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It’s hard, being fifteen. Your skin doesn’t fit—stretching too big and too small by turns as your body grows, changing—and all the while the world changes, too. All without question or hesitation; it happens without your input, without checking to make sure you’re ready for what it has in store. Too often, you’re not. The world changes regardless.
What once towered above you shrinks in fits and bursts until you look, and the imposing towers of youth are dwarfed by the body you’ve grown into.
Lan Wangji is no exception to the trite cruelty of youth; like you, he grows, his legs long and arms strong, and within him his core buds, coalesces into a steady stream of warmth. Others comment. They look at him with awe and filial pride and tell him they expect nothing less from one of the Twin Jades of Gusu.
It’s hard, being fifteen, but it’s simpler to grow into the trappings of a title. Expectation lays out the man he’s meant to be long before he knows how to become him.
It’s nice to have something to grow into, to know—if only loosely—what the future holds. It’s nice to be able to start early, and Lan Wangji takes to the responsibilities of his position with ease; after all, with responsibility comes purpose, and from purpose, stability. (The unexpected changes carve grief into your chest, ignite an ache too fierce to douse with snow or ache or stubborn desperation.) So, when duty befalls him, Lan Wangji bows, and watches his brother, and knows, distantly, that he is lucky to see in the mirror of his brother all that his future holds.
Soon, his gangling limbs will fit themselves to the man he’s trying to be, the one that’s expected from a Twin Jade.
What peculiar safety that is, to become a new person without ever leaving the old one behind.
— — —
At the start of the summer session, Lan Wangji has a firm grip on the treachery of youth. He’s long since mastered his body, in control even when his legs grow overlong and unwieldy again. In moments of weakness, when frustration rears its ugly little head, Lan Wangji has only to look at Xichen—grown tall and stately as their father before him—to make peace with the latest indignities of his changing body.
Growth is, after all, uncomfortable, but entirely expected and utterly unavoidable. When the burning of his bones or the slow repair of overworked muscle grows too much for his developing core to handle, Lan Wangji turns to the Cold Springs. He’s found ways of coping; he holds himself in perfect control.
Then Wei Wuxian arrives at Cloud Recesses, and Lan Wangji’s perfect control fails.
— — —
For the first time (ice-block hands, snow melted into the cloth of his knees, soaked through his robes, hot tears burning the skin of his cheeks as they freeze), Lan Wangji is afraid. To lose control so completely—to act so rashly, ruthless and petty and irascible—it unsettles him, rattling down to his core as he stares down the strength of these indecorous feelings. As he realizes, horribly, that these feelings overtake reason and take control of his body; that these feelings—these disturbing things that drive him to act against his nature—are as intrinsic to him as the energy flowing through his meridians.
For the first time (not the first time, not at all—just not since he was a small child kneeling outside his mother’s cottage, waiting in the cold for the warmth of a face that would never return), Lan Wangji does not know how to reclaim control. Doesn’t know where to start, not with the way those feelings burn, liquid metal pooling at the base of his spine, impossible to channel or ignore. Not with the way that heat seeps into his chest, sinks low in his gut; he doesn’t know what to make of how the heat burns brighter, more insistent, whenever Wei Wuxian is near.
For fifteen years, Lan Wangji has known what his body needs and how to satisfy it. Now, though…
Now, he has no idea where to start.
— — —
There is no respite from Wei Wuxian.
He provokes Lan Wangji at every turn—testing the limits of Gusu Lan hospitality, pushing against all attempts to remind him of his place and make a respectable cultivator out of him. He’s skilled, yes, but what use is skill without discipline? What use is any of it when his bright smile and crinkling eyes precede Wei Wuxian finding ways to break every rule he’s ever been presented with?
Lan Wangji’s role demands that he discipline Wei Wuxian, so that’s what he does. He’s just—never faced someone as resistant to correction as Wei Wuxian.
See, it’s not just that Wei Wuxian is disruptive. No, Lan Wangji could work with that—could find ways to work with his nature—but it could never be so simple with Wei Wuxian involved. Were it just his nature, then Uncle would deal with him as he deals with Nie Huaisang, but it’s not, and instead he gives Wei Wuxian to Lan Wangji in the hope that Lan Wangji’s temperament will rub off on him.
Perhaps this ploy of Uncle’s would play out better if Wei Wuxian didn’t sense it. As it stands, Wei Wuxian is brilliant, one of the brightest young minds of their generation, and he rankles against authority. No—that’s not it.
Lan Wangji watches him, tries to make sense of Wei Wuxian’s cunning manipulation, to understand the where and the why of it. What he sees leaves him with more questions, not less.
Worse still, Lan Wangji finds himself doubting Uncle’s decision. With each passing day, Lan Wangji fears that he is not wearing off on Wei Wuxian, but that Wei Wuxian is wearing off on him.
Wei Wuxian, who is all bold lines and quick action; who talks as he thinks and thinks as he talks; whose throat bobs as he tosses his head back to laugh, heedless of the carefully cultivated Gusu quiet.
That laughter sinks beneath his skin like hot coals. The precepts discourage ruminating on one’s thoughts and feelings, and Lan Wangji disciplines himself accordingly, reminding himself of each rule he’s broken as he studies. No amount of study, however, is enough to save him from Wei Wuxian.
“Piss off!”
Cackling madly, Wei Wuxian swings his legs through the window and makes his escape.
Chest heaving, Lan Wangji drives away the terrible scene burning in his mind. With great effort, he does not consider how Wei Wuxian would sound, wailing and desperate for release—escape. He does not consider; he does not want to consider.
But what he wants has very little bearing on the fantasies his mind returns to, again and again. Self-indulgence is discouraged, for it expels vital energy that ought to be cultivated, but for several long, traitorous moments, Lan Wangji considers doing exactly what the precepts forbid.
In the end, he does not give into temptation. He makes use of the Cold Springs instead, cooling himself from the outside in; he meditates, using this as a chance to corral his thoughts.
What happens if he fails to control the impossible demands of his desire?
His response is adequate overall, but still—he considered it.
Too many moments. Too many by far.
— — —
It should terrify him.
It doesn’t terrify him enough.
— — —
“Do not speak without meaning,” Lan Wangji says, resolutely ignoring Wei Wuxian’s inane babbling of Lan Zhan, Lan er-gongzi, Lan Wangji from across the pavilion.
“But Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian whines, “aren’t we close? Spending so much time together, really it’s only right.”
Lan Wangji is silent. Right does not factor into this.
“Aiyah, Lan Zhan, don’t ignore me—please, spare this lowly one a glance? Just one?”
Lan Wangji does no such thing. As expected, Wei Wuxian makes a disgruntled sound before leaving his desk in favor of Lan Wangji’s.
“Don’t you get bored, stuck in here all the time?” Wei Wuxian asks, idly fiddling with Lan Wangji’s tools. He flicks the soft hairs of one of Lan Wangji’s brushes, shifts his scroll a few hair’s lengths to the right. “I mean, surely you have better things to do than babysit me all the time, Lan Zhan.”
There it is again. Lan Wangji’s chest burns with the use of his intimate name. His gut drops with the knowledge that Wei Wuxian doesn’t mean it; he never does.
Wei Wuxian continues messing with his desk.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji snaps, and Wei Wuxian drops his inkstone with a pout that quickly flourishes into a brilliant smile.
“Ah, what’s this?” He leans forward and pinches Lan Wangji’s sleeve. His smile is incorrigible, but he doesn’t fight it. Doesn’t push away like Lan Wangji thought he might. Instead, he sinks into the use of his intimate name, and Lan Wangji…
It would be rash to assume Wei Ying felt the same.
His heart wishes regardless.
— — —
Wei Ying is hiding something in his robes.
Of course, hiding implies that he’s trying to ensure the bundle tucked under his armpit won’t be noticed, which Wei Ying is very emphatically not doing. In fact, if his uncharacteristically sheepish smile is any indication, he may very well want Lan Wangji to notice and ask.
Out of mulishness more than anything else, Lan Wangji ignores the wriggling bundles. At least—he tries to, anyway. It’s very hard to ignore anything having to do with Wei Ying, especially when those things are moving or when—
—well. It would be hard to ignore anyone with a long, fuzzy ear protruding from their robes.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says firmly, refusing to let his consternation show. “What are you doing?”
“Copying lines!” Wei Ying lies, beaming. “Wanna see?”
“No.”
Whining, Wei Ying wriggles out from behind his desk and perches instead beside Lan Wangji’s, dropping all pretense of being an obedient disciple. “Aiyah, Lan Zhan, aren’t you the least bit curious?”
“I am not,” Lan Wangji says, despite how he is quite literally always incredibly, tragically curious about the goings on beneath Wei Ying’s robes.
Very clearly unperturbed by Lan Wangji’s feigned disinterest, Wei Ying shuffles closer on his knees. Lan Wangji clears his throat, and with it, the untoward imagery flashing through his mind. Wei Ying’s sly smile widens, skews slightly to an angle that flashes white teeth, stealing Lan Wangji’s breath even before he parts his robe and reaches inside—
—and pulls out a wide-eyed, twitching rabbit.
“Here.” Wei Ying thrusts the rabbit in Lan Wangji’s direction, eyes glittering without a hint of mischief; it’s strange, how open and vulnerable he appears with such a small, fine-boned creature in his crafty, callused hands.
Tentatively, Lan Wangji takes the rabbit. Its shoulders shift, rub together as he adjusts his grip. For a terrible moment, he’s flooded with what would happen if he exerted even a fraction of the grip strength he’s worked so hard to cultivate—but just for a moment, because Wei Ying’s fingers linger on the back of his hand, and Lan Wangji can think of nothing but those precious points of contact.
“You like rabbits, right?” Wei Ying asks. He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Stroke behind its ears, like this—” he reaches over and draws Lan Wangji’s free hand down to pet the hollow of fur directly behind the rabbit’s long, wide ears “—see how soft it is?”
“Mn,” Lan Wangji says, heart caught in his throat. Wei Ying is touching him. Wei Ying is touching him and guiding him through these fine, delicate motions, and he’s not stopping. A desperate array of panicked logic smothers the multitude of feelings Lan Wangji has about this, and without thought he finds himself saying, “No pets in Cloud Recesses.”
“But if you keep it just outside the back hills?” Wei Ying says, brilliantly reasonable. “Surely that would be fine?”
Lan Wangji grunts, and though he doesn’t necessarily mean it as agreement, Wei Ying seems to take it that way. Despite himself, Lan Wangji doesn’t rebuff him.
The grin that spreads across Wei Ying’s face as he strokes the rabbit’s flank makes everything worthwhile.
— — —
The gentle peace doesn’t last long. It never can, where Wei Ying is involved.
Of course, for all that Wei Ying finds fun in making trouble, he is not unreasonable. He has a strong sense of justice, a desire to do what’s right.
So when he fights with Jin Zixuan, Lan Wangji knows he must have had a good reason.
Still. There must be consequences.
— — —
Wei Ying is trouble. He always has been, from the moment he climbed the walls of Cloud Recesses and tumbled into Lan Wangji’s life.
He questions the rules and breaks them when he cannot see their use. He plays pranks, and drinks, and fights, but he loves fiercely, more strongly than Lan Wangji has ever known. Uncle expected Lan Wangji to guide Wei Ying down the correct path, but instead, Lan Wangji found himself lost. What ‘correct path’?
He asks Xichen, but receives a profoundly unhelpful monologue on ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ being irrelevant in the judgment of others; to him, one must know their intentions deep inside.
What matters, in the end—intent or action? And where does intent and desire overlap? Lan Wangji doesn’t know if it is the man or the body that decides; he doesn’t know what qualifies as intent; he doesn’t know if these terrible fantasies that plague him have meaning.
His body responds to these fantasies; he takes perverse pleasure in them; does this not make him as monstrous as his father?
— — —
Wei Ying is expelled.
He leaves without saying goodbye.
— — —
There are other, more troubling aspects to Xichen’s musings, of course. Lan Wangji has lived his whole life abiding by the Lan precepts, listening and obeying and doing everything in his power to adhere to his ancestors’ advice, and all that he’s learned tells him in no uncertain terms that the desires he plays host to are despicable things. To question the bedrock of his discipline would be to question the true nature of his desire, and Lan Wangji cannot do that. Cannot risk losing himself to these fantasies that threaten to consume him, that would ultimately impact more than just him.
He knows better than to act; he knows what happens when desire rules the man.
— — —
He remembers little of his mother. A kind face, with round, peach blossom eyes and thin, rosy lips. In his memory, she’s tall and sinewy, but he was a small child; in all likelihood, she was not a tall woman.
Gossip is forbidden, but impossible to avoid.
It is not often that people speak of his parents, but when they do, he hears more than what is said on the surface. There are questions—doubts—about his mother’s seclusion, about his father’s love for her. They wonder about the man who left his brother to raise his sons.
Lan Wangji gives little credence to what they have to say, except… well, he was there, wasn’t he? Even as a child, he saw, and he remembered.
He knows, deep down, that there is a seed of truth to what they say.
— — —
A rabbit quivers in Lan Wangji’s lap.
It’s a curious thing, the tentative trust these creatures display when Lan Wangji visits. They act against their instinct, and knowing that Lan Wangji brings good things—a small assortment of snacks, mostly; most of the rabbits are still on the fence about touching—they allow him to approach. Carefully, Lan Wangji sits at the edge of the clearing, arranging his robes around him. Lately, he’s found himself visiting the rabbits increasingly often, losing himself in the small, gentle creatures Wei Ying gifted him.
After some time, a rabbit approaches. It sniffs Lan Wangji’s robes, long ears held behind its head, before giving the silk cloth a tentative nibble. Lan Wangji holds his breath.
The rabbit drops his robe. Thumps a leg. Sniffs its way up Lan Wangji’s thigh before digging furiously at the long drape of his sleeve.
Amused, Lan Wangji pulls his qiankun pouch from his sleeve. The rabbit freezes, eyes wide, nose twitching—but the moment Lan Wangji pulls a carrot from his pouch, the rabbit pushes forward, scrabbling into his lap, and takes a determined bite out of the carrot.
Slowly, Lan Wangji outstretches his hand, stroking down the rabbit’s back. Its fur is soft, pleasant beneath his palm; beneath it is the quivering energy of the creature beneath. Even as it munches its way through the carrot, it remains in motion, high-strung and prepared to flee at any moment.
Rabbit in hand, Lan Wangji finds himself gentling. His hands, so big and rough, float easily across the rabbit’s silken fur. Like this, he forgets the calluses from Bichen’s hilt and Wangji’s strings, and sees instead how his fingers cradle a calligraphy brush as it dances across a page; as he touches the rabbits that Wei Ying gave him, he finds that the overwhelming heat that Wei Ying induces within him does not preclude his capacity for tender care.
Even as his hands map out the fragile bones of the vulnerable creature beneath him, they remain steady, made careful with all those years of training in the impossible art of self control.
The rabbit nuzzles Lan Wangji’s thigh, burrows into his robes in search of more treats, and Lan Wangji can’t fight the way his face softens. He strokes the softest patch of fur behind its ears and murmurs his condolences for being unable to indulge it further: “Your health is paramount,” he whispers, “Surely you understand.”
The rabbit, being a rabbit, understands nothing of the sort. It digs at the silk of his robes before thumping a leg and leaping back into the soft green grass of the clearing. Something about the rabbit’s haughty indignance reminds him of the day Wei Ying showed him this most spectacular secret, and he smiles as he recalls the way Wei Ying had held a rabbit beneath its forelegs and rubbed his nose against the furry creature’s. Lan Wangji realizes that even if Xichen is wrong—even if the rules are as ironclad as they’ve always been—that there exists no rule that condemns him to a life of cold cruelty.
So long after Wei Ying’s abrupt departure, the rabbits remain, and with them, the reminder that Lan Wangji can stoke the flames building steadily inside him without setting himself, the rabbits, or Wei Ying aflame.
With time, perhaps Lan Wangji can find a way to want Wei Ying without hurting him, entrapping him.
Time.
That’s what it all comes back to, in the end.
All that’s left is to grow into the years awaiting him.