( Sickness spills and stretches in him like the first blades of grass stabbing spring snow — unable to be fought or frailed, and he is himself lessened. He is sunlight, burst through a stale room of gilded greys, of shallow breaths and squalor. There is — division between them, Lan Wangji and Wei Ying, who rounds the pretty bloom of his pale mouth around paltry, unearned gratitude. You, you child of the streets, you never learned courtesy. You hypocrite, you pretend to care what you have won here. You think you have won aught at all..
The spirit of the girl lingers with them, clasped weakly on her bones, and he should — they should attend to it with the last rites owed to the embittered dead. But that is a sophisticated exercise for humans, and Lan Wangji is pure animal, feral bright glean of gluttony growling within him, filling him out like spoiled waters, to his brim.
It strikes him, absently, that he has wanted the last morsel of meat on the bones of this man for the better part of sixteen years. That his gums itch and bleed for him, that he tastes him, the air of him now, raw-electric on his tongue. You nearly let her touch you, and now you play. You fool. You careless fool.
He does not invite, does not woo, does not instruct. Man bound, eyes shuttered, Wei Ying is ever better than a mere victim of his absent core, but he is still a man, only one man, and Lan Wangji shoves his shoulder once, turns him, pushes the nigh-paper weightlessness of him into the ragged wall, until predatory satisfaction warms his gut and his wrists and the joints of his ankles, until he feels liquid and slithered and alert when Wei Ying is trapped between the solidity of wood and Lan Wangji before him. What do you think should be contained here? Who? )
It died with want of you in its mouth. ( Hear it, in the creaks and the growls, when Lan Wangji's palm slaps the wall beside Wei Ying's head, only a call to attention, hear the house heave — ) It died in agony. Shall I explain?
( — and flinch, when the wood starts to break and crumble, pressed dry and eroding, fault of the termites within and Lan Wangji's vicious, misused strength. )
no subject
The spirit of the girl lingers with them, clasped weakly on her bones, and he should — they should attend to it with the last rites owed to the embittered dead. But that is a sophisticated exercise for humans, and Lan Wangji is pure animal, feral bright glean of gluttony growling within him, filling him out like spoiled waters, to his brim.
It strikes him, absently, that he has wanted the last morsel of meat on the bones of this man for the better part of sixteen years. That his gums itch and bleed for him, that he tastes him, the air of him now, raw-electric on his tongue. You nearly let her touch you, and now you play. You fool. You careless fool.
He does not invite, does not woo, does not instruct. Man bound, eyes shuttered, Wei Ying is ever better than a mere victim of his absent core, but he is still a man, only one man, and Lan Wangji shoves his shoulder once, turns him, pushes the nigh-paper weightlessness of him into the ragged wall, until predatory satisfaction warms his gut and his wrists and the joints of his ankles, until he feels liquid and slithered and alert when Wei Ying is trapped between the solidity of wood and Lan Wangji before him. What do you think should be contained here? Who? )
It died with want of you in its mouth. ( Hear it, in the creaks and the growls, when Lan Wangji's palm slaps the wall beside Wei Ying's head, only a call to attention, hear the house heave — ) It died in agony. Shall I explain?
( — and flinch, when the wood starts to break and crumble, pressed dry and eroding, fault of the termites within and Lan Wangji's vicious, misused strength. )