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He left bloody fingerprints on the rock, but there was something satisfying about that.
I was here. I exist. I’m alive, because I bleed.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Blue Lily, Lily Blue
❈
You taught me the courage
of stars
before you left
How life carries on
endlessly
even after death
...
I’d give anything to hear
you say it one more time:
the universe was made
just to be seen by my eyes
— Sleeping At Last, “Saturn”
❈
If you prick us do we not bleed?
— Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
“I’m glad you’re here,” Lan Wangji says, out of the blue one pre-dawn morning, both of them still barely waking beside one another. “You’re here, and not...”
His voice isn’t right, stilted by the honesty of dawn that reveals the sheer pain behind his words — pain he works so diligently to keep behind an impenetrable gaze, and Wei Wuxian knows him well enough by now to feel it seize his chest.
“Lan Zhan...?”
The silence, once mere silence, now fills between his fingertips: now words.
Wei Wuxian reaches out — the newness of the nonexistent distance between them still astounding him, still — and pulls Lan Wangji to him, cradling his head in his arms. He feels Wangji’s breaths on his throat, shuddering; clamber in, clamber out. And because he knows how quiet they both are about their innermost demons, Wei Wuxian closes his eyes and says nothing about it, merely runs his fingertips through his lover’s hair and presses his lips to the top of his head when Lan Wangji drags an arm around him to press even closer: his own resounding murmur of I’m here, I’m here to that silent cry of stay, stay with me.
And for a moment everything is
still,
washed over with the silver of morning —
but the two of them know the pain
the truth it hides:
a world
of lines blurred
words turned
rights
wronged.
Wei Wuxian doesn’t keep track of how long they stay like that before Lan Wangji finally pulls away slightly, but only slightly: far enough to see one another’s faces without strain, but close enough to feel the gentle stir of each other’s exhales, close enough that their arms remain around one another, close, close,
close.
(Far enough to see clearly,
close enough to hold
dearly —
isn’t that how they always seem to end up?)
Something startles in him, though, when he realizes Lan Wangji’s eyes are filling with tears. Wei Wuxian’s expression instantly shifts into the concern that drenches his limbs ice-stiff at the sight.
Quietly, he starts, “Lan — ?”
But before he can ask, Lan Wangji takes a tremulous breath and murmurs, “When you weren’t here, I... mornings were the worst. I would always think about how...” He trails off, and forces a sigh so blatantly pretending in its dismissiveness that it shakes at the very edges of Wei Wuxian’s eyes.
His arms tighten ever so slightly, release, reassure: I am here, still; I am here, I am here. He feels Lan Wangji relax, ever so slightly, and the bare touches of his slowing breaths over his skin.
“I would always think about how we had won, everyone said so. We had shot down the sun, after all. But...” Lan Wangji swallows hard, closing his eyes again as another one of those sobbing breaths wracks his body. His tremors shudder down the fault lines of Wei Wuxian’s own resounding pain, but he knows he needs to wait, to let Lan Wangji finish; so he fights down the urge to hold him close and simply brushes back the hair from that face — normally so pristinely blank but now so tormentingly contorted — and watches, stays. Waits.
Then:
“All I could hear was something even more impossible. All I could hear was — All I could hear that we had shot down you.” He breathes: in, out, these stuttering gasps of long-buried hurt finally unearthed. His eyes close; Wei Wuxian feels the the motion stab between his ribs, a wound scores more painful than any he’s had to bear.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji whispers, “Those mornings, I — I would realize all over. I had never, never wanted that. Never.”
(Three words he doesn’t say, but Wei Wuxian is learning to hear them.)
A tear escapes his closed eyes, carving its impossible trail down Lan Wangji’s face and into Wei Wuxian’s heart.
“It doesn’t matter now,” he says quietly. “Lan Zhan, hey, I’m — I’m back, I’m here. And —” Wei Wuxian smiles, crooked in his own aching hurt. “And I don’t intend to let myself be shot down a second time. Not when you’re here too.”
(And these, his three words back.)
He reaches out again, pulls his lover back to him, closer than before; and he holds Lan Wangji as he lets down that jade mask and finally, finally releases the flood overdue by thirteen years.
Wei Wuxian closes his eyes, breathes his three words to voice.
Lan Wangji shudders softly in his arms, grips him tight.
And though he knows neither of them will ever be truly over this, never fully healed from the scars of these wounds — Wei Wuxian can’t help but feel his blood sing and his heart cry, with honesty fierce enough to rival the sun that slowly climbs into the clouds, throwing its rays into the room as day breaks at last:
because here they are, irrevocably
here:
alive, alive,
alive.
The three words:
I missed you.
The three words:
Don’t leave me.
The three words:
I love you.
And the three words back:
But we’re here.
But we’re alive
(because we bleed)