#and lan wangji oh lan wangji bless his little heart

[jin-zixun]

actually xiyao is tolerable if it's a minji au. not because I'd want su she out of the way but because I think having su she as a brother in law would fix lan xichen.

like seriously. lan wangji already thinks supporting your war criminal husband is the best thing to do even if he is actively killing hundreds of people, he just doesn't like jgy for petty reasons. but su she fucking loves jgy, he thinks it would be intolerable for lxc *not* to support his war criminal husband, in fact the lan sect should be doing way more to help him? maybe he wouldn't even have to be a war criminal? come on this place needs soooo many reforms now and it's too late to go back to ignoring minshan once you've let him become lan-er-furen

like every day at dinner lxc is like "do you guys think I am too naive in seeing how perfect a-yao is?" and su she says "actually he's more perfect." and lan wangji says nothing because he's the type to defer to whatever his partner says.

someone brings up jgy torturing people or killing his superior officer and su she's just like "deserved. should have killed more people tbh" and lan xichen is impressionable so he's just thinking 'oh yeah guess that sounds about right. wow! actually a-yao is soooo much *more* amazing! showing such restraint in not killing more people! what a good person ❤️' and lan wangji truly does not care about that so he still says nothing.

[mdzs-owns-my-ass-i-guess]

Dancing through the night

@incorrectly-quoting-mxtx here is the ficlet that resulted from your prompt marinating in my brain for the past two days. Thank you for the wait and the sweet words, I hope you like this!

If any of you have any ideas you'd like me to write, feel free to mention me in a post and I may write it if the inspiration gods bless me!

---

"Is there anything you can't do to perfection?" Wei Wuxian begins, a fond look in his eyes and a teasing smile on his lips as he and his husband walk into their inn suite. "I don't think there's anything you don't excel at!"

Lan Wangji's eyes color a light pink at that as he sits at the table, a pot of wine awaiting, courtesy of the innkeeper.

Though he is used to hearing such words left and right, praise an appanage of his reputation, his heart always stutters whenever Wei Wuxian sets on a tirade about how great his Hanguang-Jun is. The words flow so easily out of him, like he's laying out obvious facts that anybody would see, poorly pretending to be unaware of the effect he has on Lan Wangji. It hasn't been a rare occurence for the man to have to shut Wei Wuxian up with kisses - otherwise he would have gone on for hours, waxing poetic about his husband's everything.

However, tonight is going to go different.

"There is something." Lan Wangji responds, pouring a cup of wine for Wei Wuxian, who gratefully downs it before taking his seat on Lan Wangji's lap, arms coming to circle his neck loosely. The closeness is both comforting and electric, eyes locked lovingly.

"What could there be that the great, unparalleled Hanguang-Jun hasn't mastered yet?" Wei Wuxian asks, letting one of his hands cup Lan Wangji's face, thumb stroking his cheek.

"Dancing."

"Oh?" Wei Wuxian feigns shock, "We cannot let such a simple skill evade someone as amazing as you, can we?"

Lan Wangji lets his hands caress over Wei Ying's thighs, parting robes. "Hm? What do you suggest?"

"Fortunately for you, I am an amazing dancer, and I can teach you!"

Before Lan Wangji can protest, Wei Wuxian pulls him up to his feet, and he has to catch himself out of the saccharine sweetness of having been held and holding his beloved before he falls flat on his face.

"We need music." Lan Wangji attempts a protest, though his hands come to rest around Wei Wuxian's slim waist nevertheless.

Wei Wuxian smiles, winding his arms around Lan Wangji again and begins humming a familiar tune, his voice melodious around the unspoken lyrics. He urges Lan Wangji to move, steps slow and close together, a simple sequence of moving together into an imaginary circle.

Lan Wangji's brows furrow in concentration, and Wei Wuxian finds the sight adorable enough to let a small giggle escape him before he leans to leave a butterfly kiss on the tip of his husband's nose. He stops humming to do it, and Lan Wangji stills, embarrassed.

"Wei Ying. The music."

"You know it too."

Lan Wangji wraps an arm around Wei Wuxian's waist, firmer, and fills up the tiny space between them. He picks up the song where Wei Ying left off, and tries to mirror the movements Wei Wuxian just showed him.

He thinks of the way he composed that song, how easily it had come to him and how difficult it had been for him to understand what he was feeling for this annoying, rule-breaking, intelligent, beautiful man that's now his companion for life.

He thinks of how he hummed this song thinking of him, when he was missing, when he wasn't himself, when he died.

He thinks of how he'd sang it as lullaby for A-Yuan.

He thinks of how it had been the first song Wei Ying played when he returned.

They move in tandem to their song, little circles around the wide room, and some time between gazing at his beloved like he hung the moon and the stars in the sky, and delighting in how easily he picked up those simple movements, Wei Wuxian joins in the duet.

They hum and dance like that for a while, unhurried, enjoying one another and the memories they had with their song, adding yet another one to cherish with Wangxian as a background melody.

One day, perhaps, they'd write a sequel.

[ephemeralgalaxies]

NONONO OK SO IT'S THIS SCREENCAP RIGHT HERE

THIS HERE HURTS SO MUCH

Because it's not even WWX actually saying this, but as Lan Zhan walks away all stoic and poised after being told (despite searching and worrying over WWX for THREE MONTHS) that WWX's disappearance and current well-being/cultivation type is none of his concern bc he's "an outsider" and that only the people of Yunmeng should deal with this, as Wei Ying watches him leave, knowing full well that he's just hurt him so much (ofc he probably still doesn't understand the full extent of his actions), Wen Chao is on the floor begging for his life. It's the fact that before this, WWX doesn't dare let himself even look at LWJ as he delivers that final:

THE WAY LAN WANGJI DOES LOOK AT HIM, TRYING TO GET HIS ATTENTION FOR A BEAT BEFORE REALIZING IT'S POINTLESS

LIKE HE BREAKS MY HEART WITH THIS. (wang yibo, you absolute blessing on earth, you are incredible for this).

But the fact that once LWJ has finally disappeared from view, finally left the screen, WWX allows himself to look back and oh god, what has he done. Wei Wuxian knows this is to protect LWJ, to keep him from "befriending evil", but also to protect himself from LWJ inevitably rejecting him and this new form of cultivation. From the idea that LWJ would think so little of him if he knew that WWX no longer had a golden core, that he couldn't do "righteous cultivation" rather than just a youth acting out. He can't bare to be left behind again... so why not at least have some control over it?

THAT LITTLE SIGH HE GIVES TOO (forgive me, I cannot make gifs for the life of me but it's like right between these two screenshots)

Like, I know that it's technically Wen Chao saying "forgive me," but the placement of his line is just,,, *chef's kiss* perfectly lining up with this focus on Wei Wuxian, I love the idea that it's reflecting his own inner thoughts as he lets LWJ walk away.

LIKE THIS HIT HIM SO HARD.

Watching his face slowly contort in this clip as he thinks back on what WWX said, seeing how he goes from this almost vulnerable "kicked puppy" look to this:

And then as he thinks over it and accepts that Wei Ying no longer considers him a close companion (if he ever did, if this wasn't all just a bit of fun to pass the time), he turns back into this openly hurt look where he realizes he's probably just lost Wei Ying without ever having him in the first place:

(THAT TINY OPENING OF HIS MOUTH AS HE TRIES TO COMPOSE HIMSELF)

I'm dead. I'm actually sobbing. This reunion scene will never cease to destroy me.

[wangxianficrecs]

Follower Recs

~*~

Hello Mojo, hope you're doing well and that you had a good break! I wanted to signal boost the MDZS May Diaspora event collection on AO3, and point out my favorite fic from there: 归心似箭 | Longing to Go Home by dragongirlG! It's both tender and bittersweet and it features such mature writing. The author got some hate for it when it initially got posted so I wanted to counter that and give it some love instead! [Who would do such a thing?!  @dragongirlg-fics I’m sorry that happened to you, and here, have *so many hugs!* I’ll try to do a thing just for the diaspora event, but meanwhile, I’ll just treat this as a follower rec.]

归心似箭 | Longing to Go Home

by dragongirlG (M, 8k, wangxian)

Summary:  The destruction of the Yin Tiger Seal does not kill Wei Wuxian; it ages him instead. He takes shelter in a cave expecting to die, but instead he lives, slowly learning to embrace life with each new day.

Thirteen years later, a young man with a Lan forehead ribbon stumbles into the cave. His name is Lan Sizhui.

~*~

Hi Momjo!!! I recently read the most *adorable* fic, and I loved it so much that it dragged me out of seclusion (read: social anxiety cave) to rec it. It's called 'Covered in Bees' by ScarlettStorm in which the Cloud Recesses is an apiary, and Wei Wuxian has suddenly found himself host to a swarm of bees. ~ @akyra-talanoa

Covered in Bees

by ScarlettStorm (T, 8k, wangxian)

Summary: “Cloud Reccesses Apiary,” says a toneless, deep masculine voice, with zero question in it. Wei Ying doesn’t care, because whoever possesses that voice is probably going to come save him from bees like a fucking hero while wearing like, a suit of armor. That’s what you wear to catch bees, right?

“I have like, so many bees outside my front door right now,” he says, mouth running out ahead of him before he can even begin to think about reining it in. “It’s like a sandstorm of bees out there. There are so many bees. I got out of my car and there were just bees and I don’t want these bees. Do you want these bees? Please tell me you will come get these bees. I can’t leave my house and I have enough food for maybe a week but then I’m gonna have to learn how to cook dry beans and no one wants that, especially not me.” Wei Ying runs out of air, takes a breath, and belatedly adds, “My name is Wei Ying. Hi.”

Or: The beekeeping AU that no one asked for.

~*~

Hi, you are a bless to this fandom. Your blog feels like a library, so thoroughly arranged and always within hand reach. [Thank you, wow!]  Recently, I was going through Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn is a Wēn tag and came across a fanfic, it has 3 chapters till now and is so intriguing that i thought to recommend it to you. I don't know if I can recommend or if you have already checked the story, The legendary Phoenix and his Dragon by Devipriya. I am in love with this story. I hope you will enjoy it too, do check it out

The legendary Phoenix and his Dragon

by Devipriya (T, 7k, wangxian)

Summary:  Wen Wuxian, the essence of who he is, he is a naughty child, a prankster, an enchanting dizi player, a graceful dancer, an irresistible lover, a truly valiant warrior, a ruthless vanquisher of his foes, a man who left a broken heart in every home, an astute statesman and kingmaker, a thorough gentleman, a righteous individual of the highest order, and the most colorful incarnation.

He has been seen, perceived, understood and experienced in many different ways by different people. Different people saw different facets of who he is. For some, he is God. For some, he is a crook. For some, he is a lover. For some, he is a fighter. He is so many things.

But the phoenix, seen from the eyes of time was just a playful man. A man who plays with his awareness, with his imagination, with his memory, with his life, with his death. An individual who does not just dance with somebody. He dances with life. He dances with his enemy, He dances with the one he loves, He dances even at the moment of his death.

To taste an essence of who is Wen Wuxian, be with me in the journey of exploration, NO! playful exploration of life of a playful man.

~*~

Hi! Thanks for running this blog, it's helped me find so many fics. For your next follower recs post, I wanted to rec "This love like a flood, a fire, a fear" by natcat5. Its summary is vague (which I suspect is why it isn't better known) but it is a beautiful retelling of canon from LWJ's POV with slight canon divergence. I love the author's characterization of him and the prose is gorgeous. It is easily my favorite fic in the entire fandom, and I don't say that lightly. ~ @nyanja14

This love like a flood, a fire, a fear

by natcat5 (M, 57k, wangxian, lan wangji & lan xichen)

Summary:  “I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice loves to sit and watch everything go wrong.”   - Lemony Snicket

~*~

i came to this ask to rec this baseball one called "Waiting for Spring" by thievinghippo on ao3. It somehow made me care about baseball soooo 'nough said ~ @scifikimmi

Waiting for Spring

by thievinghippo (E, 131, wangxian)

Summary:  “It is a well-known fact across the major leagues that one does not smack Lan Wangji’s ass.”

Wei Wuxian rolls his eyes. Everyone smacks everyone’s ass in baseball. It’s how the game is played. Lan Wangji does not get to be exempt from this most sacred of baseball traditions.

Wei Wuxian will make sure of that.

Or, a Major League Baseball AU

~*~

hi mojo! i wanted to rec Something Good by boxoftheskyking (a loose sound of music/canon divergence au) and also MDZS: The Golden Engine by iffervescent (immortal wangxian modern au where they gotta solve a mystery and save china, featuring jiang cheng/lan xichen)

Something Good

by boxoftheskyking (T, 43k, wangxian)

Summary:  "That Wei Wuxian, you know he used to be such a promising cultivator. Head Disciple of the Jiang Clan, can you believe it? You see, juniors, the punishment for traveling the path of demonic cultivation. No golden core, not so much as a whisper of spiritual power."

As a punishment for real and imagined crimes, Wei Wuxian is sentenced to work at Cloud Recesses as the lowest of servants. When a surprising reassignment lands him with eleven children to care for, everything changes again.

A Sound of Music AU

MDZS: The Golden Engine

by iffervescent (E, 82k, wangxian, xicheng)

Summary:  In the modern era, immortals Lan Zhan and Wei Wuxian return to Gusu. New evil and old friends + new friends and old evils.

~*~

Hi Mojo! First of all let me just tell you that you are amazing and this blog is like a gift from the gods! Bless you and your endless patience and hard work. [Oh, thank you so much!]  I know that you have just accepted follower recs and I have missed miserably but I still wanted to write and bring attention to a writer by the pseudo Xiao_Hua on ao3, I think they are quite good and I just recently found the account with so much content. If you do have the time to check them out, I'd rec catfish, my fox or the red ribbon.

The Red Ribbon

by Xiao_Hua (M, 21k, wangxian, TGCF crossover)

Summary:  Wei WuXian died but not before saving HanGuang-Jun and A-Yuan, leaving so much more behind than just his ribbon.

My Fox

by Xiao_Hua (E, 13k, wangxian)

Summary:  Once he headed to YiLing that all changed for him. His priorities have been mingled with and ordered in complete disarray even without him noticing as he was left heavily influenced by a creature.

Or one where Lan WangJi is a dragon-spirit and he finds his mate in the form of a fox.

Catfish

by Xiao_Hua (E, 15k, wangxian)

Summary:  Wei WuXian has a common sense that believes it has a nine-to-five job while Lan WangJi finds that incredibly hot.

Or one where two catfish realise that neither of them truly catfished.

~*~

Hi Mojo i'm recommending this amazing fic it is called song of joys and regrets. it's a time travel AU it's amazing. And your Blog is a Godsend Thank you! [Aw, you’re so sweet!]  ~ @highgoddess

Song of Joy and Regrets

by HelloKitten (not rated, 59k, wangxian, WIP)

Summary:  The Archery competition at Qishan this year has hit a snag. As the Sects face the wrongs perpetrated by their future selves, Wei Wuxian finds himself adopted by half of the cultivation world who are determined to save him from himself.

Baby Wangxian suffers. Adult Wangxian's job here is done.

"I'm starting to see a pattern to all his plans..." "Do they all involve him being bait?" "Yes" came deadpanned responses.

~*~

Here’s a 2021 Reverse Big Bang entry, in time for Father’s Day; [Oops, my bad, sorry!]  Under a Blanket of Black Wings, by ChaoticAndrogynous (#31398395); LWJ, recuperating from the 33 lashes, tells A-Yuan a series of fairytales about a heroic monster and the brave little boy he befriended. Vampire! WWX (in the framing story as well as the story-within-the-story); happy ending.

Under a Blanket of Black Wings

by ChaoticAndrogynous (T, 19k, wangxian)

Summary:  Lan Wangji tells A-Yuan a bedtime story about a beautiful monster and the brave little boy who was his friend. Thirteen years later, the monster returns.

~*~

Hello Mojo! Have you read ‘Key Differences’ by Pupeez4eva? Its a MDZS!WWX meets CQL!WWX and its really good! [It’s on my list!]

Key Differences

by pupeez4eva (T, 6k, wangxian)

Summary:  “I don’t understand,” Wei Wuxian said, while his alternate self continued to stare at him with almost a look of hurt in his eyes. There was longing in there too, which Wei Wuxian would have easily recognised if he paid enough attention. “How could you not get together, after everything. What even went on in the Guanyin Temple if you didn’t confess?”

“The Guanyin Temple,” Wei Ying repeated incredulously. “You’re asking me if I confessed at — honestly, a lot went on that day. It was a life and death situation. There was no confessing.”

Wei Wuxian stared at him, appalled.

(Wherein Wei Wuxian ends up meeting an alternate version of himself who, much to his horror, never married Lan Wangji. Obviously he has to do something to fix this).

~*~

Hey Mojo i would recommend this fanfic if you already haven’t, it’s called “ take me back to a time “ by DizziDreams. It’s sooooo good

take me back to a time

by DizziDreams (T, 144k, wangxian, 3zun)

Summary:  Wei Ying has a lot on his plate right now.

It’s finals week -- which isn’t so bad. He’s never had to study much to do well in classes. But that just means that things are that much more tense with Jiang Cheng, who, as far as Wei Ying can tell, only takes study breaks long enough to glare at Wei Ying where he sits on the couch playing video games.

It’s not studies that have Wei Ying stressed out. It’s everything else. It’s the recruitment for the research trial he’s coordinating. It’s jiejie and her impending marriage to His Royal Douchebag Jin Zixuan. It’s the volunteer work at the palliative care facility. It’s Wen Ning’s worsening condition. It’s Wen Qing working herself thin to care for her brother and Wen Yuan. It’s the way Wen Yuan never seems to have enough food.

So, yeah. There’s enough on Wei Ying’s plate already, meaning it’s not entirely welcome when he comes home and finds a man standing in his bedroom. A man in extravagant white robes, a ribbon tied around his forehead, long hair gathered into a topknot, fist clutching a sword at his side, who asks him, “Where am I?”

~*~

Idk if this has already been rec’d (I’ve been off the grid for a while now), but there’s this absolutely incredible fic called Restitution by an anon on ao3 people should definitely check out!

this one?

on restitution

by Anonymous (M, 78k, wangxian, jin ling & wei wuxian, lan sizhui & wei wuxian, WIP)

Summary:  When Wei Wuxian regains consciousness, he is in a bed. A real, proper bed, not the slab he called a bed in his cave in the Burial Mounds.

Jiang Cheng is glowering above him.

Wei Wuxian doesn't die during the siege of the Burial Mounds. Rather, he is captured in secret and confined at Lotus Pier. Things change accordingly.

~*~

Hi momjo! I feel like every time I come to your blog there's twenty more new and amazing fics for me to read. Thank you for everything you do for this fandom!  [Thank you, sweetie!  And yes, I think there ARE 20 new fics every day out there in the fandom.  It’s amazing!] Today I come bearing my own rec to you. I've recently read this and it's IMO one of the best fics out there. It's called Lapsteel by carriecmoney and it's a modern stormchaser AU featuring country songs and coming home. ~ @manaika-chan​

Lapsteel

by carriecmoney (T, 42k, wangxian)

Summary:  Now and then, I think about you now and then...

It's been thirteen years since Wei Ying ran for the prairies, leaving behind a family in shambles and a secret on the Pacific wind. What happens when the storm he swirled catches up to him?

Modern AU with country music star Lan Zhan, stormchaser Wei Ying, and shared crossroads.

~*~

[stiltonbasket]

Can we have a hundred day celebration for Shuilan in renouncement? Would love to see Wangxian happily showing off their baby and the everyone being KO’d by her cuteness.

If anyone had told Wei Wuxian what his future would hold five years ago, he would have laughed at the impossibility, and then dug a hole for himself in his favorite radish patch until Wen Qing came along to fetch him. 

How strange it would have sounded to the Yiling Laozu holding court in the Burial Mounds, scraping by on thin luobo stew and the odd egg from market to feed A-Yuan, that one day a child of his would receive the blessings of all the Lan sect the moment she came into the world, and again thrice over at her hundred-day feast! It scarcely seems real to him now, after more than a year as Lan Zhan’s husband and the Lan Clan’s Xinhua-jun, and the sight of his richly dressed reflection in the looking glass bewilders him so much that he scarcely registers it when Lan Zhan materializes behind him with A-Lan in his arms.

“A-Lan looks so sweet, Lan Zhan,” he laughs, when his husband reaches out to touch his elbow--in a gesture that means come back, xingan, for I am here beside you, and you need never want for anything again. “She’s sparkling almost as much as you are.”

Lan Zhan dressed the baby in a tiny, glittering robe covered with beaded flowers, and whenever the light falls upon her little body, A-Lan glows like a moonlit pearl: so cool and soft and calm that Wei Wuxian can scarcely look away from her, even after the hundred-day feast is well underway in the banquet hall. He and Lan Zhan hold the seats of honor today, rather than Lan Xichen, and Xiao-Yu sits close beside them with his fluffy hair tied up into two pigtails.

“May I hold her, Hanguang-jun?” a kindly matron from the Cheng sect asks. Lan Zhan nods, and Lan-bao is swiftly transferred into Cheng-er-furen’s arms: puzzled by her sudden ascent, certainly, but happy enough to blink her big eyes up at Second Lady Cheng and coo like a roosting pigeon.

“Oh,” Cheng-er-furen gasps, as A-Lan kicks her tiny feet in their pink satin shoes. “Xinhua-jun, she’s beautiful.”

Wei Wuxian feels his heart quiver in his breast. “They say that one beauty recognizes another,” he says gravely, laughing out loud when Lady Cheng’s cheeks flush red. “Lan-bao can already tell, Lan Zhan, don’t you think?”

Lan Zhan presses his lips together and refuses to answer, but Wei Wuxian can see them twitching up at the corners. “That means he agrees with me,” he teases, as Cheng-furen slips a red packet into Xiao-Yu’s hands and kisses the toe of A-Lan’s little sock. “Don’t you, xingan?”

Lady Cheng rolls her eyes at their flirting and passes down the line with a smile, yielding her place to the next guest before going to find a seat at the banquet table.

“Ah, Wei-xiong,” the next well-wisher sighs, snapping open his favorite fan and holding it out to the baby. “A-Lan’s gathered quite a crowd today, hasn’t she?”

“Well, we did limit the full-moon ceremony to only our friends and family,” Wei Wuxian points out. As far as social events go, A-Lan’s full moon was one of the most exclusive gatherings of the year, open to members of the Lan sect and only by invitation to guests outside the Cloud Recesses; Ouyang Zizhen was generally envied as the sole attendee unconnected to Wei Wuxian by sect or familial ties, though he would have been invited anyway as Ouyang-zongzhu’s heir. “Lan Zhan was worried that we might fall ill during the monsoon season, so of course we had to invite everyone now that the weather’s turned warm again.”

Huaisang gives a meditative nod and lets A-Lan chew on the handle of his fan. “Lan-bao doesn’t have any teeth,” he yawns, when Wei Wuxian stares at the fan in disbelief and tries to pull it out of the baby’s mouth. “She can gum on my fan all she wants, I doubt she can put a dent in it.”

But the fan loses its charm before long, and A-Lan starts fussing in her blue satin wrap and refuses to settle until Wei Wuxian picks her up. The next group of guests offers their good-wishes one by one, leaving behind gifts like red packets and jade pendants and enough books to set up a new wing in the Library Pavilion; and a little while later, a shy two-year-old wanders up with his mother and presents a clumsily-carved dizi, just the right size for a toddler about as old as he is.

“I married out of the Cloud Recesses, so I live with my husband in Caiyi now,” the mother explains, as her son looks into Lan-bao’s crib with big eyes and makes soft cooing sounds in a clear attempt to play with her. “He runs a woodworking shop, so when we heard about the invitation to Lan-xiao-guniang’s hundred-day, Fang’er asked him to help carve a dizi for her.”

Wei Wuxian is so thoroughly charmed that he promises to stop by the woodworking shop later in the month, and present little Lan Fang--who seems to have taken his mother’s name, to retain his connection to her sect--with a learning dizi of his own.

“You can never begin too early,” Lan Zhan offers, catching Xiao-Yu by the sleeve to stop him from feeding his spicy peanut snacks to Lan Fang. “Does he prefer the flute above other instruments, furen? If so, he could come to the Cloud Recesses to study alongside Xiao-Yu when Wei Ying starts his music lessons.”

Wei Wuxian flinches, wondering if Lan Zhan has lost his senses--because what good mother would send her son to learn the dizi from the infamous Yiling Patriarch, even if he had been redeemed in the eyes of the gentry by his marriage to Lan Wangji? But Lan Fang’s mother is already nodding, looking fondly at Xiao-Yu as he offers Fang’er a bite of tangyuan, and the look in her eyes when she turns to Wei Wuxian is full of nothing but happiness.

“Xiao-Fang doesn’t get along very well with the children in Caiyi,” she sighs. “But he’ll surely come to study here one day, so if I could send him and know that Xiao-Yu-gongzi would look out for him--”

“Xiao-Yu will!” A-Yu exclaims, grabbing Lan Fang’s hand. “He’ll be A-Yu’s shidi!”

Lan Fang is more interested in doting on A-Lan, but Xiao-Yu is delighted by the prospect of having a junior sect brother, and tells the next ten people in line that he has become a shixiong now.

All in all, A-Lan’s hundred-day feast goes off without a hitch, and Wei Wuxian is nearly in tears at the sweetness of it all by the time Jiang Cheng arrives with a set of silver baby jewelry.

“A-Cheng, you shouldn’t have,” he chuckles, ducking his head so that Lan Zhan can pat his eyes with a cool handkerchief. “Lan-bao has enough jewelry for a new set every day, by now!”

“This isn’t just any set of jewelry,” Jiang Cheng informs him, motioning his head disciple to come forward and open the flat jewel-cases to reveal necklaces, bangles, ankle-bracelets and a longevity lock encrusted with silver beads.

Upon closer inspection, Wei Wuxian discovers that each tiny bead is a miniature clarity bell, etched with the Jiang sect lotus blossom and reinforced with so many protective charms that the collected set must have cost a small fortune.

“Didi,” Wei Wuxian begins, trying in vain to swallow the lump in his throat. “This, this is--”

“She won’t be able to wear these for long, but you could get them disassembled and extended with plain silver when she’s older,” his brother interrupts. “But A-Shuai says you should put them into storage when A-Lan gets older, because heaven knows I can’t afford another set.”

Lan Zhan frowns. “Why would we need another set?”

Jiang Cheng fixes him with a pointed stare, and Wei Wuxian feels his cheeks turn crimson when he finally gets the hint.

(Three years later, A-Lan’s hundred-day clarity jewels are passed down to a newborn baby sister, and no one is more pleased than her adoring jiujiu when Wei Chunyang wears them at her own full moon celebration.)

[drwcn]

《Without Envy》- concubine/sleeper agent!wwx & prince!lwj 

[story board 1] [story board 2]   [story board 3]  [story board 4] 

long post: story board 5 →

Lan Wangji, as it turned, was a true gentleman. This was problematic for Wei Wuxian, who was tasked with getting close to him, because Hanguang-wang’s upstanding morals being rather unimpeachable rendered Wei Wuxian’s initial seduction efforts entirely unsuccessful. 

 Lan Wangji straight up ignored him. Whenever he came to visit Jiang Yanli it was always to speak with her and not Wei Wuxian. It was like Wei Wuxian, or A-Xian as he was known, did not exist to the prince. Whenever Wei Wuxian tried to “get close” to him, aka, making himself available to serve tea, meals and such, Lan Wangji would always dismiss him, or tell him to wait outside so Lan Wangji and Jiang Yanli could dine together alone. Needless to say, Wei Wuxian was getting increasingly frustrated. Entirely unbeknownst to Wei Wuxian however was the fact that Lan Wangji had noticed him from the start and was just trying to stop himself from doing something inappropriate. Truth is, Lan Wangji first saw Wei Wuxian at Jiang-fu during one of Lan Wangji’s visits to finalize the marriage between himself and Jiang Yanli. 

It was the dogs’ barking that got Lan Wangji’s attention first. That, and a young man’s agitated cursing.

“Fuck - ow! Princess that was not nice! I’m going to turn you into barbeque if you don’t cut this shi - Ow! Jasmine, give it here!” 

Lan Wangji’s personal guards Guo Ai and Sun Ting made to investigate the source of the ruckus and to tell off whoever dared to be so impertinent and disrespectful in a marquis’s manor, but Lan Wangji stopped them with a subtle gesture.  

Slowly, he approached the round archway looking into the garden and saw by the shrubs a handsome young man cradling a fuzzy tiny thing while trying his darnedest to fend off two relentless hounds. “Shoo, shoo, go bother your master!”

But the dogs wanted to play. Their bushy tails wagged happily.  

Eventually, the young man tired of the over enthusiastic canines, picked up a stick off the ground, and tossed it far over the garden walls. The dogs took off running, and he and the little creature he protected were allowed a moment’s peace. 

“Little tutu, it’s okay, the mean dogs are gone now. Don’t be afraid.” 

It was only then that Lan Wangji saw that the furry round thing was a small bunny, probably driven from its burrow by the aforementioned hounds that belonged to Jiang-xiao-gongzi. He watched, slightly transfixed, as the young man lifted the bunny and gently booped its nose against his own, his comely face scrunching up adorably in the process. 

So when Wei Wuxian arrived at the prince’s estate with Jiang Yanli, Lan Wangji cursed his luck. He had no intentions of becoming attracted or attached to anyone in his harem. His marriages were political games. Everything he did in his harem was calculated. The last thing he needed was for the Jins to think they could sink their claws into him. So he kept company with all his concubines equally, just to maintain the balance. Lan Wangji did not want Jin Ziyan to be the only man in his harem, which was why when Qin Su offered him Mo Xuanyu, he did not refuse. It was fortunate that Mo Xuanyu himself seemed eager to serve too, so Lan Wangji did not have to grapple with ethics there.  He was doing this for his country; everyone knew this. As long as he kept to his duties and divided his attentions equally, there would be trouble in his harem. Except...Lan Wangji wanted to see ‘A-Xian’ again. The more he wanted, the more he made himself keep his distance. He recognized the power dynamic that existed between this servant and himself, and that if he were to ask, A-xian was not really in a position to refuse. Besides, Jiang Yanli made no indications that she wanted her A-Xian to serve Lan Wangji. In fact, she seemed quite protective of him, always looking out for him wherever she could. She practically treated him like a little brother than a servant. As such, Lan Wangji was happy with the way things were. He could live with never knowing A-Xian more intimately. In fact, he did not want A-Xian to be ordered to serve him, or find out that A-Xian was just like every other man and woman in his harem, there to curry favours with him. It would be a shame if he turned out to be just another flower in the garden, another player in this game they played.  

Of course Wei Wuxian read this whole situation as: that little bastard Lan Wangji doesn’t like me. Xue Yang was charged with being Wei Wuxian’s correspondence between Gusu and Qishan but ended up just being the guy Wei Wuxian complained to.  —“Is this Hanguang-wang truly a paragon of virtues???” Wei Wuxian raged. “Aren’t princes supposed to be lechers? Wen Chao certainly is a sleeze. Wen Xu could be too for all we know. I’m young, fit, attractive and available. I know he likes men so why not me? He sleeps with Mo Xuanyu all the time apparently …Is Mo Xuanyu more attractive than me?!” Xue Yang: >_> God I miss murders. 

Wei Wuxian’s “opportunity” came when Jiang Yanli fell mysteriously ill about three months after she married Lan Wangji. When the physicians were left scratching their heads, Wei Wuxian quickly took the matter into his own hands. He needed Jiang Yanli alive; if she died before he made an impression on Lan Wangji, he could be sent away back to Jiang-fu and threaten his entire operation. What’s more, Jiang Yanli had been extremely kind to him in the last two years since he arrived at Gusu. She truly was the perfect lady; he would hate to see her suffer.  Through some crafty investigations, Wei Wuxian discovered that the cause of Jiang Yanli’s illness was a slow poison being laced into her food by Jin Ziyan’s orders. The motive of his actions were obvious enough; ever since Jiang Yanli married in, Lan Wangji seemed to be showing her extra favour, favours which he never distributed unevenly prior to her entering his household. Jin Ziyan did not want Jiang Yanli as a competition. She was a marquess’s dichu daughter, much higher in rank than either Qin Su or Luo Qingyang, and therefore posed serious threat to becoming Lan Wangji’s legal spouse. In a way, she was Jin Ziyan’s biggest competitor, and he couldn’t have that. What Jin Ziyan didn’t know was that Lan Wangji visited Jiang Yanli so much because he wanted to catch glimpses of Wei Wuxian, even though he dismissed Wei Wuxian from the room every time he saw him (the man was clearly a masochist). Wei Wuxian managed to sniff out the poison before it could cause lasting damages, but the effect of it was going on for long enough that Jiang Yanli still had an early term miscarriage before she even knew she was pregnant. Wei Wuxian, incensed by Jiang Yanli’s suffering, was ready to expose Jin Ziyan, but was ordered not to by Wen Zhuliu. ‘We still need Jin Ziyan’ was his reasoning. Still, Wei Wuxian managed to tip off the investigators such that they detected and put an end to the poisoning, but the culprit was ultimately never caught. As this played out, Wei Wuxian realized that now was his chance to get close to Lan Wangji. With Jiang Yanli recuperating...surely the Jiang family would want someone else of their clan to serve Lan Wangji in her place, someone who could keep Lan Wangji’s attention but would not replace Jiang Yanli’s place in the harem. It did not take much to lead Yu Ziyuan to the same conclusion. To ensure that he would have ample time with Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian secretly slipped a special sedative into Jiang Yanli’s food and drink to mimic the symptoms of a slow recovery. The sedative was one of Qishan’s secret formulations and could not be detected by Gusu’s finest doctors. But Jiang Yanli, bless her heart, did not want the boy who she’d come to see as a little brother to be used like an object. "A-niang, I don't want to force A-Xian to do things he doesn't want to. I will get better, dianxia will not abandon me." — Yu Ziyuan tsked, "Silly girl, serving Lan Wangji in your stead is his entire purpose for coming with you. Every family must plan for something like this; someone to hold onto Lan Wangji's interest while you're indisposed. Men are fickle, child. You need time to recover and someone will need to remind Hanguang-wang that you still matter when you’re ready again. We cannot let him forget you. Think of what this would mean for our clan." Much to Yu Ziyuan’s delight, Lan Wangji came to check on Jiang Yanli while she was visiting, and Madam Yu had no qualms making hints that it would be the Jiang family’s honour if Hanguang-wang allowed ‘A-Xian’ to serve him while Yanli recovered. Wei Wuxian did not protest. Why would he? This was his orchestration after all, but when he dared raise his gaze from the floor to look at Lan Wangji, he detected a hint of something in Lan Wangji’s face…something like disappointment. Wei Wuxian relayed this to Xue Yang and the other evil gremlin sucked on a candied apricot and said with a roll of his eyes： —“You’re so dense, shixiong, tsk. Men like Lan Wangji could have any man or woman he wants. If you go along with Madam Yu’s orders, you’ll just to be like everyone else, another ambitious servant trying to socially advance. He’ll fuck you and forget you within a blink of an eye.” — Wei Wuxian sipped his liquor and grimaced. “Fine, what do you suggest I do then? — Xue Yang smirked, “Oh, haven’t you heard? Men like roses with thorns. When you’re brought to him tonight, don’t play along. Don’t humour him. Refuse him.” — Wei Wuxian： >_> Is this how you got those Daoist priests in bed with you? — Xue Yang smirked shamelessly, “Worked, innit?”

Listen, Lan Wangji was fully prepared to have some emotionless sex with Wei Wuxian okay? Boy was prepared to just go through the motions. He was disappointed to know that A-Xian turned out to be no better than any other servant in his harem: eager to climb his bed.

Being a concubine was stupid work, Wei Wuxian realized belatedly. After dinner, Jiang Yanli bid him goodbye with worried eyes as the momos and gugus of Hanguang-fu dragged him away to be bathed and prepped for the prince’s enjoyment later that night. (gugu, momo - older female servants)

Wei Wuxian was not a dirty person - sure, he worked hard, but he bathed regularly - they did not have to scrub that roughly. As they practically scrapped off a layer of skin, the momos rattled on and on about how he should “conduct” himself in the presence of dianxia and how he should position himself to best please him. 

What the actual fuck. Wei Wuxian resisted the urge to pull a face. Did the ladies get the same banal talk? How fucking boring was the sex around here? Wei Wuxian wasn’t born yesterday alright? He knew how to fuck.  ...Well fine, he didn’t, but he and Xue Yang had sucked each other off once or twice, so that should count for something. 

Once the attendants were satisfied with the state of him - hair brushed, skin cleaned and lotioned, callouses removed - they rolled him in a large full-body sized blanket, placed him in a sedan and ordered the servants to carry him to Lan Wangji’s chamber. 

Wei Wuxian tried not to make an exasperated grimace when the servants literally picked him up like a log and deposited him on the prince’s large bed.

Fucking...seriously? 

He did not remember this bullshit when zhangjie married in...but then again Jiang Yanli did marry in. There was a ceremony and everything. Lan Wangji was very respectful that night, bowing to her before lifting her veil as a gentleman ought to. So what the fuck is this barbaric treatment? Just as he pondered on these questions, the tulle canopy parted, and Lan Wangji’s handsome face and broad chest came into view. Undressed to his inner most layer of robes and his ink black hair let loose, he looked very much like a man ready to ravish his new concubine, but somehow, Wei Wuxian could not detect a trace of interest on that jade-like face. 

Despite knowing this was all an act, just a means to an end, Wei Wuxian shivered when Lan Wangji reached for the edge of the blanket that encased him. 

He pulled the blankets closer, shrinking deeper inside. 

“Don’t be afraid,” said Lan Wangji. “I won’t hurt you.” 

Time to act, Wei Wuxian. Give it your best shot. 

“I’m not afraid.”  “Then why do you hide?”  Wei Wuxian waited a meaningful second before meeting Lan Wangji’s gaze dead on and said, “Because I don’t want to.”  Nonplussed, Lan Wangji raised an elegant eye brow in return. “Oh? Is that so? Or are those just words? Perhaps you've confused what kind of place a harem is. If you do not want to, why are you here?”

Is my act not convincing enough or is this stupid asshole so confident in his attractiveness that he thinks everyone must automatically want to fuck him? Slightly ticked off now, Wei Wuxian sat up, still holding the blanket to his chest and retorted hotly, “I am not confused, dianxia. Perhaps you are unable to comprehend the idea that someone as lowly as a servant would refuse when given the opportunity to ascend in rank, but nevertheless, that doesn’t change my position. I don't want to. I am here because Lianfang-jun appointed me; there was hardly any room in that decision for me to argue. If you are determined to have me, I will not resist, because I understand my place. But I am a person, not a thing or a broodmare for you breed. I have some dignity left, and at the very least, before you...before you hold me down and fuck me, I want you to know."

Wei Wuxian half wondered if his act had gone a little overboard. The expletives maybe were just a tad too dramatic, but then again...   ...seeing how Lan Wangji's entire stance shifted, maybe not. 

Lan Wangji withdrew his hand. He had mistaken Wei Wuxian’s initial unwillingness as coquettish posturing, but the heat in those dark, bright eyes could not be faked. 

“Those words could get you into a lot of trouble when spoken to the wrong person. Have the momos not taught you the rules?” 

Wei Wuxian squared his shoulders. “They have, but I place trust in Hanguang-wang’s reputation, that you are a true gentleman and would not force me against my will.” Then, just as he practiced, Wei Wuxian lowered his eyes. “I am a servant, your servant, and I know it is my duty to serve you in any way you command me, but I -...please find other use of me, dianxia, but not this.” 

 He startled a little when a warm hand found purchase under his chin and lifted up his face. Lan Wangji inspected him wordlessly with those cold, sharp eyes, searching for lies, for pretense. Wei Wuxian held his breath, praying he won’t be found out, but eventually, when the prince and his calculation deemed him good enough, he let go. 

“Very well.” 

Lan Wangji fetched a pair of clean inner robes and trousers from the wardrobe and handed them to Wei Wuxian. “Get dressed and move over.” Without waiting for Wei Wuxian to respond, he sat himself down on the edge of the bed and began to remove his socks and shoes. 

Wei Wuxian moved quickly, shrugging on the robes and tied it in place before shoving the trousers under the covers to try and pulling them up his legs. “You’re...you’re not leaving?” 

Lan Wangji glared at him over his shoulder. “This is my room, my bed. Why should I leave?” 

Right. Right.

“But you’re not...sending me away?” 

Lan Wangji frowned as though questioning his intelligence. “Would you like me to send you away? I should think that would reflect badly on you and your mistress.”   That did give Wei Wuxian pause. “Uh, well –”   “Your declining to be my bedfellow does not impede my fulfilling my side of the arrangement. You will leave in the morning, and the others will think that I found you pleasing enough to keep you the whole night. That should give Jiang-fu’ren and the Yunmeng Jiang clan sufficient face."   “I could sleep on the floor.” 

“Do you want to sleep on the floor?” Lan Wangji swung his legs onto the bed and arranged the blankets to his liking. “The doors are never locked. Servants and sentinels must be allowed in to check on me during the night for security purposes. It would not bode well if they found you lying on the floor.” 

Right, yeah that would defeat the whole purpose. 

“Oh.” 

Lan Wangji lay down and crossed his hands over his chest. “Lie down, sleep. I have morning court assembly, and I’m tired. If you’re going to stay, don’t be a disturbance.” 

Feeling like he’d lost all semblance of control in this situation, Wei Wuxian awkwardly laid himself down beside Lan Wangji. The bed was big enough for the two of them that there was space in between even when both of them lay flat on their backs. 

Lan Wangji lifted up just a second to blow out the bedside candle, and then there was total darkness.

Wasn’t I suppose to seduce him? What the fuck is this? Okay...maybe I have no idea how to seduce him...maybe I have no idea how to do anything that’s not straight up strangling him in his sleep. 

Wei Wuxian could feel his heart thudding in his chest, panic coiling tighter and tighter. He almost wished Lan Wangji had ignored his protest and took him, because then it’d be straight forward. As it were, he had no idea how to proceed now. 

Just as Wei Wuxian was being slowly consumed by his maelstrom of thoughts, Lan Wangi suddenly spoke into the dark. 

"I am not a heartless bastard, you should know."

Huh? 

"I never implied that."

“You did.” Lan Wangji gave a little shake of his head. “I do not want this anymore than the others in the harem. You said I treat my women like broodmares, but perhaps you have not considered that Gusu treats me like a stallion."   Wei Wuxian was momentarily speechless.    “Your mistress is very kind and gentle. I am sorry that the child in her belly was lost; I know she very much wanted to be a mother. I see that you are very protective of her, so you should know, I would never hurt her.  Even if she were to never recover her strength, I would not let harm come to her.”   Those words, softly spoken, tugged at Wei Wuxian’s conscience, if not his heartstrings. “Dianxia -”   “Sleep. Good night.”

The next morning Wei Wuxian woke up to knocking on the door. The sun was already high in the sky and the bed was empty of Lan Wangji’s presence.  A group of maids entered carrying a basin of water, towels and clean clothes. Wei Wuxian, dazed, asked, "Where's danxia?" One of the maid giggled. "Dianxia left at dawn to attend morning assembly at the palace. You must not know; he wakes up very early. He said not to wake you, and to let you sleep. He said," The others giggled with her. “He said that you've had a long night."

To the great surprise of everyone, Lan Wangji did not elevate Jiang Yanli’s servant A-Xian to concubine status after the ‘long night’ they had together. Instead he ordered A-Xian to be transferred to his court to be his close-quarter attendant, to serve him in his every day tasks.  Wei Wuxian did not exactly understand why Lan Wangji would make this particularly decision, but he did not complain. After all this was exactly what he wanted, to be close to Lan Wangji and earn his trust.  Lan Wangji, on the other hand, was content to have Wei Wuxian close by, secure in the knowledge ‘A-Xian’ did not wish to spread his legs to socially advance. Perhaps, if he dared to hope, he could finally have someone to speak to in this lonely manor full of people who only saw the crown hanging above his head.

Xue Yang was of the opinion that this was all going to end badly. He was right. 

[next]

[robininthelabyrinth]

My third and final prompt I promise: Wen Zhuliu. WEN ZHULIU. What if instead of being Wen Chao's babysitter/bodyguard he was a different young master's? Picturing him heaving a long suffering sigh at Huisang or Zixuan's antics is hilarious to me. I just want to see all the different interactions with the Core Melting Hand!

I apologize in advance for writing a fic that technically fulfils your prompt but also is...not quite about what you asked for

That Bitter Draught (ao3) 

It wasn’t that Su She was entirely unaware of what he was like.

He was a man almost entirely consumed by bitterness and envy, his eyes so firmly fixed on what his neighbors had that he couldn’t appreciate the blessings in his own life. He was selfish and ungrateful, and hated the ones he admired the most, hated all of the ones who were better off than him, even the ones who pretended to be fair and equitable about it.

Especially those.

He’d been born to an ordinary family, not cultivators at all – a feeder family doing agriculture for the sake of the great Lan sect, who never much thought nor cared about where their vegetables came from. He waded knee-deep through the muck and the mire for the first six years of his life before some passing Lan cultivator had discovered he had a bit of potential, and next thing he knew his parents had handed him off to be someone’s servant, taking him away from everyone he’d ever known – from his parents and his animals and his siblings and his brother – and he was supposed to be grateful for it.

There wasn’t anything wrong with being a servant, Su She supposed. It was a livelihood like anyone else’s, and maybe he wouldn’t be so bitter about it if he’d stayed that way, the way he was supposed to, as a servant with just enough skill at cultivating to not disturb the tranquil and thoughtful atmosphere of the Cloud Recesses as he rushed around doing all the things that were necessary.

(The Cloud Recesses – so pretty and clean and pure, except there was muck here, too, and no amount of pretending by the sect disciples that their shit didn’t stink the way everyone else’s did would change that.)

Maybe Su She would have been fine with being a servant, though he suspected he wouldn’t – in the darkness of the middle of the night he sometimes thought that his ability to be content had been taken away when he had, that the black gaping hole in his heart that had once held his family would always be a yawning pit that always wanted more than he had, forever incapable of getting the one thing that would fill it up again – but he didn’t stay that way.

No, see, Su She was good at cultivating. He was really good - not quite a genius, but his hard work paid off and he got better and better at what he was doing even though they barely gave him any time to do it in.

After all, someone had to make sure that everything was ready for the sect disciples when they woke up at the start of the mao hour, and that meant he had to be hard at work by yin, and of course the fact that they went to sleep at the end of the xu hour only meant that his work stretched well into hai, but despite all the disadvantages they loaded him down with he cultivated like a madman at every free hour, squeezing it in between work and even more degrading work. He got better and better and better, and eventually, finally, someone noticed him again.

This time they made him a disciple.

They expected him to be grateful for that, too. As if he hadn’t bought the chance with his own sweat and tears and blood, and all to be one of the blessed ones, one of the lucky ones, one of the ones who could – if they were meritorious enough – get a pass to leave the sect to go where they liked.

(Moling was too far to reach by foot, not even for the New Year, and he didn’t make enough money to buy a horse. But once he had a sword, gifted to him from the sect, once he could fly – once he was old enough – once he was trusted enough –)

Being a disciple meant that he woke up at mao hour and went to sleep at xu, that his chamber-pot disappeared in the morning as if by magic, that his food was brought to his table instead of being stuffed into his mouth in the crowded staff room right off the kitchen in the brief reprieves he had between duties…all things he had to adjust to, things that were strange and felt almost unnatural.

Now that he was a disciple, he had all the same rights as all the others, the ones who had been born to it instead of raised up from a lower level for it.

It was supposed to mean that they were all equal, all Lan disciples the same, except that all the arrogant young masters looked down their noses at the former servant who’d stepped above his station. They ridiculed him for it: for being ambitious, for being envious, for thinking too highly of himself, for not knowing the things they’d had a chance to learn and he hadn’t, for smelling like the shit no matter how clean he kept his clothing or how much he washed.

Equal – hah!

The worst, though…the worst was the Twin Jades.

Lan Xichen was powerful, yet kind and generous to the point of selflessness, a proper gentleman; Lan Wangji, equally gifted, always did the right thing, no matter the circumstances, his expression solemn and serious, his reputation famous for his righteousness.

Su She hated them. He wanted to be them, wanted to be Lan Wangji so bad it made his blood boil, but he also hated them – hated him.

The Twin Jades. They didn’t deserve to be called that, not with the three year age difference between them and at least four points of difference on their face, if you were looking; not when Su She’s brother had been born so soon before him that he’d been born clutching his ankle as they left the womb together. Not when the only difference, the only difference, between them was that fucking Lan cultivator’s comment that he only had enough room in his cart to take one of them with him.

A servant, even with cultivation potential, was worth less than a bag of bok choy meant to serve as a side dish on a trueborn Lan disciple’s plate, and so his brother was stuck in the muck back at home while Su She fought his way through the muck that was the Lan sect’s glorious principles and discipline.

He didn’t even know for sure if his brother was still alive.

Oh, Su She had the sect’s permission to write them letters, but what would it help? No one in his village could read, he certainly hadn’t been able to before he’d been forcefully taught so that Lan sect elders could pass him notes instead of condescending enough to speak to him, and the cost of paying a scholar to read it to them would be a waste of the money he faithfully sent them out of his wages every month.

So yes, Su She was bitter. Su She hated. Su She envied, and envied Lan Wangji most of all. After all, he was handsome, but not as handsome; he was talented, but not as talented; he was smart, but not as smart; he was powerful, but not as powerful; he was a twin, but no one cared about him and his brother the way they cared about Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen – Lan Wangji, who got to have his older brother with him any time he liked, but spent the entire time standing there stone-faced and driving him away.

And, of course, Lan Wangji also had – him.

Yu Zhuliu was the sort of guest disciple that was really a servant and not a proper Lan disciple, although his cultivation was high enough to rank alongside some of the shining stars of the Lan sect – even more so than most, given his cultivation of the unique ability that had made him renowned throughout the cultivation world as the Core Melting Hand. It was only that he had been too old, at the time the Lan sect had rescued him from some misfortune that Su She had never heard specified, to learn their ways properly, and for some reason the elders resisted allowing him into the sect properly.  

Perhaps it was because he was what was termed an ‘inconvenient child’ of Meishan Yu, the bastard child of a daughter of the clan; a liability that could neither be killed nor kept.

Perhaps it was because his ability was truly too terrifying, attacking as it did the golden core that all cultivators strove so hard and so long to form.

Or perhaps it was simply that he made a very convenient servant.

Yu Zhuliu was, to put a point on it, Lan Wangji’s servant, acting as both bodyguard and attendant.

He was a deputy to help Lan Wangji with whatever he needed, big or small. The Lan sect prided itself on discipline and humility, but only to a certain extent – only to the extent it looked good or was pure – and of course they were desperate to keep their precious young jade safe from the growing predations of Qishan Wen; it was not so strange that they assigned him a bodyguard, and of course if he was already doing that he might as well do the rest.

After all, who could expect a proper young gentleman to care for himself?

Su She hadn’t taken much notice of Yu Zhuliu at first, other than a brief stabbing feeling of pity when he heard of the man’s circumstances. But then one day he’d noticed him rolling his eyes as Lan Wangji stiffly recited the rules in advance of yet another punishment he was inflicting over something minor – no one loved the rules as much as Lan Wangji did. There was a reason nobody talked to him, perfect disciple that he was, and of course unlike the lowly Su She who, despite himself, longed for the company and recognition of his peers, Lan Wangji rose above it all, was above it all. And while no one could claim that his distribution of punishments wasn’t as fair and equitable as might be asked, it was evident to Su She that he only did it that way because it was the subject of yet another rule.

But no one ever seem to notice or care, no one ever thought it as stupid as Su She did, right up until that moment when he’d seen Yu Zhuliu making a long-suffering face like that where Lan Wangji couldn’t see, and Su She couldn’t help but smile a little, heart suddenly warm with a feeling of fellowship.

Yu Zhuliu had seen him smiling, caught his eyes, and rolled his eyes again, this time more pointedly – a gesture aimed just at him, a shared joke – and that was it; Su She was lost.

Su She was in Lan Wangji’s age group, even if they weren’t close (no one was close to Lan Wangji), so it wasn’t hard to find time to go over and talk to Yu Zhuliu.

The conversations were mostly one-sided to start with, which Su She had expected. Yu Zhuliu was a reserved man, and of course there was always that master-servant divide lying between them like a gulf. Still, Su She had been a servant once, which Yu Zhuliu knew – everyone knew – and in time Su She got him to ease up a little, talk back, commiserate.

Su She told him about his family, the little he remembered of them after all these years; in return, Yu Zhuliu unbent enough to tell him a little about his own background: the mother that hated him as the living sign of her disgrace, the constant accusations that he didn’t deserve to bear the Yu surname.

“Have you ever considered changing it?” Su She asked, helping him fold Lan Wangji’s laundry. It wasn’t something he’d ever have permitted himself to do under other circumstances, knowing how important it was to distance himself from all things relating to servants, but he was willing to make some compromises if it meant getting to spend a little more time with Yu Zhuliu. “Obviously if you want to keep it, it’s yours; they can’t deprive you of your birthright like that. But it doesn’t seem like you particularly want it.”

Yu Zhuliu was quiet for a long moment. “Once,” he said, his eyes distant. “I considered it once, before I joined the Lan sect. I wasn’t yet sure who had been the one to – well. Suffice it to say that I was seriously considering an offer I had received to join a different sect, and they offered to allow me to adopt the main clan’s surname as my own if I performed well.”

Su She shuddered in automatic revulsion at the thought.

Yu Zhuliu saw it, of course, and chuckled. “It would have been a great honor,” he reminded him. “Especially for someone like me – to be able to shed my old name would have been enough, but to replace it with a name that was even more powerful..?”

“Gratifying,” Su She agreed, a little begrudgingly. The idea of giving away his identity like that, giving in to the arrogant young masters’ lies that they were better than him just because they had a fancier surname, revolted him, but he could, he supposed, see a little of the spiteful appeal of it.  “Like – stamping on their faces with it, showing them what they’ve lost.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you take that offer, then?” They both knew the Lan sect would never in a million years extend a similar offer, even though there were plenty of branch families surnamed Lan and another one more or less wouldn’t much matter. It wasn’t proper, though, and no one cared more about propriety than the Lan sect. “With the clan surname, they would have had to make you a proper disciple.”

Su She would never agree to such an offer himself. He might want, in the darkest parts of his heart, to be Lan Wangjii, to be something better than he was, might occasionally daydream of what his life might have been life if they’d been born swapped in place, but he didn’t – he wouldn’t sell his surname for it.

(He wouldn’t sell his brother for it, even if all he had of his brother was a surname and some swiftly fading memories.)

But Yu Zhuliu hated his surname and all it represented. He wasn’t like Su She, always thinking of the past and the might-have-beens and growing fat on all his resentment and grievances; if Yu Zhuliu could shed his skin like a cicada, emerge somewhere else a brand-new person, he would do it in a heartbeat.

“It was the Lan sect that saved me,” he said simply. “And so I owed it to them to come here, no matter what the Wen sect offered me.”

The Wen sect. Wow. That was sure some offer to turn down; they commanded the loyalty of over a third of the smaller sects, maybe even close to half, and Yu Zhuliu could have gotten their surname.

Of course, the Wen sect offered that out much more readily than other sects did, but still.

On the other hand, if Yu Zhuliu had accepted, if he’d become Wen Zhuliu, then Su She would never have had the chance to meet him, or would have only met him under bad circumstances.

Maybe he wouldn’t have liked Wen Zhuliu that much at all.

“Your loyalty is admirable,” he finally said, after wracking his brain for something appropriately neutral to say.

That got him another chuckle. “Did you know that lies make you look like you’ve tasted something sour?”

“I,” Su She said with dignity, “am a great liar. You just haven’t noticed it yet.”

Yu Zhuliu was silent for a moment, maybe reviewing things he knew about Su She. “I suppose you probably are,” he said thoughtfully. “Which means it’s the Lan sect that you don’t like.”

Su She shrugged. “I don’t think I’d like any sect,” he confessed, even though he knew he shouldn’t.

Yu Zhuliu’s overwhelming trait was his loyalty, after all – he’d sell Su She out in a heartbeat if he thought the Lan sect deemed it necessary. Su She was mostly just counting on being so pointless and insignificant that Yu Zhuliu wouldn’t think it was worth telling anyone about him.

It probably wasn’t, either. Why would the Lan sect care about someone like Su She one way or another? He wasn’t anything to them, not really; even as a disciple, his only purpose was to act as an adornment, to bring honor and glory that would reflect upwards onto the great clan surnamed Lan.

“Why?” Yu Zhuliu asked. He sounded honestly curious – honestly interested, interested in Su She for something other than being an extra body in a formation or another cannon fodder to throw to the dogs when a night-hunt went badly.

Su She wanted to tell him everything.

But Yu Zhuliu was loyal, always loyal, and Su She may not be as smart as Lan Wangji but he wasn’t stupid.

“They’re all the same in the end, full of arrogant young masters,” he said breezily. “I mean, did you see the group of disasters at Teacher Lan’s lectures?”

Perhaps that was a harsh assessment, but he’d humiliated himself in front of them all on that night-hunt that went wrong against the Waterborne Abyss, with his still-shaky control over his sword, trying as always to live up to Lan Wangji’s example the way they kept always telling him he should and then being looked down upon as an idiot for even trying – why would he do something so stupid obviously he can never match Lan Wangji always aiming above his station and thinks too highly of himself still a servant after all obviously he’ll never be good enough – and the mere thought of them tasted like bile and hatred in his mouth.

“The head disciple from the Jiang sect seemed fairly smart,” Yu Zhuliu said, and Su She scoffed.

“He’s very smart, very smart indeed,” he said scathingly. “So smart that he’s forgotten who he is and where he came from. Eventually someone’s going to remember that he’s a servant’s son, not a proper young master at all, and he’ll pay for it in blood and tears – if he’s lucky.”

“Do you think so?”

“The Jiang heir has an inferiority complex as deep as the ocean –” Su She knew what one looked like; after all, he saw one every day in the mirror. “– and eventually the time will come when he has to be sect leader in his father’s place. On that day, all those pretty words about how wonderful Wei Wuxian is, how smart, how talented, what a credit to his sect, they’ll all fall onto Jiang Wanyin’s ears like a lash on his back. And when the time comes that he has to sacrifice something, well, we’ll see how much being smart helps Wei Wuxian then.”

“An interesting perspective,” Yu Zhuliu remarked.

“An accurate one,” Su She retorted. “He was raised as a proper young master, not a servant, and so he won’t even know to see the danger when it comes. None of them would.”

“No, I suppose not. It’s always the things you don’t know you don’t know that can harm you the most.” Yu Zhuliu straightened up – the laundry was done; they’d finished it ages ago. “We will have to continue this discussion another time, Su-gongzi –”

“Su She, please. Su Minshan, if you must.”

“Su Minshan, then. I look forward to speaking with you again.”

When Yu Zhuliu let, Su She hugged himself in glee, allowing himself a moment of triumph at a successful conversation with the person he liked, then went to wash himself clean again. He wasn’t dirty, and it was the middle of the day, but he wanted to make sure no one could smell the bleaching herbs they put in the laundry on him. He didn’t want to risk any more mockery, and anyway, it had gotten to be a habit.

As he went to the baths, he saw Lan Wangji standing on a nearby pathway, looking up at the sky as if deep in thought. He must be on his rounds again, even though it wasn’t his day for it, or even the right time; he’d taken to haunting the routine work of it as if it were the only thing keeping him grounded.

Whatever. It wasn’t Su She’s business.

Except maybe it was, because Lan Wangji kept – looking at him, over the next few days. Which was weird, because Lan Wangji never looked at anybody, his nose firmly stuck up in the sky where mortals dared not tread, and it was starting to make Su She nervous.

Surely Lan Wangji couldn’t tell – about him. He’d never been able to before, why would he start now?

And yet…what if he could?

What if Lan Wangji had figured him out? Figured out Su She’s rebellious heart, how he wasn’t grateful at all not matter nice a face he put on, how he hated the stupid Lan sect rules and the stupid Lan sect disciples and the stupid Lan sect arrogance, how he secretly schemed to learn everything he could and transcribe everything he couldn’t memorize so that he could take it back home to Moling one day and show his brother everything he’d learned, how he despised them all for their arrogance –

“Will you be attending the archery competition?” Lan Wangji asked stiffly. He did everything stiffy, like he was actually a statute carved out of jade and only just pretending to be human. “At the Nightless City?”

“Naturally,” Su She said, not bothering to look up from the verses he was copying. Not the most polite, not as kiss-ass as he ought to be when faced with the glory that was the second jade of the Lan sect, but he’d found that as long as he kept his tone as formal and humble as possible, he could get away with a little. “It may be nothing like yours, Lan-er-gongzi, but I do have some skill at it, you know.”

Not that most people thought so. They would be travelling to Qishan in three groups, for easier and more secure travel – one for the adults, one led by the Twin Jades to represent the shining hope of their sect, and the last of everyone else making up the numbers. He was in the last group, of course, even though his talent for musical cultivation was one of the strongest in the junior generation and his swordplay good enough to only lose to Lan Wangji three times out of every five – better results than a good half of the group of well-born Lan clansman being sent out as the representatives of their sect.

Was he bitter about it? Yes.

Lan Wangji hesitated for a long moment, and even shifted from one leg to the other – a sign of nervousness in most people, maybe. In Lan Wangji? Who even knew.

After a while, he said, “My group has an extra place,” sounding almost like it was an offer, and the entire thing was so bizarre that Su She immediately became suspicious.  

“What do you want?” he asked.

Lan Wangji blinked at him.

“He who is unaccountably solicitous is hiding bad intentions, Lan-er-gongzi,” Su She clarified, glaring up at him and unable to keep his mouth from twisting as though he’d bitten something sour. He knew he often looked like that, and it made the female cultivators downrate his handsomeness, but he’d been the subject of too many jokes to stop himself from being so bitterly defensive. “You don’t know me, you don’t like me, and you don’t go out of your way to offer a better place to anyone, even if there’s no official rule against it. So what is it you want?”

Lan Wangji shook his head.

“If you don’t want anything, why offer?” Su She sneered. It would be just like Lan Wangji to have decided to recognize a promising disciple that deserve a chance to shine – he was perfect like that, after all, always thinking of others, always a true gentleman. Well, Su She had endured a lifetime of being seen as promising by gentlemen, being recognized as a talent without once being thought of as a person, having to humiliate himself in front of them like a dancing monkey and worst of all of having to be grateful to them for allowing him to do it, and he was sick and tired of swallowing down that bitter draught.

He didn’t need the better spot, not this time – he would be going one way or the other – and he wasn’t willing to give Lan Wangji of all people the satisfaction of doing him a favor he didn’t even want.

Lan Wangji shifted from one side to the other again, waiting a long time before he spoke again. Maybe it was nervousness.

“Yu Zhuliu is in my party,” he finally said.

At first Su She didn’t understand the point Lan Wangji was making, terse and oblique as the other man habitually was, and then he understood it far too well.

He saw red.

“What business is that of yours?” he shouted, dropping his brush and jumping to his feet, forgetting all of his good intentions to try to keep his head down and his tone at least plausibly polite. “So what if I spend some time with him when he’s free? Not every waking hour of his is yours!”

Lan Wangji’s eyes darted from side to side. “No,” he said. “I didn’t mean –”

“You didn’t mean what?!”

“You like him.” A meaningful pause. “Very much.”

“Yes, I do,” Su She said, his cheeks flushed red. “So what? So I cut my sleeve sometimes, big deal. It’s not against any of your stupid rules – every attempt to introduce such a restriction formally has been rejected, I checked. This isn’t something you can punish me for!”

He could, of course. No one would question Lan Wangji issuing yet another punishment – he could say it was due to Su She’s noise, no shouting in the Cloud Recesses – and of course not every type of punishment was the sort that got meted out in the Punishment Hall. There were other types, more insidious – isolation, ostracization, missing out on opportunities for advancement, resources…even merely sentencing him to write lines could be used to deny him his coveted spot at the Nightless City.

Lan Wangji wouldn’t do that, though.

Somehow that just made Su She angrier. Who told Lan Wangji to be so fucking perfect?

“You can add it to your list of achievements,” he adds bitterly. “Everyone knows you’re better than me - better at manners, better at cultivation, better at everything, and now better in this way, too, because I’m a cutsleeve and you’re not –”

Lan Wangji flinched.

Lan Wangji flinched.

Su She’s jaw dropped in shock. “You are?”

Lan Wangji’s features weren’t exactly easy to ready for anyone except Lan Xichen, but at the moment it was plain enough that even Su She could figure out that he was miserable.

“For who?!” A terrible thought slipped into his mind. “It had better not be Yu Zhuliu!”

“No!” Lan Wangji said hastily. “No – no. Not at all.”

“Good,” Su She said fiercely. “Because he’s mine. Or, well, not mine, we haven’t agreed on anything, I haven’t even said anything, but I’m trying and – well, it doesn’t matter. You know what I mean.”

He wasn’t actually sure Lan Wangji did. He wasn’t sure he knew what he meant.

But Lan Wangji nodded, as if his confused rambling had been as clear as a Lan sect rule.

“I thought you might like to spend more time with him,” he said, and – oh. His offer. The Nightless City.

“…I would,” Su She said begrudgingly. “Thanks.”

For Yu Zhuliu, he’d even put up Lan Wangji’s charity.

“Who is it for you, anyway?” he asked, unable to resist and wanting to take advantage of this strange intimacy, this momentary breach of etiquette undoubtedly never to be repeated, but Lan Wangji shook his head, refusing to share. “Fine. Have it your way.”

It wasn’t that he cared, anyway.

Not about Lan Wangji’s mysterious lover, and not about Lan Wangji himself – this wasn’t a charming little flaw that made the whole seem more relatable, wasn’t something that generated fellow feeling, the way Yu Zhuliu’s gentle mockery had. So what if both of them were secretly cutsleeves in a sect that most assuredly did not approve of such things? That didn’t mean anything. It didn’t give them anything in common. They still weren’t the same, not at all, not with Lan Wangji was nobly bearing the burden of it while Su She had given in to temptation almost at once…

No, this was just more of the same.

More of Lan Wangji being, despite all of Su She’s efforts to the contrary, Su She’s idol, his ideal. The person who he hated most because he envied him the most, the person who made him hate himself as being nothing but the lesser copy, the person he despised for making him sometimes feel as if maybe Lan Wangji’s better birth really did entitle him to be better.

So no. He didn’t care.

(It wasn’t that Lan Wangji had seen him, recognized him as something the same. As a person, worthy of recognition, even if not of respect. It wasn’t.)

Maybe he cared a little bit.

He must have cared, or else he would have just run away when the Wen sect descended on the Lan sect with flame and sword instead of being a stupid idiot and going to look for him.

(He told himself it was because Yu Zhuliu would undoubtedly be wherever Lan Wangji was, and it was a pretty decent lie, except that he went to the Library Pavilion and Yu Zhuliu wasn’t there. So he told himself that Yu Zhuliu would have wanted him to protect Lan Wangji, and that lie worked better.)

Of course, once he got there, the stupid noble gentlemanly fucker wouldn’t even listen to him and run.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the important one?” Su She bellowed. This was clearly not the time for manners, and anyway Lan Wangji had already seen beneath his mask once; another time wouldn’t hurt. “Yu Zhuliu’s out there fighting to keep you alive and you’re wasting all his efforts, you’re just standing here, waiting for them to come get you –”

“It is necessary,” Lan Wangji said, solemn as ever. “Someone must keep their attention here, instead of following my brother.”

“Oh fuck you,” Su She said, and took out his sword. Lan Wangji just had to play the fucking brother card, didn’t he?

Yu Zhuliu would want me to do this, he told himself as he tried to fight. He was pretty decent, but he was just a disciple, not a soldier, and as a Lan sect disciple he’d never killed anything before. After a while, he ended up shouting for Lan Wangji to throw him his guqin – the one Su She favored was rented from the sect, lacking as he did the money to purchase her in full, and so he didn’t have it with him – and he attacked with that instead for a while, being better at music than he was at the sword.

The lash of his music was less powerful than Lan Wangji’s single-note waves of power, but Su She was also sneakier about it, and a few unexpected distractions during a battle were much more helpful to Lan Wangji’s defense than any amount of getting himself killed waving a sword around would have.

In the end, unsurprisingly, they were defeated. Su She ended up surrendering in fairly dramatic manner, knowing that the Wen sect might preserve Lan Wangji’s life as a useful hostage but that they couldn’t give a damn about his own and, as always, humiliation was the path to survival; he bet Lan Wangji was already judging him for it, for his weakness, for how pathetic he was when he was sniveling at Wen Xu’s feet as they beat him black and blue to make a point to Lan Wangji, but he didn’t care because he bowed his head and lived while the disciple next to him that didn’t died.

Lan Wangji didn’t bow his head either, but they just broke his leg before throwing them both in a carriage headed to the Nightless City.

The worst of it was, he didn’t even have Yu Zhuliu around to comfort him.

“I ordered him to go with my brother,” Lan Wangji said in belated explanation. “To protect him.”

“You could have said,” Su She said, curled up in the corner of the carriage and feeling sick to his stomach. He should have just run away. He could be in Moling right now if he’d just run away, and who would have known? Of course, then he would have to have left behind all the things he’d prepared, and Yu Zhuliu, too… “Maybe I’d rather have been on that team. Why’d he run, anyway? I bet he had a great reason.”

“He took the key books of our sect –”

Su She rolled his eyes. Of course there was a good nice selfless noble reason for Lan Xichen having fled, leaving his younger brother behind as a sacrifice to cover his tracks – proper young masters never did anything without one of those. It was like they thought that admitting that they were afraid for their lives would be worse than actually dying.

“He took what he could,” Lan Wangji said, his eyes cast down. He wasn’t really talking to Su She. “But so much was still lost.”

Su She thought about all the copies of the books he’d been making, all the knowledge he’d been slowly siphoning away over the course of years, and how they were hidden far away from the main buildings of the Lan sect. He’d probably have more than they did, when this was all said and done, assuming he survived. Wouldn’t that just drive them all up the wall? All those stiff smug elders who thought they were better than him would have to come and beg him to give them the books –

Lan Wangji would, too. Those books were probably his only friends, just as they were Su She’s.

“…maybe not all lost,” he said begrudgingly, and curled up tighter, cursing himself as an idiot.

He might be feeling all warm and fuzzy towards Lan Wangji over something as stupid as a single moment of shared misery, but just because he had feelings about it didn’t mean Lan Wangji did. More than likely, when it came down to it, Lan Wangji would put aside all his noble manners and sell Su She out in a heartbeat, and probably not even count it as a betrayal. After all, in the end, Su She was still just a servant that had temporarily made good, still just cannon fodder, meant to be used and sacrificed for the sake of his better-born master.

At least Lan Wangji had probably given up on expecting him to be grateful about it, given the despicable personality he’d already seen Su She display.

It irritated him how much that mattered.

“There’s always copies, after all,” he added. “And before you say anything, I know it’s not the same as having the original, but it’s worth something, isn’t it?”

He was worth something, even if he was only Lan Wangji’s copy.

“That’s true,” Lan Wangji said. He was quiet for a long while after that, long enough that Su She started seriously considering going to sleep because unconsciousness was preferable to worrying about what was going to happen to them once they got to the Nightless City, and then he said, “You are unhappy.”

Su She turned to goggle at him. “Of course I’m unhappy! The Cloud Recesses was lit on fire, we’re prisoners, we’re probably going to die painfully –”

“Not now. Before.” A pause. “With the sect.”

Su She shut his mouth and glared suspiciously.

“I won’t say anything,” Lan Wangji promised. “I only want to know.”

Su She shook his head stubbornly. “You won’t understand,” he said, a little helplessly, when Lan Wangji continued to look at him, wanting an explanation. “It’s not – something you would understand. You’ve always had everything, all your life.”

Lan Wangji frowned a little, clearly thinking it over, clearly taking it seriously, and for a moment there Su She kind of hated Yu Zhuliu for making him actually like Lan Wangji a little bit. “Not – everything,” he finally said. “My family…”

He trailed off, probably thinking about where they were now. A father locked away in seclusion was different from one on the verge of death; a missing brother, an injured uncle…

Su She huffed and turned his head away, refusing to feel sympathetic. “At least you had them,” he said bitterly. “I haven’t seen my family since they sold me to your sect, and at this point I’m too scared to go visit them.”

“…the Lan sect does not keep slaves.”

“No, of course not,” Su She said. “You just offer people more money than they’ve ever seen in their lives if they’ll hand over their six-year-old son to be properly trained as a servant, because it’s better to get them while they’re young – teach them to be quiet and inobtrusive and grateful for how much better it is to spend their life cleaning up the shit that sticks to your boots. And the worst part is, you are grateful for it, no matter how bad it is, no matter how much you miss your home or your family or your brother, because the buyer could have picked him instead of you and then you’d be the one stuck on some farm somewhere doing nothing with your life, just waiting to see if he’ll come back one day.”

The difference with Su She was that he’d figured out pretty quick that going back wasn’t enough.

When he’d realized how important it was to cultivate a golden core at a young age, he’d saved up every bit of money he could on top of what he sent his family every month, volunteered for every job that paid and even bit his tongue and took out extravagant loans from the sect that he would be paying off for years to come, and he’d hired a rogue cultivator to go teach his brother the basics of cultivation.

He hoped that was enough to make up for all the years he’d been gone, even though he doubted it; he wouldn’t think it was enough, himself, and surely his brother was like him. He was still too young to go outside the sect by himself – he would have to apply for a token, and agree to take someone with him, and he didn’t want to take anyone with him except maybe Yu Zhuliu, who wasn’t an option.

He didn’t want anyone to know if his return home went as badly as he feared it would. If his brother turned out to be as bitter as he was, and turned that bitterness against him –

“You have a brother?” Lan Wangji asked, because of course he’d noticed the important part.

“A twin,” Su She whispered, and turned his face away.

They did not speak again until the Nightless City, and even then it was limited to necessary things, neither of them wanting to risk the fury of their Wen sect guards. After a while, it was announced that the Wen sect would be holding a camp for all young masters, meant to indoctrinate them into righteous conduct, and that they would be attending whether they wanted to or not. They had probably assumed that Su She was well-born because of the fine clothing and fancy hairpiece he wore, and never knew that they were loaned to him by a sect that liked to surround itself with pretty things even if it had to pay for the clothing itself, and Su She had never been happier to be counted among his supposed peers.

Still, when the indoctrination camp began, and Wen Chao – accompanied by three bodyguards at all times, because he was even more of an arrogant snot than even Su She had previously imagined an arrogant young master could be – began lording it over them all, Su She drifted over to Lan Wangji’s side again.

Mostly because no one else would, other than maybe that troublemaker from Yunmeng, Wei Wuxian.

“I know some curses,” he told Lan Wangji, pretending to be casual about it as if he hadn’t accused Lan Wangji’s sect of various awful things. “Really nasty ones. Want me to try one on Wen Chao? I can be subtle.”

“He’d figure out it was you when he checked us all for the inevitable backlash marks,” Wei Wuxian put in. “Then he’d just kill you to get rid of it. Stupid idea.”

“Depends on how quick-acting the curse was,” Su She said peevishly. He hadn’t even been talking to Wei Wuxian, and he hadn’t forgotten who it was that had charged in like a hero from a play to rescue him when he’d overreached himself fighting the Waterborne Abyss even if he doubted Wei Wuxian remembered him in return. “Also, why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be off somewhere drawing fire onto the Jiang sect?”

“What? No,” Wei Wuxian said. “I’m not –”

“I mean, I certainly can’t think of any other reasons for your actions, Wei-gongzi,” Su She said, his voice set at its most simpering. It wasn’t like there were any Lan sect elders here to punish him for being disrespectful, after all, and he figured that helping defend the Library Pavilion with Lan Wangji probably earned him a little space to be himself for once. “Aggravating Wen-gonzi, making light of everything, galivanting around flirting with girls – one might almost feel as if you’re on vacation. Surely your Jiang sect will not have to pay for any of that, politically speaking; it’s not as if the Wen sect thinks of them as one of their greatest rivals and is looking for any chance to cut them down…but no, surely it’s my misunderstanding. I’m sure Wei-gongzi has a thoughtful plan, being such a good servant to his sect.”

Wei Wuxian frowned at him. “But that’s not what I’m doing,” he said, but his voice came out a little weaker this time. “That’s not it at all, I was just…hm. Hey, Jiang Cheng! Jiang Cheng, I have a question for you…”

Su She watched him leave with satisfaction, then turned back to Lan Wangji, who was looking at him again.

“Why do you dislike him?” he asked before Su She could change the subject.

“I don’t dislike him,” Su She said. “I envy him, sometimes. The rest of the time, I pity him.”

“You think Jiang Wanyin will cast him aside, one day,” Lan Wangji said, and Su She thought back to that conversation he’d had with Yu Zhuliu. Lan Wangji had clearly heard more of it than he’d let on.

“Well, yes,” he conceded, because he did. He’d seen how close they were, which was only going to make it worse for them both when it inevitably happened.  

“Would you tell me why? In your own words?”

Su She frowned at Lan Wangji, who raised his hands as if in surrender. “Please.”

Well, if he was going to ask nicely…

Su She decided to pretend that he was talking to Yu Zhuliu.

“Fine. You want my opinion? Whoever raised Wei Wuxian ruined him,” he said bluntly. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but he doesn’t act like a servant – he doesn’t even act like a second son. He acts like a master. He acts like he’s the next heir to the Jiang sect, not Jiang Wanyin; you’ve seen how he’s always bossing him around and refusing to listen to him even when he tells him to behave.”

“He’s his shixiong,” Lan Wangji objected, but mildly.

“For now. Do you really think Wei Wuxian’s going to suddenly learn how to be obedient the second Jiang Wanyin gets instated as sect leader? Or do you think he’ll continue to run rampant, doing just as he likes the way he always has, with Jiang Wanyin bending to his every whim the way he always has? What do you think the cultivation world will think of that?”

Lan Wangji was frowning deeper now, thoughtful.

“The cultivation world isn’t kind to servants who forget their place. If he keeps acting the way he has been, the time will come when he does something so outrages that Jiang Wanyin will have no choice but to throw him away,” Su She concluded. “A servant’s son, however precious, is nothing when weighed against the duty owed to the sect inherited by your ancestors. I mean, even your brother put that first and foremost, and he’s your blood.”

“…I agreed with Brother’s decision.”

“Sure. But did he ask you first?”

Lan Wangji remained quiet.

“If it makes you feel better, there’s always a chance that it won’t become an issue,” Su She continued, mostly to avoid having to listen to Lan Wangji’s injured sort of silence. “Maybe they’ll luck out and instead something will happen to remind Wei Wuxian that he’s a servant and that his job is to throw himself into the abyss to save Jiang Wanyin, probably without even getting thanked for it.”

Lan Wangji looked at him sidelong. After a long few moments of contemplation – Su She really couldn’t stand the way Lan Wangji looked at him, as if he was trying to figure out an interesting puzzle, but he also couldn’t get enough of it, it was horrible – he said, “It will not be that way, with Yu Zhuliu.”

Caught, Su She glared at him.

“How would you solve it?” Lan Wangji asked.

“What?”

“You were a servant, once,” Lan Wangji pointed out. “You are no Yu Zhuliu, no Wei Wuxian, to sacrifice yourself for the Lan sect, and it pains you to pretend to humble yourself before us. What is your solution? You are too clever not to have one.”

Su She wrapped his arms around himself, wishing he didn’t enjoy being called clever as much as he did. It didn’t sound condescending when Lan Wangji said it, the way it did when the Lan sect’s teachers did – like praising a well-performing pet that they’d raised themselves, patting themselves on the back for doing such a good job in training him. He sounded almost as if he resented Su She for being smart enough to see the messy contradiction that was Wei Wuxian’s life, and for being the only person he could ask to shed some light on the subject.

Su She didn’t mind resentment, not even aimed at him. On the contrary, it made it feel real.

Why wouldn’t Lan Wangji resent having to respect someone like him?

“I’m leaving, eventually,” he confessed. “I’m going to start my own sect, or try, anyway, if I can get the money for it from somewhere. Back at home in Moling. Maybe, if I’m very lucky, I’ll be able to convince Yu Zhuliu to come with me, notwithstanding the stupid debt of loyalty he feels he owes your sect.”

Lan Wangji looked contemplative again, surprised but not displeased, as if Su She had suggested something he’d never even considered possible. “What cultivation style will you use?”

“Yours, of course,” Su She said, rolling his eyes at him. “What am I supposed to do, come up with a new one of my own? In what free time, exactly?”

“People will say you’re copying the Lan sect.”

“People have said I’m a copy all my life,” Su She pointed out. “Let the cultivation world sneer and the Lan sect break its rule against gossiping to look down their noses at me – I’ll still be sitting by myself as a sect leader in my own right while they’re just disciples. I’ll make my own rules, admit anyone into the sect that I want, and that’ll be worth all of their disdain.”

He hoped it would be, anyway. He suspected he’d end up being bitter about it, but then again he was always bitter, and anyway, what could he do about it?

If life had taught him one thing, it was that there was no way to make people stop talking, stop mocking, because no matter if he took three baths a day and scrubbed until the blood ran red he would still underneath it all be a servant, a farmer’s son. But he was more than that, he knew he was more than that, and the only alternative – to stay in the Lan sect as a second-class barely-better-than-a-servant for the rest of his life – just wasn’t tolerable.

He’d do what he could and figure out the rest when he came to it.

“You think Wei Wuxian will do the same?”

“Probably?” Su She said and shrugged. “I mean, he has the reputation for being an unorthodox genius, so maybe he’ll come up with his own cultivation style to go with it – you can do things like that when you’re rich and have the time – but as for whether he will form a new sect…how would I know? Maybe he’ll go be a rogue cultivator instead, the way his father did when he got tired of being stuck in the Jiang sect’s shadow. Depends on how many people go with him.”

Lan Wangji hummed thoughtfully. “A rogue cultivator has only to concern himself with his own wellbeing,” he said slowly, as if feeling something out. “A sect – with others.”

“I mean, you could try to take a family around as a rogue cultivator, but I think Wei Wuxian is a walking illustration of why you don’t do that.”

A small flinch. Why were all these well-born sons of the nobility so delicate? It was only loss.

“But you are certain he will go.”

“Well, yes. Either he figures out that he needs to shut up and listen to someone else for once or he leaves, and I don’t think he knows how to listen.” Su She shrugged again. “Why do you care, anyway? He’s Jiang sect. It’s not any of our business.”

Lan Wangji was silent, but somehow it came across as a meaningful silence. An almost pointed silence.  

An embarrassed silence.

“…him, really?” Su She said, twisting around to gawk a little at where Wei Wuxian was having a furious whispered conversation with Jiang Cheng that involved a lot of gestures and even more suspicious looks from the nearby Wen sect guards. “I mean, sure, he’s attractive, no one’s going to deny that – he’s not rated fourth for nothing – but…really? Him? He’s not exactly the quiet-and-thoughtful Lan sect type I thought you’d go for, you know?”

Lan Wangji, with all the great grace and dignity and pomp of a proper young master of high birth and proper breeding, buried his face into his hands.

Su She covered his mouth with his sleeve to keep from laughing at him. It wasn’t exactly nice to laugh at someone who was clearly all too aware of their evidently terrible taste in men.

From the way Lan Wangji glared through his fingers, he wasn’t doing a very good job of muffling his snickers.

It was a good laugh, which was nice because it was the last thing Su She had to laugh about for long while.

The “indoctrination camp” was frankly awful. It wasn’t that he thought being forced to do servant’s work like tilling fields or doing laundry was the worst thing in the world (although he did resent that they didn’t bother paying them for it), and memorizing useless maxims was more or less what the Lan sect excelled at the most, but the constant air of vicious supervision, the threat of punishment, of having the swords they had all worked so hard to obtain taken away from them…

And that was all before they were forced to act as bait in Wen Chao’s night hunt.

“I’m serious,” Su She muttered to Lan Wangji. “I know so many good curses.”

Lan Wangji condescended to elbow him in the side to get him to shut up.

“I miss Yu Zhuliu,” Su She complained instead. “He’s much better company than you are.”

“No one is better company than Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian piped up. He was hanging out by them – not quite with them, but nearby – again.

“I thought the Core-Melting Hand was terrifying,” Jiang Cheng opined. He was following Wei Wuxian, as always, and sticking as close as his shadow, as if he was afraid of losing him. Maybe he was. “All silent and stoic and looming.”

“He doesn’t loom. He’s just tall.”

“All tall people loom. Look at Chifeng-zun, he looms even when he’s sitting down.”

Chifeng-zun, who was the leader of the Nie sect, was, in fact, unreasonably tall and, yes, loomed quite a bit.

“Well, Yu Zhuliu doesn’t,” Sue She said. And then, because he didn’t actually like either of the Jiang sect’s young masters no matter what Lan Wangji might think of them, he added, “Not that you of all people have the place to say anything, Jiang-gongzi. Family shame should not be spread in public.”

He thought that would make an impact, remind them of their manners, but instead all three of them – Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and even Lan Wangji – looked at him in confusion.

“What?” he said, staring at them back. “I know Jiang-gongzi’s maternal family is Meishan Yu…isn’t it?”

“It is,” Wei Wuxian said, sounding baffled. “But what does…wait. Yu Zhuliu – his Yu is Meishan Yu?”

“Yes?” Su She said, looking between them. Yu Zhuliu had said it was no secret, but the junior generation was treating this as if the information had hit them like a sudden landslide: Jiang Cheng had gone white, Wei Wuxian’s jaw was hanging open, and even Lan Wangji’s eyes were as wide and round as the moon. “You didn’t know?”

“I assumed it was another Yu,” Jiang Cheng croaked.

“Meishan Yu probably doesn’t want to admit that one of their own went to work as a servant for another sect after they kicked him out,” Su She concluded. It seemed relatively reasonable to him, but somehow that made all of them look even more upset. “What’s the matter?”

They all just shook their heads and made their way away, looking stunned to a man, and Su She was left to roll his eyes and wonder what in the world made young masters act like that. Something in the water, maybe?

He would curse himself later for making the joke, because there was something in the water of the cave they went to, and that something was, apparently, a corrupted Xuanwu.

(Lan Wangji was still glaring at him for trying to pull the girl out when Wen Chao’s whore demanded it, but it wasn’t his life on the line if the Wen sect went through with their threat to start slaughtering disciples left and right if they couldn’t get to her. Anyway, it wasn’t like he wouldn’t be able to cut her in a way that let out a bit of blood but left her the mobility she might need to escape – she was a cultivator, too! What did it matter that she was a woman?)

Wei Wuxian was holding the Xuanwu’s attention with a fire talisman, and Jiang Cheng was leading the disciples to the pool with the water, which Lan Wangji had identified as containing an exit…as usual, all the young masters were showing their stuff. In a burst of resentful fury, the sort he hadn’t had in weeks, Su She leaned down and grabbed a bow and some arrows. If he shot the Xuanwu’s eye, he might be able to –

A hand fell on his shoulder, and Su She turned to look.

Lan Wangji shook his head. He didn’t seem angry about the girl anymore.

“Keep them,” he said, nodding at the arrows. “There will be Wen sect soldiers waiting for us outside.”

“You don’t think I can make the shot,” Su She accused, feeling obscurely betrayed. “You scored so high in the archery competition – I bet you think you could do better, is that it? You want –”

“If you miss, you may anger it further,” Lan Wangji said. “And I have promised Yu Zhuliu that I would see you safe.”

Su She’s anger was extinguished as quickly as a candle blowing out. “You – did? He asked about me?”

“Before he left with my brother.”

“You should’ve said something,” Su She grumbled, but he let himself be lured into allowing Lan Wangji to use him as a crutch as they waded into the water. At the last moment, Wei Wuxian threw the fire talisman into the air and ran after them, causing the Xuanwu to go crazy and chase, and then there was a bit of frantic swimming – it felt more like drowning, even with Wei Wuxian leading the way for them both – before they got to the other side.

“I’m going to be sick,” Su She groaned, spitting up water, and then he still had to sit up and shoot an arrow back at one of the Wen sect guards that, as Lan Wangji had predicted, were out there.

Of course, a few seconds later the Xuanwu came bursting out of the side of cave, so they all had a whole different set of problems to deal with.

At least the Wen sect mostly ran away.

(Not all of them. A few of them stuck around to shoot some arrows at them – every bad thing Su She had ever thought about any young master, he thought twice for the Wen sect.)

“Next time we deal with this inside the cave,” Su She shouted, running for cover. He was able to get the arrow into the Xuanwu’s eye the way he had planned to in the cave when he finally had a little time to stand and aim – admittedly, he might’ve missed in the cave, he never shot half as well when he was angry – and in the end Lan Wangji shouted something about Chord Assassination and Wei Wuxian had a brilliant-stupid idea about using it like a spider web to make a net and Jiang Cheng swam like a fish to lure it through the right spot and all together with a bunch of the others they ended up chopping the Xuawnu’s head off.

Well, chopping was the wrong word. More like a shichen or more or wretched sawing using Chord Assassination as a garotte, relying mostly on Lan Wangji’s arm strength – Su She and the few other Lan disciples that knew the trick were holding the strings down with burning bleeding fingers, an essential part of the process but ultimately only a prop to help Lan Wangji do what he needed – and by the time it was done their robes were more red and crusted brown than white no matter how many bleaching herbs and special arrays had been used.

“All right, the threat is gone,” Su She said, feeling bitter again as he scanned the treeline. He didn’t even know what the bitterness was about this time. “Can we go already?”

“You can come to Yunmeng,” Jiang Cheng said. “It’s closest.”

No one disagreed.

More or less the second after they arrived, just as soon as they’d had baths and a change of clothing, Lan Wangji wanted to go back to the Cloud Recesses or to travel around looking for Lan Xichen. He looked strange in borrowed Yunmeng purple, even if they’d politely given him the lightest and bluest shade they had – really it was at best a pale lavender at best – but that sure didn’t seem to bother Wei Wuxian from the way he kept gawking at Lan Wangji when he thought Lan Wangji wasn’t looking.

“If you don’t trust your brother, trust Yu Zhuliu,” Su She told Lan Wangji irritably after yet another request that was swiftly denied. He’d made a half-hearted effort to remember his manners after the stress of the moment had passed, but Lan Wangji seemed unhappy any time he did so now he was back at being a bit more of his awful actual self. Of course, Lan Wangji liked Wei Wuxian so maybe he just had a kink for rude people? “Do you really think he’d take him anywhere you could find him?”

“Then I should be at the Cloud Recesses,” Lan Wangji said firmly. “To help rebuild –”

“To help make them a target again, you mean?” Su She said scathingly. “Did you forget, somehow, that you’re still a valuable hostage? That they’ll be expecting you to go back? Or is it just that all that nobility is starting to make your brain rot, you stupid fucker?”

Lan Wangji glared at him, tight-lipped, and stalked away, which meant that Su She’s point had probably been taken and they could have at least a little rest before having to start running again.

Before the war started. War, which terrorized the common people…

He needed to go to Moling to check on his family. Even if his brother rejected him, as he feared, he had to go – better rejected than bereaved, surely..?

Consumed with dark thoughts, Su She didn’t notice that he wasn’t alone until he walked straight into Wei Wuxian’s chest.

(Why were they all so tall?)

Wei Wuxian was glaring at him. “Listen,” he said, sounding angry. “Listen, whatever your name is, you can’t talk to Lan Zhan like that –”

Su She punched him in the face.

Wei Wuxian stared up at him in shock from where he’d fallen on his ass on the ground, but Su She didn’t care; he turned on his heel and stormed off, his face hot with rage and shame and bitterness.

“On second thought, we can leave right now,” he spat at a shocked-looking Lan Wangji. “I’m not staying here one more fucking second.”

Whatever your name is.

Like they hadn’t just gone through life and death together, hadn’t fought side by side, like he hadn’t risked his life on Wei Wuxian’s stupid plan, none of that mattered; he wasn’t important enough for Wei Wuxian to remember his name. People like him really were nothing but side characters to people like Wei Wuxian, weren’t they? Their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their bitterness – all irrelevant. An aside at best, mere marginalia, a splash of color to liven up the background.

Su She would bet money that Wei Wuxian knew the names of all the rich young masters that had attended classes with them, whether he liked them or he didn’t. He even knew the name of that little Wen clan member that he’d so bravely stood up for during the archery competition. But not Su She’s name, no, even though he’d been so graciously suffering all of the stupid back-and-forth pining Wei Wuxian had been doing with Lan Wangji, even though he’d let himself foolishly believe that because he and Lan Wangji had something in common that they might be something like friends or at least companions, that he might be treated as an equal –

No, these stupid rich young masters were all the same. He’d been right the first time.

Actually, now that he thought about it, why was he even here? Did he really think Lan Wangji would take his side over Wei Wuxian, who wasn’t only his peer in every sense of the word but also his beloved?

What a waste of time.

Su She left again. He wasn’t stupid enough to try to walk away just as he was, no matter how furious; how far would he get with no money, no food, and even his sword back in Wen custody? Instead he made his way down to the kitchens to ask for travel rations that could last for a while, and planned to visit the armory to borrow a sword after that. He’d need to pack lightly, but comprehensively: who knew how far the Wen sect’s influence spread? He might not be able to risk going into the cities and towns on the way to get supplies, not even wearing borrowed Yunmeng robes – even if he hid the incredibly obvious white forehead ribbon with a hat, he still walked like someone from the Lan sect, something he’d only really noticed once he was surrounded by people who slouched and bent and took large ground-eating steps instead of the sedate pace that he couldn’t quite break the habit of using.

“Su She,” Lan Wangji said from the door to the room they’d been given. Su She didn’t look at him or stop stuffing the travel rations and the spare robes he’d obtained into a qiangkun pouch.

“If you’re coming here to scold me about hitting Wei-gongzi, spare me,” Su She said stiffly. “We’re not in the Cloud Recesses; you don’t have any role over discipline here –”

“The silencing spell would have been more effective.”

Su She blinked, surprised by the apparent non-sequitur, and turned to look at him. “What?”

“To silence him,” Lan Wangji clarified, meaning Wei Wuxian.

As if that was the problem with what Su She had done.

“Yeah,” Jiang Cheng piped up – Su She hadn’t seen him standing by Lan Wangji’s side. “Hitting doesn’t work, he just pops right back up again. Please ignore him in the future; he’s an idiot.”

Well, Su She couldn’t disagree with that.

“You have a guest,” Jiang Cheng added. He looked almost – nervous? “Could – would you introduce us? Properly, this time.”

Su She couldn’t think of anyone he knew that Lan Wangji didn’t also know. Why would they ask him? The only person –

He stiffened abruptly, hope welling in his stomach. “Yu Zhuliu? He’s here?”

“Brother sent him to check on me,” Lan Wangji said. “And to tell me to stay where I am. You were right.”

It was – immensely gratifying to hear that.

“He and Mother are having tea,” Jiang Cheng added, looking impressed. “She insisted. It’s so weird.”

Yu Zhuliu looked the same as he always did, when Su She finally got to see him: tall and broad-shouldered, steady as a mountain, untroubled by wind or rain. There were a few points of similarity between his face and Madame Yu’s, if you looked for them, and he seemed pleased by her surprisingly gracious reception – when they spoke about it later, it turned out that he greatly admired her, the famous (or infamous) Violet Spider who had made a name for herself as a fierce warrior and top-grade cultivator, and who had never looked down at him for his birth when they’d both been younger.

Wei Wuxian didn’t apologize at any point, though he also didn’t call Su She out as the cause for his black eye. Instead, he opted to act as though their earlier confrontation had never happened, bounding into the room Su She shared with Lan Wangji – no one else rose at the same hour they did – and insisting on taking them around to see the sights of the Lotus Pier, to spend a day on a boat, another picking lotus seeds, and yet another shooting down kites.

Su She refused to go shoot down kites, not wanting to risk humiliation at something he was actually pretty decent at by competing at archery against Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and Lan Wangji, and spent the day with Yu Zhuliu instead.

“I missed you,” he blurted out instead of saying something reasonable. “I mean – not that I wanted you to be there and suffering, it was pretty awful, and who knows what the Wen sect might have tried to get you to do, it’s just – you know – ”

Yu Zhuliu was a reserved man who did not speak much. He put his hand on Su She’s and said only, “I know.”

Su She swallowed, and stared down at the hand that rested on him. It was a good hand, to his mind: broad in the palm, with short fingers that were the exact opposite of the long graceful ones favored by the Lan sect, but it did its vicious work well enough that the whole cultivation world knew about it – the whole cultivation world feared it.

Su She had never once worried about it. That probably made him a fool.

“Yu Zhuliu,” he said, very cautiously, even though he knew he shouldn’t speak; it was him being a fool again, except only this time he was a fool a hundred times over. “I know – I know that the Lan sect is very important to you. They rescued you at a bad moment in your life, and you owe them your loyalty; I understand that. But…do you think...maybe – one day in the future…”

Yu Zhuliu was looking at him steadily. He didn’t pull back his hand.

Su She gathered up his courage. “I’m going to go home to Moling, someday. Maybe even someday soon. And when I do, I’m not – I’m not going to go back to the Lan sect afterwards. I’m going to start my own sect, if I can manage it. When I do, would you – consider coming with me?”

He waited for Yu Zhuliu’s response with bated breath.

Yu Zhuliu looked serious and thoughtful, and he opened his mouth to respond –

There was a giant clatter from outside their door. “Wen sect!” someone shouted. “They’re here!”

Su She and Yu Zhuliu looked at each other, alarmed, and rushed out.

Unfortunately, that just meant they got a front row seat to the travesty that happened next.

Su She felt sick to his stomach: he’d predicted long ago that Wei Wuxian would one day rediscover that the Jiang sect saw him as only a servant, as something that could be sacrificed for the good of the sect, but each sizzle and snap of Zidian on Wei Wuxian’s back made him feel worse and worse. Su She’d been beaten plenty of times before, even whipped on occasion, but then again he’d never really taken the Lan sect to heart as his family – it wasn’t Wei Wuxian’s fault that he’d been so badly raised, tricked into thinking that they loved him like one of their own, into acting like a proud and arrogant young master who had a family that would hold up the world for him no matter what he did.

“She’s pulling the blows,” Yu Zhuliu murmured in his ear, too low for anyone else to hear, and that helped, a little. But not that much, since it was clear that Jiang Cheng, horrified, couldn’t tell, when it wasn’t clear if Wei Wuxian could, and then in the end it turned out to be all for nothing because Wang Lingjiao still demanded his hand.

Worse: he wasn’t sure if it was that, or the casual mention of a supervisory office, that was the step too far for Madame Yu.

Su She did not especially appreciate Madame Yu’s comments about Wang Lingjiao’s status as a servant, unsurprising and almost expected though they might be – although in a moment of horror-stricken hysteria he noticed that her words made Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and Lan Wangji simultaneously flinch and glance over at him in concern, apparently all to a one forgetting the circumstances they were all in out of fear of his sharp tongue – but seeing her beat up the disgusting Wang Lingjiao was oddly gratifying.

Right up until the Wen sect guards she had brought with her started attacking from the inside, while from outside the sound of bombardment began – Wen sect’s armies had been lying in wait.

“Kill them!” Wang Lingjiao screeched the second she was free to do so, lunging forward with claws extended at Madame Yu’s face. “Kill them all –”

She never got that far.

Yu Zhuliu’s palm caught her dead in the belly, the force of it throwing her backwards into the arms of one of her guards, who quickly scurried away with her.

“A waste,” Madame Yu said, straightening her clothing. “Of your abilities, primarily. Did she even have enough of a golden core to justify melting?”

Yu Zhuliu didn’t bother responding, drawing his sword, and the next thing Su She knew they were all being given swords from dead Wen sect guards and heading out into the battlefield.

“Oh, I really hate this,” Su She said, looking down at the one he was given. As a Wen sect blade, it wouldn’t have any pity on him, and he didn’t think he was good enough to avoid getting skewered the first second he got angry and stopped paying attention to all of his weak spots. “Doesn’t anyone have a spare guqin I can use instead? I know some really good attack songs.”

“I think I have one in my room, actually,” Wei Wuxian said, and led him away from the others, limping only a little. Madame Yu really must have been pulling her strikes – not that Su She hadn’t believe Yu Zhuliu, of course, but still.

“You play?” Su She asked as they hurried through the hallways. “I thought you used a dizi.”

“I – considered picking it up. Briefly.”

“Just kiss him already,” Su She advised, deciding to try to be nice for once. “It’ll be faster, and your reception will be warm.”

“Kiss…who?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be some sort of genius?” Su She growled, and took the never-used guqin. It had been impossible to use anything more than the most straightforward sound attacks when they’d been fighting at the Cloud Recesses, given how many Lan sect disciples and even servants cultivated with music, but here at the Jiang sect where just about everyone was a swordsman first, musician later, and only Lan Wangji to compete with, Su She had a bit more freedom to go find a nice safe spot near the walls to play.

He wasn’t a guqin player on Lan Wangji’s standard – it still burned to admit it even if he maybe didn’t hate him as much as he used to – but he’d spent an awful lot of time in the library looking for things he could use when he was building his own sect and, well, he’d always liked the weird stuff.

“Wait, are you playing ‘Banish Evil’?” Jiang Cheng asked at one point, hopping over a wall to get near enough to ask.

“What? No. Are you deaf? They barely sound alike,” Su She said. “Now get out of range already before it you’re affected.”

Not long after, the effect started to show, with Wen sect cultivators falling left and right out of the sky above his head once their qi started locking up in response to his music.

Had he looked up a method to lock someone’s qi through music just because it reminded him of Yu Zhuliu? No, but it sure did help motivate him in learning the abstruse and needlessly complicated finger-work for something that, yes, okay, maybe sounded a little bit like ‘Banish Evil’, but not enough for people not to immediately call him out on what would otherwise sound like an incredibly bad rendition of that song.

“Once formed, your sect will be immensely unpopular,” Lan Wangji informed him as he flew by on his sword, his own musical cultivation acting as a shield to allow him to fight unaffected by Su She’s music.

Su She grinned down at the guqin and thought to himself that he’d be keeping this one. They could consider it payment for having made him have to put up with Wei Wuxian.

At some point in the battle, Sect Leader Jiang returned and ended up fighting back to back with his wife, which – once the battle was over – turned into a shouting match.

Yu Zhuliu, when he arrived, took one look and his eyebrows went up. “Perhaps we should assist with clean-up on the pier,” he said, delicately enough that Su She immediately figured out what he was implying.

“Yeah,” he said, covering up his smirk with his sleeve. “Let’s go quickly.”

“Don’t you two worry about our feelings getting hurt by it,” Wei Wuxian said, sounding amused, as Jiang Cheng nodded along. “We’re more than used to them fighting.”

“Is that what you call it in the Jiang sect?” Su She sniggered, unable to resist, and both of them paled.

“How would you even know about that?” Jiang Cheng eventually recovered enough to volley back. “Being from the Lan sect and all – I’m amazed it isn’t against one of your rules.”

“Su She is starting his own sect,” Lan Wangji, appearing from who-knows-where, interjected. “With fewer rules.”

“Wait, really?” Jiang Cheng asked, looking – he looked impressed, actually. “A sect of your own? That’s amazing!”

Su She flushed, his face hot and red at once. No one had ever said anything positive about his idea before. “Not anytime soon,” he demurred. “I mean, even a small cultivation sect has to have money enough to buy a house – pay for swords, musical instruments, things like that – and I’m broke.”

“Oh, money,” Wei Wuxian said, in a tone of someone who’d never had to do without, and Su She was already starting to secretly plan his murder – yes, he was aware that Wei Wuxian had reputedly spent some time on the streets as an orphaned child and no, he did not care – when he added, carelessly, “You helped save our home, the least we can do is give you something to help start yours.”

Su She stopped dead. “Are you serious?”

“Certainly,” Jiang Cheng said, and fuck, they were being serious. That was the Jiang sect heir saying he would give him money, not a servant, someone whose words could plausibly be held to be binding on the rest of his sect. “Do you have a plan for what cultivation style you’ll teach new disciples?”

“Uh,” Su She said. His mind was blank. “I was just planning on using the Lan sect techniques.”

Wei Wuxian looped an arm over his shoulder. “With some innovations, thought, right? That qi-locking music was pretty nice, and I’ve never seen it used before.”

Su She puffed up a little. It was pretty nice, good of Wei Wuxian to recognize that – and he hadn’t even seen the teleportation talisman Su She had been painstakingly teaching himself how to use!

“Nor I,” Lan Wangji said, and looked pointedly at Su She. “I suspect it comes from the forbidden section of our library.”

“No, it isn’t,” Su She said immediately, holding up his hands. He knew what the punishment was for going in there without permission. “Not the forbidden, but the forgotten – I was one of the people assigned to sort through old inheritances. Books from abroad, obscure books no one ever bothered categorizing, that sort of thing. The big jumble in the basement of the secondary library…you know, the fire hazard. The one that blew up in the Wen sect’s faces when they tried to light it.”

“You remember enough of them to make it work?” Jiang Cheng asked, now looking even more impressed.

“Well, no,” Su She admitted. “But I made copies of everything that looked interesting and hid them in an abandoned root cellar halfway down the road to Caiyi Town, so they should still be intact.”

Lan Wangji lit up, which for him was a slight bit of color to his cheeks, a slight arch to his eyebrows, a faint curve to his eyes – in other words, he was positively glowing. “Would you permit copies to be made of your copies? We would gladly pay for the privilege.”

“And if you put that together with our money, and you should definitely have enough to fund a sect,” Wei Wuxian said enthusiastically. “And we can come visit!”

“Sooner rather than later, actually,” Jiang Cheng said, rubbing the back of his head. “Before the yelling started, Mother and Father agreed that we younger generation should lie low somewhere for a few weeks somewhere obscure to avoid any immediate reprisals from the Wen sect – and once they’ve lost the trail, we go out to recruit new sects to join the war.”

“That would be in line with what Brother requested that I do,” Lan Wangji observed, voice carefully neutral as always. “I would not object to spending some time in Moling, courting a newly formed sect.”

Su She didn’t know what to say, his mouth moving open and closed. It was almost everything he’d ever wanted, and he only need to reach out and grasp it – his own sect, his brother, the respect of the arrogant young masters…

Nothing could be better.

A hand fell on his shoulder, the warmth of it lighting him up inside.

“Our sect would be happy to host you,” Yu Zhuliu said.

Su She was wrong.

Now

it was perfect.

[antebunny]

April 25: ribbons

A Swan Maiden Fairy Tale Fusion

Lan Wangji is a huntsman who happens upon a pond in the woods. He sees this epic coat thing made from raven feathers on the banks and goes “wow this is so cool and so pretty i should give it to my brother” and picks it up. Then he sees this guy on the shore and freaks out wondering if he’s dead, but he’s not, he’s just unconscious & naked. So Lan Wangji wraps him up and brings him home, because he’s nice. Then the guy wakes up, introduces himself as “wei ying, courtesy wuxian”, sees the feather cloak and says “nice…cloak you got there”

“it is a gift for my brother”

“ah. Right…when’s ur brother getting here?”

“i will visit him when the snow melts”

“k. Cool. guess im staying here until then”

“can you not go home?”

Wei Wuxian eyes crinkle like he’s sharing a private joke: “Not until the snow melts”

Lan Wangji is a good host and doesn’t know how he feels about this guy just declaring that he’ll live with him for the next several months but…okay.

Lan Wangji finds out very quickly that Wei Wuxian isn’t normal, and it doesn't take him long after that to guess that Wei Wuxian also isn’t entirely human. He’s a very bad houseguest, he just sits, doesn’t know how to cook or anything really, and talks at Lan Wangji while Lan Wangji makes them breakfast. He follows Lan Wangji everywhere he goes with no explanation, just invites himself along. He talks while Lan Wangji is trying to hunt but somehow that doesn’t scare away the game. He flinched the first time Lan Wangji’s arrow found a mark, and insisted on honoring the fallen bird before returning. He passes time whistling and carves himself a flute, they play duets and Lan Wangji finds himself composing something on his guqin in the early morning while Wei Wuxian is still asleep on the floor. Wei Wuxian introduces him to spice, which he hates, but watching Wei Wuxian’s face light up isn’t something he thinks he can ever get tired of.

Wei Wuxian talks a lot about his home and his family, which is apparently a port by a river delta, which is how Lan Wangji learns that Wei Wuxian a very good swimmer, like everyone else there, and that he and his brother are constantly pushing each other in the lake, that he goes out to the pier to drink at night, that he has the best big sister who makes lotus and pork rib soup and stops Wei Wuxian from fighting with his brother, who is an angery smol one but also the best little brother ever (how this is possible, Lan Wangji doesn’t know, it’s clear Wei Wuxian loves his brother even if he spends most of the time making fun of him)

Lan Wangji doesn’t understand why Wei Wuxian can’t return to this home he’s heard so much about, doesn’t know why he found Wei Wuxian abandoned & naked by the side of the pond, but decides that Wei Wuxian is magic and it’s a magic pond, and if his family would leave him in that state, they don’t deserve him. He works up the courage to ask “wei ying. When the snow melts. Stay with me.” and Wei Wuxian is Conflicted bc he likes Lan Wangji and would like to stay but hates that he has to and maybe won’t see his family ever again. In the end all he says is “okay” and Lan Wangji is Very Happy. He also sees Wei Wuxian eyeing the feather cloak often but he already said he’d give it to his brother and doesn’t know how to offer it to Wei Wuxian. But then Wei Wuxian says “guess you’re not giving it to your brother now” which is basically how Lan Wangji thinks Wei Wuxian asks for things so he just nods vaguely.

Wei Wuxian guesses pretty early that Lan Wangji doesn’t know the full extent of what he’s done, and he clearly doesn’t know who Wei Wuxian is, but that’s not surprising. He decides not to tell him, because why would he? On the off-chance that Lan Wangji will just...give it back to him? Wei Wuxian has heard the Swan Maiden tale, he's has seen the worst parts of humanity; he can’t trust that.

It’s been raining a lot recently, which means Lan Wangji has less opportunity to hunt, and it’s harder to hunt after rain. He goes to the nearest town to trade when his supplies get too low (Wei Wuxian comes with obviously) and there the gossip is that some villagers swear up and down that they saw purple lightning (Wei Wuxian isn’t surprised, just sighs and says “of course”) which means that Sandu Shengshou is angry! And that the Lady of Lotus Blossoms, who usually blesses typical goddess things like matchmaking and fertility/childbirth, has 1) stopped and 2) started leaving white lotus blossoms behind, which means that she’s mourning which is sad and terrible! (Wei Wuxian agrees that her being sad is terrible and gets misty-eyed. Lan Wangji wasn’t aware that Wei Wuxian held her in such high regard).

In town, Wei Wuxian gets Lan Wangji better deals, flirts with some girls which makes Lan Wangji sad for unknown reasons, gets harassed by some guys which is how Lan Wangji confirms that Wei Wuxian is not human/magic bc in the dark & rainy night his eyes looked red and his teeth in the moonlight looked too long and too sharp, and no one heard from Wen Chao again. Lan Wangji also buys him clothes

The snow melts. Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian set off to visit Lan Xichen. Wei Wuxian isn’t wearing the cloak and Lan Wangji doesn’t understand why? But doesn’t ask because he never does. They get to the lake where Lan Wangji found Wei Wuxian and wait for Lan Xichen to meet them there, meanwhile Wei Wuxian hisses at a peacock and talks to a sparrow (Lan Wangji doesn’t question it. He never does), then Lan Xichen arrives and at the same time purple lightning flashes and a young man descends from the sky dressed in rich purple silks followed by a lady dressed in lavender and rose pink. they’re easily recognizable as Sandu Shengshou, the Lord of the heavenly Lotus Pier, and the Lady of Lotus Blossoms, his sister and the Lady of Lotus Pier. Lan Xichen is like “wangji wtf is going on” meanwhile Jiang Cheng accuses Lan Wangji of kidnapping his brother, and Jiang Yanli is like “we’re willing to bargain for our brother back. what do you want?”

Lan Wangji: "If he’s ur brother why did you abANDON him"

Jiang Cheng: "how DARE we’ve been searching for him for MONTHS ever since you TOOK him"

"i found him abandoned so i took him home to PROTECT him"

"that’s a fancy way of saying you decided to keep him like an exotic pet"

"i did no such thing"

"then why did you keep that!?" Jiang Cheng points at the feather cloak and everyone looks

Lan Xichen: "oh no"

Lan Wangji: "what"

Lan Xichen: "wangji. the swan maiden"

Lan Wangji: *remembers the story about the swan maiden who left her swan feathers by the side of the pond while she bathed and the huntsman who took her feathers and thus took her, forced her to marry him and bear him three children, before she found her feathers, after which she yeeted outta there with her three children and never left the heavens again, leaving huntsman to die of a broken heart.*

Lan Wangji hadn’t even considered it, maybe because Wei Wuxian was sleeping and therefore didn’t beg for the feather cloak back, maybe bc he made a weak joke instead of flat-out asking Lan Wangji what he planned to do, maybe because his wasn’t pure and white but rather made of raven feathers and pitch black

Also Wei Wuxian got roaring drunk that’s how he ended up there. Jiang Cheng is like “just bc my brother is the stupidest dumb person to ever idiot–” “hey!” “does not mean you can just taKE ADVANTAGE of him”

Anyway Lan Wangji freaks tf out and practically throws the feather cloak back at Wei Wuxian, who hasn’t been meeting his eyes and not saying anything this whole time and tries to apologize. Jiang Yanli grabs it and her brother and walks into the lake, pink and cream lotus blossoms blooming under her feet; she doesn’t sink under the surface. She stands in the middle and they both go under. Then Wei Wuxian arises in his full black-and-red glory, Jiang Cheng shoots Lan Wangji one last glare and then the three of them promptly disappear into the heavens

Lan Xichen holds Lan Wangji for the first time in years while he cries. He stutters his way through an explanation of what happened the past three months, saying again and again that he didn’t know, he noticed that Wei Wuxian wasn’t human and a little bit magic but he didn’t expect this and he didn’t realize that he was preventing Wei Wuxian from leaving. Lan Xichen says things like “i believe you” and “you’re not a terrible person, you just made a terrible mistake”

Eventually Lan Wangji stops hyperventilating, and that’s when a flock of crows leaves their roosts, the wind shrieks, and Wei Wuxian descends again. Lan Wangji doesn’t understand how Wei Wuxian could possibly forgive him, or how someone like Wei Wuxian could possibly take interest in a lonely huntsman like Lan Wangji, but Wei Wuxian holds his hand out and says that he promised to take Lan Wangji on a tour of his home (lotus pier!!), and his eyes do that thing and he says “well? Are you coming?” and how can Lan Wangji say no?

[spockandawe]

MDZS/CQL for the blorbo meme

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most)

JIANG CHENG. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are compelling and stuff, I adore a surprising proportion of the cast considering how badly they all hurt people I love (each other), but a lot of stories.... resolve one way or another. Wei Wuxian's story swells, emotionally, and then begins the process of resolution. Because he's the protagonist. Jin Guangyao's story ramps up and up, and then ramps (abruptly) down. Nie Mingjue's story kind of... looms, at the edges of the narrative, but whatever potential was in there, it Concluded.

But for most of these characters, as much as they make me ache, their story has an ending. Jiang Cheng leaves me anxious and hanging. That's not an absolute statement, the story painstakingly carves out a potential path from what seemed like an inescapable emotional pit and forces him (and wei wuxian) to see that it's there. But the process of carving out that path is what takes up the book. Lan Xichen gives me some similar feelings, but he's not prone to the same sort of self-sabotaging spirals that compel me. It is not made at all clear where Nie Huaisang goes following the conclusion, but he doesn't have me this interested. The book and the actor both sketch out all kinds of messy+ugly (+compelling!!) emotional depths for Jiang Cheng, and lord knows how long it'll be before I stop thinking about him.

scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped)

......Xue Yang. Look. Look. I recognize that a lot of this is the killer acting job we were blessed with in CQL, but i have a Type. I just made a jokey comment about how yeah, mass murder is super compatible with being Baby, it's about lack of emotional regulation and impulse control, but you've got increased motor control and access to knives. There's something about him where the... softer side of human interaction is extremely new and foreign to him, he doesn't GET it, he doesn't know what to think about it, and that 100% activates my cute aggression centers.

scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave)

Hmm. This is hard, in a story like this. There aren't any characters where I'm like, frothing at the mouth over how people don't adore them as much as I do. Wait, actually, I've got it. Lan Qiren. He's got people who appreciate him, but I have such feelings about the way he was unexpectedly catapulted into his sect leadership/child parenting position by his brother's actions, all the things written between the lines about how difficult and traumatic that would have been, what an abrupt change in the life he expected, the feeling of abandonment by one, a brother he trusted, and two, a leader whose judgment he trusted, and how he's slow to adapt when one of his nephews is captivated by someone who's making the sort of reckless dangerous decisions that were so formative for Lan Qiren when he was younger. Lan Qiren isn't perfect, but he's struggling and trying, and that's what I want in a character, even one who's standing in nominal opposition to my sympathetic protagonist

glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week)

Oh boy. Hmm. It's hard to say obscure in a story like this, because there's a pretty clearly defined (large) central cast, and peripheral bit parts. A lot of the bit part characters operate a bit part piece of my heart. But I think I'm going to say Mo Xuanyu, for reasons I will go into in the next question

poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave)

We're leaning into the 'pathetic' angle very hard here, and 'unpopular' as in the sense of 'this character absolutely destroyed himself to set the plot in motion, and barely anyone comments on his life or death, even though the protagonist is technically piloting his meat sack around in all the present scenes. But... yeah, Mo Xuanyu. He gets a little more attention in the book, but only because things are Awkward, because he totally tried to hit on his half-brother, and when it becomes clear that he's actually Wei Wuxian... yeah, his death passes almost completely unremarked.

And also, to be clear, this story would rip my throat out if that was a central focus. It would be a lot harder for me to just genuinely have fun with this book. But I love a good hard death spiral, I love a willingness to go down in flames if it means accomplishing what you want, this character hits so many of my buttons, but it's all left so mysterious to us. He's dead by the time the book begins. We get a little backstory from his notes, but those are scattered, and there isn't much depth. If not for him, Wei Wuxian wouldn't be here, and... despite spectacularly flaming out of existence, even if news spreading about it was delayed, nobody gives his death more than a *shrug*

So yes, I am fascinated by whatever scraps of information we can get about him, he's a character I would write again in a heartbeat if I had a good idea for it, and he's absolutely my poor little meow meow.

(honorable mention to jiaojiao for being much more obscure than mxy, but I am delighted by her au potential much more than I am by her role in the canonical story)

horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason)

.......Jiang Cheng. Look. He just. He's a receptacle for all intense and negative emotions. He's really good at aching and suffering. I can appreciate it when a character soaks up damage and laughs for anyone watching as he compartmentalizes it away, I can appreciate it when a character quietly absorbs hurt and refuses to show any of that vulnerability in front of any watching eyes. But what I live for is when a character is an emotional open wound, where when he's hurt, his first impulse is to lash out and hurt back. The intensity of the way he loves just makes the intensity of the way he suffers that much sweeter. The way he struggles to regulate his negative emotions is delicious. I crave his happiness more strongly than any other mxtx non-main character, but I cannot tell a lie, watching him ache and suffer is just beyond comparison

eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell)

Jin Guangshan is the easy answer, but it's not wrong. Wen Chao is also... tempting. Wen Ruohan and both of his boys are serious dicks, and their atrocities aren't even remotely justified. The cloud recesses and lotus pier? Both appalling, even without the other parts of their history. But... man, I'm not sure if I can articulate this right. But I don't feel the same kind of 'how dare you' anger when acts of unjustified cruelty are a political maneuver, or happen as things are escalating towards war.

I can conceptualize how it's easy to hurt a faceless Other, it's been baked into human history since forever. Jin Guangshan is cruel in ways that are personal and fall on a spectrum from 'deliberate' to 'careless.' The way he treats his illegitimate children is gross. The way he treated at least some of their mothers is gross. He has the power to indulge all his stupid selfish desires be less cruel about it, but instead we hear about him bitching about Meng Shi. The way he exploits Jin Guangyao is ugly, but there are all these little touches to it, like giving him the wrong generational character, and it's just infuriating. In some ways, I have to ask if I'm falling into a doublethink trap by holding him more responsible for trying to lean on young Jiang Cheng and assert his power, than I'm holding Wen Chao responsible for orphaning Jiang Cheng and decimating the sect in the first place. But... if I have to pick one, that's where I am, apparently :p

[goldencorecrunches]

(Part II of this wnx snippet) ( @chenqingssuibian ) Wen Ning is not, it turns out, free this afternoon—he wasn’t lying about having work. As he chugs approximately sixteen liters of water (being hungover is bad; being hungover around customers is like stabbing nails into his brain) and bullies a predictably whining Nie Huaisang through a plate of eggs and grease, he tries to decide whether this is a blessing or a curse. Blessing: he can put off the inevitable confrontation for a few more days. Curse: he has a few more days to work himself into a panic about the inevitable confrontation. Lan Xichen is busy the day after, and then Wen Ning has work again, so it’s Thursday by the time Wen Ning pokes his head into the playing-at-being-cozy café, the kind with matching gold tins of organic tea leaves and a rug that costs more than Wen Ning’s entire apartment. It’s patterned in geese. Wen Ning is not sure why. Are geese rustic? Do rich people only know about swans? Everyone is there. So: not everyone, on the planet (they wouldn’t fit), or even everyone Wen Ning knows, but—but a lot of them. There’s Lan Xichen, lifting an elegant hand from a table by the window (oh no, now he’s been seen, Wen Ning can’t turn around and rush back out the door). There’s Nie Mingjue, examining the organic tea-tins (golds?) with his hands in his pockets. There’s—there’s Wei Ying, chattering and rumpled as normal, and there’s Lan Zhan, and oh, why is he here, are they going to do this now, is Wen Ning going to get the whole it-didn’t-mean-anything-why-are-you-fixated speech in the middle of a gentrified tea shop, and oh no he’s looking over-- Wen Ning wrenches his eyes to the floor. It’s a very comforting floor. He is one with the geese. The geese are one with him. They might be ducks. It’s difficult to tell.

“Bastards,” Nie Huaisang says cheerfully, hanging from Wen Ning’s elbow. They’re here too, of course, to Wen Ning’s—moral support? Witness for the end? Like the geese-ducks, Wen Ning is confused on the details. “I told Xichen-ge not to scare you. Don’t imagine Wei Ying and Lan Zhan in their underwear. It’ll make the problem worse.” It’s a terrible joke. Wen Ning laughs, quick and harsh and accidental. He—he does feel a little bit better now that he’s exhaled, though anxiety is doing carnival-balloon art with his lungs. “Wen Ning!” Lan Xichen says, warm and delighted. He sounds like he’s smiling (Wen Ning is still one with the geese). “I’m so glad you could make it! Here, Wangji, why don’t the two of you guard the table while I go get our orders?” Wei Ying’s stream of nonsense gains a frantic edge. Wen Ning can relate. “You are the worst at scheming,” Nie Huaisang says, abandoning (abandoning!) Wen Ning’s arm to latch onto Lan Xichen’s. “See, this is why I came, no, you too, Wei Ying, I only barely got him out the door and we can’t let this go to waste….” their voice is swallowed in the larger clink and murmur of the other patrons. Wen Ning is left standing on one side of an artificially scuffed tabletop. Lan Zhan is on the other. “Hi,” Wen Ning says. Lan Zhan looks at him. It’s been a while since Wen Ning has gone three days without seeing him (or Wei Ying—longer, that, in fact). It still feels like Wen Ning’s stomach is trying to crawl up his throat and eat him, but he can’t help the smile that takes over his mouth at Lan Zhan’s lovely, carefully- arranged face. Behind the smooth features his eyes are cautious—no, Wen Ning realizes, panicked. He doesn’t look angry. Wen Ning sits down. A moment later, as if following his cue, so does Lan Zhan. The thing about him is, he is a coward. No—no that’s an accusation, not an observation: his therapist has been working on that with him. The thing about Wen Ning is that he gets very anxious about events before they happen, and feels scared when he thinks someone might be upset with him. But once the fat is in the pan, so to speak, it’s like a stillness takes over. From his chest down there’s a steady weight, numbing, not stopping his pulse from racing but—but making it distant. Wen Ning has no idea how he’s going to deal with whatever happens next, but he’s going to, because someone has to. “You kissed me,” he says, slower than usual. His heart goes: thump. Thump. Thump. He folds his hands before him on the table. Lan Zhan’s gaze skitters away. He’d been carrying his phone in both hands—now he sets it between them, fusses to square up the corners with those of the table, and nudges it towards Wen Ning. Wen Ning takes it. Talking out loud is difficult for Lan Zhan, sometimes. Usually he just remains silent, but when necessary he has a text-to-speech function on his phone. Unfortunately, despite all his family’s money, text-to-speech remains an imperfect modulator. Wen Ning has trouble parsing out the digitized phrases at the best of times, and right now is not one of the best. “Xichen did not tell me everyone would be here,” the phone screen says. Wen Ning ducks his head, smile growing. “How imp-- how rude of him.” Lan Zhan takes the phone back. He types; Wen Ning watches his fingers move. They’re painted a shimmery silver, today. Wen Ning doesn’t know how he keeps his nail polish from chipping; he’s asked, and Lan Zhan, in a way that at first seemed disdainful but now Wen Ning knows is teasing, just raises his eyebrows. The phone comes back down with a decisive clack. “I will not do it again if you do not want me to.” The heavy, carnival-balloon, anxious-calm of Wen Ning’s guts go tight. This is it, then. Wen Ning squeezes his hands together. But he is not coward (nervous) Wen Ning now, he is dealing-with-things Wen Ning. “It was all right,” he says. “I wouldn’t mind if it happened again.” The next table over, a teacup rattles, louder than the rest. There’s laughter; self-deprecating. The air smells like lavender incense. Lan Zhan’s fingers curl around the phone. His mouth is parted, slightly. He and Wen Ning look away at the same time. It’s warm, in the café. Wen Ning can feel his face burning. “But,” Wen Ning says. His throat closes, dry and small, around the word, so he coughs—Lan Zhan glances back to him, worried—to force the rest of them out. “But what ab-about Wei Ying?”

What, says Lan Zhan’s sudden frown, does he have to do with this?

[beanmaster-pika]

When Wei Wuxian resurrected he got a spouse out of the ordeal so he’s like I think Wen Ning should also get a post-resurrection spouse if he wants one. Wen Ning do you want one??? And Wen Ning, who’s been quietly holding a crush on him for twenty years, is just like “:)” which Wei Wuxian interprets as a yes. This starts a comical journey to find someone willing to try dating a fierce corpse (sentient fierce corpse! Wei Wuxian stresses as he talks to people. Sentient! He’s a lovely person! Super kind and very cute!) interspersed with heart-to-hearts as Wei Wuxian tries to figure out Wen Ning’s type whilst remaining oblivious to the fact that Wen Ning means him every time he tries to explain and we get the patented “my heart hurts thinking about him with another person haha that’s weird I wonder why. Anyway back to matchmaking :))))”

Lan Wangji and Wen Ning have a slowburn second-degree-friends-to-real-friends-to-lovers arc in the background which is only slowburn because after they become friends and acknowledge they also have romantic feelings for each other they’re just enjoying the process of courting, which neither of them ever got to do with Wei Wuxian. Throughout the whole fic Lan Wangji is under the impression that Wei Wuxian is oblivious to his own feelings for Wen Ning (correct) and is trying to figure out what his type is in a subconscious effort to pursue him (incorrect) and he asks once “would you be alright with it if I were to pursue Wen Ning as well?” and Wei Wuxian’s automatically like “yeah!! Wen Ning deserves someone as good as you 😤” without giving it too much thought so Lan Wangji thinks he is allowed, no, encouraged to court Wen Ning too, which is what he thinks Wei Wuxian is doing by showering the man with trinkets and little gifts and attention while this is all happening (now this one is a subconscious effort). Wen Ning asked at first like “is Wei-gongzi(? form of address depends on how far WWX gets with ‘hey dude we’re equals call me by my name’) okay with you courting me” and Lan Wangji is like “mn. He knows loving another will not mean I love him any less, and I have already asked for his blessing.” and then at the end they’re like

LWJ: Wei Ying, have you had fun?

WWX: huh? I guess, but this was to help Wen Ning find someone.

LWJ, who thinks the second half of their trip was to further test out their compatibility before making it official: wonderful. Let us go home.

WWX: ????????

WN, who has been holding hands with LWJ for the past half hour: yeah we need to plan the wedding :)

WWX, having his usual last-minute connection of the dots right before a confession: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And internally he’s like “I can never let Lan Zhan know I wasn’t taking him seriously when he asked permission to court Wen Ning or else he’ll feel so guilty and sad” and externally he’s like oh haha my loves guess what-

[besanii]

DH prompt, maybe: after seeing the fire festival, I kinda wanna see the first time LWJ ever managed to fluster WWX? I imagine WWX (and all of their mutual friends) would be absolutely gobsmacked about it after three centuries. Thank you so much for everything you do for us—DH is the absolute highlight of my day and never fails to make me smile. Smugji is a blessing on this Earth XD

Extra 12: Prize | previous parts here

“A-Cheng, A-Xian, good luck!” Jiang Yanli calls from where she’s standing with the rest of the spectators. “And be careful!”

Wei Wuxian waves back at her enthusiastically with his sword aloft, jumping up and down amidst the line-up of competitors in today’s tournament. A red competitor’s headband is tied across his forehead, the ends draping down the length of his back, and he’s swapped out his usual loose, flowing robes for a more form-fitted ones in black and red. He likes these robes, likes the way they look on him, and how easily he can move around in them.

Beside him, Jiang Cheng is also waving at his sister, albeit in a more dignified manner, inching as far away from Wei Wuxian as possible.

“Can you calm down?” he hisses, barely restraining the urge to kick him. “I’m embarrassed just standing next to you.”

“Heh, don’t be so prudish, Jiang Cheng, you’re not even sixty thousand,” Wei Wuxian says. “You’re acting as old as Lan-laotouzi.”

He dances away from Jiang Cheng’s attempted swipe at his head with a laugh, only for a pair of hands to grab him by the shoulders.

“Oops, sorry,” he says, turning around to see who it is. “I didn’t mean to—oh, hey Lan Zhan.”

Lan Wangji looks down at him, bemused, his hands still on Wei Wuxian’s shoulders so he has to crane his neck to look at him over his shoulder.

He’s dressed in white, as always, with a white headband, but like Wei Wuxian has swapped his usual flowing robes for ones that allow more freedom of movement. The shortened hem shows off his unfairly long legs, and the sleeveless outer robe his muscular torso and arms, which suddenly reminds Wei Wuxian of their current position. He twists himself around to face Lan Wangji, breaking free of the hold on his shoulders at the same time, and beams at him.

“Hi, Lan Zhan!” he says. “Ready to lose?”

Jiang Cheng snorts under his breath, but Lan Wangji only raises an eyebrow.

“You believe you’ll win?” He sounds almost curious.

Hah! Little does he know, Wei Wuxian is the best at these games. Undisputed champion in Qing Qiu and Lotus Pier. He grins.

“Wanna bet?” he asks, and waggles eyebrows suggestively. “Loser has to grant the winner one wish.”

Lan Wangji considers this for a moment, expression thoughtful. 

“What sort of wish?” he asks.

Wei Wuxian grins confidently. “Anything! As long as it’s within the loser’s power to grant, of course. Don’t worry, I won’t ask you for anything that goes against the laws of the Nine Heavens.”

“Alright,” Lan Wangji agrees finally.

To his credit, Lan Wangji doesn’t look concerned in the slightest. That will change really soon, Wei Wuxian thinks smugly. Once they get into the arena, he won’t know what hit him. He raises his sword in both hands and bows with exaggerated formality.

“Then please go easy on me, Lan-er-dianxia,” he says.

--

When the gong sounds, all twelve competitors fly up and position themselves on top of the pillars of ice dotting the arena. Wei Wuxian winks at Jiang Cheng from where he’s perched on top of one of the shorter pillars as they draw their swords and wait for the signal to begin. He looks around for Lan Wangji and spots him close by, Bichen’s blade glinting in the sunlight.

Typical Lan Zhan to choose the tallest vantage point. All the better to look down on us from on high.

Not that it matters. Wei Wuxian has a way to deal with him. He might as well start thinking about what embarrassing thing he can get Lan Wangji to do after this is over.

“Rules are simple,” the referee is saying. “Remove the headband from your fellow competitors’ heads. You may use swords, talismans, and spells, as long as it does not endanger the lives of your fellow competitors. You must remain in human form throughout the competition. The last one with their headband still on will be declared the winner.”

Easy. He rolls out his shoulders and neck and bounces a few times on the balls of his feet to loosen up his joints. 

As soon as the gong sounds again, he whips out an amplification talisman and torches the pillars surrounding him, melting them enough so that the competitors perched on top of them come crashing down as they crumble. Wei Wuxian darts forward while they get their bearings and undoes their headbands quickly on his way past them. He grins, three headbands in his grasp.

Across the other side of the arena, Jiang Cheng is plucking the headband from another competitor whose lower body has been completely frozen onto the pillar to prevent them from moving. He looks over at Wei Wuxian and raises Sandu in challenge.

With his fire trick used, Wei Wuxian starts jumping between pillars, quick and sure-footed. He trades parries and punches, dodges the occasional fireball—because of course the other competitors would follow suit and favour fire in an arena of ice—all the while keeping an eye out for Lan Wangji. He doesn’t want to knock him out too early in the competition.

Half an incense stick’s worth of time later, there’s just him, Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji left in the arena. He has four headbands, five including his own, Jiang Cheng three, and Lan Wangji four. The ice pillars around them are in various states of collapse, making their footing rather precarious, but they pay it little mind as they size each other up from different corners of the arena.

“Hey Lan Zhan,” he calls, waving his collection of headbands in the air and flashing him a cheeky grin. “Remember our bet! You better prepare yourself, cos I’m not gonna let you off that easy!”

“You talk too much,” Jiang Cheng snorts, and takes into the air.

“Says you!” Wei Wuxian draws a quick sigil in the air and fires it in his direction; it catches Jiang Cheng’s ankle, wrapping around it like a piece of string. “Gotcha!”

He yanks on his end of the spell and the talisman amplifies the force, sending Jiang Cheng crashing into the arena below with an undignified shout. The string shortens as he reels it in like a fishing line while he hops forward to meet it halfway, grinning down at a dishevelled Jiang Cheng covered in snow.

“Thank you,” he says glibly, reaching down and plucking the purple headband from around his head. Jiang Cheng grins.

“No,” he says. “Thank you.”

He grabs hold of Wei Wuxian’s outstretched hand, holding him in place just as a flash of blue skims the side of his head. A moment later, his own red headband flutters down past his nose, piling around his neck. Jiang Cheng releases him with a whoop and flops back on the ground with a satisfied grunt. Wei Wuxian is frozen in place, staring at neat cut through the side of his headband.

What the fuck just happened?

He nearly jumps out of his skin when a pair of hands appear on either side of his head. He whips around to see Lan Wangji standing much too close for comfort, his fingers brushing Wei Wuxian’s neck.

“Wha-What are you doing?” he asks, voice oddly high-pitched, heart racing. His skin feels like it’s on fire where Lan Wangji’s fingers have made contact, and the heat spreads to his ears and neck.

Lan Wangji lifts the headband carefully from around his neck and holds it up in front of him, an strange, unsettling glint in his amber eyes.

“I win,” he says calmly.

Wei Wuxian forces himself to laugh, but it comes out louder than he’d intended, and a lot more hysterical. He hears Jiang Cheng snort; Lan Wangji’s lips twitch.

“Congratulations!” Wei Wuxian says. “Well done! Haha, yes, uh—I can’t believe you and Jiang Cheng teamed up against me—”

He breaks off with a breathy squeak when Lan Wangji steps even closer and he can feel the heat radiating from his body. It may be just his imagination, or a trick of the light, or maybe Wei Wuxian’s vision growing fuzzy around the edges, but Lan Wangji’s eyes have darkened to almost a molten gold as he holds his gaze. It’s suddenly really, really hard to breathe.

He squeezes his eyes shut as Lan Wangji leans in—his body doesn’t seem to be able to do move at all, did Lan Wangji use a freezing spell on him?—and he braces himself for—for something. Except...there’s nothing more than a light tug on his scalp, and then his hair comes tumbling over his shoulders.

“What...?”

He opens his eyes to see a familiar length of red ribbon in Lan Wangji’s hand, along with the red headband, and a look of immense satisfaction in Lan Wangji’s eyes.

“My prize,” he tells him. “As promised.”

And then he turns on his heel and flies out of the arena, leaving Wei Wuxian standing there, flummoxed and speechless, as Jiang Cheng wheezes with laughter on the ground.

// buy me a ko-fi //

[stufftippywrote]

day off

22: “You make me so happy.” From this prompt list...

Lan Wangji is not a perfect soul.

He knows his own reputation. To others, he is a lake of glass: unwavering, unmoving, still and perfect against the travails of life. More than anything, he has mastered his own body. His movements, his expressions are precise. Not an eyelash out of place; barely a twitch of his lips, sometimes, when he is stirred by emotion. He is snowfall on a mountaintop: always constant, always undisturbed.

But beneath the snowfall, beneath the glass, turmoil.

Less so today than before: before there was distress, urgency, fear of losing what he'd only so recently regained. Now, for the most part, there is peace and joy. But what remains, still, is doubt.

Wei Ying loves him. That in itself should solve every problem, open every door. He is able to take this man who captured his heart a lifetime ago and hold him, touch him, speak with him every day. Where the frost had seeped into Lan Wangji's heart, Wei Ying has melted it, and every day now it is springtime: tender, beautiful, full of life and possibility.

But spring is also fleeting, and sometimes Lan Wangji wonders.

Can someone like Wei Ying truly be happy, passing his days in Cloud Recesses?

Can he spend his days in a place of four thousand rules, bound to the same surroundings every day, teaching the same students, bound to the same room, the same man, the same bed? Should Wei Ying be living a freer life than Lan Wangji can give him? Shouldn't he be running on rainbows to the seven corners of the earth, helping the downtrodden and winning hearts as he goes, turning the legend of the Yiling Patriarch into a story of redemption and heroism? Sometimes it seems a shame, even to Lan Wangji, that he stays here.

But stay here he does, save nighthunts to and fro with the others and occasional jaunts down the mountain just because. He never complains when Lan Wangji joins him. There is no doubt there; Lan Wangji can be sure, at the very least, that Wei Ying truly loves him.

But is loving him enough to keep him happy?

This morning, he fears it is not.

They're having breakfast. Wei Ying pokes at his rice unhappily, not eating very much, which is always a troubling sign. The never troubled, always glad face of Wei Ying is pinched with some discontent. Perhaps it is as he fears. He fumbles for a way to cheer him. "Wei Ying," he says, unsure, "Do you want to take a trip?"

Wei Ying shakes his head and stares balefully at the plate of vegetables before him. "No," he says, "not really."

"Is something wrong?"

"Nothing," Wei Ying says automatically, and then sighs. "Maybe I had a bad dream."

"Maybe?" And maybe that's all it is, but Lan Wangji can't see that look on Wei Ying's face without thinking there's something more. "What will you do today?"

Wei Ying gestures vaguely to his writing-desk in the corner. "I suppose I'll probably work some more on the energy map I've been developing," he says. "Then I guess I'll do some meditation, try to get this weak little core of mine a bit more bulked up. Or maybe I'll just take the day off.”  He lets out another, resigned sigh. "It's really useless, Lan Zhan. I'm never going to be what I was."

"You will, in time," Lan Wangji starts to say, then falls silent. His words must be so little comfort to Wei Ying, who has been trying to improve on the weakness of Mo Xuanyu's golden core for months now. Lan Wangji had encouraged him, seeing it as the obvious path to take, trying to cultivate back to his former self. But perhaps it is more frustrating, and less satisfying, than he had anticipated. Perhaps it's only holding him back.

This place, these Cloud Recesses, are such an ideal place for cultivation. But if cultivation isn't what Wei Ying desires -- if being here isn't what he desires -- Lan Wangji has no right to hold him back.

He coughs softly.

Wei Ying blinks at him. "What?"

"If you want to travel," Lan Wangji says, carefully as always, "you should travel."

"What's with asking me about traveling?" Wei Ying half-smiles. "Are you trying to get rid of me, Lan Zhan?"

"No." But he must qualify that answer as well; he must make sure Wei Ying feels free. "But if you wish to go..."

"I don't." Wei Ying picks up a radish slice with chopsticks and crunches down on it decisively. "I'm not sure why you think I do."

Lan Wangji is ashamed. He seems to have incurred Wei Ying's irritation. He's fouled this up, when his only intention has been to let Wei Ying know he is free to pursue his dreams wherever they may lead him. He is silent, placing his chopsticks down on the table and staring expressionlessly at his meal. He shouldn't be speaking while eating anyway.

Wei Ying leans back and gazes at him for a long moment. "Lan Zhan," he says hesitantly, "why are you so sure all of a sudden that I want to go?"

The shame doesn't show on his face, but Lan Wangji feels it acutely. "I want Wei Ying to be happy," he says.

"But I'm happy!" Wei Ying laughs, but it's not the full, open-throated laugh that Lan Wangji is used to. There's something strained in his smile.

"You did not seem so," he points out.

The smile fades as quickly as it appears. Wei Ying crosses his arms. "I really did have a bad dream," he says, the consonants of his speech sharp as he rasps over them. "I'm always going to have bad dreams. It's the curse of the Yiling Patriarch. I have too many regrets to always sleep soundly. And the cultivation does get me down, I won't lie. I feel as though you're still waiting for me to become something I'm not."

"I'm not," Lan Wangji speaks as swiftly as he can. "If you no longer wish to cultivate, then stop."

"I don't want to stop, necessarily," Wei Ying says. "I want to live a long life with you. But I can't say I'm going to be successful at it, even with time. And I don't want you to settle."

"I want Wei Ying just as he is." The words can't rush from his mouth fast enough, but with them comes regret -- are these words binding cords? Do they trap Wei Ying in an existence that is not his ideal? "I fear you are settling."

Wei Ying looks at him a long time without speaking. Lan Wangji feels that gaze boring into him, like a pike being driven through his chest. Wei Ying's mind works fast, and in ways Lan Wangji often cannot follow. Who knows what he's thinking right now.

And then, like a bright rush of sunshine, that laugh. Full-voiced now, sounds flying into the air like a flock of birds, noisy and raucous and everything that is good. "I see," he says. "I see now. Oh, Lan Zhan, I thought I had the market cornered on self-torture, but you are good at it too, when you are given too much time to think." He takes one of Lan Wangji's hands into his own, nimble fingers caressing his skin. A blessed touch. "I'm happy here," he says. "I'm not sure how you decided otherwise, but I promise I am."

"Why?" Lan Wangji asks.

"Why what?"

"Why are you happy here?" The question seems to Lan Wangji to be an obvious one, but Wei Ying looks at him as though he's speaking in an alien tongue. "What about this place makes you happy?"

"What doesn't?" Wei Ying counters. "The scenery, being close to A-Yuan and the others, a truly insane number of books I can look through in my work, the back hill, the waterfall..."

"The rules?" Lan Wangji asks. "The food?"

"See, now you're just picking the things you know I'm not fond of." Wei Ying props his chin up on his free hand and gazes at Lan Wangji across the table. "You're forgetting something very important."

Lan Wangji blinks. What has he not accounted for? "Something important?"

Wei Ying sighs. He drops his chopsticks, stands up, and rounds the small table, planting himself awkwardly in Lan Wangji's lap. The crush of his weight and the sweet smell of him, all of a sudden everywhere, and Lan Wangji's impulse is to clutch on tightly. He wills his hands to remain still.

"You," Wei Ying says. "You're forgetting about you."

"Me?" It's not as though Lan Wangji doubted, but he hadn't considered... he hadn't thought he was enough to tip the scales.

"You. You make me happy, Lan Zhan. You make me so happy." Wei Ying kisses his jaw, caresses his face with a hand. "Don't you know that?"

Lan Wangji is silent. Wei Ying's words are echoing in his ears. You make me so happy. How could he? He tries, but how could he really when Wei Ying's heart is big enough to embrace an entire universe?

Wei Ying buries a laugh in Lan Wangji's shoulder. "Ah, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan," he berates, "it's you who's settling! Look at me, so weak, determined to keep my wicked ways. You'll never make a proper cultivator out of me, no matter how long and how hard you try. Aren't I the very picture of disappointment? It's a wonder you can keep me around."

"Stop." Lan Wangji scowls. "Stop. Don't say these things."

"Do they sound ridiculous to you? Do you see now how you sound to me?" Wei Ying winds his arms around Lan Wangji's neck. "I'm not leaving you, Lan Zhan. You couldn't kick me out with a whole army of little Lans behind you. So you might as well stop trying."

Lan Wangji is a little embarrassed. He had been so worried about Wei Ying's ill temper and so lost in his own imaginings that he'd concocted a whole universe of discontent. He lifts a hand and tangles it in Wei Ying's hair, savoring the feel of soft silk against his fingers. "Wei Ying makes me happy, too," he says.  "So very happy."

Wei Ying leans in and dots a kiss onto his lips, small and perfect. "So you'll give up then on telling me to go away?"

"Mn." For the first time this morning, he feels tethered again, sure of himself.

"And if I ever do want to go somewhere," Wei Ying says, "I want you to come with me."

"Anywhere Wei Ying wants to go."

"How about lunch in town, then?" Wei Ying lifts one of Lan Wangji's chopsticks from the table and pokes at the pile of withered vegetables. "Because as happy as I am, breakfast is not one of Cloud Recesses' high points."

"Mn. Lunch." There it is, that sense of sureness, that gentle delight that he's so used to feeling in Wei Ying's presence. He'd lost sight of it, somehow, but it's back and Wei Ying loves him and Wei Ying wants to stay with him and he needs nothing else in the entire universe. "Wherever you like."

"And I still intend to cultivate," Wei Ying says. "But perhaps, just this once, I'll take a day off." Lan Wangji nods. "Maybe I can convince you to dally with me a few hours in town? Unless you have terribly important lessons to impart and terribly important papers to grade."

"Nothing terribly important."  He lets his lips turn up in just that way that only Wei Ying gets to see.

"Good, then I'm skipping the rest of breakfast."

Lan Wangji frowns. "Don't waste food."

Wei Ying claps his hands. "Oh, there you are, Lan Zhan! I had thought you'd gone missing for  second."

He crawls out of Lan Wangji's lap and back onto his side of the table. They finish breakfast in pleasant silence, sunlight streaming in through the window. It's the perfect time to take a day off.

[trensu]

crack tangled au that nobody asked for

i saw a pic of wang yibo with blond hair and decided that lan wangji needed to be rapunzel. idk what else to tell you guys. there’s literally no other reason this exists.

so lwj has lived in his tower for as long as he can remember. his father says he’s not allowed to leave it ever bc the outside is Dangerous. There’s all sorts of unsavory folk that want to take his magic blond hair and use it for Nefarious Purposes. 

lwj is not all that interested in going outside. he trusts and loves his father. his father only wants what’s best for him. the outside world sounds scary anyway. besides, his father gave him a friend a few years back in the form of a small, surprisingly intelligent lizard named huaisang so he’s not lonely. And his father brings him books and other things for his hobbies. he hopes his father visits again soon bc his guqin’s strings snapped and now he can’t play.

lwj would have lived his whole life quite content with his little huaisang in the tower. except one day someone crawled in through his window. a STRANGER found his tower!! a DANGEROUS STRANGER was in his tower for NEFARIOUS PURPOSES. Probably. His father warned him about these guys. so he does the sensible thing and whacks the STRANGER over the head with his stringless guqin.

he stares blankly at the unconscious stranger and then looks at huaisang. 

“what are we supposed to do with him now?” lwj murmurs to his little lizard. huaisang makes a little growly sound. lwj nods. “But I don’t think we have any rope.”

lwj decides to use his hair.

--

look, wwx is not having a great day. he got chased by royal guards after he and jc were caught trying to steal from rich ppl (hey, he and his brother and sister were orphans without a penny to their name!! and sure, jyl brings in some income playing nursemaid to a fairly well to-do family and he and his brother find odd jobs here and there, but thats hardly what you’d call stable income...so maybe sometimes they help themselves to extra gold from the lordly families like the Jins; nbd, right? it’s not like they’d even notice the loss and also they’re all Assholes so they deserve to get robbed) bc maybe, MAYBE jc had a point when he said they’d be overreaching trying to steal from the royal Lan family.

he eventually loses the guards which is good! but then he loses track of his brother, which was bad. and then he somehow acquired a Very Angry Horse that won’t stop following him which is weird. also mildly inconvenient but an angry horse is still a step up from angry guards. then there was this tower he climbs up, ignoring the angry horse’s whinnies.

and now? Now he’s slowly regaining consciousness and finding himself tied to a chair by golden rope...hey, wwx is up for some bondage every now and again but, like, he’s gotta go through all the kink negotiation and safeword confirmation and sort out all the consent stuff before he gives the go ahead. he’s pretty sure none of that has happened.  So this is the UN-fun type of bondage and...wait a minute...this isn’t rope...is this--?

“who are you and what are your Nefarious Plans for my hair?”

wwx looks up and sees the most beautiful face he’s ever seen in his entire life. if jc were here he’d be shouting up a storm, demanding they be freed this instant. jc is about 90% of wwx’s impulse control and 20% of his common sense (the other 80% of his common sense resides with jyl at all times for safekeeping). So instead of demanding to be released, wwx puts on his most charming smile and leans forward towards the prettiest man in the world who’s hovering not nearly close enough in his space.

“well, hello. you can call me your future husband and the only plans i have for your hair involve a bed, you, and--”

He really should have expected the next hit to the head.

--

as far as meet-cutes go...it could’ve gone worse.

--

“i can’t believe you’ve been stuck in that tower all your life. don’t you get bored??”

“No.”

“don’t you ever want to stretch your legs and enjoy the sunshine?? go for a swim maybe?”

“No.”

“well why are you making me take you to through this awful forest and go to the palace??”

“Huaisang.”

“umm...bless you?”

The pretty man known as lwj sighs. “No. Huaisang is my lizard. It’s not fair for him to stay cooped up with me all the time.”

The lizard perched on lwj’s shoulder wiggles its disconcerting little lizard hand at him and, like, smiles at him. can lizards smile? they shouldn’t. it looks creepy. lwj cups a hand over the little lizards head and whispers to wwx.

“he thinks he’s a dragon. i want him to see what a real dragon looks like so he can figure out for himself that he isn’t one.”

“oh, so that’s why you wanna go to the palace. yeah, i wish someone had told me before that they had a dragon guarding the royal coffers.”

lwj narrows his eyes suspiciously at him. “why.”

“uh, no reason,” wwx winces and discreetly tugs the burnt edges of his robes out of view.

an awkward silence lingers for a painfully long time. the Angry Horse makes a sound. wwx suspects that he’s laughing at him. wwx sighs. at least he gets to enjoy the view, he thinks as lwj marches confidently ahead and subsequently gets them all lost.

--

lwj was just trying to be nice. that’s all. he wanted his little lizard friend to be happy. that’s it. his life was just fine before that!

but in the course of 48 hours, he finds out huaisang really IS a dragon, and is actually the little brother of nie mingjue, the dragon that guards the royal coffers. he falls in love with a roguish, penniless thief whose smile outshines the sun and carries a heart as golden as lwj’s hair. Said thief is now being held hostage by the man he calls his father but is in reality Meng Yao, the lan’s royal adviser who kidnapped him as an infant in order to use his magical hair for Nefarious Purposes. Oh, and apparently lwj is the long lost lan prince.

...he knew he should’ve stayed in the tower.

--

lwj feels his lips quirk up slightly as wwx runs his fingers through his now very black, very shortly cropped hair. wwx beams at him.

“didn’t i say i was gonna be your husband?”

“Hm,” lwj gives a small nod. “but having a horse at the wedding is a surprise.”

“yeah well, apparently we’re a package deal bc he won’t quit following me.”

wen qing, the witch officiating their wedding, scoffs. “seriously?? you haven’t figured it out yet??”

she taps the horse angrily chewing at wwx’s robes and suddenly there’s a man in purple robes shouting at the top of his lungs.

“A WEEK. I’VE BEEN CURSED INTO A HORSE FOR A WEEK, WEI WUXIAN, YOU IDIOT. HOW GODDAMN STUPID ARE YOU THAT YOU DIDN’T REALIZE---”

“Oh, jiang cheng! you’re just in time for the wedding!!”

The shouting lost all coherency at that point. but that’s okay. lwj is very happy he finally left his tower anyway.

[tanoraqui]

okay so someone made an Abhorsen AU of MDZS but it’s, like...bad, weak, basically changed the magic system but none of the worldbuilding, keeps rewriting canon scenes with no real change. Boring. So I was obliged to think of my own, and basically I concluded that there are two options:

a properly thorough thing, characters and plotlines interwoven, in which Lans are Clayr (it’s about the aloofness and presumption of being right), the Wens are probably (overreaching) royalty, the Jins are a notable family of Charter mages (cousins of the throne?) who’ve made a lot of money on business with Ancestierre, and Nie Huaisang is the worst Abhorsen anyone’s heard of (but possibly a decent Remembrancer). The Jiangs are another notable Charter-blessed, royalty-adjacent family, but Wei Wuxian takes up necromancy when he abruptly needs to; Wen Qing is a Wallmaker; and in the end, Lan Wangji wields Astarael (of course he does) and slices Orannis’s sphere in twain, and the chatty soapstone dog Wei Wuxian gave him when they were fifteen bites his hand off.

we hopscotch 80% of both plots in what I like to think of as an au titled Yrael Get Stuck in a Hole for Several Hundred Year, But Ultimately Has a Nice Day (And Maybe Everyone Else Does, Too):

the Abhorsen has been dead for hundreds of years, as has the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, as has anyone next in line, and those in line for the crown as well. The details aren’t relevant, just know that the Great Charter Stones beneath the palace were broken with blood, the border to Death made so thin that even the weakest spirit can step through, and they were only stopped by the desperate work of all the great Charter mages left in the land. Belisaere was abandoned wholesale, its rivers, aqueducts, and grand harbor transformed from guards to keep the dead out to walls to keep them in. It was renamed the Burial Mounds, and those able kept watch on the other side of the water, to beat back anything terrible that attempted to come through.

over time, factions and sects of Charter mages arose, often around those who could claim some thread of blood relation to the lost monarchs and Abhorsens. They splintered. They fought. They kept the Dead down as best they could, including continuing to guard the Burial Mounds. (Sometimes people ventured in, in search of adventure or valuables - the Abhorsen’s bells and sword, after all, were lost, and all sorts of other unknown magical weapons. But no one living ever tried to come out.)

the involvement of the Clays waxed and waned over the centuries. Overall, they tried to help. Sometimes they built and sent military forces, trained mages of their own. Sometimes, they scaled back and sent forth naught but the occasional vague prophecy. The Dead could never breach their icy stronghold, after all, so was the rest of the failed kingdom really their problem?

the Clayr certainly send military forces out to “help” the rest of the kingdom under the leadership of Wen Ruohan. And, whatever exactly precedes it, with regard to his and his brother’s Charter marks, shove Wei Wuxian out of a paperwing to fall down, down, down into the Burial Mounds. 

he walks out again three months later, probably alive? with a set of necromancer’s bells (not the Abhorsen’s; those are still lost) and a white cat with a red collar draped over his shoulders

Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng find him a couple weeks later in a Clayr outpost on the Northern Road, Kibeth and Belgaer both silent but ready in his hands, as vengeful spirits plague Wen Zhuliu and Dead Hands tear Wen Chao to further pieces. A cat watches from his feet, tail flicking, exactly like a cat watching something terrible and bloody. Both reek of Free Magic.

“What a stick in the mud.” Mogget yawns once Lan Wangji has been shooed off, showing off sharp teeth. He eyes Jiang Cheng as critically as only a cat can. “And this is the brother, huh? Alright.”

Jiang Cheng scowls at him, then decides to stop scowling at a cat and scowls at Wei Wuxian instead. “Seriously, what is this thing? Is it safe?”

“Oh, that’s just Mogget,” said Wei Wuxian. “Don’t mind him - just don’t undo his collar, and he’s fine. Hey, where’s shijie? I promised him a bowl of her pork and lotus soup.”

“And fish,” says Mogget. “Don’t forget the fish.”

some time during the war, they find a site in the east at which a complement of Wen Ruohan’s people are digging something out of a hill.

“Stop them,” Mogget hisses, digging his claws into Wei Wuxian’s arm. “Wei Wuxian, stop them now, or loose my collar so I can do it - and then remake those daisy and salt and everything else wards - ”

“For the last time,” says Wei Wuxian, “we have a deal. Not until - ”

“I’ll still help you destroy your Wens,” the cat snaps. “But I haven’t decided about everything else yet, and if- that gets loose, there’s no way your pitiful remainders of scrambled bloodlines will be able to rebind it. The containment is hanging by a thread as it is, can’t you feel it?”

(The tang of Free Magic is bitter and sharp in the air, almost to the point of being sickening - and that’s to Wei Wuxian, who’s been breathing the stuff for half a year, now.) “Fine,” he says. “But I’ll do it. You wait here.”

At the final battle of the Sunshot Campaign, at the heart of the Clayr Glacier itself, the Yiling Patriarch unleashes a monster of Free Magic like a column of moving fire, like a lightning bolt given life and vengeance, like no one has seen before. Wen Ruohan’s death still comes at the hands of Jin Clan’s expatriate son, but Wei Wuxian’s monster obliterates (most of) Wen Ruohan’s forces...and disappears

what happens next for the Yiling Patriarch may be up to him, and to his friends, family, and enemies. On the plus side, he might have an additional, particularly odd friend, who may or may not choose to appear if loudly offered milk and fish

the Abhorsen has been dead for hundreds of years, as has the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, as has anyone next in line, and those in line for the crown as well. That is: the first and second are shattered, and the third broken with their blood. The fifth remains staunch as ever, the fourth clings by a few last living souls, and the two of the weft still make and mend as they can...and the eighth who would not choose, who ran and hid and was caught and bound, and eventually freed again...continues to not make a choice. They could, after all, any time they want. Who’s to stop them from so much as sunning themselves by a river, much less freeing the ninth? Kibeth sleeps in soapstone more often than not and Astarael weeps in her forgotten well, and the little Charter mages running around with their drops here and there of royalty or Death-keeping...no. No, they really couldn’t do a thing

so...if Yrael can release Orannis any time they want, then tomorrow will do just as fine as today. And today, there’s warm sun, the song of birds, the radiating affection of a Charter mage and a necromancer fucking against a tree, and a stream of leaping salmon

no need to rush

[stiltonbasket]

(Is this where you submit prompts? I really dont know ^^💧) Prompt for the renouncement au: I don’t know why i love when gossip is involved, so maybe something about people’s opinions on wangxian’s marriage and how it slowly changes to a better perspective to the point that anyone who doubts their feelings for each other gets immediately shut down. And you could add some juniors shenanigans to make wangxian have that good of a reputation because i miss them </3. Thank you for your time and effort! (And sorry if this is not the place for the prompts, i will submit it again if you say so ^^’ )

(author’s note: please please reblog if you can, since that’s how we get prompts for future chapters!)

Lan Siyong considers himself one of the more moderate elders among the Lan sect. 

He has been close friends with Lan Qiren from childhood, and he saw Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji grow up into the fine, upstanding men they are today. When the two of them were boys, he even had fond thoughts of attending their weddings, and watching them take on the most sacred of duties with glad, willing hearts. 

Learning that Xichen would never wed had been a disappointment, but Lan Siyong rallied again when Lan Qiren confided the reason why the boy rejected marriage—chastity in an upstanding cultivator was to be lauded, especially in an age where Jin Guangshan had once demanded such high respect, and there could still be children born to Lan Huan if he decided to cultivate them. And of course, Wangji was there, and Lan Siyong knew from the first that he would be the kind of youth to fall in love deeply, at first sight, and remain passionately devoted to his mingding zhiren until he drew his last breath. 

But then Lan Siyong had Wangji’s own sword turned upon him at the Burial Mounds, because the one that his many-times distant nephew loved so dearly was none other than Wei Wuxian. 

“Qiren,” he says hoarsely, when the lotus-scented wedding invitations arrive from Lotus Pier. “You cannot let this happen—an unrighteous cultivator, one who spurned orthodoxy without remorse and led Wangji down such a dangerous path—”

“What has been done has been done,” Lan Qiren replies. “We have sent the bridewealth, and the marriage was contracted between Xichen and Jiang-zongzhu. All their terms have been agreed upon, and the date set.”

And then, after a brief pause: “He makes Wangji happy.”

Lan Siyong nearly cries. He does not attend the wedding, for fear of shaming Wangji with the open despair that appears on his face whenever he sees Wei Wuxian, and sends the newlywed couple the most expensive gift he can afford in an effort to do something useful. 

Wei Wuxian is the one who writes him a letter in thanks. Lan Siyong almost has a qi deviation.

__

“You know,” one of the other elders mutters after the second wedding ceremony: namely, the ceremony held in the Cloud Recesses, since Jiang-zongzhu demanded that his brother should be married at Lotus Pier first. “Wei Wuxian refused to have a blessing for children spoken at the an chuang ceremony.”

“Gossip is forbidden,” Lan Haiyang says tranquilly. He stopped caring about practically everything after his son’s wife gave birth to the whirlwind that calls himself Lan Jingyi, so Lan Siyong has long since given up relying on him to fix any kind of sect turmoil. “And they already have two children. I have not seen a finer Lan disciple than Lan Sizhui in all my days.”

Lan Siyong is forced to concede this last. Wangji has two good children, even if the Yiling Patriarch is perhaps the most unsuitable person alive to raise them with him, and a couple’s choice to expand their family is up to them, and no others.

“He should at least have let the blessing be spoken, though.”

Lan Siyong does not disagree with this. Traditions are traditions, and surely even Wei Wuxian should know to respect them once in a while. 

__

“It’s worse than I thought,” Lan Siyong murmurs, on a summer afternoon about six weeks after Wangji’s wedding. He passed Haiyang’s grandson and his friends on his way to the refectory that morning, and heard them discussing how heartbroken Wangji had looked upon hearing that Wei Wuxian did not return his love. “I ought not to have eavesdropped, but—poor Wangji!”

“Poor Wangji what?” Lan Haiyang asks, as if their little Lan Zhan being in trouble was all in another day’s work to him. “What’s happened to him now?”

“Wei Wuxian disavows Wangji’s love at every opportunity,” he replies dismally, going over to the refreshment table to drown his woes in chestnut cake and tea. “I fear for him, Haiyang. To love for so long, and to wed his beloved, and have children with him, and still…”

Lan Haiyang snorts into his tea. 

“What do you mean by that?” demands Lan Siyong, more than a little offended. “Wangji is in distress! We must do something!”

His friend does not reply. Honestly, it’s as if no one remembers what Wangji suffered for Wei Wuxian’s sake. Lan Siyong even tries raising the issue with Lan Qiren, and then with Xichen, but all he gets in return for his pains is a tray of fresh-baked red bean buns from the hanshi and another cryptic comment about Wangji’s supposed happiness from Qiren. 

Yet again, he is forced to leave his worries for another day, and try his best to follow rule three thousand, one hundred and sixty-two: that the affairs of a married couple should not be discussed by outsiders, even if they happen to be close, concerned family. 

Lan Siyong thinks his hair might be turning white by now.

__

And then, in early winter, Lan Siyong is roused from his bed one night and told that Wei Wuxian has gone missing. He joins the search party that Wangji leads, and follows him to a dark house in the woods with the Ghost General leading the way—and then he watches as Wangji kills at least a dozen men in an effort to reach his husband, whom they find unconscious in a cave beneath the house with corpse bites dotting every visible inch of his skin.

Lan Siyong nearly weeps as he hears Wangji’s desperate whispers to his beloved on the way back to Gusu, and watches him hold Wei Wuxian close while refusing help from anyone who offers.

Let him live, Lan Siyong prays silently, when Wei Wuxian is carried into the infirmary with Wangji at his side. Please, for Wangji’s sake, let Wei-gongzi live. 

__

“Qiren?”

A few days after the news about Wangji’s soon-to-be-born daughter is made public (public being a subjective word, since ceremony preceding the birth of a third child is unnecessary, and Wei Wuxian had said that he would rather wait until the baby arrives to make a formal announcement) Lan Siyong discovers Lan Qiren in one of the common rooms, sitting at a writing desk with his head buried in his hands. It’s a strange thing to see his friend do, since Lan Qiren has not looked so distressed since those three dark years after Wangji’s sentencing, and he hardly even looks up when Lan Siyong lays a hand on his shoulder. 

“It was just four weeks ago that Wei Ying was kidnapped and confined in that dungeon,” Lan Qiren says blankly, after he registers Lan Siyong’s presence and turns around to greet him. “If he—oh, heavens—”

Two weeks later, Lan Siyong requests a week’s leave from teaching to attend the trials of Wei Wuxian’s kidnappers, who are being held under Nie-zongzhu’s jurisdiction in the Unclean Realm. He has always believed himself to be a gentle man, but when the only sentences dealt are life imprisonment and execution, Lan Siyong’s heart is strangely devoid of any pity. All he can think of are the corpse bites he saw on Wei Wuxian’s face and throat, and a baby girl who nearly perished with her father before she had the chance to take her first breath. 

On his way back to the Cloud Recesses, he purchases a bolt of thick cream-colored silk with fine sky-blue embroidery and brings it to Wangji as a gift after the next monthly sect meeting.

“Xinhua-jun will need wider-cut robes before long,” he says, when his nephew gives him a curious glance before bowing low in thanks. “Zewu-jun has told us all that he and the child are in good health, and that the little one is growing well. All of our good wishes go with them both, and we pray that you should not hesitate to rely on us in the months to come if it should be needed.”

Wangji’s eyes go soft. “Thank you, San-shushu. It is much appreciated.”

__

Lan Siyong gets his first chance to hold Wei Shuilan at the baby’s full-moon ceremony, while Wangji and Wei Wuxian are running back and forth through the banquet hall to greet the arriving guests, and seize the first trusted elder they can reach to watch little A-Lan for a moment. At first, Lan Siyong merely stands by her cradle to keep an eye on her, but then she seems to sense her parents’ absence, so he picks her up and jogs her up and down to keep her from crying; and then he begins to hum softly beside her tiny ear, soothing the baby back to sleep by the time Wei Wuxian returns. 

“My good Lan-bao,” Wei Wuxian croons, cradling the child to his chest before rearranging her crumpled swaddling clothes. “Such a good baobei, to take your nap even with so much going on! Just like your A-Die, thank goodness, and not like your A-Niang.”

Curious, Lan Siyong clears his throat. “What do you mean, Wei-gongzi?”

Wei Wuxian laughs. “I never sleep properly at night, but Lan Zhan always falls asleep at hai shi, even if he isn’t in bed yet,” he says, with his voice so full of love for the newborn child in his arms and the husband who gave her to him that Lan Siyong feels strangely humbled. “A-Lan’s just like him that way.”

At that moment, Wangji appears with a plate of cut fruit and lotus cake before presenting it to Wei Wuxian. “Here, Wei Ying. Give A-Lan to me, and eat your lunch.”

“Lunch?” Wei Wuxian asks, confused. “But we’re having the banquet in just an hour.”

“You have been having your luncheon at this time for the past six months,” Wangji says stubbornly. “I will not have you going hungry even for a minute, xingan.”

“Lan Zhan, sweetheart…”

Thank heaven they found each other again, Lan Siyong thinks, slipping away to find Lan Qiren with a rising lump of tears in his throat. I do not think anyone else could have ever made Wangji so happy.