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Lan Zhan does not have much of an opinion of Wei Wuxian when he is informed of the betrothal proposal. It goes a little like this:

Lan Zhan is fourteen, one of the youngest head disciples in the recorded history of Gusu Lan and the sects around it, and his uncle, representative Sect Leader at the time because Lan Xichen is not quite old enough yet to do it all by himself, calls Lan Zhan to tea one afternoon after lectures. It interrupts Lan Zhan’s schedule of self-instilled hours of solitary sword form practices, which would annoy him if annoyance was allowed. It is not. With his mouth shut and shoulders set, he sits across his uncle, as is usual, but Lan Xichen sits next to their uncle instead of next to him, which is decidedly not usual.

With only as much delay as it takes to exchange bows and pour tea in respectful silence, Lan Qiren says, “Lan Wangji, you’re fourteen now.” He says it tightly, strained, like he is uncomfortable to say it, although it is only a generally known fact. It is his uncle’s specific kind of way to introduce a topic he would rather not talk about; reluctantly but bluntly. Belatedly, it dawns on Lan Zhan why his brother does not sit next to him. “And we have just received a first proposal.”

Lan Zhan could not possibly care less about a proposal. These little letters people start to write as soon as someone of status and name enters the appropriate age for talks about a betrothal, with promises and praises about potential spouses, unending lists of the advantages that could come from such an arrangement, and yet they still all lack anything of substance. Because it is not supposed to be. Of substance. Not for Lan Zhan, anyway, who in such a case merely hat to play his role in someone else’s game. It is vile, really, to be forced to disgrace the sanctum of marriage because of advantages. It is also so common that he is not surprised by it.

Lan Zhan has seen it often before. People – children with a big name in a big sect – get promised to each other before they are even born, contracts signed before the ink on the family registry has even dried. Alliances with ulterior motives are made under the thinly-veiled guise of Their birth charts are very compatible, a marriage would be auspicious. Children get sacrificed for the sect elders’ decision of what would be the best. Not necessarily for the children but in the grander scheme of things. What are a few forced marriages for the continuity and prosperity of future generations?

Lan Zhan only never received any proposal letters until now because he is not the favourable option between him and his brother. Though, maybe, no one would be compared to Lan Xichen. Strategically, as the future leader of a longstanding and powerful clan, people fall over themselves to get in his good graces, practically begging for alliances. Interpersonally, too, Lan Xichen is everything Lan Zhan is not, in all the intricate little details that Lan Zhan never bothered to learned. He knows how to be amiable and kind and polite, and he knows to choose his words carefully, bow just deeply enough to be sincere, and he knows how to carry himself with dignity, with authority, without ever appearing as threatening. Perhaps it lessens the guilt, to marry off an heir to someone who will maybe even treat them nicely.

Lan Zhan is not any of the things that have always come easily to his brother.

He is not – sociable. He has spent his entire childhood alone voluntarily, only really speaking to his uncle and his brother, and he’s always rather practiced his cultivation in solitude, purposefully choosing to remain apart from his agemates and fellow disciples. He has always been said to be unapproachable, either openly or covered by an apology for his rude behaviour, although he’s never actively tried to be rude. He only speaks when he has to, and when he does, it is curt, clipped. It isn’t something Lan Zhan does on purpose, although he cannot say he ever actively attempted to change it, either. It has spared him of a proposal letter for fourteen years, opposed to the dozen his brother receives every year, starting from the day he turned twelve.

Lan Zhan doesn’t know who could possibly consider him for marriage, but he has always been aware of the inevitability of this happening someday. Just like it happens to all the children of powerful families someday. That eventually, not at all unlikely, he would have to play his given role in the sect, whatever role may be decided for him. He would do it graciously, thankful for the great honour, and he would smother any kind of feeling on the matter because feelings simply aren’t important. His are not, and those of the poor soul that gets tied to him aren’t, either.

Today is that day, apparently. Today could also only be the first day of the many that will most likely follow now that sects have become desperate enough to send letters to him. Lan Zhan really does not care for prolonging something that can be cut short; he has been taught efficiency, after all.

“I accept,” Lan Zhan says, sipping his tea behind his sleeve in a perfect display of proper etiquette while discussing serious matters such as this. His uncle looks faintly as if he is going to be sick and Lan Xichen only presses his lips together tightly, sighing in every way except physically. Lan Zhan thinks he can feel a mild pulse of irritation in his brother’s qi, as well, though he is careful not to mention it.

“Lan Wangji, you can’t be serious,” his uncle says.

“You haven’t even listened to the letter yet,” his brother tries, calm in his urgency, but he seems to understand that it is a losing battle from the start. Lan Xichen knows him too well, is the thing, and he sees when Lan Zhan is determined to be stubborn. Lan Zhan does not think he ever outwardly expresses something as childish as stubbornness, but his brother looks at him like he does, anyway.

“They were the first ones to write, that speaks of great desperation or great confidence,” Lan Zhan says, and he knows that he would be punished for unnecessary insolence in any other situation. Speculating on other sects and their circumstances borders on gossip, which is prohibited. Making educated guesses is not, though, especially if they are built on undisputable facts. His uncle scowls deeply at his tone, like he knows what Lan Zhan is doing but not being able to say anything about it, and Lan Xichen still looks like he’s trying very hard not to pinch the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “I don’t have any good reason to refuse, either way. What is their name?”

His uncle grits his teeth, eyebrows drawing together tightly, and he sounds like he is in great pain when he says, “Wei Wuxian.”

Lan Zhan knows of Wei Wuxian only vaguely – Wei Wuxian is from the Yunmeng Jiang Sect, the name often said in the same breath as the ones of the sect leader’s children, and he, too, is the head disciple. There was talk of it when he got appointed, murmurs of a servant’s child overshadowing even Sect Leader Jiang’s own son, whispers of favouritism, shreds of conversation Lan Zhan picked up against his will. He only didn’t turn away immediately from such rumours because it had almost made him frown to hear that someone his age managed to become head disciple before him. Two months before him, granted, but it itched underneath his skin, anyway. It was childish, surely, bristling at someone else’s accomplishments like that. It was horribly arrogant, too, that Lan Zhan thought he would be the only gifted disciple around, and he punished himself by copying the disciplines on humility with a clenched jaw and a faceless image of this Wei Wuxian in his mind.

Wei Wuxian has already studied at most major sects, attending lectures and competitions alike, except – Gusu Lan. Wei Wuxian has not ventured anywhere near Cloud Recesses, and if his reputation is to believed, it is absolutely on purpose. Not that Lan Zhan ever listened to people talk about Wei Wuxian, Jiang Fengmian’s friend’s son, the servant’s kid, rumour has it that–

Lan Zhan does not listen to rumours, not only because they are forbidden, but also because he simply does not care about them. Empty words of assumptions and hearsay from unreliable sources are meaningless to him. Lan Zhan, too, has heard quite the things about himself. Different sects’ family background is none of his business, rumours of illegitimate offspring inconsequential. He does, however, not turn away as fast as he should when he hears people speak of Wei Wuxian’s archery, Wei Wuxian’s intelligence, Wei Wuxian’s skill at guiding a sword. Each praise grates at his nerves, lingering with some remnants of his immature feelings of inferiority, but it has also made him – curious. A little. Otherwise –

Lan Zhan does not have an opinion on Wei Wuxian. There simply isn’t enough information to have any kind of impression, not even enough to make an educated guess. He doesn’t know Wei Wuxian, and Wei Wuxian, in turn, should not know him, either. But then again, it’s not like Wei Wuxian wrote that proposal himself. He had probably not even been fully aware of such a letter leaving in his name until his elders sat him down to inform him about the whole ordeal similarly to what his uncle’s done.

Wei Wuxian does not know him, maybe abstractly remembering his name to be important, and maybe Wei Wuxian doesn’t feel any particular way about this, either. If Wei Wuxian’s name is well-known enough for even Lan Zhan to have heard of him, he must have been prepared for this to happen, just like it happens to everyone else. That he would have to sign himself away, at some indefinite point in time, must have been an assumed probability for him, too. Though, perhaps, Wei Wuxian has more fight in him and hopes Lan Zhan will decline, just so he can postpone the inevitable for a little longer.

Lan Zhan nearly feels something like sympathy for Wei Wuxian when he repeats, “I accept.”

xx.

The news of the betrothal make their rounds much faster than the rules would usually allow, because rumours and gossip are supposed to be shut down and not indulged. Except when it’s concerning Lan Zhan, apparently. No one asks him about it, of course, no one would even dare to suggest that they’ve heard anything at all to his face, but there are whispers when he turns around that he can’t quite tune out. Not for a lack of trying, because the alternative to ignoring would be acknowledging; the whispers and the rumours and the situation as a whole, and that simply is not something he wants to subject himself to. So, he allows his fellow disciples to get away with speaking his name behind his back and pretends not to notice eyes following him when he walks by. He assumes it is the novelty – marriages happen significantly less frequently in Gusu Lan – and the surprise of it being Lan Zhan.

The surprise is not unfounded, and Lan Zhan is not hypocritical enough to blame them for it. He lets them talk, the news spread, and it turns to one of these unspoken but commonly known things amongst the people of Cloud Recesses. Silently understood and silently looked over. After a while, the whispers stretch out and die down until nothing is left to say. Lan Zhan prefers it that way. No whispers mean no more reminders, and the severity of what he agreed to lessens to a low simmer.

xx.

Nothing much changes after that. With Lan Zhan being fourteen and Wei Wuxian being, presumably, close in age, not much will happen at all until the younger of them reaches legal age. Whoever that might be. He does not care all that much, either. In any case, he still has approximately four years – maybe more if Wei Wuxian is younger – until the negotiations officially begin. Talks of who will be marrying out, the unnecessarily prolonged period of courtship, writing contracts and discussing dowries and going through all the motions of tradition mechanically. It will all happen over Lan Zhan’s head, every decision about his future made by someone else, and he will have to accept the outcome. It is quite alright. Lan Zhan does not wish to be involved any more in the process than he has to. Thankfully, his active involvement will not be required, anyway.

For four years, nothing changes. Until it does.

xx.

Lan Zhan has turned eighteen mere hours ago, and his uncle and his brother, now officially Sect Leader, sit him down for tea. His brother sits across from Lan Zhan, next to their uncle.

“You’re eighteen now,” Lan Xichen says, and he sounds uncannily like their uncle did four years ago. For all the talent Lan Xichen has in delicately handling difficult situations, he seems rather unprofessionally reluctant to handle this. Almost petulant, as if he doesn’t wish to speak of it but is required to. It is uncharacteristic enough for Lan Zhan to recognize the purpose of this private meeting almost immediately. He politely waits for his brother continue. “Your… Wei Wuxian turned eighteen two months ago.”

“He is older than me, then,” Lan Zhan says, quietly taking in the information as an abstract fact, while skilfully ignoring the pointed look his brother gives him. He knows his brother waits for him to regret the decision he made. Lan Xichen alluded to as much when he urged him to reconsider. Lan Zhan, he said, using his given name in an unusual display of brotherly firmness. You don’t have to worry about this yet. I won’t force you to. And he didn’t. He hadn’t. His brother has always kept him out of bothersome clan affairs and sect politics, including not bringing up the topic of marriage. Maybe Lan Xichen has hoped to spare him his fate; declining proposal letters in his name with increasingly outrageous excuses until Lan Zhan would speak of marriage himself. But he persisted on the matter four years ago and has remained stubborn in his resolve ever since, and Lan Xichen can do nothing against it, neither with his authority as a sect leader nor as an older brother.

“We got the request to start the courtship today,” Lan Xichen continues, an uneasy frown tugging at his mouth, genuine discomfort replacing the reluctance from before. Lan Zhan doesn’t understand the twist in his brother’s expression for a moment, until he – does.

Starting the process of a betrothal the day the younger one turns eighteen is beyond unusual. In the Great Sects, the preferred strategy is early engagement and prolonged postponement of the official marriage. Hold the advantages of an arrangement in an unofficial alliance, allow the children to finish their education until selling them out. There is no haste, after all; no lovesick spouses longing to be together, no circumstantial necessity.

Lan Zhan thought he would have four years at least, but he expected it to be five, maybe even six. He is certain that Lan Xichen would have dragged the beginning of the procedures out for as long as politely possible. Yunmeng Jiang doesn’t seem to want to do the same. That would speak of quite a desperation, usually. An urgency to enter an official alliance is certainly not very reassuring. But Yunmeng Jiang is a strong sect – a secured one, long-standing, many generations old and many more expected to come, known for its resilience and strong cultivation. Technically, they would not even have a need for such arrangements, considering one daughter is already married to the heir of the Lanlin Jin. It is strange, in general, to have them send a proposal letter in the first place. Lan Zhan has strategically avoided to think about that too hard.

“Then we will begin with the process,” Lan Zhan says after sipping half his tea behind his sleeve. “There is no reason to wait.”

“As you wish, brother,” Lan Xichen says, and now he does sigh, with all the exasperation of four years.

xx.

The Jiang delegacy is expected to arrive a month later.

Cloud Recesses is busy with preparations for the visit – guest housings are cleaned out and decorated, appropriate meals researched to honour the guests’ sect, the lesson plans altered around the visit. The whispers start up again, too. Lan Zhan ignores them. He lets his schedule be changed around meetings without getting annoyed at it, and he lets himself be dragged to the seamstresses for new robes so expensive that they surely break the rule of not overindulging in earthly possessions, and he lets his hair be tugged on by a few distressed attendants who apparently want to go through every single type of braid on him. He sits at the meetings consisting of his uncle and brother arguing over the visit quietly. He meditates half a shi longer than usual, too, in the weeks leading up to what will undoubtedly be very bothersome. For him, specifically, but also just in general.

Three weeks go by in a blur. Lan Zhan knows that at this time in seven days, his betrothed will arrive with his delegation. He knows mainly because there is a nervous energy buzzing through Cloud Recesses, the servants half-excited and half-horrified because, as they helpfully keep repeating to each other with a steadily increasing amount of stress, They’re coming in a week.

So, he knows it is exactly one week before the arrival when someone tries to break into Cloud Recesses.

Lan Zhan has been in the middle of reading through junior disciples’ essays when he feels a disturbance at the gate. It is a slight one, a weak pulse at best, and it could have been an animal passing through the barriers. It does not feel like an animal’s life force, though, not really. It certainly tries to feel like it, though, which is worrying, because animals do not need to pretend to feel like animals. Lan Zhan rises from his desk, grabbing Bichen from beside him. Leaving his rooms, he follows the vague direction of the disturbance. It is late, almost hai-shi, and Lan Zhan is the only one still wandering around. This will be very quick, then.

Lan Zhan does not feel any trace of maliciousness, barely even feels any presence at all, so he stands still on the roof of an outer building by the walls, looking over the path leading up to the settlement, and waits. Closing his eyes, he reaches out with his mind, feeling for unfamiliar frequencies of spiritual energy. There is only the soft and accustomed hum of Gusu Lan behind him, the low thrum of nature. An unobtrusive difference, moving right towards him. Lan Zhan’s fingers twitch around the hilt of his sword, the hand behind his back clenched. He does not have to wait for long. Lan Zhan tilts his head slightly to his right. Opens his eyes.

Someone is climbing up the wall a few paces away. Arduously and not very successfully, in fact, which looks really rather ridiculous. It’s a smart move, though, as using spiritual energy to accelerate the process could possibly alert someone. Lan Zhan can appreciate thorough planning. It is also entertaining to watch this stranger who managed to somehow circumvent their barriers behave so clumsily at the objectively easiest part of trespassing.

The intruder – a young man, maybe around Lan Zhan’s age, dressed in dark robes – pulls himself up and crouches down on the wall. He has a sword in hand and a flute tucked into the belt around his waist, his dark hair tangled and barely held up by a red hairband. After regaining his balance, he shoots up, curiously turning his head around in clear inspection of his surroundings. He casually swings up his sheathed sword, letting it hit his shoulder several times as he observes. Lan Zhan waits, posture straight and relaxed. The stranger eventually faces the building’s roof Lan Zhan is currently standing on – and startles so bad he falls back down the wall. It is a rather unconventional reaction for someone who broke into the famously impenetrable Cloud Recesses. He lets go of his sword, as well, which does not speak of any kind of expertise.

Before the intruder even has time to reorient himself on the ground, Lan Zhan has Bichen pressed against his throat, not hard enough to cut quite yet but close enough, standing with his feet on either side of the stranger’s ribcage. He keeps his voice low, mainly out of consideration for the time of evening, when he asks, “Who are you?”

The stranger blinks up at him. His eyes are so dark in the late evening, it borders on recondite. He looks genuinely surprised by the situation he’s in. Like he really didn’t expect to be attacked while trying to break in. Using the back of his hand to guide away Bichen from his neck, insultingly casual in the movement, the stranger leans up and says, “Is that how you greet visitors here? I’ve heard of the strict disciplines, but this seems a bit much.”

Lan Zhan steps on the stranger’s chest and pushes him back against the ground, maybe more roughly than strictly necessary. He goes easily enough, letting himself fall backwards into the grass with a soft huff. Lan Zhan does not have a habit of repeating himself, so he merely keeps his boot against the stranger’s sternum, staring down at him. The stranger puts up his hands. It is probably meant to be placating, a demonstration of non-hostility, but it seems semi-serious at best.

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry for breaking in.”

“That was not the question.”

“You’re anal, huh,” the stranger says cheerfully, a laugh tugging at his voice, and Lan Zhan presses down on his chest a little harder. The man makes a half-strangled noise. “Wei Ying! My name, it’s – I’m Wei Ying.”

The name sparks vague recognition. Lan Zhan lessens the pressure marginally. The stranger – Wei Ying, allegedly – takes an unnecessarily deep breath. Unnecessary because Lan Zhan was barely pressing down hard enough to hurt, let alone cut off air.

“I’m the – I’m with the Jiang delegation. I got lost and thought I could wait for them here.”

“The Yunmeng Jiang delegation is not to arrive for another week,” Lan Zhan says, dutifully reiterating what he’s heard all day long already. The stranger underneath him reaches up to slap the side of his thigh. There is no force behind, barely even enough strength put into it to be anything more than a light tap. The gesture bears no ill intent. It feels – playful, in a very absurd sort of way. Lan Zhan nearly frowns.

“Aiyah, I know that! I was with them until a few days ago!” The stranger pats Lan Zhan’s leg, and it feels faintly patronizing. That’s not – Lan Zhan is not used to being patronized. No one has ever even tried to treat him condescendingly, either too afraid of the consequences or too afraid of him. The way this stranger lies beneath his foot completely unworried while patting his leg almost absentmindedly is tantamount to being blatantly disrespected, comparatively. “I had to stay behind for some business – a resentful spirit tormenting a town along our travels, they begged us for our help, and what was I meant to do? Ignore it? So, I asked to stay behind. It took longer than anticipated, and I apparently grossly overestimated my map-reading skills – I got so lost. So, I came here. It’s ultimately the same destination, anyway, right?”

The urge to frown is unfamiliar, but it itches under his skin for the second time already. Lan Zhan has to make a conscious effort to keep his muscles still, his face expressionless. The story is convenient. Just enough details to be believable but no evidence to confirm it. It would be a plausible reason to be here, yes, but it falls apart at the seams considering the specific circumstances.

“You knew they would arrive in a week’s time. Why not wait at an inn? At the very least until daytime,” Lan Zhan says, and the stranger taps his thigh again.

“Ah, you expect a poor servant to be able to afford a night at an inn? Do you think I would have bothered breaking in if I could?” Wei Ying asks, cocking an eyebrow like Lan Zhan is the oblivious one here. It’s a good answer. It is a great answer, even, but Lan Zhan knows it’s not the truth. There is no way for him to confirm that suspicion, though, unless he calls this stranger a liar which is not something he is allowed to do. How could he possibly know that this intruder is not telling the truth without admitting to making premature judgements? At Lan Zhan staring down at him doubtfully, Wei Ying finally stops tapping at Lan Zhan’s knee. “I’m really with the delegation. My name should be on the list of expected guests.”

Lan Zhan is not quite soothed in his mistrust but steps away from the stranger, anyway.

“Ah, am I not a threat anymore?” Wei Ying asks, propping himself up on his elbows. Oddly enough, he’s smiling. Widely. He also doesn’t immediately get up, just continues to lay there, looking up at Lan Zhan brightly. Lan Zhan knows it’s not an actual question and there is really no need to waste any words by saying anything. Except –

“You weren’t a threat from the beginning,” Lan Zhan says, despite it really not being necessary. It is not exactly a polite thing to say, either, especially to a potential member of the clan he is going to marry into. Wei Ying’s eyes widen marginally, looking perplexed for a single heartbeat before he throws his head back and laughs. Very loudly. It is a strange reaction, Lan Zhan thinks.

“How ruthless! Spare me some pride, will you?”

Lan Zhan doesn’t dignify that with an answer which is honestly an answer in and of itself. Instead, he turns and walks towards the gates. He does so briskly but pointedly. Wei Ying scrambles to his feet and follows him without any hesitation. Whether he is really with the Jiang delegation or merely someone who wants to exploit an easy opportunity will remain to be decided. Lan Zhan will not be the one to do that, though. Whoever Wei Ying might be, it will not be his problem.

xx.

“Wei Ying is indeed on the list,” Lan Xichen says, the corner of his mouth twitching, and he says it like he’s not saying everything. It is the certain tone of voice he uses against other sect leaders in meetings, strategically saying one thing to avoid saying another. Speaking just enough truthfulness that it doesn’t quite qualify as lying. The tone has always grated at Lan Zhan’s nerves, crawling underneath his skin with its lack of genuineness, uncomfortably close to lying, and he does not particularly like having it directed at him.

“See!” Wei Ying exclaims, turning on his heels to look at Lan Zhan. He stomps a foot. This grown man stomps his foot against the floor like a petulant toddler, exaggeratedly pouting. “I told you!”

“As he’s already here, there is no reason not to let him stay,” Lan Xichen says, looking mildly at Lan Zhan while repeating his own words back at him. It’s like he’s saying You wanted this, challenging him to argue. Uncharacteristically petty, though maybe Lan Zhan has no ground to stand on in that matter. “He’s our guest now, Lan Wangji. I expect you to show him utmost hospitality.”

Wei Ying grins at him triumphantly and Lan Zhan has to close his eyes for a moment, just so he won’t inadvertently roll them. That would not be very hospitable, surely.

xx.

After leading Wei Ying to his rooms, generously ignoring the You’re not gonna come inside? and the abhorrently unsubtle wink that followed right after, Lan Zhan turns around without a word and leaves. He doesn’t trust himself enough not to pull his sword and press it against Wei Ying’s throat again if he stayed in his presence for even one more moment.

Afterwards, he has to meditate for a significant amount longer than usual to tamper down on the irritation, which cannot be a good sign for his immediate future. It is only the first night, the very first hour, and he already does not wish to deal with this anymore. Lan Zhan has always had a low tolerance for frustrating individuals, though he has cultivated an indifferent sort of serenity when it comes to handling people he’d rather not be handling. He has the suspicion that it will not be enough for handling Wei Ying, though.

xx.

That first assessment is, unfortunately, proven to be true the very next day. Lan Zhan is practicing the guqin on the porch of Jingshi, already having moved through a third of his morning routine, when he hears a loud sound of surprise. Upon looking up, Lan Zhan sees Wei Ying running up the path, waving and grinning.

“Running is prohibited,” Lan Zhan says as soon as Wei Ying is close enough, because contrary to Wei Ying, he knows how to speak at an acceptable volume.

Wei Ying abruptly halts at few paces away. His eyebrows draw together, his chin lifts up defiantly. He opens his mouth.

“Talking unnecessarily loudly is, too,” Lan adds quickly. As long as no word has left Wei Ying’s mouth yet, it cannot be counted as interrupting. It is also oddly satisfying to watch Wei Ying’s mouth click shut.

“How do you know I would have talked loudly?” Wei Ying asks, voice low and even, almost provocative in the easy manner he mimics the natural tone of someone who has lived at Cloud Recesses for years. Everything about Wei Ying is provocative, somehow, even when he just stands there and follows a Lan discipline diligently. He swings his sword against his shoulder like he did last night while breaking in before pointing the sheathed tip at Lan Zhan. “You wouldn’t have made an assumption, there, would you? Because if I remember correctly, there is a rule against that?”

“Provocative,” Lan Zhan says quietly, not really meaning to say it at all, but Wei Ying hears it, anyway. And then he grins, open and bright, looking positively delighted at being semi-insulted.

“Provocative is actually my courtesy name,” Wei Ying says, walking up the stairs to Jingshi as if he’s lived here forever. He nods to himself. “Wei Tiaoxin. Sect Leader Jiang gave it to me himself!” He throws his head back and laughs, shoulder shaking from the force of it. Lan Zhan’s right eye twitches. “You – stop looking at me like that! Is humour prohibited, too?”

“Laughing too much without reason is forbidden, yes,” Lan Zhan says, although he knows that it wasn’t a genuine question.

“You’re joking,” Wei Ying says, looking utterly horrified. “Please tell me you’re joking. Laughing too much is forbidden? That is insane – what even qualifies as too much – no, don’t answer that, I don’t want to know. No matter what you think is too much is probably not enough. Laughing can never be too much. Actually, I think there should be more of it. How can you even enforce that rule – laughing is not a controllable thing! It’s as natural as breathing! Do you forbid crying, too?”

Lan Zhan reflexively opens his mouth to answer but stops short. Crying is not forbidding, exactly, it is not a written rule, but there is a silent understanding that too much of it is to be avoided. Grieving in excess is forbidden, and it is never specified grieving over what or what would be specified as excess, and it is greatly encouraged not to experience any kind of grief at all; keep it low, at a minimum, unobtrusive. Lan Zhan learned that a month after his mother died when he was six and he would be looked at with distaste whenever he was found on his knees in the snow with his cheeks wet.

“No, crying is not forbidden,” Lan Zhan says, and he’s only being truthful in the most superficial sense, he knows; not exactly lying but not really being honest, either. It’s not dissimilar to what Lan Xichen does. Lan Zhan wonders whether it leaves a bitter taste on his brother’s tongue, too.

“Good because I might just have to,” Wei Ying says, and drops himself at Lan Zhan’s side gracelessly, casually. Thankfully, he does not start crying. Instead, he takes immense interest in distracting Lan Zhan from returning to his guqin practice by asking about more rules which Lan Zhan is not allowed to ignore as the Head of Discipline.

During the third long-winded rant about his opinions on a rule he finds particularly nonsensical – What even qualifies as lying, Wei Ying is saying, Not telling the truth? What about withholding certain details without actually altering them? It can’t be considered lying when you’re not saying anything at all, can it. What if you find yourself in a situation where your life depends on not being truthful, that has to be allowed! – that is, quite unfortunately, not completely unwarranted, Lan Zhan is no longer willing to deal with this.

The strategy is to – behave exactly as he has done every single day for the past eighteen years. Cold and detached and distant. He will not step outside the parameters of himself to be exceptionally accommodating, only answering Wei Ying’s inquiries as far as his duties go, words short and clipped like he tends to speak, and that will be enough to scare off Wei Ying after a while. It has always been enough with everyone else. He does not get approached and when he does, he doesn’t like it. People know that, and if they haven’t learned yet, they will eventually. Everyone does, after a while of curious prodding. Wei Ying will not be an exception to this. No one besides his brother ever has been.

xx.

Except – the strategy doesn’t work. The well-trained and trusted method of keeping everyone at an arm’s length by simply being himself does not keep Wei Ying away, apparently.

Ignoring Wei Ying’s greetings in the morning, turning away from him after brief acknowledgement only makes Wei Ying push into his sight even more. His silence does not deter Wei Ying from chattering at him incessantly and his non-responses only seem to spur him on. The harder Lan Zhan tries to ignore him, the more determined Wei Ying gets. Even when Lan Zhan walks away in clear displeasure at being around him, Wei Ying eagerly follows along, either purposefully obtuse or frighteningly dense.

When Lan Zhan sits down in the library with the intention to work, Wei Ying sits at the desk across of him and sends papermen with silly notes through the room. When Lan Zhan crumbles the fifth one in his hand, staring across the room with barely concealed distaste, Wei Ying grins at him and says, You finally looked at me. When Lan Zhan tilts his head back down and says a quiet Boring, it instantaneously sends Wei Ying on a lengthy tangent about what he considers boring. Which is virtually everything in and around Cloud Recesses, according to him, Lan Zhan included. When he ignores that, too, just like he has ignored everything else up to this point, Wei Ying straightens up a little.

“Ah, you’re not boring, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says, very serious all of a sudden, the teasing smile slipping off his face. The sharp change in trajectory almost gives Lan Zhan whiplash; surprised enough to overlook Wei Ying calling him by his given name, but not enough to ignore the fact that Wei Ying knows it at all. It is not unlikely for him to know, though; Lan Zhan’s name has been in people’s mouths since before he was even born. “You almost slit my throat the first time we saw each other! That’s like, the opposite of boring!”

Wei Ying probably means to say it like a joke, just like everything he says is a joke, but it falls flat when his face remains unsmiling. It sounds more like a humourless reminder than a joke they share. There isn’t any of Wei Ying’s previous liveliness, the teasing gone from his demeanour in an instant, and it is a little terrifying how abruptly Wei Ying gets dead-serious, eyes sharp and sincere, just because he thinks he might have insulted Lan Zhan.

“I don’t take offense to being called boring,” Lan Zhan says in a clumsy attempt at reassurance, still not quite caught up. Blunt truthfulness is usually the best course of action when everything else fails him, and he hopes it is enough to make Wei Ying stop looking at him like – that; visibly distressed at the prospect of having offended him. Somehow, Wei Ying’s distress is a lot more difficult to ignore, even when it is caused by his own misinterpretation of Lan Zhan’s silence. “You would not be the first person to do so.”

That doesn’t seem be the correct thing to say. Wei Ying bristles immediately.

“You’re not boring,” he insists, loud enough to break a rule. A disproportionate reaction, Lan Zhan thinks, though maybe for Wei Ying it is not. Maybe for someone like Wei Ying, boring is the worst insult in the world. “You’re probably the most interesting person I’ve ever met!”

“Lying is forbidden,” Lan Zhan reminds, instinctively latching onto whatever little sense he can make of the situation. There is a lot he cannot grasp right now, too hung up in the change, too stuck to understand what Wei Ying is saying.

“How can you accuse me of lying!” Wei Ying yells, clearly aiming for theatrical but there is – something else, too. Like he really does not want Lan Zhan to think he is being dishonest. “Do you really think so lowly of me? Do you believe I would say one thing if I mean another? If I say you’re interesting then I mean that you’re interesting!”

The words themselves sound like the most bold-faced lie Lan Zhan has ever been subjected to – he is many things, but he certainly isn’t interesting –, but the way Wei Ying says them does not. He sits at his desk with his shoulders straight and mouth set stubbornly, seeming utterly sincere. Dead-set on treating this seriously, apparently, as if that is important to him.

“If you say so,” Lan Zhan concedes, too bewildered to do anything else. Wei Ying nods at him curtly, and then he is already half-smiling again. He nods again, this time to himself, clearly pleased at the lack of argument, and goes right back to… whatever it is that he’s been doing before this whole exchange. It takes Lan Zhan a little longer to do the same.

xx.

“Someday, I’ll find something you like!” Wei Ying exclaims solemnly before storming off deeper in the library, presumably for inspiration. With Wei Ying gone, Lan Zhan lets himself look at the inked paper on his desk again. He follows the fine lines, carefully arranged, beautifully flowing together to make a picture of him, minimalistic but impressively accurate, with the most horrendous signature Lan Zhan’s ever seen written underneath.

He does not know how it started but Wei Ying likes to draw him. Or he likes to draw for him, more specifically. Wei Ying always brings his drawings to Lan Zhan’s desk, putting them down in front of him so they cannot be pushed aside. He will then stand by, ink-stained hands fidgeting with his brush, and wait for Lan Zhan to – Lan Zhan is not too sure, honestly. Wei Ying always seems to expecting something, demeanour strangely tense and eyes uncomfortably sharp. There is not much to say – flattery is prohibited, and Lan Zhan would not have the adequate words for praising art, anyway. He will look at the drawings for a second, which then turns into several more because he can hardly believe the artistic talent, and then he will turn his attention back to his work. Wei Ying would then scoff in a way that sounds increasingly annoyed, and would say, Someday, I’ll find something you like.

It has been five days already, and Wei Ying hasn’t yet faltered in his determination. Lan Zhan cannot say he minds very much; drawing forces Wei Ying to concentrate, to settle down, even if only for a few moments at a time. Sometimes, Wei Ying will run out of the library, returning much later with a short pile of inked scraps of paper, and Lan Zhan would be halfway through his work already. Drawing keeps Wei Ying quiet, which makes Lan Zhan realize just how distracting his voice was before. Lan Zhan’s silent acknowledgement seems to be the only thing keeping him going, Lan Zhan certainly does not encourage him, but if looking at the drawings for a little too long is all it takes for Wei Ying to be less of a pest, Lan Zhan will gladly do so.

He doesn’t need to tell Wei Ying that he found something he likes three days ago, when he sat next to him at his desk, chattering away and scribbling little bunnies on the backside of an official document Lan Zhan was meant to sign. Wei Ying also does not need to know that that particular drawing ended up in a drawer in Lan Zhan’s bedchambers.

xx.

“Lan Zhan, you hypocrite!”

Maybe this was a mistake. A miscalculation on Lan Zhan’s part. But Wei Ying got restless in the library, fidgeting hands with nothing to do to keep them steady, and Lan Zhan – made an educated guess. Wei Ying seemed to burst with nervous energy but unwilling to stray too far from Lan Zhan’s side, so he took Wei Ying to the cold springs. To where he knows the rabbits to be, at this time of year. He thought Wei Ying probably wasn’t used to sitting still for too long, and he thought Wei Ying could use the distraction. Now, Lan Zhan wonders whether he made a mistake.

“I thought pets are forbidden here,” Wei Ying says from where he’s crouching on the ground, trying to scoop up one of the white flecks scurrying around. He’s too loud, his qi vibrating off of his skin in a frenzied frequency, and the rabbits scatter away from him immediately. Lan Zhan can’t blame them; Wei Ying’s restiveness was enough to disturb even Lan Zhan and his imperturbable serenity, it must feel much harsher to such sensitive animals. Wei Ying furrows his eyebrows, closes his eyes. Exhales, slow and controlled, and his nerves seem to settle down one by one. In an impressive display of control, the frantic buzzing slows, steadies, evens, until it is merely a weak echo to what it was before. The rabbits stop twitching nervously.

“They are,” Lan Zhan says. He sits across from Wei Ying, careful not to move too quickly, and he has barely even smoothed out his robes when the first few rabbits already clamber all over him. They nibble at his sleeves, because that is where he is usually carrying treats for them when he visits them. He makes a mental note to go by the kitchens in the evening. “But it’s not forbidden to befriend wild animals.”

“Wild,” Wei Ying says, eyeing Lan Zhan petting a rabbit curiously. “Sure.”

After that, Wei Ying demands that Lan Zhan takes him to other cool places, and Lan Zhan – does. Oddly enough, he does, and he’s careful not to inspect that uncharacteristic agreeability too closely. There are quite a few things he is carefully not looking at, turning his face away from them like a child being petty. As if averting his eyes from something could actually make it go away. He does not necessarily want to think about that, either, so he doesn’t.

xx.

“Wei Wuxian!”

Wei Ying flinches back from Lan Zhan as if burned, all of his previous playfulness gone upon hearing the name. His shoulders are tense, Lan Zhan notices. His jaw, as well. Wei Ying turns towards the entrance of the library, almost pointedly nonchalantly, but his grin looks mildly forced at best, and the switch is so sudden that Lan Zhan gets stuck on staring at Wei Ying’s clenched jaw for a moment. Then he turns to follow Wei Ying’s gaze.

“Jiang Cheng,” Wei Ying says cheerfully, casually waving his hand at Sect Leader Jiang’s son, not even bothering rising to bow. Which Lan Zhan should be doing, right now, as is proper etiquette. Instead, he stays stuck in his seat next to Wei Ying. Stays stuck staring. “How are you, dearest brother?”

“Who are you calling dearest brother?” Jiang Wanyin snaps loudly, marching through the library, looking nothing like a future sect leader. His eyebrows are furrowed deeply, the corner of his mouth twitching downwards, and he looks like he is barely restraining himself from jumping at Wei Ying’s throat. It is too open a display of emotion, not the unshakeable calmness Lan Xichen has been wielding ever since he was a child. The difference is so severe, Lan Zhan involuntarily thinks, Ah, they’re all like that, which is a gross violation of the rule against premature judgements. It is terribly difficult not to think, though, as Jiang Wanyin continues, disrespectfully loud for the space they are in, “You said you would catch up to us! You said, This is going to be a quick one, I promise, I’ll meet you in two days. And I was stupid enough to believe you! Do you know how worried jiejie was because of you? And then we arrive here without the betrothed like complete morons, just to be told–”

“Jiang Cheng,” Wei Ying interrupts sharply, glancing at Lan Zhan briefly. As he does, Jiang Wanyin seems to notice Lan Zhan’s presence for the first time since he started yelling. It’s almost comical how fast his mouth clicks shut when recognition passes across his face. Funnier still when he scrambles with his sword in his haste to bow in an appropriately respectful greeting.

“Wei Wuxian,” Lan Zhan says, somewhat slowly. It is the first time he’s ever said the name out loud, in all these years leading up to this day. He can’t decide whether he likes the sound of it. Maybe his intonation betrays that, maybe it wasn’t as even as he wanted it to be, because Jiang Wanyin grimaces and Wei Ying flinches slightly. “You’re – Wei Wuxian.”

“Ah, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying turns towards him again. “I wanted to tell you–”

“We’re not allowed to be together without supervision,” Lan Zhan says – interrupts. He breaks one rule to remind of another, and isn’t that funny. Wei Ying would find that absolutely hilarious, usually. Would call him out with ruthless abandon, because he only bothered to remember the rules to give him a look and say, See, not even you can follow all three thousand disciplines!

Now, he merely winces.

“Ah, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says again, reaching out to – do something. Just like he always reaches out to do something; touching his arm, grabbing his robes, poking his shoulder. Taking his wrist, sometimes, to get him to stop walking so quickly. Tapping fingertips against his thigh to get his attention. Wei Ying touches him a lot, actually, and that realization comes very belatedly. Lan Zhan rises abruptly.

“Touching is not allowed, also,” he says, and Wei Ying’s arm falls down at his side immediately. The lack of his usual fight speaks of resignation. Wei Ying is not one to resign himself to anything, though, and for a moment, Lan Zhan feels an irrational flare of anger surge through his veins. It is sudden and unfamiliar, having his hands shake as he bows to Jiang Wanyin curtly all throughout making as fast an exit as possible without actually running. Wei Ying does not try to stop him.

The shaking does not stop for a long while after that, though he doesn’t quite know why.

xx.

“You knew,” Lan Zhan says before even saying his greetings. The bow comes a long moment too late, and it is not deep enough. His brother lets him get away with it, just like he gracefully overlooks the fact that Lan Zhan stormed into his private rooms, nearly kicked the door in, really, with a grave amount of disregard for propriety. The way his brother does not flinch, does not react at all to his insolence, is already answer enough, but Lan Zhan needs to hear it, anyway. “Didn’t you.”

“If I had known, I would not have let you two spend any time without a chaperone,” Lan Xichen says neutrally, dutifully, looking nothing less than the sect leader that he is. Then the corner of his mouth twitches upwards, and he looks like his brother again. He doesn’t even need Lan Zhan to clarify, to elaborate, because he already knows. Because he knew. Because he knew what he was doing when he didn’t bother to specify that Wei Ying is also, coincidentally, Wei Wuxian. “Suppose I did know, hypothetically… I am sure I would have had a good reason not to say.”

“Hypothetically,” Lan Zhan says, disbelieving. His brother winks at him.

xx.

Wei Ying finally – finally – leaves him alone after that. It is not as gratifying as Lan Zhan assumed it would be. The absence of him is so glaring, like a void ripped into the space next to him, it makes him uneasy. The lack of Wei Ying’s incessant chattering is blaringly loud, in an odd non-literal way. Not bumping into Wei Ying with the complete absence of distance between them is – disconcerting. It’s unsettling, somehow, not to be constantly reminded of Wei Ying’s being there, because he’s not. There. He has finally left Lan Zhan alone.

Lan Zhan swallows down the heavy something climbing up his throat. He isn’t entirely successful, and it gets stuck halfway.

xx.

“Lan Wangji,” Wei Ying greets, hands folded in front of him neatly, bowing deeply with trained propriety, and the name sounds wrong curled around his voice. Just like the elaborate robes – tailored with precision and fitted perfectly to his body – do not look quite right on him. The complicated braids look foreign in Wei Ying’s hair. The violet silks swallow him up in their extravagance, the colour brutal against his skin, an assortment of shades like bruises. He looks – off. Not quite like himself.

“Wei Wuxian,” Lan Zhan says back, not quite feeling like himself, either. Bowing respectfully, speaking Wei Ying’s courtesy name like he hasn’t been calling him by his given one for a week, acting as if they are seeing each other for the first time. The displeased twitch of the corner of Wei Ying’s mouth is too obvious to miss. Briefly, he looks like he wants to argue. For once, he does not. Lan Zhan cannot decide whether he feels relieved or not.

xx.

As neither Lan Zhan nor Wei Ying are direct heirs and neither of them is a woman, the question of who will marry out of their natal sect is a longer discussion than it usually is. It is not unprecedented for two men to marry, but it is not exactly common. Most of such cases are unions of love, though, mostly between people who are wealthy enough to afford falling in love but not influential enough to disturb the delicate inter-clan politics. Lan Zhan supposes the discussions of the post-marital life goes about much more smoothly under those circumstances.

This marriage will not be out of love, though, and neither sect is willing to let their head disciple go, so the negotiations stretch themselves over several days. Gusu Lan reminds of Lan Zhan’s importance as the second heir, potential future Sect Leader in the unfortunate – and very unlikely – case of his brother’s early passing. Yunmeng Jiang insists on Wei Ying’s responsibilities as the most talented cultivator of his generation which Gusu Lan parrots. Lan Xichen speaks of Lan Zhan’s role as the head of discipline and Jiang Fengmian retorts that Wei Ying teaches, too. Yu Ziyuan scoffs visibly any time her husband speaks of Wei Ying’s place in the clan, which is something that even Lan Zhan notices after a while with its lack of subtlety. There is a strained undercurrent there, considering the fleeting glances the Sect Leader’s children send Wei Ying’s way after every undisguised display of disapproval.

Wei Ying, however, does not flinch at the open disregard of his abilities by the mistress of his sect. Lan Zhan would notice because he’s been watching. Instead, he politely ignores the praises, even interrupts once to say, “I’m nothing compared to the Second Jade of Gusu Lan!” in an obvious attempt to redirect the conversation which only earns him another sour glance from Yu Ziyuan. It is… rather odd. Wei Ying has never made the impression of being overly modest, or humble, or anything besides shamelessly confident in himself. There is another unknown piece of the grander picture in the way Wei Ying shares discreet looks with Jiang Wanyin, always with an apologetic smile following shortly after. Lan Zhan is not keen on dissecting any underlying family dynamics, though, so he pretends not to notice.

The negotiations draw to a close every day after the sun has long gone down without any solution that would satisfy both parties.

On day five, he is tempted to offer marrying out, just so this whole ordeal will finally move along. His input is not needed – or wished for, for that matter –, so he remains quiet with his back straight and subtly practices meditation in between his uncle and Sect Leader Jiang politely arguing back and forth. Lan Zhan does not usually speak at such meetings, anyway, and no one except his brother should notice his lack of attention to the topic at hand. Though Lan Xichen, too, is heavily involved in diplomatically refusing to let the head disciple of his sect go, using the title only to hide the interlaced concern for his younger brother. Filial love is not exactly needed in such discussions, Lan Xichen is fully aware of that, so he instead emphasises Lan Zhan’s status as a cultivator and second heir, only referring to him as Lan Wangji, Hanguang-Jun, Head of Discipline and Head Disciple.

At this point, however, not even his brother’s well-intending handling of a delicate situation is enough to keep a headache from throbbing in his temples. Frankly, Lan Zhan does not care. There is the preference to stay at Cloud Recesses, of course, where he was born and raised and taught, where the little remnant of his family resides, and unrooting the entirety of his life would certainly not be easy. But he is a cultivator; he has been traveling for his duties since he was barely twelve years old. What more is it to travel to another place, staying there for an indefinite amount of time? Even for the rest of his life, if necessary. It would be troublesome, surely, but not impossible. Lan Zhan is capable of adapting.

He does not say so. His opinion is not needed in this, nor is it wanted. There is also the irritated huff of Yu Ziyuan and the discreetly hopeful twitch of Jiang Wanyin’s hand around his tea whenever Jiang Fengmian insists on keeping Wei Ying at Lotus Pier, which is not something Lan Zhan wants to involve himself with.

Wei Ying, for his part, seems wholly disengaged from their elders’ talk about their future. Not in the way Lan Zhan is, which is completely on purpose, but – distracted. Wei Ying does not appear to be very interested in the conversation at hand, a conversation that will ultimately decide over his life, though he is not exactly inattentive. His focus merely lies elsewhere. His focus lies on Lan Zhan. For the past few days, he has been awfully careful not to sway into Lan Zhan’s space, keeping the distance that is considered proper for situations such as these, polite but reserved, friendly but not overly so; very unlike how he used to be at the beginning of their acquaintance. The only thing that has not changed is the way his eyes always find Lan Zhan. Like he can’t quite help himself.

Lan Zhan notices, because he has been watching, as well. Covertly, of course, because staring is impolite. He would have noticed even if he weren’t, though, because Wei Ying’s eyes are – heavy. There is no other word for it. Wei Ying’s eyes are sharp, piercing, weighing down on Lan Zhan and his unsuccessful attempts not to notice. It’s honestly a little much, for Lan Zhan personally, so he keeps his head lowered.

The few instances their eyes do meet, the few times Lan Zhan gets too impatient, too restless, Wei Ying looks like he wants to say something. He never does.

xx.

“This just never ends, huh,” Lan Zhan hears from behind him, which is strange because he did his best to escape the hall as soon as the last bows were exchanged. When he turns, Wei Ying stands a few paces away, hands behind his back and smiling in a way that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. It sounds an awful lot like an uncertain attempt at small talk, so Lan Zhan turns to resume his way. “Ah, wait!”

Lan Zhan does, mainly because it would be rude to turn his back to his betrothed but also because Wei Ying does not seem to know what to say, which is uncharacteristic enough for Lan Zhan to practice patience.

“Where are you going?” Wei Ying asks, bringing one hand from behind his back to rub a fingertip over the bridge of his nose, and the gestures makes him look a little more like himself. It still sounds like the tentative beginnings of casual conversation, something Lan Zhan doesn’t usually engage with, but he is supposed to treat his spouse with an appropriate amount of respect. Which probably means indulging his questions. He doesn’t want to think about how often he neglected that before he knew who Wei Ying was.

“Library,” Lan Zhan answers dutifully, albeit curtly, and his tone makes the corner of Wei Ying’s mouth twitch. Downwards.

“May I accompany you?” Wei Ying asks, head tilted down respectfully and hands in front of him, standing in front of Lan Zhan with the propriety of a stranger who doesn’t want to be a bother. Wei Ying has not once asked whether he was allowed to follow him around; would not even have considered that he could potentially be a bothersome presence. But that was before, and maybe he thinks he cannot take such liberties anymore. Not with their respective families arguing about their futures, not dressed in ridiculously exuberant robes. Not while they’re calling each other Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji.

“Of course,” he says, because he can’t exactly deny anyone entry to the library, but also because it is the first time Wei Ying directly speaks to him in days. Wei Ying’s voice sounds hesitant and uncertain, like he isn’t quite sure how to talk to Lan Zhan in this new context, not sounding much like Wei Ying at all, really, but Lan Zhan is strangely relieved to hear it again, anyway.

Wei Ying’s eyes widen and then he – smiles, helplessly. Genuinely, like a gap of sunlight ripping through a tree line. It slices across Wei Ying’s face, through the unnatural stillness that has been etched into it, lightens the shadows around his eyes. He looks like himself again, in that moment. Open, unguarded, bright. Everything seems a little brighter now that Wei Ying smiles again, and before Lan Zhan can even begin to think something as foolish as There he is, it’s – gone. Again.

Wei Ying’s smile falters, tightens at the corners, and then his whole face shutters closed. His shoulders straighten into a disarmingly cordial posture and he waves a hand just widely enough not to appear as mocking. “After you, Lan Wangji.”

Before Lan Zhan can snort at Wei Ying’s sudden decorum and say something stupid, something like You know where the library is, he notices the chaperone standing a few paces away. Of course, Wei Ying would demonstrate just how easily he can follow the rules in front of a sect-issued elder tasked with supervising them. Of course, Wei Ying would never have shown this much decorum in front of Lan Zhan.

Because he didn’t have to, then. Now, they are in their official courtship period where they are supposed to get to know each other. It is more pretence for the sake of tradition than anything else, because they already did. Get to know each other. Courtesy of Wei Ying breaking in a week before his scheduled arrival, which is an error that is strategically ignored in favour of pretending to be proper.

Unsurprisingly, proper is not exactly Wei Ying’s preferred way of existing, and he seems to have finally grown tired of pretending, so he nudges Lan Zhan’s thigh inconspicuously while they’re supposed to be reading in silence. Lan Zhan looks up from the scroll he most definitely was not reading, and Wei Ying looks like he’s trying very hard not to scream. Lan Zhan appreciates that – screaming is forbidden. Touching is, too, and he should remind Wei Ying of that.

“You must be bored,” Lan Zhan says instead, low enough that it forces Wei Ying to lean in subtly. Just close enough to be appropriate for a supposed pair of lovers but not quite enough to require interference. Wei Ying seems to know the fine line of plausible deniability, and he leans as close as he knows he can get away with. It’s still a little too close. Lan Zhan does not lean back.

“How could I ever be bored with my betrothed?” Wei Ying says, loudly and pronouncedly, sounding nothing less than outraged at the notion. It’s a loud and theatrical display, just embarrassingly obnoxious enough to distract from his fingers tugging at Lan Zhan’s robes underneath the desk. “I could stare at my beautiful future husband for hours, days, weeks – I could never be bored! Although, I would not exactly decline the opportunity to be alone with him.”

It is too provocative – said low enough to seem private but loud enough for everyone to hear and misunderstand. Because they will. Misunderstand. Wei Ying invites to misunderstand. He alludes to something so obvious, it distracts from what he is really saying.

“Being alone together is prohibited,” Lan Zhan says dutifully, but he catches Wei Ying’s sleeve under the table. He pulls at it once, very softly. Wei Ying’s eyes brighten. “I am sure that my betrothed would not have anything so inappropriate to say that he couldn’t say it freely.”

The corner of Wei Ying’s mouth twitches. Upwards. His fingers catch Lan Zhan’s.

“If there was anything to say, I would! But we’ve only known each other for a few days, what is there to say?” Wei Ying sighs, letting his head fall onto his hand, elbow propped on the desk, gazing up at Lan Zhan through his eyelashes. His eyes glint, like they always do before doing something that is most likely against the rules. “If only I’d broken in a week before the scheduled time of arrival so I could spend more time with my future husband! What a missed opportunity.”

Lan Zhan snaps his eyes up to Wei Ying’s, only finding unapologetic amusement.

Wei Ying grabs Lan Zhan’s hand properly, fingers curled around Lan Zhan’s knuckles, thumb drawing circles into Lan Zhan’s palm; still under the table, still hidden away, still a gross violation of a rule. Lan Zhan doesn’t pull away. “But… if I had broken in, hypothetically, I would probably – apologize. For lying.”

Wei Ying does not care much for the rules of Gusu Lan, finds them all nonsensical and asinine, and he does not apologize for breaking them by lying as much as he apologizes for lying to Lan Zhan, personally. There is no shame in violating an ancient discipline, but there is guilt for wronging Lan Zhan specifically. As though, to him, Lan Zhan and his silly feelings matter more than the rules he’s been raised with. It should make irritation flare up, annoyance, anger. Instead, Lan Zhan’s skin feels too warm, his chest too tight.

“I know lying is against the rules,” Wei Ying continues hurriedly, hand tightening around Lan Zhan’s like he’s expecting Lan Zhan to pull it away. With his free hand, he holds up three fingers close to his heart. With a solemnity so earnest it would look insincere on anyone else, he says, “This one has learned the importance of this discipline. He would not dare to disregard it again.” Wei Ying presses his lips together, curls his fingers and slowly lowers his hand almost sheepishly. He adds, “Hypothetically, of course.”

But Wei Ying does seem sincere, is the thing. His eyes are wide, his shoulders set and his back straight. The same kind of seriousness as when he apologized for calling Lan Zhan boring.

“In that case, I would trust your word,” Lan Zhan says, and he finds the words to be true, although he couldn’t tell why. They just are. Ill-advised, really, to trust Wei Ying’s words when Wei Ying has an unnerving habit of stringing them along in a particular way that always plays in his favour. Wei Ying has also never said anything that he didn’t seem to mean, unfalteringly honest, and he never actually gave Lan Zhan any reason to mistrust him. So, Lan Zhan doesn’t. And maybe that is ill-advised, too. “Hypothetically, of course.”

Wei Ying makes a little startled sound at that, like he didn’t expect Lan Zhan to play along, before laughter bubbles out of him that also sounds rather startled. Unsuccessfully, he tries to smother it in his palm, while he squeezes Lan Zhan’s hand under the table. Lan Zhan allows him to laugh too loudly, and he allows him to continue holding his hand. Lan Zhan can’t quite allow himself anything more than not pulling away – which is already too much, really –, but Wei Ying looks at him like it’s enough, anyway.

xx.

“What would you want, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying asks on the sixth day of unsuccessful negotiations. Leans over the table, spills all of himself unseemly over their tea, one leg pulled up to his chest, and it looks rather funny while he’s dressed in all these expensive robes. Lan Zhan remembers a fable his mother read to him as a child, something about how you can saddle a cow but not expect it to turn into a horse.

“What I want is not important,” Lan Zhan says, inconspicuously moving the tray with the teapot and the cups away from where Wei Ying’s elbow rests. He is grateful for his foresight when a moment later, Wei Ying slaps his hand down, palm resting where his cup would have been, looking nothing short of outraged at the statement. Lan Zhan rephrases. “Talking about it is unnecessary.”

“Aiyah, Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying says, taking hold of Lan Zhan’s sleeve just as he sets his cup down. It forces him to leave his arm on the table, which is not exactly proper, but Wei Ying traces the silver embroidery at the hem absentmindedly with his fingertips, so Lan Zhan leaves his arm where it is. “Of course, what you want is important! Not that – I mean, it won’t change anything, yeah, it’s not like we have much choice, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a preference. Right? Humour your future husband a little, will you?”

It is nonsensical, really, to even contemplate preference in such a situation. It will certainly not help. Having preference means having attachment, and that is not something that is very viable in these kinds of proceedings. But Wei Ying – his spouse, his future husband –, asks to be humoured, and what else is Lan Zhan to do than to indulge him? He can only assume that indulging Wei Ying is part of his duties, now. Not quite now, not quite yet, but Lan Zhan supposes he might as well start a little early. They have already been doing things a little out of order, have already broken too many rules to count, and Lan Zhan thinks he might as well. Clearly, Wei Ying is a horrible influence.

“I grew up here,” Lan Zhan starts, carefully choosing his words. Wei Ying’s eyes sharpen immediately, uncannily focused, like Lan Zhan’s words really are that important to him. “I was raised here. It’s where my family lives. It would be – a difficult change. But that is not any different for you.”

“One of us is fucked either way,” Wei Ying agrees easily, saying the quiet part out loud as if they wouldn’t be punished for their insolence if someone heard. “Not to say that I dislike it here–” When Lan Zhan looks at him flatly, he adds, “I don’t! Dislike it, I mean. Besides the bland food and the countless rules and your insane sleeping schedule, it’s nice. It’s structured – maybe a little too structured, granted, but it’s not unbearable. It won’t take me very long to get used to it.”

Lan Zhan’s eyes snap up from where he got distracted by Wei Ying’s fingers playing with his sleeve. He narrows his eyes. Wei Ying stops moving. “Why do you assume it is going to be you?”

“Ah, Lan Zhan, of course it will be me!” Wei Ying says, as though it is obvious. He takes his hand back, leans back a little. It sort of looks like he’s recoiling. Back into himself, away from Lan Zhan. “You wouldn’t survive at Lotus Pier. Everything is too loud, too crowded, people actually talk to each other. During meals, too, believe it or not! The food’s too spicy for your Lan tongue, the air too humid for your Lan robes. Everything is unruly and disorganized. Did I mention that it’s loud?”

“Should you speak like that of your clan?” Lan Zhan asks, although it’s more genuine curiosity than reprimand.

“I can’t be punished for speaking the truth, can I,” Wei Ying says, leaning closer to Lan Zhan again, conspiratorially like they’re sharing a secret. Then, awfully, he winks, because that is just a thing he does. Lan Zhan knows that, he’s come to learn very early on, really, he’s aware. And still –

“Your,” Lan Zhan starts, and stops, voice breaking off somewhere in his throat. He inhales slowly, unsteadily, and resists the urge to swallow. It is only a fraction of a moment, barely even a hitch in his breath, but Wei Ying seems to notice, anyway, if the intrigued twitch of his eyebrow is any indication. Lan Zhan ignores it and forces himself to continue. It is not as seamless as he wishes. Wei Ying seems to notice that, too. “Family. They are back at Lotus Pier.”

“Ah, them,” Wei Ying says, waving a hand in casual dismissal as if his family were a minimal matter to him. The movement looks a little forced. “Jiejie will marry soon, anyway, and Jiang Cheng can’t wait to get rid of me.”

Lan Zhan is inclined to disagree. He has watched Sect Leader Jiang’s son over the past days, courtesy of them sitting across from each other during the discussions as a result of their similar position in their respective sects, and he has seen Jiang Wanyin’s hands clench into fists every time the conversation steers towards Wei Ying marrying out. It doesn’t seem to Lan Zhan like Jiang Wanyin wants to let his sect brother go at all, much less get rid of him. It would be impolite to voice his thoughts about another’s feelings, though, terribly presumptuous of him to even assume, so, he does not.

“Your pupils,” Lan Zhan says instead, and Wei Ying tilts his head at him. “You’re Head Disciple. You have students, yes?”

“Ah, them!” Wei Ying says again, louder this time around. He throws a head back and laughs, though it doesn’t sound much like him at all. “They’ll survive! I wasn’t a very good teacher, anyway – I would sit back and watch them try and fail to use their arrows because I thought it was funny. Not that they would have listened to my instructions. Lan Zhan, those brats would bully me on the daily! Me! Their senior and beloved teacher!”

“They are your juniors, you would miss them,” Lan Zhan insists, although he doesn’t know what exactly he is trying to achieve. Maybe he just wants Wei Ying to be honest with him. Because Wei Ying has been lying ever since the conversation started. “You would miss Lotus Pier.”

Wei Ying’s smile falters. Then it flickers out entirely. He says, “You were right, it really is stupid to talk about it.” So, they don’t.

xx.

“I would like to,” Lan Zhan says, and everyone immediately whip around to stare him. The surprise is understandable, Lan Zhan has not said a single word during these meetings besides the usual niceties since the day they started. He was not planning to, either, but that was back when he stupidly believed this would move along a lot faster. “Propose.”

“Aiyah, Lan Wangji!” Wei Ying interjects, already having figured out what everyone else is still stuck on. He grins, but his eyes aren’t in it, and it looks too strained, too tight, too insincere. “I already did that like, four years ago! There’s no need–”

“I believe the negotiations will not be able to continue for as long as this problem is not solved,” Lan Zhan starts, and both his brother and Wei Ying grimace. Well, Wei Ying does, and Lan Xichen looks very much like he’s trying not to, which is virtually the same thing. “I would like to visit Lotus Pier. If you were to allow me.”

“How do you suggest that would help?” Jiang Fengmian asks, clearly sceptical but polite. He leans back, running his fingers over his beard, seeming much more susceptible to the idea than his wife who stares at Lan Zhan with a deadliness that would bring a weaker man to his knees.

“Words don’t seem to be of any use, maybe it will help if we were to see. A change of scenery and a few additional days for negotiations if nothing else,” Lan Zhan says, making sure to subtly enunciate the politically advantageous aspect while trying not to sound like he is. Then he tilts his head up and says something that went unspoken for weeks. “It is not as if we were in a rush, right?”

Peripherally, he sees Wei Ying wince slightly. Across from him, Jiang Yanli grabs Jiang Wanyin’s hand underneath the table, as if to hold him back from something. Maybe she is.

“Propriety suggests reciprocity,” Lan Xichen says evenly, elegantly supporting Lan Zhan’s weak attempts by gracefully using an ancient discipline for his own gain without making it seem like he is. “Wei Wuxian has already spent some time here. Albeit briefly, he has had the chance to see life at Cloud Recesses. In Gusu Lan. He lived here for a week, lived between us, and he learned to live with us. To a certain degree, at least.” Lan Zhan almost snorts at that, but he thinks he hides it well behind an exhale. No one notices, except – Wei Ying, who bites his lip in a weak attempt at suppressing a laugh. Lan Xichen continues, “He would know what to expect if he were the one to marry out. But if it were Lan Wangji…”

“Maybe I will like it there so much that I opt to marry out on my own volition,” Lan Zhan says, and he says it like he says everything which doesn’t say much at all, but Wei Ying presses a palm against his mouth to smother laughter, anyway. In a strategic but ultimately useless attempt at authority, he says, “My opinion doesn’t weigh so little that it isn’t worth a try, does it? My potential decision would matter, wouldn’t it?”

He says the words like questions, politely offering the possibility to interject and negate him. No one does. No one dares to. In this rare instance, it isn’t because of his name or his title. He says it as the chess piece he is, threatening his position on the board. The position they have been desperately fighting for.

“I don’t see any reason not to,” Lan Xichen says, and he, too, says it like an argument is allowed, although it is clear that it is not. He smiles subtly when he catches Lan Zhan’s gaze. He looks weirdly pleased. Pleased at what, exactly, Lan Zhan cannot say.

xx.

“Why would you do that, Lan Zhan?” Wei Ying asks him later, eyes wide with – Lan Zhan is not too sure. Surprise, annoyance, maybe even a little anger. He has the decency to lean close, maybe a little too close, in a poor attempt at keeping the words between them. It is futile, though; he is too loud, even when he actively tries not to be, and that is so distinctively Wei Ying, Lan Zhan almost finds it endearing.

“You said I wouldn’t survive at Lotus Pier,” Lan Zhan says, doing a much better job at speaking quietly. “It was sort of your idea.”

“That wasn’t a challenge!” Wei Ying cries, mock-outraged, and pokes a finger into Lan Zhan’s forehead, close to his ribbon, but he looks like he’s barely holding onto the annoyance anymore, face opening up with the poorly repressed smile.

“I want to see my future husband’s home,” Lan Zhan says, voice low and serious. Wei Ying’s mouth drops open. “I was also getting tired of endless meetings without conclusion.”

Wei Ying laughs shakily, rubbing a hand over his chest. “Ah, Lan Zhan! You can’t just say things like that without warning me!”

“I will, then,” Lan Zhan says, and when Wei Ying blinks at him, he adds, “Warn you.”

Wei Ying laughs again, more steadily now. “Where did that come from, Lan Zhan? I thought humour was prohibited!”

Wei Ying seems to give up on fighting this out, letting his grin take over, and to his absolute terror, Lan Zhan feels the corner of his mouth twitch, too.

That is deeply concerning. Lan Zhan doesn’t think about it.

xx.

“I told you.”

“It is really not that bad,” Lan Zhan says, although it absolutely is that bad. Wei Ying was right – Lotus Pier is too loud, too crowded, too hot. It is bustling with life, bursting with energy. The air is vibrating with people’s voices and dripping with humidity. His temples have been throbbing with a faint headache ever since he got here, and his robes have been sticking to his skin for just as long.

“I told you,” Wei Ying repeats, as if he’s reading Lan Zhan’s mind. Maybe he is. Maybe he just sees what Lan Zhan is trying to stoically ignore. Either way, Wei Ying is too perceptive, and that will probably get Lan Zhan in trouble at some point. “I’ll get you some lighter robes later. Before that, though, we need to get some liquid in you. Can’t have you dehydrate on my watch, that wouldn’t be a very auspicious for our marriage. C’mon, I’ll cut you up some watermelon.”

xx.

Lan Zhan wasn’t lying – mainly because he is not allowed to, but also because it is true. Lotus Pier is not too bad. Even everything that seemed unbearable at first has become tolerable. Manageable. The people may be loud and boisterous, no sense of personal space anywhere within them, crowding too close around Wei Ying and, consequently, Lan Zhan, but they are friendly and polite and they’re merely curious. Lan Zhan knows that, and he knows he cannot blame them for it, and it helps tampering down onto the initial irritation. The sun is ruthless, the heat relentless, the humidity suffocating, but Wei Ying has made a continuous effort to alleviate Lan Zhan’s silent discomfort – lending him weather-appropriate robes, feeding him fruit, carrying around a flask of water for him. Wei Ying cast a talisman for the water to constantly remain cool. Lan Zhan didn’t even know that there is a talisman for something like that.

(“Oh, there isn’t. Well, wasn’t. I invented it.”

“You invented a talisman for… keeping water cold?”

“You’re not used to the heat of Yunmeng, and I need to keep you cool somehow!”)

Maybe it isn’t Lotus Pier that isn’t too bad, maybe it’s just Wei Ying who makes it easier to endure.

xx.

Life’s natural rhythm runs differently, here, and Lan Zhan knows that is merely adaptation to nature’s natural flow. People usually don’t rise until the sun has long been up, and they don’t rest until it’s long been gone. It is the most logical schedule, adjusting to nature instead of going against it. Waiting out the worst of the heat before going about life is the most rational course of action. Lan Zhan knows that, he is aware. Unfortunately, though, rationality cannot win against how his body was trained to be ever since he was two years old. His very own rhythm that he brought along from Cloud Recesses, one that he couldn’t break if he tried.

So, usually, his mornings go like this: he wakes up before the sun rises, and he is probably the only person at Lotus Pier who is awake. Sometimes, he will try to lay there instead of getting up immediately, but he never manages to. Lan Zhan doesn’t even need to change most of his morning routine, and he still meditates on the porch facing the small garden before clothing himself and he still combs his hair with the same carefulness. Instead of practicing the guqin, though, not wanting to potentially wake anyone, he silently goes through sword forms. Compared to back home, however, he has a truly absurd amount of time before the days here even start, and there is really only so much meditation and sword form practicing he can do before it tips over into excess.

He gets a little restless, after a few days, against everything he’s been taught. Lan Zhan sits on the porch of his guest house, fighting to keep his hands steady, and he remembers Wei Ying sitting in the library of Cloud Recesses in a similar state of restiveness. He wonders whether that is how Wei Ying felt, forced to sit still somewhere that wasn’t his home with nowhere to direct his energy to. He probably did, just – in an unimaginable magnitude. Compared to Lan Zhan – compared to everyone –, Wei Ying has a seemingly infinite supply of energy coursing through his body. It must have been torture for him at Cloud Recesses.

Lan Zhan closes his eyes, exhaling slowly, forcing the restlessness out of his body. His hands unclench, his shoulders untense, his nerves settle. Lotus Pier is Wei Ying’s home, and he will respect it even when that means sitting on the porch facing the garden for an indefinite amount of time before Wei Ying will knock at his door again, like he’s done for the past few days, looking dishevelled and half-asleep but excited to see him, anyway. The thought of Wei Ying makes it a little easier to endure; the unfamiliar boredom, his inherent impatience.

Lan Zhan’s hand is on the hilt of his sword and his eyes are open before his consciousness even tells him why. As if summoned by Lan Zhan’s mind, Wei Ying’s head pops over the wall adjacent to the garden, clearly struggling to heave himself up and over. It is terribly reminiscent of the first time Lan Zhan saw him. It is as funny now as it was the first time. Putting down Bichen, Lan Zhan idly watches him climb the wall, not intervening.

On the second attempt – because the first ended with him slipping and yelping and falling –, Wei Ying pulls himself up onto the wall. Very clumsily, not exactly very steady, either, but he manages. He is cursing under his breath. Probably, perhaps. Lan Zhan doesn’t hear it, he’s too far away, but he would go against a discipline to bet on it. After nearly doing a repeat performance of his earlier failure, Wei Ying lets himself down the wall slowly, noiselessly, and he knows exactly what he is doing by not jumping. It is both amusing and irritating to watch Wei Ying be conscious but uncaring about breaking the rules, which is a combination of emotions only Wei Ying could evoke.

“You should not be here, Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, more so to appease himself by dutifully reminding of the rules than actually trying to get Wei Ying to follow them. That is really a lost battle from the beginning, and Lan Zhan has learned how to pick them.

“Do you want me to leave?” Wei Ying asks, but he gracelessly drops next to Lan Zhan. It wasn’t an offer, and it certainly wasn’t a genuine question. They both know the answer already, but Lan Zhan shakes his head, nonetheless. Wei Ying grins at him. It looks faintly smug.

“Do you want to leave?” Lan Zhan asks back, tilting his head at Wei Ying. “You seem tired.”

“And whose fault would that be?” Wei Ying asks, and this, too, is not a genuine question. “Why would you even be awake at this time?” When Lan Zhan opens his mouth to answer, Wei Ying holds up a hand. “No, don’t answer, I know why, but why do it here?”

“It is not on purpose,” Lan Zhan says. “There is not much I can do about it.”

“Ah, you should have said so sooner!” Wei Ying says, and he forgets to be sensible with his volume. He waves his hand at Lan Zhan. “No, it’s not your fault, I should’ve known. I will not even try to keep up with your insane schedule, but I’ll get you something to do. We have an extensive library, I’ll take you, we’ll find something to keep you busy. You must’ve been so bored! Oh, Lan Zhan, were you hungry? You usually eat a lot earlier, don’t you? You should’ve told me! We’re getting you food, right now.”

The display of worry is overplayed and obnoxious, but Lan Zhan knows that there is genuine concern somewhere in between. It seems to be Wei Ying’s preferred method of operating, loud and exaggerated while quietly sincere, and Lan Zhan does not call him out on it. He lets Wei Ying drag him along to the kitchens, not even bothering to remind him that they are not allowed to be alone together.

xx.

Despite Wei Ying’s claim, he has been showing up on Lan Zhan’s porch in the early hours of the mornings. Earlier than the sun rises, and earlier than he himself would usually rise. Each time, he looks very much like he longs to return to sleep, hair carelessly tied into a messy knot at the back of his head, robes in disarray, but he smiles upon seeing Lan Zhan, like he could not imagine to be anywhere else. And every morning, he brings one thing or another along, presenting it to Lan Zhan with barely concealed excitement. A scroll, a book, paper and brushes and inkstones, explaining So your calligraphy won’t get rusty while you’re here. A seemingly ancient board game that Lan Zhan doesn’t understand the rules of but plays with Wei Ying, anyway. A rabbit, that one time, which was stolen (“It’s not stolen, it’s borrowed, Lan Zhan, there’s a difference.”).

“It really does not bother me to be by myself–”

“Are you crazy?” Wei Ying says – interrupts, and were it anyone else, Lan Zhan would have said something. Picking battles and so forth. “You were with me all throughout my stay at Cloud Recesses. It would be a great disgrace if I were not to do the same!”

And what it Lan Zhan to say to that? It’s – it is endearing, having Wei Ying force himself out of his natural rhythm just to keep him company. It would probably be very rude to disregard his efforts, so Lan Zhan… does not. Looks forward to it, even, while he pretends to meditate and waits for Wei Ying’s subpar wall-climbing. Enjoys it, even, talking to Wei Ying in the early hours of the morning without watchful eyes clinging to their backs.

xx.

“Why did you accept to marry a poor servant’s son?” Wei Ying asks, way too casual for the whiplash in conversation he just caused, taking a sharp left in between the time it takes to peel a lotus seed and popping it into his mouth. He brought several stems, like he just ripped them out of the water on his way here, and he offered them to Lan Zhan like a bouquet of flowers. Lan Zhan’s found that he does not like lotus seeds, but he lets Wei Ying feed him some, anyway, just to see the self-satisfied twitch of Wei Ying’s eyebrow.

“Why was there a proposal to begin with?” Lan Zhan asks back. It’s easier than to ty to explain to Wei Ying that he would have agreed to whoever. It just happened to be him.

“I wrote it myself,” Wei Ying says, answering the question that went unspoken, and it is a great effort to keep the surprise off his face. Wei Ying seems to see it, anyway, and laughs. “I wrote it because – I didn’t think it would get accepted. That was the sole reason I even picked up the brush. My brother’s – Jiang Cheng’s mother, she doesn’t like me very much, is the thing. She’s wanted me out of Lotus Pier since the day I arrived. Marry you out or sell you off, I really don’t care which one it is, she always used to say.”

Lan Zhan frowns. He doesn’t mean to, not really, but he can’t really help it. Not being able to keep little twists on his face from showing has become a reoccurring theme, with Wei Ying.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Wei Ying laughs. He laughs. It doesn’t sound forced, either. Doesn’t sound like he’s trying to overplay what he just said, but instead genuinely finds it funny. The situation or Lan Zhan’s reaction to it, one of the two.

“Is that why,” Lan Zhan starts, and halts. Think thoroughly before speaking. He has had to copy that particular discipline an embarrassing amount since he has known Wei Ying. He takes a breath, forcing all his feelings back down his chest because it is simply not logical or viable to get upset over another’s affairs. It is not an easy task, and the emotions get stuck halfway, clogging up his lungs. “Is that the reason that the courtship started so early?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Wei Ying agrees easily, nodding. “She wanted me out as fast as possible. I think she nearly bit her own teeth out when you suggested prolonging the process in favour of finding a solution that would benefit the both of us.”

Lan Zhan knows that, of course, he isn’t blind. He has known there to be something the first day of negotiations, something in the way Yu Ziyuan would scowl and frown and click her tongue in disapproval. He decided not to look at it too closely, back at Cloud Recesses, although there is really no way to ignore it now when it is laid out in front of him so explicitly. There are still some pieces missing, a glaring lack of reason behind Yu Ziyuan’s distaste for Wei Ying for one, but Lan Zhan does not ask. There is no answer that he would like, probably.

“I honestly just wanted to piss her off,” Wei Ying continues, as he often does when the air starts to feel too heavy, though Lan Zhan is not sure whether it’s for his own sake or Lan Zhan’s. “I wrote the proposal as a joke. Only – that it wasn’t a joke and I really intended to send it, so it had to look serious. Enough so that it would be approved, anyway. I didn’t expect it to – I just wanted to piss her off. I wanted to embarrass her by doing something she’d been suggesting herself by doing it in the worst possible manner, and I put so much mockery into it that it shouldn’t even have been shown to you. Why was it shown to you, Lan Zhan? I think I wrote a poem about your eyes?”

Lan Zhan remembers that, of course. After he blindly accepted the proposal without even knowing Wei Ying’s name yet, he continuously refused to listen to the accompanying letter. He didn’t think it would be necessary, or helpful. He wanted to think that he didn’t want to read it, either, and he held out for a formidable two years before he couldn’t pretend to be indifferent anymore. While he was reading the proposal in truly horrid brushstrokes, he remembered his brother saying You haven’t even listened to the letter yet, sounding calm in his urgency. Lan Zhan understood what his brother had urged him for, then, while he was reading novel-length descriptions about his beauty.

He’s inclined to recite the whole proposal letter, just to embarrass Wei Ying a little bit. Teach him humility, for once in his life, as he ought to. Tragically, there is no valid reason to inflict punishment, Wei Ying didn’t necessarily break any rules. Although, there probably should be a rule about writing official documents as a joke. There aren’t in Gusu Lan, not carved into stone, because no one would even contemplate something as foolish as that, but maybe Lan Zhan needs to talk to his brother about adding a new rule to the teachings. There should be a whole subset of new rules, actually, all deriving from Wei Ying and his general way of existing. A specific category that would mostly cover the loopholes that he finds through semantics and long-winded jumps in logic that aren’t exactly incorrect.

“You were the first one to write,” he says, opting for simple truthfulness. It seems appropriate, answering to Wei Ying’s honesty in a similar manner. “I agreed so I could get it over with.”

“How careless!” Wei Ying exclaims, hand clutching at his chest dramatically, although there is something tugging at the corner of his mouth, making his eyes less open. Like he doesn’t really wish to continue the conversation. “Isn’t there some kind of rule about making rash decisions?”

“Was it a rash decision when it was decided way before?” Lan Zhan wonders out loud, purposefully evading the obvious bait. Wei Ying narrows his eyes at him, clearly not used to his attempt at deflection being blatantly ignored. “I’ve always known it is something I would have to do one day. I didn’t wish to drag out the inevitable. It distressed my uncle very much, that didn’t reassure me.”

Wei Ying laughs at that, his shoulders shaking with it. “I can imagine. He must’ve been horrified!”

Lan Zhan hums easily in agreement. Wei Ying laughs harder.

“Do you regret writing the letter?” Lan Zhan asks, which is a nonsensical question. The answer will not change anything. Personal feelings on this matter are neither helpful nor needed. Lan Zhan selfishly wants to know, anyway.

“Do you regret accepting?” Wei Ying asks back, clearly trying to redirect the conversation. He does that a lot. Redirecting. Deflecting. Backing away from an answer he doesn’t want to give. Usually, Lan Zhan would go along with it and that would be it.

Instead, Lan Zhan looks at him. And although he’s been looking, he has not been doing much else this past weeks, he looks at him and sees him, too. Lan Zhan looks at the simple black robes he likes to wear – the robes he usually wears when he isn’t forced into expensive silks by playing pretend in inter-sect politics. He doesn’t wear the kinds of robes he would have a right to, the ones marking his status and title and importance. The ones his brother wears proudly. Wei Ying doesn’t seem to mind blending himself into the background with the lack of extravagance everyone else is flaunting around; seems to prefer it, even. It’s such a stark contrast to his inherent loudness, to the borderline arrogant confidence emanating off of him.

Wei Ying is made up of a lot of little contradictions like that. A whole multitude of widely differing aspects. Wei Ying demands space by merely existing in that specific way he does, but he purposefully washes himself out with dark colours, simple materials. Wei Ying is known for his skill with his sword, but Lan Zhan has never seen him yield it, not even when a few wide-eyed juniors begged for a demonstration some days ago. Wei Ying is praised for his talent, his innate adeptness at cultivation, but he always manages to politely deny any kind words. Wei Ying is larger than any room he is in, except in the moments where he curls into himself, making himself smaller, lesser, like he doesn’t want to take up too much room. His obnoxiousness clashes with the strange self-deprecation laced in between.

Lan Zhan looks at Wei Ying and shakes his head briefly, pointedly. Wei Ying’s eyes widen, his ears turn a little red, and Lan Zhan knows he could get him to stutter if he said it out loud.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying starts.

“I don’t regret that it’s you,” Lan Zhan says, out loud. Wei Ying sputters, voice breaking off into a cough almost immediately. Watching Wei Ying thump himself on the chest and turning redder by the moment is almost enough to distract him from his own skin burning. Almost. Fortunately, Wei Ying is too preoccupied with his own embarrassment to notice.

xx.

“We’re going swimming,” Wei Ying announces, as if that were any kind of sane statement to make. Which it definitely is not. Because, first of all –

“It’s the middle of the night,” Lan Zhan feels the need to state. Wei Ying seems to be wholly unaware of that fact, standing in Lan Zhan’s room as if Lan Zhan didn’t have Bichen against his throat a mere moment ago because he mistook him for an intruder. Again. Wei Ying was entirely too casual about it this time, too. Then, conscious of the hypocrisy but saying it anyway, “We’re not allowed to be alone together.”

“Ah, as if we haven’t been doing that every day already!” Wei Ying whisper-shouts, which is heavier on the shouting part because Wei Ying has never learned how not to be loud. Lan Zhan makes an aborted movement with his arm, half wanting to reach across the space between them to slap a hand over Wei Ying’s mouth and half remembering that he really should not touch Wei Ying. Dark eyes follow the movement, because of course Wei Ying would not miss that. “Are you scared that we’re gonna get caught?”

“It would not look good,” Lan Zhan says, opting for the diplomatically neutral and infinitively easier answer. It is not a lie, not necessarily, although the whole truth is a lot more convoluted. It would not look good, politically, traditionally, diplomatically. It would look horrible, really; terribly disrespectful of sacred traditions, of their respective sects. It would look worse for Wei Ying. The burden of public disgrace would fall mostly on him, probably, because he has a certain reputation that even Lan Zhan couldn’t miss and people love to have their bias proven. It would be seen as Wei Ying’s misstep, Wei Ying’s mistake, Wei Ying’s fault. Lan Zhan knows that, and he cannot say he likes the thought very much.

“Ah, Lan Zhan, it’s fine!” Wei Ying says. He grabs Lan Zhan’s arm easily, never as reluctant to touch, and grins widely, mischievously. A little conspiratorially, too, as if they’re sharing a joke in between them. “If someone finds out, we can pretend to have fallen in love so deeply, we just couldn’t stand to stay apart! We wouldn’t be the first ones to sneak away from watchful eyes to – for, y’know. Alone time. Would we?”

Lan Zhan doesn’t dignify that with an answer, praying that the heat underneath his skin at the insinuation does not betray him. He gives Wei Ying a hopefully appropriately flat look and Wei Ying holds up both of his hands in mock-surrender.

“Yeah, I know. It wouldn’t be very believable,” Wei Ying concedes with a truly wistful sigh. Then, as though his own words register belatedly, he holds his hands up again. It looks far more genuine, now. “Not because I wouldn’t – you are very beautiful, I mentioned that in the betrothal letter. Excessively. I think everyone knows about the poem I wrote, too, I swear I’ve heard the juniors recite lines from it to each other behind my back. They wouldn’t have a very hard time believing that I certainly would. But you – would not. Right? That is not something you would do. Or, maybe, I don’t know. Would you? Hypothetically, I mean.”

It takes Lan Zhan a moment to filter through Wei Ying’s verbal onslaught, but when he does, he almost snorts. The question of whether Lan Zhan would break a multitude of rules and traditions to do whatever Wei Ying is implying right now is ridiculous. It’s insulting, almost, to even ask. Because Lan Zhan very much would. Shamefully negligent of ancient disciplines in the face of whatever Wei Ying is suggesting they would do. Hypothetically. Lan Zhan can’t even feel particularly ashamed about that, because – Wei Ying can’t possibly think Lan Zhan wouldn’t.

That is exactly what Wei Ying is thinking. He is also not exactly wrong to think that; it’s a fair assumption, a logical conclusion from all the things he knows about Lan Zhan and his natal clan. For some reason that escapes rationality, however, Lan Zhan can’t have him think that, though.

“It would be a gross rule violation, if we were to,” Lan Zhan says, and stops. His voice gets stuck in his throat, struggling to form an adequate word, his tongue clumsy with the implications. “Engage.” It is quite possibly the worst one he could have chosen because Wei Ying startles with a laugh immediately. And then he does not stop laughing.

“Engage,” Wei Ying wheezes, breathless and slightly doubled over, and Lan Zhan really doesn’t think it’s that funny. He has never been laughed at – at least not openly, not into his face – and although he likes seeing Wei Ying laugh, he doesn’t like how humiliating it feels. Wei Ying makes humiliation sound good with his voice, though, and there is a truly alarming absence of annoyance at being laughed at. “Lan Zhan, please, say anything else – make out, fool around, fuck. There are so many words for it!”

“I don’t think there is one that wouldn’t be prohibited at Cloud Recesses,” Lan Zhan says, and even though it is not a joke, it makes Wei Ying laugh again. It is quite a strange thing to make someone laugh, to make Wei Ying laugh; startling, confusing, good. Even when it’s not on purpose most of the time, Lan Zhan certainly doesn’t try, but Wei Ying seems to think he’s funny, anyway. “It would not look good. But I would. Hypothetically, of course.”

Wei Ying chokes on his laughter.

“Let’s go swimming, then,” Lan Zhan decides, impulsive in a way he would usually punish himself for. He thinks he’s allowed some impulsivity when Wei Ying breaks into his room in the middle of the night to take him swimming. He thinks he might as well when impulsivity has brought them this far, after all.

Wei Ying blinks at him, once, twice, and then his entire face brightens. He grabs Lan Zhan’s arm again, though this time, he slides his hand down, slow and deliberate, until his fingers curl around Lan Zhan’s. His smile settles a little more confidently when Lan Zhan doesn’t pull away.

xx.

It was probably a miscalculation, in hindsight. It feels like a reminder on why impulsivity is forbidden, usually. Maybe it is merely his well-deserved punishment for not thinking. Because Lan Zhan wasn’t. Thinking. Obviously, he was not, or he would have seen the error in the plan to go swimming with Wei Ying. Which includes actually swimming with Wei Ying. In the middle of the night, hidden away in a secluded corner of Lotus Pier. So secluded, in fact, Lan Zhan wonders whether anyone knows of it at all. The place certainly seems like a secret – uncomfortably far from the docks, away from the light of the torches.

“You’re really not going to undress?” Wei Ying asks doubtfully, although it doesn’t sound like a question. Lan Zhan, who turned his back as soon as Wei Ying started pulling off his robes, nods decisively. A little stubbornly, as well. “You don’t have to be shy around me – I’m your future husband, I’ll see you undressed eventually.”

“I am not shy,” Lan Zhan says, strangely childish in his insistence. There is a beat of silence, a silent rustling, and a careful splatter of water. When Lan Zhan turns around again, Wei Ying is already submerged to the hips. There is still too much skin, but the distance makes it feel safer to look. Not having Wei Ying’s eyes on him helps.

“Then why aren’t you looking at me?” Wei Ying asks, sounding both impressively innocent and annoyingly smug, which is a combination only Wei Ying could pull off so flawlessly. He hasn’t moved from his spot just off-shore, hasn’t turned around yet, either, there is no way for him to know that Lan Zhan is, in fact, looking, but he sounds like he knows. His skin glows underneath the moon, his hair bleeds into the darkness behind him, and for a moment, he looks ethereal.

Lan Zhan is looking at him, is the thing. He cannot say so, is the other.

“It’s fine, I can be a lot to look at, I understand,” Wei Ying says, combing a hand through his hair, and Lan Zhan can tell he’s grinning without even seeing his face. Then he half-turns and Lan Zhan is proven right. Wei Ying’s dark eyes are bright and sharp, as is his smile when he splashes water in Lan Zhan’s direction. Lan Zhan is too far that it could reach him, but the intention is clear enough. “Are you planning to just stare at me all night?”

“That would be more pleasant than getting wet,” Lan Zhan says unthinkingly, stupidly. Slipping up in his apprehension for late-night swimming escapades and admitting the thing he didn’t want to say.

“I don’t know, getting wet can be very pleasant,” Wei Ying shoots back, and thankfully, he’s too far away to hear Lan Zhan’s breath hitch. “I will drag you in myself if necessary.”

“Not necessary,” Lan Zhan says hurriedly, not very eager for Wei Ying to actually go through with that threat. It seems like something Wei Ying would do, and Lan Zhan does not think he could bear having Wei Ying touch him right now, half-naked and wet. It’s difficult enough to merely exist within his orbit right now. So, Lan Zhan steps into the water, keeping a pre-empted distance, just out of reach in case Wei Ying might want to touch him, anyway. It’s not impossible – Wei Ying touches him a lot.

“I can’t believe I’m night swimming with the Second Jade of Gusu Lan,” Wei Ying says, clearly aiming for a teasing tone but falling flat with genuine wonder. “Lan Zhan, Lan Wangji. What is it that they call you? Hanguang-Jun; the one of inner radiance and virtuous character.”

“I didn’t approve of that name,” Lan Zhan says, nearly tripping over the words in his haste to say them. It feels important to let Wei Ying know he didn’t approve of that name at all. Verbally protested it, even, when it was first given to him because it is – too much. Too much praise for something he was born with, too much celebration, too much flattery. Wei Ying looks at him strangely.

“I think it suits you fine,” he says, lifting his chin in a defiant half-nod. He crosses his arms over his chest just to uncross them again to jab a finger in Lan Zhan’s direction. “Did anyone tell you it didn’t? They were wrong.”

“No,” Lan Zhan says. And then, being blatantly honest about his personal and usually completely irrelevant opinion for maybe the first time in his life, he adds, “I just don’t like the name.”

“Oh,” Wei Ying says. He crosses his arms again and shrugs one shoulder. “I won’t call you by that name, then. It’s a mouthful, anyway. Lan Zhan, though, that feels much better on my tongue.”

“Please – never say that again,” Lan Zhan says, half-horrified and half-something-else that he doesn’t want to name.

“What, that your name feels good on my tongue?” Wei Ying says, and he knows exactly what he is doing by repeating it. No matter how hard he tries to feign innocence by tilting his head to the side. “Would you rather I lie?”

“I will charm your mouth shut,” Lan Zhan says conversationally.

“You wouldn’t!” Wei Ying protests, slapping the water by his hip. Lan Zhan is convinced Wei Ying would stomp his foot if they were on land. “You’d miss my voice too much.”

“That is very presumptuous of you.”

“Oh yeah? Then why did you never use that fancy charm of yours until now?” Wei Ying retorts. Lan Zhan – can’t answer that question. Wei Ying knows that he can’t answer that question without absolutely embarrassing himself in the process, and that is exactly why he has asked. Wei Ying holds up a finger, as if he is about to list something off. Knowing Wei Ying, he probably is.

“I would miss your voice,” Lan Zhan says, interrupting Wei Ying before he could even open his mouth. Ironically, his mouth drops open, anyway. Then, he lifts a hand to his face and turns around so abruptly, water splashes around him.

“Aiyah, Lan Zhan, you can’t just say things like that!” Wei Ying complains, loud enough that Lan Zhan almost doesn’t hear the embarrassment. Lan Zhan can’t even feel triumphant at that, cannot even allow himself a secret smile with Wei Ying’s back turned to him, because – Wei Ying’s back is turned to him. His broad, pale back that is distractingly well-defined and littered with scars. Long lines all across his back, his shoulders, up to his neck and down to his hips, some pale enough to bleed into his skin, some dark red and angry, bruised around the edges and fresh. Some of them look fresh enough to tear open.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, and his voice is shaking, unsteady with something ugly climbing up his throat.

“Huh? What is it – oh.” Wei Ying winces, his shoulders twitching like he wants to pull them up to his ears, like he does when he is embarrassed. He squares them instead, turning back to Lan Zhan with heart-breaking nonchalance.

“Where are they from,” Lan Zhan asks, despite himself. It is horribly inappropriate to ask, he knows; wounds that were severe enough to scar a cultivator do not usually have a story that is easy to share. Scars on the back, the place for discipline and punishment, are even more inappropriate to ask about, so incredibly indecorous of Lan Zhan, but he wants to know.

“Yu Ziyuan,” Wei Ying answers flatly but seemingly truthful, and that is – that. Wei Ying does not say anything else, seems not willing to offer up more, and Lan Zhan can’t offer anything in return, never too adept at handling delicate situations. There is nothing Lan Zhan can say, nothing that would be helpful. He cannot say I’m sorry, Wei Ying because that would not be enough, and he cannot ask the questions he wants to ask, like Why and How often and How bad would it be, politically, if I cut off the hand she carries the whip on. He can’t say anything at all because everything would just come out angry. It is unnecessary, getting angry on behalf of someone who has already learned to live with acceptance. Horribly selfish, horribly arrogant, who is he to even get angry?

Lan Zhan does not have any part in Wei Ying’s hurt, whether that is past or present. Perhaps he will never have any. Lan Zhan doesn’t say I’m sorry, Wei Ying and he does not ask any unnecessary questions and he doesn’t get angry. Instead, he nods, more a vague acknowledgement than a response, and flicks water in Wei Ying’s face. It is too childish a gesture, immature and pointless, certainly not something he would do usually, but Lan Zhan knows it’s something Wei Ying would enjoy. So, he does. Do it. When Wei Ying laughs and counterattacks, he knows it was the right decision.

(Later, when they have returned to Lan Zhan’s room, soaked and dripping all over the floor, Lan Zhan shrugs out of his drenched robes in guise of not wanting to get ill, back deliberately turned to Wei Ying, and lets him see the scars on his own back that are lesser in quantity but equal in severity. They don’t talk about it. They don’t have to.)

xx.

“Lan Zhan, try this,” Wei Ying says, not waiting for any kind of response before holding something up to Lan Zhan’s mouth. He does not know what it is, but he obediently opens his mouth, anyway. Wei Ying beams at him and bounds away again, moving expertly through the people until he’s gone. Lan Zhan does not get nervous at not having him in his sight anymore, they have been doing this all day already. Wei Ying flits away through the crowded streets, weaving in between vendors, and he returns to Lan Zhan with one thing or another for him to taste. He doesn’t get nervous because Wei Ying always comes back.

“You seem to be having quite the time with him,” Lan Xichen says, startling Lan Zhan into remembering his presence. Lan Zhan turns subtly back to him, trying not let it show. There is no hiding from his brother, though, and he smiles at Lan Zhan in a way that is unbearably smug.

“He said he wants me to focus on cultivating my palate, for a change,” Lan Zhan says instead of confirming or denying. He doesn’t think he has to, his brother already seems to know the answer, either way. Oddly enough, it is less pride-demolishing to explain why he’s getting hand-fed by Wei Ying. “Then he laughed at his own joke.”

Lan Xichen laughs at that, the sound a little clearer in Lotus Pier. It is not the first time Lan Zhan notices, but it’s the first time actually sees it. It’s the first time he’s seen his brother outside of official meetings and negotiations, outside of meals that are taken with the Jiang family, which are not any less stressful. There are no watchful eyes here, no need to keep up the pretence of propriety, only a faceless mass of people who are either unseeing or uncaring of their white robes. Maybe it is only the first time Lan Zhan really looks. His eyes were busy with someone else, the past few days. He pushes that thought firmly away.

“You like him, don’t you,” his brother says, his hands folded in sleeves in a perfect display of serene authority, but he’s smiling in a way he never is when he is wearing his sect leader robes. Lan Zhan both likes that his brother is smiling and despises that his brother is smiling at him like that. It is a conflicting feeling.

“I don’t dislike him as much as I thought I would,” Lan Zhan answers evenly, deciding for honest neutrality.

“Lan Wangji.”

“…Lan Xichen.”

“Lan Zhan,” his brother says urgently, but Lan Zhan isn’t sure what he’s urging for. At his clear confusion, his brother sends him a pointed look. It’s a look he hasn’t been graced with since he was a child, one that always makes him feel small and asinine. “You’re smiling around him.”

“I am not.”

“Sure you are. It’s a little embarrassing to watch, to be honest,” his brother says, wrinkling his nose in mock-disgust. He takes out a hand from his sleeves to point in the vague direction Wei Ying vanished to. Lan Zhan has half a mind to remind his brother that pointing is rude. “You let him feed you whatever he feels like. You despise trying new things. You like him, Lan Zhan.”

“Lan Xichen,” Lan Zhan says, now the one sounding urgent. “I’ve known for Wei Ying for less than a whole moon cycle. I barely know him at all. And even if I did, I am not – made. For that. You know that.”

“Everyone is made to love,” his brother says, predictably. It’s not the first time he’s said it. It’s something he’s been repeating ever since he was eight years old because he has always been Lan Zhan’s big brother before anything else, even before being a child himself. It is predictable because his brother has always been kindest to him, especially when Lan Zhan is not being kind to himself. “Everyone is made to be loved, too.”

“I know,” Lan Zhan says, which is his usual response to his brother’s well-meaning words. For the first time, however, he might actually believe it, too. “You’ve been saying that all my life already.”

“And it never got through your thick skull until Wei Wuxian came along,” his brother says, sighing heavily, theatrically, dramatically, with an unusual air of liveliness around him. There has been, ever since they arrived at Lotus Pier. He uses his hands to articulate himself here, like he did back when he was a child, back when he wasn’t burdened by being Sect Leader Lan yet. He speaks a little less formally, a little more freely, more openly. He smiles a little more. He smiles a lot more, actually. He especially smiles around –

“Jiang Wanyin,” Lan Zhan says abruptly, a little nonsensically. There is nothing else he says, because realization just grazed his consciousness, a half-formed thought at most, if even that. There is nothing else he has to say, either, because the absolutely horrified and comically guilty look on his brother’s face is answer to any follow-up question Lan Zhan might have had. The way his brother looks down at the ground, the way he smiles sheepishly but unapologetically, the way it makes sense that his brother seems to be livelier at Lotus Pier; it’s all answer enough.

“It’s not a bad thing to like him,” his brother says, expertly brushing over the moment, and he, too, neither confirms nor denies. It sounds like he may be talking to the both of them. “You’re allowed to like him. He is your betrothed already, liking him is really the least you could do.”

“Isn’t it too soon to decide that,” Lan Zhan says, suddenly unable to keep the concern from falling out of his mouth, like all the things he tried to swallow down climb up his throat unasked, unprovoked. “Isn’t it too soon to say that I – like. Him. How could I know, in the first place? I have no frame of reference. I don’t dislike him, I certainly don’t hate him. But not hating him is not equivalent to liking him, is it. It seems like there is a lot between those two. I think I might be somewhere in between. But how do I know? How would I know, where I am and what it is, exactly?”

“I think I never heard you say that many words in a row,” his brother says, seemingly very serious, before he holds a hand in front of his mouth to hide the laugh. He doesn’t succeed. Lan Zhan cannot even feel particularly offended by that – he likes seeing his brother laugh, even when it is at his own expense. “If you’re worried about the things you don’t know, why don’t you start with the things you do know? What are the things you know about Wei Wuxian, and how many of these things do you appreciate? Write it down, make a list. Maybe it will be a little clearer. And even if it isn’t, you don’t have to decide right now, Lan Zhan. You have a lifetime waiting for you, there is no rush.”

“What if I won’t do it right,” Lan Zhan says. What if it will end like our parents did, he does not say, but his brother seems to hear it, anyway.

“Oh, Lan Zhan,” his brother says quietly, stepping closer, subtly touching his elbow. “You being afraid is a guarantee that it will not.” He squeezes Lan Zhan’s arm once, which is probably the compromise to the hug he wants to give him. Lan Zhan is grateful for that; he doesn’t think he could bear a hug from his brother without crying, and that would be an inappropriate thing to do in public. It would also be hard to explain to Wei Ying. And, as if reading his mind, his brother smiles innocently and adds, “I don’t think Wei Wuxian would allow for that to happen, anyway. He adores you too much for that.”

Lan Zhan nearly chokes, and his brother laughs at him loudly, openly. He still doesn’t find it in himself to be annoyed by it.

“Cool water boils the fastest, Lan Zhan,” his brother adds, cryptic and abstruse, because he has always had a penchant for speaking in a way that is utterly confusing to Lan Zhan. He says it like a reminder, like Lan Zhan should already know that.

“I am not cool water, Lan Xichen.”

“No, you are not. You have been boiling for quite a while now,” his brother says, and what is Lan Zhan supposed to say to that? He has never been very skilled at following along his brother’s convoluted words and connotational analogies that never make any sense. Except when Wei Ying returns with some sweet dough on a stick, holding it to his mouth and grinning at him brightly, easily, unworriedly, he does feel like he’s boiling. From the inside, right beneath his sternum, like a wildfire pressing against his ribcage.

xx.

Wei Ying is rambling. Which is not unusual, in and of itself, he’s always either rambling or ranting, one of the two. Depending on his mood, there is a difference, something Lan Zhan can tell now. Wei Ying is never quiet for too long, always the first to break the silence like he’s scared he will forget how to use his voice. He speaks every single thought into existence, and there are a lot of them, all the time. Where he would usually force Lan Zhan into answering in even intervals with a nod or a look or an affirmative hum, he has been talking without any invitation – or possibility – for Lan Zhan to say one word yet. It feels pointed. It feels deliberate.

There has to be a good reason why he broke into Lan Zhan’s room in the middle of the night again, though, circling the room in slow strides, circling Lan Zhan, his qi is vibrating off of him, his restlessness nearly infectious. There better be, Lan Zhan is getting tired of pulling his sword at Wei Ying. So, Lan Zhan resigns himself to waiting until Wei Ying is ready to say whatever he came here for.

“Lan Zhan, what do you think,” Wei Ying says, and stops. Does not continue, either. He says it like a question, like he really wants to know, but it is devoid of any context. The sentence could end in many different ways, asking many different things. Lan Zhan doesn’t think he will like any answer he might have to give; not one question about what he is thinking would result in anything other than great embarrassment for him, probably.

“That… depends,” Lan Zhan says slowly. “What do I think about what?”

“What do you think of marriage?” Wei Ying finally asks, although it doesn’t seem to be what he wants to know. For all his bluntness, he is strangely careful with his words at times. Cautious, almost, in saying something that is close to the thing he wants to know, but not quite there yet. Like he doesn’t want to scare Lan Zhan away, easing him in by circumventing instead of being direct.

“It is a duty,” Lan Zhan answers, carefully honest. “It’s an alliance between sects, a fraternization. It surely is more political than anything else.”

“You don’t think there are unions out of love?”

Lan Zhan thinks of his father, of his mother; the only example of love he grew up with. He remembers being a small child, kneeling in the snow for days, uncomprehending and terrified, desperately wishing that that would not happen to him.

“I wouldn’t know,” Lan Zhan says. “But I hope there are.”

“What do you think,” Wei Ying says again, pausing for half a heartbeat. “Of our – union.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, voice strained from all the things he wants to say but isn’t sure whether he’s allowed to. It is not a lie, either, because he really does not. Know. There is a point to this conversation, a reason for Wei Ying’s delicate line of questioning, and maybe Lan Zhan can even guess at it, but guessing simply is not enough. Guessing is too precarious, too risky. Mercifully, Wei Ying doesn’t make him guess.

“What would you think if, hypothetically,” he starts, carefully keeping his intonation unassuming but Lan Zhan’s throat closes up, anyway. “I were to offer something else than an alliance? Something – not political. Although it would be political, of course, that is certainly one aspect of it, our marriage is too convenient not to be. But if I were to tell you – hypothetically, of course – that I would like to make this a union out of love, what would you – think. About that.”

The room is spinning. Or maybe it’s Lan Zhan’s head. Definitely his head, because Wei Ying couldn’t possibly have said that.

“A union of love would require–” Love, Lan Zhan thinks, realizes; it would require a, typically mutual, feeling of love. Lan Zhan’s voice flickers out before he can even attempt to stumble over the word. He barely even managed to admit out loud that he likes Wei Ying, the mere implication of saying the word love in the same sentence as his name makes his throat close up. There is no implication, though, not really, right? Because Wei Ying already set the context, already said what he means, and there is no room for subtext when Wei Ying decides to be so blunt – even when he hides it behind hypothetically, of course. Maybe Lan Zhan needs to be blunt, too. “Are you trying to say that you’re in love with me?”

“Well, I was trying to be more debonair about it–”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, cutting off whatever little joke Wei Ying wanted to make, either an attempt at making a heavy situation a little lighter or to make it easier for himself to take rejection. Maybe he merely wants to hide his own embarrassment, save face in a delicate moment that could fracture at a wrong word. Lan Zhan is feeling too impatient to let Wei Ying hide, though.

Wei Ying clenches his jaw, closes his eyes. It looks like he’s bracing himself. “Yes. That’s what I’m trying to say.”

“Hypothetically?”

“No.”

“Me too, then.”

“Pardon?”

“The sentiment is reciprocated.”

“Do you always have to talk like that? First you use engage as an euphemism, and now you say the sentiment is reciprocated after I confessed my love to you,” Wei Ying complains, throwing his hands up in near-genuine annoyance.

“I am also,” Lan Zhan starts, pausing to inhale slowly, a little shakily. Wei Ying’s eyes widen, his mouth opens as if to protest. Lan Zhan exhales. “In love. With you.”

“Wait, hold on, give me a second,” Wei Ying says, waving around a hand vaguely but frantically before pressing it to his chest instead. He is wild-eyed and slightly hyperventilating, clearly working through something in his mind. Lan Zhan graciously gives him a second. “You’re lying, you have to be.”

“Lying is forbidden,” Lan Zhan reminds instinctively. Wei Ying gives him a look that he probably deserves – narrow-eyed and flat, not dissimilar to the one his brother sometimes graces him with. He reconsiders. “Even if it weren’t, I would not lie about something like this.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” Wei Ying says – agrees easily, like he just trusts Lan Zhan to tell the truth. Despite that, Wei Ying does not look like he believes him very much right now. “It just – sounds like a lie. Right? That you could be in love with me, of all fucking people, that just doesn’t sound right. Like, why would you?”

There are a lot of things Lan Zhan could say to that, a lot he wants to say. He wants to argue that no, actually, it does not sound like a lie that he could be in love with Wei Ying. He wants to argue that it would always sound right for people to be in love with Wei Ying because everyone should be. He wants to argue that Wei Ying’s disbelief is completely unwarranted, that it is actually a lot more surprising that Wei Ying would like him, of all people. Instead of arguing – because that might be a little too much, too soon –, he says, “I can give you a list, if you want.”

“Huh?”

“A list of reasons why I would be in love with you,” Lan Zhan clarifies. He points next to Wei Ying. “It’s in my desk if you want to read it.”

“You really wrote a list?”

“An extensive one,” Lan Zhan agrees, not even exaggerating. The list is long. There are a lot of things about Wei Ying that are lovable, and his brother did say to write down everything, after all, so Lan Zhan did. Wei Ying looks like he’s close to crying, suddenly, eyes red-rimmed and wet. Lan Zhan’s confidence falters and crumbles in an instant of pure fear of already having messed up. “I’m sorry, was that wrong to say?”

“Ah, Lan Zhan, no, that wasn’t wrong,” Wei Ying says, choked-up and unsteady, and now he is crying. Full-on, full-bodied, crying. Lan Zhan doesn’t know what to do. He is not used to crying, in general, Cloud Recesses does not raise people prone to crying, and he surely is not used to crying from Wei Ying, who is always smiling, grinning, even when he acknowledges the suffering carried in deep scars on his back. But now he is crying, because of Lan Zhan.

“I’m sorry,” Lan Zhan says again, helpless. He is not used to this, he doesn’t know what to do, but he wants to – do. Something. Anything, to make Wei Ying’s body stop shaking, his tears stop running. He wants to reach out, maybe for the first time in his life; lift a hand to Wei Ying’s face, brush over his sharp cheekbones, cut himself open in the process. Wipe away the tears, at the very least. With his own sleeves, if he has to.

“What for?”

“I made you cry.”

“Never heard of happy tears?” Wei Ying asks, wiping tears from his face with the sleeve of his robe. Lan Zhan shakes his head. Wei Ying makes an indignant noise, quiet and offended. “C’mon, you’ve never been so happy you just started sobbing?” Lan Zhan shakes his head again, bewildered. “That’s so sad, Lan Zhan, really? Oh, see, now I’m starting to sad-cry.”

“I’d rather you not cry at all,” Lan Zhan admits. It makes Wei Ying laugh. It sounds a little wet, a little rough. It’s still the most beautiful thing Lan Zhan has ever heard. “I like you better laughing.”

Wei Ying chokes. He levels Lan Zhan with a half-hearted glare, though it falls flat with the tears clinging to his eyelashes and the grin tugging at his mouth. “There you go again, saying things like that. Didn’t you promise to warn me beforehand?”

“I didn’t think I would need to warn you when I’m simply telling the truth,” Lan Zhan says, and Wei Ying – turns a little red. Like he has any right to be bashful now when he’s been shameless since the night they met. Horrifyingly, Lan Zhan wants to touch Wei Ying’s face, wants to trace the colour, wants to feel the warmth. His hand twitches by his side.

“Aiyah, Lan Zhan, you’re going to make me fall in love with you even more!”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No,” Wei Ying says without missing a beat, not a single trace of hesitation. He looks at Lan Zhan and smiles something soft and adoring. “It’s not a bad thing.”

And maybe Wei Ying is right. Maybe his brother was right, too. Maybe it is not a bad thing. Maybe water does boil fastest and maybe Lan Zhan is allowed to have this.