Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Jin Ling had made it absolutely clear that he didn’t want his name day celebrations to be anything even remotely ostentatious. Unfortunately, as a Sect Leader, there was a minimal amount of people one could get away with inviting without coming across as a biased, rude, arrogant upstart who thought he could do whatever he pleased just because one of his uncles was Sect Leader Jiang and the other one was the Yiling Patriarch (Sect Leader Yao’s words, two conferences ago, before Sect Leader Nie had made a mild remark about how the Yao Sect hadn’t had a single disciple pass successfully through core formation in eight months and Sect Leader Yao had promptly shut his mouth, face purple). 

To mitigate the entire ordeal, Jin Ling had given his Head Disciple free rein of all the decisions regarding the preparations for the celebration. He’d given her blanket permission to do whatever she so chose—if she’d wanted to hire a peacock farmer to bring his entire flock and flood Carp Tower with the ornery birds, that was her choice—whatever she wanted, the Sect would pay for it, and Jin Ling simply didn’t want to know. 

“One day,” Jin Lihua had said, in response to his request, dryly, “Sect Leader Jin will get himself assassinated.”

“Good,” Jin Ling had replied. “Then, I’ll never have to see Sect Leader Yao’s face again.”

His Head Disciple’s bow hadn’t quite hidden in time the roll of her eyes, but Jin Ling had become more than accustomed to that after these fair few years of working with her. Her exasperation with him normally meant that he was doing something right. 

As it turned out, his Head Disciple didn’t hire any peacock farmers, but she did orchestrate a tasteful yet simple banquet, followed by an elegant and brief performance by a troupe of fire-breathing dancers, followed by the sort of drinking and revelry out in the main courtyards during which Jin Ling could actually enjoy himself and speak with the people he’d willingly invited. 

He didn’t even have to anticipate having his evening ruined with the otherwise usual interruptions from Sect Leaders Ouyang and Yao, pulling him into conversations he wanted no part in simply because he was the youngest of the Leaders and could not object—Jiang Cheng seemed to have taken it upon himself to bear the brunt of the two men’s incessantly pompous posturing for the entirety of the night, most probably as one-half of Jin Ling’s birthday present.

The look on his uncle’s face from across the courtyard definitely said this is your birthday present, I will not be doing this ever again. 

Sizhui and Jingyi had come, as part of the Lan contingent, neither Hanguang-jun nor Sect Leader Lan being able to make it. It seemed that Lan Xichen had finally come out of seclusion, but in increments rather than all at once. Hanguang-jun was, thusly, apparently handling matters back in Cloud Recesses, and had sent the two best disciples in his stead. Jin Ling had a fair suspicion that Hanguang-jun simply didn’t want to contend with the combined presences of Jiang Cheng, and the terrible two, all at once, and even though Jin Ling still rather thought that it was high time his uncle and the Lan Sect’s Second Young Master finally learned to get along, he also couldn’t exactly say he didn’t sympathize. 

Zizhen, as well, had of course come with his father, looking continuously caught between wanting to apologize and wondering if he should attempt to actually wrest his father away from Sect Leader Yao so that they didn’t both devolve into worse behavior. 

There had been a moment, when Jin Ling had been roaming around the welcoming hall as would be expected of him when the guests were filtering in before the banquet, and Sizhui had come in—alone—while the hall had mainly still been empty, without Jingyi or Wei Wuxian. Actually, there hadn’t been anyone else in the hall save for some attending staff who’d been carrying in the individual dining tables from the storage sheds into the banquet hall. 

It’d been a few years since Sizhui had begun wearing full Lan Sect regalia, following his own name day, the combs in his hair more elaborate, the robes falling in a different way from his broadened shoulders and increased height. Jin Ling still hadn’t become quite as used to the sight as he’d have liked himself to be. His breath still caught a little, every time, he found himself having to consciously tip his head upward to meet his friend’s eyes. 

“Congratulations,” the Head Disciple had said, then, eyes curving with a smile, “Sect Leader Jin.”

Jin Ling hadn’t been certain whether he’d been grateful or disappointed that Jingyi and Wei Wuxian had chosen that moment to come bounding up the tall staircases of Carp Tower. 

Nevertheless, whichever emotion he decided had been the one to pass through him, both scenarios posed the rather daunting potential for trouble—and so, he brushed the entire package under his metaphorical rug and attempted to re-focus his attention on whatever long-winded story Zizhen was telling, hand waving around his liquor cup and nearly sloshing the contents onto Jingyi’s robes. 

Tearing his eyes off of Sizhui’s sharp profile and back onto Zizhen’s enthusiastically involved expression, however, meant that Jin Ling could see what was happening off in the distance, near the shrubbery that surrounded the miniature bridges overlooking the fish ponds. 

Jin Ling was not made of stone.

As recent events regarding the Lan Sect’s Head Disciple could attest, Jin Ling was definitely not made of stone. Even if he was related to an individual, he still was not made of stone and could view them objectively—from the standpoint of an outsider. He knew, for example, that his uncle was—decent-looking. He knew from the accounts of many that his mother had been beautiful, and as his uncle was his mother’s biological brother, Jiang Cheng would then, logically, also be, at least, decent-looking.

He knew his father had been handsome, and so, logically, Jin Ling would hope, that as he was directly, blood-descended from both his mother and his father, he was also rather decent-looking. He wasn’t ugly, at least—no one had run away screaming when they looked upon him, even if his recent, slight, growth-spurt had left him feeling ill-fitted and uncoordinated.

Logically, he also knew, that if his father had been handsome, and Jin Guangyao had been another sort of attractive—then the commonality that they shared with each other, as well as with Mo Xuanyu, meant that Mo Xuanyu would also be considered, objectively, attractive. 

He’d found, however, that insanity was a rather effective deterrent regardless of the level of beauty an individual possessed. That, and perhaps, the thought of potentially sullying one’s reputation within the eyes of the sect were an association between oneself and the sect lunatic ever to be discovered. 

“No,” Jingyi said dismissively, one night in Baling, after he and Zizhen had decided that this was to be tonight’s post-hunt, alcohol-induced topic of conversation, utterly disregarding Sizhui’s pleading and Jin Ling’s threats to punch both of them in the face if they didn’t stop. “That’s not it.”

Zizhen had the gall (and the liquor) to actually lean forward over the table at this point, concentrating as if Jingyi had been about to speak the secrets of enlightenment. “Then, what?”

“Let’s say Mo Xuanyu’s body is a basket of strawberries,” Jingyi began, as Sizhui placed his elbows on the table, Head Disciple manners flung out the window, and buried his face in his hands. “Little Mistress said that Mo Xuanyu was kind of a shut-in before he was—you know—a raging nutcase. Which is fine! Strawberries are great, even when you have them plain—straight out of the basket, right after you pick them.”

Jin Ling, at this point, silently poured himself another cup, knocking it back in one shot. He stared at the ceiling. 

“But then—you make strawberry jam? Or strawberry paste? You bake the paste into buns, or, you put the jam into a tart? Strawberries and honey? Tanghulu? Strawberry juice?” Jingyi spread his hand open then, ticking each treat he spoke of on his fingers, one by one. 

Zizhen squinted, drunkenly, nodding with fervor. “Senior Wei is tanghulu,” he said reverently, as Sizhui looked at him in utter horror. 

“Senior Wei is tanghulu,” Jingyi echoed wisely, toasting the air, “and do you know who likes tanghulu?”

“Everyone,” Zizhen answered, solemnly. “Everyone wants to eat Senior Wei.”

Sizhui’s expression was begging the floor to swallow him whole. Jin Ling leaned back on his hands and silently knew that he only had himself to blame. “I should have gotten new friends years ago,” he said out loud, and was, as usual, completely ignored. 

Presently, once more, no matter how much Jin Ling would like to never again remember that conversation, it was all that filled his head as he watched the dark shapes in the distance. There was just enough glow from the brightly-lit courtyards and from the entrance to the main pavilion for Jin Ling to catch the faces of the two individuals half-hidden beside the first, small bridge. 

It had been a little over four years since the explosive, fairly world-altering, events at Guanyin Temple, and they’d all found, around a year ago, that three years seemed to be the threshold for most people to begin letting go of previously, zealously-held judgments and prejudices. This would have been all well and good, but there were a surprisingly large number of people who flew from one extreme to the other. Shallow, incomprehensible, dishonorable, uncontrolled cultivators who, in Jin Ling’s opinion, shouldn’t be cultivators at all if they couldn’t even rein in their own base desires. 

“Here?” Jingyi said, suddenly, incredulously, his eyes tracking the line of Jin Ling’s own gaze. 

“Whose turn is it?” Zizhen asked, sounding excited rather than weary as he somehow managed to be, every single time, even after a year of this perpetual nonsense.

Sizhui’s eyes slowly met with Jin Ling’s. “It’s your birthday,” the Head Disciple shook his head. “I’ll do it, tonight—”

“It’s fine,” Jin Ling said. “Better if I do it here, anyway, since it’s my—” he waved his hand in the air, presumably to indicate his jurisdiction of disallowed tomfoolery. “Before my uncle notices,” he added, darting a quick glance in Jiang Cheng’s direction to assure that the man was indeed still being properly accosted by Sect Leaders Yao and Ouyang. 

“Good luck,” Jingyi clapped him on the back as he passed.

“I’m sorry!” Zizhen called apologetically out after him, clearly having caught the Ouyang colors on the offending disciple in the bits of lantern light that reached the shrubbery. 

Mo Xuanyu had been the same height as Jin Guangyao, which was to say, not much height at all. He also hadn’t had the absurd amount of pretension required to insist on wearing the tall monstrosity that Jin Ling’s predecessor continuously hosted on his head. Jin Ling had already begun to surpass his late uncle in height, minus that monstrosity, in the year before his death. As things stood now, Jin Ling had been the last to shoot up amongst them, and he was still possibly the shortest amongst them—yet, he towered at least half a head, if not more, over Wei Wuxian. 

Jin Ling was not tall—he just managed to be of a height with his own uncle. This meant that everyone towered over Wei Wuxian in the body he’d been unceremoniously handed for his second life. It had absolutely no effect on him, save for the occasional mourning of his previous height, but it had a rather gargantuan effect on others. 

Some particular others.

That, along with Mo Xuanyu having always resembled his mother more than Jin Guangshan.

And—Jin Ling reluctantly conceded—Wei Wuxian’s soul as the addition of melted, spun sugar to Mo Xuanyu’s otherwise decent and fresh, but admittedly plain, strawberries. 

The unnamed Ouyang disciple was clearly more than a few drinks into the celebrations. This was usually the case for why someone would so blatantly decide that they wished to die a painful, and humiliating, death at Hanguang-jun’s hands. 

“Jin Ling!” Wei Wuxian said, brightly, his eyes lighting up as Jin Ling stepped over the bushes and planted himself directly between the brainless Yiling Patriarch and whoever Zizhen would be telling his father to punish for tonight. “Did Zizhen mention Baling has lotus festivals, too? Disciple Zhu just told me that—”

Jin Ling placed his hand visibly on Suihua’s hilt. “What did Disciple Zhu tell you?” he asked, looking into the quickly sobering eyes of this man who could not be any older than Jin Ling himself. Using his not-a-stone objectivity, the man wasn’t terrible-looking. He was exceptionally tall, as most of the disciples from the Ouyang Sect usually were, even if not blood-related. Zizhen, after all, was the tallest among them—even taller than the Lan Sect’s Twin Jades. 

“I—I merely suggested,” Disciple Zhu stammered, taking a step back at the movement of Jin Ling’s hand downward, “that perhaps if Master Wei is visiting Yunmeng—as—as he is known to do—then Baling is only half a day’s journey close by and—”

“—and Young Master Ouyang is always a gracious host to myself, and Master Wei, whenever we find ourselves in the region,” Jin Ling smiled—full of teeth and devoid of lenience, just the way Jiang Cheng had shown him. “I’m sure that Young Master Ouyang would be thrilled to take us around Baling’s lotus festivals when the season arrives—just as, I’m certain, Disciple Zhu would be thrilled to join his sect’s contingent for the conference Master Wei’s husband will be leading next month?”

The man’s mouth gaped open for a shocked second, before it slowly closed, the inebriated flush somehow having wiped clean from his face as well. He brought his hands together in a bow, and stiffly marched around them, through the shrubbery, back to the throngs of cultivators in the courtyard. 

Jin Ling watched him leave, still feeling himself irritated and bristling, until a hand patted his head—or at least, as close to the top of his head as it could reach, currently. “Our venerable Sect Leader Jin will never make more friends like this,” Wei Wuxian said, teasingly sighing. “What if he knows where to get the best lotus tarts in Baling? They probably won’t be better than Yunmeng’s, but you never know!”

Jin Ling jerked his chin towards where Jingyi and Zizhen had snuck off to one of the more hidden ponds, Sizhui clearly having been set as lookout, while his other two friends tried to fill liquor cups with pond water—most likely intending to sneak it to the dignitaries that seemed drunk enough that they wouldn’t notice. “The last time you told me to make friends, I ended up with these,” he said. He didn’t say that it wasn’t Jin Ling that Disciple Zhu wanted to befriend. 

Wei Wuxian’s laughter was admittedly melodic and cheerful—pleasant to hear, and the sort that made one want to say more to elicit the reaction again, but Jin Ling still didn’t understand quite all the fuss. Even from his not-a-stone standpoint, he would never risk getting utterly reamed by Hanguang-jun for some sickly sugary strawberries. Some things just weren’t worth death. 

“Anyway,” Jin Ling said, glaring off another few, Yu disciples who were also clearly well-along in their alcohol consumption and had also begun looking in Wei Wuxian’s direction, at the sound of his laughter, with interest. “What’ve you gotten me?”

There was as much amusement in Wei Wuxian’s eyes as there was fondness as he let Jin Ling lead him back to the heart of the festivities. “If Sect Leader Jin would oblige me a drink,” Wei Wuxian said playfully, slinging his arm around Jin Ling’s neck as if he was still sixteen and not twenty, “then perhaps I’ll tell him.”

Chapter Text

Sizhui could easily remember a time when he would have done anything to be able to sway the minds of the countless townspeople they encountered when taking on civilian cases who, regardless if Wei Wuxian himself was the one who saved their lives—cured their cursed children, exorcised their possessed farm animals—still somehow insisted that their intensely misplaced prejudices were well-founded on hard, cold, facts and persisted in mistreating Wei Wuxian to the point where even Sizhui began to feel his blood boil. 

Four years later, and Sizhui could fully account for the validity of the saying that time healed all wounds.

Time, perhaps, healed some wounds a little too well.

This wasn’t to say that Sizhui would ever want to go back to a time when some taverns in Caiyi would not allow Wei Wuxian to even enter their premises—even if Wei Wuxian was the reason that their premises hadn’t just been swallowed whole by mountain ghouls that had come down from the forests into the town on a vengeful, cursed, rampage. He never, so long as he lived—so long as he could help it—wanted to again witness the sort of sad, resigned smiles that would always slip their way onto Wei Wuxian’s face, as he remained eternally courteous, forever gracious, to those who most definitely never treated him with the same sort of regard. 

He would, however, like to perhaps instead suggest the concept of moderation. 

In fact, moderation was one of the core principles to the Lan Sect’s teachings and theory on how to lead a righteous lifestyle of peace with oneself and with the world. 

For example—

Taverns, now, gladly welcomed Wei Wuxian through their door as they would any other patron: 

Good! As they should!

The barkeeper took Wei Wuxian’s order politely and gave him his drink without making a show of spitting it in, and charged him the proper amount the drink was, as the barkeep would with any other patron: 

Good, as well! As all barkeeps should!

Some taverns, which Wei Wuxian frequented more than others due to the side-dishes some of them made, had come to currently know him by name to the point that other regulars in those taverns shouted his name, rather exuberantly, every time he entered:

That—that was good, too. It wasn’t bad. It was—it was a little much, occasionally, but still all right. 

Some barkeepers, of some taverns, were rather young, because they were the sons of the owners of the taverns, and would give Wei Wuxian his drinks and side-dishes completely free of charge. They would also lean over the bar top and, ignoring their other patrons, smile winsomely at Wei Wuxian the entire time he ate and drank:

No. 

No—this. This was excessive. 

It had reached the point, within these four years—with the past year seeing a surge in incidents—that Sizhui and Jingyi often tried their level best to dissuade Wei Wuxian from continuing his tradition on taking them out to Caiyi for a meal every time they completed a hunt in the area. As they both had more duties than not, nowadays, in leading their own hunts with their own sections of juniors, they had to also dissuade him from taking his own, other, juniors sections, without Sizhui or Jingyi in attendance, for meals. 

Neither of them wanted to know what would happen if some poor young farmhand or sailor or merchant actually succeeded in whisking Wei Wuxian off into the night. At the very least, they could make it look like Hanguang-jun was attacked first if it was a cultivator bringing his intentions forward to Wei Wuxian. 

What was the excuse they were supposed to use for townspeople?

The worst part, in all honesty, was that Wei Wuxian never seemed to be aware.

If he was aware, he could take on the mantle of his own rejections—and he could, as well, project a general aura of unwillingness and disinterest. After all, most of the young men in Caiyi were honorable. It was not a seedy town by any means. As honorable as they might be, however, to respect an outright rejection, they were still men. They were also young. They were also, in taverns, which meant they were mostly intoxicated—especially by the time of night that hunts and cases usually concluded in, the time of night where Wei Wuxian’s energy usually began to peak.  

Were they aware Wei Wuxian was married? 

Some, yes. Some, no.

Did they know who Hanguang-jun was?

Most, yes. Some, travellers, still no. 

Had they been raised in the cultivation world to know the full extent and reputation of the Lan Sect’s Second Young Master?

No, absolutely not—not a single one of them knew of the excruciating death that possibly awaited them. Not a single one of them was ever grateful for being saved from such a fate every time Sizhui, or Jingyi, or, when they were in the area alongside them, Zizhen, or Jin Ling, intervened. 

Some of them, in fact, such as the tavern owner’s second son—serving at the bar for the first time, tonight, in place of his older brother (who had been just as stubborn of a pursuer every time Wei Wuxian had eaten here, but had relented in past months and was now, thankfully, engaged), actually went on to fully antagonize whoever was due to guard Wei Wuxian for the night. 

Jingyi was leading his own hunt tonight, bringing his juniors to the border between Lanling and Gusu to face a herd of Spider Demons that Jin Ling had set lure arrays for so that a cohort of junior Jin disciples could join in for the hunt as well. This meant that Sizhui was alone, with five of his own junior disciples, all of whom were happily eating away at a secluded table at the back of the tavern, some of them shyly bowing whenever a few townsfolk came by to thank them for purging the disturbance of errant river spirits downstream. 

Wei Wuxian had ordered for all of them, as he always did, and then made a beeline for the bar, clearly eager to speak with his friend, the owner’s eldest son—only to find that the second son was finally attending to the bar tonight, and, like a dense block of wood, Wei Wuxian proceeded to coo at him, teasingly, playfully, coyly, “When did er-ge grow so big?”

The boy flushed from neck to forehead. 

“Excuse this Head Disciple,” Sizhui sighed, giving a little nod to his juniors, motioning for them to continue eating without him. He stood, and wearily began making his way around the other tables. 

The boy was practically looming over Wei Wuxian, palms down on the bartop, face hovering over Wei Wuxian’s own as the latter delved into cheerful chatter about when the boy’s older brother was going to be married—where was he going to be married—where was she from—was she also from Gusu—was she pretty—

“I prefer Master Wei,” the boy said, his ears redder than the chili oil glazing Wei Wuxian’s peanuts, and Sizhui was almost mortified enough to consider never telling Jingyi about this. 

Almost.

Wei Wuxian blinked, silent for a moment, and his expression was confused enough that Sizhui actually stopped approaching, waiting with baited breath for perhaps this to be the instance—finally—that Wei Wuxian knew. 

After all, there was nothing less subtle than the blundering, blustering, first attempts of a fifteen-year-old boy. 

Then, Wei Wuxian laughed—and Sizhui felt the strong urge to fall face-first onto the wooden floor in sheer frustration. 

“Because er-ge already knows me!” he said, as Sizhui increased the speed of his steps as much as he could without appearing improper in front of his juniors. “Because er-ge likes ghost and monster stories like me!” He patted the boy’s hand, and Sizhui wondered how red someone could possibly get before their face imploded. “When sao-zi opens up, and you get to know her, you’ll have a lot to talk about with her, too—er-ge will see. If da-ge loves her, er-ge will like her, too.”

“Senior Wei,” Sizhui cut in swiftly, just before the boy could reopen his mouth. He ignored the immediate glower he felt fixed onto him. Wei Wuxian swiveled on the stool and looked up at Sizhui, questioningly. “Some of the junior disciples have questions for you regarding the spirit purging we just performed.”

Wei Wuxian tipped his head to the side curiously. “Oh,” he said, listing over even more to one side to peer at the table of junior disciples who were quite deeply involved in their food, as silent as ever, not even remotely looking in the bar’s direction. “All right, then. Shouldn’t we wait until they finish their meal to speak, though?”

“I’ve heard how your sect highly prioritizes silence during meals,” the boy suddenly chipped in, and Sizhui’s eyebrows shot up slightly at the abrupt and utter vehemence in his voice. 

The emotion was thick enough that even Wei Wuxian turned back around, eyes startled. The look of overall confusion on his face intensified. Sizhui tried to meet the boy’s eyes over Wei Wuxian’s head, only he wasn’t as practiced as Jingyi or Jin Ling were in wordlessly conveying I am trying to save your short, young, life. 

“Yes,” Sizhui said firmly, “it does. However, there are always exceptions to our rules, especially in the pursuit of learning and when our disciples are not within the boundaries of Cloud Recesses. Flexibility is as necessary as obedience is to becoming an upright disciple. In fact, Master Wei’s husband, our Second Young Master, would admonish those for speaking during meals with questions on a lesson or theory, but he would still explain and answer as immediately as possible—”

“Lan Zhan usually answers after the—” Wei Wuxian began, sounding even more perplexed.

“This way, please, Senior Wei,” Sizhui said, gathering the tray with Wei Wuxian’s liquor and food in one hand and nearly shoving the man off of the stool and through the tavern with his other. 

When they gathered to leave, and the second son had finished his shift—the bar now being manned by his mother—Sizhui had to bodily move himself between the boy and Wei Wuxian on their way out. Wei Wuxian had most likely believed the boy was coming in to clap Wei Wuxian’s shoulder or upper arm because he was, no matter how much Sizhui so dearly loved him, an utter block of wood. 

The boy’s arm was poised directly for Wei Wuxian’s waist, and as much as the second son had irritated Sizhui for tonight, no young boy deserved to lose an arm so early in his life. 

“Didn’t realize how protective you cultivators are of your seniors,” the boy muttered, clearly intending for it to be fully within Sizhui’s earshot as he left the tavern.

Sizhui locked a smile into place. “This Head Disciple can only speak for himself when he says, tonight, he was protecting Young Master’s limbs far more than his Senior’s virtue.” He placed his hands together and bowed neatly at the boy’s confused, indignant, scowl. 

Chapter Text

For a world that supposedly celebrated the death of the Yiling Patriarch, it really seemed to nowadays be making full use of his return. As far as Jingyi could remember, the cultivation world seemed to have gotten along all right without Wei Wuxian’s existence, but now it appeared as if, without him, every sect would flounder at the loss. There were weeks when Wei Wuxian was busier than Hanguang-jun, and Jingyi did not understand how this was possible. 

While the first year of Wei Wuxian’s permanent return to Cloud Recesses, and his marriage to Hanguang-jun, had been still filled with mild hostility from the minor sects and non-cultivational towns, beginning from the second year onward, the realization that Wei Wuxian’s brand of solutions to pesky, restless, haunting spirits—relentless ghouls, the occasional cropping of graverobbers disturbing angry ancestors, the unfriendly neighborhood Snake Demon—were not only quick and ingenious, but Wei Wuxian himself was also far easier to get ahold of and to deal with than requesting formal assistance from any of the major sects. 

Moreover, regardless of how badly they’d treated him, Wei Wuxian never said no. At least, he didn’t say no due to the treatment he’d previously received. If he said no, it was usually because of extenuating circumstances (Hanguang-jun’s withering glare, and a hand at the base of Wei Wuxian’s back, pushing him away with Jin Ling bringing up the rear and preventing Wei Wuxian from calling out the last pieces of the puzzle for the problem’s solution).

Hanguang-jun, however—Hanguang-jun was a very big fan of no. Especially when it came to Wei Wuxian.

A border town required an exorcism and they wanted Wei Wuxian’s help rather than the Lan Sect’s? Hadn’t their mayor proposed forbidding Wei Wuxian to use their roads last year when he began travelling through them on his way back from Yunmeng?

Then, no.

The Yu Sect’s Head Disciple wanted to employ Wei Wuxian’s assistance in an outbreak of possessed Water Lizards in their rivers because all capable Jiang disciples were either momentarily occupied and Chenqing could calm them faster than any cultivators could fight them? Hadn’t that same Head Disciple lobbied to their Sect Leader, and to Sect Leader Jiang, to limit and supervise the amount of times Wei Wuxian could pass through Yunmeng ten months ago?

Then, no.

A Lan Sect Elder would like Wei Wuxian to make additions to the Lan Sect’s Forbidden Archives on the topics of resentful energy cleansing and the regulation of demonic spirits because Wei Wuxian might as well expand the Library while he was here? One of the particular Lan Sect Elders who, when Wei Wuxian bowed to them, wouldn’t even give a single nod of her head?

Then, with all due respect, Elder, Hanguang-jun would himself bow—no.

For his own part, Jingyi didn’t understand how Hanguang-jun even remembered every single instance someone had slighted Wei Wuxian. The sad truth was there had been a lot through that first year, and a good amount through the first half of the second year as well. He was also certain that if Hanguang-jun had been able, Sect Leader Jiang would be included in all those no’s. Unfortunately, Sect Leader Jiang was just about the only case where Wei Wuxian refused to listen to Hanguang-jun point-blank.

Nowadays, absurdly enough, requests for Wei Wuxian had also begun streaming into the Jiang Sect, and Jin Ling had informed them all, once, he’d caught his uncle tossing entire stacks of cases at the Jiang Head Disciple to be burned—even as Wei Wuxian had followed Sect Leader Jiang, attempting to coax him into giving Wei Wuxian at least one of those cases, just one Jiang Cheng, it was all right really, that governor already apologized, and no one deserved to be kept up at night by errant, screaming, ghosts, Jiang Cheng—  

“Kind of hypocritical of him, isn’t it, though?” Jingyi asked, slipping a cushion beneath Zizhen’s head after he’d listed flat on his face, on the floor—as usual—five too many drinks into their bimonthly post-hunt gathering.

“Oh, he knows,” Jin Ling waved his hand dismissively, cheeks flushed and ears red—the Sect Leader’s own, personal, mark of drunkenness. Although, Jingyi would know from the unusually easy way Jin Ling accepted the jibe at his uncle even if his friend was a straight-faced drunk. “That’s why he never takes Wei Wuxian’s help, either.”

“Still?” Sizhui raised his eyebrows, nursing a cup of tea, because unlike Jingyi, he’d continuously refused to drink even off sect grounds. 

“If there’re other people involved, he’ll let him,” Jin Ling clarified. “If it’s just himself, though—you know, last week, that weird Blast-Ended—uh—whatever it was? Slug? He was handling it alone because ten disciples already got burned, and he told Wei Wuxian to stay away so he could fight it himself.”

“Where were you,” Jingyi said dryly, “during all of this, Mistress Sect Leader?”

“You do know I have my own sect to run, don’t you?” Jin Ling snapped waspishly. “For your information, though, I was in the trees—trying to shoot the—the slug—so that it didn’t kill my uncle, thank you so much to the Lan Sect for their assistance.”

“We offered, and your dearest uncle said he only needed Wei Wuxian!” Jingyi hissed, as Sizhui subtly slid between them, and pushed them to opposite sides of the table. “But it looks like he didn’t even want him! Do you know how long it took him to convince Hanguang-jun to even let him go for this—alone—without even the Ghost General?”

“Yes, because bringing the Ghost General in front of my uncle, after he hadn’t slept for a week because of the villager-eating slug, was really going to go splendidly,” Jin Ling rolled his eyes.

“All right!” Sizhui said, loudly, “so what happened after that?”

“Wei Wuxian knocked him out and told me to drag him behind some rocks,” Jin Ling shrugged. “Probably wouldn’t have worked if he hadn’t not slept for a week, but—well—he didn’t see the talisman coming, so.”

Jingyi whistled, pouring himself another drink, even as Sizhui began to squint at him in silent admonishment. “Sect Leader Jiang must’ve loved that, when he woke up.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Jin Ling lay back, stretching himself spread-eagle on the floor beside Zizhen’s snoring, curled up form. He yawned. “I left as soon as I got the slime off me. Better if Wei Wuxian handles him alone, and all.”

“You mean, you ran,” Jingyi snorted, “to save your own eardrums, and left Senior Wei to his own destruction.”

Jin Ling had already closed his eyes, shifting himself onto his side in a more comfortable position, head pillowed on his arm. “He had the chance to never get yelled at ever again, but he didn’t take it, so his eardrum-damage is on him—not me.”

Jingyi didn’t get a chance to give his scathing reply after that. Their Little Mistress soon joined in harmonizing to Zizhen’s snuffling and snoring—robes askew from having pulled at them once he’d gotten deep enough into the liquor jars, Suihua strewn on the floor beside him like some common gardening tool, hair sticking out from his crown. 

Sizhui began gently loosening the combs and pins that held the hairpiece out of the younger man’s hair so that he wouldn’t wake up with a headache on top of the ghastly hangovers that both he and Zizhen always seemed to get that Jingyi was immune to. Jingyi didn’t miss how his friend’s fingers lingered in the soft, dark strands. “Honestly,” Jingyi said, under his breath because he was still a decent best friend. “I don’t know what you see in him.”

The Head Disciple didn’t rise to the bait. He simply smiled wryly at Jingyi and continued arranging the Sect Leader into a more comfortable position for sleep. 

One of the few yes’s that Hanguang-jun wholeheartedly gave to Wei Wuxian regarding the assistance of other sects and their ongoing problems was that of the Nie Sect’s Stone Castles. Two years ago, during one of the months where Hanguang-jun and Wei Wuxian had set out travelling—solving cases, absorbing the sights and sounds, indulging the sorts of adult activities that Jingyi was fairly sure would get them kicked out of inns were it not for Hanguang-jun’s bottomless coin purse—they’d stayed for some nights at the Unclean Realm and assisted Sect Leader Nie with the neverending issues the sect’s Blade Spirits posed. 

Wei Wuxian’s strategy had apparently worked well enough that he now ventured to Qinghe at least every few months to do so. Hanguang-jun had accompanied him for the first few times, since the strategy required both thick, resentful energy to be attracted to the Blade Spirits, quelling their blood-thirst, providing some sort of evil for them to battle with—but it also required strong, purging spells for the Blades, so that whatever vengeful spirits Wei Wuxian managed to attract towards them would satisfy them for a longer interval of time. 

Once Sizhui’s instrumental cultivation had reached a stage that satisfied Hanguang-jun, Sizhui had began accompanying Wei Wuxian whenever Hanguang-jun was not able. This month, however, Sizhui would be deeply involved with the preparations for the guest lectures. Jingyi’s own cultivation was strong enough to perform the spells—they just would not be as strong due to the lack of an instrument as the preferred medium. Wei Wuxian had stated nonetheless that it would be sufficient, simply for a shorter amount of time—he would have to return within two months rather than three. 

“How long has it been since you’ve had some quality time with your Senior Wei?” Wei Wuxian asked cheerily, so cheerily that he nearly tipped off the back of Jingyi’s sword as they flew towards Qinghe.

“Two weeks ago,” Jingyi answered, his hand catching Wei Wuxian by the edge of his billowing sleeve, nearly by muscle memory alone at this point, “when Zizhen got us stuck in that cave with the starving Red-Tailed Bats.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Wei Wuxian tap his own chin with the tip of his dizi. “Ah, I’d forgotten about that,” he said fondly, like it was a memory to be cherished and not one that still had Jingyi flinching violently every time a dragonfly flew past him during outside meditation. 

“I wish I could,” Jingyi muttered, giving Wei Wuxian’s sleeve another secure yank to make sure the man didn’t go careening off. 

Within the past year, Wei Wuxian had begun carrying his sword again.

As far as Jingyi had heard from Sizhui, Suibian could be wielded long enough that it could do the damage it was needed to do, but no longer, and Wei Wuxian had been unconscious for a solid day afterwards. In shorter increments, Mo Xuanyu’s spiritual energy would be depleted grievously, but Wei Wuxian would still be standing, able to command Chenqing to finish off whatever his sword could not. 

Jingyi had only witnessed Wei Wuxian draw his sword only once thus far, and as incredible as he’d always found the man regardless of which weapon he chose, seeing Wei Wuxian fight side by side with Hanguang-jun just once, the Yiling Patriarch’s sword making its way through the vicious assassins sent after a dignitary’s daughter right alongside Bichen—that single instance had been enough to solidify in Jingyi’s mind that his two seniors were truly the makings of legend. 

Jingyi had met Yi Renshu once before.

If Jingyi remembered correctly, he had been thirteen and Yi Renshu had been an untitled disciple shamelessly bending himself over a map in front of Hanguang-jun’s unimpressed eyes. 

With that being said, Jingyi therefore thought he could be excused if his opinion and impression of the Captain wasn’t exactly high. 

“He’s quite nice, actually,” Sizhui had told Jingyi, after the first time Sizhui had gone with Wei Wuxian in Hanguang-jun’s stead.

“Only because now he knows there’s no competition,” Jingyi had scoffed to Sizhui’s suddenly amused expression. 

“I don’t think Captain Yi wants to compete with Senior Wei,” Sizhui had then remarked, smiling rather mysteriously, before they’d both entered their monthly meeting with the Elders. 

Those words hadn’t remained for long in Jingyi’s mind—he had far more interesting and important things to fill his thoughts with than whichever of Hanguang-jun’s jilted admirers remained sad and pathetic in the world, long after the man himself had already happily married someone better. It was only now, upon seeing how Yi Renshu looked at Wei Wuxian when they entered the main hall, that Jingyi understood with dawning irritation. 

He especially understood when Sect Leader Nie saw them off at the gates and there were only two horses waiting. 

Jingyi internally rolled his eyes, wondering how Hanguang-jun was even allowing Wei Wuxian to return—or, at the very least, how was Hanguang-jun allowing Wei Wuxian to have the Captain, of all disciples, be the one to accompany him if his behavior was this disgustingly obvious and bold. Sizhui must have told Hanguang-jun—or, Wei Wuxian’s obliviousness must have let his husband know with his unceasing ability to tell Hanguang-jun all of his travels in which Hanguang-jun couldn’t be present for. 

He waited, politely, by Sect Leader Nie’s side, allowing Wei Wuxian and Yi Renshu, by ranking, to have first choice of mount. He also felt, oddly, Sect Leader Nie’s eyes sliding to the side at him, and then back to where Yi Renshu and Wei Wuxian were staring at each other over the horses. Suddenly, inexplicably, Wei Wuxian smiled, highly amused and almost secretive. 

Jingyi frowned.

Yi Renshu turned his gaze, clear and gray, onto Jingyi. “Disciple Lan knows how to ride?” the Captain asked in a smooth, low voice.

It had been a long time since Jingyi had to so actively restrain the urge to snort. There had been a time, when he and Sizhui had been young—nearly always, Sizhui had to be the one to discretely elbow Jingyi in the side when they were presenting themselves within another sect to remain quiet, decorous, and well-mannered. It had become almost instinct in recent years, the training settling well into Jingyi’s bones—at least, when he was with outsiders—but occasionally, here and there, there would be someone so transparent that he nearly couldn’t resist. 

“This disciple is able, Captain,” Jingyi said, with an incline of his head. “Please—Captain and Senior Wei should select first.”

Wei Wuxian was positively sucking in his cheeks at this point, something that Jingyi had long since come to recognize the man did when he was determined not to burst out into uncontrollable laughter. He seemed to shake his head at the same time that Yi Renshu’s gaze hardened on Jingyi. Once again, Jingyi barely refrained from glowering in response. After all, it wasn’t Jingyi’s fault that Yi Renshu was a loathsome piece of scum who lusted after a married man—who was able to switch his flighty affections so easily that he’d even already lusted after the married man’s husband. 

Yi Renshu seemed to compose himself then, pulling himself up with ease onto one of the horses. He stretched out a hand and pulled Wei Wuxian up behind him onto the saddle as if the other man weighed nothing at all—which, to a man as tall and broad as Yi Renshu, Mo Xuanyu’s body likely didn’t. 

Jingyi alighted onto the remaining horse, then, and bowed from his mount to Sect Leader Nie who seemed to be watching the proceedings with as much amusement as Wei Wuxian. Then again, Sect Leader Nie was the sort of strange man who would probably find potential marital strife amusing. 

“I want to drink when I get back, Nie-xiong!” Wei Wuxian called out blithely at his friend as they rode towards the forest. 

Sect Leader Nie waved with his fan, smiling. 

The process proved predictably tricky. 

Both Sizhui and Hanguang-jun had briefed Jingyi before he’d embarked on what either of them had experienced, separately, in the differing methods they’d used, even with the precise same type of instrument, to approach the purging. From what they’d told him, there was a category of around five particular purging spells that were effective—any combination, for the best effects, at least some three of the five, would work as long as Jingyi maintained a steady stream of spiritual energy while he cast each one.

The first two spells took more out of him than he had anticipated, meaning that, for the third one, his knees had buckled for a moment, energy faltering, and Wei Wuxian looking over at him from where he stood, amongst the crowding of coffins, in alarm. Yi Renshu had had to draw his own blade, then, fending off some of the Spirits who were not quite so happy at Jingyi’s attempt to forcefully cleanse them. He’d managed through the remaining spell, however, a mix of sheer determination and mortification at having to be saved by a homewrecking lump of dirt. 

They made it out successfully, after that, Jingyi flagging slightly behind as they’d exited the tombs. His mortification only increased as Yi Renshu had to pull him aside, midway through their exiting of the Stone Castles, seating him on a nearby boulder and kneeling in front of him to begin transferring his own spiritual energy into Jingyi

“I’ll go on ahead,” Wei Wuxian chirruped, “since Captain Yi has everything under control here. I’m going to visit Zhonghui-ge, Captain!” He shook Chenqing in the air as he left. Yi Renshu nodded in his direction, to signify having heard him, before his eyes turned back to Jingyi’s wrist and the glowing, thread flowing into it from the Captain’s two fingers, pointed directly over the muted blue of Jingyi’s veins. 

The loss of energy had made Jingyi light-headed enough to momentarily forget he was 1) a cold, aloof, elegant higher, inner clan, disciple of the Lan Sect, and 2) filled with disinterest and disgust for this man and everything to do with him because he was infringing upon Hanguang-jun’s marriage with faux overtures of friendship towards Wei Wuxian. “Who’s Zhonghui-ge?” he blurted out.

Yi Renshu looked up, still holding Jingyi’s wrist in one hand and transferring his energy into him with his other. The grayness of the man’s eyes was odder up close—gray but pale. “My shixiong,” he said. At Jingyi’s following look of confusion—at what would Yi Renshu’s shixiong be doing out here in the forest at this time of night, at their sect’s tombs, Yi Renshu added, “He’s dead.”

Jingyi blinked—and then stared down at his lap, wincing in his mind. “Oh.” He could practically see in his  mind’s eye Sizhui covering his own face in his hands, Jin Ling unsympathetically guffawing, and Zizhen urging Jingyi to apologize. Instead, because as much as Jingyi would like to claim Jin Ling as the worst among them in regards to the thorough lack of brain-to-mouth filter, Jingyi currently still holds that seat. “What would he think if he knew his shidi was going after a married man?” slipped out of his mouth far more derisively than he meant it.

The flow of spiritual energy stopped. 

Whether that was because Jingyi had been given enough to continue walking without passing out (which it did seem to be, admittedly), or Jingyi was about to be punched, semi-deservedly, in the face, Jingyi wasn’t certain. 

Yi Renshu did not stand. His expression also was still rather mild, eyebrows raised, and light, gray, eyes boring into Jingyi’s. “Disciple Lan should explain himself,” the Captain said, as mildly as he appeared. 

Jingyi did snort this time, fully allowing himself to make the disbelieving sound in the silence of the tombs. He was so filled with annoyance at this point, justified annoyance too, that it only faintly registered in the back of his mind that he was railing at this man for his wrongdoings in the presence of respected ancestors. 

Frankly, he didn’t quite care in that moment—the weapons of those lauded ancestors had just tried to murder him.

“Surely, Captain Yi could afford to spare one more horse,” Jingyi said scathingly, gesturing with his hand out towards the exit of the Stone Castles. “Surely, even if Captain Yi couldn’t, he could find some other solution that would not have him riding on the same horse as a married man.”

Yi Renshu’s expression still remained infuriatingly unaffected. “Master Wei did not object,” he said calmly. “Surely, Master Wei does not require Disciple Lan to make his decisions for him?”

“Master Wei isn’t aware of Captain Yi’s intentions,” Jingyi said bitingly. 

“And my intentions are?” Yi Renshu’s eyebrows disappeared up into the hair that fell over his headband, embroidered with his position and the insignia of his sect. 

“If Captain Yi is quite finished with making a mockery of this disciple’s concern for his senior, this disciple would like to leave,” Jingyi stood up, then, making to walk around Yi Renshu and storm out of this dust-filled dirt-mound by himself.

A hand wrapped around his wrist, stilling him.

Jingyi’s face tipped upward without his permission, as Yi Renshu stood close enough to him, face-to-face, that it was the only way for Jingyi to maintain his glare to continue meeting the other man’s gaze. “Is Disciple Lan planning to ride with Master Wei on the return journey?” Yi Renshu asked, and there was something dangerous in his tone that had Jingyi stiffening.

“Obviously,” Jingyi said, forcing his tone to remain even.

Yi Renshu tilted his head to one side, eyelids lowering to half-mast. “I believe Disciple Lan is of age now. I believe he is also unmarried and unrelated to Master Wei.”

Jingyi sent a mental apology to Sizhui, to all the years of hard work and unrelenting effort his friend had placed into making sure Jingyi wouldn’t one day be the one to finally send their Grand Sect Elder into a qi deviation. He felt all traces of formality drop out of him as he said, without regret, wrenching his wrist out of the man’s hand, “You’re sick.”

Yi Renshu was unfairly quick. Jingyi did not even see him move when he was suddenly in front of Jingyi again, and his gray eyes were no longer calm and mild. There was an unreadable fire in them, even as the rest of his expression remained stoic. “Disciple Lan should be more consistent with his logic. He accuses me of harboring dishonorable designs towards Master Wei even though I’ve done nothing to indicate such—his only evidence is my marital status and eligibility. Then, Disciple Lan disregards his own logic in what he claims is an effort to protect Master Wei from me—again, without sound evidence for his own stake and against mine.”

Jingyi was sullenly quiet for a moment. He risked another glance up at the man. “You do, don’t you, though?” he asked, feeling faintly rebuked, but still too vexed to back down just yet. 

The corners of Yi Renshu’s mouth suddenly turn up, slightly enough that it was near unnoticeable but in the torchlight and play of shadows, Jingyi caught it easily. “I’ve already stated that I have done nothing and will continue to do nothing, regardless, so why does Disciple Lan insist on knowing?”

Jingyi rolled his eyes. “Fine—it doesn’t matter.” This time, when he stepped aside, Yi Renshu let him. “I’d take my sword and give Senior Wei the horse,” he muttered as they began again to make their way out, “I just can’t right now—as you very well see,” he waved for emphasis the wrist that had just been used for the energy transfer.

Just before they reach the last hall, the entryway that led back out into the world of the living, Yi Renshu paused and said, glancing down at Jingyi, “Following Disciple Lan’s logic, there are two unmarried men and one who is married. Wouldn’t the two unmarried men share a mount?”

For the absolute life of him, Jingyi did not know why he was so floored by that statement that he stopped walking for a good five minutes. He must’ve stood in that doorway for what felt like an eternity before Wei Wuxian popped in and dragged him out, complaining about how he’d probably chatted Zhonghui-ge to a second death in all this time. 

“Good!” Wei Wuxian commented, upon Yi Renshu informing him that Wei Wuxian would be riding back on his own horse. “Jingyi looks like he’s about to keel over any minute now—I’d be worried about him falling off if he went on his own,” he said, his smile regaining that odd, inwardly amused quality to it. Then, he dug his heels into his horse, and rode off before Jingyi could get a word in edgewise. 

Jingyi stood to the side, waiting for Yi Renshu to mount on first and pull him up the way he had Wei Wuxian. Yi Renshu’s eyes were once again lit with the same indecipherable glow they’d carried in the tombs. “Please,” he bowed his head, gesturing. 

Of all the times the man decided to actually have manners, it was only at useless times like this, Jingyi thought, scoffing. He lightly pulled himself on, and reached a hand down to pull Yi Renshu up in front of him. 

The corners of Yi Renshu’s mouth flicked up again then, and without warning, he pulled himself up behind Jingyi. 

His arms reached around and took the reins before Jingyi himself could, framing Jingyi back against his firm, wide chest. 

“Is Disciple Lan comfortable?” Yi Renshu’s voice was a low, resonant, murmur directly beside Jingyi’s ear. He could feel the vibrations of the man’s voice against his back. 

Jingyi had absolutely no explanation as to why his voice came out so high and unrecognizable as he forced out, as steadily as he could, “Perfectly.”

Wei Wuxian drank with Sect Leader Nie and Yi Renshu, but Jingyi insisted on immediately turning in for the night, stating his depleted reserves of energy and the long, early, journey that awaited them tomorrow, for his reasons. 

If he lay in bed that night, for quite some time, tossing and turning, kept awake by an odd combination of guilt, irritation, and curiosity, no one had to know. 

“Early” when it came to Wei Wuxian usually meant some time before noon, meaning, as always, Jingyi had plenty of time from when he rose the next morning to when they actually had to leave. He blew through two hours of meditation before breakfast was even to be served at the Nie Sect’s dining hall for its disciples, and once he heard the clang of the bell, he began making his way to the stated building. 

He ate with a few of the Nie disciples whom he’d become familiar with during the years when they’d come to Cloud Recesses for the guest lectures, telling them of what had happened to him since their time there and listening to their own stories of how their cultivation was faring here. He never minded the silence of meals in his own sect, but he wouldn’t hesitate to state aloud how he preferred the occasions when he dined outside of Cloud Recesses, free rein to chat as he picked away neatly at his food. 

He was rather unsurprised when, while returning to the guest quarters to see if Wei Wuxian had awoken, Yi Renshu caught him crossing the courtyard. 

The previous night now all felt like a terrible fever dream that Jingyi would like nothing more than to put completely behind him, but he had to do one more thing before that could possibly happen. He bowed at a full, ninety-degree angle, eyes lowered respectfully, and said, sincerely, “This disciple apologizes for speaking ill of Captain Yi’s dead, and for baseless accusations of Captain Yi’s intentions towards his friend.”

He held the bow for several counts, only rising when there was no response forthcoming. 

Yi Renshu was dressed more casually this morning, no armor, and only simple robes in the Nie Sect’s characteristic dark, muted colors. His sword was at his hip rather than at his back, a light sheen of sweat over his face. Jingyi concluded he must have been overseeing the morning training. He was also looking at Jingyi with a light, open gaze. “Disciple Lan’s apology will be accepted with a condition,” Yi Renshu said, swinging his blade up to rest upon his shoulder. 

Never mind.

Forget the guilt—clearly, this man didn’t have even a child’s handful of manners to boast about. Jingyi was done. He should’ve dragged Wei Wuxian out of bed, tied him to his sword, and left before breakfast even started—they could eat in some town in Qinghe, a town without infuriating, arrogant captains. Whoever Zhonghui-ge had been, clearly he’d been a saint for ever looking after this man as a shidi. The only reason Wei Wuxian most likely could endure Yi Renshu was because Wei Wuxian’s own shidi was an unbearable, short-tempered, fire-spitting grape. 

Jingyi didn’t even deign the man with a response for this. He simply raised his eyebrows and waited. 

“In the future,” Yi Renshu said, stepping closer, and Jingyi could, at this proximity, smell him—salt from the perspiration, faint citrus on his clothes, blade oil from his sword, “Disciple Lan should be the one to accompany Master Wei when he cleanses our tombs.”

Jingyi raised his eyebrows higher, incredulous. “Were you not there?” he asked, forgetting himself once again. “I almost passed out. No—no, thank you, Sizhui is coming here again next time.”

Yi Renshu shrugged the shoulder that his sword was not resting on. “Disciple Lan’s apology isn’t accepted, then, I’m afraid,” he said, his tone so indifferent that Jingyi was about to hit him, even if Grand Sect Elder did qi deviate, when he realized that he was being teased. 

Jingyi huffed, more peeved at himself than at the man before him. He wasn’t Jin Ling—his feathers were normally not this easy to ruffle. Their Mistress Sect Leader was supposed to have the first seat constantly when it came to rising to an obvious lure. “Goodbye, Captain,” he said, also rather miffed at himself for being unable to come up with a better, more cutting, retort. 

He felt the other man’s eyes on his back, all the way up until he turned the corner into the guest quarters. 

Jingyi told himself that the strange pang in his chest, when Wei Wuxian informed him that Sect Leader Nie and Yi Renshu were both occupied with meetings and could not see them off, was solely relief, and nothing more. 

When they next gather, it is only the three of them, with Jin Ling too weighed down with Sect Leader duties to venture out to Baling. Jingyi had already given Sizhui a shorthand account of the disaster that was his first encounter in ten years with Yi Renshu, but he saved the entire, incensed, aggravated rant for when Zizhen was present as well. In all honesty, he was also saving it for Jin Ling, but he couldn’t wait another week with all of this boiling inside of him. 

To make matters worse, in the week that he’d been returned from Qinghe, Yi Renshu had sent a letter for him—straight to him, not even through Wei Wuxian—and Jingyi had read it once, and then promptly thrown it to be used as scrap paper for calligraphy practice. 

When he finished his rant, he poured himself his sixth cup for the night and knocked the contents back in a single, smooth, shot. He surveyed his friends. 

Zizhen was strangely avoiding his gaze, eyes wide at the table, but Sizhui was looking right at Jingyi’s face, mirth in every span of his features. 

“Well?” Jingyi said. “Shouldn’t we let Hanguang-jun know that his husband’s being pestered by this man every single time he’s off there doing Sect Leader Nie a favor?”

“Every time I’ve gone with Senior Wei,” Sizhui began pleasantly, as if he hadn’t even heard Jingyi, “Captain Yi always prepares three horses.”

Jingyi’s ears rang.

“What?” he said, his voice sounding odd in his own ears.

“Captain Yi always prepares three horses for us,” Sizhui repeated, taking a sip of his tea without breaking his gaze with Jingyi.

Zizhen coughed, and then refilled Jingyi’s cup. 

Jingyi downed that round as well and then poured himself another straightaway, holding it in his hand and staring, unblinkingly, at the table in front of him. 

A long silence followed, broken only, eventually, by Zizhen asking in a small voice, “Is he handsome?”

Jingyi put down his cup, and took the jar in his hand instead. Sizhui continued to smile, pleasant and amused, and didn’t stop him as he began chugging as if he was channeling the Yiling Patriarch himself.

Chapter Text

At the time of Wei Wuxian’s boomerang of a soul re-entering the world, the Jiang Sect Head Disciple was an extremely talented young man, just some years older than Jin Ling, who Jiang Cheng had taken on into the sect only several years prior when he had been a boy, with an astounding amount of natural-born spiritual energy, even without a formed core. Wang Shilin had easily become, by far, the most indispensable disciple to both Jiang Cheng and the sect. He’d come to trust the boy, and his powerful cultivation, enough that often times when Jiang Cheng was too weighed down by sect duties, it was the Head Disciple who accompanied Jin Ling on nighthunts. 

(As much as he would like to deny it, Jiang Cheng had never been able to bring himself to fully trust Jin Guangyao—not really—and he’d always declined, polite and solicitous, whenever the late Chief Cultivator had offered to send his own men to guard their nephew.)

Thus, after the usual set of catastrophes that followed whenever Wei Wuxian stuck his hand into anything of note, it was Wang Shilin who Jiang Cheng had trusted to bring Wei Wuxian in whenever the Yiling Patriarch was rumored to be in Yunmeng—Wang Shilin who Jiang Cheng trusted to greet Wei Wuxian into Lotus Pier once the dust truly began to settle—and Wang Shilin who Jiang Cheng trusted to occasionally send Wei Wuxian off on a boat, headed for Gusu’s borders whenever Jiang Cheng could not. 

Perhaps, in the end, then, it was Jiang Cheng to blame for not anticipating this—nearly four years after the Yiling Patriarch’s resurrection, and a little over two years after he and Wei Wuxian had begun propping up the shattered bridge between them with fragile planks of old wood and tattered rope. 

“Sect Leader Jiang,” Wei Wuxian chuckled, inebriated to the heavens and higher, lying flat on his back on the floor, half of his hair slipped out from its tie. He looked up at Jiang Cheng’s face and held an empty jug of liquor out up at him. “Come join us!”

Wang Shilin’s face lost every last bit of its color as Jiang Cheng’s eyes turned upon him. 

Two days after Wei Wuxian turned twelve, a shijie who was not a-jie approached Jiang Cheng’s shixiong, right in the middle of the training grounds, for everyone to see, and pressed a neatly wrapped, warm, steaming bun into his hands. Wei Wuxian was startled for far longer than Jiang Cheng thought he had a right to be. Wei Wuxian himself had yet to notice, but Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli already had—the way female junior disciples, some several years older than Wei Wuxian even, had already begun to eye him with adoring, admiring, gazes. 

Positive demeanors, attitudes of motivation, and bright determination were always highly valued here, in the sect that decreed its disciples to always strive for the impossible. Wei Wuxian was the epitome of all of those, and more—the brightest and most brilliant among all of the young cultivators at the moment, and there was yet a cultivator to join who could outshine him. He laughed even when he fell, grinned whenever he outsmarted a teacher, smiled at everyone who asked him for help. 

“I ate too much this morning,” Wei Wuxian shook his head, his voice muffled slightly by the bulging of the mouthfuls he’d torn off of the bun. He had rewrapped the other half, the larger half, neatly in the cloth and was holding it out to Jiang Cheng as they rested before afternoon training, beneath the shade of a tall tree. 

In the distance, Jiang Cheng could see all too clearly the face of that same shijie, utterly disappointed as Wei Wuxian obliviously continued trying to get Jiang Cheng to eat the other half. 

“I’m not your trashcan, Wei Wuxian,” Jiang Cheng said waspishly, parting the cloth just enough to judge that this definitely wouldn’t taste as good as his sister’s anyway. 

Wei Wuxian sighed. “It’s not good to waste food,” he said gloomily, before brightening with an apparent thought. “Maybe shijie will want some!”

Jiang Cheng only barely held back a wince at the thoroughly crestfallen expression that now befell the girl, Wei Wuxian’s loud voice easily carrying over the distance. “It was given to you, you dolt,” he muttered, deciding that this would be his one good deed for the month. “You’re supposed to finish it yourself.” 

His idiot of a brother blinked at him. “No,” he said in confused, measured, tones. “Chuhua-jie said I could share.”

Jiang Cheng stared at the sky. “Never mind,” he said, as his stomach growled. It was Chuhua-jie’s own fault anyway, for deciding that she was going to waste her time cooking for someone so stupid. “Hand it over.”

Wei Wuxian beamed. 

Every Jiang Sect disciple was, understandably, extremely wary of the Yiling Patriarch. They were all even warier still about the Yiling Patriarch’s presence at Lotus Pier. For the past thirteen years, after all, their Sect Leader had chased after any trace of demonic cultivation like a rabid dog, merciless and almost mindless in his pursuit. Jiang Cheng would easily understand why it made absolutely no sense, even with the clarifications that had come out over a year ago—along with all the other revelations—that their Sect Leader was now attempting to occasionally host his estranged shixiong once again within the sect. 

Wang Shilin was, even more understandably, the wariest of them all, having been privy to several of Jiang Cheng’s breakdowns every time yet another arrest had come up fruitless. 

While Jiang Cheng understood this, he also didn’t understand why Wang Shilin had to look that absolutely terrified of the mere thought of bringing Wei Wuxian down to the ports to sail back to Gusu. The boat was already waiting, the walk would take ten minutes, and they were in broad daylight. Furthermore, Wang Shilin had a sword on his hip, daggers hidden in his robes, and a fully functioning, intensely powerful, golden core. 

Wei Wuxian was not even currently carrying Chenqing—a casual mention, when Jiang Cheng had noted its absence as nonchalantly as he could, that he’d forgotten it. It was so overly blithe that Jiang Cheng had nearly rolled his eyes at the fact that it was a lie he was expected to believe. 

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Wei Wuxian said, when Wang Shilin stared for a moment too long instead of getting on with the damn task. “Go to your meeting—I can’t walk by myself?” he said, a little too lightly. 

“Head Disciple,” Jiang Cheng said, barely parting his lips, voice low enough to be a growl if he opened his mouth further. 

Wang Shilin pitched forward into the bow as if someone had shoved him into it. “Sect Leader Jiang,” he muttered, apologetically, stumbling over the address as he quickly went to Wei Wuxian’s side. 

Wei Wuxian’s exhale was something between resigned and amused. He cast Jiang Cheng an exasperated look that Jiang Cheng refused to meet, as the two figures began walking off into the distance. 

Jiang Cheng folded his arms and continued to watch their retreating backs, only leaving once they could no longer be seen. 

After Wei Wuxian’s twelfth birthday, the gifts only increased—the confessions surged. 

Some were light-hearted, small treats or trinkets or tokens—they came as simply as a cool, scented cloth when Wei Wuxian had been sparring long enough that his perspiration was slipping into his eyes; and, as elaborate as a box so big that Wei Wuxian could not even balance it alone in his arms, filled with freshly made rice-cakes in assorted flavors. Some were less so—letters that girls came to him with, solemn-faced and red-cheeked, so nervous that they would often stuff the scroll into his hands before sprinting away. 

There were girls, both from the towns in Yunmeng and from their own sect, who cried at Wei Wuxian, going so far as to clutch the front of his training robes, in a full-blown, fairly obvious, plight to finally be the one to convince him. Their attempts were transparent enough to make Jiang Cheng’s eyes visibly roll, but as it would be improper of him to bodily shove himself between their clinging arms and his brother’s confused stance, he usually had no choice but to watch, for several long, excruciating, moments as Wei Wuxian tried to comfort them in his usual way.

His usual way, which, Jiang Cheng knew, to Wei Wuxian’s own ears, most likely sounded like a well-meaning, kind-hearted, compassionate shixiong or shidi, but to literally anyone else on the face of this cursed earth, sounded inexcusably, undeniably, as if he was charming them—flirting with them—all the way to the matchmaker’s house. 

It was safe to say that the crying girls were only dissuaded once reinforcements, in the form of one Jiang Yanli, arrived, pleasantly but firmly plucking those girls’ hands off of Wei Wuxian’s clothes and standing in between them, and kindly asking them to leave her brother alone to his training. 

“If you didn’t chase every skirt you saw,” Jiang Cheng began, irritably, upon realizing that they’d pulled his sister away from her own lessons for this absurdity. 

Wei Wuxian frowned at him, clicking his tongue. “I’ve never even seen her,” he said incredulously. As quickly as the frown had come, however, it just as quickly smoothed into a sly smile. “Is shidi jealous? She was your type, wasn’t she?”

Jiang Cheng was too tired from all the swimming they’d done this morning, and from the heat of Yunmeng’s heartless summers, to detail the entire story of exactly where the girl was from. Even if Wei Wuxian didn’t remember her, he had definitely seen her—or perhaps, there were so many girls that their faces had begun to blend for him. It’d only been some few days ago that, as seemed to be tradition for Wei Wuxian during this blistering weather, he’d been running through the piers with nothing on but rolled up shift pants.

As Jiang Cheng’s mother had told them already countless times, her furious voice scolding them until their ears ached, it had been barely acceptable when they were children. 

Wei Wuxian was now fifteen. 

The girl had been one out of a group, who’d sat at the edge of one of the piers, eyes heated as she and her friends watched Wei Wuxian dive in and out of the waters—taking breaks only to doze on the wooden planks, the sunlight glistening off of his wet skin. She, clearly, had been the only one brave enough to approach him while he’d been napping and place a basket of sweet oranges beside his head, her gaze demanding to Jiang Cheng, who’d been lying awake beside his brother, to keep his silence. 

“I don’t have a type,” was all he ended up saying irritably, shoving Wei Wuxian forward to walk faster. Beside him, Jiang Yanli smiled faintly, patting his shoulder. “Anyway,” Jiang Cheng added, “Did you know the Lan Sect has a thousand rules? No Lan maidens will pay you any attention.”

Wei Wuxian nimbly pivoted on one foot, turning so that he was walking backwards while his siblings walked forwards toward him. “Jiang Cheng, Jiang Cheng,” he sang, winking to make Jiang Yanli smile wider, laughing quietly, “if those Lan maidens have been obeying a thousand rules all their life, they’ll pay me plenty of attention.”

The second time Jiang Cheng had a meeting to immediately attend to after a visit from the Yiling Patriarch, Wang Shilin was already waiting by the edge of the sect keep. “Shixiong,” the Head Disciple said, confusing Jiang Cheng for all of a short moment before he realized, in horror, that the young man was addressing Wei Wuxian. 

Wei Wuxian laughed nervously, eyes darting from Jiang Cheng’s face, away, then back again. “Ah—Head Disciple, there’s no need for that,” he said uneasily, even as his smile latched itself stiffly onto his face. 

“Call him whatever you want,” Jiang Cheng waved a hand, avoiding Wei Wuxian’s eyes once again and only meeting Wang Shilin’s slightly confused ones. He continued to avoid the Yiling Patriarch’s gaze even as he felt it curious and hesitant on the side of his face. 

“Master Wei trained with this sect,” Wang Shilin dared to say, out loud, in a perplexed tone, utterly oblivious to the full-bodied flinches Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian both gave at the same time, “so—Master Wei is shixiong.”

“Well, Sect Leader Jiang, I’ll see you—um—later!” Wei Wuxian called out, quickly walking forward, and grabbing Wang Shilin by the elbow. “Tell Jin Ling I say hello!” 

Jiang Cheng said nothing at all in response, watching in silence as they left, Wei Wuxian leaning up (up, it was still so strange—to see his older brother so comparatively small) to tell Wang Shilin something that made the Head Disciple turn his face, and smile down at him.

Wei Wuxian’s mind had never been one that Jiang Cheng could easily comprehend. 

There was a time, in his brother’s first life, however, when Jiang Cheng had tried his best, at least in regards to the dozens of girls who approached him every week—and the absolute zero amount of girls that Wei Wuxian actually had done absolutely anything with. 

From what Jiang Cheng came up with, after picking that brain—somehow so large, and infinite, and creative, when it came to cultivation, and yet the size of a raisin when it came to anything else—this was how Wei Wuxian saw women:

They were beautiful, and lovely, and soft, and affectionate, and comforting, and they were to be adored and flirted with and charmed—they were to have flowers tossed upon them, and given treats and bowed to and umbrellas were to be held over their heads whether rain or shine, and one day, Wei Wuxian would definitely marry one and have with her a horde of nasty little small Wei Wuxians running around to give Jiang Cheng a seizure, but until then— 

That was pretty much it. 

At this point in the explanation, Jiang Cheng almost wanted to ask Wei Wuxian if he even knew how exactly he was going to get from point A (a girl) to point B (the nasty little horde of tiny Wei Wuxians). 

The only thing that stopped him was the knowledge that, yes, his older brother had already begun his consumption of indecent, yellow, books, meaning that at the very, very, least, he must know the general mechanics of how to produce nasty little hordes of nasty little Wei Wuxians. 

It was, therefore, fairly befuddling that Wei Wuxian only seemed to like the idea in theory. For all of his innate ability to speak of the filthiest, most shameless, things without an ounce of redness in his face, he still spoke of them in the same way that an architect might speak of building a house. This was the design, here were the notes, this was the frame, this was how it would be done, but by no means, was the architect ever planning to lay his hands on the wood and tools himself. 

Even Jiang Cheng himself, by this point, couldn’t look at girls precisely in the same way that he once did. He would feel his face warm whenever he saw a pretty one, but it was no longer in the innocent way he once felt. There was never anyone that piqued his interest completely, but there were always those that had him taking a hand to himself, in the middle of the night, regardless of how exhausted he was from training. 

As far as he knew, this was the sort of thing Wei Wuxian would definitely publicize to Jiang Cheng were it to ever happen to Wei Wuxian himself—how he’d seen a girl, or girls, who were not only beautiful, but striking enough to have him spilling in bed, thoughts of having himself between her thighs, kissing her, touching her, making her call his name. 

Yet, never, not once, had Wei Wuxian ever spoken about a girl with himself as the pleasurer, as the one being pleasured—never, even in a passive way, had Wei Wuxian ever mentioned that it would be himself with any of the girls he claimed he found so stunning. 

Then, they’d gone to study at Cloud Recesses. 

After that, if it was even possible, the way in which Wei Wuxian spoke about women became so clinical that Jiang Cheng could’ve replaced her with this head of cabbage, and Wei Wuxian’s statements would still flow perfectly fine. 

“Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian asked, on yet another night they had broken curfew to lie in the grasses, staring up at Gusu’s wondrous night sky. “Isn’t the color of Lan Zhan’s eyes so weird? Zewu-jun has them, too, but Lan Zhan’s are so light, is that natural—do you think—I haven’t seen anyone else in their clan who has them, but then again, I haven’t seen everyone yet—do you think only Lan Zhan—”

Jiang Cheng tuned him out, easily, and began counting the stars above him, instead. 

Of all the answers to life’s mysteries that older cultivators always had stated that young disciples could come across, during their time at the knowledgeable, intellect-driven, Lan Sect—definitely this, surely this, was not one of the answers Jiang Cheng had predicted he’d find. 

Four days after Wei Wuxian’s twelfth birthday, two days after Chuhua-jie and the unfortunate case of the shared lotus bun, a shixiong—who both Madam Yu and Jiang Fengmian had always looked fondly upon (a rare case that both of Jiang Cheng’s parents ever agreed on anything), a near undeniable choice for the next Head Disciple, and a boy who had always looked after Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng both as his own younger brothers, when they’d begun training—approached Wei Wuxian. 

Jiang Lian was five years older than Wei Wuxian, and six years older than Jiang Cheng. He was also at least a head and a half taller than Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, obviously far broader as well. Compared to him, they were still children. Even if Wei Wuxian could now already spar against the older junior disciples, it didn’t mean he was no longer a child. He still had the same curfew as Jiang Cheng had—he wasn’t allowed into the towns in the evening without Jiang Yanli accompanying him, in the exact way Jiang Cheng as well had to go only with his sister. 

Jiang Lian was also popular. Many of the shijie who doted on Wei Wuxian would cast admiring glances at Jiang Lian. Jiang Yanli herself had noted, several times, that Jiang Lian was handsome. 

Jiang Cheng didn’t understand, then, after all the time both he and Wei Wuxian had spent with Jiang Lian through the years of their childhood, why Jiang Cheng himself felt so uneasy when he saw, one late afternoon, just four days after Wei Wuxian had turned twelve, Jiang Lian leading the younger boy off from the training grounds—just the two of them. 

In that moment, on that day, Jiang Cheng didn’t understand what sort of instinct had him running for his father, knocking on the double doors of his office, even when the current Head Disciple apologetically stated that the Sect Leader was busy at the moment. Jiang Cheng didn’t understand himself when he blurted out that it was an emergency—when he called out, loud enough to be heard through the screen, that it was Wei Wuxian. 

Jiang Fengmian’s eyes were bewildered and puzzled when he took in the sight of his son’s worried face, but he let himself be led by the hand, walking as quickly as Jiang Cheng could run, with his own small legs. Jiang Cheng knew the path that Jiang Lian had taken—the secluded meditation grounds that were usually only occupied in the mornings. Following high noon, most disciples would move indoors to study theory or train on the grounds with their swords. 

They were there, and Jiang Cheng didn’t know why he was so relieved at the sight in front of his eyes. He didn’t know, at the time—at that age—what exactly he expected to find, and so he was just as confused at himself for the relief that coursed through him. 

Wei Wuxian was smiling, as brightly as ever, with Jiang Lian’s tall frame, looming over him and cornering him against the wall of the fence that gated off the meditation area. Jiang Lian’s hands were gripping Wei Wuxian’s arms, but Wei Wuxian didn’t seem bothered, still chattering off at something Jiang Lian must’ve said previously. The chatter only died on his lips when he caught sight of Jiang Fengmian and Jiang Cheng. 

Jiang Fengmian, however, was thunderous.

Jiang Cheng looked up at his father to see an expression of pure, cold, fury that could’ve rivaled his mother’s. The expression came onto Jiang Fengmian’s face only in the split moment that Jiang Lian turned around with fear, with guilt, in his own eyes. 

“Sect Leader,” Jiang Lian whispered, hands immediately releasing Wei Wuxian, who remained standing in place, stupefied at the drastic change in atmosphere. 

“Wei Ying,” Jiang Fengmian said in a voice so quiet that it made Jiang Cheng shiver. Wei Wuxian’s eyes snapped to the man’s face, startled just as Jiang Cheng was. “Come here.”

For once, Wei Wuxian obeyed wordlessly, silently walking until he was standing at Jiang Fengmian’s other side, and then the man gently pushed Wei Wuxian back slightly further, until both he and Jiang Cheng were completely behind Jiang Fengmian—until neither of them could see Jiang Lian’s expression at all. 

Wei Wuxian’s eyes had now also gained some measure of fear to them, most likely simply because of how neither of them had ever seen Jiang Fengmian so utterly, quietly, beside himself. His gaze questioned Jiang Cheng, but Jiang Cheng had no answers to offer. 

“Go straight into my study,” Jiang Fengmian continued, in a voice so infuriated that Jiang Cheng almost couldn’t recognize his own father. “Head Disciple is there. You will remain there with him until I return. Do you understand?”

“Sect Leader, I wasn’t—”

“Do you understand?”

There was a long, long, silence.

“Yes,” Jiang Lian whispered, finally. “Yes, Sect Leader.”

Jiang Cheng heard the older boy’s steps draw further away, receding until there was no sound from them anymore at all, before Jiang Fengmian turned around and looked down at both of them. Jiang Cheng’s father suddenly looked so, so, tired. “Good job,” he said softly, looking into Jiang Cheng’s eyes with a weary smile, one large hand on top of Jiang Cheng’s head. 

“Uncle Jiang,” Wei Wuxian blinked, his expression serious and concerned. “What happened? Did something happen to Lian-ge ? Is someone in Lian-ge’s family sick?”

Jiang Fengmian was silent for a moment, before he said, his other hand now atop Wei Wuxian’s head, “Head Disciple found some evidence of misconduct on Jiang Lian’s part. It doesn’t seem to be a small matter that we could just let go without punishment. He may need to leave the sect—I’m not sure, yet.”

Wei Wuxian’s eyes went round with shock. His voice was a mix of incredulity and hesitance as he asked, “Is—Is uncle sure? Lian-ge is a really good shixiong, he’s never—he’s the one who’s always trying to make sure I don’t get into trouble, maybe it wasn’t him—”

“Wei Ying,” Jiang Fengmian’s voice rose slightly, but just slightly was enough to completely silence Wei Wuxian. After all, among all three of them—Wei Wuxian was almost thoroughly unaccustomed to Jiang Fengmian ever scolding him. He would even scold Jiang Yanli before scolding Wei Wuxian. “It would be best, if you do not argue with me on this matter.”

Wei Wuxian’s mouth snapped shut, and he looked down at his feet. 

Jiang Fengmian’s hand patted Jiang Cheng’s back. “Take him, and go find your sister,” he said, that tired smile on his face once again. “Your father will go take care of this.”

Jiang Cheng swallowed, and nodded, bowing slightly, before looping his arm through Wei Wuxian’s. The older boy looked at him, eyes still uncertain and somewhat hurt, and Jiang Cheng offered him a smile as best he could—he wasn’t good at comfort. That area was solely Jiang Yanli’s and Wei Wuxian’s. Still, he smiled until Wei Wuxian offered him a tentative one in return, and that was enough. 

Jiang Cheng was thirteen when he understood. 

Jiang Lian had been told to leave the sect, rumors silenced so efficiently—the mark of Madam Yu’s iron handiwork written all over it—that no one even questioned the reason for which he had been made to leave. The evidence had solely been placed as misconduct during a nighthunt that would’ve left the fellow disciples involved in it injured or dead, and that had been that. It had happened nearly immediately after the incident, and Jiang Fengmian’s address about it to the junior disciples had been in a tone so unlike the Sect Leader’s usually complacent, amiable, self, that no one dared speak any more of the matter. 

Two years later, and Jiang Cheng had seen enough to understand—the realization slow, but dawning, and inevitable, once it reached him. 

Men were animals. 

Men were greedy, ungrateful, desirous animals often with no sense of ever having been in a position where decision and agency were ripped right out of their desperate hands. 

In the same way that Wei Wuxian seemed to only theorize his affection for women, he solely theorized when it came to loving them physically as well. Naturally, even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t be able to freely touch any and every girl that approached him. As far as Jiang Cheng had always seen, however, it didn’t seem to be an urge Wei Wuxian had to actively rein in. He appeared perfectly content with coy words and, at most, a peck on the backs of their hands—if anything at all. 

It was in Wei Wuxian’s nature to be tactile, though—he was a person who lived off of the presence of people through and through and that included physical affection. He never ceased to cling onto his siblings even after both Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli themselves had grown more restrained, in the way most siblings did, with physical contact. Wei Wuxian also never saw anything foreboding or taboo about the way he touched his many shixiong and shidi. 

Arms around their waists—arms around his waist—arms around shoulders, hands ruffled through hair, hands on the napes of necks, palms flat on their backs as he helped them stretch, legs hooking with theirs during sparring breaks, fingers drumming on their thighs, mouth far too close to their ears just to tell playful jokes—and, through it all, Wei Wuxian retained that brilliant, bright, dazzling light around him, fully unaware of the moths who were drawn to his flame.  

It wouldn’t be a problem, if all those Wei Wuxian touched were to only touch him back with the same, innocent, intent that he himself had. It wouldn’t be a problem if what Jiang Cheng saw in Wei Wuxian’s eyes was all that he saw in theirs. 

One evening, a month after Jiang Cheng’s thirteenth birthday, a shixiong two years older than Wei Wuxian pulled Wei Wuxian by the arm behind the wide trunk of a tree, only a sliver of their bodies visible to Jiang Cheng as he’d made to pass through to the main courtyard. He couldn’t see them, but he could hear them, and the older boy was having a go at a terrible confession that a block of wood as dense as Wei Wuxian was in no way going to understand. 

Jiang Cheng angled himself so that neither of them would see him, for a moment, observing Wei Wuxian’s body language. There was confusion, certainly, in every line of Wei Wuxian’s stance, the way he was pressing himself slightly harder than necessary against the tree in order to keep some space between him and the older boy. That was enough to have Jiang Cheng stepping forward, clearing his throat loudly as he came into view. 

The shixiong immediately stepped back, throat working furiously as he bowed forward. “Sect Heir,” he said reverently, his tone thick with more than just nerves. 

“Wei Wuxian, my grandmother is coming from Meishan, and you haven’t even washed up yet?” Jiang Cheng said, lacing impatience into his tone. “Do you want to be skinned alive by my mother?” 

Wei Wuxian clicked his tongue, whining, “Jiang Cheng—you’re as dirty as I am!”

“You take longer to wash up,” he retorted, “and—I’ve already helped a-jie, have you?”

He grumbled, but it was good-natured, and he waved a hand at both of them, before running off—if nothing else, the threat of Madam Yu’s wrath keeping him in line. Jiang Cheng didn’t like pulling it into situations out of thin air, but he rather thought that even his father would approve of the use of it this time. 

Only once Wei Wuxian was cleanly out of sight did Jiang Cheng round on the older boy, still standing, frozen, near the tree. Jiang Cheng stepped towards him, heedless of the height the older boy had on him. He forwent formalities. Beasts lower than animals didn’t deserve formalities. “Do you want to end up like Jiang Lian?” he asked, chillingly. 

The realization in the other boy’s eyes happened in stages. The last stage of which sent satisfaction shooting through Jiang Cheng’s body as the fear set into the boy’s gaze. There was a short bout of anger, however, that also followed, as he drew himself up somewhat, and said, hurt, “I wasn’t about to force—”

“He doesn’t want you,” Jiang Cheng said callously, folding his arms, and snorting. 

The boy glared. “And how would you know, Sect Heir?” he spat. 

“This Sect Heir knows his brother,” Jiang Cheng took another step forward, and it must have been so threatening that the boy actually took a reflexive step back. “He doesn’t want you—he’s never going to want you, and if you don’t want to be disgraced and kicked out of Lotus Pier with a reputation that will assure you never get accepted into any other sect, I suggest you stay far, far, away from Wei Wuxian.” 

The other boy kept his chin up, meeting Jiang Cheng’s gaze head-on, for one last time, clearly valiantly trying to argue his sole, remaining, point. “What if he asks for me? What if he comes after me, after I start ignoring him?”

Jiang Cheng merely raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t this Sect Heir already say? I know my brother. How many shixiong and shidi do you think he has around him? Does this shixiong think he’s someone important to Wei Wuxian?” 

He made absolute sure to shove the other boy’s shoulder as he pushed past him, the seething, raging, expression only serving Jiang Cheng to add one last blow. “It doesn’t matter, anyway, what shixiong says to him—Wei Wuxian will believe me, first, and always.”

Every following time Wang Shilin returned from either escorting Wei Wuxian into Lotus Pier, or sending him off to return to Cloud Recesses, the Head Disciple seemed to be in a better, and better, mood. From the many years Jiang Cheng had come to know him, Wang Shilin had remained a private, quiet, young man. He’d kept to himself, unlike several of the other currently high-ranked cultivators in the sect who’d come to be far more familiar with Jiang Cheng—young, and sprightly, always greeting him brightly and asking after Jin Ling and Jiang Cheng’s own well-beings. 

Wang Shilin had never inquired after Jiang Cheng in a personal way—whether it was taking note of the shadows beneath his eyes once a year, every year, the day that Jiang Cheng could never fully celebrate even while the rest of the cultivational world happily toasted and cheered; or, whether it was noting Jiang Cheng’s genuine, small, smiles whenever Jin Ling bounded into Lotus Pier some few times a month, shouting for his uncle, Fairy’s barking following the boy’s footsteps. 

Jiang Cheng had come to like that about his Head Disciple. After days spent warding off the probing, concerned, questions of his other upper disciples, sometimes, the quiet—the halt of intrusions—was highly welcome. 

Therefore, it was with an odd jolt that Jiang Cheng realized, one morning, after Wang Shilin had returned from sending Wei Wuxian off, the Head Disciple’s ears pinked and a grin quirking his lips that, in return, he’d never inquired after the Head Disciple himself either. It was with an even odder, even more slow to form, thought that he realized he’d never seen his Head Disciple familiar with any of the other disciples in the sect. He didn’t think he had ever seen Wang Shilin spending time with any of them outside of sect duties. 

He wasn’t sure why that, in combination with the almost secret way Wang Shilin smiled whenever he returned from bringing Wei Wuxian to and from Lotus Pier, bothered him. 

Jiang Cheng was fourteen, and it was nearing curfew at Cloud Recesses. He and Nie Huaisang were returning to the guest disciple dorms, Wei Wuxian having sprinted off without them immediately after dinner, crowing about how he’d meet them back at the dorms for further mischief managing later. Nie Huaisang was, as always, complaining about how his brother had sent another letter to Lan Xichen, inquiring about how Nie Huaisang’s studies were going, if the studies were even going at all. 

They had just turned the corner when Jiang Cheng caught sight of an ever-familiar flap of red and black—and an unfamiliar white and blue soon nearby. Nie Huaisang stopped, both in his walking and in his chatter. He watched Jiang Cheng with curious, even, eyes. “What is it?” he asked, fan snapping shut as he stepped up to align himself with where Jiang Cheng was standing. 

Up, on the elevated steps leading to the areas of the sect that guest disciples were most certainly not allowed, hidden behind thickets of shrubbery and some stone statues, stood Wei Wuxian, pressing his side to a nearby gate wall, with Lan Wangji close in front of him. “Go on without me,” Jiang Cheng said, eyes already latched onto Wei Wuxian’s carefree smile and Lan Wangji’s usual, muted, flat gaze. 

Unfathomably, Nie Huaisang chose that moment, of all moments that they’d known each other thus far, not to listen to him. Instead, he stepped, just slightly, in front of Jiang Cheng, nearly blocking his gaze of the other two boys. “Wait—wait—what is Jiang-xiong planning to do?” Nie Huaisang asked, blinking rapidly. 

Jiang Cheng pushed him to the side, patience rapidly waning. “None of your business,” he snapped. 

Nie Huaisang regained his placing right in front of Jiang Cheng, eyes wide, fan open and fluttering again. “Jiang-xiong—maybe Jiang-xiong should look again before he embarrasses himself,” he said, voice mild and tentative. 

Jiang Cheng scowled, and glanced up. 

Lan Wangji’s arms were held straight down at his sides, his eyes unwavering even with the way Wei Wuxian was clearly invading his personal space. The way they were crowded against each other screamed everything but platonic, but—nothing was happening. Furthermore, Jiang Cheng realized once he’d stopped seeing red enough to remember that the Lan Sect’s Second Young Master held about as much physical desire as a stone, he also noticed—somehow—Wei Wuxian’s body was so—open. 

It was open in a different way than it was even when he held his arms around those in their own sect, even around Nie Huaisang. Even when Wei Wuxian had himself clinging warmly around Jiang Cheng, this was different. There was something different in the way his body stood around Lan Wangji, even with the perfect bubble of space between them. 

“Ahh—Lan-er-gongzi,” Wei Wuxian pleaded, his voice carrying down to them. “We aren’t going to drink or anything! It’ll just be—it’ll just be tea, Lan Zhan! You like tea, don’t you? We’ll just talk and sit around until it’s time to sleep. Don’t you want to make friends? The guest lectures aren’t just about the lectures, you know!” 

“He’d better not be trying to bring that block of ice to our room,” Jiang Cheng muttered, as he forced his eyes away and went on walking. Nie Huaisang had to jog slightly, now, to catch up in his surprise. 

“Since when did you start disliking Lan Wangji?” Nie Huaisang said, going so far as to stick his head in front of Jiang Cheng’s face, fan and all. Jiang Cheng batted at him with an irritated noise. 

“What is there to like?” Jiang Cheng snorted. “Unless we’re talking about his cultivation. The only reason Wei Wuxian follows him around is because the idiot likes poking at sleeping dragons.”

The look that Nie Huaisang fixed him with, as they reached the entrance to their quarters, was both unnerving and supremely frustrating. “Ah, Jiang-xiong,” the other boy said, shaking his head, and letting his fan drop to the side, “don’t be mad—when classes end, Wei-xiong will go home with you to Lotus Pier, won’t he?”

Jiang Cheng gripped the handle of the sliding door so tightly the wood felt like steel against his palms. “Where else would he go?” he said, ignoring the way his chest clenched at the words. 

There were boys who meant well. 

Wei Wuxian was nearly sixteen, and there had been handfuls of boys who would’ve made him happy. Jiang Cheng didn’t scare them away, but he dissuaded them—one after the other, his power as the Sect Heir growing with every year that passed. His responsibilities and obligations remained the same, as long as he was not yet Sect Leader, but the older he grew, the more intimidated the other disciples were of him. 

Their affections for Wei Wuxian, after all, were only passing fancies—the flighty first loves that all adolescents experienced. No such feelings and pursuits were worth inciting the rage of the Sect Leader’s son—they weren’t worth sacrificing one’s future in such a prestigious sect. 

Lan Wangji never visited Wei Wuxian at Yunmeng, and yet, Wei Wuxian didn’t stop talking about him. Somehow, that one season spent at Cloud Recesses had already given Wei Wuxian enough to speak of the boy for an entire year—it made Jiang Yanli laugh fondly at him, it made Jiang Fengmian watch him warmly, it made Madam Yu scoff that Wei Wuxian would bother such an important young master like that. 

It made Jiang Cheng feel like vomiting. 

He’d resigned himself, from an early age, to count the days with his sister. 

He knew, as they all did, that one day, she would marry a boy who’d never appreciated her—who would never appreciate her—and she’d be whisked off to Carp Tower for the rest of her life. Jiang Cheng had resigned himself to imagining, in the future, only ever seeing her some few times every month. Perhaps more, if he was lucky, and she would be allowed to visit Lotus Pier as often as she’d like. 

Wei Wuxian was supposed to remain with him. 

Even if Jiang Cheng knew, inherently, that there would come a time when Wei Wuxian would get married, would start his own family and his own life—the difference was stark and terrible. Wei Wuxian would never be in an arranged marriage like his sister, like Jiang Cheng’s parents, like perhaps Jiang Cheng himself, one day.

No.

Wei Wuxian’s own parents had eloped—they’d fallen madly in love and gone, away, travelling together, having a son, embarking on hunts, until one night when it all went wrong and then neither of them were ever to be seen again. 

Wei Wuxian was the sort of person that sort of love had always been meant for, and Jiang Cheng knew this. He knew it to his very bones that, even if it took some time for Wei Wuxian to realize, one day, Wei Wuxian would fall in love with someone. That someone would fall in love with him in return—because who didn’t love Wei Wuxian? 

There was, then, a very, very, very real possibility that Wei Wuxian would no longer want to stay here—here at Lotus Pier—with Jiang Cheng. Especially, after Jiang Yanli would have left, forced to start her own family. There would be nothing else holding Wei Wuxian here if the person he fell in love with had a penchant for adventures and travelling as passionate as Wei Wuxian himself did. 

It didn’t matter how much Wei Wuxian boasted Yunmeng as the best region, Lotus Pier as the most beautiful location in all of the lands—all of the sects. Wei Wuxian was still never as homesick as Jiang Cheng had been during their time in Cloud Recesses. Wei Wuxian always ventured out, flying on Suibian, thrilled to see how far he could go before only turning around because it was getting late and Jiang Fengmian would worry. 

One day, with Jiang Yanli at Carp Tower, with someone who loved him enough to follow him around the world, with his cultivation having reached the highest peak that the Jiang Sect’s teachings could bring it to, Wei Wuxian would have nothing more to tie him here. He would no longer have to endure Madam Yu’s scathing remarks. He could visit Jiang Fengmian only, whenever he wanted. He would come, for Jiang Cheng, perhaps, at most, once a month—if that—and Jiang Cheng wouldn’t have his brother anymore.

Not in the same way, never again. 

Selfishly, Jiang Cheng did all he could to delay that moment for as long as he was able. 

He told himself that he was protecting Wei Wuxian—that he didn’t want Wei Wuxian to realize that the brightness of his character could be taken advantage of by those who were worth less than the dirt beneath Wei Wuxian’s boots. He told himself that he wanted to preserve Wei Wuxian as that boy who Jiang Cheng had yelled at, the first night he’d ever come to Lotus Pier, and still laughed and smiled at Jiang Cheng anyway. 

He told himself that Wei Wuxian would be, always, happiest here—at their home—with him. 

It had only been within the past two years that Jiang Cheng had been able to look at Wei Wuxian and see Wei Wuxian—as is, immediately, without a moment of sharp disorientation—rather than some stranger with Wei Wuxian’s expressions and Wei Wuxian’s mannerisms. The first year or so after the Yiling Patriarch’s resurrection, after all, Jiang Cheng had rarely spoken with him. The contact that they’d had had been sporadic, at best, and nonexistent, at worst, until Jin Ling’s little stunt that Jiang Cheng still hadn’t truly forgiven his nephew for.  

After that, it had still taken around a year for Jiang Cheng to stop doing double-takes. It was different, seeing Mo Xuanyu’s body when the situation wasn’t dire and they weren’t trapped in a temple about to be possibly murdered by either a manipulative psychopath or the vengeful ghost of a blade-wielding warrior. Over dinner, over drinks, across a conference table about a possible nighthunt, seeing Wei Wuxian in a stranger’s body was as off-putting as anyone would expect it to be. 

Nowadays, the differences that Jiang Cheng still had to accustom himself to were the ones that Wei Wuxian himself still had to settle himself into. Quirks that were not entirely physical, but parts of one’s body that were only learned to be so embedded in one’s knowledge of oneself that it was jarring when the differences finally made themselves known. 

In his previous life, Wei Wuxian’s tolerance had far surpassed Jiang Cheng’s. Wei Wuxian could drink, easily, until both Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang were flattened in their beds, sometimes with their faces turned into buckets to catch their vomit before they passed out for the night. 

It was unimaginable to do so in Mo Xuanyu’s body. 

It was something that Wei Wuxian had learned of only in Jiang Cheng’s presence, having never had the opportunity to consume so much alcohol since he’d come back to life until then. He’d drank, once or twice, apparently, with Jin Ling—at leisure—since Jin Ling’s pace was what was to be expected of a boy who’d never drunk before. Wei Wuxian had also drank, some number of times, when visiting Nie Huaisang—but again, Nie Huaisang had always been a lover of the finer things, of sampling wines and liquors and ales, not of inhaling them by the jar. 

The first time had also been the first time the other disciples of the Jiang Sect joined them for the meal. It had been the first time Wei Wuxian was to stay more than a few days at Lotus Pier—Jin Ling claiming that he now trusted Jiang Cheng enough not to kill Wei Wuxian without the boy’s supervision, thusly marking himself as a target for Hanguang-jun’s homicidal rage. 

Wei Wuxian had brought an array of alcohol to the dinner, one that had made even the other, young, disciples’ eyes bulge—and Jiang Cheng had never made, here in this rebuilt and reborn Jiang Sect, his disciples shy away from liquor. He’d drank with all of them several times over, through the years, but even this—this was the scale that could only be brought about by Wei Wuxian. 

Mo Xuanyu’s body was tipsy at two, sizable jars. 

At three, Mo Xuanyu’s body had Wei Wuxian collapsing completely into Jiang Cheng’s lap, to the thorough horror of every disciple watching. 

At four jars, Mo Xuanyu’s body was vomiting into a bucket for at least half the night, before promptly passing out onto the table, until Jiang Cheng threw him over his shoulder like the worthless sack of potatoes he was, and carried him to the guest quarters. 

All of the disciples in the Jiang Sect had witnessed this.

All, including, Wang Shilin. 

Jiang Cheng had been in meetings all morning and afternoon and, like he had in all the times Wei Wuxian had come to Lotus Pier when Jin Ling was not around, he’d asked Wang Shilin to take Wei Wuxian to the guest quarters—or, in all honesty, simply leave him to his own devices. Wei Wuxian had still been alive when Lotus Pier had been rebuilt—he’d rebuilt it alongside Jiang Cheng—none of the buildings had changed since, other than routine repairs. 

Wei Wuxian knew where everything was and, even if he hadn’t, he’d been here quite enough times—and had made quite enough friends with all of the current disciples—to be very familiar, without any assistance at all from Wang Shilin. 

There was no reason, at all, for evening to fall upon the sect with Jiang Cheng scouring the halls of Lotus Pier in search of Wei Wuxian. 

None of the disciples who passed him, who he asked, had seen Wei Wuxian since his arrival with Wang Shilin. 

Jiang Cheng had spent nearly an hour searching every conceivable place in his mind—including the quarters Wei Wuxian always used as well as Jiang Cheng’s own rooms. Now, he supposed, he would have to begin searching inconceivable places. 

He saw the talisman on the crack of Wang Shilin’s door—a talisman that simultaneously locked and also served as an alarm that would let the inhabitants of the room know when someone was about to attempt to break through it. 

It took Jiang Cheng only one strike for the talisman to become nothing but an ordinary piece of paper, once more, crumpled in his palm as he threw the doors open, disappointment and something strangely like betrayal flooding his body as he took in the sight before him. 

His Head Disciple had never become more to him than just that—his Head Disciple—but he was a man that Jiang Cheng once easily trusted his own, young, nephew too, in the face of true danger, in the face of monsters and vengeful spirits underneath the dark cover of night. Jiang Cheng had known him since he was a boy, coming to Jiang Cheng while he’d still been a grief-stricken, young, Sect Leader, alone except for the infant in his arms. 

Wang Shilin’s room was laden with jars of liquor—some empty, but most still filled. Wei Wuxian was lying on the floor, close to Wang Shilin’s sprawled legs. Wang Shilin himself clearly hadn’t been drinking—his attire still pristine and neat. Then again, Jiang Cheng didn’t think he’d ever seen his Head Disciple drink. That wasn’t enough to make the scene a silent accusation. 

Wei Wuxian’s tousled, intoxicated, state alone was also nothing to truly set off the bells in Jiang Cheng’s head.  

No—rather—it was in the same way that, over two decades ago, Jiang Cheng had stood, beside his father, as they’d also uncovered a scene that would otherwise seem utterly innocuous. Even Jiang Cheng, eleven-years-old, without having seen enough of the world, wondered how Jiang Fengmian knew that Jiang Lian hadn’t simply wanted to speak with Wei Wuxian privately. 

He knew it, now.

In the way that Wang Shilin’s eyes first, inadvertently, met Jiang Cheng’s with so much guilt—unable to be hidden—and then when they immediately averted his gaze. 

“You’re drunk,” Jiang Cheng announced, addressing Wei Wuxian, with his eyes still locked firmly on Wang Shilin’s face. 

“Of course I’m drunk,” Wei Wuxian slurred, sighing, and clutching the jar he held closer to his chest. He turned onto his side on the floor, to better face Jiang Cheng. “That’s the whole point, shidi.”

If he was already calling Jiang Cheng that, even if he wasn’t yet vomiting, he was far more inebriated than he seemed. Jiang Cheng’s eyes scanned the jars—they weren’t even large, not nearly as large as the jars had been the very first time Wei Wuxian drank at Lotus Pier. The scent of the alcohol wasn’t strong as well. It smelled like wine, not liquor. The four jars Mo Xuanyu’s body had capped that first night had been liquor. 

“Head Disciple,” Jiang Cheng said quietly, “Step outside with me, for a moment.”

“Wait—” Wei Wuxian frowned, attempting to roll onto his stomach and push himself into a sitting position. He appeared to think better of it when his attempt ended with him face first back onto the floor. 

“If I see you drinking more when I come back,” Jiang Cheng said, dryly, “I’ll feed you to a Winged Bloodhound.” 

He slammed the door shut on Wei Wuxian’s outraged, drunken, whines. 

The way in which Wang Shilin held his shoulders straight was almost admirable.

Almost.

“I’m going to carry him to my quarters,” Jiang Cheng said softly, dangerously, “and when I return to this room, I want Head Disciple, and all of his belongings, to be gone. If I return, and he has not yet left Lotus Pier—or—if I somehow hear that, in any way, he approaches Wei Wuxian ever again, I will let Hanguang-jun know. Then, when Hanguang-jun has finished doing as he sees fit to this Head Disciple, I will take care of what remains of him. Is that understood, Head Disciple?”

Wang Shilin had gone so, utterly, still, that if Jiang Cheng actually still cared for the man, he would’ve been concerned whether he was even breathing. 

Jiang Cheng placed a steady hand on Wang Shilin’s shoulder, and let Zidian crackle on his fingers. Wang Shilin jerked so violently that he knocked himself into the wall and staggered, expression breaking, gaze shaking. 

“Good,” Jiang Cheng said, still in that even, steady, tone. “Now, please get the fuck out of my sight and out of my sect.”

Wei Wuxian sighed as his chin bumped along Jiang Cheng’s shoulder with every step the Sect Leader took towards his chambers. “I guess this is an improvement,” Wei Wuxian mumbled, and it was so strange to feel the man’s arms so thin around Jiang Cheng’s neck and shoulders. It was so strange to feel a weight so light on his back, when Jiang Cheng had once been used to a heavier weight, more muscle, thicker arms, longer legs, whenever it was Wei Wuxian’s turn to be injured and carried. “At least you aren’t treating me like a bag of apples.”

“I’d treat a bag of apples better,” Jiang Cheng said, hooking one of his feet between the sliding doors and kicking them open with a flick of his leg. 

He tossed Wei Wuxian unceremoniously onto Jiang Cheng’s bed, and froze, upon lighting the candles of his bedroom with a quick shot of spiritual energy from his fingers—eyes meeting Wei Wuxian’s abruptly steady gaze. 

Abruptly sober.

Wei Wuxian was even sitting upright, even if swaying slightly. He was, also, smiling, equal parts amused and warm. 

Jiang Cheng stared. 

“Did you—” Jiang Cheng paused. Furrowed his eyebrows. Narrowed his eyes. “Did you—”

“—know?” Wei Wuxian finished lightly. He folded his legs and rested an elbow on his knee airily. “Well, Sect Leader Jiang, I’ve never known you to want to drink in a disciple’s private rooms, and I’ve known you quite a long time, so yes—I knew.” His smile was still warm and amused, but the sharpness it suddenly gained had Jiang Cheng reeling and feeling like an idiot, all at once. 

Even if the outcome would’ve been the same—the moment Jiang Cheng found out, Wang Shilin’s tenure as Head Disciple, his status as a Jiang disciple at all, would’ve been utterly out of the question—the fact that Wei Wuxian had himself known, and could have most definitely taken care of matters himself, left Jiang Cheng feeling a microcosm of the same array of feelings he had that one, terrible, fateful night when the Ghost General had thrown Suibian at his feet and shouted for him to draw the sword. 

“You knew, and you went into his room, anyway?” Jiang Cheng asked bitingly. “Just refusing him wouldn’t have been dramatic enough? You wanted to elaborate an entire escape?”

The sigh that Wei Wuxian expelled this time was far less put-upon than his previous one, against Jiang Cheng’s shoulder. The exhalation was weary, sleepy, Jiang Cheng startlingly realized. Wei Wuxian didn’t seem drunk, and it wasn’t that late in the night, but there was still something decidedly off with him. 

Wei Wuxian’s smile was no longer amused, just tired, and his voice suddenly sounded so, so heavy. “There was something in the wine he gave me when we ate together—when you were finishing up your meeting. He was nearly carting me off into his room. I thought it’d be better if he didn’t know I’d caught on and just rested in his room until some of it wore off. I didn’t drink anything else from what was in his room, in any case, if you were wondering—that poor plant behind me got the most of it every time he turned away.”

Jiang Cheng was quiet for a moment, before he said the only thing he could think of as appropriate in that moment. “I should’ve skinned him before he left.”

Wei Wuxian laughed, still tired, but the sound was genuine. Jiang Cheng didn’t understand why he was laughing—how he was laughing. The way he looked at Jiang Cheng was so nostalgically warm. “You have great timing,” he said, lying down flat on his back now, as Jiang Cheng sat on the edge of the bed. Wei Wuxian massaged his fingers over the bridge of his nose, the dips above his eyes. “It wasn’t wearing off fast enough, and your Head Disciple is quite the cultivator. If you hadn’t come, my best bet was sealing his energy whenever he decided to get closer to me.”

Looking directly down into Wei Wuxian’s face, Jiang Cheng now was able to see how bloodshot his eyes were. He winced, involuntarily. He wondered where on earth Wang Shilin had managed to get a slowing toxin that could evade the Yiling Patriarch’s senses. Wei Wuxian seemed to see the change of expression on his face, and reached out, a little clumsily—still due to the poison—and poked Jiang Cheng’s arm. “I’ll be fine in the morning,” he said softly. “I’m pretty sure this is something that’s supposed to be able to be slept off, considering our dear Head Disciple’s intentions.”

Jiang Cheng fell silent for another moment, watching Wei Wuxian breathe a little unsteadily—deep breaths, in and out—most likely to stop his head from spinning. It was the usual sensation that followed poisons like this one. “I told him that I’d leave him to Lan Wangji first, and I’d take what’s left. I should’ve told him Lan Wangji could have him second. After me.”

Wei Wuxian looked a little too far gone to manage a full laugh, by that point, but he smiled again, yawning. There was also no color in his face, pale and drawn and Jiang Cheng knew that whether Mo Xuanyu’s body or Wei Wuxian’s own, there was always normally a healthy flush when alcohol had been involved. “No,” Wei Wuxian said simply. “It should be me first—and then there wouldn’t be anything left.”

Jiang Cheng held the other man’s gaze for a long moment, neither of them puncturing the pin-drop silence. Then, all at once, Wei Wuxian’s smile broke through again—razor sharp—simultaneous with Jiang Cheng’s knowing snort. “Go to sleep,” he said, standing up, yanking the blankets out of the bed frame and throwing them, purposefully aimless so that they landed over Wei Wuxian’s face. “You’re going to feel like shit tomorrow.”

“Are you sure you want me in your bed?” Wei Wuxian asked, shoving the blankets down away from his face. “I’m probably—” he paused, assessing, “—definitely going to vomit.”

Jiang Cheng jabbed his finger at the wastebasket below his nightstand. “Then, vomit into there,” he snapped. He blew the candles out with a wave of his hand, on his way out. “If I find puke in my bed tomorrow morning, I will drown you,” he threatened upon shutting the doors closed. 

Come morning, there was no Yiling-Patriarch-vomit in Jiang Cheng’s bed, but Wei Wuxian definitely was in no state to be moved anywhere. He also was in no state to eat anything. Jiang Cheng only managed to force water down his throat with further threats of whistling for Fairy, even if both of them knew Fairy was leagues away in Carp Tower—and that Jiang Cheng would never do any such thing. 

Some time late afternoon, Wei Wuxian had graduated from having fluids poured into his mouth, to sitting up and managing finger-sized amounts of bland bread and honey. He’d also regained enough of himself to return to his full capacity for annoying Jiang Cheng until the vein in his forehead throbbed. 

“Can’t I just load you onto a boat on a stretcher and sail you down to Gusu that way?” Jiang Cheng asked, seated at his writing desk, and trying to ignore the mess Wei Wuxian had created in his bed in the man’s attempts to throw bread pieces into his own mouth. “Can’t you send for your Hanguang-jun to come here and drag you back himself?”

Wei Wuxian looked over with an expression on his face that announced to Jiang Cheng precisely how transparent the Sect Leader was being. “I’m not due back for another day,” Wei Wuxian said, casually. “Shouldn’t cut my visit short just because your Head Disciple turned out to be a vile snake.”

“Don’t insult snakes,” Jiang Cheng said dryly. 

Wei Wuxian gave a jaunty hum and continued trying to catch breadcrumbs in his mouth—most of which landed, instead, among Jiang Cheng’s previously spotless blankets. “Anyway,” he said, “I was thinking—is the week after next all right? We could go after those over-sized dung beetles we saw last time.”

Jiang Cheng’s brushed paused. 

It had become rather routine of them to schedule Wei Wuxian’s visits for some few days, to—on very special occasions—a week, around once every month, sometimes a little over a month if Wei Wuxian had callings in Qinghe or Lanling. For Wei Wuxian to return less than two weeks later would mean that he would be spending only a week at Cloud Recesses, at—at his current home, with his husband. That would only be the best case scenario—in the worst case, Wei Wuxian would have other places to tend to in between, or Lan Wangji would, and they would only see each other for a few days. 

“The Pincer Demons?” Jiang Cheng said, still looking down at the documents in front of him. 

“Yes, those,” Wei Wuxian’s voice was muffled slightly, as if he was chewing—he’d probably finally managed to catch one of the more sizable pieces of bread. 

Jiang Cheng began writing again. “Fine,” he said dismissively. “It’s the low season. I don’t have any conferences, so it’ll be boring around here for a while, anyway. Don’t think you can keep dropping by like this when the mid-year discussions start up—the junior disciples never get anything done whenever you’re visiting, and they’re the ones in charge of organizing them.”

A piece of bread hits him square on the cheek, then, landing—of all places—into his inkwell. 

“Wei Wuxian!” Jiang Cheng roared, shooting up to his feet, and rounding towards the bed.

Wei Wuxian was resting back against Jiang Cheng’s pillows, eyes dancing with something warm, easy, and familiar. It was enough to stop Jiang Cheng in his tracks, just slightly, the nostalgia from that single expression so astonishingly poignant. It made him feel like he was seven again, following his older brother up a tree, grabbing his hand and allowing himself to be pulled up so that they could sit together, on the same branch, legs swinging, laughing among the leaves.

“Don’t worry,” Wei Wuxian said, smiling, as he tore off another half of the loaf on the tray, “I’ll only come whenever Sect Leader Jiang calls for me.”

Chapter Text

Upon Wei Wuxian’s return to Cloud Recesses, the rain stopped, and the sun drew itself out from behind the clouds. 

Lan Wangji had brought out an umbrella on his walk to the gates, one wide enough that he would be able to hold it to easily cover himself and his husband on their return to the jingshi. He ended up closing it just as Wei Wuxian came into view, two junior Lan disciples flanking him from where they’d escorted him from the border. Wei Wuxian’s robes and hair were soaked, even as one of the Lan disciples chased after him in a panic with an open umbrella of the boy’s own. 

It seemed as if both disciples were so busy pursuing Wei Wuxian in their desperate attempts to keep him dry, that they hadn’t noticed the rain had abated, mostly to a nearly unnoticeable drizzle. 

A spirited "Lan Zhan!” was the only warning Lan Wangji himself received before he reflexively dropped the handle of the umbrella, letting it fall to the ground as he caught his husband in his arms. 

The rain drenching Wei Wuxian’s robes immediately began steeping into the front of Lan Wangji’s own clothes. He didn’t care. He held on tighter—winding the other man in as close as he possibly could until Wei Wuxian was laughing, pouting, batting at Lan Wangji’s arms to loosen up before he suffocated right here with witnesses, Lan-er-gongzi, how could you suffocate your husband with witnesses?

The proclaimed witnesses were already sidling themselves in mortification around the entire scene, offering hurried, red-faced bows to Lan Wangji that he acknowledged with a nod of his head, dismissing them to walk off as quickly as the sect rules allowed. 

Wei Wuxian had been gone three days, which, within the past year, was perhaps the shortest amount of time he had ever been gone from Cloud Recesses. It still felt far longer than that to Lan Wangji, as it had every time, regardless of the length of his absence.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian said, drawing back, and looking at Lan Wangji with light dancing in his eyes, an open-mouthed smile with the power to so effortlessly make Lan Wangji’s heart skip several beats. “You won’t believe how much I missed you.”

Lan Wangji didn’t let him go, only straightening up, arms still tight around his husband, lifting until Wei Wuxian’s feet were hovering above the ground. “As much as I missed Wei Ying,” he intoned. 

Wei Wuxian’s wet hair was falling into his eyes, some of it clinging to his cheeks and neck, and there were drops clinging to his eyelashes like miniscule pearls. He was pink-cheeked, possibly from all the running, and his arms around Lan Wangji’s neck were a sorely missed weight. 

“No, I missed you more this time,” Wei Wuxian claimed loftily, pressing another kiss near the corner of Lan Wangji’s eye. “But I’ll allow myself to stand corrected if er-gege gives me a bath,” he paused, considering, then added, “and food.”

Lan Wangji, somewhat reluctantly, let him down—only because Sizhui had so delicately mentioned last month, with his ears flaming a thorough scarlet, that several of the Sect Elders had nearly gone careening down the stone steps in shock upon seeing Lan Wangji carry Wei Wuxian completely in his arms around the sect. As Lan Wangji was not one to incite unnecessary qi deviations among those respected older members of his clan, he set Wei Wuxian down on his feet, and took him by the hand instead. “What would Wei Ying like to eat?” he asked, and felt himself smile in return at the delight that lit up his husband’s face. 

Regardless of how travel-weary either of them ever claimed to be upon returning to Cloud Recesses, after they’d spent days, sometimes weeks, apart, the first night they were both once again in each other’s arms was nearly always a sleepless one. It was not something Lan Wangji had come to expect or demand, simply a reality that always seemed to come upon them, usually initiated by Wei Wuxian, once he’d eaten and drank his fill, content to lift the hem of his nightclothes and sit astride Lan Wangji’s waist. 

Occasionally, Lan Wangji was the one who sought out Wei Wuxian, more often than not only when they’d been without the other for a week, or more—catching Wei Wuxian by the hips when he attempted to bypass Lan Wangji to slip into bed first, dragging him down into Lan Wangji’s lap, and spreading his soft thighs wide. 

That didn’t mean that there weren’t nights when one, if not both, of them truly were exhausted enough from their respective journeys to genuinely want nothing more than to drift off in the other’s arms. There was a certain type of rest, after all, that one could only achieve in one’s home, in one’s own bed. It would be nothing out of the ordinary for Wei Wuxian to have sleepily kissed Lan Wangji on the mouth, before closing his eyes, head against Lan Wangji’s shoulder—a silent demand to be carried to bed. Wei Wuxian had done precisely that many nights after he returned from Qinghe or Yunmeng or Lanling. 

As soon as Wei Wuxian stepped out of the tub, it became clear that all he wanted to do tonight was sleep. He didn’t wheedle and whine for Lan Wangji to be the one to wash his hair nor did he motion with a playful hand for Lan Wangji to come and lift him from the bath—wet, bare, body and all. Lan Wangji would’ve thought nothing unusual about it, if Wei Wuxian had done as he was normally inclined to do for these evenings—flopping into their bed, face first, hair still damp, bading Lan Wangji to hurry and join him so that he could be held to sleep. 

Instead, Wei Wuxian sat down beside Lan Wangji at the writing desk, where Lan Wangji was attempting to finish up this week’s quota of paperwork—approval forms for a smattering of cases assigned to the junior disciples. Wei Wuxian’s hands were still fiddling with the sash of his nightclothes—Lan Wangji’s nightclothes, tonight, he noticed with a glance. 

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian began, uncharacteristically subdued. Lan Wangji’s ears pricked up, even as he kept his eyes steadily down at the documents. He continued writing. He’d found that those rare times that Wei Wuxian was not so bright, not so filled with sunlight and blue skies, it was better not to immediately center so much attention onto him, all at once. It overwhelmed him, more than anything. 

There was a long, long, pause after that simple, quiet, call of his name. 

Lan Wangji finished his last signature and placed his brush down, still not looking to meet his husband’s eyes. He merely waited, only watching how Wei Wuxian’s fingers continued to worry away at the edges of the sash. 

“Is it all right,” Wei Wuxian said, softly and slowly, each word pronounced so oddly crisp and clear, “if we don’t catch up on our everydays tonight?”

Lan Wangji finally turned his head, only to find that Wei Wuxian was the one keeping his eyes averted, gaze to his fidgeting hands. There had been times, earlier on, when Wei Wuxian would return from Lotus Pier, somber and downcast—still, attempting, as best he could, to smile for Lan Wangji even when the latter knew that Jiang Wanyin had most likely said something, or several things, yet again, to drench Wei Wuxian in guilt and pain. 

This was not that.

With those instances, Lan Wangji would know, right away, from a single glance upon Wei Wuxian’s return that the other man had spent his entire return journey mulling over the past, pondering broken relationships and fatal choices, all over again. 

This was not that. 

Lan Wangji wasn’t certain what it was—only that Wei Wuxian seemed to be in no place to discuss it further. Not tonight. 

“Anything Wei Ying wants is all right,” Lan Wangji said quietly. “Anything Wei Ying does not want is also all right.” The way Wei Wuxian’s shoulders were hunching in on themselves made Mo Xuanyu’s slender frame appear even more diminished. Lan Wangji’s arms were nearly tingling with the urge to cradle him against Lan Wangji’s body, but he kept them at his sides, stayed his hands in his lap. Tonight was far too clearly a night when Lan Wangji needed to wait for Wei Wuxian to come to him. 

Eventually, Wei Wuxian unfurled in stages. He stopped fiddling with the sash, first, smoothing it out and exhaling. Next was the tightness in his shoulders that gradually receded. His teeth visibly dug at his lower lip, a crease between his eyebrows as he gave another heavy sigh, and then he slowly crawled closer towards Lan Wangji. There was almost something fragile about the way Wei Wuxian sat himself in Lan Wangji’s lap, both legs slung over one side of Lan Wangji’s waist. Wei Wuxian was the one to take both of Lan Wangji’s arms and wrap them around himself like he was closing a gate. 

“Can you take me to bed, Lan Zhan?” he whispered, head still bowed so that Lan Wangji could not see his expression. Wei Wuxian’s hands gripped the front of Lan Wangji’s robes, face pressed over his husband’s heartbeat. 

Lan Wangji made a soft sound of assent, lifting the warm weight in his arms up easily with himself as he stood. Wei Wuxian’s breathing evened out with every step Lan Wangji took. His eyelashes were fluttering against the tops of his cheeks by the time they reached the bed, and Lan Wangji sat down on the edge, still simply just holding, waiting for what Wei Wuxian needed next. 

Tonight was not the night for Lan Wangji to ask for what had happened—to demand for reasons and explanations. When Wei Wuxian was ready to offer them, he would give them. 

Lan Wangji balanced Wei Wuxian against one arm while he slid his own legs, and their combined weight, onto the bed. He pulled the blankets up over them and dimmed nearly all of the candles but the one on their nightstand. The loosening of Wei Wuxian’s fingers against Lan Wangji’s robes announced to him that the other man was slowly relaxing, but not yet quite asleep. 

Carefully, Lan Wangji hovered a hand close to Wei Wuxian’s cheek, directly within his line of sight, waiting once more. There was a brief moment when Wei Wuxian simply stared at the hand, before his head nodded, infinitesimally, and Lan Wangji closed the rest of the distance to gently cup Wei Wuxian’s face—stroking back through his hair, and emitting the softest gusts of air he could from his fingertips to complete drying it. 

Wei Wuxian’s body trembled with something that was nearly happy enough to be a chuckle—a soft, content, puff of breath. “I’m being so weird tonight, and all you’re worried about is that I’ll sleep with wet hair again,” he said, closing his eyes again and settling in against Lan Wangji’s body more securely. “You’re too good, Lan Zhan.”

Lan Wangji leaned back against the pillows, continuing to stroke through the warmly dried strands of hair, smoothing them out so that the tangles wouldn’t be so terribly daunting in the morning. The tension began to finally, noticeably, bleed out of Wei Wuxian’s body. Lan Wangji caressed through his hair at a rhythm, letting his nails lightly scratch against his husband’s scalp until he felt Wei Wuxian’s body go lax and soft in his arms. 

When Wei Wuxian’s mouth fell open, little breaths gaining a slight sound to them, hands completely having now let go of Lan Wangji’s robes—that was when Lan Wangji knew he was asleep for certain. He blew out the remaining candle with a wave of his hand, slid himself down further on the pillows, and settled in to join his husband in dreams. 

The next morning, it was as if someone had turned back time and entirely erased the previous night from existence. Lan Wangji fell asleep with his arms filled with the sort of withdrawn, troubled, husband he only ever saw whenever Wei Wuxian had woken from a nightmare, and Lan Wangji awoke to a sleepy, heated, smile gazing down at him—Wei Wuxian moving up against him in small, shallow, thrusts, an iron brand against Lan Wangji’s hip. 

The sun had barely risen, and Lan Wangji was himself still disoriented enough that he stilled Wei Wuxian’s body with his hands gripping the other man’s sides, a narrow-eyed look of confusion that Wei Wuxian met boldly head-on. 

For a moment that nearly stretched too long, nearly shattering the dazed—dream-like—atmosphere, Lan Wangji rapidly searched Wei Wuxian’s eyes. For anything, for everything, for even the slightest bit of uncertainty or discomfort or—or anything that was less than wanting. 

Wei Wuxian reached down low beneath their blankets, wrapping his fingers around the part of Lan Wangji that was already moving into the proceedings even as Lan Wangji frowned and continued to scour Wei Wuxian’s expression. “Er-gege,” Wei Wuxian very nearly purred, his voice silky, but his eyes steady. They answered Lan Wangji’s wordless inquiry. “Husband,” he added, then, hand beginning to move. 

Lan Wangji flipped their positions, pinning Wei Wuxian down to the bed, and waiting one last time, attentively observing any minute shifts in expression. Only when he found none, only when Wei Wuxian brought him back down with legs wrapped around his waist, did Lan Wangji press an open-mouthed kiss over Wei Wuxian’s lips. “Why is Wei Ying awake so early?” he murmured, letting Wei Wuxian continue the little thrusts of his cock, flush up against the hard muscles of Lan Wangji’s stomach.

“I dreamed about er-gege,” Wei Wuxian sighed breathily, legs thoroughly fastening Lan Wangji’s body down to his own. “Then—I woke up before he could make me feel good.”

“Mm,” Lan Wangji pulled Wei Wuxian’s hips away, pressing them down to the bed with his full strength, eliciting a whine that was nearly annoyed as Wei Wuxian tried to buck up again. Lan Wangji pushed Wei Wuxian’s thighs open and slid himself down the bed, until he was completely beneath the sheets. “Allow this husband to continue Wei Ying’s dream, then,” Lan Wangji said, against the inside of Wei Wuxian’s thigh. He gave each of Wei Wuxian’s hip bones a chaste kiss, and then took Wei Wuxian into his mouth in one, smooth, bow of his head. 

With regards to both the demonic and the spiritual, there were no sharper instincts and eyes, senses and intuition, than that of the Yiling Patriarch’s. 

With regards to nearly everything else, Lan Wangji occasionally wondered if his husband moved through life with cotton in his ears and a thick veil over his eyes. Yet, Wei Wuxian constantly proved that regardless of the body he was in, his talent for eavesdropping the convenes of the Sect Elders was unparalleled, so surely there was no cotton in his ears. Just as well, he seemed to have the ability—both in his past life and current—to spot Lan Wangji’s uncle approaching from some dozens of paces away, clearly also ruling out the opaque veil. 

It was only after the first year of marriage, the first year in which Wei Wuxian was constantly at Lan Wangji’s side—within Lan Wangji’s sight—that Lan Wangji came to the understanding that Wei Wuxian was not oblivious when it came to the favorable attentions and affections of others. 

Wei Wuxian was unpracticed. 

Oblivious would imply that Wei Wuxian was not aware of when those around him harbored ill-feelings towards him, as well as solicitous ones. Clearly, this was not the case. Wei Wuxian was acutely apt, on a level that made Lan Wangji tighten with both heartbreak and fury, at sensing when he was unwanted. Wei Wuxian could pick up even the faintest stirrings of discomfort or ill-at-ease that others held around him. A mere shift of a farmhand’s sitting position had Wei Wuxian once immediately smiling and bowing out of the room, stating that they could relay the remaining details of the situation to Lan Wangji, and Wei Wuxian would help deal with it after leaving the farmhand’s cabin. 

In regards to any, and all, feelings of the opposite sort—well—Lan Wangji believed he had four years, and then several months, of evidence to vouch for Wei Wuxian’s utter inability to recognize those. 

As much as Lan Wangji wanted to relay all of his very specific opinions on the previous Sect Leader Jiang’s wife to the current Sect Leader Jiang, it also wouldn’t be terribly fair of him to pin down all of his aggressions onto Jiang Wanyin for the sins of his mother. Jiang Wanyin already had many sins of his own anyway that Lan Wangji had yet to vividly express his distaste for—and, most likely, never would because Wei Wuxian constantly let Lan Wangji know exactly how sad he would be if Jiang Wanyin ended up accidentally falling into a ditch of starving, venomous, vipers. 

So, because Lan Wangji could only move forward, as all humans under the merciless hands of time, he settled for lifting Wei Wuxian’s veil whenever he could. 

Three years after Wei Wuxian had begun regularly teaching lectures of his own rather than only serving as a substitute whenever Lan Wangji or any of the other Lan cultivators had sect duties to attend to, he had amassed a rather sizable swarm of young junior disciples. Three to four years was generally the amount of time it took for the formation of a solid core, enough so that a junior disciple could begin attending classes that required true cultivation. This meant that the current students attending Wei Wuxian’s rather advanced lessons had all been raised as disciples after Wei Wuxian had come to live in Cloud Recesses. 

These were boys who were born after the war, after Wei Wuxian’s death, and stories of the Yiling Patriarch cursing and possessing children who didn’t obey curfew or finish their meals weren’t enough to ward them away from gazing in starry-eyed admiration at this man who looked young enough to be their older brother. It was certainly not enough to stopper their fascination and awe at the way his deft hands painted out talismans and arrays and wards, nifty tricks that used up such little spiritual energy and yet could serve so useful in the turning points of battles. 

Some of them, the more naturally gifted ones, had started training at a young enough age that their fellow disciples truly did feel like older brothers—and Wei Wuxian, far more open and informal and approachable than any Lan Sect teacher that had ever walked the halls, felt like something of a parent. At least, at that age, slightly younger than when Lan Wangji had even sent Sizhui to the dormitories at, Wei Wuxian must have nearly felt like a mother to them. Even if Lan Wangji himself had never been so to Sizhui, he knew that those boys of the inner clan would have had fathers that were fairly customary—it was not the way of their clan, after all, to have fathers that would coddle and play with their children. 

Lan Wangji had, after all, raised Sizhui in a manner quite opposite to which that he himself had been raised in. He’d raised Sizhui in the way that he’d always thought Wei Wuxian would have, had he been given the chance. 

The youngest of the junior disciples then swarmed Wei Wuxian whenever there were no Sect Elders, or strict upper disciples, around. Their heads would reach Wei Wuxian’s shoulders, and they would bow to him in barely restrained politeness, nearly offering their heads up for his hands to pat at them lightly before he confusedly made his way through the crowd with a bright laugh. 

Then, there were those junior disciples in the years just above—the ones budding into their adolescent years. Most of them saw Wei Wuxian as an older brother, striving to be better in their cultivation whenever he airily noted the areas in which they lacked, whenever he amiably pointed out a mistake they made—a hint they missed, a fact they’d forgotten. 

Some of them looked at Wei Wuxian in a way that made Lan Wangji feel as if he was looking into a mirror of decades past. 

Unlike their classmates, who merely took the teasing with pursed lips and furrowed brows of concentration towards heightening their skills, these boys would flush red from their neat hairlines to the skin above their high collared robes. They would stammer their answers whenever Wei Wuxian bent over their shoulders to inspect their writing, the adjustments to their arrays. They would scowl, flustered, when Wei Wuxian smiled easily and brightly at them. They would rigidly tell Senior Wei that that was against sect rules and they could not possibly be expected to follow-through. They would look away, and bow, with hardened, discontent, glares when Lan Wangji approached, an arm slipping around Wei Wuxian’s waist, a whispered greeting in Wei Wuxian’s ear. 

“Ah,” Wei Wuxian breathed, one day, fondly watching a gaggle of the younger boys following obediently after Jingyi through the courtyard. “Why are Lan juniors so cute? You all are like ducklings! I thought it was just you, Lan Zhan.”

Lan Wangji placed his tea back down onto the table, turning his face towards the window to follow his husband’s gaze. “It is just me,” he said, without inflection. 

Wei Wuxian glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, amused. “No, there are definitely some little Lan boys who’re almost as adorable as you were.”

Lan Wangji inclined his head, raised his eyebrows. “Were?” he echoed.

Wei Wuxian laughed quietly, controlling the volume of his mirth here, where they were seated in one of the classrooms, taking afternoon tea. “You focus on that, but not on how I said none of them are quite as adorable as you?” He shifted in his seat, seeming to sit lower at the table slightly, and then Lan Wangji felt what was surely a leg nudging at his neatly folded knees. “I can’t call you adorable anymore, Hanguang-jun. Surely, you’re too handsome now.”

“So, Wei Ying does not adore me as he once did,” Lan Wangji took another sip of his tea. “I understand.”

Wei Wuxian turned away completely from the window then, balancing his chin atop his propped up palm, gaze thoroughly centered on Lan Wangji. His smile was a trap awaiting its prey. “How could I adore er-gege the way I used to if he isn’t as eager as he was back then?” His foot had somehow come out of his boot, landing square in the center of Lan Wangji’s lap. 

Lan Wangji caught it only in time before it was met with its intended target, a firm hand around Wei Wuxian’s ankle. “There is a class here in an hour, Wei Ying,” he said, equal parts wry and amused. 

Wei Wuxian leaned away from the table, balancing himself down with one elbow on the floor, his other arm unlacing his sash, the laces of his trousers, the ties of his inner robes. Lan Wangji’s grip on his husband’s ankle went slack at the same time that his mouth went as dry as ash—as if he’d never even tasted any of the tea in front of him. “Er-gege,” Wei Wuxian said, in a pure feint of disappointment, “when you were fifteen, how many times could you take me in an hour?”

Lan Wangji yanked the windows shut with such force, if he’d still had the mind to glance at them afterwards, he would’ve seen the hinges shattered.  

Later, as they both made their way back to the jingshi to clean up the perspiration and stickiness beneath their robes that they couldn’t in their haste to evacuate the classroom before any junior disciples were further traumatized, Lan Wangji said, readily, “They adore you, too.”

Wei Wuxian slowed in his steps, looking up at him intently. There was no confusion in his eyes as to whom Lan Wangji referred to. The smile that tugged at the corners of his lips was small, slightly uncertain. “They’re like you,” he said. “They don’t have a single hateful bone in their body.”

“No,” Lan Wangji said, the mild exasperation tinged with unbearable fondness. “You are not like the other teachers to them.” He paused. “Lan Xiang told off a Sect Elder yesterday in the eastern courtyard for calling you a depraved miscreant.” 

Wei Wuxian stopped walking entirely, at that, staring up at Lan Wangji in a mixture of horror and amusement that he was clearly trying to tamp down. There was also, suffused into both emotions, something vulnerable and overwhelmed. “That was why he was doing handstands until curfew yesterday?” he whispered, eyes still continuing to widen. Lan Xiang, after all, was one of the junior disciples under Sizhui’s section, and only the most obedient—the juniors having the least amount of punishments under their belts—were assigned to Sizhui’s section. 

“I had just finished a meeting there,” Lan Wangji gently rested his hand against the base of Wei Wuxian’s back, lightly pushing him to continue walking. “I assigned the punishment—otherwise, he still might be doing handstands today.”

Wei Wuxian allowed himself to be led to the jingshi entirely in a daze, shaking his head every now and again. “I should thank him,” he said, so mutedly under his breath that Lan Wangji was nearly certain he was speaking to himself more than to Lan Wangji. 

“He would not accept Wei Ying’s gratitude, most likely,” Lan Wangji said, as the gates of their home came into view. At the frown on Wei Wuxian’s face, Lan Wangji clarified, “He spoke for you because he believed that was what you are owed—in the same way that he would have done so for any of those respected in the sect.”

Wei Wuxian shook his head again, nonplussed, as he smiled shakily. “Lan Zhan—ah, Lan Zhan—the Yiling Patriarch, bested by little Lan ducklings and their thick faces.”

Lan Wangji lifted Wei Wuxian’s hand to his lips, placing precise kisses over each knuckle. “If Wei Ying practices with me, his face will become just as thick,” Lan Wangji said, as Wei Wuxian buried his flushed face against Lan Wangji’s chest, muttering about Lan boys and the death of him really. 

After Su Minshan’s death, Lan Wangji, and most all others, thought that the natural progression of events would predictably be to dissolute the Su Sect and decree that the existing disciples either make their individual attempts to join the Lan Sect, with all the same requirements that would have been demanded from older, outer cultivators—or—propose that they join any of the other current, approved, sects of their choice. 

The debate whether to dissolve or not dissolve the sect had been ongoing during the same year that Lan Wangji had been lobbying to disestablish the Chief Cultivator position. According to all the meetings that had been held on the matter, the vote to disband would have gone through and succeeded perhaps had they not waited long enough that Wei Wuxian had finally returned to Cloud Recesses, to Lan Wangji’s arms, and thus—inevitably—returned to the forefront of the cultivational world. 

Huan Jun was the Head Disciple of Su Minshan’s sect and, after the latter’s death, had begun acting as proxy Sect Leader. He was only some years younger than Lan Wangji, and of a height that was just below Lan Wangji’s own. Unlike Su Minshan, he possessed a countenance that had led the Sect Leaders of slightly lower intellect (Yao, Ouyang) to believe that he was nothing like his predecessor, had no knowledged of what his predecessor had been involved in, and wanted nothing more than his budding sect to succeed, in peace, working alongside the Lan Sect themselves. 

His eyes were round and constantly guileless, his face youthful and innocent, even as the expressions that he wore had Lan Wangji unable to fully let go of his reservations about the man. 

Huan Jun was undeniably sharp—possibly sharper than Su Minshan, although Lan Wangji didn’t believe that was all too difficult of an accomplishment to maintain. After all, Sect Leaders Yao and Ouyang had already been convinced to allow the Su Sect to continue. Nie Huaisang refused, as he usually did, to place in a deciding vote. The majority had fallen to Lan Wangji, acting in his brother’s place, Jiang Wanyin, and Jin Rulan, who had all firmly voted in the negative. 

On the day that the final vote was to take place, Wei Wuxian had been present, with the conference having been held in Cloud Recesses due to the Lan Sect’s proximity and unavoidable entanglement with the Su Sect. Only Jiang Wanyin and Jin Rulan had been present at the time of Huan Jun’s arrival, with Wei Wuxian standing in between them, and when Lan Wangji had finally arrived into the main hall, Huan Jun had already been shyly smiling at Wei Wuxian, chatting in his soft, dulcet tones, the perfect picture of a young man who only wanted to do right by his small, insignificant, harmless, sect. 

Lan Wangji could not be swayed, even if Jiang Wanyin and Jin Rulan had been. Jiang Wanyin had scowled through the entirety of Wei Wuxian’s mild, cheerful reasoning, yet, listening intently all the while; Jin Rulan had frowned, conflicted, but was expectedly powerless to anything his newfound, admired uncle pitched to him. 

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian, with his bleeding heart, had said placatingly. “It’s all of you against him. If he takes one step out of line, don’t you think he knows that the whole world will be at their doorstep? They have juniors, too, did you know? At least let them finish training in the sect they thought they joined.”

Lan Wangji had gazed, then, down into the eyes of his soon-to-be husband, their ceremony awaiting them in mere weeks, the small hands that had now come to be as familiar as the long fingers of decades past tenderly holding onto his own. He’d tipped Wei Wuxian’s chin higher up, curling a finger against Wei Wuxian’s jaw and said, without hesitation, “No.” 

Jiang Wanyin and Jin Rulan, who had been watching these proceedings from across the courtyard during the assembly’s afternoon recess, each looked rather as if they expected for some sort of vicious argument to commence. The former, especially, hypocritically, had glowered rather warily in Lan Wangji’s direction. 

Wei Wuxian had merely sighed, a light smile crooking his lips. “Ah, well, I tried. It’ll still be four to one, Lan Zhan.” He patted Lan Wangji’s cheek. “Don’t worry—you’ll never have to see him. I’ll take care of all the help they’ll need. He’s rather nice, though, you know. Not as sniveling as Su She.”

Lan Wangji had fixed Wei Wuxian with a wry look, prompting a laugh out of the other man. 

“Come on, then, er-gongzi,” Wei Wuxian had smiled, warm and inviting, as Jiang Wanyin, out of the corner of Lan Wangji’s eye, turned a satisfying shade of puce. Jin Rulan had already hurriedly left the scene. “If we hurry, there’ll be time for dessert after our lunch.”

Wei Wuxian did not require Lan Wangji’s permission for anything. Contrary to the popular belief that a vast majority of the junior disciples held, when Wei Wuxian consulted Lan Wangji about any of the actions he was about to take, he was not seeking permission. Rather, it usually served the dual purpose of Wei Wuxian informing Lan Wangji of his subsequent decisions as well as Lan Wangji informing Wei Wuxian on his personal opinion of Wei Wuxian’s upcoming choices. 

The circumstances that surrounded their daily life as of late, after all, were not so dire as they had once been. If there was nothing truly endangering Wei Wuxian—and, short of having an extracted core and being steadily consumed by demonic energy with the entire cultivational world baying for his blood, there was not much that could endanger the Yiling Patriarch—then Lan Wangji never saw reason to truly, adamantly, prevent Wei Wuxian from doing as he saw fit.

However, in that same regard, this meant, as well, that Wei Wuxian could not prevent Lan Wangji from also doing as he saw fit. 

If Wei Wuxian said, “Lan Zhan, I’m going to Moling to help Huan Jun,” then he would do exactly that, regardless of how unimpressed and disapproving Lan Wangji’s directed expression was.

Consequently, if Lan Wangji said, in response, “Wen Ning and Sizhui will accompany you,” then even if Wei Wuxian huffed and puffed until he was out of breath about how unnecessary that was, he still would be unable to prevent a veritable Ghost General and the Lan Sect Head Disciple from chasing after him down the river. 

“He actually listens to you,” Jiang Wanyin had the audacity to grind out through his teeth, some weeks shortly after Huan Jun had been made officially the Sect Leader of the Su Sect, “so maybe you should try harder to stop him.”

Lan Wangji calmly drank his tea, his eyes still easily bound to Wei Wuxian even across the crowded, newly and impressively renovated Su main hall. Wei Wuxian was surrounded, expectedly, by several young Su junior disciples, all immediately taking to him with Huan Jun delicately trying to prevent them from toppling Wei Wuxian in their vigor. “Perhaps Sect Leader Jiang should have considered that when he voted in Moling Su’s favor,” Lan Wangji stated, as Jin Rulan suddenly threw himself into the seat between them, before his maternal uncle could forget propriety again and start screaming obscenities at Lan Wangji.

Four days after Wei Wuxian returned from Yunmeng, he was due in Moling to discuss with Huan Jun about the possibility of some of their best junior disciples to nighthunt alongside the juniors of the major sects. The Su Sect had also expressed their readiness at hosting the nighthunt, even if Lan Wangji was of the strong opinion that that was utterly pointless considering their sect occupied the literal same region as that of the Lan Sect, and thus, there was truly no difference between the regional beasts. 

Nonetheless, Wei Wuxian’s bleeding heart had convinced Jiang Wanyin and Jin Rulan to agree to venture out to Moling and meet with Huan Jun as well, a day or so after Wei Wuxian himself went. Nie Huaisang was, in no way, going to make that journey simply for this, meaning that Wei Wuxian had used the tenderhooks he’d sunk into the Nie Sect’s Captain of the guard, and Lan Wangji, at Wei Wuxian’s strange behest, assigned the task of hosting Yi Renshu to Jingyi.

“Did something happen in Qinghe?” Lan Wangji asked, watching the way Wei Wuxian looked as if he was trying to stifle laughter after making his request. The trip to Moling was short and easy, meaning Wei Wuxian would leave himself this afternoon, with the others joining him come evening. 

“They got along well, that’s all,” Wei Wuxian shrugged, his eyes dancing as he belted Chenqing. Lan Wangji was seated at the tea table, taking a late lunch that one of the juniors had delivered. He watched, eyes narrowing incrementally, as Wei Wuxian turned his back in a rather shoddy attempt at inconspicuously also belting Suibian. 

Within the past year, the leaps and bounds that Wei Wuxian had progressed into finally being able to use his sword again were nothing short of remarkable. Spiritual swords would adjust themselves physically to befit their master once attuned to the master’s energy, meaning that until Mo Xuanyu’s core had been properly imbued with enough of Wei Wuxian’s soul, the sword had simply remained at the length and weight that best suited Wei Wuxian’s original body—too long, and too heavy, for Wei Wuxian to now wield with the ease that was needed during battle. 

Now, even though the stretch of time that Wei Wuxian could maintain his sword drawn and usable was still not long enough for it to pose an advantage rather than a risk, Suibian had finally shortened and lightened itself to suit his master’s new hand and strength. For the most part, the option, if nothing else, that Wei Wuxian had to utilize a spiritual sword proved itself useful for whenever there were situations in which no curses were involved, and harnessing resentful energy would take more time than there was available. For attacks where Wei Wuxian could not give himself enough distance, and there were no cultivators near him to defend while he gained it, the returned ability to wield his old weapon was nothing short of life-saving. 

This meant that there were very particular situations that Wei Wuxian brought his sword for, and none of those situations were supposed to arise while Wei Wuxian was going for a simple meeting with a cultivator that he supposedly himself trusted, even if Lan Wangji did not.

“Wei Ying is going to hunt with Sect Leader Huan?” Lan Wangji asked, carefully. 

Wei Wuxian’s hand grasped and let go of the hilt of his sword, several times, unconsciously, before he finally met Lan Wangji’s eyes. The look that hadn’t been there since the night he’d returned from Lotus Pier was suddenly there again, stark and obvious, before it was pushed back out of sight so quickly that Lan Wangji nearly missed it. It had been four days, and if Lan Wangji knew whatever had unsettled Wei Wuxian was a matter that still remained, he would’ve pursued the matter. 

“It’s not on the books, yet, but,” Wei Wuxian shrugged again, smiling in a valiant attempt at deceiving Lan Wangji. They both knew it was not a successful one. “Maybe—who knows. Better to have it with me, just in case I bump into something on the way there.”

Between Cloud Recesses and Moling there was a clear path for horses, for carriages and travelling merchants with their laden stalls. Wei Wuxian himself would be riding on horseback, as he always did, for the short journey. It was an area that was usually kept well-clear of both beasts and thieves, due to how many civilians used it and depended on it for their livelihoods. 

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji could not help but begin, the worry finally lacing itself too intensely through his tight chest. 

“I’ll see you there, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian said, far, far too quickly, turning away and nearly running out the door without another glance back. 

Lan Wangji only waited for as long as he knew it would take for Wei Wuxian to reach the horse awaiting for him at the gates, mounting it, and riding off down the mountain. 

He laced Bichen onto his belt, and strode off to the outer areas of Cloud Recesses, the receiving courtyards near the entrance to welcome guests. Yi Renshu had already arrived, Jingyi in a half-bow to him, the boy’s face an odd color of scarlet. 

“Captain,” Lan Wangji greeted.

Yi Renshu nodded. “Second Young Master,” he said, eyes still watching Jingyi, even as the disciple stepped back to stand beside Lan Wangji. Never before, Lan Wangji was certain, had he seen the boy this quiet. “Your disciple has just offered to take a meal with me before we embark.”

“When did I—” Jingyi began, immediately indignant. 

Lan Wangji glanced at him. 

Jingyi fell silent, clearly fuming, and Lan Wangji watched him for a short moment, glancing back up then at Yi Renshu’s face before comprehension dawned on him. 

He resolved to amend Wei Wuxian’s plans for them at a later date.

“Captain,” Lan Wangji said, “once Sect Leader Jiang and Sect Leader Jin arrive, we will leave for Moling immediately.”

Both Yi Renshu and Jingyi’s gazes changed. “Why?” Yi Renshu asked, his voice entirely captain, now. 

“To err on the side of caution,” Lan Wangji inclined his head. “He brought his sword with him, when he left.”

“Senior Wei always brings his sword with him, these days, Hanguang-jun,” Jingyi said, assuredly, even as Yi Renshu’s frown deepened. “He brought it with him to Qinghe, even when I was with him.”

“Because that was a visit for business,” Yi Renshu spoke Lan Wangji’s logic aloud. 

Lan Wangji looked to the skies above Cloud Recesses, wondering now if he and Yi Renshu should simply depart first, and Jiang Wanyin and Jin Rulan could be directed by Jingyi to head on straight for Moling once they arrived. There were risks that he was fully aware of in enacting something like this when it came to Wei Wuxian. These were the sorts of actions that had been so easily misinterpreted when they were adolescents, when Lan Wangji had not made his feelings understood and when there had been too much criticism sent Wei Wuxian’s way for him to see anything else clearly. 

Nothing of this sort had arisen in the three years they’d been married, after all. He could be certain that it would not be received as badly as it had nearly two decades ago, but he couldn’t be certain that it would necessarily be received positively. 

Then, he recalled, once more, the expression that Wei Wuxian had worn just before he left. 

Perhaps, his husband truly was in no danger. Perhaps, he was simply becoming more and more accustomed to carrying his sword with him, at all times, as he once used to. 

Yet, if nothing more, Lan Wangji knew that he could not and would not leave his husband alone with something that clearly weighed so heavy on his heart that he thought he couldn’t speak of it to Lan Wangji. 

Not again. 

Jin Rulan and Jiang Wanyin arrived later than Lan Wangji would have liked, even if they both did arrive on time, flying in from opposing directions against the backdrop of the setting sun, to land neatly at the gates of Cloud Recesses. Both of them look expectedly confused at Yi Renshu and Lan Wangji clearly ready to leave already, the former thrumming with impatience as he took both of them in. 

“I thought we were having dinner first,” Jin Rulan said, somehow never having lost his petulance even after he’d come of age. “I’m starving.”

“They have food in Moling,” Yi Renshu said, not even bothering to hide the roll of his eyes. “Sect Leader Jin should get back on his sword. We are leaving now.”

Jiang Wanyin was looking at Lan Wangji strangely, and Lan Wangji met his eyes steadily. There was a long, long, moment of silence during which neither of them blinked nor looked away, and then Jiang Wanyin was once again hovering in the air, feet firmly planted on Sandu. “Get on,” he directed at his nephew, tone brooking no argument.

Jin Rulan shot his uncle an irritable look, but obeyed, Suihua bringing itself into the air and flying off after its master’s annoyed sigh. Yi Renshu followed soon after him on the wide steel of his blade. 

Lan Wangji flew closely beside Jiang Wanyin, both of them bringing up the rear in the steadily darkening sky. 

“He hasn’t spoken to me,” Lan Wangji said, after some minutes of silence, only the sound of the wind rushing past them and Yi Renshu and Jin Rulan’s casual banter up ahead, “of whatever happened at Lotus Pier.”

Jiang Wanyin snorted. “Nothing gets past the eminent Hanguang-jun.”

“I do not seek to make a habit of ignoring Wei Ying when he is unsettled,” Lan Wangji remarked breezily, watching Jiang Wanyin dip in the air slightly, a stumble of control. 

“Hanguang-jun should perhaps watch his manners, however, when he himself wasn’t even there to—” flowed out of Jiang Wanyin’s mouth in one, single, angry rush before he cut himself off abruptly, lips clamped shut as if that could erase the words that already escaped. His expression immediately closed itself off, as Lan Wangji rounded on him. His own eyes suddenly felt as if he was looking into direct sunlight, the heat behind them scorching. 

He didn’t know what his own expression was, only that something foreboding and cold began storming inside of him. He didn’t even know what had happened. He wasn’t always proud of the fact that, after all this time, Wei Wuxian caused him to feel emotions that were beyond reason, beyond sense and control. 

He wasn’t about to demand answers from Jiang Wanyin. He didn’t care for what Jiang Wanyin thought nor did he care to ever know the course of events from the man when Wei Wuxian was the one that the situation concerned. Lan Wangji had set his sword to increase its speed before he realized, only to find himself reeling back to float, high in the air, beside Yi Renshu at the onslaught of dark, terrible, energy that assaulted all four of them. 

They were above Moling now—they were above the sect grounds. 

For a moment, there was only silence among them—none of them moving, only the bobbing of each of them in the air. 

Then, Jin Rulan spoke, hoarsely, pointing down to the shadows near what was recognizably the Sect Leader’s abode—the tall, pointed, rooftop giving it away, “What is that?”

Through the darkness, in the courtyard behind the Sect Leader’s home, there were expansive craters in the dirt—the neat stones and pathways and shrubbery torn and tossed aside, as if—

As if something had dug itself up from beneath the earth. 

Lan Wangji shot down for the ground like a comet through the sky, unhearing of Yi Renshu’s shouts for him to wait. 

There was a gaping hole clean through the back wall of the house. 

That, without a doubt, was possibly the cleanest scene of damage that met their eyes once they stepped through it into the reception room proper. 

Everything else was a nightmare. 

Blood was spattered along the walls, along the floor, the body of a man whom Lan Wangji did not recognize was nailed with Suibian through his stomach to the floor, some distance away from an upturned tea table. He was missing both of his arms, and only with some forced deduction did Lan Wangji realize they were the nearly indiscernible pieces of flesh that the vengeful, long-haired, female, corpse in the corner had been gnawing on before it had been unanimated. 

Backed up into another corner was Huan Jun himself, another corpse—a male one, this time—with both of its grisly, decomposed hands attempting to choke the life out of the man up against the wall. Huan Jun’s legs both were lying in gruesome angles, clearly broken, and his eyes immediately filled with relief upon catching sight of the four cultivators who had just arrived. “P-please,” he choked out, barely audible, gesturing wildly with his gaze to the remaining corner of the room. His arms trembled with the force it took to keep the corpse at bay from entirely killing him.

In the final corner of the room, the furthest from the broken back wall, curled Wei Wuxian, knees up to his chest, hands bound behind his back. Chenqing was discarded somewhere among the torn flesh and blood in the middle of the room. The only sound they had all entered to, save for the begging gasps of Huan Jun and the corpse’s vicious, haunting, groans, was the clear whistle of Wei Wuxian’s mouth. 

Wei Wuxian’s robes were in tatters—his inner robe was hanging onto his shoulders by a thread, barely covering anything below his waist. His trousers had been cut open, by a knife or a sword, from the way the slit was so cleanly down from his hip to his knee. His hair was loose, blood on his face, on the naked skin of his chest, near his hip. There were already bruises blooming dark on his upper arms from where someone had gripped him, and his eyes were a terrible, terrible, demonic red. 

He was shaking violently from head to toe as if he stood cloakless in the middle of a blizzard. 

Even if Huan Jun had seen them, Wei Wuxian still did not. 

His expression was almost possessed, eyes never leaving the corpse and Huan Jun, the melancholy, whistled, melody continuing without a hitch. 

There was a single, horrible, prolonged pause during which none of them moved, and then Yi Renshu made the dire mistake of immediately beelining towards Wei Wuxian, right into the Yiling Patriarch’s line of sight. 

The corpse launched for the captain so quickly that both Jiang Wanyin and Lan Wangji nearly didn’t have time to draw their swords. 

Yi Renshu’s blade sliced off the corpse’s head milliseconds before it was able to land on him, the head and body falling with a sickening sound to the floor, right in front of Wei Wuxian’s bare feet. Lan Wangji looked to gauge the captain’s expression, uncertain of what exactly he expected to find—perhaps something akin to the frozen horror on Jin Rulan’s face, as the boy somehow remained unable to move from the back wall’s hole. Perhaps, something like fury and wariness on Jiang Wanyin’s. 

The captain’s eyes, however, were utterly unafraid, almost nonchalantly inspecting the black blood on his blade before sheathing the weapon on his back once more. There was almost something like efficient briskness, the full aura of a warrior, on his face as he took another look—wretched and pained—at Wei Wuxian, and then met Lan Wangji’s gaze. It was the sort of look that Lan Wangji had only seen before in the eyes of his own brother, of Sizhui, of Jingyi, of Jin Rulan, and, once upon a time, yet, perhaps once more, of Jiang Wanyin. 

“He went—he went berserk,” Huan Jun babbled, hands massaging the bruised, wrecked, skin of his throat. “Just, out of nowhere, he—”

“Shilin-ge?” Jin Rulan’s shrill, disbelieving, voice pierced through the air, as he stood over the man that Suibian had killed. His expression was almost in hysterics, eyes taking up nearly half his face as he stared down at the dead man. His head whipped to Jiang Wanyin who also immediately crossed the room to stare down at the body. 

Yi Renshu had his blade kissing Huan Jun’s throat in the next moment. “Sect Leader Huan can just stay right here,” the captain said smoothly, as Huan Jun dropped back down to his knees. 

Slowly, so slowly, Lan Wangji lowered himself to the floor, uncaring of the blood that immediately began staining his robes. He knelt on one knee, paces away from where Wei Wuxian was still huddled, eyes continuing to glow a bloody red, expression something between agonized and vehement. His gaze did not recognize Lan Wangji. 

Lan Wangji breathed in and out deeply, silencing his screaming, crying, heart. Not now. 

“Wei Ying,” he whispered, just loud enough for the man in front of him to hear. 

Those burning, scarlet, eyes snapped onto Lan Wangji’s face. 

“Wei Ying,” he repeated, an increment louder, yet still too soft for anyone else in the room to hear.

The red of Wei Wuxian’s eyes flickered, and then suddenly, the unnatural color began receding from the edges of his irises. The shift was gradual, flickering again and again until only pale, clear, brown was visible. For one more, long, moment, Wei Wuxian stared at Lan Wangji, almost as if he was holding a breath. Then, all at once, Wei Wuxian fell forward, unbalanced, and Lan Wangji caught him. 

He was still shaking, but his eyes were alert and sharp now—he was clearly, almost painfully, himself once more. Lan Wangji hurriedly snapped the ropes around his wrists and Wei Wuxian’s arms immediately came forward to wrap around himself tightly, as if trying physically to hold himself together. Lan Wangji pulled his own outer robe off, wrapping it around Wei Wuxian’s body, securing it over the small, trembling, shoulders. 

Wei Wuxian’s eyes roved above and around Lan Wangji’s head, the attempt at a smile so heartbreaking that Lan Wangji’s eyes burned just to see it. “Wow, it’s a full house, tonight, huh?” he rasped, as if he himself had been choked earlier, and only now that they were in direct moonlight, did Lan Wangji see the faint discoloration on Wei Wuxian’s neck. 

A crackle through the air alerted Lan Wangji to turn back. Zidian was not yet unfurled, but it was acting in the way that it did when its master’s emotions were boiling up, threatening to overspill without control. 

“Stand down, Sect Leader Jiang,” Yi Renshu ordered, his tone a frightening, militaristic calm that Lan Wangji could not empathize with in this moment. 

“You’re telling my uncle to stay still when—when Wei Wuxian was just—” Jin Rulan shouted, incredulously. 

“When I was just what?” Wei Wuxian cut in, exhausted. In Lan Wangji’s arms, he looked too small—too drained and drawn and weak. He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead forward against Lan Wangji’s shoulder. “Nothing happened,” he said, loud enough that his voice carried through the room. It sounded like it was hurting him just to speak even at that volume. 

“See?” Huan Jun stuttered at Yi Renshu, face turned up towards the captain beseechingly. “It was—it was Wang Shilin—he—”

Huan Jun broke off into a high-pitched shriek of pure torment. Yi Renshu stumbled back, eyes wide, blade falling away from the man’s throat, as all of them could only watch as something black, and veiny, wormed its way up from beneath the Sect Leader’s robes, covering his skin in what appeared to be thick ink. The blackness inserted itself like liquid into his eyeballs, his nostrils, his mouth, and then the screams subsided, as Huan Jun’s entire body vanished into a dark, writhing, lump. 

Lan Wangji felt a tentative touch on his shoulder, pushing him back slightly. Wei Wuxian’s expression was mild as he held up, between his middle and index finger, a glowing talisman. Wei Wuxian aimed it directly for the undulating lump, and with another piercing screech, the black slime turned into innocent ash. 

Wei Wuxian sighed, and rested back in Lan Wangji’s arms, closing his eyes tiredly. “There was a small village here,” he told, as the atmosphere remained heavy with shock—Jin Rulan looked as if he might truly vomit on his own feet. “Before they built the sect. Everyone had died from a curse plague. Some of the corpses still retained it—it can be transferred fairly easily and eradicated after its eaten its fill.”

Yi Renshu finally looked as disturbed as Jin Rulan and Jiang Wanyin appeared. Beneath the layer of distress, however, all three of them looked absolutely enraged, and mixed with that, clear dissatisfaction that none of them had been given the chance to hurt either of these two men themselves. 

Lan Wangji directed his eyes back down to his husband, at the way the full-body tremors still had not abated—at the way Wei Wuxian was determinedly keeping his eyes closed, even as tension lined his face deeply enough that Lan Wangji knew the man could not possibly lose consciousness even if he wanted to in this moment. 

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian whispered, as Jiang Wanyin began taking slow steps to take Suibian out of the corpse, and Jin Rulan picked up Chenqing, “take me home?”

“Of course, Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said, quietly, as his husband turned his face against Lan Wangji’s neck and breathed out a heavy sigh, as if the weight of the world had been finally lifted from his shoulders. 

Yi Renshu volunteered to stay behind in Moling to deal with the fall-out that would inevitably happen upon the rest of the sect awaking in the morning, if many hadn’t already at the sounds of the disturbance. Lan Wangji had agreed to send several Lan disciples over as soon as he returned, for reinforcements, should Yi Renshu require them if anything more were to happen. 

Jiang Wanyin and Jin Rulan both appeared reluctant to simply let Wei Wuxian from their sight tonight, just like that, but they both had sects to return to, and Wei Wuxian was the one who tonelessly reminded them of that fact. He seemed unwilling meet either of their gazes, something that clearly unsettled both uncle and nephew, but they had no choice but to return, with the way that Wei Wuxian did not even seem to be in a mood to speak with them. 

Wei Wuxian did not speak much at all either to Lan Wangji, as the latter flew them through the skies as quickly as he could on Bichen without having the force of the wind become too unbearable for the man in his arms. Lan Wangji almost wished Wei Wuxian would fall asleep, but Lan Wangji could feel precisely how rigid, how still utterly guarded, his husband was. 

With the passage token, Lan Wangji was able to bypass the entire barrier from earth to sky, and he made the executive decision to fly them straight into the jingshi’s courtyard. Yi Renshu would be fine, alone, for some hours still, and Lan Wangji would alert the Lan disciples necessary once Wei Wuxian was at least somewhat settled in for the night. 

“Before you ask,” Wei Wuxian said, in that same, tired voice, as Lan Wangji set him down on the bench behind the privacy screen, tub filling itself quickly with the water and heating talismans. “They really didn’t do anything to me. Not yet.” His fingers twitched around where they held the edges of Lan Wangji’s robes closed around himself, and Lan Wangji heard the unspoken words.

But they so very, nearly, did. 

Lan Wangji looked into Wei Wuxian’s eyes for a moment, and then nodded. It wasn’t the time to dwell. There would be time, so much time, for that, later, when the pain and fear weren’t fresh. “Would Wei Ying like me to be here, while he bathes, or would he like me to leave?” Lan Wangji asked, not touching even so much as Wei Wuxian’s hands. 

The hesitation in Wei Wuxian’s eyes nearly wrenched out an audible sound from Lan Wangji, the look so devastating that his chest felt as if it was being pricked by knives. Wei Wuxian’s hands clenched at the cloth of Lan Wangji’s outer robe until his knuckles whitened. 

“Anything Wei Ying wants is all right,” Lan Wangji said, softly reciting the words he’d shared just days ago, on a night that was a shadow of this one, but—now that it struck him—too, too, similar. “Anything Wei Ying does not want is also all right.”

Wei Wuxian lowered his head, eyes cast to the floor. “Could you leave?” he whispered in a voice so quiet that Lan Wangji thought, perhaps, a non-cultivator would have been unable to hear it. 

Lan Wangji easily nodded, standing. “I will step out,” he said softly. “Sizhui must be alerted to send disciples to Moling, in any case.”

Wei Wuxian jerked his head slightly, to acknowledge that he’d heard. Other than that, he made no moves to let the robe fall away until Lan Wangji was completely outside of the vicinity and of the privacy screen. 

Lan Wangji sealed the jingshi’s doors with a talisman that would only prevent entry, then set off to find his Head Disciple.

When he returned, there had been enough time that Wei Wuxian should’ve finished bathing and dressing as well. Nevertheless, Lan Wangji still knocked at the doors of the jingshi after extracting the talisman. “Wei Ying,” he said, just loud enough for it to carry through the closed screen. 

“Come in, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian’s steady voice called in response. 

Lan Wangji entered, and found Wei Wuxian already seated on their bed, clean and dressed to sleep. His face was still paler than usual, but he was no longer shaking. His eyes flitted down to the clear, glass, bottle in Lan Wangji’s hands, colored a dark green from its contents. Lan Wangji had gone to the infirmary, after speaking to Sizhui, and he’d made his way directly to the Head Healer, explaining the situation with the minimal amount of information needed to procure what he now placed onto the nightstand. 

Lan Wangji did not sit on the bed, going down instead once again onto one knee and looking up at Wei Wuxian from a degree of distance. “What is that?” Wei Ying asked softly, gesturing to the bottle. 

“A sleeping aid,” Lan Wangji replied. “It ensures dreamless sleep. It is only there if Wei Ying wants it. If Wei Ying wants it,” Lan Wangji raised his voice slightly, slowing his words so that each would come out in the right way—so that he did not choose the wrong ones, this time, “I would ask that Wei Ying allow me to play the Song of Clarity for him first. Wei Ying has resentful energy remaining in him, and the aid will not take well unless it has been cleansed.”

Wei Wuxian gazed down at him, dark shadows somehow already clinging to the rims of his eyes. He blinked, several times, in silence, and then, his eyes began to shine far too wetly, his breath growing unsteady. Lan Wangji was alarmed, the words he spoke immediately filtering backwards through his mind to search for any that would’ve offended—any that would’ve set off the bells in Wei Wuxian’s head from years past. 

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said, instantly, because the very last thing he wanted in this moment was for Wei Wuxian not to understand that Lan Wangji would do anything, everything, that Wei Wuxian wanted and nothing that he didn’t. “I am not implying that you are not in control. If you do not want the Song of Clarity, I will find another way—”

“You’re so good, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying whispered, breathlessly, tears in his eyes and a smile on his face even as his voice breaks on his name. 

Lan Wangji helplessly watched Wei Wuxian swipe, his motions jagged and harsh, at his own tears with his sleeves. His hands ached to be the ones that caught the drops of salt water falling from his husband’s eyes, but Wei Wuxian had yet to ask Lan Wangji to touch him tonight. He would not presume to be allowed to do so until he was requested. 

He couldn’t help but think, silently, at Wei Wuxian’s words, I was not so good as to be there to stop them. 

“Yes,” Wei Wuxian answered firmly, after his eyes were only damp, but his cheeks were dry. “Play for me, Lan Zhan. I’ll—then I’ll drink.”

Lan Wangji tilted his head downwards once in concurrence, and then stood to sit by the table holding his guqin. 

The purpose of the Song of Clarity was strictly for the calming and cleansing of a cultivator’s meridians, of the stabilization of their spiritual energy. The side-effects, however, were nearly just as beneficial for those who had undergone stress and trauma alongside whatever had destabilized and impurified their qi. Lan Wangji attentively observed as the tension left the lines of Wei Wuxian’s body in stages, bit by bit as Lan Wangji played on, fingers strumming over the strings. 

By the time Lan Wangji finished one round of the melody, standing and bringing with him on his way a cup from the shelves of the tea room, Wei Wuxian looked nearly relaxed enough to sleep unaided. He even seemed to manage a small yawn, muffled against the back of his hand, as Lan Wangji knelt again, pouring out a dose of the draught. 

Before pressing the cup into Wei Wuxian’s waiting hands, there was one last thing for Lan Wangji to ask. He motioned for Wei Wuxian to slip himself under the blankets, and rest back against the pillows. “Would Wei Ying like me to sleep elsewhere for tonight?” Lan Wangji murmured. “If he wishes, I will ward the doors and windows, as well, before I leave.”

Wei Wuxian’s eyes shone with gratitude that was so intense, yet so fragile, that Lan Wangji’s breath caught in his throat. His hand came then to rest on Lan Wangji’s cheek, thumb tracing the slope of Lan Wangji’s cheekbone. “Er-gege shouldn’t say ridiculous things,” Wei Wuxian said softly, his smile small and wet and fleeting. “After I finish drinking, er-gege should hurry up and take his bath, so I can have his arms around me while I sleep.”

The iron grip that Lan Wangji hadn’t fully realized had been wound around his lungs and heart loosened a little, finally, as he handed over the cup. Wei Wuxian placed it onto the nightstand once he drank down its contents, face grimacing slightly at the taste. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and shuddered, but the smile that followed came even easier than its predecessor. Piece by piece, he was coming back together before Lan Wangji’s eyes. 

“This,” Wei Wuxian swayed back into the pillows, as if hit by a spell of dizziness, “this stuff works fast, Lan Zhan.”

“Mm,” Lan Wangji stood up, faint amusement warming him at the sight of Wei Wuxian’s mouth stretching in a far larger yawn as his eyes began to stop fighting the urge to close. “It does.”

Wei Wuxian batted a hand through the air that immediately fell to his side, afterwards, as if he couldn’t even muster up the energy to finish the motion. “Bath,” Wei Wuxian mumbled, head already turning onto its side to press deeper into the pillows. “Then, come here, er-gege.”

Lan Wangji wanted to obey his husband’s demands, but at the same time, he was powerless to move away from the bed in that moment—waiting for Wei Wuxian’s breath to even out, for the crease between his eyebrows to fade, for his body to become slack and loose in blissful, peaceful, unfeeling sleep. 

“Goodnight, Wei Ying,” he found himself whispering, before finally tearing away from the bedside. 

Lan Wangji had left clear, strict, instructions to Sizhui the previous evening before he’d returned to the jingshi that under no circumstances was anyone to come to the jingshi the following day. All of Lan Wangji’s duties for the day could be shunted off for when he was able to leave his husband’s side, and Wei Wuxian’s duties could be piled onto Lan Wangji’s plate for the time being. Their meals could be left outside on the steps of the jingshi, and if either Sect Leader Jiang, Sect Leader Jin, or Captain Yi wished to speak with Wei Wuxian, they also would all have to wait until Wei Wuxian was himself prepared to do so. 

Undoubtedly, Sizhui, and Jingyi had most likely received the unspoken message that they also were to wait until Wei Wuxian had regathered himself enough to face the outside world again. The former had surely as well ventured out to Caiyi to inform Wen Ning of the previous night’s events. 

Any more information on the man that Jin Rulan and Jiang Wanyin had recognized at Moling, as well as Huan Jun himself, could also wait for when Wei Wuxian was ready to speak about the events that had transpired between himself and the two men prior to their deaths. 

The following morning, Wei Wuxian was still not yet returned to his usual brightness. He was not as burdened and dark as he was the night before either, however. He seemed to now want Lan Wangji’s touch more than anything, as compared to before he’d slept. Lan Wangji had himself woken up to his arms filled with his husband, their bodies pressed close together, Wei Wuxian snuffling sleepily against his neck. 

That was how most of the day passed. 

Wei Wuxian only left the bed to eat and drink tea, sitting silently in Lan Wangji’s lap while Lan Wangji placed his arms on either side of his husband and finished any reports that he could without having to leave the jingshi. Lan Wangji could not deny that it was unnerving, how quiet Wei Wuxian was all day—and even more unnerving to realize that he had grown so used to a comforting, soothing, stream of sprightly chatter that the silence almost felt uncomfortably loud.

Wei Wuxian sat pressed to Lan Wangji’s side in the late afternoon, as Lan Wangji played the Song of Clarity for him once more, just to soothe. Throughout the entire day, Wei Wuxian’s expression had alternated between blank and a strange determination—as if he was steeling himself slowly for something as the hours passed. 

It was only in the evening that Wei Wuxian crawled into Lan Wangji’s lap as he sat in their tea room, a pot of hot tea on the table, and beside it, a jug of Emperor’s Smile—just in case Wei Wuxian were to find himself craving for it, even on a day like today. 

Wei Wuxian held Lan Wangji’s face in his hands and looked into his eyes. 

“Lan Zhan,” he said quietly, fearful and brave all at once—the endless study of wondrous contradictions that Lan Wangji’s husband was composed of. “Can I tell you something?”

Lan Wangji twined his arms securely around Wei Wuxian’s waist. “Always, Wei Ying,” he said softly. 

There was a boy—kind, warm, charming, and brotherly. 

He taught Wei Wuxian to climb trees, he helped him learn to wield a sword, he scolded him so mildly and understandingly whenever Wei Wuxian broke the rules. He came out to kneel alongside Wei Wuxian in the dark of night, whenever Madam Yu would reprimand him and punish him. He was everything that Wei Wuxian thought an older brother might be, an older cousin—if he’d ever had more than just two siblings, if he’d ever had a large family with kids running around everywhere for him to play with. 

When Wei Wuxian was twelve, the boy asked him to come along with him, to follow him to a corner of the sect where no one would find them because the boy had learned such a fun trick—they could play it on Jiang Cheng, they could ask some of the other shixiong and shidi to join in or for the prank to be played on them as well. 

Wei Wuxian followed him, without another thought, and then, just as Wei Wuxian was chattering at him enthusiastically, framing all of his own guesses at what the trick was, Jiang Fengmian and Jiang Cheng had come, the former with cold rage on his face, and the latter confused and frightened. 

The boy had been told to leave—first the corner, then the sect. 

Misconduct, Jiang Fengmian and Madam Yu said, their tones for once matching in unadulterated fury and disgust. 

Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli refused to entertain any questions Wei Wuxian mentioned of the boy even in passing. He had never seen his shijie look so angry and closed off. Jiang Cheng seemed as confused as Wei Wuxian himself, but he, too, never wanted to speak of the boy ever again. 

Wei Wuxian was fifteen when there was another boy—loud, and brash, and reckless, just as Wei Wuxian was. He was a shidi and Wei Wuxian doted on him, as he did all of his shidi. Wei Wuxian would carry him on his back when he was injured. He would hold the younger boy’s hands firmly and pull to help him stretch out his aches. He would sling arms around the younger boy’s shoulders when they’d finished racing each other through the fields, breathless and laughing. He treated him as he would Jiang Cheng, as he would any other shixiong or shidi.

The boy asked Wei Wuxian, so similar to the shixiong who had been forced to leave the sect—never to be seen again—to come with him, one afternoon, to a place where no other disciples were during that time of day. He led Wei Wuxian out to the fields where they often played, and tried to kiss Wei Wuxian. 

“So, everyone was right,” the boy spat at Wei Wuxian’s feet after he’d stepped back, eyes wide, quietly, shakily, saying that he didn’t feel towards the younger boy in that way. “You’re the reason Lian-ge was kicked out. You strung him along, and then you told Sect Leader that he started it. You, and Young Master guard dog.”

Wei Wuxian punched him, then, his fist flying almost as if reflexively at the insult to Jiang Cheng. The boy staggered back and spat at Wei Wuxian again. “You only ever hit us,” the boy sneered, “because you know we can’t hit you back. Young Master and Sect Leader would have us dismissed, and you know it. Do you think all your shidi leave you alone after a while because they’re actually so busy? How could we be busier than you, da-shixiong? You don’t think it’s because your guard dog tells us that no matter how hard you lead us along, if we try to get what’s due to us, he’ll have our names demolished?”

After that, Wei Wuxian found that he couldn’t do anything else. 

He stood there, in silence, until the boy left. 

Then, Wei Wuxian went to Gusu to study. 

He went to Cloud Recesses, and found a boy who never seemed to react, regardless of how much Wei Wuxian wheedled him and whined at him and attempted to touch him—regardless of all the words and actions that had before easily charmed and won over all of the boys that Wei Wuxian had trained alongside at Lotus Pier, this boy at Cloud Recesses would never respond in the way that Wei Wuxian had come to predict. 

He, also, never seemed to expect anything in return. 

“You know, back then,” Wei Wuxian said, and Lan Wangji knew he shouldn’t be holding his husband this tightly—that Wei Wuxian had already squirmed earlier from the sheer force of Lan Wangji’s embrace—but he could not help it. It wasn’t tight enough, it wasn’t close enough, Lan Wangji felt all the same as if he was the one who had difficulty breathing. “Jiang Cheng was starting to get worried. Shijie was so worried. She kept asking me all the way until we left on the boat for Caiyi if something had happened. I don’t think they’d ever seen me so quiet since Uncle Jiang had brought me back that first day.”

“You did not hold back when we met,” slipped out of Lan Wangji’s mouth unbidden. He frowned at himself, for a moment, uncertain of how the remark would be received. 

Wei Wuxian’s laughter was a relief. “How could I?” he asked. “Your face was just asking to be teased.”

Lan Wangji pressed his face down against the back of Wei Wuxian’s neck, and Wei Wuxian yelped, startled, before giving another light laugh. After so much silence, and solemnity, Lan Wangji was powerless against the urge to elicit as much laughter, as many smiles, from his husband as he possibly could. “I’m glad,” Lan Wangji said. “I am glad that Wei Ying chose to remain Wei Ying.”

Wei Wuxian stilled in his arms, a strange beat of quiet following, before he turned around to face Lan Wangji more directly. His eyes were almost overly bright, expression dazed. Then, he smiled a beautiful, open-mouthed, smile that reached entirely to eyes, shaping them into half-moons, bringing with it a sound of sheer contentment. “One of us had to be shameless enough for both of us, after all,” Wei Wuxian bobbed his head in agreement. “Back then er-gege’s face wasn’t as thick.”

Lan Wangji kissed his cheek. “Mm—and now Wei Ying leaves all the shamelessness to me.”

Wei Wuxian laughed, tipping his head to one side until he could press his mouth beneath Lan Wangji’s jaw. “Er-gege is better than me, these days. I did it all in the beginning—it’s his turn!”

Lan Wangji did not say aloud that if Wei Wuxian needed him to be the one chasing after him, pursuing him with a relentless fervor without expecting anything in return for as long as they both lived, Lan Wangji would do so without question—without hesitation. He did not say it, but from the way Wei Wuxian’s smile faded into something so terribly soft, he knew that he did not have to. 

Wei Wuxian fell asleep without the draught that night, and the following day, he framed Lan Wangji’s waist with his thighs and placed Lan Wangji’s hands over the bruises on his hips that hadn’t yet begun to fade. 

His eyes said everything that he did not as they met Lan Wangji’s gaze, there, in their bed, the morning still so early that even the rest of the sect had yet to spring to life for the day. 

Lan Wangji understood.

He kissed Wei Wuxian until the other man was gasping for air beneath him, and then Lan Wangji proceeded to do as his husband bade him, covering up all marks with his own—pressing into Wei Wuxian’s body over, and over, and over again until he felt that it once again belonged to himself first, to Lan Wangji second, and no other.  

That evening, Wei Wuxian finally told Lan Wangji about Wang Shilin—about Huan Jun. 

“I made the decision, back then,” Wei Wuxian said quietly, both of them still blissfully, warmly, naked against each other’s bodies. Wei Wuxian lay atop Lan Wangji’s front, lined up so that Wei Wuxian could rest his head over Lan Wangji’s heartbeat and trace patterns around the brand on his husband’s chest. “With you—after teasing you, all those times—and you, you started to become my friend, I decided it didn’t matter what happened. I liked that. I wouldn’t stop just because—just because it made some people feel like I owed them.”

The candlelight made the warm brown of Wei Wuxian’s eyes even warmer—this syrupy, dark, color that Lan Wangji had come to love as much as the inviting, steel, gray before it. He brushed a lock of hair out of those eyes. Wei Wuxian smiled at him for it, helping it along on its errant way by blowing a puff of air up to it. 

“This, though,” Wei Wuxian laughed thinly. “No matter what those—the other boys tried to do—we were all just juniors then. I might’ve even been stronger than that shidi.” His face went slightly wan, undoubtedly recalling both what had happened at Lotus Pier and what had happened in Moling. “Wang Shilin poisoned me. Huan Jun—Huan Jun tried, with the same poison that Wang Shilin used. I have no idea how they know each other. I would’ve—I would’ve been done for if I’d drank the tea, but I found a way to detect it after I came back from Yunmeng. It’s—just a standard color-changing talisman. The toxin doesn’t have a scent, so no one would test their drink if they didn’t find anything odd about it.” 

Wei Wuxian smiled humorlessly. “Two against one is a little hard, and I told Jiang Cheng already, but, Wang Shilin is really not someone you want to mess with.” He lowered his eyes slightly, palm flat over the divot between Lan Wangji’s pectorals. He drummed his fingertips and used his other hand to tuck a stray lock of Lan Wangji’s own hair behind his ear. “I hope Captain Yi won’t be too mad over me evening the odds a bit.”

Lan Wangji’s eyebrows tugged together, puzzled. 

“He’s not, you know,” Wei Wuxian waved a hand airily around, “big on the whole raising the dead thing. I’ve only ever hunted beasts and things with him.”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said, fixing him with a rather incredulous stare. “If you had raised every corpse from that village, Captain Yi would not find fault with you.”

Wei Wuxian squinted doubtfully at him. “I didn’t know you two talk without me,” Wei Wuxian mused. 

Lan Wangji fixed his husband with another look that he well knew Wei Wuxian acknowledged as Lan Wangji’s well-mannered way of rolling his eyes. “Does Wei Ying think I am the only one receptive to his charms?” he teased, and Wei Wuxian readily ducked his face into the crook of Lan Wangji’s neck. 

“Lan Zhan!” he yelled, the noise only stifled by Lan Wangji’s skin and hair. “We talked about this!”

“Captain Yi is an upright man,” Lan Wangji agreed, stroking his fingers through Wei Wuxian’s hair as the other man continued to snuffle curiously into the side of Lan Wangji’s face, listening for what Lan Wangji had to say. “Yet, he invites the Yiling Patriarch into his sect, where his men train and sleep every day and night. He invites the Yiling Patriarch to hunt with him and share meals, and drinks, with him. What does that say about Wei Ying?”

“Don’t you mean—what does that say about Captain Yi?” Wei Wuxian drew his face back, and gave Lan Wangji another doubtful look that properly conveyed his opinion on Yi Renshu’s sense of self-preservation. 

“Sect Leader Jin?” Lan Wangji raised his eyebrows, as Wei Wuxian blinked, bewildered. “Young Master Ouyang—Sizhui, Jingyi, and all of Wei Ying’s students, here. Our Head Healer. Head Disciple Jin. Disciple Lan Guiren.” 

“Why are we making lists of people who don’t hate me?” Wei Wuxian said, a half-hearted attempt at a joking tone that did not reach his eyes whatsoever. 

“I am listing,” Lan Wangji said patiently, “the people who were raised against the Yiling Patriarch, yet, have come to care greatly for Wei Ying.” He sat up slightly against the pillows, so that Wei Wuxian slid down in his hold, head tipping up—expression brittle and confused. Lan Wangji rearranged him gently to sit across Lan Wangji’s thighs, careful not to jostle him after the aches he must still have from the vigor of the day’s previous activities. “Wei Ying should know how powerful he is—just as Wei Ying.”

The way Wei Wuxian looked into Lan Wangji’s eyes then was intensely reminiscent of the night that Lan Wangji led his husband onto a boat down Caiyi’s river, surrounding him with lotuses that lit up the dark night. It was a look that Lan Wangji would do anything, say anything, to see—over and over again. It was an expression that Wei Wuxian deserved to always wear, constantly made aware of precisely how extraordinary he was, and absolutely nothing less. 

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian broke his somewhat stunned silence, finally. “Are you sure you aren’t just saying this because the great Hanguang-jun doesn’t want to be the only one who fell for the Yiling Patriarch’s demonic wiles?” His following smile announced to Lan Wangji more clearly than any words of reassurance could that Wei Wuxian would be just fine. 

“If I was the only one who ever fell for Wei Ying’s charms,” Lan Wangji said, knuckles caressing Wei Wuxian’s soft cheek, “I wouldn’t have to share Wei Ying so often.”

Wei Wuxian hoisted himself up, hands balanced on Lan Wangji’s shoulders, thighs spread wide again to plant his knees on either side of Lan Wangji’s waist. He kissed Lan Wangji once, twice, on the lips, a playful lick on the third. “I told er-gege before he shouldn’t say ridiculous things,” Wei Wuxian admonished mischievously. “He knows perfectly well no one else has me the way he does.”

Lan Wangji pulled his husband ever close by the hips, until he was the one who had to look up to meet Wei Wuxian’s eyes. “There are times when I forget,” he murmured, and Wei Wuxian’s responding laugh was filled with incredulous delight. “Wei Ying should remind me.”

Wei Wuxian looped his arms around Lan Wangji’s neck and leaned in for a kiss. “Always,” he said, brightly, as Lan Wangji closed the distance and obliged him.