Chapter Text
“Tell me no,” Lan Wangji says, his hand wrapped delicately around Wei Ying’s throat. His mouth is so close to Wei Ying’s ear that he can feel his lips brushing flushed skin. “If you want me to stop, tell me no.”
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying groans, and then whines, “this is--”
He tightens the grip on Wei Ying’s throat, just enough to be a threat, and it sends a bolt of heat down to his groin. His fingertips sit right over his pulse points, fluttering and quick like bird wings. Their bodies are so close that he can feel Wei Ying’s unnatural coldness, the chill in him that had been there since his three month absence during Sunshot, and he aches with wanting to warm him. He’d stop if Wei Ying said no, but he hopes that he won’t.
He tells himself that this is all for Wei Ying.
“You can’t just show up here and do this,” Wei Ying says, hands settling on Lan Wangji’s chest as if to push him away. But he doesn’t.
“Then tell me no.” Lan Wangji searches his face. Wei Ying doesn’t say anything at all, but the apples of his cheeks are pink without the aid of alcohol for the first time in many, many months. Lan Wangji crashes their mouths together.
When Lan Wangji returned to the Cloud Recesses from his first visit to where Wei Ying was carving a home out of the Burial Mounds, he knew he had to do something. He knelt through his punishment stoic as ever, the ache in his chest swallowing the pain in his knees and arms so that when he was dismissed, he was surprised by how much time he had lost there in the snow. He found that the punishment had only steeled his resolve: if Wei Ying wouldn’t let him try music, he would find something else.
Wei Ying was doing the right thing, and he deserved support.
He began to spend all of his spare time in the Library Pavilion, and was grateful that it wasn’t unusual enough to warrant comment from his brother or uncle. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for at first. Wei Ying’s use of resentful energy was unprecedented, so there wasn’t exactly a reference manual.
He started with Wei Ying’s symptoms. He was quicker to anger, of course; that had been one of the first things he had noticed with Wei Ying’s return. That only got worse as other symptoms started to appear: dark circles under both eyes that never went away, sunken cheeks, skin going pale and grey and cold, irises glowing red, wounds that took longer to heal than they should. He was losing weight as if he were being eaten from the inside, but that could have just as easily been from the state of near starvation everyone in the Burial Mounds was in, if he wasn’t using his core to help sustain himself. He looked like he had one foot in a coffin already, just a ghost of the boy Lan Wangji knew.
Yet he was still so beautiful. A full moon in a stormy sky.
There had been another shift in Wei Ying, but Lan Wangji couldn’t be sure of its provenance. Where Wei Ying had been frustratingly, maddeningly physically affectionate before, he had begun to jerk away from it. There were some notable exceptions: his shijie, Lan Wangji himself--so long as he didn’t attempt to check the state of his spiritual energy. Yet even those touches were brief, fleeting, where Wei Ying had always lingered. Only with a-Yuan did he relax into the contact, pulling the boy into his lap to talk or up on his hip as they examined the radish patches.
Lan Wangji hadn’t been comfortable with casual touch from anyone other than his brother before Wei Ying had burst into his life, an explosion of color and warmth and insistent physicality. He missed it now, the weight of Wei Ying hanging off his shoulder and speaking low into his ear as if they were co-conspirators. The heat of Wei Ying’s palm settling on his elbow, his forearm, his wrist, asking for attention. The press of Wei Ying’s thigh when he sat too close. The tug of his fingers on a sleeve, or a ribbon.
Lan Wangji hadn’t been looking for it, but now it was excruciating to be without it.
Eventually, he started to find descriptions of similar symptoms in other cultivators. The curses were easily dismissed from the pool of possibilities. It would be nice if it were as simple as breaking a curse to help Wei Ying, but Lan Wangji knew this was no curse. Then he stumbled upon records of cultivators who had been overwhelmed with resentful energy, few and far between but one led to the next and then the next. Their symptoms were much the same, although they varied in severity and length of onset. It seemed most of these cultivators were those with underdeveloped or damaged cores, which left them vulnerable to what seemed to be a kind of invasion, a parasitic relationship in which the resentful energy slowly drained their bodies of life.
Many of these scattered accounts ended in death, but Lan Wangji comforted himself with the knowledge that Wei Ying was one of the strongest cultivators of their generation.
Weeks passed. Lan Wangji drove himself sleepless, spending every spare moment in the Library Pavilion and secreting texts away to the jingshi when he had to return for curfew. As time passed steadily on, as he refused nighthunt after nighthunt to stay home and read, as his face got more pinched and tight, his brother started to visit him among the stacks of books.
“Wangji,” he would say, in his soft way. “You are looking for something specific.” He meant, I’m worried about you . He meant, Tell me how I can help.
“Mn,” Lan Wangji would reply, and his brother would set a hand on his shoulder and they wouldn’t say anything else for a while. Xichen wouldn’t push him to speak something he was not yet ready to speak. This was one of the things Lan Wangji loved about his brother.
Once he stumbled upon what he thought could be the answer, he nearly did go to Xichen with it. He felt strangely fluttery in his abdomen, paralyzed by the implications and breathing hard.
Dual cultivation.
The theory was sound. Though normally dual cultivation implied a mutual exchange of spiritual energy, a strong cultivator could flood a partner instead, and in a handful of cases, this method had successfully driven excess resentful energy from the receiving partner. It seemed obvious now that he had encountered it.
But obvious was not the same as easy. Knowing that dual cultivation was a viable option and understanding the theory of how it worked was not the same thing as knowing how to do it. Fortunately, Lan Wangji thought, this was a much more straightforward research path.
Twenty minutes later, he was walking as quickly as he could back to the jingshi with a book from the forbidden section clutched to his chest, his face flushed and his lower belly burning. When he was safely in his own space, he set the book on the low table he sat behind with careful respect, closed his eyes, and tried to steady his breathing. This was research, nothing more. Research into a legitimate form of cultivation that had been written about even by his earliest ancestors. It was no different than meditation or sword practice.
Lying might have been forbidden in the Cloud Recesses, but that didn’t stop Lan Wangji from trying to convince himself that these things were true.
He opened the book in front of him with a willfully steady hand to the third page, where he had stopped to flee from the Library Pavilion. The text was written like any medical text discussing the healing arts, with clear, precise descriptions of anatomy and behavior and the resulting effect on one’s qi. There was nothing scandalous or indecent about it, yet the heat returned to Lan Wangji’s belly as he read, a steadily growing fire inside of him and a gnawing in his chest for something to ease the fire.
An image of Wei Ying came to him unbidden. Wei Ying flat on his back, knees held near his ears with messy hair and sweat beading on his forehead, eyes rolled back in his head, his mouth dropped open, red and wet.
Lan Wangji felt like his robes could crumble to ash from the inferno under his skin. He pushed the heel of his palm against the front of his robes and groaned into the silent jingshi when it came into contact with his growing erection. He looked at a diagram in the text of a couple locked together at mouth and hip, and imagined he and Wei Ying there instead. He rocked his own hips up into his hand experimentally, gasping a little at the pressure. He thought of Wei Ying on his knees, looking up at him with that teasing smirk of his, and pulled his belt off, fingers stumbling over the ties of his robes, clumsy and trembling. He thought of Wei Ying bent over a desk in the Library Pavillion with bound hands, and he dragged his fingernails over the trail of dark hair leading to his groin until his fingertips dipped beneath his trousers. When he took himself in hand, he couldn’t think anything except Wei Ying, Wei Ying, Wei Ying.
He decided he needed to return to Yiling as soon as possible while his spend was still hot on his fingers. He had a plan.
Since no permission would be granted if he asked and he had no wish to inform anyone of his plans, preparations to leave the next day went quickly. He waited until after curfew to depart so that he wouldn’t have to lie to anyone about where he was going, and he thought it might be best to arrive in the Burial Mounds after the Wens would likely be asleep. The night was crisp and clear; he hadn’t noticed the seasons changing but he could feel the beginnings of autumn in the air, hear the rustling of leaves beginning to turn and dry on the branch.
The flight on his sword felt agonizingly slow. His stomach churned with sour anxiety, with lingering doubt, and he had too much time to think as he flew, low clouds eddying around his passage in dizzy circles.
Wei Ying might say no, he knew that. Wei Ying would in all likelihood say no. He told himself he was prepared for it, that it didn’t matter if Wei Ying, for instance, turned away from him in disgust, because he was losing Wei Ying anyway. If this is what tipped them over the edge into a final goodbye, at least he wouldn’t have to wonder at Wei Ying’s feelings for him anymore, and he would know that he had tried to help.
Another thought itched at him, too, though, right between his shoulder blades where he couldn’t quite reach it. A hazy fantasy, barely more than a suggestion of a fantasy, that had haunted his thoughts of Wei Ying from that first night on the rooftops of the Cloud Recesses, Bichen in hand as they chased each other in the moonlight: Wei Ying protesting around Lan Wangji’s fingers in his mouth with a pretty blush across the bridge of his nose, Wei Ying insisting that they shouldn’t but leaning into the touch all the same, Wei Ying saying, “Make me.”
Lan Wangji shivered as he landed just outside the Burial Mounds. He had heard rumors of other cultivators trying to enter and being turned away by the wards, but the wards didn’t stop him. He let himself wonder if Wei Ying had made him an exception, or if the rumor was just unfounded. He suspected regardless that Wei Ying was probably alerted the second anyone crossed the wards, whether they were allowed entry or not.
His suspicions turned out to be true; about halfway up the winding path leading to where the Wens made their home, Wei Ying was leaning against a tree with Chenqing tucked into an elbow of his folded arms. He raised an eyebrow as Lan Wangji approached. “Lan Zhan! Out for another night hunt?” he said with a laugh, and it was almost a real laugh, so close a facsimile that it would have fooled most. “This isn’t the safest place for a lone cultivator at night.” His eyes glinted red in the low light, dramatic shadows cutting across his face.
He was beautiful like this. He probably thought he was intimidating, or scary, and he did cut an intimidating figure. But that only made Lan Wangji want him more. “I’m not alone. You’re here.”
Something cracked through the tough facade Wei Ying was trying to project, a hint of insecurity and longing that was there and then gone in a flash. His shoulders dropped out of their defensive posture a little, though. “I guess you may as well come up then. If you want to, I mean.”
“Mn.”
They didn’t speak as they walked, Lan Wangji half a pace behind Wei Ying, letting him take the lead. Wei Ying seemed to be listening to something, his head tilting and his eyes constantly searching the sparse forest around them. There were sounds in the night: scuttling in the underbrush that could be small mammals, scattered cawing of crows, wind through dry, dead branches. More than once, Wei Ying stopped to raise his dizi to his lips and play a few melancholy notes before listening attentively, and then, satisfied, moving on.
The settlement was quiet when they got there. They had managed to do more construction and plant several new patches of vegetables since the last time Lan Wangji had been here, and the green was shocking against the endless grey even in the dark. Red lanterns fluttered against stone where they had been hung, only two of them lit on either side of the entrance to Wei Ying’s Demon Subdue Palace.
With a flick of his wrist, Wei Ying lit a couple of candles on the low piece of rock he was using as a table and sprawled down next to it, gesturing to the other side for Lan Wangji. He poured water into two mismatched, chipped bowls from an old kettle and slid one across. “Sorry I can’t offer you more. We don’t have many guests.”
“You don’t need to treat me like a guest, Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said. “But thank you.”
The cave was much the same as it had been last time, talismans scattered on surfaces and the floor, strung up between rocks. There were piles of papers and broken ink sticks, and on the stone walls, Wei Ying had hung drawings that Lan Wangji recognized as those being sold in town as portraits of the Yiling Laozu. In this area, where Wei Ying made his private quarters, old straw on a smooth rock made for a rudimentary bed on which there was only one thin blanket.
Wei Ying studied him, and Lan Wangji let him, keeping his eyes on the water he was holding. “Why are you here?” Wei Ying said, finally. It was hard, cold, missing the natural sunshine Wei Ying had always seemed to carry inside of him before the war, the teasing warmth that Lan Wangji hadn’t noticed was there until it wasn’t.
“To see you.” His hands were trembling on his cup, so he carefully set it down and folded them in his lap. He swallowed hard and met Wei Ying’s eyes. “I will not ask you to stop your method of cultivation again, nor will I ask you about your sword or lecture you.”
Wei Ying arched an eyebrow. “But?” he said, voice dripping with acid.
Lan Wangji felt himself flinch and shook his head. “Not but. And.”
Wei Ying looked away with a scoff. “So you are still trying to cure me.”
“No,” Lan Wangji said firmly. “I want to help. You said you would let me.”
He watched as Wei Ying popped up to his feet, a dizzy sway at the top he tried to pass off as stretching, and then walked to the cave entrance, leaning against the rough stone. Lan Wangji gave him a moment before standing to join him, his hands clasped behind his back, Bichen balanced against the cave wall behind them.
“I did research. I believe there is a way to make your methods more sustainable in the long term.”
That startled Wei Ying into looking at him again. “How could you possibly know that? I’m the only person who has ever done this, remember? Unless the Lan have been hiding a tradition of demonic cultivation I don’t know about.”
“It required some logical leaps, but I think the theory is sound. I would like to explain, if you will hear it.”
“Am I dreaming? Is this a dream? I’m finding it very hard to believe that the righteous Hanguang-jun wants to help me get better at demonic cultivation.”
Lan Wangji looked down and considered for a moment before he said, “If I were as righteous as anyone says I am, I would have come with you that night at Qiongqi Path. Or before, when you left Jinlintai.”
Why not just let the truth spill out? What did he have to lose? If he couldn’t convince Wei Ying to let him do this, he was going to lose Wei Ying anyway. If he met with Wei Ying’s rejection now, at least he would know that he tried.
Wei Ying blinked like an owl at him, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. “What? That’s not--I mean, you’re--.” He stopped and searched Lan Wangji’s face, his eyebrows furrowing. “You really mean that, don’t you?”
“Lying is forbidden--.”
“In the Cloud Recesses. I know,” Wei Ying finished. He rubbed his nose with his finger and looked out over the Burial Mounds in front of them. “Ok. Ok, sure, let’s hear it.”
“I found accounts in several old record books of cultivators who were experiencing the effects of an excess of resentful energy in the body,” he explained. He needed to be careful how he sold it, or it would send Wei Ying bolting away again. He had intended to practice in his head on his way here, but he’d been distracted. “After a certain threshold, it seems resentful energy starts feeding on the cultivator, like a parasite and its host. It causes…” He looked at Wei Ying to gauge his reaction. “It causes insomnia, nightmares, stomach pain, and nose bleeds, among other things.”
Wei Ying’s face was somber and attentive. “That much I have figured out from experience,” he quipped, but the teasing didn’t quite make it into his voice.
“Mn. But under that threshold, there have been cultivators who were able to maintain control over some amount of resentful energy in the body while mitigating or eliminating symptoms and extending their lives.”
“There are actual records of this in the Lan library?” Wei Ying asked.
“Mn. They seem to be records of cultivators who suffered an injury to their core that resulted in resentful energy entering their dantians.” He tried to keep his suspicions out of his voice, but Wei Ying looked at him sharply at that. He could look all he liked; something was wrong. If he wouldn’t tell him, that was fine, but he wasn’t going to pretend that there wasn’t something going on. “That means they had to develop a method of maintaining a certain level of resentful energy over time that did not involve using their own spiritual energy, because any reduction in power would simply allow the resentment to grow.”
Wei Ying’s gaze was turned inward, like he was doing calculations in his head. “So theoretically, if I could find the method they used and make it work, I could figure out my body’s threshold, and then still use the resentful energy without the negative side effects. Or at least, less of the negative side effects.”
“Yes. It would make your method of cultivation both more sustainable and more effective. Theoretically.”
A slow grin spread across Wei Ying’s face, a grin so much like the ones he’d so easily worn before that Lan Wangji’s eyes started to prick with tears. He blinked them away. “Lan Zhan! Lan Zhan, do you know what this means?” Wei Ying yelled, and then grabbed him by the shoulders to shake him a little. “If they figured it out, I certainly can! You have to tell me everything you found so that I can reconstruct what it is they did.” He turned back into his cave all in a rush and started to pull out writing supplies absent-mindedly, muttering to himself.
“Wei Ying, I know the method they used.”
He stopped short, and then made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, like both were trying to exit his mouth at the same time. “Alright, I’m good, I got this. Just--hold on.” He clumsily ground some ink, tipping water from his drinking bowl onto the ink stone, dug through a pile of papers for a brush that wasn’t crushed, and then opened what appeared to be a journal of some kind. He looked up expectantly after he arranged himself.
“There needs to be a strong, fast stream of spiritual energy pushed through the meridians to expel some of the resentful energy without making more room for it in the dantians. From another person.”
Wei Ying accidentally swiped a line of ink against his cheek with his brush as he made notes, and then annotations to his notes. “That makes sense. But I wonder how they did it without exhausting the other person. That much directed power moving fast would be difficult for even a cultivator of your caliber, Hanguang-jun.”
Lan Wangji had almost forgotten what it had been like to witness Wei Ying’s brain working before the war, the way his eyes lit up when he felt he had figured something out. The way he talked to himself around the end of his brush as he chewed on it. The quick connections between ideas like small fish darting in a river, too fast to hang on to.
“There was only one way they discovered,” Lan Wangji said. Then he stopped. His stomach flipped and his mouth was suddenly dry.
“Don’t keep me in suspense, Lan-er-gongzi!” he said, and he sounded like he could almost be happy.
Lan Wangji’s ears burned. He cleared his throat. “Dual cultivation. Of a kind.”
Wei Ying froze for a beat, for two beats, for three, and then he started laughing. He clutched at his stomach. Embarrassment curled up tight around Lan Wangji’s lungs. Something must have appeared on his face, because Wei Ying’s laughter died down quickly. “Oh,” he gulped. “Oh you aren’t kidding at all, are you?”
“No.”
With a snort, Wei Ying said, “Well, I guess I’m out of luck after all. Who would I even find that I could do something like that with?”
Lan Wangji bit the inside of his cheek to school his face to neutral, and he didn’t say anything. He wanted to. But what was there to say? Clearly, Wei Ying did not consider him a potential partner for this. It felt like a knife twisting between his ribs, but he refused to make Wei Ying feel badly because of his own selfish desires.
Wei Ying tipped his head back to look up at him and his eyes grew wide. “You meant--” he choked. “When you said you want to help.”
Despite the rumors to the contrary, Lan Wangji was not actually made of jade, but right now, he sort of wished that he was.
Standing, Wei Ying said, “Lan Zhan, you can’t.”
He’d broken a rib once, and the thing that cracked in him now felt similarly. “Why not?” he demanded, more heated and raw than he’d meant to. He stepped towards Wei Ying.
“Because!” Wei Ying shot back. “Because I’m me and you’re you!”
Lan Wangji clenched his jaw and looked into the middle distance, straightening his back. He should have known; he knew how people saw him. He was too frigid, too cold, boring and unmoving and strict. Wei Ying was quick and warm and rambunctious. Fire and ice. Water and a stone. Even Wei Ying couldn’t see how much he’d softened Lan Wangji.
“I apologize if I have offended,” he said stiffly, and put his arms up to drop into a formal bow. If he could do nothing else, he would at least make his exit with dignity.
Wei Ying tripped over himself to get to him fast enough to straighten him, wrapping his hands around Lan Wangji’s wrists. “That’s not what I meant. Shit, Lan Zhan, I’m messing this whole thing up.” He didn’t let go. “You’re good, Lan Zhan, you know? You’re so good. Please, will you look at me?” he said. When Lan Wangji looked at him, his face was pained. Not disgusted or angry, but something more like afraid. “You can’t.”
“I can.”
“I didn’t think you--I mean, you don’t even like it when people touch you.” He sounded strained and knocked off-kilter.
“Wei Ying.” Lan Wangji looks down at where Wei Ying’s hands are still on him. “ You touch me all the time.”
“Aiya, that’s different,” Wei Ying said dismissively, then, realizing, “Oh. That’s--.” He shook his head, his brows furrowed. “You just can’t, ok?”
Lan Wangji tried to tamp down his frustration, and his own fear and insecurity, and think rationally about Wei Ying’s response. It was hard when Wei Ying was still touching him, and it didn’t help when Wei Ying moved one of his hands up to the side of Lan Wangji’s face, a more intimate gesture than they normally shared. Desperation, hot and heavy, clawed at his insides, and he grabbed Wei Ying’s hand to keep it in place, crowded into Wei Ying’s space until they were both backing up nearly against the wall of the cave and slipped his other hand behind Wei Ying’s neck. Their faces were just inches apart, staring at each other. Trying to take the measure of each other.
Wei Ying never took anything from anyone that wasn’t pushed into his hands by force of will, Lan Wangji realized. Even for all his pouting and attention-seeking with his sister, he would take no more than she insistently gave, and Lan Wangji had watched him grit his teeth against his own needs to tell her he was fine.
“Who is going to stop me? Are you going to stop me, Wei Ying?” He brushed a hand over Wei Ying’s throat, and then rested it there. “Tell me no.”
The kiss is hard at first, bruising. But then Wei Ying’s back hits the cave wall hard enough to knock the breath out of him, and when his lips part, Lan Wangji dips his tongue into that inviting heat by instinct. Wei Ying opens for him and moans into his mouth, and the feeling of it sends heat down his spine.
“I don’t need your pity, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying asserts between a gasp and a groan when Lan Wangji moves his mouth down to his throat, and the sting of it is undermined by the noises he makes.
“I do not pity you,” Lan Wangji says into the soft skin just under Wei Ying’s ear, behind his jaw, and feels him shiver. He wants to make Wei Ying shiver again, wants to find every place on his body that makes his breath hitch.
“I don’t need any charity from you, either.”
“What about this looks like charity?”
“And you would sully yourself for me?” Wei Ying says, and Lan Wangji hears the truth of it, that Wei Ying doesn’t think himself his equal anymore. He’s wrong.
“It is not lowering myself to be here with you,” Lan Wangji says. He bites a tender spot on Wei Ying’s neck hard, sucks at it when Wei Ying cries out and his hips jolt forward. The evidence of his arousal presses against Lan Wangji’s thigh, and they both freeze.
They stare at each other with wide eyes. Wei Ying’s eyes are dark, flecks of honey in them from the warm glow of the candles. They pant into each other’s mouths. Wei Ying’s cheeks are flushed, his lips red and swollen. There is a dark mark where Lan Wangji bit him. Wei Ying worries his bottom lip between his teeth.
“Have you ever--Lan Zhan, have you ever done this before?” Wei Ying asks. His insecurities are so close to the surface that Lan Wangji could almost touch the places they manifest in his expression, in his tense muscles. He slides a hand down to splay over Wei Ying’s lower back, the other cupping his skull to keep him from hitting his head on the rock behind him.
“No,” Lan Wangji says, and is surprised by how gruff he sounds. He clears his throat a little. “But I believe I have done ample research.”
Wei Ying laughs, but he is not being cruel. It’s soft, maybe shy as he looks away, a little self-disparaging. “Well that’s good because I’ve never done this either.” He looks up through his eye lashes. Swallows hard. Something complicated passes over his face. “I don’t want you to regret that it’s for this. For your first time. That it’s here. That it’s me.”
“I won’t,” he says, into the dip above Wei Ying’s collar bone so that his face can’t give anything more away. He doesn’t want Wei Ying to be overwhelmed with his feelings. This is about helping Wei Ying, keeping him from losing himself, not about Lan Wangji’s more romantic notions.
“You deserve better than a dirty cave on a mountain of corpses.” Wei Ying’s voice cracks, but he tips his head up to give Lan Wangji better access to where he is nosing along his jaw, running his lips over his throat, feather light.
Lan Wangji pulls back so he can meet Wei Ying’s eyes. “So do you,” he says solemnly. “So do they.”
Wei Ying searches his face. He doesn’t know what Wei Ying is looking for, but he fights every instinct to close himself off, and hopes that Wei Ying can see that he is trying to be open, that he’s trying to be warm, to connect. That he isn’t ice or stone, that he will be unyielding only when Wei Ying needs something to push against, to brace against, to rail against.
“I can’t make any promises, and I won’t let you make any to me,” Wei Ying finally says.
Lan Wangji squeezes his eyes shut and wills himself to keep his breathing steady. Wei Ying doesn’t need to love him for this to work. “I know.”
The look on Wei Ying’s face is soft, bittersweet, when he reaches his hand up to cup Lan Wangji’s cheek. He strokes his thumb over Lan Wangji’s cheekbone. “Zhiji,” he says on a quiet exhale. “Lan-er-gege.” Lan Wangji doesn’t bite back the sharp intake of breath fast enough, and he can feel Wei Ying’s sharp smile as he presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth. Wei Ying catches Lan Wangji’s earlobe in his teeth, nips at it, then says, “Lan-er-gege, what do you think you are going to do exactly?”
The feeling of Wei Ying’s lips dragging on his earlobes sends a bolt of pleasure into his belly. “For it to work,” he says, and gasps when Wei Ying’s hand brushes experimentally over his robes, fingers trailing right over his cock. “I have to be inside you. I have to--to release inside you.”
Wei Ying makes a sound that Lan Wangji has definitely never heard him make before, a needy sound, trembling. “There is more than one way to do that, if I remember Nie-xiong’s cutsleeve books correctly,” Wei Ying says with a breathy laugh.
Lan Wangji grabs his chin to move Wei Ying back into a kiss, open and hungry, before he says, “Your mouth. This time, your mouth.”
Nipping at his bottom lip, Wei Ying lets his hips find Lan Wangji’s thigh again and he rocks once, twice. “I think you just want to see if you can get the Yiling Laozu on his knees for you,” he pants. “I won’t let you use me to make yourself feel more powerful, Hanguang-jun.” There’s an edge to it, a dare.
A moan that is something more like a growl rips itself out of Lan Wangji’s throat and he twists Wei Ying’s long hair around his fist and tugs his head back, his fist carefully between Wei Ying’s head and the wall still. Wei Ying’s hips jerk against his leg and his eyes flutter. “Take off my belt and sash.” It is a command, not a suggestion, and Wei Ying whines in the back of his throat when it registers. Trembling fingers make their way to his waist, and Wei Ying has to search with them to find the ties and fastenings because Lan Wangji has his head tipped far enough back that he can’t look at what he is doing. Lan Wangji licks a stripe up his throat when the sashes finally drop to the ground. “Untie them,” he says, and keeps kissing and sucking and biting Wei Ying’s neck until the last tie is hanging loose and Lan Wangji’s chest is bare beneath his open robes. Wei Ying’s hands run over his chest and his stomach, over his sides to stroke his back underneath the layers, blazing a trail of lit up nerves wherever his fingers touch, making so much noise that it’s like he is the one being touched. Lan Wangji feels like a man possessed.
“I think,” he whispers into the shell of Wei Ying’s ear, “that Wei Ying wants to be good.”
Nails dig into the flesh of Lan Wangji’s back and Wei Ying makes a gasping, choking sound, somewhere between desire and the pain of being recognized, a quivering sob. His body surges forward, closer, as if he might press himself inside Lan Wangji’s chest. He seems all at once to be so fragile in Lan Wangji’s arms, a precious, breakable thing. Lan Wangji knows better, of course, knows that Wei Ying is one of the most dangerous men in the world, but that only makes it somehow sweeter that he is squirming and whining in Lan Wangji’s grip, pushing back into Lan Wangji’s hand that has slid down to massage his ass and then grinding down on Lan Wangji’s thigh. His eyes are glassy, and his pupils are huge black oceans.
“You must have forgotten all of those hours you were forced to spend in the library pavilion with me because I couldn’t be good ,” Wei Ying says, and he’s trying for teasing, for swagger, but the tremulous way it comes out falls far short.
Lan Wangji had been guessing, mostly, about what Wei Ying would need to let this happen, but he realizes, deeply satisfied, that he was right. Wei Ying wants to be good, wants to be shown he is good, wants to be made to be good. And it is perfect. Wei Ying is perfect. Lan Wangji is burning with desire.
“I think that Wei Ying wants someone to take his power away, for just a little while.” Wei Ying’s responding noise is ragged, unintelligible. “I think that you are going to behave for me, and that you will like it.”
Lan Wangji grabs one of Wei Ying’s hands and guides it down, their knuckles bumping over his abdomen, and then carefully, delicately, wraps Wei Ying’s hand around his length. His hand feels tiny there, so much smaller than Lan Wangji’s own hand and he gasps.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says. He squeezes his fist and it punches a groan from Lan Wangji. “Fuck, I just--.” He runs his fist up and down the length once with a loose grip, experimenting. Lan Wangji can feel the pre-cum that catches on Wei Ying’s palm and smears back down to the root, and he is pretty sure he has forgotten how to breathe. “You’re going to break me--.”
Not yet. Not this time.
Their mouths are both open when Lan Wangji claims Wei Ying’s mouth in another kiss. The kiss is heated, sweltering, the kind of kiss that is undeniably leading them somewhere, and Wei Ying’s hand starts to move.
“Does it feel good?” Wei Ying asks, right into Lan Wangji’s mouth.
He cannot explain how inadequate the word “good” is in this context, when he’s spent nights imagining Wei Ying’s hand doing exactly this for him. “Yes,” he says, instead of trying, and then gets his fingers in Wei Ying’s belts and robes, tugging and pushing the fabric away until he can feel Wei Ying’s cock heavy against his palm through the thin fabric of his trousers and take in the smooth, pale skin of Wei Ying’s chest.
He used to be sun-touched, golden-brown, like he spent his time in Lotus Pier lounging by the water, soaking up every sun ray he could grab. He’s been pale since his three month absence, even after spending time back in Yunmeng before now.
The Wen brand is red and angry on his pec. Lan Wangji bends enough to latch onto his skin just next to the brand, biting and sucking, leaving his own mark. Wei Ying’s knees nearly give out; only the hand still buried in his hair and his weight on Lan Wangji’s thigh keeps him up.
“Are you ready to get on your knees for me?” Lan Wangji asks and then licks a stripe from Wei Ying’s collarbone to his jaw.
Wei Ying groans, swears. “What if I said no?”
Lan Wangji locks eyes with him. “Then I will put you on your knees.”
The animal sound Wei Ying makes makes his cock twitch, makes his abs clench, and makes the hand in Wei Ying’s hair go tighter. He pulls Wei Ying to the ground with the grip in his hair, right up next to his skull, and holds their contact while he pulls himself out of his trousers and strokes himself a few times just to feel it. He fights to keep his eyes open and keep his breath steady.
He has a plan; he has to stick to the plan.
“Open your mouth,” he says, and sees a tiny spark of rebellion in Wei Ying’s gaze. He loves that part of Wei Ying, the part of him that is built to fight. How proud he is. The challenge he poses. He finds he loves the challenge especially in this context, the back and forth of their desiring bodies and their strong wills.
He moves his hand out of Wei Ying’s hair, noting the tiny bereft sound Wei Ying makes as he does, and presses on Wei Ying’s jaw to force his mouth open, and then he shoves two fingers straight into that red heat. He can feel Wei Ying’s moan vibrating through the pads of his fingers as he moves them slowly in and out. At first, Wei Ying doesn’t move; he just takes it. When he closes his lips around the intrusion and starts to suck and lick, Lan Wangji lets his other hand drift back to Wei Ying’s hair, soft and long and quickly becoming a mess.
Lan Wangji is making a mess of Wei Ying, and it’s amazing.
“That’s a good boy,” Lan Wangji says, and Wei Ying squirms on the floor, pushing the heel of his palm into his crotch to give himself some friction. Lan Wangji considers stopping him, but changes his mind. Next time, he thinks. He adds a third finger to Wei Ying’s mouth and dips them in deep enough to make him gag a little, and Wei Ying’s eyelashes flutter and his bare chest flushes deeper.
When his fingers are wet with Wei Ying’s saliva, he pulls them out and strokes himself again. Wei Ying watches him with unfocused eyes, his mouth hanging slack and his chest heaving. His hips are rocking against one of his hands. He looks beautiful. Debauched.
“You’re beautiful,” he says, because Wei Ying should know. Even if this is just hormones or desperation or problem-solving.
Wei Ying whines and tries to turn his face away, but Lan Wangji’s hand is still tight in his hair. His breath hitches at the tug. “Lan Zhan,” he says, raw and wrecked.
The first time Lan Wangji’s cock touches Wei Ying’s tongue, he doesn’t recognize the sound his own throat makes. Wei Ying’s mouth is wet and plush, a furnace, and he suckles at the tip and wraps his hand around Lan Wangji’s hand where it’s gripping the base. Lan Wangji’s cock looks huge in the stretch of Wei Ying’s jaw when he starts to bob his head, trying to take just a little more each time until he finds a rhythm, dipping down nearly to where their hands are curled together and then sucking hard on the way back up. It’s so good, too good; the feeling is overwhelming. Molten, golden pleasure spreads outward from his groin.
“You’re doing so good, being so good for me,” he says and watches it send little zaps of pleasure into his body.
He gets much too near the edge too fast, so he pulls Wei Ying’s head off by the hair, ignoring his whining, to pull himself back. He slides back in after a few deep, shuddering breaths, but he takes control this time, holding Wei Ying’s head in place and thrusting into him slow and steady. The pleasure and that sits in his belly and his core and are so near each other that it’s easy to send his spiritual energy out with it, through his meridians, and then he pushes it out. Into Wei Ying. Wei Ying quakes and moans under him, and the sounds drive Lan Wangji to fuck him faster, and then faster again when he can feel his climax rushing towards him, a wave about to break. “Wei Ying, I’m going to finish,” he chokes out. Wei Ying hums and moans around him, sloppy but enthusiastic, tears in the corners of his eyes.
Spiritual energy surges out of Lan Wangji when he comes in a bright, searing flash. It lights Wei Ying up from the inside as he swallows around Lan Wangji’s cock and rolls his hips into his palm frantically and then shakes and goes boneless.
Lan Wangji rests his forearms on the cave wall above Wei Ying as he catches his breath after, and Wei Ying rests his head on Lan Wangji’s thigh, arms tight around his leg. It takes a little bit of time for Lan Wangji to come down after. “Wei Ying,” he says, finally. “Do you want to come?”
Wei Ying’s face, which had finally returned to its normal color, flushes red again in an instant. “Ah, see, the thing is,” he says.
Lan Wangji looks down at where he’s kneeling in the dirt, surprised. “Did you--? Just from--?” There is a pretty large wet spot on Wei Ying’s trousers. He most certainly had. There is a stir in Lan Wangji’s cock at the thought.
“Lan Zhan!” Wei Ying says, looking away and ducking his head.
“It’s good,” Lan Wangji assures. “I like it. You did very well, Wei Ying.”
Once he has convinced his cock that they do not need an immediate reprise, he tucks it away and bends down to scoop Wei Ying up with an arm under his shoulders and another under his knees. Wei Ying yelps and then protests, but he puts his head on Lan Wangji’s shoulder and rests a loose hand on the side of his neck. He takes them to the stone that passes for a bed, and sits with Wei Ying cradled in his lap.
Wei Ying is shivering and clinging, but he looks much better than he did when Lan Wangji got here. His skin is pink and alive, warm to the touch even down to his fingertips, and he’s breathing deep and even. It’s not until he feels the tears damp on his neck that he realizes Wei Ying is crying.
“Wei Ying?” he says softly.
Wei Ying clings tighter and his shoulders shake a little. “It’s nothing, Lan Zhan,” he says, his voice thick and wet. “I just--It’s just I haven’t felt like this--haven’t felt alive , really, in so long--.” He cuts himself off and then starts again. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to turn into an emotional mess on you. That’s not what you signed on for,” he says with a sour laugh, as he scrubs hard at his face with one hand, sniffling, before sitting up a bit, starting to pull away from Lan Wanji. But Lan Wangji just holds his waist tighter.
“It’s ok.” Lan Wangji tucks a strand of loose hair behind Wei Ying’s ear. “The... dual cultivation, it helped?”
He nods, but this time he does pull away, just enough to sit up. “I mean, I don’t know. It feels. It was overwhelming.” He stops and looks down at himself thoughtfully. “I’m not freezing, which is nice, but I guess that could just be from, well, you know.”
Lan Wangji raises an eyebrow. “The orgasm?”
Wei Ying covers his face with both hands. “Oh my god, Lan Zhan! You can’t say shit like that with a straight face! You’re going to kill me!”
“May I check your pulse and your meridians?”
Before he can finish the question, Wei Ying has wriggled out of his grasp and is dancing away from him. “This, I think, calls for a drink!” he says, tugging his robes closed messily around himself and darting around some large piles of rocks. He emerges with a jar that he tips back to drink from, and winces as he swallows. Lan Wangji can smell it from where he sits, the sharp smell of fermented fruits he can’t quite name.
It isn’t the first time that Wei Ying has subtly and not subtly denied Lan Wangji a chance to check the flow of his spiritual energy and the health of his golden core. There’s some kind of damage. There must be, or Wei Ying wouldn’t be trying so hard to hide it.
Lan Wangji stands to begin fixing his clothing, carefully settling and retying his layers. “I have to be home by morning,” he says. He does. He should. His absence may even go completely unnoticed if he is back before people wake.
He would, he knows, stay if Wei Ying asked plainly. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself.
“Aiya, Lan Zhan, I wouldn’t have thought this of you! Steal a poor maiden’s virtue and don’t even stay to warm her bed!” He’s smiling, but it’s brittle around the edges. He’s asking. But he’s giving them both plausible deniability regardless of whether Lan Wangji does or doesn’t stay.
Instead of staying, he retrieves a jade token from the sleeve of his robe and walks towards Wei Ying to take his hand and press the token into his palm. Wei Ying looks at it with a question plain on his face, his eyebrows climbing towards his forehead. “The books recommend this kind of energy transfer once a week for the best long-term results. If this is something you desi--” He stops himself. “If this is something that will help you to protect yourself and the Wens, it is not a burden to be of assistance.” He grimaces internally at his own stiltedness. “This token will allow you to enter and exit the Cloud Recesses at your will.”
Wei Ying studies the token, turning it over in his hand, running the pad of his thumb over the clouds carved in its surface. “What? You aren’t going to do house calls for me anymore?” He smirks, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
Lan Wangji looks down. “I am not technically supposed to leave the Cloud Recesses without permission, and for this, permission would not be granted.”
Wei Ying lowers the alcohol jar from his mouth and swallows round a cough. “Lan Zhan, please don’t tell me you are going home to be punished.”
“Not if I return before morning.” He lets the corner of his lip quirk upward, as close to a smirk as he ever gets.
First, Wei Ying gapes with wide eyes, then the smile spreads over his cheeks like the sun coming out from behind a cloud and he laughs, delighted. “Such a rebel, Lan Zhan! One day I’ll make you tell me how many rules you broke tonight!”
Then Wei Ying sways on his feet and Lan Wangji has to keep him from falling. “You need to rest. Come.” Before Wei Ying can protest, Lan Wangji sets his jar of alcohol on the table and then helps him over to his bed. He strips him of his outer robe and his shoes, helps him to lie down, and tucks the meager blanket around him, sweeping hair out of his face with gentle, sure fingers. He suspects that he will find himself overwhelmed by everything he is feeling when he is home and has time to think about it, but it is easy enough to focus on Wei Ying for now. He waves his hand to put the last few candles out and sits next to Wei Ying so he can pet his hair.
He hums a song he has given Wei Ying before when he was on the precipice of falling into sleep, a song that was, after all, written for him. Wangxian . Maybe one day he would tell Wei Ying.
“Lan Zhan, why are you doing this?” Wei Ying asks. He sounds sleepy and small, fragile in a way. His eyes are staying closed a little longer each time he blinks, although he is looking at Lan Wangji every time he opens them.
There are too many answers to that question, so Lan Wangji doesn’t bother trying to answer. He hums and he runs his fingers through Wei Ying’s hair, and when Wei Ying finally closes his eyes and keeps them closed, he knows he has to leave before he can’t make himself do it. He tells himself, trying to feel confident, that Wei Ying will come. Wei Ying will seek him out. He will be allowed to do this.
When he leaves, he leaves behind a bottle of Emperor’s Smile and a money pouch. It’s not much--most certainly not enough--but it is, he thinks, what Wei Ying will accept.