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Lan WangJi is a boy of routines, which makes him a boy of sunset, which is when he begins to wind down for bed every night, every night , every night he is alone. Some of the other boys have roommates; Lan WangJi, as the nephew of the esteemed Lan Qiren, has the luxury of sleeping in a room all his own. It is a luxury and not a punishment, he is certain, for not having friends like a teenage boy should. Like a boy who’s nearly an adult should. It is only months away now before I’ll be eighteen. But sometimes when he can’t sleep in the jingshi, his too-quiet room, he goes outside to patrol. Sometimes he lets himself wonder what it’d be like having someone in the same room, falling asleep to the sound of their breathing. He even wonders what it might be like to be inconvenienced by a still-lit lantern in the late hours of the night. (Or at least, later than nine at night.)
He is wondering about this when he sees Wei WuXian on one of the rooftops. Wei WuXian isn’t doing anything, he’s just sitting. But to see him so still is concerning. The night is cool on Lan WangJi’s skin, and he thinks sometimes about the blood on his hands and Lan Xichen’s voice in the night, ( You did the right thing,) and Wei WuXian’s face looks like that, the feeling of his stained hands. Wei WuXian’s mouth is a tight line that holds no forgiveness, and his eyes, his eyes are dead. Wei WuXian’s eyes have seen things they shouldn’t have, but this is the life that they live, as junior cultivators and members of sects. ( We are part of a sect , Lan Qiren had told him. The Wens are part of a gang.) But on his hardest nights, Lan WangJi has wondered what the difference is at all, between the righteous Lans and their sect, or the honorless Wens and their gang.
The low-angled rooftops provide an easy seat for Wei WuXian, and for Lan WangJi, too, as he settles down beside Wei WuXian, who is surprised to see him, and whose face lights up as if it had never darkened, the prior expression entirely forgotten.
But Lan WangJi remembers.
“Lan Zhan! What are you doing here?”
“Wei Ying.” Lan WangJi nods. “Something is on your mind.”
“Aw, Lan Zhan! You really do care!” Wei WuXian clutches his heart and gives a simpering smile. “Thanks, but I’m fine.”
“Something is on my mind, too,” Lan WangJi says quietly.
“Whatever could be bothering the newly esteemed HanGuang-Jun?”
“With you, it is Lan Zhan,” Lan WangJi says firmly. “First, what is bothering Wei Ying?”
Wei WuXian laughs, chiming with surreal delight, and Lan WangJi’s heart picks up, even though he knows Wei WuXian doesn’t mean it, he’s just good at sounding like he does. “It’s nothing, Lan Zhan. Look at you! Worrying about me! We’re close after all, huh?”
“Not close,” Lan WangJi says, but the denial falls flat against the soft rustling of fabric when Lan WangJi grips Wei WuXian’s sleeve. “Tell me.”
“Oh, alright, I’ll tell you on one condition.”
Lan WangJi waits.
Wei WuXian’s smile sharpens. “Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“Wei Ying.”
“Are you ready?”
Lan WangJi narrows his eyes and tightens his grip on Wei WuXian’s sleeve. It’s just a regular cotton long sleeve shirt, thick enough to ward off the night weather. Although, if Lan WangJi thinks about it, no matter the weather, Wei WuXian is always in long sleeves or a jacket. Which is actually good for Lan WangJi now, when Lan WangJi isn’t sure if touching him would be welcomed, although holding his sleeve is acceptable.
Lan WangJi has never...this might be the first time that Lan WangJi’s approached Wei WuXian, much less touched him. Wei WuXian has approached him countless times before this one, but Lan WangJi has never approached him. But Lan WangJi in equally countless times has wanted to, oh how he’s wanted to. Except there is always something inside him telling him that he can’t ruin this shining summer boy, because he’s not--he’s not like Lan WangJi is. Sometimes, it feels like no-one is like Lan WangJi is, even though Lan WangJi knows there must be others like him, out there, somewhere.
Lan WangJi is a boy who likes boys, and boys who like boys the way Lan WangJi does know one thing: you can never say it. You can never put the words in your mouth, because once you do, they cast a spell. They cast a spell of truth, and that kind of truth is one you can never take back. Once it’s spoken, it is in the world, and it is real. Lan WangJi can’t make it real. Because making it real would mean telling his uncle ( More than once, he’s thought that Lan Qiren is more a father to him than his own father) that there is something wrong with Lan WangJi, with his star pupil, with his esteemed nephew, and it’s the kind of wrong that nothing can fix, no matter how many times he copies down Righteousness .
Wei WuXian isn’t that kind of boy. It is plain and simple. Lan WangJi wants him because he is everything that Lan WangJi isn’t, and that includes this. Wei WuXian is bright and full of laughter and sunshine and joy and Lan WangJi is cold and expressionless and distant and alone. Of course Lan WangJi wants to be with him so badly his stomach twists every time he sees Wei WuXian approaching him, and of course Lan WangJi can do nothing except push Wei WuXian away and hope, just hope, that he doesn’t see how badly Lan WangJi wants him to stay. Only Lan Xichen seems to see it.
It is a good thing Wei WuXian doesn’t know how to read his face. Lan WangJi curls his fingers more tightly in Wei WuXian’s sleeve. “Wei Ying, I’m ready to hear it.”
Wei WuXian’s smile turns shaky and vulnerable for a second--just a second--before it hardens into something impish. “If you want me to tell you what’s on my mind, you’ll have to kiss me.”
Lan WangJi feels like someone ripped his organs out. The heavens are playing a cruel, cruel joke on him. Wei WuXian absolutely cannot be taking it seriously, so of course he’d just joke with the thing that Lan WangJi wants most, that Lan WangJi has wanted since he started getting to know Wei WuXian for the wonderful, too-clever fool that he is. Lan WangJi is instantly furious, biting his cheek so hard there's blood in his mouth. Wei WuXian’s vulnerable expression flickers across his face again, and if Lan WangJi didn’t know better, he’d say that Wei WuXian looks like he’s about to cry, but it’s gone too quickly for Lan WangJi to interpret, and he immediately doubts he saw anything at all, because Wei WuXian laughs, and he laughs hard .
“Are you really so disgusted by me, Lan Zhan?” His voice cracks where his laugh doesn’t.
Lan WangJi doesn’t understand anything at all, but the way Wei WuXian’s voice cracks says everything. The moment he hears what his anger does to Wei WuXian, his fury goes out like a candle in the wind.
“I do not understand,” Lan WangJi says, lost.
“What’s to understand? I brought up the idea of you kissing me, and you got angrier than I’ve ever seen you in my life. Clearly, you think I’m disgusting for wanting something like that.”
“Wei Ying,” Lan WangJi says patiently, “I have thought of kissing you since the day we met.”
“You’ve--what?”
Lan WangJi doesn’t feel like anything needs to be said. His heart is racing. Lan WangJi takes the hand that had been gripping Wei WuXian’s sleeve and slides it around Wei WuXian’s wrist, feeling his hummingbird pulse. For some reason, there’s a scar around his wrist. Wei WuXian tenses as Lan WangJi’s thumb runs over it, the scar thick and bumpy, but then he looks like he’s forcing himself to relax, and lets Lan WangJi hold his wrist. Both their hearts are beating so quick. Lan WangJi doesn’t know what needs to be said, he doesn’t have the words, he’s never had the words. But he thinks...he thinks maybe that Wei WuXian had been serious when he said he wanted Lan WangJi to kiss him.
Lan WangJi has always been a boy of action, not of words. Another difference between him and Wei WuXian. Lan WangJi’s mouth is dry, so he licks his lips before reaching over and gently taking Wei WuXian’s chin in hand and tipping his head up. Lan WangJi presses his mouth to Wei WuXian’s, and he tries not to think, just letting it be. Wei WuXian’s lips are dry and chapped, and their noses bump into one another, teeth painfully clipping against lips, but Lan WangJi tilts his head, and they find their sweet angle, and the kiss deepens.
Wei WuXian clings to Lan WangJi’s linen button-down, and Lan WangJi slides his hand around to cup Wei WuXian’s head, pulling the red ribbon that holds up his ponytail undone. His long, long hair falls loose in a cascade around them both. Wei WuXian grips Lan WangJi closer and closer, his racing breaths matching Lan WangJi’s. Wei WuXian presses one last, fierce kiss to Lan WangJi’s mouth, biting him hard enough that blood fills both their mouths, but it’s perfect.
Lan WangJi wipes the blood from his mouth, and he remembers what Wei WuXian said he’d tell Lan WangJi. “Wei Ying. You said you’d tell me.”
Wei WuXian purrs and laughs and presses his head against Lan WangJi’s chest. “That doesn’t matter. You kissed me.”
Lan WangJi threads his fingers through Wei WuXian’s loose hair and holds Wei WuXian’s head to his own chest. “Wanted to since I met you. Now tell me.”
“You know, you have perfect timing,” Wei WuXian says, and Lan WangJi can feel his wry smirk.
Lan WangJi hums.
“Sometimes...I feel worthless. Like there’s nothing I can do to justify my existence. I don’t know how to explain it but...I feel like I don’t deserve good things.”
“You do,” Lan WangJi says.
“It’s hard to feel like it,” Wei WuXian laughs. “ I feel like I don’t deserve you , for instance, but I’ve been trying so, so hard to, and the harder I tried, the more you just brushed me off, and I mean, it’s fun to try and know that you wouldn’t pay me any attention because that just proved it, didn’t it, that something as good as you would never, ever touch something as wicked and wretched as me, that you could never want me, never love me, which just proved that I’m not deserving of love. But...you proved me wrong.”
Lan WangJi pecks the top of Wei WuXian’s head. “You are wrong. Does that have something to do with the scars?”
“Huh? Oh, my wrists...Guess you know about that now. The answer is yeah and no.”
Lan WangJi smooths his hand across Wei WuXian’s back. “How can it be both?”
Wei WuXian curls up closer to Lan WangJi, as though he’s trying to make himself small. “Probably the worthlessness feeling has something to do with it, like, fundamentally, but...it’s mostly that...You know, we have so much blood on our hands from night hunting and sect violence that--that--don’t you ever feel like some of that blood should be your own? Like it’s just paying it back, somehow, making it even, if you shed a little of your own blood for every person you’ve killed? If it hurts you just a fraction of what it hurt them?”
Lan WangJi strokes Wei WuXian’s hair. “Mn.”
Wei WuXian reaches out. “I just...I’m just trying to make it right. I’m trying to make it make sense.”
“The world is cruel and senseless,” Lan WangJi says.
Wei WuXian snaps his fingers. “Exactly, and I’m just...trying to make a little of the world that’s under my control follow some kind of rule, trying to make the world at large make sense. It was just...it was just one, at first, but then it became a ritual, and now I just...I can’t stop and don’t want to. Maybe one day I won’t need to do it anymore, but I need it now. I just need something. And this is my thing.”
Lan WangJi hugs Wei WuXian close. “Maybe Wei Ying can make the world make more sense with his ideas.”
Wei WuXian laughs. “Lan Zhan, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Lan WangJi takes a deep breath, remembering. “Wei Ying has ideas like spiritual compass, to detect what direction a creature of resentful energy is.”
Wei WuXian shakes his head. “That was just something I said in the moment. It’s meaningless, like most things I say.”
Lan WangJi also shakes his head. “Not meaningless. Just...you could take your ideas, make them real, make them into things that could give you control over the world, in small ways. Wei Ying is smart and clever and capable enough, no matter how you act the fool. That could make the world into something understandable, too.”
“You want me to stop,” Wei WuXian says, tensing against him.
“Who wants to see someone they care about in pain?”
Wei WuXian grabs his shirt. “But it lessens my pain, really, truly. It helps. It’s not good, but it helps, and it’s all I have, it’s all I have even when I have nothing. At least I have this.”
Lan WangJi cups Wei WuXian’s face.“I hope you won’t need it forever.”
Wei WuXian lets out a long exhale. “No, I don’t think I’ll need it forever. Just for now. And I think...I’ll think about trying to make stuff. I don’t think I could make anything worth using. But maybe just...to try it. To try to make things make more sense.”
“Mn. What did you mean I had good timing?”
Wei WuXian cocks his head. “Oh. Just that when I was ready to finally give up on deserving to be loved, here you come, kissing me, wanting me, and caring for me. Makes me feel like someone would care if I wasn’t around anymore. Sometimes, you really, really just need the affirmation that people want you to exist. That they think you’re worthy of existing. Because it sure doesn’t feel like it most of the time, haha.” Wei WuXian breathes against Lan WangJi’s lips, pecks him, and then curls up against him again, in his arms. “What was your thing that you were thinking about?”
“The blood on my hands.”
“Yeah?” Wei WuXian grabs one of Lan WangJi’s hands and threads their fingers together.
“Did these enemies of the Lan deserve to die? Was I right to kill them?”
Wei WuXian squeezes Lan WangJi’s hand. “I think only the gods in the heavens can tell you that. You’ve heard how I deal with this doubt.”
Lan WangJi soothes himself by rubbing circles into Wei WuXian’s back with the hand that is still around him. “I deal with it by trusting my brother and my uncle. They have told me it was the right thing to do. But one day, I will have to decide that for myself, and that day is coming soon. And I don’t know. I don’t know if I can ever know.”
Wei WuXian clasps Lan WangJi’s hand with both of his, now. “I think something we both have to do is accept that sometimes you can never know if what you did was the right thing or not. You can live and love and that’s all you can be certain of. Living and loving.”
Lan WangJi looks at Wei WuXian. “I love you, Wei Ying.”
Wei WuXian smiles. “I love you, Lan Zhan.”
Lan WangJi kisses Wei WuXian again, and the blood on his hands goes to rest.