He is cared for. Webs of flimsy-thin oil in kaleidoscopic translucence, spume snagged on skin. Wei Ying weighs him with touch and teasing attention, wet of the rag enshrouding muscle where it's bloated, skin that's cracked, the deep-sculpted rivulets of his gashes. His bruises weep their gratitude. He leans into it, willow-like and soft, here to allow Wei Ying the greater expanse of work between his neck and clavicle, there to shudder like a breeze dancing leaves on string.
He is himself, absent ownership of his bones, accountability. Limbs move in familiar geometries Wei Ying yokes to whim, then the slipper gravity of his cloth, seeking shadows of filth. Enough on Lan Wangji, at first, to raise a palace of silt and debris. It scrapes off him in thin, crackled skins, polluting waters that roil and round, waves hard breaking.
When his moan crests, round, is when Wei Ying's cloth finds his temple, as if by accident, and the blackening there burns in pleasant waves of synchronised, dull torture. He is a child again, subject to uncle and large doting hands and attendants. His father's heir, his brother's spare, his mother's son.
"Enough." But he turns his head, so his lips spill rich and wet prints of stunted affection on Wei Ying's knuckles, when he catches them, in passing. Later, when he is armed with his ribbon again, he might pay this pale branch of a hand its due. "Fetch your wine."
Early, grey and slate and white morning. No hour for drink. Yet. "You wish to be my husband." I am, Wei Ying will curse him back, but there are notions to have, and notions to hold, and truths relative in this world, shaking. "Sit with me without purpose. Why do you want this? Tea."
The pretence of a happy, lost family, when Wen Qing does not meet their eyes, Xiao Xingchen cannot perceive them, and Jiang Cheng would sooner claw them out.
no subject
He is himself, absent ownership of his bones, accountability. Limbs move in familiar geometries Wei Ying yokes to whim, then the slipper gravity of his cloth, seeking shadows of filth. Enough on Lan Wangji, at first, to raise a palace of silt and debris. It scrapes off him in thin, crackled skins, polluting waters that roil and round, waves hard breaking.
When his moan crests, round, is when Wei Ying's cloth finds his temple, as if by accident, and the blackening there burns in pleasant waves of synchronised, dull torture. He is a child again, subject to uncle and large doting hands and attendants. His father's heir, his brother's spare, his mother's son.
"Enough." But he turns his head, so his lips spill rich and wet prints of stunted affection on Wei Ying's knuckles, when he catches them, in passing. Later, when he is armed with his ribbon again, he might pay this pale branch of a hand its due. "Fetch your wine."
Early, grey and slate and white morning. No hour for drink. Yet. "You wish to be my husband." I am, Wei Ying will curse him back, but there are notions to have, and notions to hold, and truths relative in this world, shaking. "Sit with me without purpose. Why do you want this? Tea."
The pretence of a happy, lost family, when Wen Qing does not meet their eyes, Xiao Xingchen cannot perceive them, and Jiang Cheng would sooner claw them out.