The weight of one man's head, and Wei Wuxian bids his eyes rise, not dip downward, not flirt with glances which might, somehow through the thickened curtain of the long, black tresses draped down over Lan Zhan's shoulders, bare skin. His husband has asked this much of him, and he speaks, further, thus listening is his duty. Hear.
Harken back to the weight his head must have been on his sister's lap, and there's a softened fierceness, a warmth, that floods through him even with the chill of water's kiss, of damp, of heat rising and inundating his pulled back sleeves. Scared of this, as a younger man. Strength is not always what he's understood it to be.
"Mm," he says, and the hum of soft assertion vibrates in his throat, the beat of dragonfly wings. Wen Ruohan and his greed, his inability to understand what command meant if it were not in the way he wished it, where the compromise of surrender and guidance called on horrifying possibilities, invited the sweeping gesture that was Wei Wuxian's bold claim to end a war, within proximity. Even the men who followed, tripping over their lowered robes as easily as their lowered sense of justice for any but themselves, could never quite grasp the sacrifice inherent in keeping from true demonic cultivation.
He does not mourn any of their lack of insight. Doesn't rejoice in it, either. Only considers where Lan Zhan might swallow, and what Wei Wuxian will accept, trusting those teeth across his throat will graze, not tear. They are each born greedy men, striving after different wholes destined to lack completeness.
Bichen's fall startles him from this quiet, from the room he makes for Lan Zhan's words alone, and their combined pulse, the weight of him not quite in his arms, the lapping water at the tub's sides, shush, shush.
"Learn with me," he says, any of the thousand of things that occur to him he might say. He does not love well either, but for different faultlines across the expanse of his heart. Too great, he supposes, his capacity to care, and love as a word from Lan Zhan's mouth strikes him hot, a brand invisible, heat rising to bleed a blush up his neck, flowing in reverse, to his ears, to the expanse of his cheeks. Love is not a word that sits easy in his flirtatious mouth, too direct, too honest, too private, but who are they now but private with each other?
"The only way we love better," he says, and he stumbles, throat thick and catching and dry all at once on that word, on the love he frames for being theirs, for being specific, particular, unique, "Is in learning."
Love, he thinks. What is love but a grand adventure, with the pains and trials that come along with breaking through to find that path ongoing, shared underneath the same skies, hand in hand as often as they're sundered by temporary circumstance? If they must be, he thinks to himself. If these days past, if the time he stood in fox's pelt, if the thousand tiny ways they cannot live within each other's skins aren't a lesson in and of themselves, learning to align two bodies, two hearts, two spirits, to fill in each other's spaces, invade by invitation, possess by permission, and settle, even when they stood shoulder to shoulder across a divide of time, space, agony.
no subject
Harken back to the weight his head must have been on his sister's lap, and there's a softened fierceness, a warmth, that floods through him even with the chill of water's kiss, of damp, of heat rising and inundating his pulled back sleeves. Scared of this, as a younger man. Strength is not always what he's understood it to be.
"Mm," he says, and the hum of soft assertion vibrates in his throat, the beat of dragonfly wings. Wen Ruohan and his greed, his inability to understand what command meant if it were not in the way he wished it, where the compromise of surrender and guidance called on horrifying possibilities, invited the sweeping gesture that was Wei Wuxian's bold claim to end a war, within proximity. Even the men who followed, tripping over their lowered robes as easily as their lowered sense of justice for any but themselves, could never quite grasp the sacrifice inherent in keeping from true demonic cultivation.
He does not mourn any of their lack of insight. Doesn't rejoice in it, either. Only considers where Lan Zhan might swallow, and what Wei Wuxian will accept, trusting those teeth across his throat will graze, not tear. They are each born greedy men, striving after different wholes destined to lack completeness.
Bichen's fall startles him from this quiet, from the room he makes for Lan Zhan's words alone, and their combined pulse, the weight of him not quite in his arms, the lapping water at the tub's sides, shush, shush.
"Learn with me," he says, any of the thousand of things that occur to him he might say. He does not love well either, but for different faultlines across the expanse of his heart. Too great, he supposes, his capacity to care, and love as a word from Lan Zhan's mouth strikes him hot, a brand invisible, heat rising to bleed a blush up his neck, flowing in reverse, to his ears, to the expanse of his cheeks. Love is not a word that sits easy in his flirtatious mouth, too direct, too honest, too private, but who are they now but private with each other?
"The only way we love better," he says, and he stumbles, throat thick and catching and dry all at once on that word, on the love he frames for being theirs, for being specific, particular, unique, "Is in learning."
Love, he thinks. What is love but a grand adventure, with the pains and trials that come along with breaking through to find that path ongoing, shared underneath the same skies, hand in hand as often as they're sundered by temporary circumstance? If they must be, he thinks to himself. If these days past, if the time he stood in fox's pelt, if the thousand tiny ways they cannot live within each other's skins aren't a lesson in and of themselves, learning to align two bodies, two hearts, two spirits, to fill in each other's spaces, invade by invitation, possess by permission, and settle, even when they stood shoulder to shoulder across a divide of time, space, agony.