Chapter Text
Wangji’s ears are red.
That is the first thing Xichen notices even as Wei Wuxian all but thrusts his son -Xichen’s new nephew?- in his direction.
Why are Wangji’s ears red? There was no reason for his brother to be embarrassed, or awkward, not in this setting.
Still, that is a question for another day, Xichen supposes. For now, he reaches out to hold Wei Wuxian’s son, praying that he isn’t holding the boy too tightly, or in a way that would cause him discomfort.
The child is surprisingly obedient, quiet, for someone whose mother is as rowdy as Wei Wuxian. He sits quietly in Xichen’s lap, offering a quiet, “Gege, hello,” before subsiding again.
He doesn’t look uncomfortable, but is clearly a little startled at suddenly being transferred from his mother’s hold to a stranger’s lap.
“Young master Zhenli, right?” Xichen says, in a bid to make the child a little more comfortable around him.
Turning to him, the boy blinks wide eyes, and Xichen feels something in him freeze.
Those eyes- They send Xichen back decades, with another small child in his lap, with the same golden eyes staring up at him in query.
Those eyes are- They are-
Across the table from him, Wei Wuxian laughs softly. “I see Zewu-Jun has figured it out, then.”
Xichen is far too shocked to hide his reactions like he usually does, and he can really only gape, gaze darting between Wangji and the child in his lap.
The more he looks, the more resemblance he sees. Although at first glance the child resembles Wei Wuxian far more than he does Wangji, Xichen can see Wangji in the gold of his eyes, in the slant of his nose, in the way the boy sits still and obedient and does not fuss. The child -Zhenli, Wei Wuxian had said- pats Xichen’s hand gently and says, “Gege don’t worry,” when he sees the furrow of Xichen’s brow.
The small, close-lipped smile the boy levels his way is all Wangji.
It almost feels like Xichen has been thrown almost two decades back into the past, when Wangji was still small and Mother was still alive, and Wangji would sit in Mother’s lap just like Zhenli was now sitting in Xichen’s, the tiniest pout on his lips and staring up at Xichen and Mother with those very same gold eyes.
It does not matter that the shape of those eyes are different, or that the fall of his hair is different. It does not matter that his hair curls instead of falling straight, does not matter that his skin is not the pale fairness that almost all children born in Gusu have. It does not matter, because now that Xichen has made the connection, it is undeniable that the child is Wangji’s.
But- when? Wangji is only a bare twenty-two, and the child is, at youngest, two, but probably older given his coherence in speech. That would have made Wangji and Wei Wuxian nineteen, maybe even eighteen, when the boy was conceived.
Eighteen would have been right after the Sunshot Campaign, perhaps even during it. But when would Wangji have had the opportunity to bed Wei Wuxian? And why hadn’t Wangji said anything after?
Xichen has always, always known that Wangji had long given his heart to said omega, and he had hoped beyond hope that Wangji would have the happy ending that eluded most of the main branch of the Lan clan.
So why had Wangji bedded Wei Wuxian, and then not said anything? It was completely incomprehensible. The Wangji Xichen knew would have jumped on any chance to marry Wei Wuxian, would sooner have proposed to Wei Wuxian on the spot than to let Wei Wuxian go unmated, unbonded, especially after Wangji took his virginity.
And yet, that was clearly what had happened.
So why?
And why would Wei Wuxian, an omega who had always defied the cultivation world’s beliefs, the only omega who had ever made it into the top five of the list of young masters, settle for being deflowered and left pregnant out of wedlock? Why would he settle for him and his child being hidden away from the world? It was no secret that Wei Wuxian was a highly desired young master, and that in the past, even as an omega and without blood ties to any sect, there had been plenty of families willing to marry their daughters and sons to him.
The only possible explanation Xichen can think of is that Wei Wuxian was as ridiculously in love with Wangji as Wangji was with him, and that somewhere along the way, somehow, everything had most likely broken apart due to miscommunication.
From what he knows of Wei Wuxian, and from growing up with Wangji, the idea is far more feasible than Xichen would like it to be.
Still, the idea that Wangji had hidden something as huge as an illegitimate child from him is jarring. He had always thought Wangji trusted him, that he was perhaps one of the only people that Wangji gave his full and wholehearted trust to, but that thought that Wangji could hide something like this from him?
It is terrifying, almost as terrifying as the thought that Wangji was callous enough to leave an omega pregnant with his child and not even mention marrying them.
Xichen swallows drily at the thought, and he does not notice that his fingers are curling into fists until the child in his lap lays a small hand atop his own and blinks at him guilelessly. “Gege sad? No sad, is okay.”
Xichen cannot help but smile, no matter the turmoil in his heart. After all, this boy bore Wangji’s smile, bore Wangji’s eyes, bore Wangji’s temperament watered down with a childhood raised by someone as rambunctious as Wei Wuxian.
The child was almost a perfect mixture of them both, and Xichen cannot help but love his nephew already.
“Brother,” Wangji says softly, and then his little brother is shifting closer, obligingly maneuvering his son into his lap when Zhenli grins wide and raises his arms with a soft, “Papa!”
Xichen watches as his little baby brother -now all grown up, with a baby of his own- cuts himself off momentarily to adjust the child in his arms, crooning lowly as he nuzzles up against Zhenli, gentle fingers brushing loose hair from the child’s forehead.
After Zhenli is situated well, Wangji turns back to Xichen again, and Xichen sees a melancholy sort of regret in his little brother’s eyes.
“Brother,” Wangji starts again, and he shifts Zhenli’s weight to one arm with an ease that speaks of long practice. With his free arm, he reaches out, and Xichen is abruptly comforted by the feeling of Wangji’s hand on his shoulder. “I… did not know about A-Li until recently. It is- It is why I have not returned to Cloud Recesses in almost a month.”
Oh. Oh, that made so much more sense, cleared up the strange picture that Xichen had been starting to paint in his mind. Wangji hadn’t known. Of course. Of course.
“...I have already proposed,” Wangji continues. “Wei Ying has accepted- will GusuLan take him in?”
Xichen blinks. He had not been aware that this was even a question that Wangji would have harboured-
“Of course,” Xichen says. “Even if I had not been Sect Leader- even if you had not been my brother, Wangji, GusuLan would still have taken Wei Wuxian in. He is the mother of a direct descendent of the main branch, and he is your beloved, Wangji. We have… we have always been far too romantic of a sect to not let that weigh our choices.”
“Would you… would you take in others as well?” And that is Wei Wuxian’s voice, sounding far more hesitant than Xichen has ever heard it, worried and concerned. “Not just me?”
Xichen blinks once again. Wei Wuxian has no family that he would want GusuLan to take in- the Jiangs that had raised him were doing well in their own sect, Jiang Wanyin now the Sect Leader of YunmengJiang, and Jiang Yanli the wife of the sect heir of LanlingJin, the mother of the next-in-line. There is no need for Wei Wuxian to ask GusuLan to take in any of them- they were already comfortable in their own niche in the world.
Who else could he be-
Xichen’s gaze lands on the other young child in the room, seated comfortably in Wei Wuxian’s lap, clearly more than halfway to sleep already.
Of course. The Wen remnants. Who else would Wei Wuxian have meant? These were the people that he had thrown away all his reputation for, the people who he had stormed a Discussion Conference for, the people who he had accomplished the impossible and colonised the Yiling Burial Mounds for.
Who else could he have meant?
And yet… yet, taking in the Wen remnants would be a risky, a very risky political move. It would be almost openly going against LanlingJin, would be like saying that the deaths of the LanlingJin cultivators that Wei Wuxian had caused when he’d rescued the Wens were nothing to GusuLan. It would be like saying that GusuLan did not respect LanlingJin at all.
But Xichen looks around, and he remembers what he had seen when he’d first landed on Burial Mounds.
There had been huts, small, cramped, almost falling apart huts, patched together with straw and mud and whatever they could get their hands on. There had been graying men and women plowing the fields, harvesting a meagre crop of potatoes smaller than Xichen had ever seen.
The only young people on the mountain that Xichen had seen, other than the two children in front of him, were Wei Wuxian, Wen Qing, and Wangji himself. Maybe Wen Qionglin, if Xichen were to count him.
Other than them, there was no other person who would be capable of putting up any kind of defense at all.
This was not an army. This was not the force of doom that LanlingJin had been trying to tell the world that the Yiling Patriarch was trying to amass.
This was just a small, almost falling apart settlement of the defenseless and the elderly, and their overworked, undernourished protectors.
This was not an army, and Xichen would not be Sect Leader of the most righteous sect in the cultivation world if he saw this and stood by.
“It is an unconventional bride price,” Xichen says, and he is smiling. “It is unconventional, but I am sure that no one would object to GusuLan taking in the bride’s family as well.”
The pure, unbridled joy on Wei Wuxian’s face, one that reflects the relief on Wangji’s own- it is more than worth the months of paperwork and political maneuvering that Xichen will most likely be doing to to cover this stunt.
But it is worth it, and Xichen cannot find it in himself to regret the choice.