#artwork embedded with Ceru's permission

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

The Sculptor

Chapter 10 - The Gift of Fire

[Final main chapter! I'll post the epilogue shortly and then this fic is done ♥ And please don't forget to check out @ceru-draws!! This fic wouldn't exist without their incredible piece The Sculptor (but Wangxian), and I seriously can't recommend their art enough, go give them some love! Follow them here, or on Twitter, or on Instagram, whatever you prefer, but just do it!]

[Masterpost] [AO3]

-/-

“How was the party?” Lan Wangji asks Wen Qing when she arrives home on Saturday afternoon, and he can tell the moment she walks through the door that something’s up. He looks beyond her shoulder to spot Luo Qingyang following her in, and he relaxes. He likes Luo Qingyang, truly and genuinely, and though he’s not typically fond of unexpected visitors, how could he be upset to see her? “Mianmian,” he greets, more warmly than he would greet anyone else who isn’t his wife or Wei Wuxian.

“Hi Wangji,” she says with a sweet smile up at him. “I hope you don’t mind-”

“You know you’re always welcome in our house, don’t ever apologize,” Wen Qing reminds her before Lan Wangji can say precisely the same. “We have news for you,” she then says to him, and he can’t help but blink at the barely-restrained aggression in her tone.

He reaches out to take the shopping bag from Luo Qingyang’s arms with an inquisitive noise in the back of his throat. The pair of them follow him into the kitchen, and when he sets the bag down with a rustle of paper and a glance back at them he catches them in the middle of communicating something between them with nothing more than sharp glances in his direction and thinned lips.

“What happened?” he asks with no small amount of alarm - considering the panic he’d felt over the party in the first place, he’s not inclined to think that any news they might have to give him together the day after will be anything good.

“Wei Wuxian is definitely gay.” Wen Qing says it like ripping off a bandaid, sharp and quick, and Lan Wangji so thoroughly appreciates his wife and her no-nonsense attitude in that moment that he can hardly breathe. “Mianmian’s Family - they’re the painters he shares Yiling Collective with, the theater director at the performing arts center in town, and Wei Wuxian.”

“He was there?” Lan Wangji asks when he feels like he can breathe again. He’s not sure what he would have done if he’d gone to the party with them and seen Wei Wuxian sitting there, surrounded by part of their little underground community in such a way that there could be absolutely no doubt as to his place in it, but it likely wouldn’t have been very dignified.

“No,” Luo Qingyang says apologetically and Lan Wangji exhales carefully. “But Uncle Xingchen had to run out to the studio for something and he said A-Ying was still in his side of the studio moping around. Uncle invited him to come but he said he didn’t want to show up at the party all sad and accidentally spoil our coming out. He started telling us about the piece he saw on the workbench, and when he described it to us Qing-jie knew for sure that my ‘cousin’ he kept mentioning was your Wei Wuxian. I didn’t even realize you were down there working with him until last night!”

Lan Wangji stares into the space between their shoulders and just..tries to think.

Wei Wuxian’s eyes come to mind first, laughing and intense in equal measure, heavy whenever they rest on him for any reason. His hands, never straying but…lingering, on the rare occasions Wei Wuxian finds a reason to touch him. His blushes, his praises, the way each image he’s made of Lan Wangji yet has been done with so much delicate care that it makes him want to blush just to think of them. 

He’d mentioned the end of their allotted time together twice within roughly 30 seconds of each other yesterday, and the reminder had settled uncomfortably under Lan Wangji’s ribs and stayed there, sharp as a razor whenever he breathes even today. Had it made Wei Wuxian just as upset? He’d seemed alright when Lan Wangji had left, but if Xiao Xingchen, who must know him well, had seen him just hours later and reported him back as ‘moping’ then what could have happened in the interim except Wei Wuxian thinking about their parting conversation?

“A-Zhan?” Wen Qing prompts quietly, and Lan Wangji forces himself to take a deep breath in. Hold it. Exhale slowly. “I want you to pursue this,” she tells him when he looks at her, her face as serious as it ever gets. “I want you to be happy. We can stay married, we can adopt A-Yuan, we can do everything we promised. And you can keep Wei Wuxian.”

“He’s single,” Luo Qingyang adds before Lan Wangji can attempt to get his feet back under him and he narrows his eyes at her - they’ve clearly coordinated this attack, but Luo Qingyang just smiles at him, falsely guileless. “And he told Huaisang forever ago that he was going to quit going down to the Corner Bar because hookups just aren’t what he wants anymore, he’s looking for more but he doesn’t think he’ll be able to find it.”

Lan Wangji wants to give him so much more that his knees nearly buckle under the weight of it, though of course only he knows just how close he is to losing his iron-clad control.

“Go sit down,” Wen Qing orders. “That’s a lot of information for 2pm on a Saturday, just go think about it, alright? We’re going to make Mianmian’s cookies to take across to Margaret, we’ll set some aside for you.”

Lan Wangji frowns a little at that, startled out of his spiraling thoughts by the utterly uncharacteristic decision from Wen Qing to not only bake cookies for someone, but specifically for a woman she claims to barely tolerate. As far as distractions go, it’s surprisingly effective. It’s Luo Qingyang who clears that up for him too, still smiling sweetly.

“I think Peggy’s one of us,” she says with a wink. “I’ve seen her snooping around the outside of the Corner Bar one too many times for her to have been ‘just a little lost’, I want her to know we’re here for her if she needs people to talk to.”

“Right,” Lan Wangji manages, and the only thing that keeps him from mumbling it is all his uncle’s comportment lessons as a boy. “That is…good. Mn.” He drifts out of the kitchen in a daze to return to his spot on the couch, mind churning uncomfortably through so much new information that he was in no way prepared for. He can hear Wen Qing and Luo Qingyang chatting quietly in the kitchen as they bake, occasionally breaking into laughter, and it soothes him to hear his best friend and her partner free to be themselves. Happy.

This is what he’d promised her. He’d sworn to her that they’d keep each other safe, that she could be herself with him and he would be there for her. Encourage her. He’s only realizing now that he’d never truly anticipated she would need to uphold her promises to do the same for him. He’d been so certain that he would spend his life entirely celibate, too afraid of being hurt, being in danger, to ever pursue a partner for himself. He had accepted that. But now, with the possibility of not having to accept it in front of him, it feels like his entire world has been flipped upside down. It’s terrifying. It’s uncomfortable.

But he knows Wei Wuxian. He trusts him. He, if he’s being honest with himself, loves him already. Desperately, in his own quiet, hidden ways. If pursuing that love means he has to feel like he’s falling up into space then he hopes he never finds his footing again.

“What are you going to do?” Wen Qing asks him quietly on Monday morning when he comes downstairs for breakfast, dressed for the day as usual in one of his most comfortable suits. “Will you tell him?”

“I do not know,” he answers honestly. He’s had a day and a half to think about it, and though he knows he wants Wei Wuxian, wants whatever the man will give him, he has utterly no idea how to go about actually getting it. Wen Qing had come to him on her own to ask him to start ‘dating’, and had proposed their marriage to him as well in her usual no-nonsense way. He has never once, in his entire life, practiced going after the things he wants like this, and certainly never with so much at stake.

Wen Qing, mercifully, leaves him to his thoughts without sharing any of her opinions on the matter (though he’s sure she has plenty). She sends him off at the door at the usual time with a reassuring squeeze to his hand and he appreciates it, the quiet reminder that no matter what happens he still has her. They’d promised - support and companionship. Security. He can be safe with her, even if everything else falls apart. 

When he arrives at the studio it’s to find Wei Wuxian only just arriving to unlock the door, his shoulders a little slumped and his hair tied up sloppily in a red ribbon, much brighter than the faded maroon of his shirt. Lan Wangji thinks of Luo Qingyang saying that he’d been ‘moping’ on Friday night, and he wonders with a pang if that’s still the case.

“Wei Ying,” he greets, and the man turns to look at him over his shoulder, already grinning at the sight of him.

“Lan Zhan! Right on time as always. Sorry I’m not already set up, I slept in this morning.”

“No need, Wei Ying deserves to rest.”

Wei Wuxian just chuckles at that and steps into the studio. The first thing Lan Wangji notices when he steps inside is that the place absolutely reeks of cigarette smoke, and he glances automatically at the ubiquitous little cardboard box that had taken up residence in Wei Wuxian’s pockets a few weeks ago. He hasn’t actually seen him smoking, but now he supposes that’s just because Wei Wuxian does it on his own rather than because he doesn’t actually do it at all.

“Ah…I’ll just. Open the windows,” Wei Wuxian says sheepishly with a little wrinkle of his nose that’s unfairly adorable.

“Mn.”

Lan Wangji shuts the door behind them and begins undressing. After having done it so many times he barely hesitates at all, even when it comes to removing his trousers which is still such a new development. His hands are shaking today like they haven’t since those first few days of undressing here, but he knows that at least this morning it has very little to do with baring himself for Wei Wuxian’s gaze - which, now that he can be honest with himself about his feelings, had thrilled him just as much as it had terrified him when Wei Wuxian mentioned it during that very first meeting.

“So - before you get comfortable on the sofa for the day,” Wei Wuxian starts with a smirk to invite him to join in the joke that is ‘comfortable’, as his pose is far from it, “I want to let you know that since I’ll be moving onto the final piece now I need to take some um..measurements. Well a lot of them, actually. To build to scale.”

It hardly takes any consideration at all for Lan Wangji to see the logic of that and he nods easily, unsure why Wei Wuxian is blushing about it.

It takes roughly two minutes more for Lan Wangji to understand the reason for that too.

He’s been measured for suits his entire life, stood on many a tailor’s podium with his feet spread shoulder-width apart and grit his teeth until the process was over. He has never once had a handsome man’s hands on his bare skin, measuring every conceivable part of his body. It’s a very different experience, and one he has no interest in ending any time soon. 

Wei Wuxian’s clever, lovely fingers skim across shoulders, ribs, down his arms, circle around his wrists…his neck. He finds a robin’s egg blue silk ribbon somewhere in all his many scraps of fabric and uses it to tie Lan Wangji’s hair up for him when it proves to be too inconvenient to ask him to hold it up out of the way in a loose bun on top of his head, and somehow the gentle hold of it at the back of his head, the bottom two thirds of his hair still hanging loose to drape over his shoulders, leaves him feeling more exposed than if it were all still gathered neatly out of the way.

He stands still in the middle of Wei Wuxian’s studio, in front of a mirror he’s never seen before but that Wei Wuxian seems to be using to help with the measuring process, and he settles into the low-simmering arousal of being naked for Wei Wuxian as the man, fully dressed, circles him slowly. Touches him, polite and businesslike but reverent in the same way he’s been every single time he’s ever touched him. Lan Wangji glances down on instinct when Wei Wuxian stops in front of him to measure the breadth of his chest from shoulder to shoulder and his next inhale catches when he sees Wei Wuxian’s sturdy leather boots so close to his own bare feet, a large fold in the stiffened skirt of his apron a hairsbreadth from brushing against his thigh.

Wei Wuxian has forgone his usual clay-stained overalls for the day, dressed instead in worn trousers and a sinfully soft short-sleeved button up, sleeves cuffed over the strong curves of his biceps, all of it haphazardly protected by a softened denim apron that does actually brush Lan Wangji’s skin in the next moment when Wei Wuxian steps just a centimeter too close. Lan Wangji’s hands are practically aching with the desire to push it all off him and strip him down as well, even as he thrills at the power dynamic of being so vulnerable in front of Wei Wuxian, still completely put-together and in control of Lan Wangji’s every movement.

Wen Qing’s question pings helpfully in the front of his mind again when he looks up from the narrow space between them to meet Wei Wuxian’s wide, dark eyes.

What are you going to do?

Wei Wuxian’s fingers twitch on his chest and he swallows once before he leans back to scribble messily in his notebook balanced on the edge of his workbench, the furniture shoved aside for the moment to accommodate the mirror and give them room for Wei Wuxian to circle around him easily. They continue on in silence like that - nothing but their breathing, the occasional creak of leather or the wooden floor, and the slither of the tape measure through Wei Wuxian’s fingers to break it - for almost half an hour before Wei Wuxian finally takes a step back and studies him, color high in his cheeks.

“I have a few more to do,” he says, which Lan Wangji had expected considering he hasn’t even done his legs. He nods and follows easily when Wei Wuxian sits down on his stool sandwiched carefully between the mirror and the overladen table that Lan Wangji has spent hours looking at over Wei Wuxian’s shoulder. He’s meant many times to ask him about the family of statues on the top of it and is tempted to ask now, but whatever’s happening between them right now is..fragile in a way he can’t explain, but that he knows he doesn’t want to break. He stands silently beside the mirror as Wei Wuxian leans over - stretching out the lean line of his body for Lan Wangji to savor - to drop his tape measure on the workbench and swap it out for a pair of wooden calipers. Lan Wangji can’t resist raising an eyebrow when Wei Wuxian clears his throat and gestures vaguely at his hips.

Not that he needs permission, Lan Wangji would give Wei Wuxian anything, but he nods anyway and offers the man his usual quiet but firm, “Mn.” The familiar gesture makes Wei Wuxian smile up at him and Lan Wangji slides his hand up the side of the mirror to curl his fingers over the corner of the sturdy wooden frame - he’s afraid his knees will give out from under him if he doesn’t.

Wei Wuxian’s hands are visibly trembling as he adjusts the calipers a few times anxiously without bringing them anywhere near Lan Wangji’s cock (which is not nearly as soft as would be appropriate in a professional setting, though it’s thankfully not hard either) - and then he suddenly reaches into his pocket to draw out a brand new pack of cigarettes to pull one out and pop it between his lips.

What are you going to do?

Lan Wangji reaches out before he can think twice about it to take the lighter from Wei Wuxian’s shaking hands. As Wei Wuxian looks up at him, startled, he maintains steady eye-contact as he flicks the lid back on its hinge.

Spins the wheel under the side of his thumb with a metallic ring. 

There’s a nearly inaudible whoosh as the flame catches, hot and bright in his hand, and then Lan Wangji holds it out at hip height, mere inches from his own pelvis.

If Wei Wuxian wants a light, he’ll have to lean in close to get it.

They spend an endless moment blinking at each other, and Lan Wangji thinks in that moment that an understanding of the sort they’ve been dancing around for two months, since the moment they met, finally passes between them. Wei Wuxian lounges sideways slowly, ankles crossed next to Lan Wangji’s bare feet, elbow resting on the back support of his stool. His calipers dangle carelessly from his relaxed hand as he raises the other hand to hold his cigarette steady between his index and middle fingers as he leans in, in, in - and holds the tip of it to the flame cupped in Lan Wangji’s fingers.

Lan Wangji tucks one ankle carefully in front of the other and settles in with a relieved little sigh, the weight of years lifted from his shoulders in the moment between Wei Wuxian lighting his cigarette and flickering his heated gaze up to meet his, eyes glinting with the warmth of the flame. 

Lan Wangji flips the lid of the lighter over to snuff out the fire with another metallic little click, fingers clutching tight around the cool metal of it nestled in his palm. Wei Wuxian breathes deeply, takes the cigarette from his lips, and turns his head to the side to exhale again.

“Lan Zhan-” he chokes, his gaze fixed on the bare expanse of wall beside them. “I can’t-”

“My wife is a lesbian,” Lan Wangji blurts, panic moving him to speak bluntly. Heated glances and mutual understanding, one queer man to another, are all well and good, but he also knows that Wei Wuxian is a good man, a righteous man - he won’t step anywhere close to what he sees as an unforgivable breach of trust, but Lan Wangji can’t lose him. Not now, not ever. He can force himself to speak clearly for the sake of something so vital. Wei Wuxian will keep him safe.  “She had her coming out just recently. Friday evening.”

Wei Wuxian looks up at him again sharply, eyes wide with quick understanding.

“Mianmian?”

“Wen Qing’s girlfriend of three months, as of this week.”

Wei Wuxian exhales shakily and takes another fortifying drag off his cigarette - and the moment he does he seems to remember just how it was lit, and by whom, and his cheeks flush the deepest red Lan Wangji has seen on him yet.

“And you, Lan Zhan?”

“Pleased that my wife has found a lover to make her happy. And…” Lan Wangji swallows down years of shame, embarrassment, longing for something he’d never hoped to have in order to add, “I believe it is time I allowed myself to find my own.”

Wei Wuxian stares up at him for a breathless eternity, and then in quick succession he tosses his cigarette down to the floor to grind the lit end between his boot and the wood, jerks to his feet, and then his hands are on Lan Wangji again, firmer than before and without the excuse of the tape measure to mask his intention. Lan Wangji releases the mirror and the lighter clatters to the floor beside their feet in favor of having his hands free to reach towards the other man, to cup Wei Wuxian’s jaw, both hands curled tightly against that beloved face so he can pull him in and kiss him with barely-controlled hunger. There isn’t an ounce of hesitation left in either of them as their mouths meet, parted and perfect.

Lan Wangji may take a long time to make up his mind, but when it’s made he does nothing by halves; now that he knows what it feels like to have Wei Wuxian melted against his chest, lips soft and open in eager permission for Lan Wangji’s clumsy, amateur kisses, he knows he can never live happily without it again.