Work Text:
Wei Ying has been at Cloud Recesses for three months when Lan Wangji starts to notice him getting restless. He spends his days wandering in the back hills, or running everyone else’s errands in Caiyi Town, or goading Sizhui and the other juniors into helping him test new talismans. The other night, Lan Wangji told Wei Ying about a water ghoul in a nearby village that some disciples had gone to suppress, and Wei Ying looked visibly disappointed that there was nothing there he could help with. It’s clear to Lan Wangji, even though Wei Ying has mostly been talking around it: Wei Ying needs something to do, or somewhere to go. A quest, or a journey.
One year earlier, Lan Wangji would have panicked. He did panic, that day on the mountaintop, when it became clear that Wei Ying needed time to journey without him, that they would be going their separate ways. But he held himself back, forcing himself to focus on the logic of what Wei Ying was asking for, instead of his fear that Wei Ying would disappear from his life yet again. And Wei Ying wrote often, long letters that made Lan Wangji wonder if he was spending most of his money on ink. Until one day he got a short letter, the shortest he had ever gotten from Wei Ying: I miss you more than anything in the world. Meet me on the mountaintop where we parted, in five days’ time.
And when they did—Lan Wangji has not stopped thinking about it three months later, will never stop thinking about it as long as he lives. The way it felt to have Wei Ying in his arms, pressed tightly against him, smelling of sweat and leather and his perfumed hair oil. The fervent look in Wei Ying’s eyes as he said, “The most important thing I found in my travels is that I never want to be without you.” How the two of them collapsed in the grass, overcome with emotion, trading gazes and kisses and promises until Little Apple got tired of being ignored and brayed so loudly they both jumped. The walk back to Cloud Recesses, hand in hand.
It would be different, now, if Wei Ying left again. They are partners, now, cultivation and otherwise, married in their own eyes if not yet in the world’s. He knows now that if Wei Ying left, he would come back.
Still, if Wei Ying left, what would Lan Wangji do? What would they do without each other? He thinks about those words on the mountaintop daily. The most important thing I found in my travels is I never want to be without you. He talks to Uncle, and to some of his most trustworthy senior disciples, and to his brother, still faithfully mourning in the cold springs. And then, one evening, he talks to Wei Ying.
They are eating soup at the low table in the jingshi—there was a chill in the air today that heralds the arrival of autumn—and Wei Ying is uncharacteristically quiet, sipping his broth.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says. “You’ve seemed a bit restless, lately.”
“Have I?” Wei Ying says, with a chuckle meant to dissuade.
This is as good as a yes to Lan Wangji. “Do you wish to leave Cloud Recesses and travel again?”
Wei Ying puts down his bowl with a clatter and grabs at Lan Wangji’s arm, rubbing his face into Lan Wangji’s sleeve. “Lan Zhan, don’t worry, I’m not trying to be rid of you. I won’t just abandon you.”
Amused and saddened and fond all at once, Lan Wangji kisses Wei Ying’s cheek. “Forgive me, I misspoke. Do you wish to leave Cloud Recesses and travel again with me as your companion?”
Wei Ying’s eyes go wide, and his mouth drops open. “Lan Zhan! Would you really? But what about—everything here, you have so much…”
“It is all arranged,” Lan Wangji says. “I want us to travel together. Like we always said we would.” He does want this, even though this started as a plan to make Wei Ying happy. For all the things they’ve done together, their original dream has gone unfulfilled: the two of them wandering the world in search of those who need them, one unified whole in two bodies. It would have been impossible in their first lives, and too dangerous in their second ones with Nie Mingjue’s killer still at large, but in this, what Lan Wangji privately thinks of as their third lives, it’s finally possible.
Wei Ying is grinning now, fiddling with the end of his ponytail the way he does when he’s plotting something. “Where will we go?”
“I seem to recall someone telling me once that the world was wide,” Lan Wangji says, and then he can’t say anything else because Wei Ying has clambered into his lap and is kissing every inch of his face.
****
They set off from Cloud Recesses in early autumn, with nothing but their qiankun pouches and whatever they can fit into Little Apple’s saddlebags. Lan Wangji loves the cool autumn weather, the way the breezes get warmer as they pass down from the mountains and into the valleys. He loves the steady stream of Wei Ying’s chatter. In this adventuring mood, he even loves Little Apple, whose temperament even at the best of times is recalcitrant. It’s all delightful to him, suffused in the joy of being with Wei Ying.
“My parents traveled like this,” Wei Ying says one afternoon, from his perch on Little Apple. “Sometimes they brought me along too.”
Lan Wangji can picture it: a tiny Wei Ying, seated on an equally stubborn ancestor of Little Apple, watching his parents talk and stroll in front of him. “It’s a good way to travel.”
“Better than flying by sword?”
“Swords are for speed,” Lan Wangji says. “But we’re not in a hurry.” He looks back at Wei Ying and sees the grin spread across his face.
“I don’t care if we come back for years,” Wei Ying says. “Ah, is that too bold?” He doesn’t seem to need an answer before pressing on. “But it’s the truth. When I traveled without you, I loved the travel, but I was always thinking, It’s been two months without Lan Zhan. It’s been five months without Lan Zhan. But to travel with you, I could journey for another hundred years. As long as you were happy, of course.”
“This is how I feel, too,” Lan Wangji says. He takes a deep breath and lets himself say his truest thoughts, because Wei Ying deserves to have them. “I was getting—a little tired of Cloud Recesses. Of having to do the things I have always had to do. Can I truly say I have lived with no regrets and a clear conscience if I never try anything new?”
“Oh, my Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says fondly. “We’ll try everything. The old ways, and the new ways, and the things that we invent ourselves that everyone tells us are a terrible idea.” He gurgles with laughter. “And not just in the bedroom.”
Lan Wangji whips around to fix him with a pretend-glare.
“I’m joking, I’m joking, aiyah! But. We don’t have to invent a new cultivation path or anything, but I think we’ll always be on that single-log bridge, you know? And that means we’ll get tired of the way everyone else is doing things, sometimes. But it’s okay, because we’ll have our path, together.”
Lan Wangji’s chest is suddenly so full he can’t breathe. He nods, looking Wei Ying deeply in the eyes. Wei Ying holds his gaze for a while, long enough that it feels like a conversation. Then he nudges Little Apple to keep walking. Lan Wangji turns around again, fixing his eyes on the path ahead. The single-log bridge, he thinks, smiling to himself. From behind him, he hears the sound of Wei Ying’s flute, playing their song as they journey onwards.