( The rest fall away before the weight of a hand on his shoulder, the fingers curled in, the collapse of Lan Zhan in the degrees that Wei Wuxian has so often visited himself. The core of him, that which has nothing to do with the cultivation their culture has venerated, aches to see him so; if the anger were not cold in his veins, the concern would more easily rise to surface.
It is fettered, now, as he had been. Still, his arm circles his husband's waist, drawing lines of red against blue and white, beautiful collapse they'd both make into the craven restlessness of the floor.
Yet it bears them on, and Wei Wuxian pulls his tumbled, chewed, god-bitten husband close, and says only what he means, stripped of the charismatic caring that defines his steps through the world. )
It's you, my brother, and Qing-jie who delight in I told you sos.
( Before he is the unflinching resistance that brings them upward, birthed out of the darkness in their bleeding sacrifice and venerated in the drops of life they leave scattered behind them, the exhaustion that he refuses to show, the strength he refuses to give up in its pretense. Not for each stumble, not for the thirst that trembles within him, not for the concern that blooms like a midnight flower in the wake of their exit, not the certainty of his own skills, not the qi he sends, for once, into Lan Zhan on their way home, to any place that is not here. No, not with his targeted questing, coaxing to slowing and stopping any lingering bleeds, singing to the body in the way he largely hasn't tried for any since Alem, and two men are tired and bloodied and sweaty and weary at the edge of the rooms he keeps near the senator's estate he pays ceremonial guard at whim, and it is to the privacy of a small offshoot of the bathing rooms that he brings them, waters cool, the offense in their nature to not be cold enough, not be hot enough, not be enough.
Good enough for bathing, and for in the dripping exhaustion that follows, the lullaby that leaves his lips, a song to send Lan Zhan asleep, before Wei Wuxian goes tumbling after, curled up by his side, destined for the pained awakenings of cricked necks and poor sleeping posture.
A problem for later. For now, the city feeding the death of a god rumbles around them in the mixture of living and dead, and they drift onward into the darkness that lurks beyond dreams. )
no subject
( The rest fall away before the weight of a hand on his shoulder, the fingers curled in, the collapse of Lan Zhan in the degrees that Wei Wuxian has so often visited himself. The core of him, that which has nothing to do with the cultivation their culture has venerated, aches to see him so; if the anger were not cold in his veins, the concern would more easily rise to surface.
It is fettered, now, as he had been. Still, his arm circles his husband's waist, drawing lines of red against blue and white, beautiful collapse they'd both make into the craven restlessness of the floor.
Yet it bears them on, and Wei Wuxian pulls his tumbled, chewed, god-bitten husband close, and says only what he means, stripped of the charismatic caring that defines his steps through the world. )
It's you, my brother, and Qing-jie who delight in I told you sos.
( Before he is the unflinching resistance that brings them upward, birthed out of the darkness in their bleeding sacrifice and venerated in the drops of life they leave scattered behind them, the exhaustion that he refuses to show, the strength he refuses to give up in its pretense. Not for each stumble, not for the thirst that trembles within him, not for the concern that blooms like a midnight flower in the wake of their exit, not the certainty of his own skills, not the qi he sends, for once, into Lan Zhan on their way home, to any place that is not here. No, not with his targeted questing, coaxing to slowing and stopping any lingering bleeds, singing to the body in the way he largely hasn't tried for any since Alem, and two men are tired and bloodied and sweaty and weary at the edge of the rooms he keeps near the senator's estate he pays ceremonial guard at whim, and it is to the privacy of a small offshoot of the bathing rooms that he brings them, waters cool, the offense in their nature to not be cold enough, not be hot enough, not be enough.
Good enough for bathing, and for in the dripping exhaustion that follows, the lullaby that leaves his lips, a song to send Lan Zhan asleep, before Wei Wuxian goes tumbling after, curled up by his side, destined for the pained awakenings of cricked necks and poor sleeping posture.
A problem for later. For now, the city feeding the death of a god rumbles around them in the mixture of living and dead, and they drift onward into the darkness that lurks beyond dreams. )