(closed) all in the family

[weifinder]

WHO: Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji, & Lan Sizhui
WHEN: During our time in the resort castle.
WHERE: In one of the inner courtyards.
WHAT: Wei Wuxian does his best to bury their son in rabbits, inviting Lan Wangji to assist.
WARNINGS: None, other than Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji being a delightfully dysfunctional married couple, and Lan Sizhui being the best adjusted out of the three of them, somehow.

Wei Wuxian had rabbits in the basket clutched to his chest, his smile broad as he strode closer to where his son stood, or sat, or generally minded himself as any young adult might. The robes he's borrowed here are more colourful than his usual, with purples and blues and whites more evident and in decoration of cranes and wave patterns; not precisely a knowing choice, all this patterned wear, but acceptable enough right now.

"Sizhui! Please sit, I've a basket full of rabbits due for your lap. Lan Zhan! Lan Zhan, you're going to miss the start of things!"

He didn't look around to see if his husband was already there or not. Too much attention diverted from the five rabbits in his basket guarantees at least two will leap out and bolt, knowing his luck.

Comments

[paperbutterflies]

"A basket of rabbits?"

Sizhui was very much curious about, well, everything related to that statement, but his smile was nearly as bright - if less wide - than Senior Wei's. "Are they all right? Let me see?"

And, yes, he was open to the idea, settling where idicated immediately, his owen eyes very much gauging how each of the older man is, just in case.

... where did the rabbits come from, anyway? Perhaps it truly did not matter.

[downswing]

...and now they've rabbits, well fattened if small, rotund bundles of pale and turbulent joy. If Lan Wangji weren't already drawn, moth-like to the flame of his son's gladness, he would be shamelessly sauntering to study the creatures in Wei Ying's... basket.

Of course. Of course this hooligan has savagely abducted and aggregated innocent babes. May the Heavens take their pity on the Yiling Patriarch for his crimes committed against the bunny kind.

Artfully, Lan Wangji does not offer his custody of the rabbits immediately. He does not flinch when Wei Ying seems to threaten them with touch. Does not even coo or nod enthusiastically, when Sizhui expresses his interest.

For, 'lo, he is a gentleman of Gusu Lan, possessed of precisely one tray of tea and cups, and a silent, broad inn's courtyard before them, snow dancing down in droves like scavenger birds. He sets down his offerings, kneels by the five-step wooden staircase leading into the gardens, and in his most paternal tone pronounces:

"Your senior Wei serves example of grievous hostilities against rabbit clans. Thank him his lesson before your —" Burial. They are burying this child. He is done for. A foregone conclusion. Not long for this dignified world. "Activities."

[weifinder]

"Lan Zhan is notably dramatic," he says, a cluck of his tongue preceding the declaration before he and his basket descend upon Sizhui with all the grace of a cultivator, and all the apparent ease of a man who made collapsing look charmed. The bounty spills forth in careful tipping, rabbits edging over the basket's lip and extending paws to reach Sizhui's robes, those which find his legs strong beneath trusting their half hop forward far more swiftly.

They're in winter coat, rather than born to the whites; dark eyes mark the difference, and noses twitch, for all the rabbits themselves aren't yet full grown. No need to mention where they're from.

This is a gift for others, and the rabbits gifted too.

"Anyway, my hostilities against peasants are worse, ah?"

A twitch of his lips into a different smile, one jesting and amused. Hunting versus collecting, and here the hunt more metaphor than elsewise. The rabbits too used to humans to indicate anything less than feeding, regularity in handling. Behold. Rabbits spilled into Lan Sizhui's lap, until the full cluster of them nestle there, ears flicking, noses twitching, paws digging as they shift and a few start to perch, considering shifting toward the ground.

[paperbutterflies]

With all the dignity he has been taught for most of his life by the Gusu Lan sect, Sizhui only makes one (1) soft squeak of delight as the soft warm bodies tumble on him. He does reach to pet as soon as the first rabbit is on his lap, and his touch is light and easy and familiar.

His bright eyes dance between Senior Wei and Hanguang-jun, he knows that the latter's slight grumpiness is not in the least because burying Sizhui in rabbits is his to do, but happiness at the warmth and...

Family. Rightness.

Too great to contain.

On the other hand...

"Pheasants?"

There weren't many of those at the Burial Mound.

[downswing]

...oh. Oh, his son is gaining increments of invisibility, beneath the bounty and trembling mounds of fattened, glorious, content rabbits. The shimmer of his smile, the gentle pucker and wrinkling of rabbit noses, as the globes of fur tumble down or escalate him, slim ropes of their claws anchored in his silks.

They slip, tease, drift down, valiantly assail him. Make the purred-out, drawled, gasping and thrumming sounds Lan Wangji associates with pristine contentment. In the midst of perfection, the Yiling Patriarch — wicked, vile, intemperate being — makes himself known through a series of imprecations about Lan Wangji's composure.

Of course he is not dramatic. He is exercising the perfect degree of poise for a man melting before their eyes. He thinks, dripping down to both knees so one of the regal bunnies might plop in his lap and thieve a few moments of succour before attacking Sizhui again — he is comporting himself admirably, all things considered.

"Senior Wei and Jiang Wanyin served frequent architect to their ruin."

...better to excuse details of gore from this conversation.

[weifinder]

"When we stayed with Wen Qing and Wen Ning." Said offhand, the details of a time Sizhui wouldn't have known, that no one would have told Lan Zhan much of. After the fall of Lotus Pier, before the successful transfer of his core, before his first seeming death in the burial grounds.

Nothing to be said, only the moment, here, with the ghosts that contain them paired with the life that fills them overfull.

He smiles, watching his son in all but name, his husband five times over, and the rabbits. They're not all white, but he appreciates that character, the smudged perfection of them resetting in Sizhui's lap. One nibbles at his sleeve, while the rabbit sneaking into Lan Zhan's lap to join the first is a speckled, spotted black and white.

"We're, ah, going to have to take them with us."

... Because he did buy them. This is... interesting.