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If not parent, spouse, or child, how can I let anyone else touch it?
One can only let go of all regulations when they are with those they love and cherish.
The first person Lan Wangji remembers touching his ribbon, other than himself, is his mother. His memories are blurred with that haze of childhood, but he remembers waiting to see her, kneeling at her door and restraining his glee. He remembers the warmth of her arms around him and the touch of her hands in his hair, the slight pressure of the band around his temples as she knotted it tightly against the back of his head. He remembers her smile. He remembers, more vividly, the fumble of his young fingers tying her own ribbon in place. He remembers waiting for her, and the cold, and Lan Xichen’s hands touching his arm, a voice telling him to leave.
He remembers realising she was gone.
The forehead ribbon remains his alone for years.
And then there’s another.
Wei Wuxian has a smile so bright that Lan Wangji almost flinches at the sight of it, buries the burn of it in anger and disapproval. And then the ribbon curls around their wrists – protection , Lan Wangji tells himself. Wei Wuxian would not understand the movement’s significance. He’s protecting him from the cave. That is all.
Yet when they escape and Wei Wuxian lands on top of him Lan Wangji can do nothing but stare at their hands in silence.
Wei Wuxian glances at his brother and Wen Qing.
“Get up,” Lan Wangji finally manages.
Wei Wuxian glances down to their hands and his eyes widen slightly.
“Okay, sure,” he nods and draws back, laughing awkwardly, and Lan Wangji is suddenly colder than he’d been amongst the ice of the caves as he has no choice but to stand with him.
“Here,” says Wei Wuxian with a soft laugh, tugging at the ends of the ribbon. Lan Wangji watches as he unwinds it from his own wrist, and then Lan Wangji’s before pressing it gently back into Lan Wangji’s palm.
He does not say he is sorry. He does not say thank you. He does not say anything.
Parent, spouse or child.
Lan Wangji stares at his hands and pushes past him, suddenly desperate to get away. He turns away from Wen Qing and Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian and looks down at his hands, willing them to still before he reaches up to loop the ribbon about his head. When he looks around, he sees Wei Wuxian watching him and he feels a shiver rush down his spine. Wei Wuxian smiles slightly and turns to his brother and Lan Wangji lets out a breath, moving to stand at his side, the pressure of the ribbon against his temples its usual reassurance.
It was for his protection, Lan Wangji tells himself. That’s all.
It happens again. Wei Wuxian grabs for it this time, and it swings loose at his touch despite the careful knots Lan Wangji always secures it with.
His breath catches as he watches Wei Wuxian tie it around his wound.
He shuts his eyes against Wei Wuxian’s voice, lets his head thud against the cave wall.
Lan Wangji tries to remember if he and his father have ever touched.
He watches Wei Wuxian’s smirk grow as he asks for it before tugging a strip of black from his own sleeve. The band wraps around Wei Wuxian’s eyes. He shoots. Lan Wangji blinks. Wei Wuxian nods to him when he returns and Lan Wangji can do nothing but look back and breathe deep.
The forehead ribbon would not have fit anyway.
He hears about the attack and races to the Burial Mounds. There’s nothing left but a child. The child. Wei Wuxian’s child. Wen Yuan. Lan Wangji doesn’t hesitate, carries the boy back and takes him to a healer.
“He has a fever,” he says, “Care for him as though he is my son. He is my son.”
The healer looks too surprised to react.
“His name is Lan Yuan,” he says, the words like ash in his mouth. "He is my son."
Wei Ying, forgive me, he thinks. I just want him safe. I want you safe. It is to protect him. I swear.
He waits until the healer nods and bows.
Lan Wangji runs.
He watches Wei Wuxian fall.
Hands shaking as he kneels in the dirt, Lan Wangji closes his eyes against the sight of his brother.
“A-Yuan…” he mutters, sags against the arms enveloping him. “Ge… please.”
He passes out before he can beg more, hoping his brother can get to A-Yuan before their Uncle. That Lan Xichen will help him.
Lan Wangji lets the strikes fall on his back and doesn’t let himself cry out. He thinks of Wei Wuxian falling to his death with a serene smile and clenches his fists. He thinks of A-Yuan and forces himself to keep breathing.
He remembers Wei Wuxian. He remembers his mother. He doesn't remember his father. They’re all dead and Lan Wangji is lying half asleep with thirty-three wounds on his back and his brother’s hand in his.
“A-Yuan?” he whispers.
His brother squeezes his hand. “He’s safe. He’s healing. I’ve hidden him for now.”
Lan Wangji blinks.
“Who is he, Wangji?”
“My son.”
Lan Xichen sighs, but squeezes his hand.
“Do you want to see him?”
“Hm.”
“I’ll bring him. And the Sect book. Uncle won’t like it if you do it sneakily, shall I bring him?”
“Hm. A ribbon.”
Lan Xichen stills. After a moment he squeezes the hand one last time before letting it go.
He doesn’t reappear till the next day. Lan Wangji has been too exhausted to worry.
Lan Xichen knocks and moves into sight first.
“Do you want to sit?”
“Hm.”
They spend an agonising few minutes manoeuvring Lan Wangji until he’s wheezing and blinking back tears, hands clenching in the sheets beside him. Lan Xichen hovers nearby, and Lan Wangji can tell he wants to push him back down.
But Lan Wangji wants to see A-Yuan.
“Uncle?”
“He… he did not forbid it,” says Lan Xichen. “But he wants to interrogate you about his origins. He’s keeping the book out of my reach until then.”
Lan Wangji nods.
“I’ll bring him in.”
A few minutes later, and A-Yuan is there , a tiny hand gripping Lan Xichen’s and Lan Wangji almost chokes at the sight of him.
“How are you feeling?” he asks as Lan Xichen lifts the boy onto the bed beside him.
A-Yuan nods. “Better. Thank you.”
Lan Wangji lets himself smile – small and sad, but there all the same. A-Yuan would like to see it, he thinks.
“How do you find this place?” he asks, thinking of the dirt and laughter of the Burial Mounds, Wei Wuxian and Wen Qing’s arms always welcoming of the boy, and thinking of the crisp robes and cold mountains of Cloud Recesses, of years of longing for someone’s touch.
But A-Yuan smiles.
“Kind-gege,” he points to Lan Xichen. Lan Wangji feels like he might weep again, remembering the boy hugging his leg and Wei Wuxian’s outcries about money and -
He keeps his expression steady.
“How would you feel about staying?” he asks.
A-Yuan’s expression is complex for someone so young.
“Sure,” he says eventually. “Where else?”
Lan Wangji’s heart sinks.
“The healer said the fever may have affected his memory,” Lan Xichen murmurs. “He’s so young.”
“Should… should I remember something?” asks A-Yuan quietly.
“It is okay,” says Lan Wangji, heart heavy. “Whether you do, or do not. It’s okay.”
A-Yuan reaches out for him, grasps at the front of Lan Wangji’s robes.
“Kind-gege said you were hurt,” he says. “That I shouldn’t touch you.”
Lan Wangji aches. He doesn’t respond, but reaches out, ignoring the pain in his back and pulling the boy into his arms. He meets his brother’s gaze over A-Yuan’s head. Lan Xichen has always been able to read him, and Lan Wangji can see beneath the calm smile he’s getting in return that Lan Xichen understands. He’ll protect Lan Wangji’s son, will take his side against their uncle if needed. Lan Wangji reaches out, holding A-Yuan with one arm and offering the other to his brother.
Lan Xichen takes it. The three of them sit in the quiet for so long that Lan Wangji’s back bleeds. The healer chides him later, reapplying bandages. Lan Wangji looks to the door where he’d last seen A-Yuan waving goodbye, his other hand tucked into Lan Xichen’s and thinks he can’t bring himself to care to listen to her.
Lan Wangji signs the name in the book – Lan Yuan, proposed courtesy name, Lan Sizhui – under his own. He feels overwhelmed but lets none of it show. The elders watch on like pillars of the jade he’s supposed to be and Lan Wangji takes a forehead ribbon from his brother with shaking hands.
“A-Yuan,” he says quietly.
Wei Wuxian’s child is so good, is quiet and careful when Lan Wangji asks it of him, even as he laughs and jokes when they’re alone. It’s taken two years for Lan Qiren to allow this, and Lan Wangji’s back is healed and A-Yuan doesn’t remember anything from before his fever.
And Lan Wangji hates himself for being bitter about it. It makes A-Yuan’s life easier, safer for him not to know.
A-Yuan kneels before the elders and Lan Wangji loops the forehead ribbon around him, indicates for him to hold it in place as Lan Wangji ties it in place. He thinks of his mother’s arms warm around him and hopes far in the future A-Yuan will remember him with fondness, with love. Hopes he’ll remember Lan Wangji’s touch as gentle.
A-Yuan turns to him and flashes a smile, meant for Lan Wangji alone. Lan Wangji reaches out and touches his son’s cheek and smiles back – small but with Lan Wangji's whole heart behind it.
A-Yuan turns up at his door in the mornings from then on. Five o’clock comes and so does A-Yuan, forehead ribbon in hand and comb pushing into Lan Wangji’s. It’s all Lan Wangji can do to take the comb and lift the boy up beside him, working through his hair and placing the ribbon neatly straight around his temples, and then sitting on the floor beside the bed so A-Yuan can do the same for him.
Lan Wangji has always appreciated routine.
Once, A-Yuan wakes from a dream with bleary eyes and asks for Wen Qing. Lan Wangji holds him until he is asleep once more, and then steals a bottle from the loose floorboard and creeps out into the night, lungs burning and chest aching so hard he wonders if he might die with the pain of it. The moon is bright and Lan Wangji sits on the roof.
He drinks.
He forgets what he does but he wakes the next morning with the Wen brand stinging his chest and A-Yuan’s ribbon dyed bright red.
He stares for a long moment, thinking of the name in the book and A-Yuan’s lost memories. He thinks of the boy’s family – of Wei Wuxian and the Wens, his home in Yiling, the red in his history that Lan Wangji has been trying so hard to hide.
Suddenly it’s all too unfair. Lan Wangji breathes deep.
People cannot know. It is necessary for A-Yuan’s safety. It is for his safety.
He takes A-Yuan to his brother without a word and takes off for a week, losing himself to the exhaustion of journeying and night hunting and thinking about no reds other than the splashes of flowers on the sides of the road, the splashes of chilies in the dishes in inns he stops in.
When Lan Yuan becomes Lan Sizhui, he stops appearing at Lan Wangji’s door. This is fine. The boy is growing and noticing the elder’s expressions every time A-Yuan addresses him as his father. He begins to call him Hanguang-jun and Lan Wangji does not ache for the past. Focus on the present . It is safer if he isn’t under scrutiny as Hanguang-jun’s son.
They are on a night hunt, split off from the others by chance. A-Yuan smiles at him and holds his hand and offers his comb and Lan Wangji almost weeps as his son touches his hair so gently.
It happens so scarcely now, but they are familiar with each other, with each other’s ribbons and how they each like them tied. How they like their hair to lie against their scalps.
And A-Yuan’s eyes glint even when he calls him Hanguang-jun around others, and Lan Wangji understands.
Just as he cannot bring himself to tell Lan Sizhui that, by rights, he should have never been a Lan at all, just as Lan Wangji had learned the quiet obedience of kneeling in the snow, Lan Sizhui can’t bring himself to step outside the bounds of what the elders have deemed appropriate for him. For them.
Lan Wangji understands silence. He understands Lan Sizhui.
He wishes he could help make Lan Sizhui different.
Wei Wuxian is reborn.
His new body backs into Lan Wangji’s chest and Lan Wangji’s small gasp is lost in the last note of a flute and Lan Wangji thinks he might stare at this unfamiliar face for the rest of his life.
He thinks this, often. The day they’re married, Wei Wuxian’s smile wild and bright and hands slightly trembling as Lan Wangji passes him a ribbon of his own, Lan Wangji looks at him and thinks for the rest of his life.
And beyond then too.
Each morning Lan Wangji wakes to the sight of husband at his side. He ties his own ribbon, attends to his morning duties, returns to his husband. Wei Wuxian smiles and passes him a comb and Lan Wangji sets Wei Wuxian’s ribbon into place. Each night Lan Wangji sets Bichen away and passes Wei Wuxian a comb and sits before his husband as he unwinds the system of head pieces and hair and finally, removes Lan Wangji’s ribbon. He is always so careful, lays it aside as though it is as precious as Lan Wangji’s very heart. This is not for protection, for shielding. This is Wei Wuxian’s love glowing out of him in gentle familiar movements.
When Lan Wangji wakes it’s to the sight of his husband at his side.
Lan Wangji is not a child anymore, he has not knelt outside his brother’s door in the cold and wept. He has visited. He has left food and letters on the entryway when he is inevitably rejected. Sometimes Wei Wuxian or Lan Sizhui will come with him, and they will leave things too. A hand-woven blanket, a piece of artwork. A song drifting through a window propped ajar.
The day Lan Xichen lets Lan Wangji in, he had come alone. His brother is smaller than he remembers.
Over time, Lan Xichen lets Lan Sizhui in too, then Wei Wuxian. Lan Wangji does not know if Uncle has visited, or been denied entry.
The rules state spouse, parent, child. The rules are not always, completely, right. Lan Wangji has known this for years. Has bent them to his understanding as much as he can.
He is reminded, gut wrenchingly, when Lan Xichen first ventures outside with them. They visit the rabbits - Sizhui’s suggestion - and Wei Wuxian’s smile is soft as they sit under the canopy of trees.
Lan Xichen has a pair of rabbits balanced across his thighs.
“Ahh, Xichen-ge,” Wei Wuxian flaps his hands from next to him. “Your ribbon’s crooked.”
And he reaches.
Lan Xichen jolts away, the rabbits slipping onto the ground beside him.
Lan Wangji’s husband is… sometimes quite oblivious. Lan Wangji knows this. The expression on Wei Wuxian’s face is not confusion.
“Wei Ying,” he says quietly. “You know the rules.”
“Ah, Lan Zhan, I know, I know. I just thought…” he lets out a little laugh. “never mind.”
“...What is it?”
Wei Wuxian looks away.
“I’m sorry, Sect Leader Lan,” he says, stiff. “I… I won’t make such a presumption again.”
Lan Xichen just stares back at him.
“Haha…” Wei Wuxian blinks, brushes the grass off his robes. “I should go. Just remembered that paperwork I put off this morning, Lan Zhan, ah…”
With a wave he’s gone.
Lan Xichen turns his stare to Lan Wangji.
“He did not neglect any paperwork,” says Lan Wangji, dumbly.
He wheedles it out of him a few days later.
Wei Wuxian laughs that laugh again and shakes his head. “I thought… it’s silly, Lan Zhan, I just. I thought… since we’re family now… but I suppose I shouldn’t have assumed how your brother feels, ah.”
Lan Wangji blinks. “If not spouse, parent or child, you may not touch. I may not touch.”
“But I thought the whole point was self regulation? We’re all family, aren’t we? If he can’t be unrestrained with you…?”
Lan Wangji looks at him. Has anyone touched his brother’s ribbon since their mother…? The thought is somehow horrifying. Lan Wangji remembers the warmth of her arms around him and the touch of her hands in his hair, the slight pressure of the band around his temples as she knotted it tightly against the back of his head. He remembers her smile. He remembers, more vividly, the fumble of his young fingers tying her own ribbon in place.
He remembers Wei Wuxian’s hand, warm and quick and clever and gentle. Remembers little A-Yuan’s hands, careful and familiar and slow. It is not the act that matters.
“Oh.”
“I… Lan Zhan, you know I think a lot of the Lan rules are stupid.”
Lan Wangji huffs out a laugh.
“But this… there’s a reason I wear the thing. And it’s not just to keep Lan Qiren from setting on me about the sanctity of Lan An’s romantic ways or whatever.”
“I will… consider this.”
Wei Wuxian nods. “Do you think I really offended him? I didn’t want to set him back or whatever, I just didn’t think about it, it just felt right. He should be free with us. But I suppose from his point of view I’m still your greatest mistake and what not.”
“You’re my what?”
“Never mind,” says Wei Wuxian. “It’s not as though he knew me before I turned his world upside down and revealed his sworn brother was… well,” he waves a hand. “It makes sense he would still be wary of me, right?”
“You’re missing the point. Wei Ying. Sweetheart. The rules say spouse, child, or parent. Of which you are none. Lan Xichen will not have intended it as a statement of his feelings for you as part of our family.”
Wei Wuxian blinks. “Our family…” he repeats softly. Red creeps up his cheeks.
The thought sticks. Who last touched his brother’s ribbon other than Lan Xichen himself? Who did he last feel safe enough to remove that restraint? Lan Wangji has thought the ribbon a shield, a gesture, a symbol of love and openness. What is it for Lan Xichen? A shackle? A binding tying him to his grief and regret?
The next time Lan Wangji visits and is not denied entry, he sets down the tray of soups he’s brought with him, sits, and deliberately lies his ribbon to one side.
“...Wangji?” Lan Xichen raises an eyebrow politely.
“Ge,” Lan Wangji says deliberately. Can’t remember calling Lan Xichen anything but his xiongzhang since they were children.
He is a man of few words, but he explains.
One can only let go of all regulations when they are with those they love and cherish.
The next time he visits, Lan Wangji threads his fingers in the ends of his brother's ribbon. He unwinds it slowly, so that Xichen might have a chance to stop him if he changes his mind.
The ribbon (shield shackle restraint) falls loose.
Lan Xichen turns to him, and he weeps.