He feels the sword moving, glances up to watch it find Lan Zhan's hand, as unerring and right as his own had been, still craved to be, and he could not meet. He sighs, lips curling up, admiring what it is that he always has in Lan Zhan's skill with a sword, in that stillness, the white knuckled grip, the lips that had brushed his fingertips as careless as butterflies flitting from flower to flower pressing firm, intentional, to Bichen's length.
"He's too practical to want you dead," he says, and perhaps it's callous in its own way, to speak a truth not tied into tradition or grace, but cold, cutting ruthlessness. A part of himself that will remain colder than the springs in Gusu, knowing how to act that way, to make those calls. Knowing how to avoid them, too, even as he brushes his thumb against Lan Zhan's cheek, and cants his head, questioning, uncertain.
So often he doesn't feel he has a stake to claim in Lan Zhan's time or interest, not as the man he is now, versus the youth he once was. They've talked on this, how he who was had been loved, in secret or otherwise, and how he who is becomes a paradox, a complication. To try has been seeing each other as the men they've become even before sixteen years stretched dark and taunt between them, even since they'd wandered in each other's footsteps to strike into the shadows manipulating his return, the cultivation world's upheaval.
Lan Zhan, he thinks, can do better than whatever he is, but chooses not to. Not all of it comes from nostalgia now, he tells himself this. That as frustrating as they find each other at times, as frightened by broken gaps between them, they can reach across: that Lan Zhan can learn to let go of the fear that defines him, the one he cripples himself with, fetters himself with, and so Wei Wuxian reaches, slides his fingers between Lan Zhan's own, holding and clutching.
Like his own mother's son, the spectre of a woman he'd always been akin to, had always called upon in his actions, unknowing. Only one man loved him for that, in particular. More had resented him for the same.
Hand in hand, stilled for the moment, he breathes in, breathes out, adjusts how he kneels.
"Even at your worst, you weren't implacable. If we're all to be held only as our worst moments, Lan Zhan, then you should never forgive mine, mm? You carry guilt on strong shoulders, but have you ever learned how to forgive yourself for what was beyond you? I'm terrible at it, but I've been learning."
So many words, their flowing expanse over the deeper truth in rounded, smoothed stones below their surface. I care, you care. If you wish to give yourself up, give up on me, too.
"I want to be here," he says, after a pause and the dip of his lashes, eyes half shaded, words now difficult to parse. "With you, wherever you are. Wherever we are, and not wondering if I should feel that way, if you do, if it's gratitude I need to repay, a debt that can't be calculated. If you'd asked, before, it might have been. All of everything I could mold myself to be, for whatever I thought you wanted."
What does it mean, then, to qualify he wants to stay now, that he chooses, when his neck is ringed in damp and healing bruises, when his husband languors in the bath's sweet heat, when he shudders and collects himself from the grips of something larger, more compelling, more insidious than what stalked the depths of darkness back home. Still from a human heart, once. Now gone beyond, inhuman, feral. What does it mean, but to accept there are hurts they continue to cause, and healings they continue to foster, in spite of and because of who and what they are.
He was frightened of something like this, as a younger man, as one who worried over bonds that he had to uphold and find himself choked by, fettered and left less and less able to choose any path forward for all their contradictions. Bereft of them all, what then? To have and to hold, and to hold on to Lan Zhan's hand now, and to study his face, rather than let his eyes wander, because it can be admiration and curiosity and want and still be intrusion, too, whatever their titles, whatever their bond. He knows that, even in his carelessness for himself, for what a body is, what it gives, what it disguises.
Leans in, to press a kiss to Lan Zhan's forehead, dampened by cloth, and some perspiration perhaps in the heat. There is this, whatever it is, and while he can agree, I appear worth wanting, what he can only recently acknowledge is, I am worth wanting as I am. Close after, following, you see me, not who I was, and though it leaves them restless, though the scars of the past won't unmake themselves, they can loosen, snakes coiled that stretch slow and sumptuous under a summer's sun.
no subject
"He's too practical to want you dead," he says, and perhaps it's callous in its own way, to speak a truth not tied into tradition or grace, but cold, cutting ruthlessness. A part of himself that will remain colder than the springs in Gusu, knowing how to act that way, to make those calls. Knowing how to avoid them, too, even as he brushes his thumb against Lan Zhan's cheek, and cants his head, questioning, uncertain.
So often he doesn't feel he has a stake to claim in Lan Zhan's time or interest, not as the man he is now, versus the youth he once was. They've talked on this, how he who was had been loved, in secret or otherwise, and how he who is becomes a paradox, a complication. To try has been seeing each other as the men they've become even before sixteen years stretched dark and taunt between them, even since they'd wandered in each other's footsteps to strike into the shadows manipulating his return, the cultivation world's upheaval.
Lan Zhan, he thinks, can do better than whatever he is, but chooses not to. Not all of it comes from nostalgia now, he tells himself this. That as frustrating as they find each other at times, as frightened by broken gaps between them, they can reach across: that Lan Zhan can learn to let go of the fear that defines him, the one he cripples himself with, fetters himself with, and so Wei Wuxian reaches, slides his fingers between Lan Zhan's own, holding and clutching.
Like his own mother's son, the spectre of a woman he'd always been akin to, had always called upon in his actions, unknowing. Only one man loved him for that, in particular. More had resented him for the same.
Hand in hand, stilled for the moment, he breathes in, breathes out, adjusts how he kneels.
"Even at your worst, you weren't implacable. If we're all to be held only as our worst moments, Lan Zhan, then you should never forgive mine, mm? You carry guilt on strong shoulders, but have you ever learned how to forgive yourself for what was beyond you? I'm terrible at it, but I've been learning."
So many words, their flowing expanse over the deeper truth in rounded, smoothed stones below their surface. I care, you care. If you wish to give yourself up, give up on me, too.
"I want to be here," he says, after a pause and the dip of his lashes, eyes half shaded, words now difficult to parse. "With you, wherever you are. Wherever we are, and not wondering if I should feel that way, if you do, if it's gratitude I need to repay, a debt that can't be calculated. If you'd asked, before, it might have been. All of everything I could mold myself to be, for whatever I thought you wanted."
What does it mean, then, to qualify he wants to stay now, that he chooses, when his neck is ringed in damp and healing bruises, when his husband languors in the bath's sweet heat, when he shudders and collects himself from the grips of something larger, more compelling, more insidious than what stalked the depths of darkness back home. Still from a human heart, once. Now gone beyond, inhuman, feral. What does it mean, but to accept there are hurts they continue to cause, and healings they continue to foster, in spite of and because of who and what they are.
He was frightened of something like this, as a younger man, as one who worried over bonds that he had to uphold and find himself choked by, fettered and left less and less able to choose any path forward for all their contradictions. Bereft of them all, what then? To have and to hold, and to hold on to Lan Zhan's hand now, and to study his face, rather than let his eyes wander, because it can be admiration and curiosity and want and still be intrusion, too, whatever their titles, whatever their bond. He knows that, even in his carelessness for himself, for what a body is, what it gives, what it disguises.
Leans in, to press a kiss to Lan Zhan's forehead, dampened by cloth, and some perspiration perhaps in the heat. There is this, whatever it is, and while he can agree, I appear worth wanting, what he can only recently acknowledge is, I am worth wanting as I am. Close after, following, you see me, not who I was, and though it leaves them restless, though the scars of the past won't unmake themselves, they can loosen, snakes coiled that stretch slow and sumptuous under a summer's sun.