Steps forward, and he's within touching distance of the wooden tub, steam wafting upward in patterns that shift as the air does, as Lan Zhan unwinds in fractions, as Wei Wuxian moves with feline grace. Two predators don't stalk each other so much as admit awareness and respect for each other's claws, their strengths, their aptitudes. Catalogue each others weaknesses, and decide, too often independently, what they mean, and how to relate, to excuse, to gloss over them.

"When something is given, Lan Zhan, you cannot steal it."

Steps around, and he broaches the foot, such as it might be, of this tub not as grand as those in Taravast, but leagues beyond Lan Zhan's condescension in Sa-Hareth. Around and toward one man, kneeling, to crouch, studying Lan Zhan's face in profile. To soften words, but not attempt disguises, not of his self, or the pain that was taken out of his flesh, the marks mistakable for nothing other than fingers, hands, which had marked flesh as surely as teeth did.

"When something is taken, Lan Zhan, you can apologise for it. Not always return it," he says, conceding a point where undoing is not within the nature of this world they're in, nor within the nature of the world they descend from, like roots from the tangled mud of a lotus's anchor. "There are things that can't be returned. For those, we can ask forgiveness, make reparations. We do." Facing what it is, perhaps lacking, perhaps adequate.

He reaches out, touching Lan Zhan's arm, watching what his weight does in one touch, and a glance that shifts from his husband's features to the alluring swirl of warm, hot water, of the soothing it promises, of the comfort in a worldly flesh, of a body that isn't beyond all awareness of ills done and received, immune to changes in temperature, in deprivations.

"Bathe, husband." Another shift, and his fingers travel fast paths, an intrusion of space and intent that unseals qi locked away from Lan Zhan's hands during the time where their dangers could make themselves known. Once, he'd watched Lan Zhan seal himself up, at the power-hungry fear of a man who could never forgive the world for treating him as his birthing, and not his capabilities, would provide. "Meditate. Grant me this," he says, and he searches for Lan Zhan's gaze, lifting his brows, canting his head a touch. "For having had to guard you against your own strength."

Grant him caretaking that is not brutal, ruthless, calculated clarity. A pause, and he adds, lips quirked upward, just a touch.

"I'll even wear a blindfold, if you like."

And he winks, because it's easy to grant that playfulness, that teasing, that sincerity in allowing barriers when others are removed, if it helps.