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The curse hits them both at the same time. Lan Zhan knows this because he had intended to step in front of Wei Ying to shield him from it, but Wei Ying had realized his plan in the split second before impact and immediately moved to attempt to protect him instead, which had resulted in them standing side by side and bearing the brunt of the curse together. Lan Zhan feels the impact of it in his chest, reverberating and echoing around the spaces between his ribs before it settles into the ache of a new bruise, heavy and pounding with his pulse. He ignores it in favor of turning to Wei Ying, whose weaker core has led to him winding up laid out flat on his back and unconscious.
Lan Zhan does not panic. He knows Wei Ying is stronger than he seems, he knows that Wei Ying has been taking care of himself just fine since they’d parted over a year ago, each to their own lives while Wei Ying settles into having one at all again. Still, Lan Zhan’s traitorous heart pounds in his chest and his hands tremble with adrenaline and fear as he kneels to scoop Wei Ying into his arms - why must he always do this? He’ll do it every single time it’s necessary, of course, but he wishes it wouldn’t be. He wishes people would stop hurting Wei Ying, just for once.
“Wei Ying,” he calls for lack of anything better to say, any more succinct way to beg for the other man to wake. He feeds him a thread of spiritual energy, searching already for the wrongness of the curse in his meridians; Lan Zhan can feel it in his own, clinging and dark and dripping with malicious intent. It’s little competition for the strength of his burning core, but Wei Ying doesn’t have the same level of protection, and it’s likely that the curse has sought out the easier target of the two of them, and latched onto the other.
Wei Ying wakes quickly though, thankfully, so Lan Zhan hides his relief in fussing over Wei Ying, who smiles up at him in that false-bravado way he has that Lan Zhan has learnt to ignore. He begins pressing along Wei Ying’s chest with his fingertips, searching for any internal damage from the impact of the curse - and they both suck in twin gasps of pain when his fingers prod against an injury in his ribs. Lan Zhan’s ribs flare with the same pain, burning and sharp, and his eyes widen as he meets Wei Ying’s.
“Hah…You okay, Lan Zhan?” Wei Ying asks through his shallow panting.
“Your ribs are fractured,” Lan Zhan reports, brushing past the strange sympathetic pain to focus on the much more important task of helping Wei Ying. “I will carry you back to the village so you may be seen by the doctor.”
“Ah Lan Zhan you really don’t have to !” Wei Ying yelps the last word as Lan Zhan scoops him up and stands without any ceremony, and then he stands there blinking as a wave of vertigo rushes straight to his head. Wei Ying’s eyes are clamped shut against the sudden elevation change and Lan Zhan just knows, somehow, that he’s feeling the same thing Wei Ying is.
“I will ask them to check your head for injury as well,” he says, because what else is he supposed to say? He can feel Wei Ying’s body as if it were his own; it’s an unacceptably intimate experience when Wei Ying has made his desire for space so clear, but Lan Zhan can’t find it in himself to apologize for it. It wasn’t his fault after all - in fact he’d attempted to keep Wei Ying from getting hit by the curse in the first place - and he didn’t believe in apologies between the two of them anyway. He wouldn’t expect Wei Ying to apologize if their roles were reversed, and so he won’t do it either.
He walks back to the village with Wei Ying in his arms, valiantly pushing through the phantom sensations of Wei Ying’s injury and his dizziness with some effort to ensure they both return safely. Wei Ying does his best to keep up a string of chatter to cover the awkward tension between them, but he quiets again when they reach the doctor’s cottage.
Lan Zhan lists off the injuries he can feel and ignores Wei Ying’s wide eyes on him, confused and vulnerable in a way that makes Lan Zhan fear he’s taking unwelcome liberties - but Wei Ying’s health and recovery is more important in this moment, so he brushes the feeling aside and does as he’s asked to help Wei Ying undress enough to be treated. And he feels it when Wei Ying suppresses a shiver under the touch of his hands on his bare skin. His own heart - of its own volition - reacts by racing in his chest, and despite the fact that he doesn’t outwardly change Wei Ying looks up at him, all sharp curiosity under the haze of pain clouding his eyes.
Wei Ying’s wounds are treated and Lan Zhan is permitted to escort him back to the inn to recover before they attempt any further pursuit of the spirit they’d been asked to subdue.
“So I can feel you and you can feel me,” Wei Ying says the second they’re alone on the path, everyone in their homes for the night already. Trust Wei Ying to just say it without much of an attempt at delicacy. Shameless.
“Mn.”
“So. Do we..talk about what kind of curse this might be, or do we actually talk about.. other things?”
“What other things?” Lan Zhan is fairly certain he knows what sort of things Wei Ying has in mind, ridiculous man that he is, but he also knows how quickly Wei Ying will flounder and fold with churlish grumbling if pushed anywhere remotely close to emotional vulnerability. Perhaps he shouldn’t find it as charming as he does.
“Like how..in there you…Your heart..”
“Mn?”
“Does it do that all the time? Who would have thought Hanguang-Jun would have such an unsteady pulse! Do the doctors in Cloud Recesses know about this? You can’t just think cultivation will solve everything Lan Zhan!”
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan admonishes, as he usually does when Wei Ying is allowing himself to dance around an issue rather than confront something he wants.
“Hm? What is it Lan Zhan?” Wei Ying asks, because as much as Lan Zhan is willing to call Wei Ying on his bluffs, so is Wei Ying prepared to call him on his. Lan Zhan sighs softly to himself and levels Wei Ying a look that usually works well to cow the juniors (Wei Ying is, unsurprisingly, immune).
“You are tired, I can feel it. We should sleep. Talk about things later.”
Wei Ying teases him for his bedtime the rest of the way to the inn, which Lan Zhan accepts with affection that warms him from the inside out, his chest yawning with the desire to hold Wei Ying in his arms and his ears warm with a faint blush in response to his own yearning. Wei Ying gives him a look far too keen for Lan Zhan’s liking, but he ignores it in favor of dressing down for bed.
The building tension breaks when Lan Zhan loosens his guan to let his hair down. It falls soft and heavy around his shoulders, a distinct relief after a day of the weight of the silver on top of his head, and as he brushes his fingers through it Wei Ying whimpers softly. Lan Zhan’s eyes dart to him despite him not picking up any pain from Wei Ying’s side of the curse, and he finds the other man lying on his bed watching him under half-lidded eyes.
“That feels nice, Lan Zhan,” he says with a shy smile. “I’ve always wanted to know what it feels like to play with your hair.” Lan Zhan’s ears warm again, his heart skipping in his chest, and Wei Ying’s slow-spreading smile at him isn’t doing anything to help the matter. With his eyes still trained on Wei Ying across the room he deliberately runs his fingers through his hair in the way he likes best, scritching against his scalp and hauling the weight of it off the back of his neck to comb it away from his nape until it all falls in a waterfall against his shoulders again.
Wei Ying actually shivers with it, the pleasant tingling the action always creates down Lan Zhan’s spine, and Lan Zhan smiles ever so slightly when Wei Ying’s eyes dart back to his.
“Do that again?” he requests, hesitant, as if Lan Zhan would ever deny him anything. He repeats the gesture and pairs it with a little tug on his earlobe, the kind he used to use as a child to help himself calm down. It still feels nice though he doesn’t need to do it anymore, and Wei Ying whimpers again in a way that has Lan Zhan’s heart racing with the implications that flood his mind.
He realizes then, after a moment, that he can feel the shiver of pleasure spreading through Wei Ying, born from his own but growing into something else in Wei Ying’s body only to be returned back to him again. Something tingling and warm, inviting him in, asking him to continue. Lan Zhan raises an eyebrow and Wei Ying’s cheeks grow scarlet, the phantom heat of his blush in Lan Zhan’s own cheeks.
“Hey. Listen. About those ~other things~,” Wei Ying says abruptly, propping himself up on one elbow until Lan Zhan glares at him for the twinge in his bruised ribs that zings across whatever this bond is. “Hear me out - we have to break the curse, obviously we do because we have to subdue the spirit, that’s what we’re here for. But I think we could also make very good use of it , and this time you can’t pretend like you don’t know what I mean because I can feel that you do-”
Lan Zhan stands and strides to the bed quickly enough to make Wei Ying laugh at him, his delight a palpable thing, fluttering in his stomach even before Lan Zhan joins him and leans over him, his loose hair falling around them in a curtain, hiding them from the rest of the room. He feels Wei Ying’s breathing hitch in his own chest and against his own chest, the lines where he stops and Wei Ying begins already growing hazy as the sensations they create in each other become an instant feedback loop.
“Wei Ying will have to be more specific,” Lan Zhan teases even as he can feel Wei Ying’s body stirring in interest (again, the sensation both inside himself in the way Wei Ying feels it and outside himself in the way said interest presses against his hip), and he’s rewarded with Wei Ying covering his eyes with his hands.
“So cruel, Lan Zhan!” he cries with a smile he doesn’t try to hide behind his hands. “This humble one is injured and cursed yet you would treat me like this? How could Hanguang-Jun be so-”
Lan Zhan cuts him off with a kiss, the direct contact instantly overwhelming, and they don’t bother with much talking after that, mouths too busy with exploring and devouring to get many words in edgewise.
They finally find the spirit again a few nights later, the curse broken and the spirit laid to rest in short order. Lan Zhan returns to Cloud Recesses with Wei Ying at his side, his travels brought to an end by their desire not to be parted again, and when Wei Ying develops a talisman inspired by the curse Lan Zhan is embarrassingly eager to test it.
(Because Wei Ying is a genius it is, of course, an unequivocal success.)