Dry his throat, no longer aching, days ago ignored and forgotten, left to heal as healing will do, faster than if he were never once who cultivated, slower than if he possessed still within himself that central burning core. Lan Zhan holds his gaze, demands it, and he's helpless before the unspoken request, eyes on eyes, and swallowing down some sensation of improbability that has no place here and now.
He keeps his eyes locked with Lan Zhan's as robes slide down, cascading to the floor, puddling as rent shadows and gasping darkness in the first blush of morning's light. Banished from white shoulders, the white jade of his frame, but that in and of itself isn't unknown, isn't fully unfamiliar.
Steam wafts and washes over him, he who remains crouched, who follows his soulmate, his husband, to the waters run hot and deep enough for submerging, and he only blinks after, at the statement of wishes in their inversion, as his head tilts just enough to shift tendrils of hair to one side, accepting.
"Of course," he says to the first, because Lan Zhan did not wish to speak on the carving of his flesh by the discipline of his sect, and Wei Wuxian had not asked, never would have asked, does not when he carries his own carved hurts, some visible, some less.
He has the bathing rag in hand, and for one of those hands beneath the water, he doesn't so much reach as allow the clean rag to soak up the water's heat, drenched in moments of scattered heartbeats, breath indrawn.
"Which would you wish to wear?"
A question asked, and he starts, with care remembered from a cross of one child's bathing needs when barreling into the blood-red waters of his bathing cave, to the ablutions delivered by one who nursed when he was ill, more care taken to scrub down from Lan Zhan's shoulder toward his submerged, clenched fist than given to Wei Wuxian's own skin so addressed by proper bathing. Care taken for every scratch, and eyes that don't wander so much as catalogue, that liminal space between a desire he'd denied existing for longer than he wanted to realise, and a desire to understand a body's toils, its hurts and healings, but only as he's allowed.
Time also to not linger, to not send Lan Zhan flinching away as violently as he might, and so he hesitates on the consideration of mindless chatter versus silence to sit as lightly across their shoulders as it might, were hearts not heavy.
"Want me to talk through this?" He says instead, bent to his ministrations, kneeling now properly at the tub's side, facing Lan Zhan's front ongoing, as had been wished without wishing.
no subject
He keeps his eyes locked with Lan Zhan's as robes slide down, cascading to the floor, puddling as rent shadows and gasping darkness in the first blush of morning's light. Banished from white shoulders, the white jade of his frame, but that in and of itself isn't unknown, isn't fully unfamiliar.
Steam wafts and washes over him, he who remains crouched, who follows his soulmate, his husband, to the waters run hot and deep enough for submerging, and he only blinks after, at the statement of wishes in their inversion, as his head tilts just enough to shift tendrils of hair to one side, accepting.
"Of course," he says to the first, because Lan Zhan did not wish to speak on the carving of his flesh by the discipline of his sect, and Wei Wuxian had not asked, never would have asked, does not when he carries his own carved hurts, some visible, some less.
He has the bathing rag in hand, and for one of those hands beneath the water, he doesn't so much reach as allow the clean rag to soak up the water's heat, drenched in moments of scattered heartbeats, breath indrawn.
"Which would you wish to wear?"
A question asked, and he starts, with care remembered from a cross of one child's bathing needs when barreling into the blood-red waters of his bathing cave, to the ablutions delivered by one who nursed when he was ill, more care taken to scrub down from Lan Zhan's shoulder toward his submerged, clenched fist than given to Wei Wuxian's own skin so addressed by proper bathing. Care taken for every scratch, and eyes that don't wander so much as catalogue, that liminal space between a desire he'd denied existing for longer than he wanted to realise, and a desire to understand a body's toils, its hurts and healings, but only as he's allowed.
Time also to not linger, to not send Lan Zhan flinching away as violently as he might, and so he hesitates on the consideration of mindless chatter versus silence to sit as lightly across their shoulders as it might, were hearts not heavy.
"Want me to talk through this?" He says instead, bent to his ministrations, kneeling now properly at the tub's side, facing Lan Zhan's front ongoing, as had been wished without wishing.