Chapter Text
The Yiling Patriarch didn’t use a sword, but he was fast.
Very fast.
He was also annoying in that loud, flirty way that drove Lan Wangji up the wall, quite literally in this instance. Honestly, Lan Wangji would have likely already lost him to the twists and turns of the alleyways they were running through if the other man hadn’t been laughing and teasing and sending flirty winks over his shoulder through that ugly mask of his the whole time. Had Lan Wangji been one to roll his eyes, they may have rolled so many times as to unscrew and fall from his head at this point. This whole mess was juvenile and obnoxious and made Lan Wangji want to drag him in front of his uncle as he’d done when he had been the head of discipline when disciples came to train at Cloud Recesses.
And yet, Lan Wangji still couldn’t catch him.
Lan Wangji loathed to compare the dreaded Yiling Patriarch to his precious, perfect rabbits, but trying to catch him was reminiscent of those first couple of weeks with them before they really learned to trust him and before he figured out exactly how to handle them. The way they had turned him in circles was a little too like Lan Wangji being taunted through the back alleys.
“You’re going to have to do better than that, Hanguang-jun,” the Yiling Patriarch called, his following laugh echoing around the street.
There was something familiar about his taunting laughter, and it made Lan Wangji wonder if he hadn’t been a student at Cloud Recesses when he had been young, before he’d cultivated resentment and became the Yiling Patriarch. Not that anyone knew who was behind the mask.
He’d shown up one day three years previous and stopped Wen Ruohan in his attempt to destroy as many cultivators as he could in order to establish a cultivation monopoly, to have the only sect left. It had begun to look like Wen Ruohan might succeed, Cloud Recesses having been nearly burned to the ground and both Sect Leader Jiang and his wife both dead, but then, masked and in dark robes, affiliated with no sect, the Yiling Patriarch had countered dark cultivation with dark cultivation. He’d been responsible for the death of Wen Chao, he’d been the one to wrench the blasphemous puppets from Wen Ruohan’s control, and he was the one to finally breach Nightless City. He hadn’t been the one to take Wen Ruohan down, though. That honor had been taken by Lianfeng-zun, Lan Wangji’s own brother-in-law, though at the time, he hadn’t been that, just someone his brother stared at for embarrassing lengths of time while in public and formal places. But none of them would have gotten close to Nightless CIty, or even Wen Ruohan himself without the Yiling Patriarch and his ghostly path.
And then, after the dust had settled along with the ash that permeated the air of Qishan, the Yiling Patriarch had disappeared. For a while at least. He would reappear from time to time to wreak a little havoc. Releasing an entire branch of Wens who had been imprisoned for conspiring with Wen Ruohan, crashing the wedding between young maiden Jiang and the heir to LanlingJin, nearly killing said heir on his own son’s one month celebration. He would then disappear with a smirk or a scowl or a bark of laughter only to show his masked face sometime later disturbing their peace in some other way.
There were theories to his identity out there, of course. Lan Wangji had to suffer through one of Nie Huaisang’s new theories practically every week. Theories which ranged from a restless spirit to a god fallen from favor to the former head disciple of the Jiang clan who had disappeared during the war. That one hurt Lan Wangji to think about, because the only thing worse than presuming Wei Wuxian to be dead, and really, how could he be alive and not tell his family who were still mourning him years later, was letting himself hope, even for a moment, that he might be alive only to be proven wrong.
Lan Wangji had met Wei Wuxian at Cloud Recesses when he had come for the guest training, and he’d despised him instantly. Wei Wuxian had immediately exposed himself as flippant and irreverent and purposefully disrespectful to the Lan principles and anyone with authority over him. Exactly the kind of person Lan Wangji despised. However, over the course of the lectures, Wei Wuxian had also, much to Lan Wangji’s ire, revealed himself to be kind and just and skilled and smart. It had taken Lan Wangji a single conversation on the rooftops of Cloud Recesses to hate Wei Wuxian and a short couple of weeks to fall in love.
There had been some overlap in those two emotions, before he’d figured out the latter, where he'd ignored Wei Wuxian for the better part of the week, irritated how his ears would burn red and his heart would beat heavy in his chest when Wei Wuxian executed a perfect sword form or answered a question perfectly when he had been called out specifically to shame him for not paying attention. Once he had realized that Wei Wuxian’s smile made his chest flutter, he avoided all contact with him, even going as far as to take meals in his own room to not see him any place outside of class.
During this time, Wei Wuxian had pestered him relentlessly for a few days until he’d suddenly stopped. Lan Wangji had tried to ignore how devastated he had felt that Wei Wuxian stopped trying to get his attention. It wasn’t until then that he had realized, livid at himself once he uncovered his feeling, that Wei Wuxian’s attention was all he had wanted, what he had craved more than anything. This went on long enough that Lan Wangji almost thought Wei Wuxian had given up on him completely until, after a few days of silence, Wei Wuxian camped outside Lan Wangji’s door for an entire night begging him to open the door and be his friend again. Allegedly. Lan Wangji had slept through the entire thing, so he hadn’t heard any of it, but Wei Wuxian had made it seem like there had been longing songs and poetry and perhaps tears shed.
Lan Wangji had found him the next morning asleep on his porch, a racoon trap with a rabbit inside—the tiny thing kept company by a week’s worth of fresh vegetables crammed in beside it—at one side and a partially-crushed bouquet of fresh gentians, almost certainly plucked from Lan Wangji’s own personal garden, at his other.
It had been that moment that Lan Wangji had realized that he was in love.
Mortified, Lan Wangji had turned on his heel immediately and slammed his door shut, only for the noise to rouse Wei Wuxian from sleep.
“Lan Zhan! Please don’t hide from me! I brought gifts!”
“Pets are forbidden,” Lan Wangji had said, hoping to hide the pounding of his heart at his revelation behind the careful sanctuary of rules.
He had been almost ashamed of himself. Why couldn’t he have just despised Wei Wuxian for the remainder of the lectures and then never spoken to him again. He’d felt rubbed raw and exposed and deeply embarrassed, like he’d been dumped from his bathtub into a room full of strangers. He’d wanted to cry, though his eyes had remained dry. Wei Wuxian had continued on, unaware that Lan Wangji had been falling apart on the other side of the door.
“He’s not a pet! I found him in the woods like this! It was a rescue!” He’d exclaimed. There had been a rattling noise, like he’d jostled the cage. “I thought we could tend to his foot then release him once he felt better.”
At this, Lan Wangji had opened the door, because he hadn’t quite realized that the rabbit was hurt and couldn’t stand to leave it without trying to help. At least that had been the idea. In reality, when he had opened the door, he had been met with Wei Wuxian, sleep ruffled and stretching his arms above his head, who had smiled so brightly when he’d realized the door was open that Lan Wangji had had to slam the door shut again lest he grab hold of the front of Wei Wuxian’s lecture robes and pull him into a kiss. He’d never even kissed anyone before, so he hadn’t even been sure how to do it.
After that, he had began to speak to Wei Wuxian again, desperate to be near him even as he was haunted the Wei Wuxian might ever find out about his feelings. Xichen, after he’d divined Lan Wangji’s longing through some brotherly intuition after watching Wei Wuxian and him interact exactly once after Lan Wangji had uncovered his own heart, had encouraged him to confess. Lan Wangji, who had had a panic attack even picturing spilling his heart, had firmly denied.
Now he wished he had. Wei Wuxian and he had remained friends. Friends enough, even, for Lan Wangji to get to a place where he could see himself confessing eventually, if for no other reason than to clear the air between them. And then Lotus Pier had been attacked and Wei Wuxian missing, presumed dead. Lan Wangji had searched and searched, nearly abandoning his duties during the sunshot campagne. Weeks turned into months turned into using any spare time he had outside of his duties turned into now, longing, missing, mourning, never moving on even though he knew it wasn’t healthy. Xichen still gave him that sad face when, every few months when melancholy hit too hard, Lan Wangji spent too long lingering in the data room, going through files and reports hoping and trying not to hope, holding that worn photo of himself Wei Wuxian when they’d been at Cloud Recesses close to his chest.
Lan Wangji shook himself from his thoughts as the Yiling Patriarch rounded a corner far enough ahead of him that he almost thought he’d lose him. Lan Wangji rounded the corner to catch sight of that trailing red ribbon and took a moment to take stock of where this chase was taking them. He realized suddenly, that, as much as it had seemed like he was being led in a pointless run-around, they had turned a full circle and were now headed in the exact same direction they had come from: the Jin corporation’s main building, a gaudy, gilded thing, allegedly shaped like a koi, though Lan Wangji thought it looked more like an abstract butt plug than anything else. Nie Huaisang agreed with him, but Lan Wangji had forbidden him from revealing that the observation had come from him.
The realization that the Yiling Patriarch was leading him back to where he’d been caught doing mischief, had Lan Wangji speeding up. He didn’t know what the Patriarch had planned, but he knew it couldn’t be good.
“Catch me if you can, Hanguang-jun!” The Yiling Patriarch called out as he burst through the entrance to the parking garage at the base of the tower.
He turned to catch a glimpse of Lan Wangji just as he entered, which turned out to be exactly what Lan Wangji needed to finally close the gap between them.
Lan Wangji let himself savor the thrill of a successful chase as he wrapped a hand around the Yiling Patriarch’s slender wrist. He could feel a victorious smirk twitching his lips when the other let out a startled yelp, but that victory was cut short when, with no warning, the world fell apart around them.
There was a deafening sound, one that Lan Wangji couldn’t process before the building groaned and debris started collapsing around them, raining concrete and steel beams and whatever else.
There was no time to seek shelter from the chaos around them, so on some sort of instinct born from years of battlefields and combat and protecting people, Lan Wangji tugged the Yiling Patriarch to his chest as he dropped to a crouch over him, shielding him with his body and hoping to avoid as much damage as possible. The trembling continued, rushing around, turning the world dark.The air filled with dust and debris as a tremendous weight dropped onto Lan Wangji’s back, becoming heavier as the ground continued rumbling. The weight of the wreckage sent him to his elbows, but that was as far as he let it drop him. The rest of the nearly unbearable weight settled over his back, a blunt piece of metal digging into one of his shoulder blades, a smooth, sharp piece of pipe lying diagonally over his hips.
When the dust settled Lan Wangji had the Yiling Patriarch underneath him, trapped between his elbows and knees, breathing in the same debris-filled air.
When Lan Wangji opened his eyes, it took him a moment to adjust to the darkness, but when he did, he found the Patriarch with his arms around his own head where he lay, curled in on himself as he coughed the dust from his lungs, thankfully into his own elbow as opposed to Lan Wangji’s face. After a few blinks, Lan Wangji realized that it wasn’t completely dark. There was sunlight from some crack or crevice, just not shining directly on them. It was enough to see the deep red of the Yiling Patriarch’s under robe and the matching ribbon in his hair that tormented Lan Wangji only because Wei Wuxian had favored a ribbon in the exact shade and to see it on the Yiling Patriarch felt like a mockery.
There was shifting metal and stone, dripping water and the crunch of gravel around them, but nothing else like that first blast. The Yiling Patriarch uncurled when he realized the immediate danger had passed. Lan Wangji held his gaze as the Yiling Patriarch’s eyes shot up to meet his, blinking a few times rapidly to adjust and perhaps clear soot and dirt from his eyes. Embarrassingly, the first thing Lan Wangji thought was that he had beautiful eyes. They were almost familiar, in a way.
Then, the Yiling Patriarch crooked his mouth into a teasing grin and said, “So, do you come here often?”