, he could go to Caiyi. He feels directionless.

He looks like a rogue cultivator, or a stray cat, or a beggarly fool. Like a child, constantly batted away from kindness and opportunity.

...and his robes yet fit him too loose, no matter how much Lan Wangji seeks him fattened. This will not do. Cannot.

In the end, Lan Liang spares him pity and does not wake while he's transported back to his crib. Through a minor miracle, on cursory inspection, neither has he soiled his linens. He sleeps, far too peacefully and sprawling, fists dangling now and then to catch whatever sliver of a dream envelops him, while he scolds his dreamed things to attention.

And so, Lan Wangji allows himself to return, less encumbered by responsibility, to either seize whatever dregs of patience they can still summon for each other, or wage the full war of their quarrel. Nothing short of this will do.

"I am not the one who banishes you." But they both know how Wei Ying does with neglect, startled by the mere possibility of being unwanted after the torture inflicted by Madam Yu. "You are the one who flees."

He stands dumbly next to the discarded remains of a dinner he’s barely touched and he watches Lan Zhan disappear in the direction of Liang’s makeshift room. He thinks about leaving before Lan Zhan comes back, but he doesn’t. He’s still holding the half-finished jug, it bulging out from beneath the blanket.

Yet when Lan Zhan comes back, he looks away. At the window where he can see it’s full dark and there’s a crowd of people walking from the direction of the lecture hall. The aspiring immortal must have been long-winded. How long had that lecture gone on?

“I thought you’d want some time to yourself,” he answers quietly, risking a glance at his husband. How is it that he’s right there where he could reach out and touch Lan Zhan yet it feels like there’s a chasm he can’t cross?

Edited 2024-04-10 20:23 (UTC)

...and he is young, it strikes Lan Wangji.

Young, to the measure of his body. Wei Ying might have rejoined them in the days of Wangji's maturity, but he only ever lived a handful of decades, before his — sleep. He never learned to pace himself, to find steadiness, to anchor his grief. What loneliness and uncertainty storm Lan Wangji must drown Wei Ying, who lacks a profound knowing of himself.

He has earned a little grace, Lan Wangji supposes. Not comfort, but guidance. And so, gaze slate and slanted, he covers the distance at a stubborn pace to catch the bird-boned wrist of his husband's free hand. To squeeze once in slow, warm pulses.

"Thirteen years were enough," he reminds gently, and tugs once, towards the waiting low table, where their meal waits respectfully. "Come join me to finish dinner."

The mountain between them shatters when Lan Zhan takes his wrist. He could run away like he’d been accused of, but he doesn’t want to. Instead, he follows him to the table, the blanket dragging on the floor behind him. Thirteen years. How could he have thought Lan Zhan would want to spend his nights alone when he’d mourned for him for so long.

“You’ll sit with me?” He asks, lowering himself down onto the floor again, legs folding underneath him in a more proper eating posture than before. He takes the half-full jug of wine out from under the blanket and sets it down on the table. Will he finish it tonight or store it for later? He’ll decide later after he’s finished eating.

“This whole situation’s a mess, isn’t it?” All stemming from a budding romance between his son and his nephew. “We’ll make it through it, won’t we? Together, I mean.”

It’s a fight. It’s not the end of their marriage or their lives.

He does not answer at first, only lets himself become once more a man of action: sits down patiently beside Wei Ying, to his left rather than opposite him, so that their knees might gently brush at the very ends of a table only constructed to host one. Another legacy of a life lived in loneliness.

"The precepts were wise to prohibit talking during meals," he murmurs, and delivers private thanks to the disciples who thoughtfully accompanied their dinner with a minor assortment of bowls. Fresh ones, he decides, rather than reusing the ones already soiled. They can pretend, almost, that their meal is barely started. To new, rice-filled beginnings.

With measured dips of a spoon, he fills Wei Ying's bowl near brim with hearty broth, first. Then, a second bowl of rice. For himself, a light stew of mushrooms and scattered bean stalks. "Before, I asked if you wished us to depart the sect. Now, you believe I would abandon you for a title."

Mollified, he relaxes when Lan Zhan sits next to him, letting their legs touch while Lan Zhan serves them. The wine is starting to hit him now, leaving him leaning to his side slightly until his shoulder is touching Lan Zhan’s arm. He takes comfort in the passive touch taking it to mean Lan Zhan isn’t angry with him. Or at least he isn’t so angry that he’d prefer to keep his distance.

Through the opening where the two sides of his blanket meet, he extends his right hand to pick up his bowl of soup for a few small sips. It’s not as hot as when it had first been delivered, but he drinks it without complaint.

He wants to start their evening over, but he hasn’t come up with a means for time travel. Not that something like that would be possible.

“It’s not the title. It’s the obligation,” he clarifies. “I was shocked by the thought of living separately… I guess I can see your point about A-Liang, though. He’s going to need more room for himself when he’s older. I just don’t like the idea of either of us sleeping alone. I have to remind myself that a decade or two will be a blink of the eye when we’re cultivating towards immortality.”

Drooping inelegantly, wilting beside Lan Wangji like a beautiful flower — welcomed, when Wangji's arm wraps tenderly over his shoulder, half to pillar him, half to bring him in.

"No." Calm, settled. Unambiguous. "I would come to you each night, leave with morning."

A straining commitment, likely to choke his sleep, but not negotiable. This much cannot be sacrificed between them. They have so little, so scant.

Unbidden, perhaps unwanted, he refills Wei Ying's bowl with fresh broth, pushing the rice offering forward to entice him. "Eat. Soothe yourself."

His eyes start to water when Lan Zhan’s arm goes around him and he tries to will them dry. It doesn’t work, so he tries to ignore it instead. Maybe Lan Zhan won’t notice if he keeps his head down and focuses on his refilling bowl of soup.

“I already keep you awake past your bedtime. You’d really be okay cutting your sleep to travel so much?” He sets the broth down and eats some of the rice next. He doesn’t feel hungry and it’s a little harder to force down solids, so he only eats a couple bites before reaching for the broth again. He knows from experience (and Wen Qing) that drinking more things without alcohol will make him feel better in the morning.

He hadn’t given Lan Zhan a chance to make amends before reacting so defensively. “I know you wouldn’t leave me for anything. I was just being selfish by wanting more of your time than I thought you’d be able to give me.”

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