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Lan Wangji knows he’s making himself miserable. There’s no other reason to spend this banquet imagining what Wei Ying would do, if he were there. Lan Wangji can imagine himself in the burial mounds, an ornament in blue next to a monument in brittleness, or he can superimpose his memories of Wei Ying over this scene, layering them like watercolors until a picture emerges. He looks over at Jiang Wanyin, imagining the shadow of his brother at his shoulder, his hands as quick as sunlight over water. He’s spent so many endless, silent meals imagining Wei Ying beside him. His mouth. How exactly he would eat, his fingers deft even in distraction.
When he is particularly lacking in self discipline, he imagines Wei Ying at his side, draped over his shoulders and laughing into his ear. He imagines Wei Ying brushing his hair off his neck and sighing against him. He imagines how the sect leaders next to him might look askance at this, how shameless Lan Wangji would be in this daydream. Wei Ying would be allowed to tease. Lan Wangji would let him get away with anything. Lan Wangji would, as this is a fantasy, pull Wei Ying down into his lap so he would have to feel the weight of Lan Wangji’s cock against his ass. He would grind up against him when Wei Ying made those small, needy noises of protest he liked to make.
Could he grind up against Wei Ying without getting caught? Could he position him in such a way that he could sneak a hand into Wei Ying’s robes and jerk him off while everyone talked amongst themselves in the middle of the hall? Wei Ying is so bad at being quiet. He would enjoy watching him try. Perhaps, if he was too loud, Lan Wangji would stop touching him until he quieted back down again, then go back to teasing him, until Wei Ying was a wet, desperate mess in his arms.
Lan Wangji shifts to accommodate his stiff cock in his robes, then again when the drag of the silk feels good. He has let this go on for too long, but he is tired, and bored, and angry. He is always trying to convince himself that he is not these things. He had felt controlled once, content in his righteousness. He can feel the echo of those emotions, like the ash of an incense stick, fragile and burned through. He feels flushed and irritable and can’t, in any real way, tell what part of that would be noticeable to anyone other than perhaps his brother, who has been swept into conversation by a minor sect leader that Lan Wangji recalls he does not like.
He can spend whole banquets this way, as people mingle, sometimes reciting poetry in his head, sometimes teasing out intellectual problems, sometimes imagining just how he might convince Wei Ying to be taken over the table, just his robes rucked up. Sometimes people approach him to ask his advice or try to draw him into conversation, and sometimes it is pleasant. He is not entirely humorless, he tells himself. He is aware that he has been raised a facsimile of the ideal gentleman and aware that it has been, in some ways, an utter failure. He is beautiful and brave and a model example of the Lan sect and he had not known that no one had ever liked him until Wei Ying had.
He indulges in the decadence of a nervous tic, rubbing his finger across the thin porcelain rim of a cup for the satisfaction of it. He’s never had Wei Ying in his lap, but could spend hours imagining it. He would have a hand on his slim waist, the other palming his cock through layers of silk until he begged to be touched for real. Lan Wangji wants to press himself against Wei Ying’s back and bite against the soft, warm skin of his neck. He wants everyone to know that Wei Ying is his, he wants Wei Ying’s hands on his shoulders as he rides him until his thighs give out.
Under his robes, his cock pulses. It had been possible for him to hide his erection, but he’s following the thread of his thoughts all the way to their conclusion, working himself up. It is noticeable, though no one is paying him enough attention to notice it. He shifts, silk pulling over his cock, then shifts again. He wonders if he could come like this, in his own robes in front of everyone, just from thoughts of Wei Ying. He feels the end of his own control thinning, much like fabric wears through use. He feels the desire to do something stupid and reckless, secretly, perhaps to feel closer to Wei Ying. Since the burial mounds, he has been getting by on small rebellions, private punishments. If he does this, he will kneel for three days. If he does this, he will ask to be whipped once for each thought he should not have had.
He breathes in deep through his nose, steadying his racing heartbeat through the familiar grooves of meditation. If he can calm down, he can leave, and jerk off in his rooms with Wei Ying’s name on his lips. It is not as successful as it should be. His concentration is never as shattered as it is when he thinks of Wei Ying. His brain slides back to that image, of his cock rubbing against Wei Ying through their robes, of the sound he’d make when he noticed, of Lan Wangji holding him by the hips and making him feel it.
Lan Wangji always returns to the moment in the cave, when he’d snapped and told Wei Ying not to flirt if he didn’t mean it. He’d spent so long taking Wei Ying at his word, calling him all manner of things, letting him wind Lan Wangji up tighter and tighter. Letting himself be an easy target, storming away before anything could become real. He itches to know what Wei Ying would do if Lan Wangji held steady, dared him to take it as far as he would. He wondered what Wei Ying would do if Lan Wangji escalated things, if he touched Wei Ying back in the casual way he has, if Wei Ying threatened to take his clothes off — why is he always doing that — and Lan Wangji told him to do it and see where it got him. If Lan Wangji didn’t offer at all, but did it, how Wei Ying would act as if he was innocent while Lan Wangji removed his robes. Lan Wangji would let Wei Ying pretend to be innocent, would let him moan and whine and say he didn’t want it.
Lan Wangji does not notice Nie Mingjue until he is intolerably close. He had come up on Lan Wangji’s right side, another man who has only so much patience for pomp and circumstance. Rather more than Lan Wangji, but that was true of almost anyone.
It happens so quickly that Lan Wangji does not entirely have time to feel the bright pulse of shame course through him. Nie Mingjue meets his eyes and looks briefly concerned. Lan Wangji startles, Nie Mingjue glances down at his lap, and then meets Lan Wangji’s eyes again. There is no ambiguity in that gaze and no tease. Nie Mingjue has noticed that he’s hard and Nie Mingjue would fuck him, if he asked. He can’t say exactly how he knows this. There’s an intensity and a certain lack of embarrassment at having looked, a curiosity that Lan Wangji recognizes only because it is familiar. A split second of surprise and then a brief flicker of desire, as matter of fact as any rule.
Lan Wangji wants to be touched so badly it aches. If he can not have Wei Ying, he does not much care who does it. He meets Nie Mingjue’s eyes and, as if he is not ashamed at all, lifts an imperious brow.
“Wangji,” Nie Mingjue says, cutting him a neat bow. Lan Wangji realizes, with a buzzing kind of horror, that he should stand up and greet him in return.
“I,” he begins, then swallows, his throat working. His cock pulses between his legs, a thick, hot weight. He has never been this ineloquent in his life. “Chifeng-zun—“
Nie Mingjue just watches him, a hot interest in his eyes. Amusement, he realizes. It is clear that Mingjue doesn’t think he will do it and finds this charming. Lan Wangji decides that he would like to be more than charming.
Standing is torture. The slippery silk of his under robes drags against his cock, the material tenting when he stands. Nie Mingjue glances down to look at it, then back up at Lan Wangji’s flushed face. His skin feels tight and overwarm, his mouth dry. Lan Wangji wants to double check that no one can see him, but he doesn’t. He holds Nie Mingjue’s gaze, bows deeper than he needs to just for the way it makes his eyes go wide.
“Is everything to your liking,” he asks, his face carefully blank, watching as Nie Mingjue catches his meaning. As he returns to his cushion, Lan Wangji doesn’t know if he should be offended or relieved that Nie Mingjue, who he has known all his life, looks both incredulous and fascinated by him. Of course he didn’t know. Lan Wangji makes it his business that no one knows. He could probably end this now and Nie Mingjue would convince himself he imagined it.
Nie Mingjue opens his mouth and seems to hesitate his way through a variety of different responses. “Moreso than I expected,” he says finally, a candor in his expression that Lan Wangji remembers from trailing him and Xichen around when they were younger. He’s stern, as a sect leader, but as a younger man he’d had some core of good-natured sensitivity — it was why he’d gotten along so well with Xichen. They’d spent an afternoon in the stables once while Nie Mingjue re-shod a horse. Lan Wangji had noticed the calm, assured way he spoke to the animal when it grew agitated, his palm big and reassuring on its flank. Lan Wangji knows that Nie Mingjue has a temper. It occurs to him, with a flash of grim humor, that he has no problem wanting a furious, righteous man.
“I have heard Ouyang-zongzhu’s gardens are beautiful in the evening,” Lan Wangji says, his inflection as serious as anything. “Would Nie-zongzhu like to accompany me there.”
Lan Wangji is enjoying the slight incredulity on Nie Mingjue’s face more than perhaps he should. It is not as good as playing with Wei Ying would be. Wei Ying has never missed a beat in his life. In all things, they are equals. Wei Ying has never met a challenge he could not escalate. Nie Mingjue is looking as if he is sure Lan Wangji can’t possibly mean it. He is looking at Lan Wangji like he’s desperate for him to mean it. Lan Wangji wants to know what he looks like when he comes.
“Now?” Nie Mingjue asks him, glancing around at the gathered cultivators as if surprised to remember they’re at a banquet.
Lan Wangji waits him out.
Nie Mingjue glances down at his lap again. “You—“
Lan Wangji has a vague idea that he will cover evidence of his arousal with his sword and walk quickly and with intent. He wonders, like pressing on a bruise, what Wei Ying might do if he was in this situation, then decides that Wei Ying would not do this at all. Wei Ying does and says a million things he is not prepared to mean. Lan Wangji takes a steadying breath and lets the yang energy building inside him dissipate, his control as thin as a guqin string, but holding.
“Now,” Lan Wangji says. “I will be in the east garden. You may follow me if you wish.”
“You’re really something else,” Nie Mingjue says. Lan Wangji nods, standing with as much dignity as he can muster.
“Yes,” Lan Wangji says, and then sweeps out of the room in a swirl of white fabric. No one even notices him leave.
The night is warm and fragrant, dark but for the starlight and the crisp, pale circle of the moon, like a bite taken out of an apple. Leaving is a relief, if a minor one. Lan Wangji would be dishonest to say he’d never considered Nie Mingjue in that way. There were no rumors that Nie Mingjue cut his sleeve. Perhaps he didn’t make a habit of it. Likely, he was circumspect. Lan Wangji was only as sure as he was because he’d watched Nie Mingjue and his brother with the sharp eyes of someone looking for any hint of sameness. He’d glimpsed it, sometimes, in the way Mingjue looked at Xichen after he’d been drinking, his eyes dark and trailing, Xichen laughing and apparently unaware.
Lan Wangji wondered if this was part of the desire on Mingjue’s part. He was a poor substitute for his brother, but Nie Mingjue was a poor substitute for Wei Ying. When Lan Wangji had considered it, finding a replacement, he had imagined a sharp grin, irrepressibility. He had imagined some dimmer alternative who would go to pieces under him like he knew Wei Ying would. He does not think that is what Nie Mingjue has on offer.
He wonders, strolling out into the shadows of the night-lit garden, what it is that Nie Mingjue wants. They won’t be the only people to have snuck out. Sect Leader Ouyang’s summer festival has been well attended and well stocked with summer wine, and the evening is growing late. Lan Wangji can hear the hushed voices of another couple, half-hidden by shrubbery, their words interrupted by laughter and then conspicuous beats of silence.
Lan Wangji walks as if he’s in no hurry, knowing the incandescent figure his robes cut in the moonlight. If he is walking with slightly less grace than he normally does, no one would notice but someone paying him great attention. He hears Nie Mingjue approach at a jog, feels his hand wrap around Lan Wangji’s forearm and tug him to a stop underneath a fruit tree.
Lan Wangji lets himself be stopped, tilts his head up to catch Nie Mingjue’s gaze. He’s aware of all the places his robes cling to his body. He no longer has any clear idea of what he’s capable of, of what he wouldn’t do. Kneel for three days. One lash for every thought he should not have. Nie Mingjue is just out of breath from running, like he lingered in the banquet hall deliberating before rushing out after him. It brings a compelling openness to his face.
“You’re serious?” Nie Mingjue asks.
Lan Wangji blinks at him, thinks ‘I do not joke.’
“Right,” Nie Mingjue says, his grip tight and his expression still colored by disbelief. “Right. You’re not drunk?”
Lan Wangji communicates as much disdain as he can without allowing his face to move. “If I was mistaken about your interest, please accept my apologies for being so forward.”
Nie Mingjue balks, and Lan Wangji leans forward, holding Mingjue’s gaze and letting his lips part. Nie Mingjue darts a look around at the empty courtyard, then jerks his head towards a secluded area, something set in his jaw.
Lan Wangji lets himself be led there, thinks of nothing but the line of Nie Mingjue’s shoulders, of how his hands might feel on Lan Wangji’s waist. He wonders if he could ask to be taken back to Mingjue’s rooms - he wants to undress him completely, watch the muscles of his back move. He wants to feel Nie Mingjue’s gaze all over him, to pretend that they’re lovers. Praise comes so easily to Wei Ying’s lips. He can’t even conjure it up in his mind, what Wei Ying might say to him, what he might admire. Lan Wangji has been led to believe that he is beautiful and he wants it to be good for something.
Nie Mingjue steers him into an alcove and has him up against the wall, a warm hand on the back of his neck, and suddenly Lan Wangji has given his second kiss away. Nie Mingjue has a hand on his hip and he’s nudging Lan Wangji’s mouth open, tilting his head tilted back and gentling him into it. Do not act impulsively, Lan Wangji thinks, and kisses him back. Do not behave improperly.
Lan Wangji thinks back to how he’d kissed Wei Ying. It hadn’t occurred to him that he could be gentle. The last person who had touched him with gentleness had been his mother. What use is gentleness to him, now. What is the point, at this juncture, of not debasing himself completely.
He loops an arm around the back of Nie Mingjue’s neck and another around his waist, like a blow met and returned. Lan Wangji is beautiful with his sword because he’s used it for so long that he understands how it will move even before he moves it. He has no idea how to do this. He has no instinct for it, no finesse. He thinks if his longing was any larger he’d be crushed by it, but he doesn’t know what it is he wants, only that what he has gotten isn’t enough.
“Hey, slow down,” Mingjue murmurs, pulling back from the kiss and not letting Lan Wangji chase him. Lan Wangji feels a hot, sordid flush of shame at the way Mingjue looks like he doesn’t know quite what to do with him.
Lan Wangji can’t find enough breath in his lungs to apologize. Mingjue leans back in to kiss along Lan Wangji’s jaw, being sweet with him like he’s something spooked.
Mingjue reaches for his robes, undoing his belt and then the outer layers, unhurried. Lan Wangji holds him and thinks about breathing. He thinks about how it’s going to feel when Nie Mingjue reaches his skin, if he will be able to bear the wait, if he will be able to bear the touch once he gets it. His hands do not shake when he reaches for Nie Mingjue’s robes in turn, but only because he is concentrating very hard to ensure that they don’t.
“Your brother’s gonna kill me,” Mingjue says on a laugh, almost an afterthought.
“Not if you do not tell him,” Lan Wangji says, and slides his hand up Mingjue’s broad chest, pressing the pads of his fingers against the hollow of his throat.
“Huh,” Mingjue says, letting him do this, opening the last of Lan Wangji’s robes until there is only the whisper of fine silk between his skin and the summer night. Mingjue undoes the last tie and Lan Wangji shudders when he’s finally touched, pulling Nie Mingjue back into him. He’d had some kind of idea about having Mingjue fuck him, about learning something useful, but all he wants is to be crushed against the wall, like applying pressure to staunch a wound.
“Come here,” Lan Wangji says, when their mouths slip apart, his voice a rasp. “Come here.” Lan Wangji gets his arms around him, pulls him down, presses them together. Please, he swallows. Nie Mingjue follows his movements like any true swordsman would.
As it happens, he marvels at it. Nie Mingjue kisses him, open mouthed and slow, an arm holding him around the waist. He closes his eyes. Far off, he can hear the murmur of conversation. Mingjue’s cock is hard and pressed against his belly and Lan Wangji reaches for it, fumbles his hand over the head. He imagines the flavor of Wei Ying’s disbelief. Sometimes he thinks it is lucky that Wei Ying can not seem to see the truth of him. Nie Mingjue reaches for his cock in return, an ease to the movement. His touch feels too good to be true.
Lan Wangji rolls his hips up into Mingjue’s hand, chasing things he will not ask for. He wants Nie Mingjue to clutch him more tightly, he wants to be skin to skin. Lan Wangji wants, when he places a hand on the back of Nie Mingjue’s neck, for him to fold underneath it. Nie Mingjue is steady and warm and Lan Wangji wants to crawl up against his body, wants to be so close that he no longer feels the ragged, raw edge of himself.
Lan Wangji realizes he has been making noise. His breaths come audibly; he imagines Wei Ying’s ink-stained fingers like he does when he’s alone. It’s not good enough, this imagining. It isn’t fair, he thinks, with the kind of childishness he does not normally permit himself. Mingjue’s shoulder is warm under his palm and he wonders if the thing building within himself is a sob or not.
“That’s it,” Nie Mingjue says, and Lan Wangji chokes on his own breath, desperation a ghost at his shoulder. He hides his face in Mingjue’s neck, holds as still as he knows how, comes quickly, hard and silently. “Just like that.”
Lan Wangji breathes against the beautiful brocade, as empty as he ever was, Nie Mingjue a solid thing to brace against. At some point, he’d stopped moving his hand and he tries to pick up the motion again, only for Nie Mingjue to catch his wrist.
“No,” Lan Wangji says, mostly into his neck. “I will.”
Nie Mingjue laughs, not unkindly.
“Let me,” Lan Wangji says, and then goes to his knees, where he has always been his most patient. He does not try to meet Mingjue’s gaze. He reaches out to touch the softness of his belly, feels his muscles shift under the skin, the texture of his hair. There is a pool of quiet in the back of Lan Wangji’s mind and he tries to go there, to a place that is only sensation. When Lan Wangji fights he no longer thinks in words. There is a curious, tense blankness, like the sound of running water. He wants this to be the same.
Lan Wangji considers the motion of his next gesture, then leans forward to take Mingjue’s cock into his mouth. He softens his lips, sucks, lathes his tongue across the tip, then tries to sink deeper, negotiating the physicality of it. Nie Mingjue’s hand comes to rest on the back of his head, not pushing him anywhere, just keeping him close.
Nie Mingjue says nothing, but he’s hard and Lan Wangji can taste him. Lan Wangji likes the weight of him in his mouth, the pressure of Mingjue’s hand. It requires nothing more complex than the application of his own control and this is a relief, that he will not make an embarrassment of himself for being a novice.
Lan Wangji chases the deep sounds of his approval. There’s no fitting all of his cock in Lan Wangji’s mouth so he reaches up to stroke him, looking for a rhythm the way he does when he gets himself off. He gets overeager, chokes, and begins again.
“Careful,” Nie Mingjue murmurs, not quite a direction, some marriage of chastisement and praise. Mingjue’s voice is low and gentling even on the single word and it sends a hot, brilliant tension through him. Lan Wangji could make himself sick imagining the things Wei Ying might say with Lan Wangji between his legs - a neverending glut of praise and pleading. Wei Ying has told Lan Wangji that he is beautiful as if it cost him nothing to say so. Wei Ying does not need an excuse to beg for Lan Wangji’s attention, to demand things of him. Lan Wangji pulls off with a gasp, determined.
“Tell me what I should do,” Lan Wangji says. “And when I do well.”
Mingjue blinks down at him for such a long moment that Lan Wangji thinks maybe he has asked for something impossible. He pets the back of Lan Wangji’s head, his laugh a little incredulous. “You’re doing fine.”
Lan Wangji holds his gaze stubbornly, makes his eyes big and gazes up through his eyelashes, tucking his chin. This is a trick he has learned from Wei Ying.
“More than fine,” Nie Mingjue amends gently, nudging his cock against Lan Wangji’s parted lips. “Come here, you have the hang of it.”
And Lan Wangji is at a loss for how else to ask for what he wants, so he makes his mouth willing and returns to his task. The next time he chokes, it brings tears to his eyes, and he doesn’t reach up to wipe them away and doesn’t look up. Nie Mingjue breathes heavily above him, his hand stroking almost absently through Lan Wangji’s hair, carefully not to disturb his ribbon or his hairpiece. Lan Wangji wishes he’d taken them off. His robes are laying all wrong on his body. He feels foolish suddenly, to still be wearing his boots.
He can tell that he’s doing a good job. He doesn’t need anyone clutching at him and telling him in a lilting, musical voice that he’s so good, that he’s perfect, that he’s the best thing there ever was. Wei Ying would not be nearly so respectful. He wants to scold Wei Ying for grasping at his ribbon and then he wants to tie his hands up with it, just for the fit he would pitch at not being able to use them.
At the Burial mounds, it had seemed so important that he not stay for too long, lest he prolong his punishment further. He had stood in the half light of the cave that smelled like blood and seen the dead-end impossibility of himself there. Here, on his knees, he regrets every unlikely thing he decided it was better not to ask for. As if he ever would have stooped so low as to beg a man who had found him interesting for a few moments to do so once more, just so he could remember what it felt like.
Lan Wangji finds himself near the edge of tears and chokes on Mingjue’s cock again so that they might be indistinguishable from overeager desire. He doesn’t know if he believes that it would change anything to have a glowing memory of Wei Ying squirming underneath him to worry over, as if the kiss he stole caused him anything but torment. He doesn’t truly believe Wei Ying would have said yes, if Lan Wangji had asked for him. That last time he’d seen Wei Ying, he had looked worn, vaguely sorry. Lan Wangji had easily imagined having him. Worse still, he had wanted to kiss each of his raw knuckles. He had wanted to wash his snarled hair.
Lan Wangji closes his eyes, tries to let his task consume him. He’s damp with sweat underneath his robes and his jaw has begun to protest at this use, a centering discomfort. Nie Mingjue curses, his hand clenching in Lan Wangji’s hair.
Lan Wangji is hard again despite himself, his body a blurred landscape of anguish and pleasure. Nie Mingjue’s cock is big and hot in his mouth and Lan Wangji will be as beyond reproach in this as he is in everything else, until he earns his praise. Lan Wangji will be perfect for him.
When Mingjue comes, Lan Wangji swallows all of it, leans back in to lick across the head until Nie Mingjue pulls him up and kisses his swollen mouth.
“Are you alright?” Nie Mingjue asks when he pulls away, a hand on Lan Wangji’s warm cheek, his thumb catching a tear from his lashline.
“Touch me,” Lan Wangji says instead of replying, this thing he knows he can ask for. Please, he swallows. Would you pretend, for my sake, that you could be in love with me. Would you pretend that we understand each other perfectly.
Lan Wangji holds him tight around the shoulders and buries his face in his neck, long past dignity but trying for silence. Lan Wangji is more aware of being touched this time, present enough to notice how much bigger Mingjue’s hand is than his own. Lan Wangji is surprised at how much of the pleasure comes simply from being held, the reassuring pressure of Mingjue’s arm around his waist and his face tucked into the warm crook of his neck.
The night is sticky and Lan Wangji mouths at the sweat on Mingjue’s skin, nothing material enough to truly be a kiss. He feels himself getting close again and resists the urge to rock his hips faster into Mingjue’s loose hold, trying to draw it out as long as he can. He just barely has the discipline for it. Lan Wangji doesn’t ask if Mingjue thinks he’s pretty. He doesn’t ask anything at all, he just comes on a ragged exhale, letting Nie Mingjue support most of his weight.
“Better?” Mingjue asks after Lan Wangji has relaxed into his hold, quirking a satisfied smile at him that he follows with a quick kiss.
“Mn.” Lan Wangji chases after his mouth, demanding another longer, lingering kiss, relieved this privilege has not been taken away from him. When they part, Nie Mingjue tidies Lan Wangji’s robes before his own, and though it is an imperfect effort — he can feel that they do not lie quite right and will have to be redone completely — Lan Wangji allows him to complete it.
Lan Wangji has always been told that he appears immaculate even when crying or exerting himself. It surprises him that he wishes for something that might expose them as lovers, some rumpled edge that would expose himself as something desired and had.
“Thank you,” Lan Wangji says, somewhat stiffly. He feels a little embarrassed by himself in this aftermath, watching Nie Mingjue begin to set his own robes to rights. Mingjue glances up at him, shakes his head, and stops what he’s doing to return his hand to Lan Wangji’s cheek. Lan Wangji does not allow himself to lean into the touch.
“You’re not coming back to the banquet?”
“No,” Lan Wangji says. It’s late enough that he can claim the easy excuse of his sect’s sleep schedule. It means that he does not have to undergo the arduous task of pretending that the decision is a difficult one for him.
Nie Mingjue is studying him. He has big, pretty eyes. They’re so incongruous with his gruff, serious manner that it’s possible not to notice them. “I didn’t know it was your first time,” Nie Mingjue says finally, and Lan Wangji makes a concerted effort not to shrink against this pronouncement. “Do you know where I’m staying?”
Lan Wangji nods. He doesn’t know what would have given him away and won’t debase himself so far as to ask.
“I should go back,” Nie Mingjue says, his thumb worrying over Lan Wangji’s cheek. “Why don’t you wait for me in my rooms?”
Lan Wangji nods seriously, and finds himself being kissed.
“Be discreet. I won’t be long,” Mingjue says, and then he’s walking off in the direction of the banquet, leaving Lan Wangji standing by himself in the garden fielding an overwhelming urge to reach up and touch his own cheek. Moving like a dreamer, Lan Wangji watches the place he disappeared into, redoing the layering of his robes with the fastidious tidiness he is accustomed to.
As if he is in no particular hurry and has no particular destination, Lan Wangji sweeps back into the garden and towards the guest accommodations. He finds Nie Mingjue’s quarters quickly, familiar after he’d walked his brother to them earlier that day. He gives the disciple guarding the door a flimsy excuse and slips inside, lighting a candle as he removes his headpiece and his ribbon, and then his robes. He dithers over his under layer, hands paused on the fastening, then decides to leave it on. He is already slipping under the covers and assuming the position he sleeps in, anything even more presumptuous would be too mortifying to be borne.
Alone in someone else’s guest rooms, Lan Wangji listens to the sound of his own breathing. He is waiting for the meaning of what he’s done to come to him. He is waiting to feel the scope of the change. He can not tell if this action has made him better or worse. He doesn’t quite feel like someone who does this kind of thing, but neither does he feel like himself. He has been waiting to feel like himself for what has become a very long time.
Tomorrow he will wake at mao shi and he will not run or speak without thinking. He will exact his own punishment and he will proceed as he always has done, the Lan sect’s immaculate second young master. Often, he considers what he might do as if consulting a very long list of proper procedures. He feels sometimes that if he stopped walking, his body might continue his day without him, leaving him lingering on a path somewhere, superfluous. He has become someone who does all of the things he used to do. He has begun to feel that he is nothing more than a collection of gestures and yet he has done this unlikely thing simply because he wanted to, and he does not feel that even this deviation has made much of a difference.
Nie Mingjue wakes him from a fitful half-sleep when he finally comes to bed, murmuring apologies when Lan Wangji shifts to make room for him.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Mingjue murmurs, reaching for him. Barely conscious, Lan Wangji lets himself be pulled close, an ache yawning large in his heart at how it feels to be gathered into someone’s arms.
Lan Wangji makes a soft, grasping thing of his body. Mingjue holds him close, lips pressed against the top of his head, his body a warm witness. Lan Wangji has never been held like this before and does not know when he will be held like this again. He closes his eyes and burrows close, a hand pressed flat against Mingjue’s broad, muscular back. He does not think there is any use crying over it.