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Here's the thing: it's surprisingly difficult, keeping a body alive. This is, presumably, why Wei Wuxian fucked it up the first time.
It's not like he's doing nothing with his days. He travels, if not as much as he used to. He helps the locals, or the kids, or when he's feeling particularly magnanimous, the in-laws. He has, and this is a scientific measurement, the most active sex life of any living person.
But he seems to need more than he used to. He sleeps like he's got something to prove, a little longer and sounder every night until the Jingshi could burn down to ashes around him and not disturb him once. He drinks more water than he does wine. The first time he reaches out in the bleary light of morning and whines I'm thirsty, Lan Zhan, Lan Wangji is still long enough that Wei Wuxian has to crack open an eye and clarify, Literally this time.
He doesn't remember ever craving water when he was last alive. He doesn't remember spending much time thinking about how thirsty or tired or sore he was. Lan Wangji would point out here that he doesn't remember anything important. Which is fair, but beyond the point.
"I haven't done anything all day," Wei Wuxian grumbles one night, when he can barely keep his eyes open. "During the Sunshot Campaign I could go for days without sleep. Does married life burn more energy?"
He sprawls across the floor, leaving the door wide open for Lan Wangji to show him how, exactly, that energy is going to be burned. But the Jingshi is strangely still. And when Wei Wuxian opens his eyes, Lan Wangji is still looking at him, soft and unreadable.
"You were tired then, too," is all he says.
***
He doesn't think much, at first, about this body. And at the same time, he thinks about it constantly. What it can't do, what it doesn't have, whether it is or is not prettier than his last.
The last is up for debate, depending on the day. The first two are more complicated. He keeps a running list as the months go on. He's the first to get sick and the last to recover. His back aches sometimes, as if from a lifetime of hunching. And he tires more easily, which he learned when, on night five of a week-long hunt, he becomes so suddenly, dramatically dizzy that Sizhui barely keeps him from pitching face-first into the ground.
The winter is the worst. The cold seeps through that softer, paler skin like paper. That body shivers through each night like its trying to shake Wei Wuxian loose.
(He doesn't share that particular comparison with Lan Wangji. Something tells him he wouldn't appreciate it. But then again, Wei Wuxian's gifts are perpetually unappreciated.)
But. Mo Xuanyu's hands are long and slender and deft. He runs faster, if not for as long. His narrow shoulders slide so easily into every opening, whether it's an embrace or into the nook under the floor where Lan Wangji keeps his Emperor's Smile. And everything else can be built.
The first day he hikes the surrounding hills without his legs shaking once is when he feels it: his lungs pushing the air in and out, the sweat cooling on his skin, his blood thrumming like a song. The wind rushes up to meet him, catching at his hair, his robes.
This is not his victory to take. The fact that he's alive has shockingly little to do with him.
But the body he's standing in kept him that way. And it can't exactly celebrate without him.
***
"How about this," Wei Wuxian muses. "You're a rogue wandering cultivator, performing exorcisms for money. I'm a young maiden, spirited but poor, beset by a vicious ghost. I don't have the money to pay you. But I offer, instead, my body?"
He rolls over in the grass to look at Lan Wangji, who looks back at him impassively. "No? Okay: you're the noble Hanguang-Jun of the Gusu Lan sect. Easy enough to get in character, right? I'm a young maiden, possessed by resentful energy. You're running out of options to save me. But you've got one final option. One you've been reluctant to use all these years. An arcane sex ritual."
Lan Wangji's eyebrows raise, just a fraction. "You're a young maiden again?"
Wei Wuxian tilts his head and flashes a sunny smile. "Well, just look at me."
Lan Wangji's lips twitch.
"Okay okay, something different, then." Wei Wuxian wriggles across the grass until his head is resting on Lan Wangji's crossed legs. "I'm the Yiling Patriarch--"
He theatrically cuts himself off, pretending not to understand the sudden crease in Lan Wangji's brow. "No, you're right," he sighs. "You're right, as always. What was I thinking? I don't have the cheekbones for that anymore. Anyway, you're the Yiling Patriarch--"
A finger falls to his lips, and he obediently stops short as Lan Wangji traces one side of his face, then the other. The finger slips down the fold of his robes, skimming the edge of his collarbone until he forgets, altogether, what the hell they were even talking about.
"I have no complaints about your bone structure," Lan Wangji says. There's a beat. And it's not until the soft curve of his mouth falters that Wei Wuxian realizes his own expression has changed. "Wei Ying?"
Wei Wuxian blinks, his vision suddenly, slightly blurred. It's a bit too much to name, this sensation: his ribs, the grass, the ground on one side of his heart, the light pressure of Lan WangJi's hand on the other. "Nothing," is all he can choke out. "It's just-- holy shit. We're here."
They're still, for a moment. Wei Wuxian's gaze darts to the trees, too self-conscious to check how Lan Wangji is looking at him.
He never catches it. In one fluid motion, Lan WangJi is on top of him.
"Aaah--!" Wei Wuxian's yelp is swallowed in a flurry of kisses, first to his mouth, then down his neck. "Hey, hey, Lan Zhan, Lan Wangji, Hanguang-Jun," he gasps out between helpless laughter, "you may not know this, but excessive noise is forbidden in the Cloud Recess-ah!"
Lan Wangji nips at his shoulder as he buries his face into the crook of Wei WuXian's neck. "Then be quiet."
Wei Wuxian takes one slow, smiling breath, and lets it go. "Then make me."