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The river water is cold and dust-swirled. He splashes some on his face, then cups his hands to drink.
In the water, his face looks wrong. "It's just the ripples," he mutters to himself, like he always does when this happens. "Makes your jaw longer, makes your cheeks narrower." Then he sees the mole under the left eye and remembers that this time it really isn't his face.
Well. It's still the only face he'll ever have. But then, he thought that about the old one, too! Who knows what could happen.
Cheered by the thought, he coaxes Little Apple away from its river-grasses and back onto the road to continue on.
-
He draws back the bow-string. Halfway to his ear, his arm shudders to a stop. Mo Xuanyu probably never did need to use the muscles between his shoulderblades, did he?
The undead wildcat leaps at Wei Wuxian. He smacks it with the bow. The cat is knocked back a little. At least Mo Xuanyu had the upper arm muscles for downward slashes. Hey, maybe he did used to break his awful cousin's stuff after all. Just for the catharsis or something.
As the wildcat lunges again, Wei Wuxian grabs an arrow from his stolen quiver and stabs it into the cat's eye. A bright and shining chord from Wangji slices the cat in half at the hip. It still hisses.
Wei Wuxian never really found wildcats scary. Maybe Mo Xuanyu did? Maybe that's where the scar on his thumb came from? A bite from some kind of housecat or wildcat? A second chord decapitates the cat. Wei Wuxian is still gripping the arrow embedded in the eye socket. The cat's severed head slowly slides down the arrow before hitting the ground with a dull and wet sound. Maybe Wei Wuxian should have a mortal terror of wildcats. Ah, well, whatever.
He drops the arrow onto the corpse. He can steal more arrows later. Hey, how long has Lan Zhan been standing there staring at him?
-
It's well after the middle of the night. Wei Wuxian is, as usual, immobilized in an awkward position squarely on top of Lan Wangji. As usual, he is staring blankly at the space to the left of Lan Wangji's head and thinking unpleasant thoughts.
The dick currently attached to him probably hasn't ever been inside Jin Guangyao's mouth. Although it's entirely possible that it has. And Wei Wuxian probably wouldn't ever know or find out. But it probably hasn't.
Maybe they had a secret affair in the secluded pavilions of Golden Carp Tower by moonlight. Maybe the scar on his thumb is from Jin Guangyao's teeth. If he could move his shoulders, they'd be tensed.
Wei Wuxian briefly wonders if Mo Xuanyu ever had sex with Lan Wangji. No, definitely not.
-
As Wei Wuxian pours a suitable amount of chili oil into the congee, he wonders if he should feel grateful.
Spending time with the juniors is…not unpleasant. Telling these idiotic children how to die less quickly feels constructive, in a way he hasn't really felt constructive since the Burial Mounds. Like planting radishes, it's something that'll improve the future.
Maybe something good did actually come of him showing his face.
Of course, if it had been Wei Wuxian's face, Jin Ling and his dog would've killed him a long time ago. No, that's ridiculous. Jiang Cheng would've done it first.
Suddenly, someone moves next to Wei Wuxian. Lan Sizhui, with a lid for the congee pot. Startled, he flinches a step back—on his left foot. Dammit.
He pivots to catch himself on the table with both hands, but the expected spasm never comes. There is no awful clenching along the palm-length scar at the left of his abdomen. There is no scar at the left of his abdomen. He's just standing, facing the tabletop, both hands held tense above the table.
Lan Sizhui thinks better of whatever he was going to say.
-
Lan Wangji is asleep. Wei Wuxian is awake, not immobilized, and still tipsy enough to do something stupid. He's perched on a cushion with no line of sight to Lan Wangji's bed. He has the rouge that he'd intended to use as a gift, and lipstick paper he had halfheartedly tried to justify as being for the same purpose, and the hotel room's provided hand mirror.
He dips two fingers into the rouge and smears it smoothly onto his cheeks. If these hands were Wei Wuxian's, they'd be shaking, but Mo Xuanyu's hands know how to blur the rouge. Wei Wuxian used less rouge than Mo Xuanyu would've. The paste feels thick and cold on his cheeks.
He stares into the mirror.
Without the white foundation, Mo Xuanyu doesn't look quite so much like a ghost. The warm blush on his cheeks and the delicate red on his lips make him look a little less…real. A little more like a princess from a children's story. Somehow, irrationally, the face in the mirror looks a bit less like a stranger.