Birds of a feather tumble down, swept and trembled together. Wei Ying, first — and before, there slept in Lan Wangji enough chivalry to fasten his arm, a shield before the wall, his body a weapon against his collision. Then, he suspected Wei Ying for treachery; now, he knows him for a fool, and no more harm can come of quaking the smooth, diminutive brains of a deranged creature. The damage was done with his birthing.
Wei Ying falls like every sack of rice Wangji has seen kitchen servants carry, hard, the body recalling its filling. As if ready, just one heartbeat more, to burst. Isolated, Wangji only pivots aside, leaving Wei Ying to the lion's share of pristine floor, while two women emerge from shared quarters, pinked and hasty of breath, exuding the disturbed indolence of bedfellows stirred before their time.
Lan Wangji blinks long intent, takes their measure — one of them, lean and sweet and seemingly tame, meets his eye with the lift of her brow. Wafting behind her retreat: thickened lavender.
Pushing upright, Lan Wangji straightens, knelt in obedient wait until Wei Ying... recovers from his coma of drunken laughter enough to bear questions, "What... manner of house of this?"
It seems to Wangji, from time to time, though the crone Tamaiu slithers down to survey him, and trace the length of her claws over his temples, raking his hair, and she is kind to him, gives him milk and offers wine, and he takes the one but would spit out the other — this is no ordinary house of encounters, where women of the softened arts merely approach their patrons to whisper poetry, dally in song or tease the zither to please the ear. There is... the possibility of deeper ill repute than Lan Wangji cares to contemplate, with his bed earth-bound and his bathing water shared, his virtue suffocated.
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Wei Ying falls like every sack of rice Wangji has seen kitchen servants carry, hard, the body recalling its filling. As if ready, just one heartbeat more, to burst. Isolated, Wangji only pivots aside, leaving Wei Ying to the lion's share of pristine floor, while two women emerge from shared quarters, pinked and hasty of breath, exuding the disturbed indolence of bedfellows stirred before their time.
Lan Wangji blinks long intent, takes their measure — one of them, lean and sweet and seemingly tame, meets his eye with the lift of her brow. Wafting behind her retreat: thickened lavender.
Pushing upright, Lan Wangji straightens, knelt in obedient wait until Wei Ying... recovers from his coma of drunken laughter enough to bear questions, "What... manner of house of this?"
It seems to Wangji, from time to time, though the crone Tamaiu slithers down to survey him, and trace the length of her claws over his temples, raking his hair, and she is kind to him, gives him milk and offers wine, and he takes the one but would spit out the other — this is no ordinary house of encounters, where women of the softened arts merely approach their patrons to whisper poetry, dally in song or tease the zither to please the ear. There is... the possibility of deeper ill repute than Lan Wangji cares to contemplate, with his bed earth-bound and his bathing water shared, his virtue suffocated.