Chapter Text
It was dark, but for the moon. Dark, but the moon hung bright and fat enough that outside the ink of shadows, the forest hardly seemed dark at all. Wei Wuxian whirled around in frustration on a second, earthbound moon that stood regarding him with a stubborn jaw and fierce eyes.
Lan Wangji had been surrounded by the enemy, briefly, when the two of them encountered a detachment of Wen troops trying to move through Sunshot-controlled terrain under cover of night, evidently missing the irony. And in the process of cutting his way out of the moil he had not had time to dodge the spray of slain foes falling with severed arteries, while his sword was busy with the next attacker. Blood was spotted all across the white and soft blue of his robes, now. It made him seem wilder but less untouchable than usual.
“It is endangering your heart,” he said again. As though Wei Wuxian had failed him on purpose by letting so many Wen get past his puppets. “As well as your body, and your spiritual health. If Wei Ying is not careful—”
Wei Wuxian, specifically because there was a Gusu Lan rule against it, interrupted him. “What do you think you know about my heart? My spirit, my temperament, my body—how are they your business, Lan Wangji?”
Lan Wangji turned his head aside and said nothing.
Wei Wuxian hated feeling ignored. He stalked closer, letting the spirits he’d been dragging with him tug at his hair and hems, the resentment in him rear up and create the illusion of a chill in the air. “Well?” he pressed. “On what grounds do you keep seeking to meddle with me?”
He spun Chenqing and then thrust it through his belt as Lan Wangji still didn’t look at him.
He shoved him.
Wei Wuxian was shocked he got away with it, but probably Lan Wangji’s instincts could tell the difference between a blow that could do any real harm and one that was just—provocation. Of course, he could have affixed all sorts of talismans to Lan Wangji’s body, being allowed to touch him like that. He could even have afflicted him with a haunting or a curse, though it would be hard to get one to take on such impeccable cultivation.
But Lan Wangji didn’t expect that level of wickedness from him yet, at least.
“What makes you think those things are your business, hm?”
Wei Wuxian shoved again, harder, and now Lan Wangji finally looked around, brows faintly knitted, one hand rising half-heartedly to fend him off, and Wei Wuxian caught it by the wrist.
“Do you want my body to be your business, Hanguang-jun?” he taunted, archly, and when he pushed against Lan Wangji’s chest again the man fell back, and back again, into the black pool of shadow under the trees, not shaking Wei Wuxian’s hold from his wrist, eyes starting to grow wide, and a triumphant flame lit in Wei Wuxian’s chest at having gotten him to react, even as bitterness filled his mouth that even Hanguang-jun looked at him like that, even as Lan Wangji backed up into one of the mighty beech trees and stopped hard.
Wei Wuxian pinned the captive wrist to the tree trunk, expecting to get shoved away, but all he got was one satisfying instant of a sharper startled look, Lan Wangji for just a moment meeting his eyes. And then once again his eyes went distant, focused only on the vague area of Wei Wuxian’s face.
“Hmm?” Wei Wuxian asked, and stepped in, now that Lan Wangji had nowhere left to retreat to, would have to react. He sent a curl of resentment coiling down Lan Wangji’s arm against the bark, invisible, nearly intangible, like cold fingers. “Is this what you’re so concerned about? My wicked, awful self?”
Lan Wangji’s gaze slid away over his shoulder.
Wei Wuxian, provoked, closed the distance some more until their chests brushed together. “My body is just fine, Lan Wangji,” he said, leaning in so Lan Wangji had to feel his presence. His fingers tightened on Lan Wangji’s wrist. Whispered into his ear, “See?”
His mouth brushed against Lan Wangji’s cheek half by accident as he withdrew from the whisper, and it made Lan Wangji’s breath catch, hard. He’d already been standing stiff and tense but it was more obvious now, could have been seen and not just felt if Wei Wuxian had been standing far enough away to look at his bearing.
“Am I scaring you?” Wei Wuxian asked, hating the idea and thrilled at it. “You can do something about it, you know. You can beat me up, even without a sword to defend myself. I’m giving you an excuse.”
Lan Wangji schooled his expression blank. It was the most offensive thing he could possibly have done.
Wei Wuxian leaned against him, pulse pounding in his ears in some wild blend of the old excitement of teasing Lan Wangji and the new world-shaking rage that drove him now. He grazed Lan Wangji’s face with his mouth again, this time deliberately, and half-open.
“Stop me,” Wei Wuxian said. He bore down harder against Lan Wangji, feeling out the solid strength of him under the muffling layers of those blood-spattered pale robes, ran the hand not pinning his sword-arm tauntingly down his trim waist. “Go on, Hanguang-jun, rein me in, what are you waiting for.”
Lan Wangji’s breath was coming just short enough to show he wasn’t as calm as he looked, and Wei Wuxian was losing his mind with the urge to make him crack, to break that wall of pretended indifference. He buried one hand in Lan Zhan’s hair, dragged his lips over the corner of his mouth. “Come on, Lan Zhan, stop me.”
Lan Wangji—shivered. It was a faint motion, something he might not have detected if he hadn’t plastered them so close together, hadn’t had his lips and fingertips against his skin. It set Wei Wuxian on fire, to feel that chink in his armor.
“Does Wei Ying want to be stopped?” Lan Wangji asked.
Wei Wuxian caught his breath, feeling abruptly—not quite small, but entirely too observed. He pressed Lan Wangji harder against the tree in reprisal, tightened his grip on his wrist and bent the fingers in his hair until it must have tugged.
“Because if he does,” Lan Wangji said into the slightly wider space now opened between their faces, “he should try to stop himself.”
It was a valid criticism, dry and biting and stinging with characteristic moral truth, which was why Wei Wuxian was completely taken by surprise when Lan Wangji punctuated it with a bite.
Not the kind of violent warning-off bite he’d had from him once before, animal defensiveness that left a dent in the flesh, but a deliberate, carefully placed grip of teeth on the bone of his jaw. His lower lip pressed under Wei Wuxian’s chin, just as deliberately sensuous.
He let go, and it was Wei Wuxian who shook now. “Lan Zhan,” he gasped, all his careful menace lost.
Lan Wangji met his eyes. There was no fear there.
Wei Wuxian kissed him. He couldn’t pretend it was a decision he’d made; it didn’t even feel like an impulse he followed. He fell into the kiss. It was hard and wet and his tongue kept hitting Lan Zhan’s teeth probably more than it was supposed to, and then it was over. Wei Wuxian’s head spun.
“Lan Zhan,” he repeated. His hand in Lan Zhan’s hair had to be hurting at this point. He tried to relax it.
Lan Wangji rolled his body between Wei Wuxian and the tree, pivoted his hips so now Wei Wuxian could feel something else through those layers of robes, could feel—Lan Zhan was— “Lan Zhan, you—” He kissed him again, a little more intentionally.
Lan Wangji came out of it gasping, rolling his hips again. Hard, hard. They both— “Does Wei Ying want to be stopped?”
“Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan.” Wei Wuxian was going insane. There was no other explanation. He had finally lost the last bit of sense tying him together and taken Lan Wangji with him. “I don’t, I don’t want to stop.” Kiss again. “But I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t hurt me.” Lan Wangji’s left hand had hung at his side all this time; it came up now, got a fistful of the back of Wei Wuxian’s loose outer robe, pressed in, gathering Wei Wuxian into him as though there were any more distance between their bodies to close.
Wei Wuxian groaned and used his grip on Lan Wangji’s hair to drag his head to the side, so he could fulfill a sudden desperate need to suck at the thin skin under Lan Wangji’s right ear. “Wei Ying won’t hurt me,” Lan Wangji repeated, and rolled his hard-on up against Wei Wuxian, which was a move calculated to turn his thinking brain off.
He rocked against Lan Zhan, not managing to coordinate right away but Lan Zhan sped up to match him. “Fuck,” Wei Wuxian gasped, and pulled away from Lan Zhan’s neck and his hand out of his hair.
Lan Zhan growled and jerked his head after him, so their mouths hit hard enough to bruise, and then Lan Zhan was nipping at his lower lip as if to punish him for withdrawing and Wei Wuxian groaned again and kissed like drowning as his hips hitched desperately, and dragged his right hand down over Lan Zhan’s shoulder, outside the arm still clutched around his body, back to Lan Zhan’s waist and then over his hip.
He felt like he’d never had such strong feelings of approval before about the curve of someone’s hip, even though Lan Zhan was not, objectively, very curved.
“Oh,” he mumbled, spit sticking his mouth to Lan Zhan’s when they pulled apart enough to breathe. The drag of Lan Zhan’s cock against his even through all their layers, both of them working for all the pressure they could get. “Let me,” he begged, and slipped his hand in to tug at both their robes, pulling them open below the belt until it was just their underwear between them. He could feel the heat of Lan Zhan now. “Let—”
Lan Zhan made a sound, a groan or a moan or something less human than either, and tugged at his handful of Wei Wuxian’s outer robe so hard for a second he thought it was going to be torn clear off his body in shreds. Then Lan Zhan let the garment go and shoved that hand between their bodies, groping over the shapes of them pushing together as though looking for something. “May I,” he said, and nothing more.
Wei Wuxian pecked at his mouth. “Yes,” he said, not caring what the question was. “Yes,” and kissed again, harder, tongue in Lan Zhan’s mouth again just in time for Lan Zhan’s hand to find its way inside his pants. He tightened his grip on Lan Zhan’s wrist and leaned into him harder, helpless to figure out anything more complicated when Lan Zhan’s hand was wrapping around his dick.
He jerked hard, involuntarily into the next press of Lan Zhan through their clothes, and groaned. Lan Zhan was doing his best at moving his hand on Wei Wuxian within the confines imposed by his waistband, and not to complain because it was the best thing his dick had ever experienced but he wanted more, he needed—he needed, right now—
Wei Wuxian tugged at the tidy knots closing Lan Zhan’s pants and got them to unravel, made a muffled sound of triumph which Lan Zhan met with a needy groan that fizzed all up and down Wei Wuxian’s spine.
And then before Wei Wuxian could do more than get his hand around Lan Zhan to return the favor Lan Zhan had snapped the ties on his pants and was shoving the barrier of cloth aside and pushing them together, and ah, fuck yes, that was what he needed, that was—
He wound up with his hand back on Lan Zhan’s hip, bare now, running his fingers over all the skin he could reach, over the arch of the bone and digging a little into the softness at the back of it, tipping Lan Zhan’s body into his occasionally for a better angle. Lan Zhan had taken charge of their contact, long fingers holding them together as they slid and rutted, fast, desperate.
Lan Zhan was making little muffled noises into his mouth, and Wei Wuxian broke away for a second to let him talk but it was just ah, ah, ah, the rhythm of their bodies meeting. He made a side trip to mouth over the side of Lan Zhan’s face for a few seconds, enjoying the sensation of skin and the tiny throat noises of Lan Zhan wanting, but then plunged back into the kiss. Lan Zhan’s lips, Lan Zhan’s fingers, Lan Zhan’s cock—
Lan Zhan got off first, but the sound he made and the feel of him spilling hot over both of them brought Wei Wuxian after him seconds later, and they shook together, mouths pressing dumbly motionless and slick as their breath hitched through the shock of it.
Afterward Wei Wuxian felt like he was floating and at the same time like he weighed five times what he usually did. Lan Zhan’s hand had fallen away at some point and they were pressed so close together it was like they were trying to fuse into one. Wei Wuxian let out a long, groaning sigh as enough of his mind came back together to say holy shit, that really just happened.
Not only had he gotten off in a forest fifteen minutes after killing a bunch of enemy troops, it had been with the incomparable Lan Wangji.
“Lan Zhan,” he breathed. He let go of Lan Zhan’s wrist because his left arm was, frankly, tired, but didn’t let up the weight of his body pushing down on Lan Zhan. Also because he was tired. “Lan Zhan, you were into that.”
This should feel like no kind of shock or revelation given it had only happened due to Lan Zhan’s interest, but it did. “Holy shit, you were really into it.”
Lan Zhan made small, nothing kind of noise that could mean anything from acknowledgement of this fact to annoyance at the mess congealing between them. Wei Wuxian felt so good. He nudged his nose into the hollow beneath Lan Zhan’s cheekbone and felt his lips brush skin with each syllable when he spoke. “Tell me everything I did right so we can do that again as soon as possible.”
He hadn’t felt this good since before the core surgery, never mind the Burial Mounds. He hadn’t realized his body even could still feel this non-shitty to inhabit.
“I will push you up against as many trees as you want, Lan Zhan, holy shit,” he added, and then reflecting that Lan Zhan might be into the spontaneity element and asking for a graded breakdown of his performance might sort of ruin it, he tipped his head and nibbled at Lan Zhan’s earlobe, to remind him that he could (apparently!) be sexy.
Lan Zhan let out a punchy little ‘nn!’ that suggested he liked some part of that. Wei Wuxian thought it was probably the bite. He had never considered teeth in a sexy context before but he was absolutely picking up Lan Zhan’s clear biting thing from exposure, give him thirty more seconds and he was going to be into biting and being bitten for the rest of his life.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said, his very nice voice breathier than usual.
Wei Wuxian buried his fingers in Lan Zhan’s hair for another second, bumped a messy kiss onto his cheek, and shoved them apart. “Oof. Whew.” He shook himself out. “Lan Zhan you don’t happen to have a handkerchief? Or uh, two?” He was going to act like this was normal until and unless Lan Zhan made it weird, he’d decided. He wasn’t normally into men, but these kinds of things happened a lot in war and it was Lan Wangji. Who wouldn’t make an exception if that was on the table? Had he mentioned, holy shit.
Lan Zhan had only one, and Wei Wuxian waved it off when offered and picked up the hem of his inner robe, rubbing himself down with the inside surface, making a point to avoid overlapping with the bloodstains out of a vague sense of decency.
He tugged thoughtfully at his trouser-ties, torn free right at the base on one side and absolutely no use at present, without a needle and thread to reattach. He could probably hold his pants up until he got back to camp and could go to his tent and get changed, if he just held an elbow tightly against his hip at all times? But he could already see himself getting distracted and his pants falling down in front of everyone. Not the kind of incident he could laugh off with his current public image.
The Wei Wuxian of one year ago absolutely could have. Not for the first time he mourned the privilege of being able to coast on amazing cultivation skills and having nothing to hide.
He pulled the ribbon out of his hair and looped it tight around his waist as a sort of ad-hoc sash. It should keep him from public embarrassment. He looked up and Lan Zhan was looking away, the tops of his ears red. Oho. “You don’t have to be embarrassed about getting carried away Lan Zhan,” he said, only teasing a little. “I can sew my clothes back together no problem when they’re just torn apart this much! It’s really very flattering.” It was, actually, but fortunately he’d gotten the words out before reflecting that, so he didn’t sound too affected.
Lan Zhan shot him a sidelong look of suspicion, presumably thinking he was being made fun of, which he was but only to the extent he absolutely deserved. Wei Wuxian couldn’t believe he’d ripped his pants open.
Couldn’t believe Lan Wangji had ripped his clothes open in his hurry to get at Wei Wuxian’s dick. Seriously could not.
Lan Zhan’s nice outer robe had hardly gotten any of the mess on it and once daubed away the stains that remained vanished by comparison to the blood, so now that Lan Zhan’s clothes were back in place and he was straightening his hair, the only evidence left was his kissed-red mouth.
“How long do you think we can draw this patrol out for?” Wei Wuxian asked. Lan Zhan blinked at him, and he waved toward his own swollen lips. “Need to wait for that to go down. That is, I assume you want to be discreet about this?”
Lan Zhan’s gaze slid away, his ears flaring even redder. “Mm.”
“Next time we’ll have to plan ahead,” Wei Wuxian said experimentally, as they set a course that would take them back toward the camp in a long loop, and Lan Zhan kept blushing but didn’t contradict him in any way. Score.
They ran into a small party of Wen scouts on their extended patrol route, happily, and it was a small enough group Wei Wuxian didn’t feel it was worth calling up anything dead. He blew a few notes on Chenqing calculated to sap the enemy’s morale, then waded in behind Lan Wangji relying mostly on talismans to attack, supplemented by a blow with Chenqing that drove one man’s nose into his brain.
When they were done and everyone else was dead Wei Wuxian looked up from inspecting his instrument for damage or debris to find Lan Wangji staring. Lan Wangji glared at him kind of a lot but he was fairly sure he hadn’t done anything to deserve it in the quarter hour since they’d been sucking face, and on careful study that wasn’t really an angry expression. “Yeah?” he asked, giving Chenqing a spin.
Lan Wangji shook his head slightly. “You fought well.”
Wei Wuxian pulled a face. “Even without my sword, huh?”
He didn’t want to have this conversation again. He walked up past Lan Wangji, a crooked smile on his face, and when he got close reached out and dragged the bloodied back of his hand over Lan Wangji’s lower belly as he passed, obscuring the faint stains they’d left with fresh red. “Come on, Hanguang-jun. It’s about time we got back.”