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It would have gone better, Lan Xichen thought, blackly, if Wangji had laid up the other half of the Lan. Lan Xichen had argued with Lan Zhicui all afternoon about fidelity and contradiction, and about—by the standards of Zewu-jun, muralled diplomat of Sunshot, this had been a grievous tactical error—about love. When that made no inroads with a man who had never risked such an emotion, he spoke in desperation about Lan Wangji as the product of twenty years of Lan training and investment.
It would be a waste not to use him. He had said it despite being sure his face bared his fear and partiality, unable to take refuge even in his usual smile: he was among Lan. Lan madness was tolerated only if it remained sober.
He had furtively downed a bowl of jujube tea for calm. He had lost it fighting with his uncle, nearly to the point of apoplexy, past the point of a shattered vase, but to the point an exceptional man could recover from. Shufu did love Wangji, and had been correspondingly devastated. Lan Xichen then fought flurries of snow all the way to the Jingshi. As he stepped through the open door, he could only hope Wangji was not feeling so combative.
Not quite accurate to say Lan Xichen liked hope; he lived upon it. But—"Xiongzhang," Wangji said, eyes blazing up from the boards under his knees. "Will it be you?"
A week prior Lan Wangji had been the sect's head of discipline. Now the handle of his whip clicked, hardwood on hardwood, as he pushed it across the table and bowed, although all other formality seemed forgotten. Lan Xichen was not prone to flourishes, but Wangji's movements reached another level of sparing. Wangji would need that, Lan Xichen thought, and then he found he had skirted the table and knelt and planted an unsteady hand on Wangji's shoulder, and the last of his poise had fled from him as the magnolia petals fled the summer branches. The cloth clutched between Lan Xichen's fingers felt slippery, unembroidered; someone—perhaps Wangji himself—had already stripped his Jade-fine outer silks. In his underrobes his chest visibly moved.
"No," Lan Xichen said. "Shufu has barred me from involving myself any further."
Not What will be it be. Not even How many. Did Wangji not understand how narrowly won it had been, or did he trust Lan Xichen beyond reason to find him a living road? As he trusted his Wei Ying. Should it not be as easy to trust a brother who had not killed so many in months of war as Wei Wuxian had in one clear evening in supposed peacetime?
Ah, Lan Xichen's questions could still be swept up with a look. Lan Wangji asked, "Then why come here?"
Before Lan Xichen could—do whatever he could do, which was not to take a whip to Wangji's back or further to his heart—Wangji continued, "Why see me now?" But he picked Lan Xichen's other hand from his side and pressed his own into it. His skin warmer, Lan Xichen thought, almost nonsensical with tiredness, than the charged air.
He heard: Before I am penitent, or silenced into passing as such. Before I can be cleansed, in the view of at least some of the elders. When you might be accused of empathizing with my crime, before the pain that would justify concern.
For Lan Xichen to rest his head onto Wangji's shoulder and admit he'd just wanted to see Wangji would choke him. The wish had been as thoughtless as a child's: to see Wangji whole, defiant, criminal, as free as Lan Xichen could keep him from being eaten by their mutual upbringing. So when he spoke he made it come out lightly, as he imagined drunkenness must feel. "Wangji, what do I do when everyone I love and respect makes choices that lead to a consequence I cannot?"
"You would never do anything to merit censure." Accusatory, or forgiving: Lan Xichen had spent so many years peering through the screen of Wangji's stoicism, but in this his tea-gold eyes only fermented with something waiting to be uncovered. "But if you had—I would also not spurn death to help you."
"A-Zhan," Lan Xichen said. He was not Wei Wuxian; he was incapable of devising anything that could follow.
Lan Wangji's hands caught Lan Xichen's cheeks as naturally as Bichen's hilt. Outside the clouds must have been swanning slowly through the dark, the ice crinkling across half the stream like finest paper: these composed the painting Lan Xichen would retain in his head for the evening. He could only take Wangji in flash-blurs of sensation as he was kissed: some things were always too large to consume whole. Fingers wound into his hair like a pin, unhesitant around the ribbon. The taste of Wangji's preferred oolong, subtly reshaped by the taste of Wangji's mouth. The soft skin exposed along both their ears, and all the skin hidden beneath Lan Xichen's five unnecessary layers of robes, brimming with blood. He had imagined this once and felt sick; Wangji laid him unblinkingly upon the floor and he felt the involuntary tranquility of knowing the worst had already been decided, of diving into the coldest pool.
Some things were always—