By Sun and Candle-Light

After the Notpocalypse, Wei Wuxian moves in with Lan Wangji.
Well. Moves in is a bit of an exaggeration, a tall tale perhaps, stretched by Wei Wuxian’s stupid imagination and even stupider pining, but regardless. This is the thirteenth night in a row that he’s spent in Lan Wangji’s bed, curled up around Lan Wangji with their wings brushing over each other. Wei Wuxian’s entire collection of weird mugs has found a new home in Lan Wangji’s fancy wood cabinets. And, Lan Wangji’s immortal rabbits now love him half as much as they love Lan Wangji, which is really the kicker, since said immortal rabbits hate everyone except Lan Wangji.
(Or; Wei Wuxian is a demon, Lan Wangji is an angel, and somehow, stopping the Apocalypse didn't solve all their problems.)

Notes:

For postingpebbles.
Translation into Русский available: Под солнцем, при свечах by DReindeer

WOW this is a very late bday fic for miss ollie postingpebbles!! A VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OLLIE, and I hope you enjoy this fic! <3
This is a good omens au but you absolutely dont need to have read the book or watched the show to read it -- all you need to know is that wwx is a demon, lwj is an angel, a-yuan is the antichrist who was destined to cause the Apocalypse, but together they subverted it.

(See the end of the work for more notes and other works inspired by this one.)

Work Text:

After the Notpocalypse (or, as Wei Wuxian calls it, that time when Wen Ruohan was fucking owned,) Wei Wuxian moves in with Lan Wangji.

Well. Moves in is a bit of an exaggeration, a tall tale perhaps, stretched by Wei Wuxian’s stupid imagination and even stupider pining, but regardless. This is the thirteenth night in a row that he’s spent in Lan Wangji’s bed, curled up around Lan Wangji with their wings brushing over each other. Wei Wuxian’s entire collection of weird mugs has found a new home in Lan Wangji’s fancy wood cabinets. And, Lan Wangji’s immortal rabbits now love him half as much as they love Lan Wangji, which is really the kicker, since said immortal rabbits hate everyone except Lan Wangji.

And that’s not all. Every morning he wakes up at 9, pads into the kitchen, and Lan Wangji is right there (of course he’s there, it’s his fucking house), quietly making breakfast, and he’s always shirtless for some reason, AND he has the body of what humans would call an angel. Which is a little ironic, since Lan Wangji is an actual angel. He lets Wei Wuxian hook his chin on his shoulder and hug him from behind with wandering hands for a full minute before asking him to feed the rabbits.

(Wei Wuxian is pretty sure Lan Wangji upped his internal temperature after Wei Wuxian made one (ONE!!!) comment about it being cold in the kitchen, won’t er-gege warm me up, ah Lan Zhan don’t look at me like that, don’t listen to this Wei Ying, he says stupid things all the time, you don’t have to indulge him —

Lan Wangji definitely upped his internal temperature. Fucking angels, man.)

The point is, though. The point is. Wei Wuxian is freaking out a little. Or a lot. When you’re a demon, you don’t freak out. Freaking out is against the rules. It’s so uncool. Wei Wuxian knows a demon who got demoted back to sorting the filing cabinets because he freaked out over the French Revolution.

It isn’t even over anything important, either, like being summoned by Down Below. It’s just because A-Yuan, their sweet little adorable Antichrist, has sent them an invitation to his belated 11th birthday party, and it’s addressed to “Mr. Lan and Mr Wei” which means that apparently A-Yuan knows that they’re, what, cohabiting??

So now Wei Wuxian is freaking out over the fact that the boy he might or might not consider his precious son with Lan Wangji thinks that he and Lan Wangji live together.

God. At least he won’t get demoted to the filing cabinets or whatever.

(Mostly he’s been demoted from the entirety of Hell and exiled to Earth for going against the Great Plan, but, details.)

“Lan Zhan, sweetheart,” Wei Wuxian says, watching with glee as Lan Wangji’s ears turn red and he looks up very slowly from his book to gaze at Wei Wuxian. Nearly a century of calling Lan Wangji ‘sweetheart’, and Lan Wangji still gets flustered every time like clockwork. It’s so cute. “A-Yuan sent us an invitation to his belated birthday party. It’s this Saturday, 1 PM, Luanzang, you know the drill.”

A tiny little furrow appears between Lan Wangji’s brow. Cute!!!!! “Is there a dress code?”

“What? No, it’s a children’s birthday party, if A-Yuan had his way we’d all be wearing period outfits since he just watched a period drama and he thinks it’d be cool, why would there be a dress code?”

Lan Wangji nods. “Period outfits it is,” he says, gravely. Lan Wangji probably has five different white and blue hanfu in his walk-in closet, which he has because he lives in a goddamn penthouse in downtown Suzhou, like the menace that he is, and works as a senior fellow with the prestigious music conservatory when he isn’t busy stopping the apocalypse with Wei Wuxian.

“Lan Zhan.”

Lan Wangji just gazes at him. The fucking traitor. “You said A-Yuan would think it is cool.”

“And it’ll be humiliating to pull up in front of a bunch of 11 year olds in flowy robes with our whole hearts in it! Come on, we can just — get A-Yuan a cool present or whatever, you’re an angel, you could literally summon A-Yuan’s dream present — “

“A-Yuan deserves a present that is thoughtful and picked carefully,” Lan Wangji cuts in, which, god, he’s so caring, he would be such a good dad, why aren’t he and Wei Wuxian married and adopting A-Yuan already?

“His present can be us showing up at his party full of eleven year olds,” Wei Wuxian huffs. Somebody has to be the strict dad here, and apparently Lan Wangji is. Gasp. The secretly indulgent and kind dad, to nobody’s surprise, because his face is stiffer than that fucker Michael’s robes but his heart is as soft as his rabbits’ fur.

“He saved the Earth three weeks ago,” Lan Wangji points out. “Do you not think he deserves a wonderful present?”

Wei Wuxian sighs. As always, he can never say no to Lan Wangji. Especially not when Lan Wangji is now looking at him with those adorable eyes that mean Lan Wangji is turning on his sajiao-mode, which is. Um. Well. Strong enough and cute enough that it could have sent Wen Ruohan himself crawling back to Hell, in Wei Wuxian’s professional and unbiased opinion as a fellow demon who feels his molecules disintegrating and returning to Hell whenever Lan Wangji hits him with that Look.

“Fine,” Wei Wuxian says. “I’ll like, go humiliate myself trying to summon the perfect hanfu, which will be, for your information, my glorious and very thoughtful present to A-Yuan.” Then, because Wei Wuxian is fundamentally shameless if nothing else, “But we have to wear matching hanfu! I’m not doing this alone!”

Lan Wangji tilts his head, considering.

“Of course,” he says. “You have me. You are not alone.”

~~~

So. Yeah. Wei Wuxian has a bit of a problem, namely that he’s been in love with Lan Wangji for the past three centuries.

(Well. He’s been aware that he’s in love with Lan Wangji for the past three centuries. He’s been in love for much, much longer.)

Sub-problem A: Lan Wangji is an angel. He’s a demon. Demons can do, mostly, whatever the hell they want as long as it’s considered appropriately evil, which is a descriptor that can be applied to a great variety of things. Once Wei Wuxian passed off giving a customer slightly cold coffee as evil because it could make them sad. Down Under was totally cool with it, so.

Anyway, seducing an angel into liking him is most definitely suitably evil. So he can do that. But Lan Wangji — well, his status with Heaven is already so precarious, no thanks to him helping Wei Wuxian with his whole prevent-the-Apocalypse-and-go-against-the-Great-Plan agenda. Lan Wangji can’t afford to be seduced by a demon. Lan Wangji could be doing so much better than a disgraced failure of a demon.

Sub-problem B: Lan Wangji loves him. This is a problem, because the way Lan Wangji looks at him sometimes — the way he takes care of Wei Wuxian, quietly, implicitly, the way he combs Wei Wuxian’s hair at night, the way he says Wei Wuxian’s name — it’s not special. Lan Wangji’s an angel, and Wei Wuxian knows very well that angels are by nature obligated to love everything of God’s creation, even demons. The whole ‘hereditary enemies’ bit is enough to tamper that for most angels, but maybe Lan Wangji’s just… gotten used to him.

So Wei Wuxian knows what it’s like to be loved by Lan Wangji, except that love will probably never be the kind of love Wei Wuxian feels every day, and he’s learned to live with it.

Well. Most of the time.

A fun fact: Wei Wuxian nearly confessed, the day of the Apocalypse, wondering if it was the end of all things, if this was the last day he’d get to have with Lan Wangji before they were flung onto the battlefield on opposite sides, both trying to utterly destroy each other. He’d thought, Lan Zhan is so beautiful, and I can’t leave this world without kissing him at least once, and at Luanzang Airfield when Wen Ruohan rose, If I tell him I love him, I’ll be able to leave without any regrets.

Then A-Yuan had stepped up and said, “You’re not my dad!” and stuck his tongue out at Wen Ruohan, and Wen Ruohan had kind of. Just. Crawled back into the sulfuric hole he emerged from. And the Earth spun on through the endless void of space. So that was that, and if Wei Wuxian’s hand was still tight and warm in Lan Wangji’s in the dusty silence of survival against all odds, nobody except them noticed.

And Wei Wuxian had thought, Oh, and We survived, then, and Lan Zhan’s hand is so warm and pretty and now that it’s all over and we’re still alive I can’t jeopardize the best thing that’s ever happened to me, I can’t do that to Lan Zhan, he doesn’t deserve it. He didn’t break the quietude of Luanzang Airfield post-Notpocalypse.

Now, Wei Wuxian has unofficially moved into Lan Wangji’s expensive penthouse and is mooching off his fancy job and fancy food and fancy amenities, and it’s like nothing ever happened and they hadn’t just given a metaphorical middle finger to their respective bosses who run the entire universe, staring down the end of the world with only the surety of each other by their side.

Except Wei Wuxian can’t stop thinking. About his almost-confession. About Lan Wangji’s hand in his. About how Lan Wangji loves him, just as Lan Wangji loves all creatures because he’s a goddamn angel, and about if Lan Wangji could ever love him in the way that Wei Wuxian so sinfully desires.

Maybe Wei Wuxian should just stop thinking. He’s been going around in circles for centuries and there’s never been a good way out of the loop aside from putting Lan Wangji’s status, his position, his everything, over Wei Wuxian and the nothing that he has to offer.

And it’s fine. It’s fine. They’ll go to A-Yuan’s party, they’ll come back home (home!!!), their unchanging life will go on for eternity, and Lan Wangji will never have to know how much Wei Wuxian wants to hold his hand when they go shopping, and how much Wei Wuxian wants to kiss him on the cheek and the nose and the forehead and the lips, and how much Wei Wuxian wants, with him, every day.

“Wei Ying?”

Speak of the fucking angel and he will appear.

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian absolutely does not jolt up from the sofa or summon some pockets to stuff his hands in, or anything. Lan Wangji blinks, unfazed by Wei Wuxian’s weirdness via centuries of exposure therapy. “Wow, what are you doing here?” Then Wei Wuxian’s brain catches up with his mouth. “Wow, you look. Um. Ah. Really… good?”

Really good is the understatement of the year. Lan Wangji’s dressed in silky, willowy hanfu, with blue and white fabric layered delicately over each other. A soft overcoat with dreamy blue cloud patterns drapes over his shoulders, and a wide, intricately detailed belt encircles his waist. His hair is up in his usual half-updo, accentuated with the maddeningly attractive addition of a regal silver headpiece and a dangling jade pin. He looks ethereal and entrancing and untouchable, like everything Wei Wuxian wants and cannot have.

Lan Wangji raises one perfect eyebrow. Fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck fuck, Wei Wuxian chants in his brain, not really because he’s trying to summon any other demons (demons aren’t summoned by ritual chanting anyway, usually you kinda just… dangle shit they like in the air and hope they appear, in Wei Wuxian’s experience), just because Lan Wangji makes Wei Wuxian want to curse, though preferably not in this situation, and in a room with a proper bed and romantic lighting.

“I live here,” Lan Wangji says. Fuck. Wei Wuxian is going to pass out. “Thank you, Wei Ying.”

If vanity weren’t a sin and therefore wouldn’t strike Lan Wangji from Heaven’s good books if he exhibited it, Wei Wuxian gets the distinct feeling that Lan Wangji would have done a modest little twirl in the middle of their living room.

“Is that what you’re wearing to A-Yuan’s party?” Wei Wuxian says, trying not to stare at Lan Wangji in a creepy way and (mostly) succeeding. “I mean, obviously it is, but just to confirm, because like, I said we’d wear matching outfits but I don’t know about the blue and white — not that it’s not good, it looks. Um. Amazing on you! Of course!! But I’m a demon, it’s not really my brand, all that — “ He cuts off, waves vaguely at Lan Wangji’s entire being. “Brightness, and exquisiteness, and goodness… I’m more. Hellfire and chaos and destruction! Ya know!”

Lan Wangji makes a skeptical ‘Mmn’ that suggests he does not, in fact, know. Then his face scrunches up in that characteristically adorable way of his that means he’s calling a favor and producing a truly astounding miracle.

A few seconds later, Wei Wuxian hears the pop of the miracle and feels rather than see it happen, because the miracle is the hanfu that replaced his ratty sweatshirt and summer shorts.

“Ah,” Lan Wangji starts, looking faintly confused. “It was not supposed to do that — ” A strangled, abrupt stop.

“Lan Zhan?” Wei Wuxian says.

“That.”

“This?”

“I. Hng.”

Wei Wuxian, for once, cannot decipher Lan Wangji’s facial expressions at all. But Lan Wangji is staring at his outfit, and his expression has shifted to ‘somewhat betrayed by his own miracle-ing abilities’, so Wei Wuxian does a little bit of popping his soul out of his bodily vessel to appraise himself.

Which, well.

Wei Wuxian won’t deny that his bodily vessel is rather attractive. He might even go so far as to say he created this particular one to feel handsome and confident in his looks. But. Wow.

Wow.

The hanfu Lan Wangji miracled for him shrouds his body in a inky black outer layer with crimson etchings like flames crawling up the sleeve, yet falls in just the right way to reveal the smooth lines of his torso, emphasized by his tasseled red belt. The hems drag an inch above the carpet, billowing around his legs and giving him an air of mystique and hallowed power. There’s a shining red ribbon tangled in the midnight-velvet spill of his hair.

To top it all off: his inner robe is opened carelessly, only falling closed in the middle of his chest. The second layer does nothing at all to conceal that. And again, not to brag, but like, Wei Wuxian has taste, okay, he created this body and he knows he has certain assets. He’s just… never seen them accentuated so perfectly before.

Huh.

Wei Wuxian ducks back into his body.

“Looks good, doesn’t it, er-gege?”

Lan Wangji is staring at him very intensely. Wei Wuxian swallows and runs his fingers through the parts of his hair that have fallen over his shoulder.

Finally, Lan Wangji says, strangled, “Good. Yes. Our outfits — their patterns and styles — match.”

“Good,” Wei Wuxian echoes.

Silence falls, a too-heavy blanket filling Wei Wuxian’s mouth with cotton and angel-white feathers.

Lan Wangji steps closer, his movements deliberate and measured, so characteristically Lan Zhan. His hand comes up as if to cup Wei Wuxian’s face, and Wei Wuxian nearly leans into it, but at the last minute it falters and turns to stroke a lock of Wei Wuxian’s loose hair. “You…” he starts.

Wei Wuxian takes in Lan Wangji’s expression: the delicate flutter of his eyelashes on high cheek bones, the sweet strawberry curve of his mouth and the dark, barely-there space between his parted lips. The beloved set of his eyebrows, the trusting, devastatingly fierce shine of his eyes, a beautiful gold that Wei Wuxian is too much of a fool to not fall for.

He’s never had the privilege of seeing this raw, cracked-open Lan Wangji before. He rather thinks he’d like to see it again and again and again, every time with the rush of knowledge that Lan Wangji trusts Wei Wuxian with even the most secret, bloody parts of himself.

Wei Wuxian darts his tongue out to wet his lips. Lan Wangji’s eyes follow.

“Me,” Wei Wuxian rasps. He’s a demon. He’s never been good at controlling his desperation.

“This outfit…” Lan Wangji’s words are thick with intention. The Lan Wangji of a decade ago would have slammed his eyes shut and been a good little angel and stepped away. The Lan Wangji of the post-Notpocalypse steps even closer, until Wei Wuxian can almost feel the warmth of his body. “It — suits you.”

Then:

Lan Wangji, in a rush, hand drifting up to hover at Wei Wuxian’s waist, still hesitant even after everything. “Wei Ying, if you would want me — ”

Wei Wuxian’s forgotten phone on the couch cushion and its 6 dangly phone charms, blaring out Wei Wuxian’s (stupid loud possibly cockblocking fucking annoying what the hell was I THINKING) ringtone.

Wei Wuxian, hands smoothing down his hair nervously, ducking around Lan Wangji’s stone-still body to smite his phone through all 9 layers of Hell, decidedly not thinking about whether Lan Wangji had been about to kiss him, and the velvet smudge of Lan Wangji’s parted lips, and the grounding warmth of them on his. “Ahaha, ah, sorry, it’s A-Yuan, um, I wonder what he wants, I should take this call, Lan Zhan — ?”

But Lan Wangji has already swept across the room and seated himself at his computer, all sharp angles and pale sloping lines like he wasn’t just less than a foot away from Wei Wuxian and looking for all the world like he wouldn’t even mind if Wei Wuxian kissed him. Like he’d been expecting it, waiting for it, just like Wei Wuxian has been doing all these lonely decades.

Wei Wuxian sighs. He swears to Satan, if it’s just A-Yuan asking him what flavor of cake they should have, he’ll — he’ll wear a less cool outfit to A-Yuan’s party, or something. There isn’t much one can do to piss off the Antichrist when the Antichrist has the power to completely remove you from the face of the Earth and is also your sweet adorable cute maybe-son.

He takes the call.

It’s A-Yuan asking him whether he should manifest a blue or green outfit for his party. Wei Wuxian tells him to do both, hangs up, and teleports to his room to scream very calmly into his pillow.

~~~

True to form, Wei Wuxian doesn’t really… talk about the almost-kiss with Lan Wangji for the next week. He’s a demon. Demons don’t resolve romantic issues by talking, because no demon in their right mind would go and fall in love with an angel who could never love them, let alone do something as disgusting and spiteful as falling in love in the first place.

Also, he’s Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian doesn’t resolve romantic issues because Wei Wuxian resolves exactly 0 of his issues. He prefers to leave them to marinate in their own misery so when he accidentally uncovers them five decades later, they’re all shriveled and tastefully seasoned and hopefully Not An Issue anymore.

(Not that he can do that with loving Lan Wangji though, nope, no way, compartmentalization and marination isn’t something he can (or would) do to something as good as loving Lan Wangji.)

Lan Wangji doesn’t bring the almost-kiss up either, which is a problem for Wei Wuxian, because he can’t just ignore the issue, but he also can’t function properly if he’s always thinking about Lan Wangji’s lips.

So they kind of just. Coexist for the week. Wei Wuxian continues padding into the kitchen at hours Lan Wangji considers satanically late and wrapping his arms around Lan Wangji’s stomach, and Lan Wangji continues to bask in Wei Wuxian’s presence. Wei Wuxian continues to hog the couch and sprawl in Lan Wangji’s lap as they watch TV, and Lan Wangji continues to miracle bottles of Emperor’s Smile for him. Wei Wuxian continues pining, and Lan Wangji continues making Wei Wuxian swoon over his general existence.

It’s all very… prim. And proper. And domestic. Eeeuuuurrrgh.

Speaking of domestic. Wei Wuxian blinks. Why is there a bowl of cut fruit in front of him? When did that get there? How does Lan Wangji know his favorite fruits — no, wait, Wei Wuxian knows, he must have said something about loving peaches and mangoes way back in like, December 1739, and Lan Wangji must have silently tabbed that under his Things About Wei Wuxian To Remember That Are Definitely For The Purpose Of Defeating My Demonic Immortal Enemy If Heaven Is Reading This folder. Gods. It’s always an instant KO to Wei Wuxian’s rotten, wormy heart when Lan Wangji does shit like this.

“Lan Zhan, did you miracle these peaches and mangoes for me?? I know these aren’t in season, I haven’t lived six thousand years to not know the life cycles of fruit, and I took some classes about plants at university when I had my rebellious student phase back in the 1960s so I’m definitely an expert on this, Lan Zhan.” Wei Wuxian peeks over his laptop to look at Lan Wangji in the kitchen, putting away groceries. “Hey. Psst. Lan Zhaaaaaaan.”

“You majored in chemical engineering,” Lan Wangji points out, looking somewhere deep inside the refrigerator like it contains all of life’s mysteries. “And you do not even use your major.”

“Hey,” says Wei Wuxian. “I used it enough to get my money’s worth. Besides, just because I crammed my brain full of equations that I could have just begged God to beam directly into my field of vision during tests, doesn’t mean I didn’t also cram my brain full of plant knowledge.”

“I was around,” Lan Wangji says, examining the leaves of a napa cabbage very closely. “As I recall, you spend the great majority of your time complaining about your required chemistry and math classes and only ever mentioned one class about plants.”

Curse Lan Wangji’s Things About Wei Wuxian mental folder. Wei Wuxian huffs. “Well, what if I remember everything from that one class about plants, huh?”

“Unlikely.”

Wei Wuxian puts a hand to his forehead and faux-faints by ducking behind his laptop screen. “Woe is me, my best friend is insulting me so cruelly, how could you ever say that to this beautiful delicate face of mine — and, AND, it was two classes. Definitely two.”

“Two?” Lan Wangji says, managing to look skeptical while checking if the eggs in the carton are broken, which is a feat that Wei Wuxian truly admires, and also finds. Hhh. Just the tiniest bit. Adorable.

“Two. Also. You’re changing the subject, sweetheart.”

Lan Wangji’s hand slips, taking an unfortunate leaf on a tangerine with it. Eventually — head ducked, ears dusted pretty pink, Wei Wuxian’s heart going into overdrive from across the room because the sight of him is so cute — he mutters, “Yes.”

Wei Wuxian sighs. “You didn’t have to, Lan Zhan ah, why do you keep using your miracles on me? Those are supposed to be for special occasions only. One of these days you’ll run out, and you’ll think, why’d I spend my last miracle on fruit for Wei Ying, when I could have spent it saving a life or whatever, and you’ll remember this conversation and think, Wei Ying is so smart and wise and brilliant and I should have listened to him because he gives the best advice ever.”

Lan Wangji is silent. Then — “I wanted to,” he says. Petulantly. Fuck. Wei Wuxian is going to temporarily die one of these days because Lan Wangji is so cute. Fuck! “Fruit is good. Would you rather I have miracled a candy bar?”

“You — that isn’t the point!! The point is that you didn’t need to miracle anything! Come on, look at — “ Wei Wuxian gestures vaguely at himself. Lan Wangji’s eyebrows move up half an inch, code for you gestured to all of yourself, and Wei Wuxian rolls his eyes — code for exactly. Nonverbal communication, that’s their Thing. “Are you quite sure your precious miracles are worth this?”

Lan Wangji frowns. More silence. And — and, and, oh —

The real thing is. Wei Wuxian was joking, mostly, when he said that. But he knows Lan Wangji is... well, to put it lightly, a little sensitive about any jokes Wei Wuxian makes about his self-worth. Something about you disappeared on me for 13 decades because I was good to you and you didn’t think you were worth it and I missed you, you are worth it, please, Wei Ying. Wei Wuxian skirts carefully around those memories.

But ‘joking, mostly,’ doesn’t mean Wei Wuxian has stopped feeling like that entirely. He still thinks, sometimes, some of the good things Lan Wangji gives him would have been better spent on something less demonic, a being less innately evil. Mostly because if he thought all of the good things were undeserved, a bitchier version of Lan Wangji would appear in his mind and beat him the fuck up.

Anyway. It’s fucking fruit. Wei Wuxian doesn’t even know why he’s bothered. Lan Wangji can do whatever he wants with his powers, even if it’s useless things like this.

“Of course,” Lan Wangji says, simply.

Oh.

It really is that easy for Lan Wangji, isn’t it?

“Ah, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, what am I going to do with you, you terrible angel, you, how are you so good?” Wei Wuxian presses his lips together, thinks please kiss me, and I want your goodness all for myself, and it’s so selfish. He can’t let himself accept something like this. “Did you cut the fruit, too? You probably did. Fuck.”

Lan Wangji blinks slowly at him. “Yes,” he starts, tilts his head in consideration. “And you could… eat the fruit?”

Wei Wuxian wheezes. “Lan Zhan. Let it never be said that angels are unfeeling, unfunny business majors in an immortal body. You, my friend, more than make up for the deficit in humor in the angel population.”

“Mmn,” Lan Wangji hums, managing to make a meaningless one-syllable word sound fond. Argh. Wei Wuxian’s demon heart is just not equipped to handle this level of smittenness!

Wei Wuxian stabs a slice of mango and crams it in his mouth so he doesn’t self-immolate from embarrassment. Then, once he’s determined that looking at Lan Wangji won’t disintegrate his molecules into a pile of pining dust, he says (making sure to chew the mango so Lan Wangji doesn’t get mad,) “But really, Lan Zhan, I don’t know why you insist on taking care of me like this, don’t you ever want to. Like. Take a break? Don’t you get tired??”

“Why would I get tired?” Lan Wangji fires back.

“Um.” Wei Wuxian frowns. What? “Obviously because I am like a needy houseplant that demands exactly 6 hours and 25 minutes of sunlight every day and 431 milliliters of water at 8 pm at night.”

Another blink. “I like plants.”

“Again, that isn’t the point, Lan Zhan!! I mean — you know, I’m so much work, and — ” And the fault line in Wei Wuxian slips. Suddenly, he feels tired, wrung-out, like how he imagines God feels, endlessly looking at Their creation for ten thousand years, a bone-deep and ancient exhaustion. “Isn’t it hard? Why aren’t you tired of me?”

Immediately Wei Wuxian knows he’s said something wrong. Lan Wangji’s shoulders tense, the smooth line of his brows turning into something unhappy and downcast, his lips parting barely. He puts the tofu down and says, carefully, “Why do you think I would get tired of you, Wei Ying?”

“I — “ Wei Wuxian stutters. He’s — he — he didn’t really mean it that way, he just — He’s so used, to people writing him off, to the higher-ups Down Below finding him ridiculous, to the human kids he once worked with thinking him a touch too flamboyant, to just being the Annoying One. He knows Lan Wangji wouldn’t think like that, that Lan Wangji is too good and Lan Wangji’s heart is too big for that, but something in him still whispers, sometimes, why do I have this, why me, who am I to deserve this, when will this end? “I don’t — ”

Lan Wangji doesn’t let him continue. Interrupting is forbidden in Heaven, Wei Wuxian thinks, a little hysterically. “I thought… I thought you knew, that I want to care for you. And that I… feel that way, unconditionally. I do not mind work. Never, if it’s you.” His gaze is heavy and meaningful on Wei Wuxian. Then — “I love you, Wei Ying.”

Oh.

That — that —

That really is unfair. The way Lan Wangji says it, like he means it, a love that is no more than what he feels towards every living creature by nature, like it would ever be enough for Wei Wuxian’s selfish wishes. Wei Wuxian’s hands are shaking under the table.

He pastes on a smile and says, “Okay, okay, Lan Zhan, I know, I know, I won’t question your dedication like that anymore, okay?” and, “Don’t look so sad, ah, I like it when you take care of me, don’t stop if it makes you happy, alright?” And doesn’t say I love you back, not if Lan Wangji can’t know the full extent of his feelings.

Lan Wangji’s face ripples imperceptibly and, in a move Wei Wuxian thinks is even more unfair, shifts into a tiny, pleased smile, complete with the silk-soft eyes and gently quirked lips and beautifully round cheeks that Wei Wuxian wants to press a thousand kisses onto.

Satan help me.

“Okay,” Lan Wangji says, still smiling, as beautiful as the very first spring dawn and the glistening earth-green dew, all of it meant completely and utterly for Wei Wuxian.

Wei Wuxian is going to fucking die. He’s going to die, and it’s going to be because he pined so much for Lan Wangji that he keeled over one day because his heart couldn’t take it, and he’ll be the laughingstock of Hell.

“Okay!” Wei Wuxian echoes, ruthlessly shoving down the well of feelings rising up his throat. This is fine. It’s fine. He’s dealt with this for hundreds of years — what’s a few hundred more? “Now let me help you with those groceries.”

~~~

Wei Wuxian first met Lan Wangji on the wall.

Well. That wasn’t quite correct. Wei Wuxian was an angel before he Fell, and so logically speaking he must have encountered Lan Wangji in one of the posh marbled palaces of Heaven. But Wei Wuxian doesn’t remember much from his days as an angel — a kind, lotus-sweet smile, maybe, a silken white toga around his waist, celestial light radiating through a lonely universe — so, unfortunately, he wouldn’t know.

Anyway. The wall. Eden. An everlasting garden. Where it all started, and it being not just a metaphorical thing but also it, the very beginning of humankind.

It looked a little like it was about to storm over the unblemished desert sands. One of the humans had a flaming sword.

Humans were not supposed to have flaming swords, but in the interest of all things evil, Wei Wuxian turned a blind eye, because evil was anything that was not supposed to be (as his higher-ups had told him.) Even if it did feel like the flaming sword would help the humans out a lot.

Wei Wuxian blinked. There was, if he was not mistaken, an angel beside him. A very pretty angel. He was standing tall and graceful there, his downy wings folded behind him, black hair blowing softly in the breeze. His eyes were a brilliant molten gold. Wei Wuxian swallowed.

“Lovely day, isn’t it?” Wei Wuxian said, stupidly.

The angel stared at him. “I suppose so.”

“Although there haven’t been very many of them. Not to say the others weren’t — I think all of the days have been lovely, but this one is — erm. Particularly lovely. If you know what I mean.”

A slow, measured blink, and then a truly lovely tilt of his head. “Mmn.”

Silence. Then — “You are a demon,” the angel said, slowly, like an observation. “You were the snake.”

“Oh.” Wei Wuxian’s hands flew up to touch his cheeks. At this stage, he hadn’t yet learned to transform himself into a fully human body. The scales there were edged and cold. “Yes? Does that make us enemies?”

“According to the laws of Heaven, yes.”

“Oh,” said Wei Wuxian again. He didn’t really want to be enemies with the angel. He seemed nice and reasonable, and Wei Wuxian was also nice and reasonable, and besides, the angel was pretty. Really pretty.

Under the inhuman layer of scales, Wei Wuxian felt an inexplicable urge to reach out and stroke the white wings.

Wei Wuxian considered this. Then he shook his wings out, because they were cramping, and shot his most beautiful smile at the angel. “Do we have to fight here, though?”

“Hn,” said the angel. His ears were flushed pink, right where his wispy bangs met his skin.

“Because I don’t want to fight you. Would be a shame to ruin such a day with a crossing of swords — ah, and you don’t have a sword, you gave it to the humans, so it would be quite unfair!”

“No fighting. Not until the Apocalypse.”

“The Apocalypse… the one with the Antichrist?”

The angel shot him a look that seemed to say what other one?

“Yes, of course, it’s that one. I do hope there isn’t another Apocalypse. I really don’t want to fight you.” Wei Wuxian scratched at his scales and turned to stare at the horizon, where the dunes met the cloudy watercolor sky. It would be a shame, if they had to fight. Wei Wuxian hadn’t even gotten his name.

More silence. Wei Wuxian winced. The tips of his wings itched to stretch out and soar in the sky. He wondered if the angel would fly with him. That would be… it would be nice. More than nice.

“I’m Wei Wuxian. Oh, but you can call me Wei Ying. I mean, you don’t have to, but you can if you want. Which I hope you do. Want to call me Wei Ying, I mean.”

Wei Wuxian was now considering the likelihood of temporarily dying if he threw himself off the garden wall in sheer embarrassment.

“Lan Wangji,” said the angel, after a moment of contemplation. He was staring intently at a lavender-smoke cloud in the distance. “...Lan Zhan.”

“Lan Zhan?” Wei Wuxian said. The weight of the name was smooth and comfortable on Wei Wuxian’s tongue. “Lan Zhan!”

“Mn?”

“Oh — I, um, nothing, really, I just wanted to try it out. It’s a nice name! Pretty and elegant, to suit a pretty and elegant angel!”

Something rippled through Lan Wangji’s face then, like Wei Wuxian’s words were a lone raindrop on a still pond. “Ridiculous,” he grit out, his wings folding with a snap.

Wei Wuxian hid his laughter behind his hand rather unsuccessfully. Even when Lan Wangji turned the full force of his glare onto him, Wei Wuxian didn’t stop smiling. He couldn’t, not when it was Lan Wangji.

Ahh, he remembered thinking. Lan Zhan is really so pretty. It’s too bad we’re enemies. Otherwise, I’d definitely try to make friends with him, and drag him around the world, and we’d have so much fun…

And that was that, at least for the next three thousand years or so, when Lan Wangji still cared about strict adherence to the whims of Heaven and treated Wei Wuxian as he would any other demon. Eventually Lan Wangji would… loosen up, in a way, and come to see Wei Wuxian as Wei Wuxian had seen him for the past hundred years — a being more than whatever the laws of Heaven and Hell dictated was an enemy. Something that defied all conventions. Something almost human.

For now, Wei Wuxian settled for not-quite-enemies and not-quite-friends, that uneasy misunderstanding between them that made his chest clench like a snake’s jaw snapping shut, a feeling he wouldn’t understand until centuries later.

~~~

They end up taking the train to Luanzang, because Lan Wangji has gone entirely native and attached himself to even the loudest, slowest, most crowded methods of human transportation instead of staying sane and teleporting like a proper genderless ancient cryptic being does. You know, like Wei Wuxian. What kind of angel relishes sitting in a train car and staring outside the window for an hour as some kids yell at each other in the aisle across from you??

The Lan Wangji blueprint of angel, apparently.

(Wei Wuxian has not gone native. He has not and he will never lower himself to that level and the only reason he told the apocalypse to fuck right off was because he didn’t want to fight the Final Battle against Lan Wangji. That, and because he couldn’t bear losing the nifty little chili sauce packets those clever humans invented.)

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian had said, trying to be the voice of reason for once. “Sweetheart. Literal light of my life because you glow in your angel form. Do you not think warping our atoms at lightspeed to A-Yuan’s house and thereby bypassing this whole endeavor would be much more pleasant?”

“This is also very pleasant,” Lan Wangji had retorted, carefully smoothing out a lock of his hair and taking a sip from a thermos of green tea that Wei Wuxian knows he didn’t bring out of the house. Goddamn angels, man.

“Everything outside is flat and dull and boring. Also, the train is noisy, because humans can’t be bothered to figure out how to make zero-noise peaceful transportation methods.”

“I do not mind the background noise,” Lan Wangji had said. Then, with a small, secret smile, “The countryside is very calming.”

So. That was that. Wei Wuxian shut the fuck up and cursed his weak, pathetic, smitten heart for never being able to argue with Lan Wangji when he made that face and had that tone of voice.

They arrive at A-Yuan’s house exactly 4 hours, 13 minutes, and 48 seconds after they leave home. It would have been, like, 10 seconds tops and 4 hours, 13 minutes, and 38 extra seconds for Wei Wuxian to binge-watch the latest romance drama those clever humans have come up with now, if they’d just teleported. Unfortunately for Wei Wuxian’s drama-loving brain, though, it was merely 4 hours of auditory and physical suffering.

Lan Wangji places a hand on the Wens’ mailbox to temporarily link it to his interdimensional storage space and pulls their sets of robes out. Then, before Wei Wuxian can one-up him and link the neighbors’ mailbox to his interdimensional storage space so they can change, Lan Wangji waves his unoccupied hand and miracles their respective robes on.

Wei Wuxian raises an eyebrow.

Lan Wangji stares placidly back at him, unblinking. There is a wrapped gift in his hand that was not there 3 seconds ago. Wei Wuxian has no idea when Lan Wangji went behind his back and bought said gift.

Bastard, thinks Wei Wuxian, fondness bubbling up through his lungs and spilling over the wearied edges of his ribcage like a vast, lonely sea.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, closer to a gasp than anything else, feeling the burning pressure in his chest squeeze the only words he’d remember at the end of the world through his throat and out of his lips.

“Mn?”

Wei Wuxian shakes his head. “Oh, nothing — let’s go give A-Yuan the time of his life, ah?”

How ridiculous. For a moment, he’d seen the light glimmering in the depths of Lan Wangji’s eyes, like a late summer sunset glinting off that secluded mountain lake they’d happened upon all the way back in 1887, and thought —

I want to tell him, just once, that I love him, and thought, he always looks at me like that, and I can’t bear the unbridled warmth in his gaze, and wouldn’t it be easier, really, for him to know, for it to be a done deal?

Ridiculous. Wei Wuxian knows it could never be that easy.

He swivels around and rings the Wens’ doorbell before he gives Lan Wangji a chance to see that anything is wrong.

~~~

A-Yuan’s party is, for a lack of better words, boring.

Okay. So.

Maybe Wei Wuxian is being a bit harsh here. He probably, definitely is. But, see, the thing is, he’s an immortal, powerful being who’s been hanging around Earth and its vague spatial boundaries for the past however-many millenia, and these are tiny little 11-year-old children who relish in yelling random things about issues beyond Wei Wuxian’s comprehension and zooming around the house with plastic toys in their hands.

It’s not a great match. Wei Wuxian has no idea why A-Yuan even hangs out with half of these kids. They’re so loud. And weird. And Wei Wuxian is starting to sound a bit like Lan Qiren, but it’s… it’s justified, alright, he didn’t sign up to babysit the Antichrist’s noisy, messy, incomprehensible-to-nonhuman-beings friends when he Fell!

(To be fair, there are only three other children at this party — a curious, enthusiastic boy named Lan Jingyi, The One With His Head Stuck In A Fantasy World, also known as Ouyang Zizhen, and A-Qing, who, if not for her bossiness, Wei Wuxian would vibe with. A-Yuan doesn’t actually have many friends.)

Wei Wuxian might really be getting old.

Fuck.

His one consolation is that Lan Wangji, He Who Sparkles Perfectly At Everything He Does, isn’t doing so hot either. He’s sitting at the table and very patiently trying to explain where everything around them came from to A-Qing, whose reservoir of questions is absolutely endless. Every so often, the boys will run past the table, and a look suspiciously akin to a celestial being’s first existential crisis will ripple over Lan Wangji’s face.

Not that Wei Wuxian has any experience with having existential crises as a celestial being, or anything.

Anyway. Loud kids plus stifling robes plus no other mature human being to talk to except the very scary prophet’s descendent Wen Qing and her brother Wen Ning, who is sweet and adorable and quiet but also currently occupied with Lan Jingyi, does not make a fun party.

Wei Wuxian props his elbow on the kitchen counter and sighs. Another couple of hours of his time… not exactly wasted, since he got A-Yuan’s delight upon seeing their robes and a lot of respectfully ogling a distracted Lan Wangji out of it, but still not very well spent.

“Hey, Xian-gege,” says A-Yuan, popping out of fucking nowhere, like a veritable Antichrist. Wei Wuxian, as a high-ranking and powerful demon, absolutely does not startle and hit his funny bone against the counter. Note to self: rearrange body to remove these unnecessary, painful additions. “Can you help me with something?”

“Sure, kiddo, what is it?” Wei Wuxian has… a few qualms about calling the Antichrist kiddo now that the Antichrist knows he’s the Antichrist, but he figures A-Yuan is still A-Yuan and A-Yuan didn’t mind it before, so why would he now?

A-Yuan grabs Wei Wuxian’s wrist. “That,” he says, pointing to the freshly turned soil scattered around the backyard garden.

Wei Wuxian swivels to stare at the sliding door leading into the living room. He can see Lan Wangji’s blurry white form on the couch if he squints. Wasn’t he just in the kitchen? He could have sworn he was just in the kitchen.

“I thought you gave up your powers,” Wei Wuxian says, half-scolding and half-impressed. Even he, Wei Wuxian, the Yiling Laozu, can’t teleport that smoothly.

A-Yuan blinks innocently. “I did! It’s not my fault some of them remained, I’ve never given up my powers before and by the time I did, I didn’t have the ability to relinquish the rest.” Then he hits Wei Wuxian with an angelic, pleading look, the exact one Wei Wuxian taught him. God. Wei Wuxian’s fucking hubris, biting him in the ass for the 3726th time.

“Whatever you say, A-Yuan.” Wei Wuxian scans the garden. “So… what, exactly, are you trying to do here?”

“Qing-gugu said I have to do her garden work for 3 weeks because I nearly caused the apocalypse,” A-Yuan says, bouncing on his toes. “I thought I’d spruce it up a little bit by planting flower beds in cool shapes. See, this one’s supposed to be a bunny, and that one is a bowl of noodles, and that one represents Xian-gege and Qian-gege. And then I thought it’d be cool if Xian-gege helped cultivate his flower representation, so.”

“That one is just two more bunnies. Also, why do you still call Lan Zhan Qian-gege, it’s so embarrassing, A-Yuan!”

“Qian-gege is Qian-gege,” explains A-Yuan, “Because he has more money than Xian-gege, and also because… I think he’d be sad if I called him anything else. Qian-gege is quite sentimental, isn’t he? If I called him Lan-gege instead, he’d feel like I’m growing up, and he’d go all soft and sad and mope around quietly and I’d feel so bad.” A-Yuan shivers, like the mere thought of Lan Wangji being sad physically pains him. So fucking valid of him.

“Shit,” Wei Wuxian says, “You have him read to the T. How is that possible?? Also, I could be rich if I wanted, just so you know, you ungrateful child, you. But I hate rich people and I’ve had enough of self-hatred, so!”

A-Yuan giggles a little at that, pokes his finger into the tail of the bunny-shaped flower bed, looks up at Wei Wuxian. “You two helped raise me,” he says, simply. “I think of you as my fathers. Of course I’d be able to read Qian-gege. How could I not?”

Wei Wuxian staggers a little, at that. He disguises it as a very graceful wobble down to A-Yuan’s level to examine the soil. It’s very good soil, Wei Wuxian thinks, dazedly. Dark and damp, teeming with life and small bits of grass. And worms, there are worms in there too, of course. Very good for the economy, those little guys. Yup. Definitely.

“Xian-gege?” A-Yuan murmurs, carefully removing Wei Wuxian’s hands from the soil. Whoops. “I was hoping you could, like… summon some flower seeds and help me plant, but you can also sit down if you want.”

“Sit down? What? Why?” Wei Wuxian says, jolting back to reality. “No, I don’t need to sit down, I can totally get those flower seeds — here you go, fresh seeds, at your service — ” He runs the hand that isn’t cupping the seeds through his hair, laughs weakly and immediately cringes at how borderline hysterical he sounds.

“These are mustard seeds,” says A-Yuan gently, banishing the seeds to somewhere unknown and squeezing Wei Wuxian’s hand.

In the end, it’s the patient pressure of A-Yuan’s small hand on his that breaks the last of the dam walls holding Wei Wuxian’s lonely little ocean back, the simple warmth of being seen completely and still being loved in spite of — or because of — it. He collapses onto the low stone bench placed neatly amongst the flower beds and thinks, weakly, ah, Lan Zhan, my — our son is so good. Really.

“You aren’t supposed to abuse your powers for personal gain, A-Yuan!” Wei Wuxian jokes — or at least, he tries. It’s valid, at least. He’d like to see anyone be funny when their entire view of the world has been upended and they feel like they’ve been hovering on the verge of a breakdown ever since they moved in with the love of their life whom they’ve been pining for since the Garden.

A-Yuan’s fingers stroke the back of his hand. Wei Wuxian gets the distinct sense that he’s waiting for Wei Wuxian to break physically as well, to burden A-Yuan with all those thunderclouds that have been hanging over his mind. “It isn’t personal gain, it’s altruistic, since I’m using them to help you feel better,” A-Yuan points out.

Wei Wuxian feels little like crying, maybe. He thinks it would be cathartic. He also thinks it would be the most humiliating thing ever, personally dictated by God Themself to shit on Wei Wuxian like the universe’s worst practical joke. Also. He’s only ever cried four times in his approximately 9 thousand years of life and he will not have the fifth time be at a children’s birthday party.

Instead, he squeezes A-Yuan’s hand back and imagines the darkness, the bitterness, all of his fear and doubt, draining out of him and into Xue Yang, that motherfucker of a demon, get fucked. He nudges A-Yuan’s shoulder and takes a decisive breath and says, all at once, “Do Lan Zhan and I really seem, you know… that, um. Fatherly to you? Like, you know, because, fathers. Plural. It, it kind of, implies a married couple raising a child — I mean! Not that fathers have to be romantically linked, I’m not that old-fashioned, but. Erm. You know. Like that. Right? Right??”

No more crying. Wei Wuxian has upgraded to the ultimate level: wanting to strip himself of all his demonic protections and drop-kick his puny human body into space. So much for his eloquent, melancholic, concise, purposefully vague explanation of his whole… Lan Wangji situation that would steer A-Yuan towards leaving it the fuck alone so Wei Wuxian wouldn’t have to confront it at all.

“Weeeellllll,” A-Yuan says. He drops Wei Wuxian’s hand and scoots a few centimeters away from him. “I think that… um, you know, if you think you seem like fathers that’s great and I’m glad we’re all on the same page, and if you don’t, maybe you should. Just, maybe, try to.” A-Yuan puts another few centimeters of distance between them. “Communicate… effectively… with Qian-gege?”

Wei Wuxian groans. He. He will just have to. God. Say it. Out loud. There is nothing worse in the world, Wei Wuxian decides, than being so bad at romance that you have to stoop to airing out your issues with an eleven year old.

“No, I mean, like. The part where.” Wei Wuxian lowers his voice to a whisper. You never know! Lan Wangji could have superhuman hearing if he tried, okay! “We might look like. Hrngh. Like. A, a married couple, and all that jazz, A-Yuan please do not make me say the l word I will burst into fire and ruin your nice flower beds I swear to Satan.”

A-Yuan stares at him. “But aren’t you already a married couple??” He blurts out.

What.

“No?” Wei Wuxian says, very calmly, in his opinion. “What the f — I mean, what the heck?”

A-Yuan has less reserves. “What the fuck??”

“Aren’t you not supposed to say that?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in love with Qian-gege?!” A-Yuan fires back, with all the betrayal that Wei Wuxian expects an 11-year-old to have upon finding out his father figures aren’t actually married.

“Of course!”

“And don’t you live with him? And act like a married couple, and look at each other like that all the time, and didn’t you literally go against the creator of the universe so that you wouldn’t have to fight each other?”

Wei Wuxian makes a face. A-Yuan should be a prosecutor someday, with how… enthusiastically he’s firing these questions at Wei Wuxian. “That was a recent development! Like, 3 weeks ago! We rebelled because we didn’t want humanity to die, that’s all — and I have no idea what you mean by ‘like that’. Anyway, what about us even screams married couple?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” A-Yuan wheezes, looking very much on the edge of hysteria. “Um, like, just, everything?? How about the fact that you guys practically raised me when Qing-gugu and Ning-shushu were trying to make ends meet? Or, like, that you’ve been each other’s only confidants for 6000 years? You know?”

“Objection!” Wei Wuxian says — or tries to say, at least. A-Yuan makes a face. Wei Wuxian shuts up very quickly after that.

“What about how you get all sappy and mushy when you talk about Qian-gege and how good and pretty and talented and strong he is?”

“Hey, that’s not — wait, how do you even know about that??”

“I am omniscient and all-powerful,” says A-Yuan flippantly, “and also nobody can spend more than one week with you and not hear you talk about it.”

“Fuck,” Wei Wuxian utters. He’s completely given up at this point. Lan Wangji can be the responsible dad, okay, Wei Wuxian is having a crisis, leave him alone! “But that still doesn’t mean we’d be — married! Or whatever!”

“Well, aren’t you… in complete and utter love with Qian-gege?”

“Of course, who wouldn’t be?”

A-Yuan winces. Too bad for him! As his father (Wei Wuxian is A-Yuan’s dad, holy shit, he’s a father,) it’s like. Legally Wei Wuxian’s job to embarrass him.

“And isn’t Qian-gege… also in complete and utter love with you?”

“Oho,” says Wei Wuxian, having spent a couple hundred years gaining partial immunity to being bowled over by the intensity of his unrequited love. “That is where you are wrong, my young paladin.”

“Paladin?”

“Ah? I meant padawan.”

“Lame,” A-Yuan mutters. “Anyway, what do you mean oho~ that’s where you’re wrong~, Xian-gege, why do you even speak like that??”

“To annoy you!”

A-Yuan groans. “Well, I think Qian-gege is in love with you, and since I’m omniscient and all-powerful, I can’t be wrong, take that!”

“What you’re getting wrong here is the type of love,” Wei Wuxian says, stroking his chin wisely. A-Yuan cringes into himself a little more. That’ll teach him to never ask his parents if they’re married ever again! “See, our dear Lan Zhan is an angel, the very best angel ever known to the universe, right?”

“Right!!” A-Yuan agrees readily. Wei Wuxian is getting the sneaking suspicion that A-Yuan has a favorite dad and it isn’t Wei Wuxian.

“And all angels are, by nature, required to love everything, right?”

“Uhhhh.” A-Yuan blinks. “Honestly I have no idea because I wasn’t even aware angels existed until two weeks ago but, uh, sure, yeah, if Xian-gege says so? Okay?”

“Therefore, Lan Zhan does love me, but only — only because he’s an angel. He doesn’t, he, he — I don’t know if he can even love me that way, but.” Wei Wuxian sighs. He doesn’t like outlining his reasoning per se, mostly because it’s depressing and he’ll have to go and drink his woes away while avoiding Lan Wangji’s concerned gaze later tonight, but the sooner it gets A-Yuan to understand the better. “I wouldn’t bet on it. And you shouldn’t bet on it either, okay, I won’t have my kid sink into a sorry life of gambling and depression!”

A-Yuan laughs. “No, sorry, what?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’??”

“You’re... being serious?”

“Of course.”

“Ah,” A-Yuan says, flatly. Ooh. That probably isn’t good. “Xian-gege, you are so stupid.”

“Hey!!” Wei Wuxian objects. “About what, exactly! I just said it’s his nature, alright, I’m not even at the stage where I go all emo and red-eyed and insist ooo Lan Zhan doesn’t like me at all my heart is so broken. I am being very reasonable and logical, if you peer into my brain you’ll see all the cogs clanking along perfectly well!”

A-Yuan shakes his head almost sadly and stares down at a lonely worm inching through the flower bed. Perhaps he’s communicating with it and whining about how his dad has a grand total of negative 0.5 braincells. You never know with the Antichrist.

“That isn’t logical at all! If you don’t know, then why don’t you just ask? And, and, you know, in a horse race, there’s still the slightest probability that the horse you didn’t bet for could win, isn’t it just like that?”

It’s… really not like that at all — even though Lan Wangji would make for the most amazing, glossy-coated, powerful white stallion — but Wei Wuxian doesn’t want disaster to befall him, so he lets A-Yuan talk. “I don’t know much about angels, but I know Qian-gege, and Qian-gege loves so much — his heart is so big, I know he feels so much more than all those other angels I met at the Apocalypse — if he loves you one way, why can’t he love you all other ways?”

“How would I know?” Wei Wuxian doesn’t want to snap at a child, but it’s almost like A-Yuan is goading him into it, which. A-Yuan certainly is smart enough to do, but also not dumb enough to attempt, so it’s really just Wei Wuxian being touchy again.

“You don’t know, which is why you should.” A-Yuan nudges him with his elbow and does a physical sort of wink, wink that makes Wei Wuxian want to sink into the ground. “Ask him about it! Definitely! Just say it! What’s the worst that can happen, huh!”

Wei Wuxian clutches his heart. “You are so innocent, A-Yuan, you have not yet discovered the woes of love nor the timeless troubles of the terror of confessing, ah — “ he dodges A-Yuan’s unimpressed grimace and continues, “Plus, like I said. I wouldn’t want to force Lan Zhan to try and feel the same way for me, even if he can’t. You know how he is.”

“But why can’t he?” A-Yuan pushes.

“Because he just can’t, alright!” Wei Wuxian hisses, voice strung tight and reedy across his tongue like a snake posed to strike. How fitting. “He can’t, and we can’t, he’s an angel — and I’m, I’m just, I really can’t — ”

“You can’t this, Qian-gege can’t that, ah, that’s exactly why this is ridiculous!” A-Yuan shouts. Then he shoots a guilty glance at the glass sliding door and the worn, cheerful facade of his house and lowers his voice, because A-Yuan is still his adorable wonderful son even when he’s ripping Wei Wuxian a new one.

“Anyway. You keep saying he’s an angel, it’s in his nature, he can’t and he shouldn’t love me that way, he can’t, fine! I’m the Antichrist, so it’s in my nature to bring about the Final War, to scorch the earth and boil the seas, right? I can’t go against it, right? But look where we are!”

“Wait, A-Yuan, that isn’t what I — ”

A-Yuan scoffs. The seas might not have boiled up, but the sound scalds the tops of Wei Wuxian’s ears all the same. He stands down.

“Who’s saying that we all have to adhere to what our nature dictates, huh?” A-Yuan gestures around brashly and levels Wei Wuxian with a terrifyingly irate scowl. “The reason we’re still alive today is because I saw what was expected of me simply due to how I was born, and I said I didn’t want to do that, and I didn’t!”

Wei Wuxian takes a breath.

“And before you say ‘yes of course A-Yuan you are so wise A-Yuan, but — ‘“ Oh. Nevermind. Wei Wuxian should probably just… shut up for a few seconds. Yes. He can definitely do that. “No buts. Nobody can tell you who you are and how you act because of it but yourself! I dictated my own fate. Why can’t Qian-gege?”

“I…” Why can’t Lan Wangji? Did Lan Wangji ever say that he couldn’t love in a non-angelic way? Did Lan Wangji ever say that he didn’t want Wei Wuxian, or that he cared about Wei Wuxian’s demon-ness?

In the end, wasn’t it just nine parts Wei Wuxian’s doubts and fears, and one part Wei Wuxian not letting Lan Wangji decide their relationship for himself at all?

For the first time, Wei Wuxian thinks, perhaps he should ask. Perhaps he should disrupt this status quo they have, the delicate see-saw balance they’ve worked so hard to maintain.

What if he did that? What if Lan Wangji really —

What if?

A hand on Wei Wuxian’s shoulder. A kind, understanding smile

“Besides, you two… to me, Qian-gege and Xian-gege aren’t angel or devil,” A-Yuan says, ducking his head like the bashful little radish he is, after everything else that he said to Wei Wuxian. He really is Wei Wuxian’s son, isn’t he! “More than anything, you’re human. And we humans don’t let others define who we are.”

Wei Wuxian manages a weak laugh, which does approximately nothing to fool A-Yuan. “Okay, okay, A-Yuan, I got your point — seriously, I did! Don’t look at me like that! I’ll… I’ll try to ask Lan Zhan, alright? And you have full permission to spam my messages every day until I communicate properly with him about it. I swear!”

“Thank you, Xian-gege!!” A-Yuan says, perking up near-instantly. Curse Wei Wuxian’s soft, indulgent heart, now he really does have to talk to Lan Wangji sometime in the near future to avoid disappointing A-Yuan, doesn’t he! Gods.

(Although… the near future, for a being like Wei Wuxian, does mean anywhere in the span of three days to a hundred and thirty three years. Heh. Loopholes.)

Wei Wuxian ruffles A-Yuan’s hair in a distinctly fatherly way before he can stop himself. A-Yuan looks even more delighted now, which at least completes the ringer of emotions this entire conversation has thrown Wei Wuxian into, if nothing else.

“Go back in and enjoy the party, alright? Don’t let this sad, creaky old demon keep you from celebrating with your loud human friends,” Wei Wuxian says half-jokingly, tapping his finger on A-Yuan’s back to send him floating over the flower bed and to the glass door.

“You’re not old!!” A-Yuan protests, like the dutiful and loyal son he is. Awwwwwww, goes the broken machine of Wei Wuxian’s mind. “You’re like, cool and hip and probably more updated on pop culture than me!”

That is very true, mostly because Wei Wuxian has secret social media accounts to keep up with life and start drama in every other online community so he can pass it off as doing his duty as a demon, but A-Yuan doesn’t need to know that.

Wei Wuxian strikes a pose on the bench instead. “Ah ah, little radish, my ravishing looks and banging fashion doth deceive you, for I am over 10,000 years old!”

“What?” A-Yuan laughs. “Wait, really?”

“I have literally been hanging around since the universe was created, give or take — I guess you can’t take, but give a few hundred years or so, no big deal.”

A-Yuan wrinkles his nose. “But, Xian-gege…” He gestures at Wei Wuxian’s general corporeal body. “You’re cool. Like, you’d have tens of thousands of followers on Douyin if you made fashion videos.”

“Who says I don’t?”

“Wait, so you do??”

“Anyway,” says Wei Wuxian loudly, bulldozing right over A-Yuan’s incredulous look. “Age has no impact on coolness! Now run along, A-Yuan, and forget I ever said anything, ever.”

A-Yuan snaps his mouth shut and says, slowly, “If I find you on Douyin…. I definitely won’t follow you or recommend your videos or anything okay bye Xian-gege please don’t smite me off the face of the Earth I’m going I swear I’m going good luck with Qian-gege bye!!”

Ahh, they grow up so fast, Wei Wuxian thinks, watching A-Yuan do a complicated little hop-dance-struggle thing with the locked sliding door only to give up and subtly teleport through it.

Wei Wuxian tips his head back and allows himself exactly one minute and thirty seconds to gather himself a semi presentable and coherent state.

Then, he pushes himself to his feet to find Lan Wangji. He has — so many things he wants to say, and needs to say, and doesn’t know how to say, and he probably won’t ever know how but either way he’s got to try at least, today or tomorrow or next week — and underneath all that, he just wants to go home with Lan Wangji.

Maybe then, if it’s just him and Lan Wangji and their shoulders pressed together on Lan Wangji’s weathered white couch, he’d know what to do.

~~~

Wei Wuxian finds Lan Wangji in the kitchen, demonstrating various food-related miracles he can perform to an enthusiastic A-Qing and a Lan Jingyi who seems to thinking more with his stomach than his head. By the time Wei Wuxian manages to, a: politely excuse themselves from the party, b: fail to convince Lan Wangji to teleport home instead of taking the train, and c: not pass away during the train ride, twilight is falling velvet-heavy outside already.

Their doorknob is cold beneath Wei Wuxian’s palm, and he tugs his scarf tighter around his neck as they step inside, but Lan Wangji waves his hand and the familiar, soft glow of angelic light fills the room. The dragon coiled in Wei Wuxian’s stomach huffs out a tiny bit more of anxiety at this mindless domesticity.

He feels Lan Wangji’s fingers curl around his wrist, searing even through the fabric of his autumn windbreaker. Wei Wuxian doesn’t have to turn around to know Lan Wangji has that look on his face — the one he gets at the end of the day, hazy-warm like candlelight and so heart-achingly tender, after a cup of warm tea and Wei Wuxian’s laughter have melted his layers away.

It’s so soon. Wei Wuxian’s shoulders are tense again, his heart rabbiting wildly in his ribcage. He can’t — he doesn’t even know what to say —

But. But. If he doesn’t do it now, then when? If he doesn’t even try to fight, for Lan Wangji, for himself, for everything Wei Wuxian wants with him, then how could he still boldly proclaim his desire for Lan Wangji’s love?

There never will be a right time. Wei Wuxian, he, he needs to take this chance, he has to —

Wei Wuxian spins around.

Lan Wangji’s fingers slip down to tangle in Wei Wuxian’s.

And Lan Wangji opens his mouth.

“Wei Ying, love,” says Lan Wangji. “What’s wrong?”

Wei Wuxian freezes.

“What — Lan Zhan, you — ” Fuck. Fuck. Shit. Wei Wuxian’s mouth is dry and the ends of his fingers are tingling and he isn’t sure whether he’s stopped breathing with how loudly his heart is roaring in his ears, and, and — he swallows painfully and rasps, “Lan Zhan, what did you just call me?”

Lan Wangji’s frown deepens. Wei Wuxian wants, desperately, to reach out and smooth it under his fingers and tip Lan Wangji’s chin up for a kiss. “Love?” Lan Wangji murmurs, voice deep and concerned.

Wei Wuxian can’t fucking do this. He cannot. Vaguely he’s aware that his breath is coming in raw pants, his hand spasming in a death grip around Lan Wangji’s gentle touch.

“Why,” Wei Wuxian chokes out. “Lan Zhan, why — I don’t, I don’t understand — ”

“Am I… moving too fast?” Lan Wangji looks regretful now, his worry nearly masking the hurt and confusion hovering in the shadows of his frown. “I — I apologize, I just… you have been looking stressed lately, and I merely wanted to see if — if I could help you feel better in any way. I am sorry.”

“Wait, no, don’t, Lan Zhan, you don’t have to apologize,” and before Wei Wuxian can stop himself he reaches out to cup Lan Wangji’s face and strokes the smooth skin beneath his eyes, made crazy by his own desperate yearning and Lan Wangji’s lips forming the shape of love. “Please don’t apologize. I’m just, aha, well, a little. Confused.”

Lan Wangji is frowning again, even as he leans into Wei Wuxian’s touch. “About what? Wei Ying, you… you know I love you, right? I am here for you, always. I would like it very much, if I could bring any measure of comfort to you when you are feeling unwell.”

All at once, it’s too much for Wei Wuxian. He rips his hands away from Lan Wangji’s face and resists the urge to curl into himself until his quivers subside and says, hoarsely, “Don’t.”

“Wei Ying?”

“Don’t. Lan Zhan, don’t — please don’t say it if you don’t mean it. I, I, you’re just, you’re an angel, and I know — ” Wei Wuxian gulps, and shies away from Lan Wangji’s hesitant hands. “A-Yuan said nature doesn’t define everything, but I. I don’t know. I really don’t, Lan Zhan, I’m so sorry, I — angels love everything, and I can’t do it, if you only mean it that way, so don’t say it. Lan Zhan.”

A beat. Another. Wei Wuxian dares to peek at Lan Wangji, which is. A mistake. There’s obvious distress in Lan Wangji’s eyes, edging close to something Wei Wuxian isn’t brave enough to call heartbreak, and Wei Wuxian feels like he’s falling from Heaven all over again.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says again. His name is a soft, wounded thing in Lan Wangji’s mouth. “I thought — I thought you knew I meant it.”

Wei Wuxian’s head snaps up. “You — ” and then he can’t say any more, because his breath is leaving him in a whoosh and Lan Wangji is gripping his hands desperately and there is a molten fire in his eyes that makes Wei Wuxian remember angels were made half for love and half for war.

“I mean it, I truly do, you must know — Wei Ying, I am sorry, I failed to make myself clear — you should have known, you deserved to know, that you were — are loved, that I. Towards you, I feel… Wei Ying, this feeling, it is not angelic love. I love you, in every way, always and all ways.” Lan Wangji pauses. This time, he is the one to duck his head. “And I am sorry. If I... assumed that we — if I made you uncomfortable, I thought. I thought that you also… that you loved me too.”

“Oh,” Wei Wuxian gasps. Lan Wangji’s voice had trailed off to something quiet and ashamed and distressed at the last three words, and now his face is shuttering and he’s pushing Wei Wuxian away for the first time in decades.

Wei Wuxian’s body moves before he can think. He lunges forward and hugs Lan Wangji close to him, tucking his head into the curve of his neck, digging his fingers into Lan Wangji’s jacket. Lan Wangji stiffens, but he isn’t trying to run away anymore, just breathing shallow and controlled in the circle of Wei Wuxian’s arms.

Wei Wuxian pulls back to scan Lan Wangji’s beloved face, stroking aimless patterns into Lan Wangji’s back in a pathetic attempt at comfort.

“Lan Zhan, sweetheart —” Lan Wangji’s entire form shudders, and he makes to turn away, so Wei Wuxian cups his cheek with one hand and strokes in a desperate, messy manner — “No, don’t look away, look at me, look at your Wei Ying, I’m right here, I’m not going anywhere — Lan Zhan, did you think… this whole time, did you think we were, ah… together?”

Lan Wangji winces, and breathes, “Yes, Wei Ying, please, I — ” and struggles a little more in Wei Wuxian’s grip, the raw humiliation in his words tearing the tissue of Wei Wuxian’s heart to pieces one by one, razor-sharp.

“Since when?” Wei Wuxian says, fingers trembling on Lan Wangji’s cheek. “Lan Zhan, how long?”

“Three weeks,” Lan Wangji mutters mutinously, his flushed ears betraying his embarrassment. “Since you moved in with me. I thought… I assumed, because of how you were acting, and how you said — the night after the Notpocalypse — that you did not want to live in a world without me. That you wanted to ‘be with me’. I misunderstood you. I am sorry.”

Ah.

Ah???

Wei Wuxian had. Um. Maybe. Forgotten about that entirely. Or more like, he’d been very drunk and sad and lonely post-Notpocalypse, and he’d staggered over to Lan Wangji’s house and in the black hole that is his memory of that night, apparently said something along those lines then passed out on Lan Wangji’s spare bed. He’d woken up to Lan Wangji bringing breakfast to him and saying, shyly, Wei Ying, you… would you like to stay here?

Of course, Lan Zhan, I’d love that, Wei Wuxian had said in a rush, when the silence stretched out and Lan Wangji’s face had gone tense and resigned.

Exit Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji stage left, and cue the past three weeks. Fuck.

In retrospect, perhaps Wei Wuxian should have known, that when he gets drunk he does stupid things and nothing — nobody — entices him to do stupid things more than Lan Wangji. But either way he’s wasted three weeks and, really, the past three goddamn centuries never truly being able to love Lan Wangji the way he deserves, and he doesn’t want to wait any longer.

Wei Wuxian can’t help it. He laughs a little, thunks his forehead on Lan Wangji’s shoulder and laughs more, holding Lan Wangji close. “We’re so stupid, aren’t we, Lan Zhan?” He says, still giggling, as Lan Wangji’s arms wrap tentatively around him. “I could have been kissing you for the past three weeks, we could have been, like, stupidly domestic and romantic and sappy — I mean, we already are, but with the knowledge that we meant it!”

“Wei Ying?” Lan Wangji starts, the length of him warm and solid and trusting against Wei Wuxian’s body. “Do you — ”

Wei Wuxian pulls back. “Lan Zhan,” he says, smiling. “I love you. I really do. Oh, oh, I love you so much and I mean it — I always have and always will! You’re so kind and pretty and caring and smart and good, ah, my Lan Zhan, how could I not love you?”

And then, because Lan Wangji looks entirely too blown over by it all, “Sweetheart, baobei, darling, my love, Lan Zhan, I’ve wanted to say it for so long. I like you, I fancy you, I want everything and anything with you. I love you, and now that I get to say it I’ll never stop. I’ll say it every day, if that’s what you want! Fuck, you have no idea how much I’ve wanted to say this.”

A very slow, measured blink. Lan Wangji’s hands are trembling minutely, tightening around his waist. That is, for all intents and purposes, super fucking hot, but Wei Wuxian will have to examine that later, since Lan Wangji appears to be malfunctioning a little.

“I,” Lan Wangji says, barely breathing. “I. Wei Ying. I may have some idea.”

“Lan Zhan!!! You menace!!” Wei Wuxian hoots, absolutely delighted. He’s running entirely too much on adrenaline and joy and all his three-century-long pent-up longing. “Oh my god, come here — ”

And then Lan Wangji is burying his face in Wei Wuxian’s neck and chanting his name like a prayer. Wei Wuxian runs his fingers through Lan Wangji’s hair, and Lan Wangji says, “Wei Ying, Wei Ying, I want it, everything with you, every day with you,” and, “I love you — I love you, I love you — ”

Wei Wuxian squeezes his eyes shut before he bursts into tears. They sink to the floor of their living room like that, Lan Wangji whispering his love warm and desperate and honest against the pulse point of Wei Wuxian’s neck, Wei Wuxian holding him impossibly close.

It’s more than Wei Wuxian ever thought he’d have, once upon a time. But now Lan Wangji loves him — Lan Wangji loves him!!! — and Wei Wuxian, he… he still doesn’t know whether he should even have this, but he wants it anyway. He wants this, and so does Lan Wangji, and against all odds they’ve come this far together. Wei Wuxian will guard their love fiercely for the rest of their lives.

“Lan Zhan?” Wei Wuxian says after an indeterminate amount of time. They’re still tangled together, and Lan Wangji is being so adorably affectionate right now, but Wei Wuxian needs to confirm something.

“Mmfh?” Lan Wangji mutters, nuzzling his head against Wei Wuxian’s jaw. Fuck. Wei Wuxian’s corporeal body is seriously about to have a heart attack right now, and he’ll have to hang around as a ghost while he manifests a new one, and it’ll be Lan Wangji’s fault for being so utterly cute.

“Lan Zhan, I will preface this by saying I love you very much and absolutely nothing will change that, but.” Wei Wuxian pries Lan Wangji away from him with great difficulty. Lan Wangji looks a little worried, but mostly dazed and love-drunk. Wei Wuxian resists the urge to push him down to the floor and kiss him. “Um. Are you sure it’s absolutely okay for an angel to — you know. Love. And be with. A demon? You won’t be smited by God or stripped of your status or anything, right — because I don’t want to ruin you, and I don’t think that’ll happen but just to be sure — ”

Lan Wangji blinks. “If that were so, it would have happened a long time ago. In the Garden, perhaps.” And — Lan Wangji smiles, small and slow and indescribably beautiful, like a cherry blossom unfurling after an endless winter. “Wei Ying, you have only ever made me better. There is no need to worry.”

Wei Wuxian gapes at Lan Wangji, who just sits there and stares fondly at him and knows exactly how devastatingly romantic what he just said was, what the fuck, is this what Wei Wuxian’s life is going to be like from now on?

“Lan Zhan, you — !”

“Mn?”

“You… wait, you really mean it?” The glint in Lan Wangji’s eyes is amused and bright, and Wei Wuxian’s entire world is reassembling itself. “You’ve, you, the Garden of Eden was the first time we ever met, Lan Zhan, are you saying you’ve been in love with me for all of those six thousand years??”

Lan Wangji takes Wei Wuxian’s hand and kisses his knuckles, eyelashes brushing gently over his cheeks. “Wei Ying. Yes. I have always loved you, even before I knew it.”

“You — oh my god,” Wei Wuxian babbles, “You’re impossible, what the fuck, I — Lan Zhan, me too, I think I loved you from the very beginning, you have to know that I did, always.” He pats Lan Wangji’s cheek with his free hand a little hysterically, because Lan Wangji’s lips are still on his knuckles. “Always, if it’s you. Okay, baobei?”

Lan Wangji lets out a sound that is one part strangled gasp, one part a worshipful Wei Ying, and one part just desperate and punched-out. “Okay,” he says. When he lets go of Wei Wuxian’s hand and looks up, his eyes linger on Wei Wuxian’s lips, and suddenly it’s all too much to bear for Wei Wuxian.

“Lan Zhan, kiss me.” He says. “I think I will physically wither away if you don’t kiss me right now, god, you can’t just tell a demon that you’ve been in love with him for thousands of years and then not take responsibility!”

Lan Wangji’s eyes are wide and deliciously dark. He loops his arms around Wei Wuxian, draws him close yet keeps those torturous few inches of distance between them.

“I will take responsibility,” Lan Wangji promises.

“Good,” says Wei Wuxian, and kisses him.

At first it’s gentle and chaste, though by no means hesitant, because even though Lan Wangji is the most ascetic being Wei Wuxian knows, he also has, as Wei Wuxian is quickly finding out, an ocean-deep well of desires.

And Wei Wuxian has kissed people before, for the demonic jobs assigned to him, and to just to figure out what all the human rage about it is, but everything falls far short of kissing Lan Wangji. His lips are smooth and soft against Wei Wuxian’s, and he’s stroking the nape of Wei Wuxian’s neck, and Wei Wuxian’s heart is a roaring river flowing surely towards Lan Wangji.

Then Lan Wangji’s fingers dig into Wei Wuxian’s hair, and Wei Wuxian’s lips part in a gasp of surprise, and it becomes decidedly less chaste.

Lan Wangji uses his leverage to tilt Wei Wuxian’s head further, which is super hot, holy fucking shit. In the new position their mouths slot together perfectly — fuck, Wei Wuxian thinks dazedly — and then Lan Wangji slips his tongue into Wei Wuxian’s mouth, and Wei Wuxian surprises even himself by stuttering out a moan.

Lan Wangji freezes. But he doesn’t pull back, not really — the opposite happens, instead. He surges forward and crashes their lips together and Wei Wuxian’s hands fly up to cup Lan Wangji’s face, guiding him into a searing kiss. Everything is heat and wetness and want, the familiar sandalwood-lily-vanilla scent of Lan Wangji making him dizzy with desire.

There’s a hint of teeth scraping against his bottom lip, and Wei Wuxian moans again, louder this time. It works perfectly, which means it incentivizes Lan Wangji to deepen the kiss further until Wei Wuxian’s head is spinning with the sensation of Lan Wangji’s tongue licking into his mouth, Lan Wangji’s teeth nipping at his lips, Lan Wangji, Lan Wangji, Lan Wangji.

Eventually the desperation of their kisses dies down, so that it’s just him and Lan Wangji sitting in the twilight darkness of the living room, limbs tangled together, kissing quietly. At some point Wei Wuxian had made his way into Lan Wangji’s lap, or maybe Lan Wangji had tugged him into it, and even now it’s so, so good. Wei Wuxian decides he will never be able to go a day again without at least three kisses from Lan Wangji.

Wei Wuxian pulls back to catch his breath, leans his forehead against Lan Wangji in a move that’s somehow more intimate than their kisses, and thinks — but I get to kiss him three times a day, now. I get to do it, and Lan Zhan wants it, and Lan Zhan loves me.

“Lan Zhan, ah,” he whispers. Lan Wangji hums, sounding the happiest he’s been in the past five centuries. “I like you. I like you so much, I don’t know what to do with myself. That night, I was drunk, but I still meant it. I don’t want to live without you. I want to be with you every day, and I never want to leave your side.”

Lan Zhan is brilliantly beautiful in the dusk-light falling over their living room. He kisses Wei Wuxian twice, on both sides of his lips, then Wei Wuxian’s forehead, and finally on his lips, a brief, fond peck.

“Then don’t,” Lan Wangji says.

Wei Wuxian smiles and leans in to kiss Lan Wangji again.

“I won’t.”

~~~

cutest son ever!!!

Xian-gege good morning!

You said I could spam you until you confessed, and you didn’t text me last night

Therefore I will spam you!

Did you know that cats regrow their whiskers when they lose them?

Did you know that if you eat some kinds of mushrooms, according to Baidu, their toxins will inhibit how RNA transcribes DNA and then kill you?

[pic_of_Rabbit_for_xiangege.png]

[pic_of_Rabbit_for_xiangege2.png]

Rabbit is very cute in those! He is cheering you on!

Did you know that the universal gravitational constant is 6.674 times 10 to the negative 11th meters squared divided by kilometers times seconds squared?

I have been [summoned] by the physics

A-Yuan you are s soooooo CUTE i could eat u right up

i actually could bc i can turn into a gigantic snake

Perks of being the serpent of eden amiright

cutest son ever!!!

You’re WHAT

Xian-gege??????

ANYWAY

Rabbit is so cute i cant believe u named ur hellhound rabbit which turned him into an actual rabbit

u have the naming sense of like. me. HAHA MY INFLUENCE

Also i just woke up what do u want My Son

cutest son ever!!!

Well, I was just wondering if you’ve confessed to Qian-gege yet!

It’s only been a day though, so maybe not

But I thought you could use some encouragement!

Oho I see

cutest son ever!!!

...Xian-gege where’d you go?

Xian-gege?

[IMG_3572.png]

[IMG_3573.png]

<(￣︶￣)>

cutest son ever!!!

YOU DID IT?!!!

CONGRATS XIAN-GEGE,

i TOLD you so but also

Is that Qian-gege?? With bedhead??

Wow……………………

You’re a very cute couple but

In the future, do you

Have to send me pictures like that?

SORRY A-YUAN

im just very happy u know gotta brag abt it! Gotta show my new boyfriend status off!

Boyfriends are human inventions but idk what else to call us

Since we haven’t gotten married

……….YET.

and yes thats ur refined Qian-gege with bedhead isnt he CUTE…

cutest son ever!!!

I’m very happy for him!!

And you, too!

Qing-gugu says to come over for dinner on Wednesday

She says you’re really stupid and glad that you two are finally together

And that she’ll make hotpot because it’s almost winter!

Wow qing-jie so mean to me :’(((

But tell her i said yes!! Free hotpot calls my name!!!

Okay gotta jet i wanna watch lan zhan make breakfast

cutest son ever!!!

Why?

u will understand once ur older sweet summer child

The allure of seeing the love of ur life make u breakfast

cutest son ever!!!

…

Okay!

Congratulations again Xian-gege!! Have a good breakfast!

UUUUUU UR SO CUTE A-YUAN SO ADORABLE

THANK U!!!

~~~

Wei Wuxian’s mornings go something like this now. (They’re solidly two months out of the Notpocalypse, so Wei Wuxian can safely say that this is a Routine(tm) that he doesn’t plan on breaking anytime soon.)

1: Wake up.

Subcategory 1a: if Lan Wangji is still in bed with him, curl around Lan Wangji and schmooze off his warmth and doze off with Lan Wangji’s arms around him.

Subcategory 1b: if Lan Wangji is not in bed, convince Lan Wangji to come back to bed with some pointed pet names and a deliberate reveal of his bare shoulder under the blanket, then cuddle with Lan Wangji.

2: Intermediate steps and breakfast.

Subcategory 2a: yawn and roll around in their bed that they share (THEY SHARE A BED NOW, HOLY FUCK) a bit more, then stagger into their bathroom to freshen up while tugging on one of Lan Wangji’s oversized shirts.

Subcategory 2b: hug Lan Wangji from behind as he makes breakfast, thereby soliciting a sweet good morning kiss, as energy for the day.

And the rare subcategory 2c: get hoisted onto the counter if he decides to sneak his hands up Lan Wangji’s shirt to grope his abs, and spend 5-10 minutes not-so-lazily making out before their immortal rabbits start whining to be fed.

Anyway.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says one morning, cup of coffee clutched safely between his sweater paws. “I have a very important question. Very important. Please listen.”

Lan Wangji switches off the stove. “Yes, Wei Ying?”

“Should I wear my high-waisted black jeans or my flared maroon pants to A-Yuan’s school play?”

“Black jeans.” Lan Wangji says shortly, and turns the stove back on. Oof.

“Yeah, they make my ass look really great, don’t they? You’d know, of course.”

“Wei Ying.”

“Ah ah, Lan Zhan, don’t burn our breakfast!”

Wei Wuxian waits until Lan Wangji plates the food and brings it safely to the table before he catches Lan Wangji’s sleeve between two fingers. Best not to start the beginning of the rest of their lives with broken dishes. It feels a little like it would be a bad omen.

“I swear it’s a really important question this time, Lan Zhan, okay, just — give me a second — okay.” Wei Wuxian clutches Lan Wangji’s sleeve tighter. There’s no reason to be so nervous. Maybe that’s just what Wei Wuxian gets for spending so much time around humans. “Lan Zhan, sweetheart, love of my life. Do you want to get married?”

Silence.

Once Lan Wangji’s eyebrows start migrating their way up his forehead and Lan Wangji still hasn’t said anything, Wei Wuxian says, quickly, “I mean! I know marriage is, like, a weird human concept, and I don’t necessarily need it to know that we’ll be together for the rest of our immortal lives, but I thought. You know. It might be. Nice?”

“Wei Ying.”

“I know, I know, it’s kind of stupid, but it would also be so fun, and we could get some cute sparkly wedding rings, and A-Yuan would be so delighted with it, and — I, I really, I just want to call you my husband, okay? It has a nice ring to it, but, I guess, if you don’t think so — it’s not necessary, I just thought it’d be cool — ”

“Wei Ying. Yes,” Lan Wangji interrupts, grasping Wei Wuxian’s hands in his. “With you, it is always yes.”

“Oh,” Wei Wuxian says, a little shell-shocked. That’s definitely the human influence rubbing off on him. “Really?”

“Really,” Lan Wangji confirms. “I also think it would be very nice. I want to call you husband, too. I love you, and I would very much like to be married to you.”

“Okay!” Wei Wuxian squeaks out, Lan Wangji’s secret ability to say really fucking sappy things without batting an eye one-hit KOing him once again. “That’s! That’s great! Um! Marriage! Yes! Good, great, great, cool, wonderful, yes, yep, super cool. Ah. Fuck. Lan Zhan?”

“Mmn?”

“Just so you know. This also means. That I really, really want to spend the rest of eternity with you.” That’s a bit of an understatement, to be honest, given just how much Wei Wuxian wants. “I think, you know, I told you this, and you already know, but in case I didn’t! I want that. And everything. With you.”

“That sounds… super cool,” says Lan Wangji, lips curving up into a teasing, gentle smile. “And I would very much love that. Eternity with you, and everything else, too.”

Wei Wuxian pulls Lan Wangji into a brief kiss, because otherwise he might say something even more embarrassing and sappy, and he won’t stand for that.

Lan Wangji’s face is glowing with warmth and trust when they part. “Wei Ying,” he says. “Let’s start the rest of our lives together, then.”

Wei Wuxian smiles, and takes Lan Wangji’s hand.

“Okay, Lan Zhan. Let’s go.”

Notes:

this was a lot longer than i intended [slaps fic this baby can fit so much pining and wangxian misunderstandings in there]
for those of you who have read/watched good omens - this is not at all an accurate good omens au in that wangxian's backstory and history together are nothing like aziraphale and crowley's, and the antichrist baby switch doesn't happen... mostly because I planned out exactly 0 things for this fic. please ignore the inconsistencies T__T
eternal thanks to lin for looking this fic over and editing it!
There is now amazing art for this fic!
my twitter.

Works inspired by this one:

[Restricted Work] by rivendellion (Log in to access.)

Actions

Kudos

li_corsair, EirynStellar, moonangeltsuki, tygerliftsthemountain, yeecing, justhereforthefic, Aashi213, kisahawklin, RobinAway, rofiar, Th_Still, BugsBunny777, EmR, Cynnabun0825, StrayNCTTeez123, chocolateandmurder, coloryournight, purplerainydawn, betul, Yane223, Sora_amat_lugal, sevastea, ruusflowers, KingdomFlameVIII, groignequi, Ag_Escape, moonsdreaming, Hannah11, axotly, micobell, silvernekkoshark, mostlyvoid8, Heliocentric, QueueTea, cloudsgrl, alailyre, Timion, GreenDrkness, acesphinx688926, Kiiro_Shizuku, Deyna_Doy, Dilbaro, Shweta_07, smoltae, Min_yoona, lapwing_deceit, HadaDeCuentos, Lady_Ogre, Lalettriceinsaziabile, IamhappyJc, and 1538 more users as well as 443 guests left kudos on this work!

Archive of Our Own

Actions

Work Header