Chapter Text
Even in the middle of wedding preparations, it had been decided that finding Xuē Yáng took precedence. Wèi Wúxiàn wrote a coded letter to his fiancée explaining that they were going to deal with the Delinquent situation. His hope was that Lán Zhàn would be able to tell his brother that Wèi Huìhuá had a vision that needed resolving, and that together they would be able to make excuses for Wèi Wúxiàn not being available.
He did not expect to see Lán Zhàn waiting for him in Yuèyáng. It was unexpected, but he wasn’t about to complain.
Lán Zhàn stood at the city gates and nodded at his fiancée like it had only been hours since they'd last laid eyes on each other, and not weeks.
"Lán Zhà-" his mouth was closed with a silencing spell. Well, what was the point of that? Lán Zhàn hadn't even tried to disguise himself, everyone knew who he was! Just calling out his name wouldn't key anyone in...
But Wèi Wúxiàn was the only person who called Hánguāng-jūn by his birth name. Right, maybe that wasn't the best idea. He felt the spell lift and he said, "Hánguāng-jūn, it's good to see you again." Then, quietly, "I missed you."
"Mn." His future husband nodded and turned to walk towards the city. Ah, but those ears of his were tinged with pink! Nothing could escape Wèi Wúxiàn's keen eyes!
He walked in step with Lán Zhàn and said, "We think that he's a different age. He might have already lost his finger, that'll make it easier to track him down."
"What will you do once we find him?" Lán Zhàn asked as he eyed any passing children for missing digits.
"Not really sure. Ā'Huá says that if he's young, we should just raise in him the Burial Mounds."
Lán Zhàn looked back at him. "You disagree?"
He shrugged. "I don't disagree, but I still don’t like the idea of him being around Ā'Yuàn. You've never seen him, Lán Zhàn. The way he takes glee in hurting people. He revels in it. He massacred an entire clan because the clan leader destroyed his finger."
Lán Zhàn gave him a long look that he couldn't quite parse the meaning of. At last, he simply said, "Let us ask if anyone has seen him."
They didn't bother going to the merchants or normal people. That was sure to lead nowhere. Wèi Wúxiàn got Lán Zhàn to buy a bag of candy to use to bribe some street kids into talking.
Lán Zhàn stayed mostly silent, observing from a short distance while Wèi Wúxiàn did all the talking. The sight of a well-dressed cultivator frightened some of the children, but others were curious and asked about the beautiful man in the pristine white robes. None would actually get close to him, but plenty of eyes were drawn to him. Well, good! None of these kids were blind!
"Why are you traveling with that rich cultivator?" One of the kids asked, a cute young boy missing two front teeth. "Are you his servant?"
"Me? No, I'm not his servant!” Wèi Wúxiàn said. “In fact, he's so in love with me that it's more like he's my servant!"
The kid scrunched his face. "He's in love with you ?"
That...that just meant that Wèi Wúxiàn's disguise was so good that it was covering his handsome face! That had to be it. He did not get offended at the brat.
"We love each other very much, and if you don't believe me that's your problem. Now, who wants to help gege out and get some candy as a reward? I'm looking for someone called Xuē Yáng. He lives here. He might be missing his left pinky."
The kids all looked at each other. The one who asked about Lán Zhàn spoke up.
"Xuē Yáng doesn't come around these parts, he lives under the bridge close to the west gate."
Finally, a lead! "Thanks kids, here's the candy. And two for you for being a good helper." He handed the kid two pieces of candy and distributed the rest until the bag was empty.
Wèi Wúxiàn and Lán Zhàn walked to the bridge the kid described. Upon arriving, they found no one living there at all. If anyone had been staying there they had long since been cleared away by guards.
"He's not here! This is why you never pay in full up front!" Wei Wuxian kicked a stone and sighed. "Oh well, at least those kids got some candy. This place has a lot of urchins running around."
"We will find him."
The rest of the day was fruitless, and at night they paid for a single room (with two beds), and discussed what they would do.
"We can speak to Cháng Cí'ān and ask him. He would not refuse an audience with me."
Wèi Wúxiàn looked up at the ceiling. "Yeah...unless he's already done the thing and doomed himself."
"Should Xuē Yáng’s finger already be maimed, we will need to raise him so that he does not seek vengeance for what has been done to him. He is still a child now. No child is beyond saving."
Wèi Wúxiàn turned the words over in his mind. He knew that to be true, but... something about Xuē Yáng from the 'show' chilled him to the bone. Someone who didn't have even the pretense of noble goals, someone who killed for the pleasure of killing and took joy in the suffering of those around him. At least Jīn Guāngyáo's evil plans involved infrastructure that could benefit people! Xuē Yáng was a beast of a man...and he had looked up to the Yílíng Patriarch.
If this timeline matched the 'TV Show', the answer would be clear- by that time. He would have already slaughtered the Cháng clan. They could turn him in to Niè Míngjué...but, that also happened in the show, and Jīn Guāngyáo had let him get away. Well, they could turn him over to..
It didn't matter! They weren't in a...what was the word, a timeline where they could do that! They couldn't leave Xuē Yáng to be picked up by the Jin, so they needed to take him somewhere.
Maybe Gūsū? With all of those rules there, he would have to learn to conform. But what if he took some slight against the conformity and turned on the sect?
So then maybe the Niè clan. They would stamp out any desire to practice demonic cultivation! But that just had him going to the same problem, resentment, that fear that under the Niè, he would be just waiting for some slight to get him to lose his mind.
In Yúnmèng with the Jiāng he would surely find support, right? Under...Jiāng Chéng... who would be really curious to know why Wèi Wúxiàn was so adamant about him taking in a particular street urchin....only to find out that he was fated to become an infamous murderer and destroyer of entire clans. Could he really ask Jiāng Chéng to do that, to take and raise someone fated to cause havoc and devastation everywhere he went?
There was always his martial grandmother, wasn't there? He could send Xuē Yáng to the Celestial Mountain. Bàoshān Sànrén took on orphans and...no, there was no way the immortal would take him on. He wouldn't even know how to try. Plus, he wanted to keep Xuē Yáng away from Xiǎo Xīngchén, not risk them meeting even sooner.
That just left bringing Xuē Yáng to the Burial Mounds, where they could keep a close eye on him and watch him if he started to show any tendencies for violence. They'd just keep him from all of the demonic cultivation, keep him fed and happy. He couldn't grow up to be a revenge hungry wild man if no one gave him anything to seek revenge for. Again, assuming that Cháng Cí'ān hadn't already doomed his clan.
Wèi Wúxiàn looked over at Lán Zhàn, who was dressed down for bed and making himself comfortable.
"Hey, Lán Zhàn. Does your brother even know you're here?"
"Yes."
"What about your uncle?"
"Unsure."
Lán Zhàn was down to just an inner robe- did he have any idea what he was doing to Wèi Wúxiàn? His hair was still a little damp from the bath he had taken, and it was making his white robe even sheerer.
"Lán Zhàn, I can't believe this! Here you are, sneaking off to be with me before our wedding and instead of doing anything fun we get a room with two beds! I don't even get a kiss from you, it's so unfair!"
Lán Zhàn looked his way, and his gaze hardened. He got up and crossed the room to loom over Wèi Wúxiàn's bed.
Before he could give another complaint, Lán Zhàn grabbed his wrists and pinned him to the bed.
Wèi Wúxiàn looked into his fiancé's eyes. Lán Zhàn's fierce, hungry gaze would have done just as good of a job keeping him in place as the hand clenched around his wrists.
"How scary~!" Wèi Wúxiàn laughed, pretending to struggle against his grip. "Is that what you looked like the first time you kissed me? You really are a hungry wolf ready to eat me, aren't you Lán Zhàn?"
Like on Phoenix Mountain, Lán Zhàn's mouth pressed against his aggressively. Wèi Wúxiàn eagerly tilted his head up to meet Lán Zhàn's lips and opened his mouth for Lán Zhàn's tongue. Without use of his hands, Wèi Wúxiàn had only his legs to wrap around Lán Zhàn's waist and pull him closer.
"Lán Zhàn", he whined when they finally broke for air, "we've only ever kissed each other, so how are you so good at this?"
Wèi Wúxiàn watched as Lán Zhàn's lips twitched up into the barest shadow of a smile. "Wèi Yīng asked for a kiss. Is Wèi Yīng not satisfied?"
At those words, Wèi Wúxiàn swallowed hard. They had the room to themselves, and Lán Zhàn was right there , still warm and wet from his bath. If they wanted to spend the night as lovers, who would stop them? Who could?
Yet there was something to be said about having their first time... he felt the inn's sheets beneath his pinned hands. It all seemed so clandestine. He wanted Lán Zhàn, but he wanted to look back on their first time as something...more. For some reason he couldn't name, that mattered to him.
He smiled up at Lán Zhàn. "Very satisfied."
Lán Zhàn let go of his wrists and climbed onto the bed, sitting next to Wèi Wúxiàn. For his part, Wèi Wúxiàn sat up and rested his head on Lán Zhàn's shoulder.
They were quiet for a while, until Wèi Wúxiàn broke the silence. "Jiāng Chéng said he wants to pay for my wedding robes. And new clothes for Ā'Huá and Ā'Yuàn."
Lán Zhàn wrapped an arm around Wèi Wúxiàn's waist. "What about Xuē Yáng?"
He was about to ask, 'What about him?' before he realized that it would be...strange to not bring the boy to his wedding after taking him in. "I'm sure it'll be okay," Wèi Wúxiàn said, before scowling and giving his best Jiāng Chéng impression, "Where did you get this third brat from? Will you invite every orphan on the street to this wedding?" He relaxed his face and shrugged, "He might say something like that, but he'll be fine with it, I think. How about you? Have the Gūsū elders made any demands? Are we holding the wedding in Gūsū?"
"They refuse to hold the wedding in Gūsū." There was a tense pause after his words. "They...insist that because I am marrying out, it would not be proper to have the wedding in my home."
Wèi Wúxiàn groaned. The Burial Mounds were extremely inhospitable for big, lavish parties. Where exactly was he supposed to put everyone? He didn't do all of the book-keeping himself, but he knew enough about their financial situation that even just the sedan chair to take Lán Zhàn to the Burial Mounds would likely bankrupt them, let alone all of the other formalities. He couldn't spend money that they needed for food on his wedding!
"Wèi Yīng." Lán Zhàn pulled him closer. "So long as we are married, that is all that matters."
Wèi Wúxiàn felt his face grow hot and gently pushed Lán Zhàn, not putting any strength into it. His arm was strong and warm, and he found himself relaxing a little into his fiancee's side. "Lán Zhàn, you can't just say things like that! What if I wanted to elope like we did in Ā'Huá's visions and spare us all the trouble, huh? What then?"
"If that is what Wèi Yīng wants, we will elope tonight." Lán Zhàn looked completely serious about it, too. Wèi Wúxiàn imagined how horrified Lán Qǐrén would be to hear his beloved nephew had eloped with the Yílíng Patriarch.
"Such a straight face!" Wèi Wúxiàn teased, "No, we can't. Jiāng Chéng already said that he wanted to buy my wedding robes. Can you imagine how mad he'd be if I eloped after all of that?" He lowered his voice, "Besides... it will be nice to have a wedding, don't you think?"
"Yes."
"But it's not, like...too bothersome, is it?" The words popped out of his mouth as worries began to leak from the part of his brain where he tried to keep them locked up. "I know everyone's expecting a big ceremony and I don't know how it's going to go, I guess this is a lot of trouble to go through, but the whole world will be watching..."
"Good." Lán Zhàn cut him off. "If the whole world watches, then everyone will know Wèi Yīng is mine."
The more sweet words that came out of Lán Zhàn's mouth, the more Wèi Wúxiàn wanted to cover his fiance's gorgeous face with a pillow. Embarrassing as it was, he couldn't help but feel his worries shrink back into the recesses of his mind.
"Yours."