What is it men do, when they are neither children nor monsters, but the transient, mundane emptiness between these states? When they must decide, if, like planets, they can love themselves and pull and yoke and tether others close? When they are simply, intrinsically insufficient and their only chance of survival is not the autonomy of amputating half of their soul's yearnings, but finding a pair?

They marry in this life and the next, the heavens their sullen witness. He does not flinch when Wei Ying's fingers insinuate themselves, a warm blanket overlapped, when Lan Wangji's head roams in tumble, and his cheek crosses Wei Ying's knuckles on the bathtub's edge, and there is stillness between — that moment when a fissure must decide whether it will rot into breakage, or trip back into balance, whether the matter it sink or come afloat.

And he warns, pale ash in his mouth, "This is not a marriage they will understand."

A binding of fates and blood and curse and qi, and no sanctity of romance, no trinkets of gifting, no honeyed courtship. No beauty of youth swollen to great convexity with each conventional milestone marked, each merit earned.

He thinks, they are great proud fools, stones stabbing seas and failing to broker ships their passage. Their door game is carnage, their red was the war.

Softened, like the warmth of air beside him, an exhalation, "We shall have tea."