#lanerose23

The huge unblinking eyes of a snowy owl watched the eggshell fall away to expose the fragile form inside. The tiny hairless thing that was called rabbit did not, right now, look like one. He shivered in cold mountain breezes. “Will you love me?” the rabbit asked, for he had heard the great bird’s promise.

The snowy owl pondered this. “If you’re silent,” he answered, fluttering on his perch, “and always stand tall and elegant and do just as I do.”

He would, the rabbit vowed inside. He would forever and ever.

___________

The silences of Cloud Recesses were all wrong. Wuxian turned fitfully on the fine bed with its fine pillows and missed the sounds of Lotus Pier, the insects chirping and fishermen casting nets with soft splashes. Plus, he wasn’t tired. It was barely night and already everything had been shut up tight. He was tempted to break out, perhaps sneak to Nie Huaisang’s quarters and invite him into some mischief, but thoughts of Shijie’s disappointment kept him inside this time.

He wondered where Lan Zhan slept; he was probably already deep asleep in twenty layers and rigid from head to toe, pretty and perfect as an ice sculpture. He’d heard that Lan Zhan played guqin and he’d heard Lan Zhan was already one of the best. Wuxian wanted to hear him play and see what he could learn from the methods. Or maybe he just wanted to watch him play, elegant and handsome and stone-faced.

Wuxian turned onto his back with a groan. It was annoying that Lan Zhan was so attractive. It was annoying that Wuxian couldn’t stop thinking about him. Surely, Lan Zhan would be so boring to touch, he thought, surely it would be like kissing a dead fish, but he couldn’t really believe it because he’d seen Lan Zhan fight. He was fierce and intense and intelligent and appealing, so obnoxiously, effortlessly appealing. If they could have fooled around weeks ago like he’d wanted, Wuxian wouldn’t be in this situation. He grumbled and turned onto his stomach again.

“Wei Wuxian! Go to sleep,” Jiang Cheng growled from his bed. “I can’t sleep with you flopping around!”

Wuxian pouted at him in response, but he tried to lay still. He closed his eyes, settled his head on his pillow, and tried to sleep. He tried to not think of Lan Zhan.

Courtyards away and hours later, Wangji sat poised in meditation, incense a lazy curl of smoke around him. Today’s lectures would begin soon. Today, as every other day, Wangji vowed to be the example Uncle expected of him.

Back straight, hands atop his knees, he breathed evenly, a rhythm as familiar as Inquiry. He appeared as placid as a frozen lake in winter.

Inwardly, he thrashed. He tried to focus on the thrum of his golden core, but instead thought of a bright toothy smile and a laugh that echoed off the Cloud Recesses quiet walls. Wei Wuxian, who broke all wards. Wangji wanted to fight him. He wanted to kiss him. He wanted to silence him. He wanted to hear his every thought. He wanted him to leave and never come back. He wanted him to stay and never go. He wanted to avoid him. He wanted to find him.

He wanted. He wanted. He wanted and he hated wanting. Wanting opened a cavern inside him that he couldn’t fill. Wanting stoked hungers he had no intention of feeding. He would extinguish them forever if he could. He wanted to look upon Wei Wuxian, his smiles, his talents, his body, his brilliance and rebellion, and feel nothing. Instead, the gaping wound of want split open inside him, spilling desire all through him, melting the ice of him. Filling him with want.

Outwardly, Wangji’s little finger tremored on his knee.

___________

The rabbit felt so proud when his fur grew in white and downy as owl feathers. With the owls, the rabbit stood as tall as he could and thought how striking they must look together, though he was still quite small.

But when the owls took to the air, he couldn’t follow. When they returned with beaks full of creatures that were no bigger than he, the rabbit felt queasy. The elegant snowy owl blinked knowing eyes at him and the rabbit understood.

He carefully descended the towering pine tree, the only home he’d known, and began searching for where he belonged.

Soon, the rabbit found a little gathering of field mice. Hope bloomed inside him. They were even smaller than he was! They couldn’t fly through the air and wouldn’t return with beaks full of meat.

“Will you love me?” he asked, gazing into tiny black eyes. The mouse’s nose twitched a little like his, whiskers bouncing as she looked him over.

“If you stay small,” the field mouse answered, “and you never scare us and you never, ever get angry.”

The rabbit eagerly nodded. He never felt anger and he was so little, with no wings or beak, so how could he ever be scary?

___________

Wuxian felt pride and embarrassment in equal measure as he led Lan Zhan around the settlement built by Wen hands and the wards forged with his blood. He’d seen the difficult scrabble of pulling together even these comforts, to make gardens of graveyards and homes among bones. But with Lan Zhan, Hanguang-Jun, beside him so bright and so beautiful, it was impossible not to see it through new eyes. How gray and horrible all this must seem to one raised in the glorious Cloud Recesses. How repulsed Lan Zhan must feel, he thought.

Wangji was not repulsed, but his heart ached, for this did not seem a way for anyone to live. Yet the grayness of the landscape did not scare him like the grayness of Wei Ying’s skin.

“Let’s go,” Wei Ying said, voice on the wind. “I’ll walk you down the mountain.”

They moved side by side back toward the crumbling entry enforced by fearsome power. The infrequent bump of their shoulders reminded Wuxian of happier days spent pretending they were like Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen, bound only by their shared ideals. He wondered, though, if they shared ideals anymore. No regrets, they’d pledged; to live with a clear conscience. Wuxian had no regrets, not really, and he felt cursed by that. He was rigidly ruled by his own unflinching moral compass. He longed sometimes to be someone who could turn away. Life would be simpler, he was sure, if he could only close his eyes and fall into the shared delusion of clear lines, protect our own and only our own, and the black/white thinking of others. Instead, he felt trapped awake, eyes open, poisoned by the horrors hidden within those comforting platitudes. He felt terribly, achingly alone.

“Is there anyone who can give me a bright future path that is easy to go on?” Wei Ying asked and Wangji had no answer. He didn’t understand why Wei Ying had abandoned the sword, but he could recognize now that the power granted him by this disturbing path was immense, more immense than even a prodigious swordsman like Wei Ying could accomplish with Suibian. And immense power was needed to protect the Wen against the clans.

“Let yourself judge what is right and what is wrong, let others decide to praise or to blame, let gains and losses remain uncommented on,” Wei Ying said sadly, certainly. “I know what I should be doing. I also believe I can control it.”

Behind his eyes Wangji felt the press of tears. He wanted to weep in a way he’d not done since he was a child and had never done with any witness but his brother. That radiant, infuriating boy who had lodged himself in Wangji’s heart was bleeding himself dry for others and Wangji could do nothing but admire him for it. It felt thick in his throat, like any word out of his mouth might come carried on a sob.

“Brother, Brother.” A weight, now familiar, crashed against his legs. “Brother, are you not going to stay and eat with us today?”

Wangji looked down at A-Yuan’s bright eyes and soft cheeks. How could he argue with anything Wei Ying did to protect this boy? How could any action to that end be wrong? The questions burnt and knifed inside him against 3,000 rules he knew like his heartbeat. Three thousand rules that conflicted with one another and yet screamed that he should not be here and he should not care for Wei Ying.

Wei Ying lifted the boy into his arms, making Lan Zhan’s excuses for him. “A-Yuan, this brother here already has food waiting for him at home. He won’t be staying.”

“But I heard a secret earlier,” A-Yuan said. “They said that there was lots of good food today.”

“A-Yuan,” Wuxian scolded, but then fell silent. He had never given much thought to being a parent, but the weight of a child in his arms resonated with something primal inside him. It made him feel gentle and fierce. And to see A-Yuan take to Lan Zhan stirred something else inside him, something he was scared to name because he could never deserve it.

Wei Ying turned to him. Wangji expected him to repeat his explanations, give his silence words as he so often did, but instead, Wei Ying looked at him with an expression he’d never seen before. He wasn’t joking, flirting, arguing, or cajoling. He was just...open, holding a child and looking at him, hopeful.

“I’m leaving,” Wangji said and pulled himself away from that look on Wei Ying’s face. He would wonder until the end of his days what might have been different if he’d stayed.

___________

The field mice adored him, for a time. That he was small made them feel safe. That he ate only green things gave them comfort. But not always, and not enough. They were afraid because he was still bigger, mistrustful because he’d lived among owls, and it wore on the rabbit. He tried to never be angry, even when their suspicious looks made him feel that way.

“You have to leave,” the little mouse told him one day, the same one who’d once allowed him to stay. “Your jumping is too scary and we told you not to be scary.”

He only jumped like that when he was happy, but the rabbit didn’t try to explain; he just left.

After days alone, the rabbit awoke to a vibration, like the world might split open beneath him. It came in slow, steady beats—thump...thump...thump. He hopped to investigate and saw enormous grey-bellied elephants with long trunks and huge flapping ears that swatted the flies away.

They’re so big, the rabbit thought with joy. They’d never be frightened of me.

The elephants settled around a watering hole to drink their fill. Some lounged in the water, washing away the dust coating their thick hides, and the littles ones who were still so much larger than the rabbit played silly games that made him smile.

He politely ventured close to an old matriarch with wise eyes. “Will you love me?” he asked.

She turned in his direction, searching the empty air until she found the tiny origin of the tiny voice. She took in his twitching ears and quivering whiskers. “If you don’t get scared,” she said, “and you help us to lift big trees, find tall grasses, and always stay loyal.”

The rabbit nodded because he wanted to be and do all those things.

___________

Uncle saved his life with his punishment.

He was meant to suffer and reflect on his wrongdoings. And Wangji did suffer. He did reflect. But the flayed flesh on his back was nothing compared to the flaying in his heart. In fact, it was comforting, somehow, to hurt as much on the outside as he did inside. It put Wangji’s pain somewhere it could bleed.

The Yiling Laozu fell with only one hand reaching out to him, and that hand reached out too late. Too late. Too late to change anything.

He cared for A-Yuan, but selfishly the boy wasn’t enough. Wen Yuan had a clan now, he would be safe and fed without Wangji around. Wangji didn’t want to be around. He wanted to be free of this hurt, of this loss, of existing in a world without Wei Ying, surrounded only by those who had betrayed him. Including himself, including the beating heart in his chest.

The pain gave him focus. He read the rules and found those he’d violated. He found those he wished he had. He reflected. He reflected. He reflected and accepted that he was in love with Wei Ying, he always would be, and he should have been by his side. The recognition came in a wave, followed by a soul-deep exhale, like the release during meditation or a gasp after almost drowning.

The Cold Pond Cave cooled the fires of him, but not the way Uncle intended. Wangji didn’t regret his misbehavior, only his inaction. He didn’t regret his words, only his silences. And when he accepted these truths, the turbulence in his mind froze clear and solid. He’d loved Wei Ying. He’d failed Wei Ying. He’d wanted to protect Wei Ying. He could protect A-Yuan. He could love A-Yuan.

As the truths solidified in his heart, power thrummed in his core like a yoke had been thrown off. Energy filled him from toes to fingertips to the ends of his hair. The world perceived his affection for Wei Wuxian as his only weakness. Wangji learned in that moment that his love, immortal and infinite, was his strength.

___________

The rabbit had promised to not be scared, but he felt so afraid dodging heavy elephant feet that could crush him. When he rode on their backs, he felt scared to be so high for he remembered the flying things that ate little things like him. He couldn’t help lift big trees, or even the small ones, and they lost him when they strode in tall grasses. The matriarch scooped him up in a mouthful and nearly ate him, even though elephants don’t eat rabbits.

He didn’t stay long with them, though he loved the silly games of the babies and the huge flapping ears of the elders.

He wandered and soon met a tortoise, its thick skin familiar from the elephants, its size just right—not so big as the elephants, not so small as the field mice. “Will you love me?” he asked the tortoise with his hulking shell and narrow eyes.

The tortoise sniffed at him. “If you can keep up,” he said, and continued on his path.

The rabbit happily hopped beside him, only to discover he’d left the tortoise far behind. Oh, dear no, thought the rabbit, this won’t work at all. He thanked the tortoise for his kindness and continued on alone.

___________

When he left the cave, having lost three years with A-Yuan, he let the regret scatter like leaves in the certainty brought by this new, engulfing spiritual power. Three years earlier, he would have met the boy full of ferocity and self-destruction. That was no way to love a child.

Wangji had been raised beside someone’s anger; he would not wish that for A-Yuan, his Sizhui, who looked plump-cheeked and happy in his pale Lan robes. In the mornings, Wangji combed his hair and helped him fasten his ribbon across his smooth forehead. Sometimes, tongue poking out in concentration, Sizhui helped Wangji with his in turn.

Wangji couldn’t decide if it was blessing or curse that Sizhui, Xian-gege’s A-Yuan, had no memories of him. It left Wangji alone to grieve the dreaded, well-dead Yiling Laozu, Wei Wuxian. But left him alone to bear that bittersweet pain, too. To wish memory on a boy who’d already suffered felt selfish. Better that Sizhui start here in the embrace of GusuLan, in Wangji’s embrace.

Sizhui sat on his lap, even when he was too old and too tall for it. Wangji allowed it. The boy tugged on the strings of his guqin and giggled at the trembling twang. It seemed they both needed this, an extended autumn of youth after a parched summer; forging—or perhaps re-forging—a bond made one magical afternoon that only one of them remembered.

At 12, Sizhui was proper, good looking, and hard working. His aptitude with the guqin gave Wangji stirrings of fate—would this talent have been discovered in a Wen? he wondered. Wangji traveled often, on quests he could barely admit to himself, and when he returned, his first visit was always from Sizhui, even before his brother or his uncle. The boy would seek him out, no matter the hour he returned. It was an indulgence Wangji couldn’t deny either of them.

The sun had just crested the horizon, spilling into the rebuilt shadows of Cloud Recesses.

“I don’t know how we’re meant to obey all of them all the time,” Sizhui admitted softly. The steam from the teapot caught the sunlight like smoke around his young face, carefully schooled to hide his agitation. Wangji knew Sizhui’s face better than his own.

He thought of the platitudes he was told when he’d made the same observation as a child. That the conflict was in him, in the human heart; the rules were to tame the conflict. That cultivation means control and great spiritual strength can only be achieved through harnessing one’s nature.

That is not what he told Sizhui. “They conflict with one another because they are not of equal value at all times,” he said, pleased by Sizhui’s steady hands as he prepared their tea. “Like strings on the guqin, from thick to thin, they can be played separately or together, depending on the melody of a moment.”

“So...we learn the rules so that we may know all the principles that should guide our actions.” Sizhui carefully extended his teacup toward him and Wangji felt a rush of affection for his perceptive, soulful boy. “Just as we learn all the notes we can play, even though not every song requires them?”

“Mn.” Wangji gave a slight nod and lifted his tea, breathing in the floral scent. “And indeed, not only do some songs not require them, but the wrong note—even when beautiful in another melody—would ruin the one before you, and to play every note at once would only create discord.” Wangji knew that discord well. He’d grown up in it.

Sizhui let out a relieved sigh that gave Wangji a tremulous feeling of success, like he’d done a bit of good parenting, even when he barely understood what that was. “That makes sense,” his lovely boy said. “Thank you, Hanguang-Jun.”

Wangji didn’t respond. He simply drank the tea prepared by his son, his Lan Sizhui, Wei Ying’s A-Yuan, and let himself feel a rare moment of peace in the sunrise.

Years later, in Yi City, Wangji would see himself in Xiao Xingchen, who died rather than continue in a world where he’d hurt his beloved—and also in Song Lan, who soldiered on, a ghost carrying memories of dead love close to his heart.

___________

In his travels, the rabbit soon came to wide water, so expansive he could not see its end. It rose and fell like great moving mountains. On the gray-sand shore were seals with big limpid eyes and sweet round bellies. “Will you love me?” he asked one, feeling so scared and so hopeful.

“If you stay close and always share your food,” the seal answered.

___________

Wuxian felt the pleading weight of Zewu-Jun’s words.

He walked in to see Lan Zhan with his hair down, sleeves held back gently as he prepared tea and poured wine, and he understood why Zewu-Jun told him more than he’d asked. Lan Zhan was a warrior, Hanguang-Jun, Lan Wangji, a jade of Gusu, and one of the most powerful cultivators of any generation. He was also a man in love. A man so deeply in love it had burned—burned him—for almost two decades.

Wuxian trembled beneath that weight.

“I don’t need anyone to save me,” he’d said years ago in the Burial Mounds. It took dying and coming back to understand that what he’d meant was I’m not worth saving. Lan Zhan had never agreed, no matter how Wuxian tried to convince him.

The plink and shiver of the guqin brought the tingle in his limbs to his awareness, like the growl in his empty stomach breaking through the excitement of an invention. That physical attraction he’d had to Lan Zhan in their youth had never gone away. It had just been papered over by battles, separation and second lifetimes, unworthiness and the paradoxical belief that he could not love someone so profoundly and also desire him. His eyes trailed over Lan Zhan’s long fingers on the strings, his soft mouth; his eyes, those remarkable, unforgettable eyes, and—

“I want to kiss you,” he blurted out.

Lan Zhan’s playing stilled and he looked up. They stared at each other in silence. Lan Zhan’s expression was gentle, accepting, and silent. Wuxian laughed—the silence should be no surprise; this was Lan Zhan, after all, who would answer direct questions with silence, who would offer no information, even when it was demanded. Wuxian had no intention of demanding. “Oh, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan,” he said, entering the room. “I want to kiss you, but do you want to be kissed?”

Lan Zhan simply nodded, as if Wuxian had asked about getting dinner. But the rosy tips of his ears gave him away. “Only by you,” he added. And oh, Lan Zhan’s other great skill: to say so little and still say more than Wuxian knew how to believe.

Wei Ying lowered himself to the floor, sitting cross-legged to Wangji’s left where he still sat rigid, back straight, hands flat to still the long-gone vibration of his guqin. He’d imagined kissing Wei Ying—and more, so much more—for so long. The passion inside him felt always dammed behind an insufficient barrier. So, to release it...he imagined embracing Wei Ying like a tidal wave, overwhelming, undeniable, claiming him with lips, tongue and teeth, smashing their bodies together with the force of his want.

The reality was somewhat different. Wangji’s passion was no less extraordinary, but the dam restraining it now was love, not self-domination. What did Wei Ying want? How much did Wei Ying want? His passion could be like a wave gently lapping shore, if that’s what Wei Ying needed.

Slowly, Lan Zhan turned to face him, fingers moving to rest in his lap. Their knees touched as Wuxian scooted just that small bit closer, movements young and eager. Lan Zhan looked up to meet his eyes and once he’d done that, Wuxian could almost never look away. He reached out to close a hand over Lan Zhan’s, heart thumping and feeling 16 years old with his mind full to brimming with the most beautiful boy he’d ever seen.

For once, he did look away from Lan Zhan’s eyes. Away from his eyes to his mouth, lips plump-pink and tempting. As soon as he looked, he touched, before the courage left him. The tension melted from Wuxian’s shoulders at a kiss returned.

Their hands bumped when they both reached for each other at the same time. Wuxian laughingly yielded, letting Lan Zhan cup his jaw and direct the kiss. It was honey on his tongue, a mouth moving against his, a pleasant buzz through his body. He let his own hand drop to Lan Zhan’s knee, the curve firm and intimate through layers of linens.

Hai hour settled heavily on Wangji’s shoulders. Childhood routine made his mind shift into a quieter state, lending a dreamy mist to the minutes spent blissfully kissing as the snow blanketed the world outside. “It’s time to sleep,” he said. He didn’t much care for himself, but Wei Ying was wounded, and battles loomed still to be fought. Wei Ying needed his rest.

Wuxian wanted to tease Lan Zhan like he used to, mock those rigid GusuLan traditions—if they weren’t going to defy them for this, then for what!? But Lan Zhan, his Lan Zhan; he’d spent so much time worrying and caring for him, he had to be exhausted. “Okay,” he relented.

But neither of them moved to stand or stop. They just kept trading kisses.

Wuxian laughed against Lan Zhan’s mouth and felt an answering smile that made his heart throb. He decided a few moments more couldn’t hurt. For a few moments more, they could be the lusty, carefree boys they could have been 20 years ago, if war had not arrived so early and maturity so late.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying whispered against his lips after several molten minutes more. He felt hot all over, from his knees tight against Lan Zhan’s to his throat where guqin-skilled hands stroked his skin and caressed his jaw. “We should sleep.”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan agreed, but only kissed him again.

Wei Ying laughed and Wangji loved the sound. Loved the sound of him, loved the feel of him, loved the life in him. Wanted him endlessly.

“Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying pouted sweetly, “who’s been taking care of me, hm? Who will take care of me if Hanguang-Jun is asleep on his feet?”

When Wangji opened them, his eyes were unfocused. He felt drunk, though he’d had no wine but what he could taste on Wei Ying’s lips and tongue. “Sleep with me,” he said.

Blushed cheeks and well-used lips complemented Wei Ying’s features well. He looked young and healthy. “Yes,” he answered, adding sternly, “but we have to sleep.”

Wangji nodded his agreement, amused to have Wei Ying making rules now.

They stripped to their underrobes and climbed into the bed, each fully intending to sleep as agreed, but the room had grown cold with the frost outside and there was so much warm skin, so many hot kisses still to give, so much uncharted territory on this path they’d just begun to walk together and now single layers that could be opened to allow palms to feel the firm planes of stomach and the exquisitely narrow rise of hip.

But they each had secrets, too: a boy asleep not far from where they lay and a golden core warming someone else in Yunmeng.

Lan Zhan felt so good and Wuxian didn’t want to stop even as his heart thumped for the wrong reasons when Lan Zhan’s fingers grazed his wrists. If they were to do the things he’d seen in Nie-xiong’s books, then surely Lan Zhan, the great Hanguang-Jun, would sense what he was missing. He wanted it as much as he feared it.

“Lan Zhan, is it okay – if we – if we don’t go any further – tonight – just not tonight,” Wuxian gasped, each phrase punctuated with more kissing, his hand tangling in Lan Zhan’s hair, his knee sliding over Lan Zhan’s hip.

Wangji gripped the knee curving around him to bring their bodies closer. He wanted to pull it firm against him and take this pleasure he’d been dreaming of for decades. But Wei Ying’s words. He was forever reckless with himself and he would keep going if Wangji pushed it because they wanted each other. Even that thought was a thrill. Wei Ying wanted him, and Wangji wanted to tell him.

But if Wei Ying approached Sizhui with the familiarity and fondness he almost certainly would if he knew, what terrible memories might that disinter? For as much love as had surrounded little Wen Yuan, he’d been living on a mountain of the dead and all his family had been slaughtered. Would returning those memories to his sensitive, happy boy be a kindness or a cruelty?

Wangji still wanted. He wanted to tell Wei Ying the one good thing he’d done, kiss him, hold him, cry with him, make love in a happy haze as though all the painful years had never happened, but no. No, the note he must play strongest now was for Sizhui, and he did not want his first joining with Wei Ying to be shrouded in secrets.

He called upon his Lan reserve to drag himself away from the delicious warmth of Wei Ying’s mouth. “We can stop,” he said, startled by the lust-roughness of his voice.

Wei Ying’s eyes drifted away from his lips. Wangji felt his steadying exhale against his skin. “You’re right, Lan Zhan, you’re right,” he said. “We should stop.”

“You said it first.”

Wei Ying let out a loud laugh, rolling away to throw his head back. Wangji wanted to cover that smooth neck with bites and kisses. When Wei Ying curled toward him again, his eyes shown with fondness and he reached between them to link their hands together, bodies at a safer, less enticing distance.

They talked, then, how they did any other night they’d shared a room in their travels. They compared thoughts about what they had discovered, expectations for what lay ahead, but it felt so new, whispering face to face, lips kiss-tender, voices crossing not an empty room but only the small expanse of the bed.

Wuxian wasn’t sure when they finally fell asleep. He remembered dawn peeking through the screens at the window and it seemed only seconds later that they had to wake and get dressed. He wanted to curl up and sleep for a day, but a wicked, immovable deadline hung over them for soon a murderer would come to Cloud Recesses.

___________

The rabbit had a delightful afternoon in the seals’ company. Their bodies bounced like his and they had whiskers like him and they bounce-bounce-bounced together, but then all the seals bounce-bounce-bounced into the waves where the rabbit couldn’t follow because he didn’t have flippers and his feet were not shaped like a paddles for pushing through water.

He stood alone on the beach for a long, stunned moment, then he turned and began searching again.

In the silent grasses, the rabbit came upon a leopard, its sleek, spotted body low to the ground, eyes peering straight ahead. Its backside wiggled the way the rabbit’s did sometimes. “Will you love me?” the rabbit asked.

“If you can keep up!” the leopard replied, bounding off on strong back legs after a sprinting deer.

The rabbit tried to keep up, but he lost her before the leopard’s voice had even faded from his ears. He continued on alone.

___________

The moment he saw that broken look on his brother’s face at the Guanyin Temple, Wangji knew his daydream of traveling by Wei Ying’s side had died.

To live with a clear conscience, without regret. An easy phrase that provided no guidance in how to weigh regrets against one another. He would regret watching Wei Ying walk away again. He would regret leaving GusuLan with one leader heartbroken and another too unyielding for the complex days ahead. He would regret forsaking a generation of Lan juniors to that unsteady guidance. He would regret abandoning the cultivation world to a power vacuum where evil and self-interest could so easily gain dominance. He wanted to be Lan Zhan. He wanted to be Wei Ying’s. But the world, for now, needed Hanguang-Jun.

But like so many deaths around the Yiling Laozu, Wei Wuxian, this death was not forever. One day, Wangji sat reading in the jingshi when a flute’s notes drifted in with the breeze. He heard a song he knew well and knew Wei Ying had come home.

It was strange to walk the paths of Cloud Recesses and realize it had started to feel like home. Wuxian found comfort in the routine, and could maybe—maybe—understand the appeal of a clearly defined schedule, up to a point. His 16-year-old self would never have believed it, but his 16-year-old self hadn’t yet had to survive in the Burial Mounds. His 16-year-old self hadn’t yet died for his convictions and mistakes.

Wuxian let out a breath as the sorrow passed through him, a familiar companion after all these years. Even that felt at home in Cloud Recesses with its stillness and meditative spaces. Here, Wuxian could grieve and find solace. He’d found love here. He’d found purpose and family. Even Lan Qiren surrendered some of his vitriol when he’d realized that Wuxian would not steal Lan Zhan away. At last, the old man recognized that Lan Zhan was the wise and filial leader he’d been trying to raise all along, even if they disagreed on the details.

Lan Zhan looked as beautiful as an art print among the rabbits in the back hills. The pure white fur and Lan Zhan’s robes, the earthy brown and green—it made Wuxian’s fingers itch for brush and parchment. Perhaps he’d do that tonight...or maybe tomorrow because he’d learned the expressions on the face so many others thought immobile. All morning, Lan Zhan’s eyes had been lingering on Wuxian’s throat, his lips. Their few touches outside the jingshi had been lingering.

The first night Wuxian returned to Cloud Recesses they’d had no early appointments and no deliberate secrets between them, only stories not yet told and endless days to tell them. That night, they discovered new things they could do together that were even more satisfying than fighting side by side.

“Lan Zhan,” he said casually, scratching a rabbit between its velvet-soft ears. “What do you want to do tonight?”

The rabbits on Lan Zhan’s lap were calmer, almost sedated by his familiar and predictable stillness. But then, rabbits couldn’t really read the way his eyelashes slowly lifted over a heated gaze.

Wuxian grinned as a lovely anticipation started to pool in his limbs. He’d always been attractive, but it wasn’t until all this started with Lan Zhan that he’d felt desired, even seduced. “Ah,” he said, and stretched out on his back, hands folded beneath his head. Leaves and sticks crunched beneath him and a few rabbits darted away, but Lan Zhan’s eyes traveled the length of him, just as he’d wanted. One day, perhaps, Wuxian would try to tempt Lan Zhan into kissing him here the way he did in the jingshi, all devouring and unrestrained.

“I want—” Wangji began, then silenced abruptly. He found himself disinclined to speak most of the time, but rarely did he want to express himself more than in these moments with Wei Ying, these rare moments when the intimacy of their relationship was in the fore and not buried beneath life-or-death politics and layers of the mundane. Wei Ying had gotten so good at reading him, but sometimes Wangji wished he didn’t have to.

“Yes?” Wei Ying curved toward him, head propped up on his bent arm. “What do you want, Lan Zhan?

In that eagerness, Wangji saw that sometimes Wei Ying didn’t want to have to read him either. He swallowed and tried. “The book you had.”

“Which book?”

“During the lectures. In the library.”

Confusion clouded Wei Ying’s handsome face and Wangji worried this would fall prey to his poor memory, but after a few seconds, clarity spread like a sunrise. “In the library. When I was having to copy all those rules and you were being so mean and ignoring me.”

“Mn.”

Wuxian smiled brightly. Funny how those days had a rosy shine to them now. Lan Zhan, his beloved Lan Zhan, his sweet stick in the mud who defied nearly every one of those rules for him. He’d been unimaginably attractive in that library, so cold and untouchable. How badly he’d wanted to touch. “What about it?”

Wangji swallowed. He turned his attention to the rabbits in his lap. They dozed, their red eyes closed into gentle lines on their white faces, noses twitching with dreams. They clearly didn’t sense the rapid heartbeat in the body beneath them. “The picture. I would do that with you.”

Wuxian’s mouth twisted. “Which picture?”

Lan Zhan looked up at him, exasperated.

“Ah-ah, Lan Zhan,” he sighed, one hand lifted in defense. “That book was full of pictures. I don’t know which one you saw. I gave it to you to tease you and you ripped it apart so quickly.”

Wangji looked back to his rabbits. One blinked awake and he slid a finger along its forehead as it yawned, cute big teeth on display. He let the subject drop. He would not be able to find the words.

But Wei Ying sat up, excitedly crossing his legs beneath him. “Could you describe it to me?” he asked.

Wangji didn’t reply, neither by words nor a shake of his head. The tightness in his throat frustrated him. The sentence wouldn’t form in his mind, his tongue wouldn’t lift in his mouth, his lips wouldn’t part. That he had these desires, he had accepted. That they were not shameful, he had learned. But to speak them was still beyond his strength.

Wuxian scooted closer until his knees touched Lan Zhan’s. He loved the warm-pink of his ears, but not the storm clouding the features beneath his pale blue ribbon. He reached forward to join Lan Zhan’s hands in petting the rabbits in his lap. “Maybe you could show me,” he said, letting his fingers glide over Lan Zhan’s in a way he was certain could be called shameless. “Tonight, Lan Zhan. You could show me what they did in the picture. You know how smart I am; I’ll figure it out.” Lan Zhan didn’t answer, but the pink of his ears deepened to red, the storm cleared in his expression, and Wuxian grinned. His clever mind liked a mystery and the rest of him liked touching Lan Zhan, so these evening plans were very welcome indeed.

But being Wei Wuxian they also slipped his mind. That Cloud Recesses felt like an embrace would have shocked his 16-year-old self. That he’d become a teacher would not have. Oh, he dreamed of being a rogue cultivator, and that lifestyle suited him quite well on his not infrequent night hunts, but Wuxian had always been someone who loved being surrounded by youth and happiness, laughter on lotus lakes and meals made by someone who adored him.

Those days couldn’t be recreated, not after so much damage, but with the Lan juniors, with Lan Zhan, and A-Yuan, visits with Wen Ning and even slowly, slowly something better with Jin Ling and Jiang Cheng... It suited Wuxian quite well to be Wei-laoshi. He liked guiding disciples in archery and sword forms. He liked the spark of delight in their eyes when they first mastered a talisman.

Wangji liked that others saw His Excellency in the company of the Yiling Laozu. It killed off the rumors explaining Wei Ying’s absence and their hopes that Wangji had “come to his senses.” He preferred when they could tell by sight that the cultivation world was now guided by a mind that had not been tamed. If they felt fear, Wangji assumed they were right to do so. Those who gave him small, secret smiles—they were right, too.

That evening, Wuxian sat on the edge of their bed and barely seconds later found himself with a lapful of Lan Zhan. He instinctively gripped him and blinked, confused, at the broad expanse of a silk-covered back before his eyes.

“It was like this,” Lan Zhan said, a low whisper.

Wuxian blinked once, and then once more. “Ohhh,” he breathed, as every piece of their earlier conversation came back in a rush. “Oh. Yes, Lan Zhan, we can do that.” And really, they’d already started. Lan Zhan’s hips circled in a way that made Wuxian shiver and forget everything else. He swept Lan Zhan’s hair over his shoulder to bare his neck to his kisses and reached around to start pulling the robes from Lan Zhan’s body, sliding his hands up the strong thighs parted atop his. “Did you want to do this that day in the library?” he asked.

“No... and yes.”

“Yeah,” Wuxian agreed. He remembered the messy jumble of yearnings back then. If they’d kissed as boys, Wuxian was sure he would have ruined it, laughing, callous and too scared to wade into the depths of his feelings for the boy who was everything he was not.

They kept small pot of gel by the bed next to a stack of bathing linens. Wangji still felt a bit embarrassed by the obviousness of these supplies, but it was worth it when he didn’t have to leave Wei Ying’s arms when the mood struck them.

When he was young and his body was rocked by desires he didn’t understand, he’d done what he always did: he studied, like curse victim seeking the counter-curse. And indeed, he’d felt cursed, the way his mind refused to stay on any topic but Wei Ying and his antics. He discreetly researched how men fit together, how they touched and satisfied each other. He believed knowledge would bring the counter-curse for surely he would see these acts were foul and undesirable. Instead, he learned, in detail, all the ways he could give pleasure to the vexing boy who had disrupted the peace of him.

The worst times were the fits of grief that took hold during those long years existing in a world without him. Even gone, his thoughts still turned to him. Even gone, he still wanted to touch him. In those dark hours, with smooth gel on his fingers, he’d give his body what it needed. He pictured the beaming smile that died long before the man, those clever eyes and slender hands full of power and strength. After the crest of climax, the tears would swallow him. He would cry into bed linens that would never carry Wei Ying’s scent, and search for the reasons to go on when all he wanted was to fall into darkness with him.

But his linens did smell of Wei Ying now, of his hair oils and the natural tang of him. His linens were their linens because his bed was not his alone anymore, would never be again, and that beautiful boy who had once vexed him let out a tense, blissful sigh when their bodies joined at last.

Wuxian touched his forehead to Lan Zhan’s warm back and tried not to move, though the pleasure made him want to. He kissed the juncture of neck and shoulder blade, gave a light scrape of teeth. “Is it good, Lan Zhan?” he asked. His voice and his legs trembled.

He didn’t immediately receive a response, not a verbal one anyway, but Lan Zhan shifted, adjusting angle and depth and clinging to Wuxian’s hands on his hips.

Soon enough Wuxian didn’t need his words. Soft sounds rumbled in Lan Zhan’s throat, small gasps of satisfaction that would, in anyone else, be loud wanton moans. Like the sort Wuxian muffled against Lan Zhan’s scarred skin, pressing hot, open-mouth kisses as they found their rhythm with one another. It felt so good, always felt so good to touch Lan Zhan, to have this closeness, this way to show with bodies the intensity of his feelings inside. Sometimes he felt obsessed; he wanted to breathe in Lan Zhan, drink him in, become one person and be done with this false separation, this ridiculous idea that there was a Wei Ying and there was a Lan Zhan when they were so clearly one soul, one heart, one person. Maybe if they had a hundred lifetimes together, they could cultivate a way to join their spirits and become one. But—gasping deep and human against sweat-damp shoulder blades as Lan Zhan rode him—Wuxian couldn’t complain about this method for now.

Finished, they collapsed to their sides on the bed, letting bodies cool and heart rates settle. Wuxian dropped kisses on Lan Zhan’s naked shoulders because the affection still bubbling from his climax needed somewhere to go.

After a few moments’ rest, Lan Zhan turned to him. Those who thought him beautiful had no idea, Wuxian thought. They’d never seen him flushed with color, limb-loose and sated, eyes cloudy with peaked pleasure.

Their couplings usually ended with whispered conversations and Wei Ying’s happy laughter, so Wangji didn’t expect the emotion clogging his throat. He didn’t realize tears had followed until Wei Ying’s thumb slid beneath his eyes wipe them away.

“Lan Zhan?” he asked, concerned. “Why are you crying?”

The cavern of want that once terrified him had expanded and burst, filled now with a shameful fantasy made joyful flesh; filled to brimming with a partner, a son, a healthy clan, a life he felt so grateful to be living.

“Thank you,” was all Wangji managed to say.

Wei Ying smiled, that achingly gorgeous smile that Wangji wanted forever. “For what?”

For killing my shame, he thought. For making Cloud Recesses feel like home again. For embracing my silences. For coming back. For staying. For—

“I love you,” Wei Ying said, when he didn’t get an answer, at least not one Wangji had consciously given.

For that, Wangji thought and welcomed his kiss.

___________

The rabbit traveled on, alone and desperately lonely, until he came upon a stranger munching green, green leaves. Hunger twisted in his tiny rabbit belly, but the ache in his heart was more.

“Will you love me?” The rabbit asked, but before the stranger could answer, he went on, “I may be too scary or too big or too small. I may not be elegant and I can’t help lift big trees, or even little ones. I may go too fast or I may go too slow, and I cannot bounce-bounce-bounce into the water. I jump when I’m excited, I sometimes get scared, and I may not be perfect at giving love back,” the rabbit said in a rush. “But will you love me?”

The stranger blinked with red eyes just like the rabbit’s after listening with long ears just like the rabbit’s. A whiskered nose twitched.

“I do,” said the stranger, for he’d been searching a long time, too.

___________

They stood together, watching the swirl of pale fabric as two juniors sparred. Blades glinted as they caught the afternoon sun. Wuxian couldn’t help smiling, feeling like a grandpa remembering his good old days. “Ah, Lan Zhan,” he said wistfully. “Do you think we’d still be equals if I had my core?” It wasn’t as hard to talk about now, between the two of them. It was a fact of Wuxian’s new body and his health; they had to talk about it to navigate a life lived together.

“We are equals.”

“Tsk. I mean with swords.”

“Still equals.”

“Ah, Lan Zhan, you know what I mean.”

Wangji did and he didn’t. “Wei Ying survived the Burial Mounds.”

Wuxian shrugged, feeling that ancient shadow whisper in his heart. “That’s just survival. If you’d been thrown there, Hanguang-Jun would have survived too.”

Wangji didn’t reply, but he also didn’t agree. He suspected that his unwillingness to use resentful energy—his fear of the discord already living inside him—would have meant his death. His spiritual power would simply have bled into the earth, more foul power leeching into the dirt. No, he was certain that none but Wei Ying would have emerged at all, let alone emerged more powerful than when he fell. “Wei Ying is gifted,” he said finally.

Wei Ying spun Chenqing in his hand. These days, it played music more than puppets. “Gifted in something evil.”

“That he uses for good.”

Wuxian snorted. “You have an answer for all of it, don’t you, Lan Zhan? You can’t clean me of all my mistakes.”

“I’m not trying to.” Lan Zhan turned to meet his eyes, countenance both stern and sweet in that way of his. “A golden core can be used for evil deeds,” he said. “You’ve demonstrated that resentful energy can be used for good ones. That is innovation. You saw what others could not. That is a gift. Core or no, you have always been my equal.”

“Lan Zhan.” Wuxian pouted. He’d wanted to flirt and reminisce about the days when an incredibly pretty fuddy-duddy had broken his bottle of Emperor’s Smile. Instead, Lan Zhan had cut at something naked and fragile inside him.

His eyes drifted from Lan Zhan’s, but he bumped their shoulders together to tell him that he wasn’t upset, not really. “Maybe,” he said. “But I want to know if I could’ve ever bested you and Bichen.”

Lan Zhan’s lips lifted in a sad, tiny smile. “Me too,” he agreed softly.

Wuxian wanted to kiss him. Instead—for the sake of the juniors—he just pushed their shoulders together more firmly, removing any lingering space between them. That sorrow could visit them, he decided, the sorrow of what could-have-been. It could visit, but not stay.