Work Text:
Wei Wuxian, being an inventor himself, was familiar with how unpredictable the results of an experiment could be. You could theorize all you wanted, and a lot of the time you might even get things right, but it was the times you didn't that had the potential to fuck you over. And the golden core transfer, as successful as it had turned out, had very much been an experiment, with all of the uncertainty that implied. Wen Qing had given it a 50% chance of working; she hadn't said anything about more... esoteric side effects.
Wei Wuxian had expected to be an average person again, with all of the related aches and pains and hunger and chill and weakness. He hadn't expected to find himself tongue tied the moment he tried to lie to Jiang Cheng. He'd lied to Jiang Cheng as easy as breathing a few months ago, convincing him that he'd remembered the location of Baoshan Sanren's mountain and that she could help Jiang Cheng get his golden core back. But since they'd been reunited, he hadn't tried to lie to Jiang Cheng until now. Not directly, anyway. He'd done everything he could to keep from telling the truth--giving misleading, technically true answers or distracting his shidi with questions of his own--but he hadn't directly lied.
And then he tried to say "I'll explain my situation in detail later, when we have time," and he couldn't bring himself to actually shape the words. Because he had no intention of elaborating later. In fact, he intended to do everything he could to avoid explaining to Jiang Cheng what had become of him in the three months they'd been separated or what had led to the separation in the first place. Wei Wuxian just wanted to head off the questions for now, especially with Lan Wangji present. But the fact that he couldn't say it... The only things that had changed were his golden core and his cultivation.
Jiang Cheng frowned. "You look ill," he said. "Have you been eating?"
"I'm a little hungry," Wei Wuxian said, because he couldn't say I'm fine, and because hunger was honestly one of the least alarming of his issues that he could have mentioned.
He could only hold onto the desperate hope that this connection, this inability to lie, didn't go both ways, that Jiang Cheng would remain blissfully unaware of it. That his shidi wouldn't try to ask any questions that Wei Wuxian couldn't talk his way around answering truthfully. If he did... Wei Wuxian was half dead already, barely holding himself together at the seams, and he didn't want to take Jiang Cheng with him when he inevitably fell apart.