[ As children bow, flinched and steep is the bend of his back and its arc tired, the form demure. Artlessly, he takes the knee and lets Jiang Cheng make honest toil and trouble of him, in stark dark stabbed erratically by screams of distant merry-making, of men negotiating more wine.

There is softness to Jiang Cheng's hand that becomes a brother, that warmed Zewu-Jun's grip of Wangji's unsettled crown to a curl once, setting perfumed oil slick in his hair. You had a sister, once.

Worse yet, A brother.

And now, the Yunmeng guardian turns earnest whore, and it is in the way of intimacy won before carnage that Wangji's tongue turns warm and kind: ]

Irrelevant. [ For, briskly: ] Reports claim he is insufficiently virile.

[ No doubt the tragedy of drink, as, You ain't got the diiiiiiicccckkkkkkk foooor'eeeemmmmm, man, look at that stump, you ain't got the diiiiiiiiccckkkkk blares strong from the house's wine-clouded horizon.

Spread no rumour like pox or plague, but the precepts of Cloud Recesses do not condemn men who betray their natures.

The bindings of his hair weigh him like hanging rope, with the old, learned requirement to bear them sullen, sophisticated and well. He rights himself under the play of Jiang Cheng's fingertips. ]

Apologies. You intended this for the first wear of another. [ Need teaches compromise, and yet. ] I shall beg pardon at her feet.

[ After this, if they have not drowned the trinkets in red and slaughter. ]