( Step in step, partnered in movement, less intent. Wei Wuxian moves through the jungle as a predator might, but his thoughts, his concerns, aren't for the hunt his husband engages: aren't for the serpent whose grace is courted by these versions of sacrifices, these listed claims of merit and worth.
He's not a man concerned with others asking after his worth. So many years to arrive back here, where he finds himself indelible, where he is self-filling, self-fulfilling, and allows hope and better will to blossom twined with the grounded awareness that people will be people.
So he laughs, the low and rolling chuckle birthed from his diaphragm, shaking his head as he takes his husband's arm in hand, tugging just so. Just this much, just this request for Lan Zhan's attention. )
Ours to know. Ours to embrace, or see made better. You're half of me, side by side, step by step. Stumbling and otherwise, Lan Zhan, seen if not always understood.
( His gaze flits to the dark, the gaps between leaves and greater things, and he smiles, softened, eyes sharp. )
We don't beseech gods or devils alike to know what we are. Lan Zhan, do you know your worth?
( They who don't seek the trappings of glory, unless they do. They who don't seek to rule, but to lead, by example and decision. Or do they? Wei Wuxian knows himself, knows he steps into roles to guide and protect, but it isn't his calling, isn't his desire to sink into the well of any one power and rise from it, swollen, splitting at the edges of his skin. He is a man of intimacies and depths, who gives, and gives, and negotiates what taking means, day to day. Moment to moment.
There is a sadness that comes in any soul which gives of itself too wholly, too completely, without the regard for itself that each living essence should hold. Wei Wuxian has burned bright, has burned as embers, carried in the ashes of his heart the coals of his soul. He has lit fires, and he has burned down fortresses, and he has banked and simmered and flowed as water does, relentless. He has been air that plays against skin, kisses that brush against flushed skin and steal away again, relief and promise and seduction without a resolution to whom, to what, he might lead.
He might have learned and earned a different kind of ruthlessness than what lies under the darkness of his eyes, had he been an ambitious man in the ways people had suspected, had feared. Sometimes he wonders, what did Lan Zhan finally find when he stepped into the role of chief cultivator? Did he find, at least, his avenue to influencing the world? On his own merits, on his own path, support lent still to the trembling foundations of his brother's spirit, to his clan at large, but more than, not limited, not hemmed into only their expectations? Their clemency of constraint? )
no subject
( Step in step, partnered in movement, less intent. Wei Wuxian moves through the jungle as a predator might, but his thoughts, his concerns, aren't for the hunt his husband engages: aren't for the serpent whose grace is courted by these versions of sacrifices, these listed claims of merit and worth.
He's not a man concerned with others asking after his worth. So many years to arrive back here, where he finds himself indelible, where he is self-filling, self-fulfilling, and allows hope and better will to blossom twined with the grounded awareness that people will be people.
So he laughs, the low and rolling chuckle birthed from his diaphragm, shaking his head as he takes his husband's arm in hand, tugging just so. Just this much, just this request for Lan Zhan's attention. )
Ours to know. Ours to embrace, or see made better. You're half of me, side by side, step by step. Stumbling and otherwise, Lan Zhan, seen if not always understood.
( His gaze flits to the dark, the gaps between leaves and greater things, and he smiles, softened, eyes sharp. )
We don't beseech gods or devils alike to know what we are. Lan Zhan, do you know your worth?
( They who don't seek the trappings of glory, unless they do. They who don't seek to rule, but to lead, by example and decision. Or do they? Wei Wuxian knows himself, knows he steps into roles to guide and protect, but it isn't his calling, isn't his desire to sink into the well of any one power and rise from it, swollen, splitting at the edges of his skin. He is a man of intimacies and depths, who gives, and gives, and negotiates what taking means, day to day. Moment to moment.
There is a sadness that comes in any soul which gives of itself too wholly, too completely, without the regard for itself that each living essence should hold. Wei Wuxian has burned bright, has burned as embers, carried in the ashes of his heart the coals of his soul. He has lit fires, and he has burned down fortresses, and he has banked and simmered and flowed as water does, relentless. He has been air that plays against skin, kisses that brush against flushed skin and steal away again, relief and promise and seduction without a resolution to whom, to what, he might lead.
He might have learned and earned a different kind of ruthlessness than what lies under the darkness of his eyes, had he been an ambitious man in the ways people had suspected, had feared. Sometimes he wonders, what did Lan Zhan finally find when he stepped into the role of chief cultivator? Did he find, at least, his avenue to influencing the world? On his own merits, on his own path, support lent still to the trembling foundations of his brother's spirit, to his clan at large, but more than, not limited, not hemmed into only their expectations? Their clemency of constraint? )