Wei Wuxian doesn't examine that he feels soothed, at the press of lips to his head in a far more likely consuming than the playful pretense moments earlier. Nor is he any less soothed by the distaste on Lan Zhan's face as he pulls away, looming impossibly large over him, features distorted by sheer size, a mountain that peers down upon the climber of its feet. Heavy as Mount Tai, they both have lived and will live, and Lan Zhan is the weight of that in politics divorced from this world, but aptly relevant on their own.
He does not anticipate the pull to chest, the tucking away against his husband's skin, or close enough to it that the warmth of him is a succor of its own. Wei Wuxian huddles himself small and contained, surrounded in soft whites of filtered light through fabric, of moments caught in silent blizzard, isolated in the fringes of a deadly storm.
He closes his eyes, listens to the improbably heady sound of an earthquake, steady and rolling, underneath his feet, his chest, his belly. Lan Zhan's heartbeat is a dragon coiling and shifting in the earth of his flesh, and Wei Wuxian tucks closer, listening. A pulsing sound, the paired thumps and the inhalation that lifts him up with the flesh and bone and connective tissues of Lan Zhan's body, with the encasing silks and the indelible vivacity of life that surrounds him, lowers in the next seconds with an exhalation. He sits next to a cacophony of noises he usually hears only when they rest at night, Lan Zhan slumbering, hands over chest, on his back and insensate to the world around them. Moments where Wei Wuxian steals closer, tucks himself in close, and closes his eyes to the reassurance of a heartbeat, a breath, not his own.
No darkness consumes as much as one in silence. He knows that, knows the sound of his own heart, his own breath, his own relentless mind far too well. Lan Zhan is a balm he cannot articulate, if even he tried.
"I would not," he says, a beat late, toad eyes opening in their multitude of lids, resolving the image of glacial safety he's ensconced in courtesy of his soulmate, his husband, his partner. He tucks his chin down even lower, resting on feet and toes pulled into neat lines, lulled by the tidal ebb and flow of Lan Zhan's inhalations. "I can only stand four shichen in a handsome shape. Or an especially cute one. Why couldn't she have cursed me into a rabbit? You'd like that better, I'd like that better, I could still fit in your robes..."
The heavy, theatrical sigh of a man of Lan Zhan's size, coming from the diminutive form of the toad hunkered down at his chest. How unfair, and his mind already turns, with his husband a man of action and attentive to the moment, to what he'd heard from the young woman before her chains had been pulled tight, her terrible laughter pulled into the harsh light of day and dishonour and injustice.
They have more to fight against here, he knows it.
"She said they don't move the dead. Bitter, against the accusations the village levels at the women of the waters."
no subject
Wei Wuxian doesn't examine that he feels soothed, at the press of lips to his head in a far more likely consuming than the playful pretense moments earlier. Nor is he any less soothed by the distaste on Lan Zhan's face as he pulls away, looming impossibly large over him, features distorted by sheer size, a mountain that peers down upon the climber of its feet. Heavy as Mount Tai, they both have lived and will live, and Lan Zhan is the weight of that in politics divorced from this world, but aptly relevant on their own.
He does not anticipate the pull to chest, the tucking away against his husband's skin, or close enough to it that the warmth of him is a succor of its own. Wei Wuxian huddles himself small and contained, surrounded in soft whites of filtered light through fabric, of moments caught in silent blizzard, isolated in the fringes of a deadly storm.
He closes his eyes, listens to the improbably heady sound of an earthquake, steady and rolling, underneath his feet, his chest, his belly. Lan Zhan's heartbeat is a dragon coiling and shifting in the earth of his flesh, and Wei Wuxian tucks closer, listening. A pulsing sound, the paired thumps and the inhalation that lifts him up with the flesh and bone and connective tissues of Lan Zhan's body, with the encasing silks and the indelible vivacity of life that surrounds him, lowers in the next seconds with an exhalation. He sits next to a cacophony of noises he usually hears only when they rest at night, Lan Zhan slumbering, hands over chest, on his back and insensate to the world around them. Moments where Wei Wuxian steals closer, tucks himself in close, and closes his eyes to the reassurance of a heartbeat, a breath, not his own.
No darkness consumes as much as one in silence. He knows that, knows the sound of his own heart, his own breath, his own relentless mind far too well. Lan Zhan is a balm he cannot articulate, if even he tried.
"I would not," he says, a beat late, toad eyes opening in their multitude of lids, resolving the image of glacial safety he's ensconced in courtesy of his soulmate, his husband, his partner. He tucks his chin down even lower, resting on feet and toes pulled into neat lines, lulled by the tidal ebb and flow of Lan Zhan's inhalations. "I can only stand four shichen in a handsome shape. Or an especially cute one. Why couldn't she have cursed me into a rabbit? You'd like that better, I'd like that better, I could still fit in your robes..."
The heavy, theatrical sigh of a man of Lan Zhan's size, coming from the diminutive form of the toad hunkered down at his chest. How unfair, and his mind already turns, with his husband a man of action and attentive to the moment, to what he'd heard from the young woman before her chains had been pulled tight, her terrible laughter pulled into the harsh light of day and dishonour and injustice.
They have more to fight against here, he knows it.
"She said they don't move the dead. Bitter, against the accusations the village levels at the women of the waters."