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One year after leaving Gusu, Wei Wuxian meets Lan Wangji at an inn on the border between Yunmeng and Yiling.
It’s not their first meeting—there have been a few night hunts when Lan Wangji happened to be nearby, a few arguably chance encounters when Lan Wangji arrived somewhere Wei Wuxian had just not quite left, in the days before some all-important meeting between the Chief Cultivator and a local sect leader. Perhaps two handfuls of moments, all together, as the spring passed into summer, and summer to autumn, autumn to winter and winter back to spring again.
Lan Wangji has reserved a room, and ordered food—local flavors to Wei Wuxian’s taste, steaming in the cool night and red with chilies—and has produced two bottles of wine and brewed what Wei Wuxian is certain is the best tea the Lan Sect buys, which is very good tea indeed.
“Lan Zhan,” he says as he finishes the meal, “You spoil me, really.”
Lan Wangji says nothing, but he looks so quietly, smugly pleased that Wei Wuxian laughs.
“You look like you’re getting away with something, Lan Zhan,” he says. “Does your uncle know you're spending Lan funds on me? Does he know you’ve bought me wine?”
It’s Emperor’s Smile, because of course Lan Wangji would just have a pair of bottles ready, even though Wei Wuxian knows he’s been traveling for weeks now, putting out little metaphorical fires and one real, actual fire, almost since the moment the Spring Festival ended.
“Uncle is not here,” Lan Wangji says, which isn’t anything like an answer and they both know it.
“Mn,” Wei Wuxian agrees, because he wasn’t really looking for an answer anyway. “Just us here.” An illusion—there are other people in the inn itself, of course—but an illusion helped along by silencing talismans on the shared walls and the door. It’s not quite as quiet as the Jingshi in Cloud Recesses, but it’s close.
Lan Wangji looks back at him and softens in that small, sudden way that always makes Wei Wuxian feel like his heart’s trying to climb out through his mouth. Not just—informal and relaxed for the evening, the way he was when Wei Wuxian arrived, but present. Open and bared like a flower whose petals have just unfolded.
Wei Wuxian wants to cradle Lan Wangji’s face between his hands and pull the last of his ribbons out of his hair, wants to kiss every part of his face, and then the palms of his hands and his knuckles and the pulse in his wrists, and then see if there’s any other skin he can manage to reach.
It is unfortunate that he is still seated on the other side of a dark-lacquered dining table, his hands already occupied with a wine cup. He sets it down with a soft click and that’s it. That’s enough to break the moment. Lan Wangji goes back to looking like he’s maybe enjoying a quiet evening after a long day instead of like he’s made of light and warmth and eggshells.
Wei Wuxian throws himself around the table, ending with his head in Lan Wangji’s lap. He’s the shameless one in this—whatever they’re doing, it’s not fair that Lan Wangji can make him feel like he’s going to come unraveled from more than arm’s-reach away and then turn it off.
“Lan Zhan,” he whines, “You can’t look at me like that, it’s too much, I can’t stand it.”
Lan Wangji hums thoughtfully and brushes hair out of Wei Wuxian’s face. The quirk of his lips is insufferably amused.
Wei Wuxian pouts at him
“What if I want to spoil you sometime, hmm?”
It’s difficult to do, both because Lan Wangji has so few things he actually lets himself be attached to, and because he’s rarely content to sit idle while others act. Wei Wuxian has tried, twice before, to spoil him for an evening, and both times he’s fairly certain Lan Wangji was merely indulging him rather than actually enjoying the experience.
There’s a difference. He hasn’t been able to explain the difference even to himself yet, but he knows it matters.
Lan Wangji finds his hand and squeezes his fingers.
“Wei Ying is here,” he says, and the look on his face—as if Wei Wuxian’s mere presence is in any way comparable to the effort and care Lan Wangji has put into this evening so far—Wei Wuxian turns and buries his face in Lan Wangji’s side, which probably does nothing to hide his blush in the end. He can feel his ears burning.
“Lan Zhan,” he groans, dragging out the second syllable. “You—” He sits up. “At least let me comb your hair,” he asks, because it’s the one thing he knows Lan Wangji really does enjoy having someone else do for him. Hair combing. That’s what he has.
“If you wish to,” Lan Wangji says, which is so not the point, and then he reaches up to start undoing his topknot himself. Wei Wuxian grabs at his hands.
“I want to,” he agrees. “But we could be somewhere more—come sit on the bed,” he suggests, tugging on Lan Wangji’s hands as he sits up, then stands.
Lan Wangji has that terrible amused tilt to his mouth again, but he stands and walks obediently to the bed, and waits while Wei Wuxian rummages through his bags for a comb and tries to find the most comfortable position for them both.
He does relax as Wei Wuxian undoes his topknot and starts drawing his fingers through his hair. The blue hair ribbon and white forehead ribbon are carefully wound into small coils and set safely aside, and then Wei Wuxian presses his fingertips to Lan Wangji’s temples and draws them slowly back, dragging light circles over his brow and the crown of his head and down, behind his ears to the point at the back that always aches when Wei Wuxian himself spends too long hunched over books and letters, and then down again, to the base of his neck. He sweeps the motion out to Lan Wangji’s shoulders and then starts again, just a spark of spiritual energy in the touch to smooth away the cares of the day.
Lan Wangji sighs, a quiet note of tension released, and Wei Wuxian smiles to himself. He sets his fingers on that same path again and again, until a quick glance at Lan Wangji’s face reveals his eyes closed and his lips parted, the strain around his brow and mouth loosened.
He starts combing at the ends of Lan Wangji’s hair, working out small snarls as he moves upwards. It’s soothing work. Meditative. Sometimes he thinks Lan Wangji does meditate when they do this, but not tonight, or at least, not in any visibly discernible way. He even relaxes again, just a little more, his shoulders drooping just slightly, as Wei Wuxian reaches the top of his head.
There’s a while where the only sounds in the room are the slide of the comb through smooth hair and the slow pulse of their breathing. Wei Wuxian keeps steady, light pressure on the comb, another round of massage for Lan Wangji’s scalp, and counts the strokes until he passes one hundred.
Lan Wangji lets him get all the way into the one-twenties before he straightens slightly and turns to tug the comb from Wei Wuxian’s hands.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian protests, “you really needn’t—”
Lan Wangji is looking down at the comb. There’s a hint of puzzlement to the expression.
Wei Wuxian looks. The rest of his protest dies on his tongue.
The comb in Lan Wangji’s hand is not his usual peachwood comb with the lotus flowers motif; The one Lan Wangji watched him buy in Yunmeng, over a year ago, before they’d started on their separate paths. No. This is the other one. Sandalwood. A pair of cranes in flight. The one Wei Wuxian has been holding onto for three months now, cradling it between his hands on long evenings with no one but Little Apple for company and thinking—wondering—
The merchant had said his young lady was very lucky to have such a beautiful gift in store, and up until that moment Wei Wuxian hadn’t even thought—he’d just seen it, as he passed by, and the sandalwood reminded him of Lan Wangji and quiet evenings in the Jingshi, and the cranes had reminded him of a summer morning when he’d woken as Lan Wangji slid out of their shared blankets, and he’d watched him stand against the sunrise, white robes and black hair limned in dawnlight and he’d thought, yeah. Forever.
“You can keep it, if you want,” he blurts. And then he keeps talking as Lan Wangji looks at him, that hint of confusion still pulling between his brows.
“I bought it for you,” he admits, “I just—”
He waves his hands, trying to encompass the small comfort it had brought him in lonely places even as fear had grown under his ribs, and the whole tangled mess of how forever meant something different when only one of you had a golden core, meant something different when you were living such different lives—but always with the same goals, so it was still the same, somehow—
Lan Wangji looks down at the comb again.
“Thank you,” he says, and his face does that thing again—a slight softening. Light and warmth and the fragility of eggshells.
Wei Wuxian kisses him, because he’s close enough to do it this time, kisses his eyebrow and his cheekbone and his lips as if that can make up for the words that crowd under his breastbone, unspoken and smothering with the bound-together weight of Thank you and I want and please.
It’s not fair to ask when he has so little to offer. That was the conclusion he’d come to, those nights watching firelight flicker over carved wooden cranes—so perfectly paired, so equally matched. He won’t ask until he has something more—a golden core, or a home, or a promise that doesn’t feel like it will fall to ashes as soon as it leaves his tongue.
“Lan Zhan,” he says, his lips moving against the flushing skin of Lan Wangji’s jaw, “Don’t you know how much I like you?”
It’s enough, for now, that Lan Wangji hums against his temple and nips kisses that are half teeth down his neck, that Lan Wangji’s hands wind into his layers and pull at his belt, that he says Wei Ying like it means something more than just a name.
It’s enough, for now.