Lanterns burn mellow and cool, a dulcet, coppered exhalation. He thinks, a less fickle man, lent to care, might have coaxed himself to whisper the flame unwound, then dead. But this is Wei Ying, who crystallises chaos, who flits and blitzes from man to man and spell to spell and cliff to death and wanton abandon.
Who bids Lan Wangji bare. Are we yet so mercantile? That Wei Ying must wish to see what sixteen years of longing have bought him? He, who has scratched Lan Wangji's scalp like a kept cat and owned his ribbon and rationalised Lan Wangji's most intimate desires to inventory them like private, trinkets of possessions.
His mind clouds, whites like sea foam when waves crest. He thinks — not of savage lust, immature and sophomoric. His want is a simmered thing, an imprecise and foreign calculation. The empty desires of another man, dead sixteen years at a cliff's side. Need will not betray him.
Only — the husked sensation of coring, the temple of his body abandoned. The knowledge, as he strays his fingers silent, eyes catching Wei Ying's to hold them, keep them, watch him now — that he is purchased and owned, and collared. Fresh cuts riot against the friction of dark robes, slipping his shoulders. Bruises sing a swarthy gold, like a maiden's beads, drumming his collarbone. Restlessness swells in his joints, where cartilage has wounded and the bloat of his limbs threatens misalignment.
Wei Ying's lent robes whisper down the floors.
Morning searched him, clever, with diffuse light. It bathes him before the waters, casts him pretty and pale and wandered in the liminal space between captive and free. He knows, inks and poetry paint Hanguang-Jun beautiful. He knows, footing trembled as he enters the bath, and warm waters sway, and he stumbles more than he descends, until he settles, they settle — he is the sum of scars gaping, of sacrifice screamed. Bare, vulnerable before Wei Ying, like a war horse before its first rider, the paraded prime mistress of a flower house.
Waters singe his hurts. Cauterise them. In his belly, resent curdles. Do not ask, knowing you will not be denied. "I do not wish your eyes haunting my back."
For a constellation of reasons known, undying. "I do not wish..." And how to speak his truth? That his hands, curling beneath waters cloyed by salts should break, that he wishes his fingers dancing on fire, flesh festered and burned and paying at each turn the gasped ache he has given Wei Ying's throat. "To wear these skins."
no subject
Who bids Lan Wangji bare. Are we yet so mercantile? That Wei Ying must wish to see what sixteen years of longing have bought him? He, who has scratched Lan Wangji's scalp like a kept cat and owned his ribbon and rationalised Lan Wangji's most intimate desires to inventory them like private, trinkets of possessions.
His mind clouds, whites like sea foam when waves crest. He thinks — not of savage lust, immature and sophomoric. His want is a simmered thing, an imprecise and foreign calculation. The empty desires of another man, dead sixteen years at a cliff's side. Need will not betray him.
Only — the husked sensation of coring, the temple of his body abandoned. The knowledge, as he strays his fingers silent, eyes catching Wei Ying's to hold them, keep them, watch him now — that he is purchased and owned, and collared. Fresh cuts riot against the friction of dark robes, slipping his shoulders. Bruises sing a swarthy gold, like a maiden's beads, drumming his collarbone. Restlessness swells in his joints, where cartilage has wounded and the bloat of his limbs threatens misalignment.
Wei Ying's lent robes whisper down the floors.
Morning searched him, clever, with diffuse light. It bathes him before the waters, casts him pretty and pale and wandered in the liminal space between captive and free. He knows, inks and poetry paint Hanguang-Jun beautiful. He knows, footing trembled as he enters the bath, and warm waters sway, and he stumbles more than he descends, until he settles, they settle — he is the sum of scars gaping, of sacrifice screamed. Bare, vulnerable before Wei Ying, like a war horse before its first rider, the paraded prime mistress of a flower house.
Waters singe his hurts. Cauterise them. In his belly, resent curdles. Do not ask, knowing you will not be denied. "I do not wish your eyes haunting my back."
For a constellation of reasons known, undying. "I do not wish..." And how to speak his truth? That his hands, curling beneath waters cloyed by salts should break, that he wishes his fingers dancing on fire, flesh festered and burned and paying at each turn the gasped ache he has given Wei Ying's throat. "To wear these skins."