Chapter Text
It’s a peaceful day at the Cloud Recesses. Start of Summer has come and gone, and it’s almost Small Full now; the summer crops are beginning to become plump, but not quite ripe yet, and each pair of free hands is preparing for the upcoming harvest.
Wei Ying is in the fields when the call arrives. He’s plucking weeds, with rolled-up sleeves and the lightest sheen of sweat covering his forehead; not far away, Wen Ning is doing the same.
A small smile brightens his features as he replays Uncle Qiren’s words in his head. How was it again? He thinks to himself, amused, and throws a handful of leaves into the basket to his right. ‘With the number of sect duties we are currently facing, the council has deemed… beneficiary… to ask you to supervise the harvest this year,’ the old man had said, looking as if he’d just swallowed the most bitter medicine.
The memory makes Wei Ying’s smile turn into a cheerful laugh.
Leaning back, he wipes the drop of sweat that’s pooled at his brow with the back of his hand, before it can get into his eye. Then, a shadow creeps over his knees, and he takes his hat off to look up.
When he gathers it’s Lan Jingyi, he grins.
“Senior Wei,” the boy bows and waits until Wei Ying gets to his feet.
Dusting his knees off, Wei Ying playfully asks, “Did Old Uncle Qiren send you to make sure I’m not burning the Cloud Recesses down?” But his smile falters when he sees the anxiety that’s painting the boy’s face.
“No, Senior Wei.” Lan Jingyi shakes his head and looks away, as if searching for the right words. “It’s…” he begins anew, nervous, but then he squares his shoulders and meets Wei Ying’s eyes. “Could you follow me to the Jingshi?” he asks, and the unspoken now hangs in the warm air.
“Of course,” Wei Ying replies, giving Wen Ning and his men a smile and a wave when they call out his name.
He swallows his worry down and takes the first step towards home, keeping the act up until they’re far enough.
“What’s going on in the Jingshi?” he asks when they reach the front gate, urgent and sharp, because, except for himself, there’s only ever Lan Zhan in there.
However, when he sees that Lan Jingyi looks like he might cry, he tries to tone his expression down and musters up a light smile. Reaching out to pat the boy on the head, he makes a scene of puffing his chest and says, “It’s okay, it’s okay. There’s not a single problem the feared Yiling Patriarch can’t solve!”
“Senior Wei,” Lan Jingyi starts, looking up at him, and his voice wavers a little, but he doesn’t say anything else until they get past the guards.
Then, once the Jingshi comes into view, he finally speaks anew.
“Senior Wei, do you… Do you remember that time you super secretly taught us how to make those talismans that turned the withered flowers fresh again?” he asks and twists the fabric of his sleeves in a way that would gain him three hours of copying if Lan Qiren were there to witness it.
Wei Ying remembers.
He wants to break into a run. To close the last steps, because Lan Zhan is nowhere to be seen, but instead, he asks, “What’s with those?”
At that, Lan Jingyi becomes even more distressed. “W-well, I… I was sure I burned them all, just like you asked, Senior Wei. B-but this morning, Hanguang-Jun found one, and－”
“And what?” Wei Ying cuts in, feeling his stomach drop and his heart jump to his throat.
“And…” Lan Jingyi tries, but his voice cracks and that’s enough for Wei Ying.
He reaches under the lap of his robe and pulls out a small, bamboo flute. Chenqing is inside, after all, waiting for another night hunt to be taken out, so he puts the simpler instrument to his lips while his other hand travels to the door, tracing the familiar patterns in the wood as it flattens against the surface.
Yet, just as he’s about to push, with Lan Zhan’s name in his heart and at the tip of his tongue, the door gives in and Lan Sizhui’s face comes into view.
He is pale and his lips are parted. However, when his eyes focus on Wei Ying’s, some of his tension goes away.
“Senior Wei,” he calls, and Wei Ying lets the hand that’s holding the flute drop to his side.
“A-Yuan,” he breathes out. He shoves at the door to open it, but his shoulder hits the board when it doesn’t move － firm against A-Yuan’s side, who’s not quite meeting his eye anymore.
“Lan Sizhui,” Wei Ying warns the boy, and watches him gulp; he never calls him by his courtesy name. “Let me in.”
His son hesitates. It’s the most unruly Wei Ying has ever seen him, yet there’s not much he can do under Wei Ying’s unyielding hand.
“Senior Wei, Hanguang-Jun is－” he starts, loosening his stance, but Wei Ying is already barging in, looking around and ready to fight.
His pulse jumps when he doesn’t see Lan Zhan anywhere.
“Lan Zhan!” he calls, frantic, and he thinks that he’ll raise the dead and the living, consequences be damned, because there’s just one last corner left and his Lan Zhan is not. There－
Then, soft footsteps echo in the room.
They’re too light and too numerous to be Lan Zhan’s, so Wei Ying puts the flute by his mouth and takes a deep breath.
When his eyes finally, finally lay on the source —
— the piece of bamboo falls to the ground with a loud clatter and rolls away.
“Lan Zhan?” he croaks, blinking twice, thrice, because it cannot be.
There, in the middle of the room, right by their bed...
… Is a little boy, dressed in white robes that are way too big for him, and a forehead ribbon that’s tied askew.
He’s got a rattle drum in one of his tiny fists and eyes that are molten gold. When he sees Wei Ying, he slowly lifts his hands, over his shoulders and above his head, and very carefully says, “Wei Ying.” His brows are furrowed in concentration, as if he’s making sure he pronounces it well, and Wei Ying feels his heart explode into a myriad of bright pieces.
“Lan Zhan,” is all that he can whisper, because there are no words left in his head except for his husband’s name.
He takes a step, feet light with wonder and something else he cannot name — after all, he thought it wasn’t possible for him to love his husband more than he already does — and he closes the distance between them.
His hands reach out to where his love resides, brushing over the folds of Lan Zhan’s robe with tenderness.
He takes his husband and lifts him up. There’s the biggest of smiles on his lips when Lan Zhan’s arms wrap around his neck and his little face presses against his shoulder.
A laugh bubbles in his chest, then. “Lan Zhan, are you being shy?” he teases, but he can’t bring himself to worry. Lan Zhan has turned into a baby, and Wei Ying adores him with every piece of his body and mind because his heart is not enough anymore.
Lan Zhan, in his smallness, only hums something indiscernible into the fabric on Wei Ying’s chest.
“Lan Zhan, what did you say? This husband of yours hasn't heard well,” Wei Ying says with mirth and straightens his arms to look at Lan Zhan’s face, but baby Lan Zhan keeps his head low. “Oi,” Wei Ying calls him out with more gentleness then, and that seems to do the trick.
His husband looks up… with the slightest pout gracing his lips.
“Jingyi,” Wei Ying manages when the breath gets knocked out of his lungs, and isn’t even surprised when both Lan Jingyi and Lan Sizhui appear by his side in the blink of an eye. Without taking his eyes off of Lan Zhan, he solemnly commands, “If I die because I can’t handle Lan Zhan’s cuteness, don’t mourn me, for I’ll die a happy man.”
The boys choose to abstain from answering, since they know their Senior Wei all too well.
Lan Zhan, on the other hand, gives Wei Ying a stare so sad that Wei Ying wants to fall to his knees and apologize, even if he doesn’t know where he’s gone wrong.
“No dying,” he says after a pause, in that small voice of his. Wei Ying can’t take it anymore.
“Of course I won’t die, Lan Zhan!” he cries and presses him to his chest.
“S-Senior Wei, you’re suffocating Hanguang-Jun!” Lan Sizhui panics somewhere to Wei Ying’s side.
“I’m sorry, Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying cries again, loosening his hold and letting his husband breathe.
Articulating the long word in a way that does terrible, terrible things to Wei Ying’s’s heart, Lan Zhan replies, “Not suffocating,” and shakes his head. The movement makes his forehead ribbon slip a bit, but Wei Ying manages to brush his fingers over it just before the knot comes undone.
“You tried to tie it by yourself when you turned, didn’t you?” he asks with warmth in his voice, and laughs when Lan Zhan, with great reluctance, gives him a minuscule nod. “Here, here, let this dutiful servant take care of it,” he hums before carefully putting Lan Zhan down. Then, he tries not to cry as Lan Zhan’s little hands don’t let go of his robe, and pulls at the silky strands, gently, with diligence.
The knot was already loose, so it doesn’t take much for the ribbon to fall. Without his usual hastiness, Wei Ying places it over Lan Zhan’s forehead once again, and while Lan Zhan keeps his eyes up and his hands in the fabric of Wei Ying’s robe, Wei Ying ties it back, just like his husband taught him to do.
He’s almost done when Lan Sizhui politely disrupts the silence with another “Senior Wei.”
He pulls his gaze from Lan Zhan’s face. In the pocket world of his newly acquired baby Lan Zhan, he had forgotten that the little ones were still there.
“I spoke to Hanguang-Jun before Senior Wei came in,” the boy says. “From what I gathered, he appears to have retained his consciousness, or at least a part of it. He knew my name and the exact disposition of the Jingshi…”
“And he knew who I was, even if we met when we were fifteen,” Wei Ying finishes, diverting his attention back to the tiny Hanguang-Jun.
“Lan Zhan,” he reminisces, grinning anew, “do you remember that time I switched your book with Nie-xiong’s porn?”
To his utter delight, this Lan Zhan makes the exact same face he did on that day in the Library Pavilion.
“Senior Wei!” Lan Jingyi exclaims, abashed.
Wei Ying laughs. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! But now we have the answer!” Then, before his husband can unsheath a mini Bichen and point it at his chest, because he looks like he wants to do just that, he refocuses. “Say, Lan Zhan,” he ponders, wishing he could hug Lan Zhan forever before he becomes all serious again. “Do you know what happened?”
For a long while, there is no answer.
When Lan Zhan finally speaks, his voice is but a whisper, so quiet that his words fade into the rustling of leaves.
Wei Ying watches his expression darken, and it makes him want to say that it’s okay not to know. That they’ll find a way out, just like they always do, but then Lan Zhan huffs — a sound Wei Ying has never heard him make — and squares his little shoulders in a way that’s too mature for a child.
“A-Zhan is big,” he says, holding his head high, making Wei Ying’s jaw drop as his brain goes blank except for A-Zhan . “But A-Zhan’s body is small and his mind is young.”
His eyes drop to the ground, and his hands grab the hems of his big, big sleeves.
“A-Zhan doesn’t want to act small,” he admits, as dignified as he can despite his reddening ears, and looks at Wei Ying with wide, watery eyes. “But he is unable to stop.”
He tries to keep his bottom lip from trembling as he says that, yet he doesn’t quite succeed.
Wei Ying, on his part, can’t really do anything besides softly repeat, “A-Zhan.”
In his hazy state, he hears the door shut with a soft thud and a not so soft sniff.
It must be Lan Jingyi, who probably couldn’t handle the sight of his Hanguang-Jun being so sad. Wei Ying doesn’t blame him — all he’ s doing is kneeling on the floor and keeping his tears from falling with the last remains of a self-restraint he’s never really had, after all.
Lan Zhan, too, must be trying very hard not to cry. Wei Ying can see it in the way he shuts his eyes and purses his lips, and jerkily rubs his face with his sleeve.
It breaks Wei Ying’s heart a little.
“What’s wrong, A-Zhan?” he asks.
His husband doesn’t even pout at Wei Ying’s shameless indulgence as he pries his eyes open and takes a shaky breath.
“Shufu says crying is forbidden,” he replies matter-of-factly once he’s calmed down, just like he used to do when they fought over the jars of Emperor’s Smile on the roofs of the Cloud Recesses. “It means that A-Zhan will not cry,” he murmurs just to himself then, but Wei Ying hears it nonetheless, and he already knows that he’ll be shaving Lan Qiren’s beard again, even if much later, after it’s all over. Because now, for the sake of A-Zhan, he’ll tuck his burning vengeance away and focus on the problem at hand.
“Lan Zhan, tell this gege, how old are you?”
His husband furtively dries his runny nose on the collar of his robe. Then, to his own, young mortification, he lifts his hand and shows Wei Ying three fingers.
Wei Ying gives him his widest smile.
“Let’s see if this big gege has understood well then,” he says, as encouraging as he can possibly get, and stops his internal cooing to list out the facts. “You’re trapped in the body of the three year old you, and you can’t do anything the little you hasn’t learnt yet.”
Lan Zhan brushes a strand of hair away from his cheek and nods.
“Also,” Wei Ying smiles again, softer this time, and tucks the unruly lock behind his husband’s pink ear, “Your body acts on its own when you feel emotions, and it behaves just like the younger you would have behaved… Unless you try your best to stop it.”
Lan Zhan nods with more vigour, at that.
“Well, A-Zhan,” Wei Ying sighs theatrically and pushes himself up to his feet. Then, he looks down at the rattle drum that’s almost as old as his true Lan Zhan, and laughs. “I guess you’ll just have to embrace your inner baby!”
He doesn’t expect his joke to backfire on him when Lan Zhan’s lip starts to tremble again.
“Lan Zhan, this gege is kidding, haha, please don’t cry,” he panics a little and reaches out.
Lan Zhan instantly lifts his arms.
“Here, why don’t we change your robe first?” he asks once Lan Zhan buries his face in the crook of his neck, and carries him to a beautifully carved chest that stands in the corner of the room.
It was one of the wedding gifts from the Bailing Ouyang Sect, and Lan Zhan keeps A-Yuan’s baby clothes in there, along with his drawings and toys.
“How lucky I am to have such a considerate husband,” Wei Ying hums to the boy in his arms. When all he gets in return is a muffled Mn, he bursts out laughing; then, under Lan Zhan’s attentive stare, he takes off the lid and starts to unfold robe after robe, until Lan Zhan deems satisfactory the one that, a moment and a glare at Wei Ying’s suggestion to help him out later, truly turns out to fit him best.
“Where shall we go now, A-Zhan?” Wei Ying asks while he fastens his husband’s belt, the only thing he’s been allowed to do.
“The Big Library,” Lan Zhan replies once Wei Ying is done, and lets Wei Ying scoop him in his arms.
“To fulfill A-Zhan’s wishes is this gege’s greatest honor!” Wei Ying exclaims, dutifully marching to the exit.
It’s only when he’s opening the door, with such enthusiasm that it bangs against the outer wall, that it occurs to him that parading around the Cloud Recesses with a cursed Hanguang-Jun perched on his hip might not be the best idea.
Lan Zhan must be thinking the same, for he starts to pull at the hem of his black sleeve with a distressed, “Wei Ying.”
Wei Ying, however, has never let such idle thoughts occupy his mind; in fact, when they predictably run into a group of disciples as soon as they get out, he simply whispers, “Don’t worry, A-Zhan, this gege has everything under control!” and gives his husband a heartfelt wink.
Then, casually throwing his hair over his shoulder, he glances at the juniors and smirks when the gesture makes them snap out of their awe.
There’s a moment, hopeful in its uncertainty, when all they do is bow and proceed to look at each other, as if pondering the right course of action. But it lasts for as long as it takes them to disregard the interdictions of the Wall of Discipline — not much, overall.
“Senior Wei,” one of the boys chimes in with poorly contained curiosity. “Who is this?”
Wei Ying feigns surprise.
“Who?” he asks, pointing at baby A-Zhan. “This boy here?”
The disciples nod shyly.
“This,” he drawls, letting his lips stretch into a wide, wide grin. “Is my and Hanguang-Jun’s new son!”
For a while, there’s only the soft hum of the trees, in the space that spans in front of their house. Then, the same disciple from before, as red as a chili pepper, stammers, “B-but Senior Wei… D-don’t you need a… a woman to do that?”
With eyes lightened with amusement, Wei Ying’s about to ask ‘to do what?' The tease, however, dies in his throat when Lan Zhan, who up to this point had been hiding in the crook of Wei Ying’s neck, slowly turns around.
Letting the disciples see his face, he levels them with a gaze worthy of the name of Hanguang-Jun.
“Dada says bao bei is pretty like a-die,” he states in his righteous majesty, and Wei Ying laughs so hard that he almost drops him to the ground.
He apologizes, of course, sneaking a kiss on the crown of his husband’s head as they walk through the recesses hidden among clouds.
Lan Zhan is still pouting a little by the time they get to the Library Pavilion, but Wei Ying doesn’t mind. He just tells him he’s adorable, and laughs when it makes him sulk.