Chapter Text
Lan Wangji first knows something is wrong when, in the middle of the day, his older brother fetches him from the library.
Lan Xichen is strangely unsmiling when he appears, a strained tension drawing unfamiliar lines in his face. It’s an expression that Lan Wangji has only seen before in fraught circumstances.
“Xiongzhang,” he says quietly as he follows Lan Xichen across the main courtyard, past two pavilions; his brother is evidently directing them to the lanshi. “Has something happened?”
At this, Lan Xichen attempts a smile over his shoulder, half in profile. It is the opposite of comforting. “It’s nothing to worry about, Wangji. We have known, for some time, that this day would inevitably arrive, given your age.”
What day? Lan Wangji wonders, dread pitting in his stomach. He is already twenty years old. What does his age have to do with anything?
“I was even younger than you when I received my first one,” Lan Xichen continues, his tone lightening as they approach the lanshi, and then they’re entering the hall.
Lan Wangji glances around at the congregated party, all seated in waiting, which includes his shufu and nearly thirty of his sect elders. They all watch Lan Wangji’s entry with a grimness that does little to dispel the tension knotting in Lan Wangji by the second.
“Wangji,” his shufu says from the head of the room. “You’ve come. Please, sit.”
Lan Wangji quietly does, tucking Bichen by his side and folding his hands in his lap.
Lan Qiren wastes no time on suspense, which is something of a relief. “A proposal letter has arrived from the YunmengJiang sect. Jiang-zongzhu has proposed a courtship of marriage with Wangji, and subsequently an alliance between our two sects.”
Lan Wangji feels his stomach swoop as though the ground’s given way beneath him. A ringing sound hollows out in his ears as the elders around him begin to mutter darkly.
He has dreaded this day since his childhood, but he never imagined it would come so soon, or with such little warning. The YunmengJiang sect? Which of his children could Jiang Fengmian possibly have in mind for a match with Lan Wangji? The idea of being betrothed to Jiang Wanyin makes his nausea curl even tighter, pressing against his throat. Jiang Yanli, nearly moreso. Lan Wangji had encountered the Jiang siblings during lectures the previous summer, when several sects sent disciples to study in the Cloud Recesses, and he is familiar enough with them to know neither would be an ideal match.
That summer...that same summer, he had met…
Lan Wangji opens his mouth to speak, and no sound comes out.
Lan Qiren’s expression blackens as he scans over the lines of the letter, his fingers crumpling the paper. When he does speak, it’s with apparent difficulty. “Jiang-zongzhu has put forth the YunmengJiang’s first disciple Wei Wuxian as a suitor.”
Lan Wangji’s jaw rehinges with an audible click. All at once, the elders begin to vocally protest, shouting down Lan Qiren as though he himself had made the suggestion.
Wei Ying. The sick feeling suddenly eases, subsumed by a slow-mounting shock.
“An alliance with the Jiang sect would be advantageous,” Lan Xichen is saying mildly through the clamor, “in resisting the growing influence of the Wen sect.”
“Alliance?” one of the other elders scoffs with a shimmering scorn. “What alliance? Wei Ying is the son of a servant and a myrmidon. You all have heard what they say about him.” A ripple of assent murmurs through the congregated party. Lan Wangji’s fists slowly tighten in his lap. “It would be a disgrace!”
Nobody has taken a moment to ask Lan Wangji his thoughts. No one has even spared him a glance. They’re all arguing in earnest now, breaking several sect rules to do so, a furious chattering of noise. It reminds Lan Wangji of a childhood memory at the beach, when he’d first seen a flock of bickering seagulls in the surf.
“Whatever his bloodline, Wei Wuxian is no mere servant,” Lan Xichen’s voice cuts through the babble, steady and unmistakably clear. “The Jiangs take him as family and as their head disciple. His potential as a cultivator is also considerable.”
“Taking him as family is no surprise,” one of the other elders mutters, “if the rumors are to be believed.”
Another ominous mumble sweeps through them like a rank wind. Lan Qiren has not said another word the entire time, the line of his jaw tight and his brow dark.
“I say let them pass the boy off to whoever is gullible enough to have him,” the first elder, Lan Qingsheng, says derisively. “ Pah. The audacity to proposition Wangji, when Wei Wuxian is no better than a common wh —”
Lan Qiren’s head snaps around at this, his nostrils flaring, and the elder falls silent at once, having the grace to look a little sheepish. The other seniors have gone quiet as well, visibly abashed after this outburst.
The ringing in Lan Wangji’s ears grows louder, a white whine of sound.
Wei Ying, passed off to whoever will take him. Stifling his cultivation and wit to act as a servant for whoever will have him, whoever will touch him. Wei Ying, his eyes warm like polished riverbed stones catching the sun, the scrunch of his nose when he laughs; hot-headed and arrogant and brash, too smart for his own good, for his own safety, a reckoning with a sword or a bow in his hand, Wei Ying.
Lan Wangji stands before he’s aware of the movement. Every head in the room swivels to him, astonishment clear in their faces. The surprise from his shufu and xiongzhang is tangible. As a general rule, he never speaks at gatherings like this. To go as far as standing is the closest he’s ever come to being disruptive.
“Respond to the Jiangs’ proposal,” Lan Wangji says. His voice does not waver, even though everything inside him feels like it’s vibrating in place. “And tell them Lan Wangji will have Wei Wuxian of YunmengJiang.”
Silence falls like a ringing slap to the cheek.
And then pandemonium ensues.
◈ ◈ ◈
The moment he says it — the moment he leaves the lanshi with the elders’ outrage buzzing in his wake like a swarm of hornets — Lan Wangji also has to question his own decision, his own clarity of mind. He does not even like Wei Wuxian. He hardly tolerates him, as a general rule.
He had simply stepped in as — a magnanimous gesture, to protect him from some worse fate. Better to pair him with Lan Wangji, who will not lay an untoward finger on him; who won’t stifle his burgeoning cultivation and swordsmanship, who won’t subject him to a lifetime of servitude. Wei Wuxian would do the same for him if their roles were reversed, would he not? They have never been friends, but they have fought together, hunted together, studied together.
In his time at the Cloud Recesses, Wei Wuxian had trailed around after Lan Wangji like a noisy shadow, and in spite of his best efforts, Lan Wangji had grown accustomed to it, to his unruly and unremitting chatter and his frequent misbehavior. Even to his beauty, which Wei Wuxian wielded like any of his other weapons: flashing, incisive strikes unbeholden to anything resembling seriousness. Entirely inescapable.
Wouldn’t the experience of being married to him be just the same? Annoying, but weatherable?
There’s also the small, not-insignificant fact that each time Lan Wangji pictures him with someone else — some unfamiliar, older man stripping Wei Wuxian’s clothes off and claiming him — a sour taste rises in his throat, coating the roof of his mouth. Certainly no one deserves that treatment. Certainly that is the reason for — for why he…
“Wangji,” Lan Qingsheng interjects, rupturing the train of thought. Lan Wangji turns toward the voice, still somewhat distracted. Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen stand just behind the other elder, their arms clasped behind their back as they watch the exchange impassively.
“I beg you to reconsider,” Lan Qingsheng continues, windless from speed-walking to catch up with him. “Whatever sense of obligation you feel to pursue this alliance, please forget it. There will be other and better-fitted partnerships to be made.”
“There is no reason to refuse,” Lan Wangji says quietly. “The YunmengJiang is a friend to the GusuLan. Let us not poison the well by rejecting them.”
“Wangji,” Lan Qingsheng begs again, going paler. “Think twice about what you’re doing. You could marry any suitor in the four great sects and none would refuse you. You do not have to settle for your first proposal; at least consider all other options.”
For his entire life, Lan Wangji thinks, his marriageability has been leveraged like a stone in a game of go. He had always known, growing up, that whatever partner he ended up with, it would not be of his choosing or his volition. Accepting Wei Wuxian, as little as they get along, feels like a reclamation of something lost. Of something his mother, too, had lost.
“Qianbei,” his xiongzhang interrupts, not rudely. (Never rudely.) “Wangji has consented to the proposal. The benefits of such an alliance far outweigh whatever concerns one may have about Wei Wuxian’s character. He is young and unrestrained, as many boys are in their teenage years, but he will learn our ways in time.”
His shufu’s mouth is pursed with unhappiness at Lan Xichen’s side, his brows low over his eyes, but he does not counter Lan Xichen’s appeal to reason. Perhaps, in spite of his personal antipathy toward Wei Wuxian, he too sees the unarguable benefits to such an arrangement. In any case, he will not openly contradict Lan Wangji’s decision in front of one of the other elders. Perhaps he has a private rebuke prepared for later.
Lan Qingsheng looks back and forth between the three of them with growing, baffled despair.
“That boy will bring us to destruction,” Lan Qingsheng proclaims in a shaking voice, and what he says next lingers with Lan Wangji for the rest of the week. “Mark my words, Wangji. Wei Wuxian will ruin you.”
◈ ◈ ◈
The weeks leading up to the wedding are a blur, time skipping too quickly and then slowing with agonizing torpor.
Lan Wangji’s sect takes care of the details, brisk and characteristically without fanfare; the exchange of family gifts, the letters of betrothal, the most fortuitous day calculated and selected. Lan Wangji feels as though it’s a marriage happening to someone else, for how little he’s involved in the logistics. And each day that creeps closer, he thinks more and more of Wei Ying, the last time they’d parted in Moling for a night-hunt, on civil terms but certainly not overwarm.
Surely Wei Wuxian cannot be amenable to this arrangement, given how much he and Lan Wangji had butted heads when they’d studied together. Given how much he values his own freedom, unbound by anyone or anything. He certainly values being unbound by the GusuLan’s disciplines and Lan Wangji’s reinforcement of them.
For Lan Wangji, who since his childhood has been close to no one except his xiongzhang, the concept of sharing his household with a stranger has always been nothing short of horrifying. Although marriage to a man in the gentries is not out of the question, based on some political alliances, it has also always been his impression by his sect that he would be forced to marry a woman. There is always the question of heirs to consider, and even within male pairings, a sexless union is common, even expected, under the assumption that the arrangement is purely political and usually not preferable. With this knowledge, as he had grown older, Lan Wangji had come to dread the looming expectation that he would partake in...more carnal acts with a wife, as is to be expected with marital duties. Until now, the thought of that intimacy with an arranged live-in partner has been as alien to him as it is nauseating.
So, yes, since he was a child, since he had first become aware of his own...alienating effect on others, Lan Wangji has long resigned himself to a loveless marriage. He would have even settled for a companionate one, so long as his partner was agreeable and unbothersome and let him have his own space.
He could not have even begun to predict Wei Wuxian, who is disagreeable and incredibly bothersome and has seemingly never encountered the concept of personal space in his life.
And yet. In spite of these facts Lan Wangji knows to be true, when he thinks of a life with Wei Wuxian, he cannot help but feel the tiniest whisper of relief. Of hope.
◈ ◈ ◈
The actual wedding day, when it does eventually arrive, transpires just as quickly and just as surreally.
The preparations begin at dawn, an aromatic bath with pomelo leaves and Lan Wangji’s hair washed, oiled, perfumed; a roomy silence as his xiongzhang’s fingers comb through the drying strands. Layers upon layers of cinnabar-red silk and brocade; his mother’s jade hairpin, crane-shaped, tucked snug underneath one of his braidings. The arrival of the bridal sedan, ceremonious and strangely silent, flocked by a violet wave of Jiang disciples. The tea ceremony, four empty spaces and his shufu, frowning with tension and his mouth puckered; Jiang Fengmian, the only smile in the room, and Yu Ziyuan, scowling at Wei Wuxian as though he’s a blight. Throughout the ceremony, Lan Wangji can feel the presence of his xiongzhang, Jiang Wanyin and Jiang Yanli behind them, whose expressions Lan Wangji cannot see, but he hears low sniffles that he thinks might be Wei Wuxian’s sister crying softly.
After the tea-pouring are his and Wei Wuxian’s bows, to the heavens and earth and everyone who has come before, and then to each other. The locks of their hair, snipped and knotted and tucked away. The Lan handfasting ceremony, Lan Wangji’s ribbon tied tightly around Wei Wuxian’s wrist. Twelve gifts, and then the banquet. Out of respect to their visitors, his sect had included meat-based dishes prepared from Caiyi Town and one of the neighboring villages. It consists of mostly seafood like shark’s fin soup, lobster, abalone and sea cucumber, but also roast duck, chicken and a suckling pig. Lan Wangji finds himself unable to touch any of it, too tense to stomach anything.
He and Wei Wuxian are then presented with a cup of sweet wine, the effects of which Lan Wangji immediately disperses with his core. Lan Wangji watches the cup vanish beneath Wei Wuxian’s red veil, knocked back in one swallow and reemerging empty. Since he first stepped out of the sedan, Wei Wuxian’s face has been concealed by the cloth, impossible to read through body language alone. Lan Wangji has never been near Wei Wuxian when he has not talked his way through something, teased and laughed and shouted and whined and flirted, but his silence throughout the processions is resolute, an unbreached wall. Lan Wangji doesn’t attempt to speak to him throughout the entire wedding; how can he? With how quickly the rites proceed, there’s hardly the opportunity to catch a glimpse of him, let alone attempt conversation.
Toward the end of the banquet, Wei Wuxian vanishes for half a shi, escorted somewhere by the GusuLan’s two physicians for reasons Lan Wangji is afraid to contemplate. Upon his return, the two of them are escorted to the bridal chamber by their families on either side. As they walk alongside each other, Lan Wangji notices that Wei Wuxian has his hand clasped tightly with Jiang Yanli’s, who’s begun to cry again. In another sect, Lan Wangji and his new husband might be subjected to light-hearted teasing about the eventful night ahead of them, but the silence from his shufu and his xiongzhang is like mountain fog, thick and impenetrable, and the Jiangs seem equally disinclined to lighten the mood.
When they finally approach the guesthouse, Jiang Yanli turns and grips Wei Wuxian tightly around the shoulders, her face buried in his neck as she continues to sob. Lan Wangji hears Wei Wuxian soothing her, a gentle snatch of “Hao le hao le, we did our crying earlier, shijie, don’t be sad for me.”
Yu Ziyuan observes her daughter’s tears with a darkening scowl, striking an uncanny resemblance to her son, while Jiang Fengmian gently guides Jiang Yanli away by the shoulders and wishes Wei Wuxian well.
Like his mother, Jiang Wanyin stands stiffly watching off to the side, his stinging black gaze pinned on Lan Wangji with startling vitriol. As though it’s Lan Wangji personally prying Wei Wuxian from his sister’s arms and hauling him away.
He might as well be, Lan Wangji thinks, and then the two of them are alone for the first time, crossing the threshold of the guesthouse together, into their new life.
Their bridal chamber is drenched in draperies of red and gold, a pair of long feng candles burning near the marital bed. The covers and pillows have been scattered with dried fruits and nuts, of which Lan Wangji can pick out persimmons, red dates, longans.
And Wei Wuxian is...moving toward the bed now, to seat himself there as he is supposed to, turning his shrouded face toward Lan Wangji to bring the evening to an inevitable conclusion.
For a moment, as Lan Wangji approaches him, he imagines for a wild moment that he’s married someone who is not Wei Wuxian at all. That he’ll lift the bridal veil, and a stranger’s face will peer back at him.
There’s a fine tremor in Lan Wangji’s hands as he lifts the covering, and then he’s staring at Wei Wuxian for the first time in months, nearly a year. For a moment, they do nothing but that — drinking each other in, the sheer strangeness of this reunion after so long apart.
There is one yawning, endless moment in which Wei Wuxian’s uncertainty is clear, his trepidation and misgivings laid bare in the wideness of his eyes, the blood-drain from his face. Then something shifts, and Wei Wuxian cracks a smile and says, with almost convincing levity, “Hi, Lan Zhan.”
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji responds when he finds his voice, then appraises him more closely, absorbing the details of him that have faded in their time apart. Wei Wuxian is always handsome, disarmingly so, but his beauty today is nearly heart-stopping. His cheeks have been pinked with rouge, the devastating effect of his bright eyes starkened by kohl and his lips painted a shade darker.
“Look at what they’ve put me in,” Wei Wuxian complains good-naturedly, pinching at a heavy red sleeve encrusted with gold lace. Oh, Lan Wangji realizes with a startling lurch. He’s missed him. Impossibly. The tension that’s coiled itself tighter and tighter in Lan Wangji for weeks, throughout the events of the day, loosens at the sound of his voice, a buoyant relief rising in him like hot air. Wei Ying.
“I look ridiculous,” Wei Wuxian is saying, then gives a distorted pout as he pinches at one of his own ruddied cheeks.
“No,” Lan Wangji disagrees, too abruptly, enough so that Wei Wuxian looks at him in surprise. The fierce, deep awkwardness that Lan Wangji feels is nearly paralytic, rendering him clumsy. He has never in his life felt so at sea. But. Wei Wuxian looks lovely. Lovelier than anyone Lan Wangji has ever met. Shouldn’t someone tell him so?
Wei Wuxian leans back on his hands into the mattress, his legs falling apart as he tilts his head at Lan Wangji. His gaze slides over Lan Wangji like the stroke of a hand, up and then down. “Lan Zhan, you look so handsome! I think of the two of us, you make for the prettier bride.”
“Ridiculous,” Lan Wangji mutters.
“I bet you never thought you’d end up like this, huh,” Wei Wuxian says, rocking one of his knees back and forth. “I couldn’t believe it when they told me!”
This exchange is...easier. Commiserating, acknowledging the strangeness of it all, across all of these weeks of anticipation, with so many involved parties pulling their strings. Lan Wangji feels himself relax further.
“It has been strange,” Lan Wangji says, more easily than before. “Fast.”
“So fast,” Wei Wuxian agrees emphatically. He sits up straighter and scoots across the bed so he’s closer to Lan Wangji. “They told me I was set to marry you — imagine my reaction, Lan Zhan, ha! — and the next thing I know, all of these gifts and letters start showing up at Lotus Pier, good heavens, it was a whole ordeal.”
“Wei Ying likes attention,” Lan Wangji points out.
“Well, yeah,” Wei Wuxian says, unrepentant, then screws up his face. “But not all of that. Not all of that...romantic, formal wedding stuff, aiyo, it was all too much to bear.”
Lan Wangji hums his agreement.
A fiercely awkward silence settles between them. Lan Wangji is unaccustomed to silence where Wei Wuxian is involved, and it is not within his nature to be the one to break it.
“So, uh,” Wei Wuxian says at last, biting his lip. “Is now the part where we…”
Lan Wangji stares.
“You know,” says Wei Wuxian. He makes a vague and meaningless hand gesture. “Aren’t we expected to…”
Yes, they’re expected to...most will have a strong idea of what they’re doing right now, and it does not involve conversation.
They stare at each other for another excruciating, unending moment. Then quickly, nearly tripping, Wei Wuxian stands from the bed and starts to fumble with his robes in jerky movements, no longer meeting Lan Wangji’s gaze. The material is heavy enough that he struggles with it, but Lan Wangji feels too frozen in place to reach out and help as he ought to.
“I sort of figured that I would be the one to,” Wei Wuxian rambles as the expensive red silks crumple to the floor, far more crudely than they should be handled. “You know, it’s — it’s not supposed to hurt all that bad, if it’s — if we — if you —”
Stripped to his inner robe, Wei Wuxian sits on the bed with a hard thunk and looks anywhere but Lan Wangji. Lan Wangji still hasn’t moved. He’s hardly blinked since Wei Wuxian started undressing. His hands hang wooden at his sides. He’s still standing by the bed, fully dressed in each of his layers.
Lan Wangji turns, for just a moment, to assess what’s been left for them by the bedside. Various unmarked oils, mostly. He is only vaguely familiar with visual references of intercourse with a man, although the mechanics seem intuitive enough. A few weeks before his wedding, he had been perfunctorily walked through the expectations of the marital bed by his xiongzhang, but it had been such a mortifying exchange that he’d spent most of that educational session deafening himself by will, a high droning sound in his ears that drowned out Lan Xichen’s uncomfortable instruction.
Lan Wangji turns back toward the bed, where Wei Wuxian has repositioned himself to lie on his stomach, his knees tucked underneath him and his hips tilted slightly up as though in invitation. His hair, slung over his shoulder, is shiny and soft with perfumed oil, unbound now from its elaborate styling and pinnings. He had turned over casually enough onto his front, but Lan Wangji can see that his fingers are flexing in and out of the covers, a nervous tic.
In those earlier days, there had been...lapses, lapses which Lan Wangji is ashamed to admit to, in which he’d envisioned something similar to this. Claiming Wei Wuxian by force, holding him down and taking him apart until he broke, until he cried with misery. He’d thought it was anger toward Wei Wuxian’s misbehavior before he realized it was something else entirely.
But presented with the actuality of it, he...those thoughts had only been…
He doesn’t want Wei Ying to fear him.
“They, um, they gave me this,” Wei Wuxian says into Lan Wangji’s long silence, and holds up something he’d apparently been keeping tucked in a pocket. “They said it would help make it...easier.”
Lan Wangji doesn’t recognize the medicine, but he can guess its properties all too well. Someone, likely one of the GusuLan’s physicians, had given him an aphrodisiac. Wei Wuxian hadn’t taken it. Not yet, at least. Strangely, it feels like a relief. It also feels like an indication of Wei Wuxian’s reluctance.
For the first time, Lan Wangji notices that the sheer silk of Wei Wuxian’s inner robe clings wetly to the insides of his thighs. Someone must have...prepared him, directly before this. Or they had directed Wei Wuxian how to do it himself. Lan Wangji can feel his heartbeat in his mouth, in the tips of his fingers.
When Wei Wuxian had studied at the Cloud Recesses, they had been equals — if not in status, then in everything else. Wei Wuxian had matched him blow for blow in fights, kept pace with him on night hunts; had far outpaced him in wit. Within the first few days of knowing him, Lan Wangji had realized, with no shortage of indignation at the time, that Wei Wuxian was smarter than him. He was smarter than everyone, and he knew it, and he wore that knowledge with a breezy assuredness; cocky with no patronization. He didn’t believe he was better than everyone else by some inherent stake to a claim. Not like Jin Zixuan, not like Wen Chao, or even like Jiang Wanyin. He was like no one Lan Wangji had ever met, growing up in the gentries.
To have Wei Wuxian brought to him like this as a servant, like — like cattle trotted out for breeding — Lan Wangji feels something in his stomach twist unpleasantly, close to nausea.
“Enough,” Lan Wangji says. His voice is so quiet, so rough that he hardly recognizes it. “There will be no...need for that, tonight.”
Wei Wuxian cranes his head to blink at him in surprise. Then he straightens up, propping himself up on the bed with his hands and twisting to face Lan Wangji. “But we have to. Those are the rules. Aren’t they? That we have to…” Wei Wuxian glances away, gnawing on his lower lip and his cheeks pinking. So, not as entirely shameless as believed.
Wei Wuxian resumes, a little unsteadily, “Consummate, to legitimize the marriage.”
“It will not be necessary,” Lan Wangji says again. Their marriage has been legitimized in every way that matters to his sect traditions. He will not impose such an act on Wei Wuxian when he is unwilling.
Wei Wuxian watches him uncertainly for another moment, pinching his lower lip between his fingers and worrying it against his teeth. He looks so soft like this, bare and gold-spun by candlelight, his hair loose over his shoulders and his inner robe peeking open. Lan Wangji has wanted him before, against all of his better judgment, but this configuration of it feels strangely new. Husband. He carefully tests the weight of the word. As a child, Lan Wangji could never even begin to picture marriage for himself, but now that Wei Wuxian is in front of him, packaged in wedding-red, he can imagine no one else, no other outcome. His husband. So strange, the shock and novelty of it, the low thrill of it.
“I guess if you say so,” Wei Wuxian eventually says. Then he frowns and adds petulantly, “As long as it’s not because you think I can’t handle it.”
Oh, Lan Wangji has little doubt of that.
“Like I’m too weak to take it or something,” Wei Wuxian says, looking more rankled by the second, as though Lan Wangji had genuinely implied such a thing.
For just a moment, a selfish free-fall of a moment, Lan Wangji lets himself envision it. It would be so simple to give in, to slowly strip away that last layer separating them, or to ruck up the fabric over Wei Wuxian’s hips. Wei Wuxian would not say no, no matter his personal misgivings — he has made that clear, at least. All of that skin, the flex of his thighs, the curve of his neck and shoulders. The wet heat of him, virgin-tight. The hunger of it beats faintly in Lan Wangji’s stomach, a hollowness that wants to consume.
He thinks of Wei Wuxian, stiff with awkwardness and discomfort while Lan Wangji fucks him. He thinks of looking Wei Wuxian in the eye the morning after, the first dawn of the rest of their shared partnership, and knowing what they’d done had been nothing but a painful, unwanted inconvenience, a mandatory rite of passage. No.
“No,” he says, sudden and firm enough that Wei Wuxian startles. “The day has been long. Let’s rest.”
He steps away from the bed and turns, his back facing Wei Wuxian as he disrobes, layer by meticulous layer. It would be more customary for his new husband to undress him, but the thought is far too uncomfortable, given what had just transpired.
When he’s down to just his innermost robe, Lan Wangji turns to find Wei Wuxian watching him from the bed. He still looks a little lost, his mouth parted in a tiny o. Lan Wangji hesitates, then walks toward the bed, reaching up to untie his ribbon as he does.
“Hey,” Wei Wuxian says as Lan Wangji slips into bed next to him. He wriggles down deeper into the covers, batting away some of the dried fruit and petals with a yawn. He seems to have relaxed, now that imminent sex is off the table. “I finally got to touch that earlier.”
He gestures toward the ribbon, which Lan Wangji has already folded carefully to place by his pillow.
“It is meant to be touched only by family and spouses,” Lan Wangji says quietly. Which. Wei Ying is, now. His...spouse.
Wei Wuxian reaches out to run a curious finger along the firm material, and Lan Wangji tries to ignore the lurch of strangeness at the image, a reflex against someone else touching what he has guarded closely since he was a child. Strangeness, yes, and a shiver of something else he cannot name.
“Can I use it however I want to now?” Wei Wuxian wonders aloud. “Like, can I use it to clean out food that gets stuck between my teeth?”
Lan Wangji feels his lips thin in exasperation, and he rolls onto his back so that he faces the ceiling. “Good night, Wei Ying.”
“Good night, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian echoes, then fidgets for several more minutes beside him.
From the sound of it, neither he nor Lan Wangji sleep for a long time after that.
◈ ◈ ◈
When Lan Wangji wakes the next morning, the bed next to him is empty.
It always is, when Lan Wangji wakes. But this is not his bed. The slant of sunlight is all wrong, the sheets a different color and the pillow uncomfortably stiff against his neck. It takes him a few seconds before the events of the previous day roll over him, and it’s startling enough that Lan Wangji sits up. Yesterday’s proceedings had transpired so quickly that it still feels dreamlike.
But his new husband is not here. Wei Wuxian had overslept and lagged late to class every day of the summer he’d studied in the Cloud Recesses, but now, at the break of dawn on the first day of their married life, he’s nowhere to be found.
Lan Wangji’s ribbon is still folded next to his pillow, visibly untouched.
“Hi,” Wei Wuxian’s voice says, to his right. “You’re awake! Lan Zhan, isn’t it poor form to sleep until all hours of the day?”
Lan Wangji turns to tell him, on droll reflex, that it is exactly mao shi, but once he looks at Wei Wuxian, he forgets what he’s going to say entirely.
“Ah, they took my usual clothes,” Wei Wuxian says, to Lan Wangji’s stare. “Before the...before I came here.”
That Wei Wuxian is already dressed and ready for the day is a surprise in and of itself. But even more startling is that he’s clad in pristine white hanfu, sky-blue clouds threaded on the sleeves — GusuLan robes. The quality of the material is a tier above what the servants wear, but still subpar to the fineries of Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen. A subtle reminder that though they are married partners, Wei Wuxian is meant to be viewed beneath him. Lan Wangji has never seen Wei Wuxian without a hectic crop of bangs flying into his face; it’s strange to see his hair parted neatly down the middle, bangs pinned neatly back. The red hair ribbon is long gone. A light blue one takes its place, accentuated by a white hairstick.
He looks...Lan.
“Are they,” Lan Wangji begins, horrifically stilted. He has no idea how to do this — how to be a husband, how to engage with Wei Wuxian within their new arrangement. “Are you...comfortable?”
Wei Wuxian opens his mouth quickly to speak, then shuts it, like he’s thought better of answering. He hesitates, then says with careful formality, “The GusuLan have been very kind to me. I appreciate the gift of these new robes and my new sect’s hospitality.”
No, that isn’t right. Lan Wangji’s heart knocks too quickly in his chest, that same twisty feeling as the night before settling low and acidic in his stomach. There had been a time in which he would have liked nothing better than Wei Wuxian’s compliance, for his behavior to model that of a Lan’s. He had not expected the reality of it to feel so unwelcome.
Wei Wuxian is quiet for the rest of the day once they return from their bridal chamber to the jingshi, dutifully copying lines or reading through scrolls that Lan Wangji would know, even from one day of Wei Wuxian’s acquaintance, that he cannot stand. Lan Wangji holds his breath around him, steering clear and allowing him any distance he may need.
Another day of this follows: Wei Wuxian holding himself unobtrusively, treading lightly, too polite. There are a few times, seated at the jingshi’s table or meditating, when he starts to squirm, when he opens his mouth with a petulant expression as though to complain to Lan Wangji, and then his jaw clicks shut and a flutter of some indecipherable emotion crosses his face, and he goes back to whatever he was doing with renewed focus.
Lan Wangji notices it because of how closely he watches him. Every moment he’s not absorbed in a task, he’s watching Wei Wuxian. Through his lashes, from under his eyebrows, in the corner of his eye. Wei Wuxian’s presence had once been too loud for any contained space. But the third day is the same peaceful quiet; Wei Wuxian rises like a ghost in the morning at mao shi, eating what he’s given without complaint, then sleeping in the evening when Lan Wangji does, even though Lan Wangji hears him fidgeting awake in their bed for at least a shichen after.
And then another day, just the same.
Their dynamic before had been reflexive, Wei Wuxian teasing, taunting, torturing; Lan Wangji a reactionary, reproach and order. He isn’t sure what to do with a Wei Wuxian who is suddenly not Wei Wuxian. With a Wei Wuxian who belongs to him in every proper sense, but has never felt so far from reach.
On the morning of the fifth day, Lan Wangji tells him, “Come.”
Wei Wuxian pokes his head up from where he’d been half-dozing, nodding toward sleep over a text on ethics. “Come where?”
“I have errands to run in Caiyi Town,” Lan Wangji says. “If Wei Ying would prefer to accompany me.”
The premise of the outing is not quite the truth, but it’s not a breach of the sect rules, either. Lan Wangji will just have to make something up to do, once he’s in town, and the statement will be an honest one.
Even if it were to break the rules, it would be worth it for the way Wei Wuxian perks up at the suggestion, like a crack of sunlight through a cloud cover, and scrambles up off the floor to follow him out the door.
◈ ◈ ◈
The first order of business is a tailor. Lan Wangji has known Shen Xu since he was a child, as he and his xiongzhang have had several articles of clothing mended or bought to him in Caiyi over the years, and so he trusts his craftsmanship closely. His shop is the first place he brings Wei Wuxian, near the entrance of the main market in Caiyi.
“Lan er-gongzi,” Shen Xu says with a short salute and a smile of recognition at Lan Wangji’s arrival. “What can I do for you today? I just received a set of new silks from Hangzhou; perhaps a new zhiju for the summer season?”
“Thank you, Shen-xiansheng,” Lan Wangji replies. “But no. I would like to see him fitted.” He inclines his head slightly in Wei Wuxian’s direction, who takes the cue to shuffle into Lan Wangji’s personal space.
“Ah.” Shen Xu peers at Wei Wuxian doubtfully, noting the Lan robes and clearly failing to recognize him. “Lan er-gongzi brought a friend, I see.”
“He’s…” Lan Wangji begins, and his mouth goes stiff, the words paralyzed even as they take form. My husband. My husband, my husband.
“Wei Ying,” Wei Wuxian pipes up with a small bow, sparing Lan Wangji the embarrassment of that temporary lapse. “Courtesy name Wuxian.”
Shen Xu limps toward Wei Wuxian before he begins to circle him, sizing him up with a years-trained keenness. He lays light, measuring touches on the breadth of Wei Wuxian’s shoulders, his narrow waist. “Another set of hanfu like these, Lan er-gongzi? I can improve their look significantly. Perhaps some silver thread accents with the blue —”
“No,” Lan Wangji says again. “Three sets of hanfu in black, please.”
Shen Xu turns to give Lan Wangji a quizzical look; Wei Wuxian’s head snaps toward Lan Wangji, his eyes round with surprise and his mouth falling open.
Shen Xu recovers from his confusion smoothly. “Black hanfu are in shorter supply on-hand, but it should not be undoable, Lan er-gongzi. I estimate it will take a week before I can make something exactly to Wei-gongzi’s measurements.”
“A week will suffice,” Lan Wangji says. “What do you have in stock that can be sold today?”
Wei Wuxian is still staring at Lan Wangji with stunned uncertainty, his arms held at wingspan so Shen Xu can gauge their length.
“Just two, at the moment, that fit Lan er-gongzi’s request,” Shen Xu says apologetically. “They might be too big for him, around the waist.”
“Try them,” Lan Wangji says, then looks away as Wei Wuxian is whisked away to be fitted.
When Wei Wuxian emerges half a joss stick later, he cuts a similar figure to how Lan Wangji remembers him, the few times they’d reunited outside of summer classes. Sleek, fitted black from head to toe, a leather belt cinched tight around his hips to hold the too-loose material. A little too roomy in the shoulders, not enough red or gray accents, but seeing him this way eases something in Lan Wangji, some inner disturbance that had been pinching at him like a splinter between his fingers.
“How do I look?” Wei Wuxian says with more spirit than Lan Wangji has heard in days. He jokingly performs a spin, the tails of his robes flying as he cheeses a smile at Lan Wangji.
He looks very handsome. Wei Wuxian always looks handsome. Of course, Lan Wangji cannot say as much.
“These will do until I return next week,” Lan Wangji tells Shen Xu instead of answering Wei Wuxian’s question, and reaches into his sleeve for his money purse. “Gray and red accents for the new sets.” He pauses, and then adds, “A red hair ribbon today, if you have it.”
Moments later, Wei Wuxian scampers out of the shop ahead of Lan Wangji, his hands clasped behind his back and the red streak of his new hair ribbon bouncing with his steps. He turns to look at Lan Wangji over his shoulder, a smile breaking across his face and his eyes shining.
There he is, Lan Wangji thinks, and feels something in his chest twang.
◈ ◈ ◈
Wei Wuxian is unbridled here, away from the silent and encroaching eyes of the Cloud Recesses. The lingering, enclosing quiet of the mountain air that seems to cling to him — it dissipates entirely as Wei Wuxian plunges into the teeming, chattering bustle of the market, immediately at home among the throngs of strangers in a way Lan Wangji has never been nor ever could be. He flits from stall to stall like a frantic sparrow, sampling whatever food is within reach, feeling different cloth swatches between his fingers and eagerly conversing with shopkeepers. Lan Wangji silently pays Wei Wuxian’s way in his wake as he tears a meteoric path through Caiyi, content to watch him from a few paces behind. Content to watch him enjoy himself, for the first time since they’d gotten married on that strange, strained day.
When Lan Wangji finally does catch up, after a few moments of attempting to relocate him in the heavy bustle of people, he finds Wei Wuxian in the middle of an argument with one of the vendors. The other man is red in the face, which is never a promising sign where Wei Wuxian is concerned.
“ — hadn’t set such a ridiculous price for it,” Wei Wuxian is saying hotly.
“If you are unwilling to pay the set cost, gongzi,” the seller replies with icy scorn, “then I suggest you move along.”
“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian calls out when he sees him, and Lan Wangji is reluctantly towed into the fray as Wei Wuxian hauls him forward by his sleeve.
At once, the vendor’s eyes widen in recognition and he salutes with a stammered “Lan er-gongzi.” Wei Wuxian folds his arms smugly across his chest.
“Oh, so you’ve met my husband,” Wei Wuxian says, deliberately drawing out the word. The vendor’s eyes bug. “Lan Zhan ah, Lan er-gege, tell this man how unreasonable he’s being, swindling his customers like this.”
If the vendor had been goggling before, the pet name makes his eyes fit to fall out of his skull.
“Do not act unruly,” Lan Wangji tells Wei Wuxian quietly. Wei Wuxian sulks and throws an elbow onto Lan Wangji’s shoulder, leaning his weight into him and sucking a displeased sound against his teeth.
“I apologize for my husband’s untoward behavior,” Lan Wangji tells the other man with a slight bow, and Wei Wuxian straightens up and makes an indignant sound. “I will pay whatever price has been set.”
“He started it!” Wei Wuxian complains as the man bows again, mumbling thanks over and over as Lan Wangji drops the appropriate coinage into his hand.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian whines at him the moment they’re out of earshot. “You really couldn’t have given me some face there? You couldn’t have defended your husband in front of that mean old uncle?”
“Do not sow discord among others,” Lan Wangji recites, nowhere near harsh enough to be fully reproachful.
“Aiyo, aiyo,” Wei Wuxian sighs, slinging himself into Lan Wangji’s side again. “This married business is hard. Who is left to defend my honor, my virtue, if not my betrothed?”
Lan Wangji has made it an active point to not consider anything regarding Wei Wuxian’s...virtue. Still, underneath the melodramatic moaning and masking, he gets the sense that he’s genuinely offended Wei Wuxian, perhaps even hurt his feelings, by taking a stranger’s side over his. Had it been a misstep? Is it an unspoken rule in marriage to always take the side of your spouse, no matter the fault in the situation?
He is still feeling his way blindly in the ways of marriage. He has no context for it, not in the way that others with living parents do. That being the case, it’s only inevitable that Lan Wangji will make errors, where his new husband is concerned. But small mistakes like this can be rectified. Surely he can...make amends.
“Here,” Lan Wangji says quietly, and passes his money pouch into Wei Wuxian’s hand.
Wei Wuxian blinks, his eyes widening down at it. “Uh…”
“Whatever is mine is now yours,” Lan Wangji says, then swallows and frowns as he feels heat creep up his neck.
“Tian ah, I’m rich,” Wei Wuxian exclaims, then his mouth splits into a wide, roguish grin. “Lan Zhan, you never used to be so soft before. Do I just need to cry every time I want something from you now?”
Lan Wangji shakes his head, not sure whether to be more flustered or irritated at allowing himself to be conned.
Wei Wuxian winks at him, then bounds off with a flip of his ponytail, vanishing into the crowds again.
Lan Wangji manages to detain Wei Wuxian from draining the rest of the GusuLan coffers, but he suspects it has less to do with his influence and more with the fact that Wei Wuxian had eaten his way through half of the town and cannot consume anything else without getting sick. Lan Wangji leads Wei Wuxian to a spot along the shore of Biling Lake, far enough removed that they won’t be disturbed, but near enough that they can still feel the pulse of crowds moving, the murmur of overlapping voices and the shouts of vendors selling their wares.
Wei Wuxian flops onto his back in the grass, moaning and rubbing a hand over his distended belly. “Lan Zhan, why did you let me eat so much? I look pregnant!”
Lan Wangji purses his lips and glances away toward the water, resolutely ignoring whatever strange stirring he feels at that provided image.
At this point in the afternoon, the sun beams hot onto the mossy green surface of the water, churned brown and swollen by recent rain. The heat off the lake hangs heavy like a murk, a dampening humidity. Boats drift past, fishermen hollering in distorted snatches to one another around the movement of their oars. Their voices catch and carry easily across the surface of the water, the dialect of Lan Wangji’s childhood. The last time he and Wei Wuxian had been here together, the atmosphere had not been so serene. There had been water ghouls, a seething maw bubbling in the center of the lake pulling everything in.
Not so, now. Lan Wangji closes his eyes and tilts his face toward the sun, allowing himself the luxury of drowsing. The sun’s warmth sinks beneath his skin, a golden lull.
“Won’t your elders be angry?” Wei Wuxian asks to break the quiet, and when Lan Wangji turns his head, he’s fiddling with his belt to tighten it. “When they see me dressed like this?”
“If they are, they can approach me with it,” Lan Wangji says. He pictures Lan Qingsheng’s face and finds himself viscerally irritated by the thought. It should be no one else’s business what Wei Wuxian wears. Wei Ying is his husband — his to protect and his to reproach, if the need exists. If someone has an issue with him, they will withstand Lan Wangji to do it.
“Ah, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says. He leans back onto his elbows, spreading his legs so they sprawl. “You’re not...aha, I’ll confess, today isn’t what I expected. You’re not what I expected.”
“Sit properly,” says Lan Wangji, and Wei Wuxian quickly straightens up before he tosses Lan Wangji a sullen look.
He maintains the posture for a couple minutes before he gives up, slithering back onto the ground to lie flat on his back. He closes his eyes into the sunlight and tips his chin up, his dark lashes brushing his cheeks. He looks so appealing like this, sprawled and languid and his arms above his head, his slim waist. Black suits him, Lan Wangji thinks, and swallows despite the dryness of his mouth.
“You know Lotus Pier is expecting me back in a month,” Wei Wuxian says, stretching his arms further above his head and wriggling his hips a little. “I think the Jiangs are expecting me to tell them I’m carrying our firstborn son, in which case they’re going to be sorely disappointed.”
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says sharply. In their time apart, he has somehow managed to forget the extent of Wei Wuxian’s flippant vulgarity, and his own intolerance for it. In spite of himself, a flustered heat prickles at the back of his neck at the image Wei Wuxian has provided; that same odd, perverse tug as moments before.
“I’m only kidding, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, an amused glint in his eye as he observes Lan Wangji’s reaction. He’s still on his back, relaxed and wanton. “I don’t have the parts for that, so you shouldn’t have to worry about knocking me up.”
Crass. Shameless. Lan Wangji gets to his feet, clearing the dust from the back of his robes as he does.
“Wait, wait, don’t leave just yet,” Wei Wuxian protests, the humor gone from his voice. He sits up to grab for Lan Wangji’s wrist, and Lan Wangji tries not to flinch away from the touch. “Can we stay here just a few minutes longer? I like sitting by the lake with you.”
Lan Wangji stares down at Wei Wuxian, the dancing flash of his eyes and the curl of his lips, and attempts to detect any teasing. There’s none he can find, only an earnest entreaty for his time.
Lan Wangji tugs his wrist free from Wei Wuxian’s grip and resumes his seated position, his legs crossed.
“Such things should not be spoken of,” he says a moment later. “It isn’t proper.”
Wei Wuxian huffs a sigh and wriggles closer to him. He smells sweet and smoky from the market, something like fried bread.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says. “Do you wanna go swimming with me? It’s so hot out; the water would be perfect right now.”
“Here?” Lan Wangji says, unable to keep the incredulity from his voice. There are so many people milling around.
Wei Wuxian shrugs one shoulder. “Sure. Why not? Here’s no different from anywhere else.”
The image of it is so preposterous: Lan Wangji, stripping down to his inner-robe or less in front of all of these strangers. Wei Wuxian, doing the same, where anyone can see him. Wei Wuxian, who apparently does such a thing often.
“Look,” Wei Wuxian says, and points with his chin out toward the lake. He’s sitting close to Lan Wangji’s side, nearly hugging his shoulder with his chest. “They’re selling loquats on the water. I could swim over there and get you a whole basket! I’d tell them it was for my lovely wife, who’s awaiting my return with desperate longing on the shoreline, and then they’d ask, ‘Which one is she, gongzi?’, and I’d point you out and say —”
“No,” Lan Wangji says, and Wei Wuxian sulks and goes back to lying on his back.
“Well, I’m not gonna swim by myself.” He sniffs, petulantly rubbing his hand against his nose. “You’ve always been so cruel rejecting me like this, even when we would go to Cold Spring. One day, Lan Zhan, I’m going to convince you to go with me.” He cracks open an eye to appraise Lan Zhan with sudden doubt. “You can swim, right?”
“Of course,” Lan Wangji says irritably. This is how Wei Wuxian gets others to do what he wants; baiting people to prove themselves, until they’re irritated enough to spite him. It has been an admittedly effective technique against Lan Wangji in the past, but it won’t work today.
“If you say so.” Wei Wuxian yawns, then closes his eyes and says nothing for a very long time, and when Lan Wangji glances over, he finds Wei Wuxian fully asleep, his arm slung partially over his face to block the sun’s glare.
Lan Wangji lets him rest for an unmeasured amount of time, allowing him to sleep off the food he’d consumed. He meditates in the meantime, so deeply that when he cracks his eyes open, the sun has shifted positions in the sky, low and amber. Wei Wuxian has lapsed from a light doze into a deep sleep, his mouth slack and his skin a little pink from so long in the sun.
Lan Wangji wakes him, and they go home. As they do, Lan Wangji tries not to notice, with each step closer to the Cloud Recesses, how Wei Wuxian bricks himself in by barely noticeable degrees. A smoothing-over, a dullness. He tries not to, but he does anyway.
◈ ◈ ◈
About a ten-day after their wedding date, his xiongzhang comes to check on him. Lan Wangji meets him on the jingshi pavilion following a long day of sect work, and they maintain a companionable quiet as they head up the steps and through the jingshi’s sliding doors.
“How have things fared with Wei-gongzi your first week?” Lan Xichen asks just as the door slides open, and then there’s a long, silent pause as they both survey the state of the jingshi in shocked dismay. His husband is nowhere to be found, off cavorting somewhere in one of the nearby towns, but even his absence is the loudest thing in Lan Wangji’s home, his belongings strewn in every which way. Wei Wuxian’s newly acquired black robes are crumpled and tossed over the bed, the rest of them tangled up with the pristine order of Lan Wangji’s, which have been neatly pressed and selected in advance for the week. Unfamiliar scrolls and books are scattered across Lan Wangji’s desk next to an upturned inkstone and a scorch-mark that hadn’t been there before. A sheaf of loose talisman papers flutters like leaves around the jingshi, dislodged by the wind through the cracked window. Wei Wuxian’s unfinished breakfast has been left cold on the table, half-eaten. A note in Wei Wuxian’s irredeemable scrawl is pinned to the jingshi’s sliding door that reads: Back soon, husband! ☺
Lan Wangji wearily rubs a thumb against his temple.
“It’s refreshing to see you so happy, didi,” Lan Xichen says, and to Lan Wangji’s disbelieving glance, he merely smiles.
That evening, when Wei Wuxian comes home, Lan Wangji has cleared most of his mess and has fully prepared a reproachful speech about the importance of maintaining cleanliness, and respecting a shared living space — both precepts that Wei Wuxian well knows, given his days of library copying. But the moment Wei Wuxian crashes through the door, the lecture loses any of its importance, somehow.
“Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian exclaims, then surveys the half-cleaned jingshi with his hands propped on his narrow hips. His face is streaked with dirt, gleaming with sweat, and he’s considerably more sun-tanned from this morning, a little red along his cheeks and forehead. “Oh, I left you a mess, huh? Sorry about that!”
Lan Wangji could rebuke him, recite a handful of rules, tell him what exactly is expected of a Lan spouse. Instead, he hears himself ask, “Where did you go?” because suddenly, seeing Wei Wuxian after several shichen without him, and in such a state, he’s curious to know about his day. He’s spent so long alone that it’s a strange novelty to have someone constantly present, filling the space with noise and color and movement.
Wei Wuxian sighs dramatically, then reaches up to untie his hair, the red ribbon twisting free. “An older couple in the Yushan village requested my help in cleaning out their pond. They said I looked like I was young and had a good back, which are both true, so I couldn’t exactly say no.” To Lan Wangji’s vague horror and immediate, unshakeable interest, Wei Wuxian shrugs off his outer robe, leaving it crumpled on the floor, and then he doesn’t stop, one layer and then the next as he moves toward the latticed privacy screen, chattering all the while. He stops for a moment to say, from behind the screen, “Oh, did you draw this bath for yourself? I can wait!”
“No need,” Lan Wangji says quickly. He had drawn it for himself, but it’s not important.
Wei Wuxian suddenly ducks out from behind the screen to trample toward Lan Wangji’s desk. He’s just the red underclothes left, his forearms and his calves bare and golden-tan, both splotched with dry mud. Wei Wuxian keeps talking as he scribbles out a talisman, presumably to heat the water, while Lan Wangji watches him flit around the jingshi with a funny feeling in his chest, impossible to name.
“— that, I think people assumed I was there to help, so I started getting requests from all over the place! I even had to shovel donkey shit, but these people were all so nice and grateful, so it was impossible to say no to them. Not exactly how I saw my career as a cultivator going, but I also didn’t think I’d end up married to you, so there have been a few wrenches in the plan, huh, Lan Zhan?” He casually shrugs off his inner robe and slings it over the privacy screen. Lan Wangji is still three steps behind, the lecture utterly forgotten. He gets a quick glimpse of Wei Wuxian’s strong shoulders, the sloping curve of his back before he vanishes behind the screen. A moment later, his dirty trousers join the robe from the other side of the screen. “But look at me, I’m being so rude, doing all the talking. Lan Zhan, how was your day? Probably less smelly than mine!”
It takes Lan Wangji a second to find his words, after all of that. His response is measured and quiet. “It was okay.”
He hears Wei Wuxian pause, then the slosh of him getting into the bath. “Just okay? What did you do?”
“Nothing interesting,” Lan Wangji says. The conversation is not first-nature to him; he’s never been encouraged to discuss such things, certainly not with someone who isn’t family. “Trade negotiations with the PingyangYao sect. Instructing two of the younger disciples.”
“Well, you should come with me next time, if you don’t have something important to do,” Wei Wuxian says over the sounds of water moving in the tub. “I can only imagine their reactions if I come back with Hanguang-jun in tow, hahaha! They might just put you to work, Lan Zhan!”
“Hm,” Lan Wangji murmurs, and is surprised to find he is not entirely opposed to the idea. He has never done manual labor before, given his upbringing, but Wei Wuxian makes it seem nearly appealing. Warm, communal. Wei Wuxian makes a lot of things seem that way.
Wei Wuxian rounds the corner only a few moments later, his skin glowing pink as he wrings out his wet hair with his hands. He’s wearing a loosely tied white inner robe, one of Lan Wangji’s. It’s a little too big on him, but not by much.
“I hope you don’t mind that I borrowed one of your sleeping robes, do you?” Wei Wuxian asks, then without pausing for an answer, he picks up Lan Wangji’s comb and begins to work it through the dripping dark silk of his hair. “All of mine are dirty right now. Also, your comb is a lot better quality than mine, really gets out all the knots, so I hope you don’t care that I’m borrowing that either.”
“It’s...fine,” Lan Wangji says. He feels a little dazed, knocked flat by the cyclone of Wei Ying. He’s never had to share any of his belongings before; he’s certainly never had them seized by benevolent force.
After he finishes brushing his hair, Wei Wuxian traipses over to Lan Wangji’s bed — their bed, Lan Wangji reminds himself — and sprawls himself out on it with all his limbs, heaving a contented sigh. He lies there for so long that Lan Wangji thinks he must have fallen asleep, but then Wei Wuxian blinks his eyes open and rolls onto his stomach, pushing his backside out in a quick, wriggling stretch. At this, Lan Wangji finally looks away.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, collapsing flat onto the mattress again. “Aren’t you going to bathe?”
Lan Wangji opens his mouth to answer, but Wei Wuxian plows on to ask, “Do I snore?”
Lan Wangji pauses for a moment, catching up to the question, then says, “No.”
Wei Wuxian’s eyes narrow. “Are you lying?”
“Lying is forbidden.” Lan Wangji hesitates, then admits, “A little.”
Wei Wuxian’s mouth falls open in a dramatic gasp. “Do I keep you awake?”
“No.” Lan Wangji’s answer is honest this time, at least.
Wei Wuxian twists over onto his back and groans at the ceiling. Lan Wangji realizes the strange tug he feels at his mouth is a small smile threatening to form, and he quickly tucks it away.
“What else do I do in my sleep that you haven’t told me?” Wei Wuxian demands, then rolls his head to peer at Lan Wangji accusingly. “Do I kick? Do I drool? Do I cling?”
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji protests. “It’s no matter.”
“If you say so,” Wei Wuxian says, then settles down more peaceably, holding one of Lan Wangji’s pillows close to his chest as he curls up. Then his eyes close, and he doesn’t say anything else for a long time, his breaths evening out.
Lan Wangji stares at him, then gives a slow, bemused shake of his head. There’s still dinner to be eaten, but for now, he lays a blanket over Wei Wuxian’s shoulders and lets them both rest.
◈ ◈ ◈
The next morning, one of the elders, Lan Boqin, visits the two of them exactly at mao shi, his face blanched with anger. He spends the next undetermined length of time lecturing Lan Wangji about what’s expected of a marriage as prominent as his, about keeping his husband in line, about sect disciplines Lan Wangji could recite forward and backward in his sleep. Wei Wuxian sits beside Lan Wangji in the main chamber, looking sleep-rumpled and a little like he doesn’t know what’s happening but has committed to the ride.
“The husband of Hanguang-jun cannot be seen traipsing all over the countryside,” Lan Boqin fumes at the two of them, who both sit before him like chastised children. “Performing such ridiculous acts for commoners — what face will we have left?” He jabs a finger at Wei Wuxian. “Everything you do now reflects on the GusuLan and on Wangji. Did you stop to think of that, when you were tearing around like some wild creature?”
Wei Wuxian has maintained a relaxed, tranquil expression throughout the conversation so far, clearly accustomed to weathering tirades from seniors, but Lan Wangji can see the tension in the way his knuckles are white in his lap, the clench of his jaw.
“Qianbei,” Lan Wangji finally interjects at this. “Wei Ying understands the expectations. As do I. None but I reserve the right to rebuke him.”
“Clearly you have not rebuked him enough,” Lan Boqin says coldly. “This arrangement is already painful enough for our sect. Wangji, I beg you not to make it more difficult.”
“With respect, Wangji must ask qianbei to leave,” Lan Wangji replies, not entirely able to keep the ice from his own voice. “Wei Ying and I have a full day of duties to attend to.”
“Hmph!” Lan Boqin says with a snap of his sleeve, and he strides out.
“You shouldn’t anger your elders,” Wei Wuxian says the moment he’s gone, and when Lan Wangji looks at him, his mouth quirks in a humorless smile. “Certainly not on my behalf.”
“I apologize,” Lan Wangji says, inclining his head slightly. “For the callous manner in which he spoke to you. He was inconsiderate enough to say such things with Wei Ying present.”
Wei Wuxian waves an airy, dismissive hand. “Eh, let your elders come, one by one. As if I haven’t endured a lifetime of it. What’s a little more? Anything without a whip is welcome.”
Lan Wangji’s intake of breath must be audible, the joke a little too heavy to land, because Wei Wuxian blinks, like he also realizes he’s said something wrong.
The day after that, and then the week, lapse similar to the first. Wei Wuxian remains quiet, behaved, and perfectly in reach. Lan Wangji can trace the physical evidence of his unhappiness by the day, and it whittles something hollow in him to know he has played a role in it. That he continues to do so.
It’s then, after those first three weeks, that they depart for Lotus Pier.