He starts into laughter, the spill of it no tinkling of bells in some artful clattering array, but a light and leaping thing, loud enough to cut outside the taunt walls of their tent and turn heads that as easily turn away again.

"Lan Zhan! Don't scare me like that! Bathing like dogs, as if dogs bathe."

Dogs might be bathed, but as far as he knows or is concerned, dogs embrace filth and violence. He pulls an outright pout, managing to look insulted surface deep, but his eyes laugh, thinking this is fun at his expense in a way with no stakes. Nothing lurks with teeth that aren't blunted to vegetarian diets or honed to simpler blood needs; Jiang Cheng and his four legged beast of a dog are in their own tent, and Wei Wuxian is safe that company, for now.

Together, with that hovered hand and the heat trapped between them. Together, and oh, but is there work yet to do.

Work for the morrow, winding around the roots of problems that can be seen under daylight's starkness or in the flickers of the firelights around them, in this blood drenched encampment.

"Lan Zhan," he says, quirking his brow. "What should be do with all this water?"