#Also I know I introduced Lao Nie out of the middle of nowhere but I'll explain things later I promise

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

You Are Of Their Ilk - Sequel to ’You Need Tending’

[1] [2] [3]

Part 4

[Masterpost]

[The last time I updated this fic was back in JUNE?! Somehow?!! Anyway I kept trying to force myself to switch to WY's point of view, but I wrote and discarded a solid three or four drafts that were all just awful. And then of course I had to take a break from every project to write for the Big Bang, which meant that this one got pushed even further to the back burner. And then when I finished my BB project I said I was gonna take a little break while I finish up my semester and organize my flight back to the States for the holidays - I don't know why I thought I could ever sit around and NOT write. Anyway I thought last time that I was going to switch to the kids' points of view again like YNT, but that didn't work so here's about 6k more of Lan Qiren trying to be a good uncle/dad 🥺]

--

As it so happens, Wei Ying is, in a word, rambunctious.

If there has been another child such as him in the recent history of the Lan, Lan Qiren isn’t aware of it, and he’s more inclined to think that that’s by virtue of the Lan children’s natures rather than that there’s information being hidden from him. He has, after all, been quite involved with the children over the years thanks to raising Xichen and Wangji. Despite the both of them being kept somewhat aloof from their peers, they had still been expected to interact with the other children from a young age, to get to know those they would one day share their classes with.

Surely if there had been such a wild child in the children’s home or in any of the nuclear families who raised their children themselves, Lan Qiren would have known.

Wei Ying quickly proves himself to be even more unruly than Lan Qiren had first anticipated on their return trip from Yunmeng, and most days he finds that he can only be grateful that he’s been given permission to handle the boy’s education and upbringing entirely on his own until he’s deemed fit to attend the group classes. He’s not entirely certain what others might do to a boy so seemingly dedicated to creating chaos, but knowing how staunchly Xichen and Wangji are monitored any time they leave the house, Lan Qiren knows it wouldn’t be good. Or healthy.

He’s actually gaining quite a lot of new opinions these days on what constitutes a healthy childhood. The fact that some of them are seemingly in direct opposition to some of the Sect precepts is a secret he holds close to his chest and gives no hint of to anyone else.

Not that there’s anyone he would tell. Lan Qiren is, somehow, more isolated than ever. Between juggling his duties as Acting Sect Leader, checking on Xichen’s academic and cultivation progress regularly, and raising Wangji and Wei Ying, there just isn’t time for him to have even the passing acquaintanceships amongst the members of the Sect that he had once tolerated. He misses them now, much more than he would have ever expected while suffering through hours of small talk and cups of tea he didn’t care for.

It would be easier on him, probably, if he could bring himself to be as stern as he once was with his nephews. Sharp reprimands still dart to the tip of his tongue and he has to constantly focus on ensuring his tone isn’t too harsh. He must monitor himself just as rigorously as he monitors the children in his care.

But all it had taken, in those first few weeks of adjustment, was one impatient, frustrated demand for Wei Ying to just be quiet for Lan Qiren to feel so sick with himself that he couldn’t even continue the reports he was signing.

Wei Ying had gone still, and quiet, just as he’d asked.

For days.

He had also begun hiding food under his bed, and a little bundle of clothes beside the pilfered snacks. Wangji had come to inform him of the little horde one day with a frown on his lips, hands hesitating through the necessary signs, and when Lan Qiren had gone to investigate he’d felt sick all over again.

‘In case I have to leave’ Wei Ying had explained in a tremulous tone when Lan Qiren had questioned him – gently – about the stash. ‘It’s always better to be safe than sorry. A-Die always says so, even when A-Niang laughs at him.’

Lan Qiren still has to stop and breathe as he remembers the look on the boy’s face, the way he hadn’t quite raised his eyes, the way his hands had twitched at the hem of his little tunic in clear anxiety.

So – it may be easier to be stern, but Lan Qiren knows very well now that he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he made Wei Ying fear him like that, or if he were to give his nephews a reason to believe that his new levels of tolerance and visible affection for them are in any way temporary, or dependent on their continued good behavior.

He loves Wei Ying. He loves this boy with all the strength he loves his nephews, and the thought that any of them could grow to doubt him or to lose their trust in him makes him want to scream. And so he gently corrects Wei Ying but he doesn’t stifle him. Wangji watches his companion with those hawk-like eyes of his and he slowly, slowly begins to unfurl again. He’d been a flower when he was younger, blooming happily for his brother, his mother, for the people who showed him gentleness. He’d smiled, and he’d cried openly, and he’d bitten quite a few people that Lan Qiren couldn’t say he liked very much either. And then Madam Lan had died, and Wangji had closed himself up, all the delicate petals of him withdrawing and curling inward, encased in an icy shell of grief that he refused to allow to thaw.

Wei Ying is beginning to pry him open like an otter with a reluctant clam, and Lan Qiren would by lying were he to say he isn’t enjoying watching the process.

Time slips him by as he works himself to the bone to maintain the standard of work required of him in each area of his life. He can’t give the elders anything new to find fault in, nor can he let his new behavior with the children slip into old patterns, and so he hardly notices the seasons changing. Or rather he does, but he doesn’t really consider what it means.

He watches the boys play together in the first thick snow that blankets the Cloud Recesses in the autumn. He hurries Wei Ying to the healers when the boy proves himself so thoroughly unused to the snow that he grows dangerously ill, and Lan Qiren nurses him back to health anxiously – with Wangji a silent and very serious little nurse at his side for every hour of Wei Ying’s recovery.

The winter that follows drags on and lingers as it always does this high in the mountains. Wei Ying doesn’t seem to enjoy it, necessarily, but he doesn’t complain except on particularly biting mornings. On those days Lan Qiren allows the child to climb into his thick outer robes and snuggle in for their morning lessons, and eventually Wangji builds up the courage to request the same. By the time spring arrives, it’s just as common as not for Lan Qiren to deliver lectures to two lumps of boy in the front of his robes, and he is thoroughly grateful that no one ever comes to observe his tutelage of the two of them.

Spring thaws the ground and melts the snow and Wei Ying is allowed to venture outside again when he isn’t in danger of becoming injured by the cold. Lan Qiren keeps him under close watch and prevents him from causing too much trouble – or at least trouble that others can see. When it’s only him with his nephews and his ward, he allows them the freedom to play as children should, and Wei Ying invents all manner of games that seem to do mainly with running and yelling. Lan Qiren begins ordering medicine to treat his headaches from the healers, and he doesn’t make him stop.

The meaning of it all hits him rather suddenly, though, when the height of summer is upon them and Wei Ying is more comfortable than ever in his antics – and Lan Qiren is reminded by the teacher of the youngest group of disciples that it’s time for Wangji and Wei Ying to join their peers when lessons begin again.

Lan Qiren thinks about the ways he’s found are best to teach Wei Ying and…balks at the thought of urging the boy into a classroom.

The thing about teaching Wei Ying, Lan Qiren has come to learn, is that the boy is exceedingly bright. He’s quick and eager to learn, his brain like a sea sponge. He finds everything interesting, and he’s eager to face challenges with the unending good cheer that Lan Qiren knows is inherited from both of his parents.

But he doesn’t sit still. He paces around the room in unending loops while he recites his mathematics because the movement helps him remember. He asks questions about the seasons and animals and the world around him while balancing on his head with his feet against the wall. He climbs into Lan Qiren’s outer robes – even though it’s no longer cold enough to warrant it – so he can listen to his heartbeat while Lan Qiren teaches him basic anatomy for the beginnings of his lessons on present moment meditation. Wei Ying frequently interrupts him to ask questions that pique his interest, whether they directly relate to the subject at hand or not. Lan Qiren has grown so used to it that he hardly notices the intrusions anymore, simply answering Wei Ying’s questions to the best of his ability before returning to his original train of thought as if uninterrupted.

Lan Qiren thinks now of the strict expectations of the group classrooms, and he understands instantly that he has utterly failed Wei Ying, as both his guardian and his sole instructor.

“They will require more time.” It’s a stain on Lan Qiren’s already tarnished reputation, but he doesn’t care. He is exhausted, he would do much better (in some ways) to have the boys all out of the house and being educated by others, freeing up his schedule for the unending task of running the Sect well. But he finds, suddenly, unexpectedly, that he doesn’t trustanyone else to teach the boys how they need to be taught.

Wangji, after all, is a model student in every single way – but he still can’t speak, and there are few in the Sect who have had the patience or inclination to learn to interpret his hand signs. There are even fewer who know to look for the minute changes in his expression and posture that convey at least half of the meaning of what he’s trying to say. He will not be able to participate in a group class with the degree of conformity required, and Lan Qiren refuses to see his nephew – or his ward – punished for their differences.

“You were only meant to teach them until the age at which they can join the others,” the instructor says with very mild reproach. “Withholding them now could damage their relationship with their peers, especially as they are already so isolated from other children their age.”

Ah, of course. One of the latest criticisms since Lan Qiren had brought Wei Ying home. For Wei Ying’s sake, he’d kept him separate from the other children. At first, it was because the boy was nearly feral. Wangji was too attached to him to see the problem, and Xichen too kind to ever comment on it, but there had been no hiding that Wei Ying had raised himself. While Lan Qiren privately thinks it may have benefitted the other children to have seen that there are people who do not always behave as expected - and been made to learn that these people still deserve respect and kindness - he hadn’t wanted to subject Wei Ying to any possible negative reactions. It had been particularly important when he’d still been so fragile around the edges, so sure that his time here would be limited because of his own faults.

And then it had been winter, and dangerous for Wei Ying to spend time out of doors even to travel to the group children’s house to play. He and Wangji had had each other for companionship anyway, and they’re clearly happy with being inseparable, and so Lan Qiren had seen nothing wrong with the arrangement.

He had been, perhaps, the only one. Rumors had begun to circulate, despite the rules against gossip, that he was attempting to hide his inferiority. That Wei Ying was too much for him to handle and so he just let the boy run utterly wild and was attempting to hide it from the Sect out of a misplaced sense of pride. Unwilling to admit that the elders were right, that he was a failure, that he was in over his head. People had begun to criticize him, even to his face, for squirreling his – no, the – children away and therefore stunting their social growth. Lan Qiren had let it roll off him as easily as any unfairly harsh criticism from the elders, of course, but now he knows that his chickens will soon be coming home to roost.

“I understand,” Lan Qiren says with a bow, and a fresh wave of tension in his shoulders. “However, I cannot in good conscience recommend Wei Ying or Wangji for the group lessons at this time. I will revisit the matter again in the spring. I will ensure they are prepared to enter their second year of courses with their peers so that they will not fall behind.”

Lan Qiren makes his escape then as quickly as is polite, and he returns home to check on Wangji and Wei Ying, unable to shake the feeling that their time together is now much more limited than he had previously been prepared to acknowledge.

--

To appease his critics, Lan Qiren unbends enough to allow the children to begin finding playmates amongst their peers. Though it means more strain on him, he begins to schedule himself time in the afternoons to take Wangji and Wei Ying to the children’s hall during the leisure hours and supervise them from afar as they attempt to find ways to join the others.

It is, to put it succinctly, a disaster.

“Don’t talk about A-Zhan that way!!” Wei Ying screeches one day at the top of his lungs, and Lan Qiren expends a whisper of qi to tamp down the headache beginning between his brows. He looks up from the crop report he’s been attempting to read for the last shichen to find that the situation is worse than he’d feared – he’s too late to intervene before two of the attendants who watch the children are hurrying over to hold Wei Ying and his target apart, Wei Ying’s hands balled up into little fists and blood just beginning to drip down the other child’s nose.

It is, unfortunately, his responsibility to mete out the necessary punishments for both children.

The offending party – a young boy named Zhao Luo, the child of outer disciples – is assigned an afternoon of handstands for speaking cruelly and bullying others. Wei Ying is assigned the same number of handstands as well as copying the rules dealing with correct conduct two hundred times.

Lan Qiren attempts not to feel guilty when Wei Ying looks at him like he’s been slapped.

He cannot play favorites. All his care and regard has gotten for Wei Ying so far is a black mark on his already tenuous reputation amongst the elders and teachers of the Sect, and Lan Qiren knows now more than ever that he’s been neglectful in his duties to teach Wei Ying not only the things he must know but also the ways he must navigate his life in Cloud Recesses. His love for the boy has blinded him to what’s required of him as his caretaker, and he knows that it will hurt to correct this oversight but in the end Wei Ying will be better off for it.

Safer.

Lan Qiren just wants his young charge to be safe, above anything else he may want for him.

Wei Ying completes his punishment. Wangji makes his displeasure for his friend’s punishment known in the small, quiet ways that he has, but Lan Qiren does not indulge his younger nephew’s tantrum on Wei Ying’s behalf. He begins to teach Wei Ying more about how to carry himself properly. When he had first arrived, Lan Qiren had thought it a great triumph to have taught the boy how to eat with utensils and at a speed that wasn’t thoroughly alarming, let alone rude. He had thought himself a fine teacher when Wei Ying had stopped alleviating his boredom by sneaking out to play on the roof or in trees and had instead learned to tell him when he felt the need to move so that Lan Qiren could see to it that he played properly.

Perhaps, Lan Qiren thinks grimly, the elders were correct in accusing him of an excess of pride in his teaching accomplishments.

As the autumn bears down on them all far too quickly, Lan Qiren finds himself almost too distracted to have the time to grow guilty over the negative shift in his relationship with both of his young charges. Lan Xichen is a help to him as Cloud Recesses begins preparing to receive the Great Sects (and the local Lesser Sects) for a massive discussion conference, but Lan Qiren is wary of putting too many burdens on his nephew’s shoulders. He has so few years of childhood left, and already his status as the Heir is beginning to drive a wedge between himself and his classmates, who have begun to treat him not as a peer but with the awe and respect he is due as both an exceeding talent and their future Sect Leader. Lan Qiren wishes for Lan Xichen to enjoy the few years of childhood left to him, and so he shoulders as much of the planning as he can, in addition to his typical duties of running the Sect, teaching the children, and ensuring that his own discipline doesn’t stray too far from his already-mediocre abilities.

By the time the delegations begin arriving, Lan Qiren finds himself so exhausted he can’t even recall greeting the visiting Sect Leaders when he returns home from the welcome feast. He certainly can’t recall if he invited anyone to his quarters for tea afterwards, which is why it’s thoroughly startling to find his table occupied when he opens the door.

“Lao Nie,” he greets, too tired and startled to bother with his friend’s proper title, particularly in his own home. His gaze swings over to the other side of the table and he has to blink to make sure he’s seeing things correctly when he spots both Wangji and Wei Ying sitting ramrod straight across from the Nie Sect Leader, both of them watching the mountain of a man in their home with no attempt to hide their distrust. “Wangji, A-Ying – you are to be preparing for bed, it is nearing hai-shi.”

“Ah let them sit there a little longer, Qiren,” Lao Nie waves him off with his usual wild grin. “Look at how stern they are! As much courage as any Nie in both of them to look at me like that.”

Lan Qiren knows a losing battle when he sees one – is extremely well-practiced in spotting them, actually – and so he just sighs and turns to boil a pot of water for tea while Lao Nie peppers the boys with questions, all of which go unanswered. It doesn’t stop Lao Nie from laughing his booming laugh after some of them. Lan Qiren can only assume he finds the boys’ silent judgements to be decent entertainment. Perhaps Lan Qiren hasbeen keeping them close to him for too long – they’ve picked up at least a few of his habits, not all of them for the better.

“If you two are going to remain, then you may serve Lao Nie tea,” Lan Qiren instructs, never one to miss an opportunity for instruction. Wei Ying in particular is in need of practicing his budding skills in the gentlemanly arts, and so it is him who carefully picks up the pot and serves the tea with only a few minor hiccups.

“I was wondering why you weren’t returning any of my personal letters,” Lao Nie chuckles around the rim of his cup once it’s safely in his hand and no longer being sloshed about by Wei Ying. “Now I see that someone’s been awfully busy raising the next generation – and a spare.”

“A spare?” Wei Ying asks, because his curiosity is insatiable and occasionally (read: frequently) chooses to rear its head when Lan Qiren would very much prefer it if he wouldn’t ask what’s on his mind.

“An extra,” Lao Nie explains with another grin. “I don’t know if a third child was really necessary Qiren, you’ve already got the two.”

“Wangji, A-Ying, go prepare for bed,” Lan Qiren instructs in his tone that means he expects no arguments, and this time they both stand to go. Or rather Wangji stands to go, and he takes Wei Ying by the hand to drag him along, though neither of them look happy about it. “What are you doing here, Lao Nie?” Lan Qiren asks once the boys are in their room. As is his wont, Lao Nie’s joking fades instantly into a more serious attitude as he looks him over. Lan Qiren sits straight under the scrutiny, despite how badly his shoulders want to curl inwards.

“I meant it – you haven’t been replying to any of my letters except the official ones. I was getting concerned, you know you’re prone to overworking yourself.”

“I have duties to my Sect that cannot be ignored –“

“Your duties to your Sect begin with taking care of yourself!” Lao Nie shoots back instantly, the opening steps to their usual dance. Lan Qiren will insist that he has duties and responsibilities. Lao Nie will encourage him to loosen the ties that bind him by using the sanctity of his physical and emotional health as a smokescreen to encourage him to live the same hedonistic lifestyle that Lao Nie so enjoys, despite the both of them knowing that such a lifestyle wouldn’t suit Lan Qiren anyway.

Though the moves are familiar and well-worn, hardly worth repeating again, Lan Qiren steps into his place in the dance, as he always does. “That is untrue and you know it, at least in the way that you mean it. I eat, I sleep, I meditate. I take care of my body well enough to attend to my duties, which is all that is expected of me.”

Lao Nie sighs heavily and knocks back the rest of his tea as if it were liquor and pours them both another cup. Lan Qiren accepts and drains his mechanically, his friend’s frustration with him sitting against his skin like poorly-spun wool. Another place in which he is deficient. Lan Qiren quiets the melancholy thought with an effort.

“Don’t let me keep you from your sleep, then,” Lao Nie finally grumbles ill-naturedly. “You look like you’re hardly getting any as it is, let alone enough of it to be healthy. We can talk about your…situation tomorrow.”

“There are meetings tomorrow,” Lan Qiren replies. He lists sideways ever so slightly but corrects it before Lao Nie can notice his slip-up. “And after the day’s discussions and banquet are over I must see to the children-“

“Who’s the new one?” Lao Nie cuts in, despite his assertion that he would leave him to sleep. “Don’t tell me your brother had a secret child at the same time as Zhan’er that you’ve only just discovered. That kid isn’t a Lan.”

“A-Ying is a member of this Sect,” Lan Qiren defends instantly, sympathetic fear spiking through him. Wei Ying has shown anxiety too many times at the thought of not being recognized as a Lan for Lan Qiren to let the slight pass him by, even when Wei Ying isn’t present to hear his legitimacy brought into question. “He is a Lan, by agreement if not by blood, which youshould understand better than anyone -”

“Alright!! I’m not trying to say you can’t claim the boy, Qiren, I’m trying to make sure you’re not running yourself into the ground trying to please everybody by doing so!”

Lan Qiren takes a deep breath in to rein in his temper while Lao Nie grumbles through pouring him a fresh cup of tea. They sit in silence for long enough that exhaustion blankets the flare of his temper, and when Lao Nie speaks up again it’s with the decidedly smug air of a man who knows he doesn’t have to actually say “I told you so” to make his meaning known.

“You’re tired - get some rest. I’ll get you out of the afternoon meal so you can have a few minutes to yourself, alright?”

Lan Qiren is well aware that whether or not he agrees is irrelevant. Lao Nie has always done as he pleases, and though his focus used to be on Qingheng-Jun, without his old friend to banter with he’s taken to bullying Lan Qiren around in recent years. Not that Lan Qiren minds – as a boy he’d always admired Lao Nie, had wished to befriend him as his own person, rather than as the younger brother doomed to be dragged along on every excursion to get him out from underfoot of the Sect. He usually tries not to become too focused on the fact that it had taken his brother’s complete betrayal and withdrawal to earn him Lao Nie’s friendship.

“Yes, alright. The boys will be at the children’s house tomorrow to be looked after, I would appreciate a reprieve from company.”

“Then you’ll get it. And Mingjue and Huaisang will be at the children’s house too, I managed to drag them along with me this time. I’ll make sure they play with Wangji and this A-Ying, alright? Relax for once, Qiren. You work far too hard.”

Lan Qiren offers no reply to this. It’s easy enough for an outsider to walk in, see the results, and make a judgement, but Lan Qiren has been quite careful not to let on the amount of scrutiny he faces from the elders. It’s easy enough to tell him to relax without knowing the weight of their stares on his back. But Lao Nie means well, Lan Qiren knows that, and so he thanks him as he lets the man out into the evening, and he stands there for a long few minutes in slightly melancholy contemplation of his life. A thump from Wangji and Wei Ying’s room draws him from his thoughts, and so he goes to check on them. Wangji is already asleep in his bed, the hour for rest having already come. Wei Ying, on the other hand, is half-under his bed, his backside and his legs poking out from under the wooden frame as he wriggles.

“A-Ying?” Lan Qiren says softly. “Where are you going?”

Wei Ying stops his wiggling and stays there for a moment or two before he reluctantly pushes himself back out from under the bed, hair and sleep clothes rumpled. Lan Qiren sits on the edge of the bed and holds his arms out in cautious invitation; he’s grown more distant than before, and he worries that it means the beginning of the end of his hopefully-healthy relationship with his nephews and his ward that he’s been working so hard on. He knows he likely doesn’t have a right to ask for or offer Wei Ying affection, but the boy practically flings himself up into his lap to pull his robes askew and climb inside them. He’s nearly getting too big for it these days. Lan Qiren toys very briefly with the idea of simply wearing larger robes to allow Wei Ying to continue the habit for just a little longer.

“Am I an extra?” he asks once he’s safely in the dim warmth of Lan Qiren’s robes, face nearly invisible without some contortions to get a proper look at him.

“A-Ying, Nie-Zongzhu is a man who says many things he doesn’t think through properly. He is from a different place, and therefore he and his people behave differently. He doesn’t have anything like the Lan rule to consider our speech carefully before speaking, and so he frequently doesn’t think at all before he says what is on his mind.”

Wei Ying hums and curls his hands slowly into fists in Lan Qiren’s underrobes. Curl in, clutch on, release. Curl in, clutch, release. “An extra is something you don’t need,” Wei Ying finally mumbles. “He said you have Xichen-ge and A-Zhan already and I’m not nece – ne-ce-ssary. He maybe didn’t think before he spoke but he also didn’t say anything that isn’t true.”

“I disagree,” Lan Qiren replies, falling easily into their usual pattern. He and Wei Ying disagree quite frequently, actually, though never on important things. It’s more that Wei Ying enjoys trying to find every loophole or forgotten possibility that has ever existed in the world, and Lan Qiren is frequently the one who must attempt to curtail him and bring him back to the realms of the possible. Their back-and-forth is as familiar as breathing by now. “It is true that I have raised Xichen and Wangji, and that you are my third child to raise. It is true that Xichen and Wangji are both heirs to the Sect, and that a third heir is unnecessary. But that doesn’t make youunnecessary. You are the only Wei Ying that I have, and I think that is verynecessary.”

Wei Ying makes fists in his robes a few more times as he digests this new viewpoint and considers his own feelings on it. Lan Qiren had spotted this particular habit early on, and has done everything in his power since to ensure that Wei Ying doesn’t lose it – he’ll need that strength of opinion when he goes to the group classes.

“Can I call you Shufu?” Wei Ying asks, seemingly apropos of nothing. Lan Qiren blinks in surprise and then looks down, drawing his robe aside enough to see Wei Ying’s silver eyes peeping up at him from somewhere around his ribcage.

“Why?”

Wei Ying looks away perhaps guiltily, watching his own hands rather than Lan Qiren’s face. “Xichen-ge calls you Shufu. And A-Zhan has a special way he moves his hands when he asks for you, it means Shufu too, doesn’t it? I want to call you Shufu. I want to be family, too.”

Lan Qiren is, quite frankly, amazed that Wei Ying still manages to find ways to make his heart ache this fiercely in his chest.

“You must call me Master Lan, A-Ying,” he admonishes gently despite the way it sits all wrong in his mouth. “Out of your parents I truly only knew your mother-“

“Jiujiu then!” Wei Ying cries, beginning to sound desperate. “Please I don’t want to be separated, I want to be a family!”

Lan Qiren glances at Wangji but his nephew is thankfully still sleeping through Wei Ying’s upset. Their emotions are so attuned to each other’s that Lan Qiren is nearly surprised that Wangji hasn’t sensed Wei Ying’s distress even while deeply asleep and woken to come to his rescue. Lan Qiren closes his robe again tightly and wraps his arms around Wei Ying’s trembling form, warm and safe and held between his numerous layers as he cries. Lan Qiren rubs his back and tries not to let the soothing gesture lull him to sleep as well.

“We will not be separated,” Lan Qiren says when Wei Ying has quieted down to miserable sniffling. “You should not allow Lao Nie to upset you so, A-Ying, what he said has to importance here. I decide whose family you are, and where you will go. You will not be forced to go anywhere you do not wish to go, no matter what others may say. You were not born to me, but you are mine now, alright? No matter what you call me, and no matter what happens in this life, you are my family.”

Lan Qiren isn’t entirely sure where the reassurance comes from. He’s told Wei Ying similar things before in the early days after his arrival, when his anxiety was at its peak and he was terrified of being pushed out onto the streets again on his own. But he hasn’t had the need to reassure him thus in so long he’d nearly forgotten how fiercely he feels about it. Wei Ying is his, and while Lan Qiren knows that he’s everyone’s second choice – or third, or fourth – he can be assured in turn that he is Wei Ying’s first. Wei Ying, too young to truly remember his parents these days, too close to him to long for any other parental figure, will always choose him first and run to him. For comfort, for guidance, for instruction, for food, for shelter, for help.

If only there were anyone else in the world who could see the way Lan Qiren treasures such an unexpected gift, rather than seeing Wei Ying as an obstacle that stands between him and things that they deem more important.

Lan Qiren sits there with Wei Ying curled up against him for a while longer, but eventually Wei Ying wiggles in the way that means he wants to escape the stuffy confines of his robes and so Lan Qiren loosens his grip to let him squirm his way out. Wei Ying stands on the bed beside him scrubbing at his face and eyes, and Lan Qiren helps him rearrange his clothing and hair to sleep comfortably.

“You must still call me Master Lan,” Lan Qiren says quietly as he helps Wei Ying settle into his little bed. “But…during this conference, with all of these other Sect Leaders visiting, I will gift you with a ribbon like mine, Wangji’s, and Xichen’s. You’ll wear the inner-family ribbon. It will mean you’ll have to continue to change your behavior as I’ve been teaching you to show the same restraint that Xichen and Wangji do, but no one will ever be able to doubt that you are my family again. Will that help?”

Wei Ying’s eyes fill up and turn glassy, so Lan Qiren quietly mops up his tears with the edge of his sleeve. Wei Ying nods and curls his entire body around Lan Qiren’s arm, hugging tightly with all of his strength. Lan Qiren’s heart aches again, and by the time he leaves the boys’ room to go to his own, he can’t help but sit on the edge of his bed to cry a bit himself, as well. He knows that soon everything will have to change. He can’t hang onto Wangji and Wei Ying forever, just as he couldn’t hold Xichen forever when he had still been young enough to carry with him everywhere he went. They’ll have to grow up, and Lan Qiren will have to step back to allow them to do it. But for now, he’ll take any amount of criticism or exhaustion or extra work if it means he’ll get to continue being the first one to witness their triumphs and their joys.

He makes a mental note to place the order to have a cloud plate fashioned for Wei Ying’s ribbon first thing in the morning, and with Lao Nie’s admonishment to sleep and take care of himself ringing in his ears, he puts all other thoughts aside to get some well-earned rest.