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Xichen’s touch is gentle as always, and A-Yuan is learning well.
“Softly, A-Yuan,” Xichen reproaches fondly, stilling the fine comb in the boy’s small hand. “We do not want to pull.”
A-Yuan nods seriously, setting about his task of combing Wangji’s hair. “A-Yuan will take good care of him.”
His touch is still unfamiliar; Wangji has known his brother’s hand, and his mother’s before him, but he thinks he would not mind learning the touch of the little one.
Xichen’s hand moves to rest on his shoulder as A-Yuan combs his hair. His fingers gently work into the tight muscles, careful to keep away from the forming scars on Wangji’s back. His massage is as gentle as his voice as he begins to hum softly, a sweet and simple tune he had composed himself years ago.
Wangji sits silently, patient, not daring to move nor able to muster up the willpower to do so. He has the energy for so little these days. If Xichen were to leave him on his own, he suspects that he may simply waste away.
But Xichen is too soft-hearted, Wangji thinks. Xichen, despite his own pains, despite the responsibilities he’s adopted as the new Sect Leader, he makes his way to the back hill once every day to visit and to care for him. Sometimes, like today, he brings the boy, A-Yuan.
Sometimes, like today, Wangji thinks he likes that.
His hair is still damp from the bath, and it comes untangled between the teeth of the comb, even if Xichen needs to help a little bit from time to time. A-Yuan is surprisingly gentle for a boy of his age, not that Wangji has much experience with small children. But what he has observed abroad and among the shidi has taught him that A-Yuan is being very careful indeed.
It takes a while for the little boy to complete his task, and then Xichen takes over. A-Yuan moves to the side, allowing Xichen to sit behind Wangji and attend to his hair.
Xichen’s hands are gentle and methodical as he twists a portion of Wangji’s still-damp hair into a knot, mindful of how tight it pulls, and fastens it in place with a clip. He dresses Wangji’s hair as if for a night-hunt, largely unadorned and neatly styled, knotted and tied into place.
It’s been a very long time since Xichen was responsible for dressing his hair. But it is a familiar reassurance now, to feel his brother’s dexterous hands in his hair, trusting yet another part of himself to Xichen’s impeccable care.
How far he has fallen; too wrecked to even fix his own hair, too miserable to care.
“Lie forward, A-Zhan,” Xichen murmurs, and something in Wangji’s chest aches at the appellation. He wishes he were A-Zhan still, when he could run to dada and dada would make everything better. Even now, Xichen is doing his best to make everything better, but the trauma that plagues him is far beyond the scope of childhood troubles.
He eases himself forward and lets out a ragged gasp as his muscles shift painfully, and Xichen hushes him gently, taking his hand and feeding a trickle of spiritual energy into his veins. “Easy, easy, now. Good boy.”
“Gege is hurting?” A-Yuan asks in a small voice. He knows well to be quiet when he comes to visit.
“This gege,” Xichen tells him, “is hurt very badly, but we will make him feel better, hmm? A-Yuan, bring me the medicine we made this morning.”
The little boy nods eagerly, getting down off the bed to rummage in Xichen’s bag.
“A-Yuan was helping me this morning,” Xichen tells his brother, his spiritual energy flowing quietly like a stream into Wangji’s ruined body. “We made ointment together. It will ease the pain in your back and help you heal quicker.”
Wangji makes a soft sound of acknowledgement. It’s all he can muster. But, receiving Xichen’s energy transfusion he can feel Xichen’s core suddenly flare with happiness at this paltry attempt at responding in conversation, and Wangji’s heart curdles with guilt.
His dear brother is trying so hard.
A-Yuan returns shortly with a small jar of medicinal ointment, and Xichen turns to take it from him, severing his transfusion. Wangji silently mourns the loss of closeness.
Xichen takes a small amount of the ointment into his hands, warming it in his palms before beginning to apply it to Wangji’s bare back. Wangji hisses in pain, and Xichen murmurs an apology, lightly spreading the ointment over the scabs and new-forming scars.
A-Yuan sits on the bed beside him and takes Wangji’s arm in his own, gently rocking back and forth, as Xichen anoints his injuries, and the simple rhythm of the boy’s movements entice Xichen into humming again. It’s a lullaby, Wangji thinks, from when they were small. He thinks he remembers their mother singing it.
“I do not have Liebing with me today,” Xichen says by way of apology when the song finishes, rubbing his hands together as he warms the medicinal ointment before moving further down Wangji’s back. “I’m afraid my pitiful voice will have to do for now.”
It is not pitiful, Wangji thinks. There is only one voice in the world that he would rather hear more, and this person has been silenced forever. But Xichen...
Xichen sounds like home. Like Cloud Recesses. Like the back hill and the rabbits, like sneaking into the library pavilion to read stories instead of practicing swordsmanship, like sweets smuggled inside sleeves, like the perfume of the gentians, like the sandalwood incense that permeates his robes even now, still lingering from the jingshi.
“Sing,” he pleads softly, his voice so weakened that it is barely more than a breath.
But Xichen hears, and Xichen listens.
Wangji is barely conscious of the words, feeling them more than hearing them, as Xichen sings to him. It is no great ballad, no epic, nor even a vocalization of a cultivation song. It is, again, a simple lullaby, as one would sing to a child.
Somehow, it hurts a little less when he sings, his gentle hands rubbing the ointment into Wangji’s tender skin. Even when the new-formed scabs crack and split, sending rivulets of blood over the marred jade of his back, it does not hurt like it ought to. Wangji feels strangely numb, as if his brother’s voice has enveloped him protectively, shielding him from his own pain. He feels almost detached as Xichen cleans his bleeding wounds with a damp cloth before proceeding, careful not to get the medicinal ointment in the open wound.
Beside him, the little boy has stopped rocking. He is still and silent.
“Oh, dear,” Xichen murmurs, a small smile tugging at his lips as he moves to clean his hands. “It seems A-Yuan is all tired out.”
The little boy is fast asleep on the bed next to Wangji, still holding onto his arm. He’s done well today.
“Good boy,” Wangji manages, his voice still weak from disuse. Xichen seems to find this comment amusing, and he adjusts A-Yuan’s position slightly, helping him get comfortable at Wangji’s side, while taking great care to make sure that the little boy does not make contact with his still-healing wounds.
“I have two good boys,” Xichen says fondly. “My dear little brother and my little nephew.”
Wangji looks up at him questioningly.
“A-Yuan is yours, is he not?” Despite the stress that has begun to mark his face, there is a bit of mirth in his eyes. “I can’t imagine you want to give him to someone else.”
Wangji shakes his head with as much vigour as he can muster. No, this boy is all he has left of the time before. He will not give him up.
“I thought as much. He will be yours, then.” Xichen runs his fingers through Wangji’s hair, gentle and soothing. He smells of medicinal herbs and incense and something softer, sweeter that Wangji cannot put a name to. “I will convince Uncle to let him take the ribbon. Do not worry for him, Wangji. I will make sure to take good care of him.”
Wangji allows himself to think on that for a moment: A-Yuan following Xichen around the Cloud Recesses as a small shadow, Xichen doting on him in the ways that Wangji remembers from his own childhood. His brother is a soft touch, undoubtedly, and Wangji has no trouble picturing him accompanying a child like A-Yuan.
He is not sure that he is fit to be considered a parent, much less a good father, but he is quite certain that Xichen will be a wonderful uncle.
He can’t find his voice to tell him as much. He makes a strained sound, choking softly on his own breath.
“Shh, Wangji.” Xichen takes his hand in his own, bending Wangji’s arm at the elbow to avoid pulling on the muscles in his shoulder as he brings Wangji’s hand up to his lips. He presses a soft kiss to the knuckles, and Wangji lets out a withheld breath, his eyes suddenly swimming with tears. “You do not need to speak. Just rest, now.”
Wangji does not want to rest. He wants, he needs to do something, anything, to vent his tumultuous emotions. He is angry with himself, he is grieving, he is wrought with guilt, and how can he express these emotions when he is confined to a bed? He cannot even give praise to his brother, his small happiness stifled.
He is too weary for such emotions, but it is these same emotions that keep him from resting.
Xichen hums his displeasure, and Wangji feels a sudden touch on his lower lip. His jaw unclenches, and he feels the ache, accompanied by the bitter taste of his own blood.
“You do not need any more hurts,” Xichen chides gently, blotting at the bite marks on Wangji’s lower lip with the hem of his sleeve. His blood stains the fabric in sickening shades of crimson. “If it makes you feel better,” he says, briefly indulging in the urge to caress Wangji’s cheek, “then bite down on me.”
Wangji goes still. It is not Xichen’s fault. It has never been Xichen’s fault. Xichen in the one who fought with their uncle over the siege of Burial Mounds. Xichen is the one who screamed for the beating to stop, begging to take the punishment in his place. Xichen is the one who took in the child that Wangji found, the one who cares for A-Yuan and for Wangji himself, and he seems like the only good thing in the world. Wangji should not take his own suffering out on his brother.
Wangji lets his jaw slacken slightly, and Xichen cleans his bloody lip. “Good boy,” he whispers. “I wish there was more that I could do for you.”
What he does is enough. Wangji hopes he realizes this.
“Now rest,” Xichen whispers, caressing his cheek gently. “You need your sleep.”
Xichen needs his rest, too. Wangji is all too aware of the bruise-like circles under his brother’s eyes, the new lines in his pretty face that hadn’t been there a year, a month, a week ago. He works too hard. He always has to give his all in everything he does.
“Don’t have to,” Wangji slurs softly, the words barely even audible, nonsensical in their context, but Xichen understands him, like always.
“Don’t have to,” he agrees. “Want to. Always want to.” He leans in and presses a kiss to the top of Wangji’s head. “Sleep, A-Zhan. I will be here.”
Wangji can feel his eyelids grow heavy as Xichen begins to sing again, and he finds himself being lulled to sleep, his brother’s presence his greatest comfort in this darkness.
(“Softly, A-Yuan,” Wangji whispers, the words coming back to him from a distant memory. “We do not want to pull.”
Sizhui nods, a bittersweet smile tugging at his lips as he gently pulls the comb through Xichen’s hair, still wet from the bath. “A-Yuan will take good care of him.”)