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There was a time, very long ago, when Lan Wangji would have welcomed this curse more enthusiastically than he had welcomed anything in his life.
Even after the first burst of humiliated confusion at his own responses to a certain youth had ebbed away, and his heart had begun to twist with a genuine if reluctant affection, it would have been a deep relief to be free of those desires.
Very nearly to the end, he might have been relieved.
For a long time afterward, he would not have been glad, but he would have accepted it with perfect equanimity. The scandalous dreams of Wei Ying, in the years of his death, had been neither the most frequent kind nor the most welcome—at least, not once he awoke.
And he had never been moved enough for it to matter by any other person.
So it would not have mattered very much. Though he would have missed those dreams, he thought, if they had left him altogether during those long years.
But now—now this loss was distressing enough to embarrass him, even the relatively shameless person he had become with maturity. He hoped he was not betraying the depth of his feeling on the subject to all and sundry.
He had shared his marriage bed with the man he loved for three years, after loving him hopelessly for nearly twenty. ‘Every day’ had not been faultlessly adhered to for that while, since after a certain point even he had to acknowledge that it was healthy to be able to part for a few days at a time, and on a few occasions night hunts or Wei Ying’s health had proven obstacles even when they were together, but the days that they had had each other more than once well outnumbered the days they had not at all, so their average was at least secure.
It was inane, the way that thought kept passing through his head, throughout the unproductive hours in the medical pavilion. The idea that falling below a ratio of at least as many sexual encounters as days in their marriage would somehow constitute losing at something.
It tugged at him with a strange anxiety even as his sect’s doctors and curse-breaking specialists studied the problem, all grave and respectable about it since any curse was dangerous and should be got rid of as quickly as possible. Even if this one did so far seem to have only the single, embarrassing symptom threatened by the angry ghost who’d left it on him, just before being dispelled.
(She had been a murdered prostitute, ill-used in life, and compared to her earlier victims Lan Wangji had gotten off very easily with the loss of his desire, as opposed to any part of his body or cognition. He couldn’t summon any real rage at her.)
Lan Wangji was no fresh junior cultivator. He shouldn’t have been caught out by something like this. No one had actually made fun of him for the failing—Wei Ying might, once it was sorted out. Lan Wangji looked forward to it.
Brother might, too. It would be amusing if the thing to finally bring him out of seclusion was an opportunity to tease Lan Wangji.
Once this was over, it would be funny.
Now, it was evening, and he had been released to rest and recover his strength, before reporting for more study tomorrow. He reached his home and dressed for bed still lost in abstraction—he and Wei Ying had each bathed, separately and cursorily, at some point during the day, and they’d each eaten, Lan Wangji while under medical supervision, and he was terribly tired. He was not intentionally ignoring his husband.
He did not realize he was ignoring his husband, until Wei Ying sat down beside him, on the edge of their bed, with a fragility that demanded Lan Wangji’s attention specifically in how it failed to demand any attention at all.
Wei Ying was very like a wild creature in a few particular ways, and one was that he hid all his real distress. Lan Wangji had learned to take notice of those absences, that stillness. Of Wei Wuxian, that bright loud figure, making himself small.
Wei Ying smiled when he saw Lan Wangji looking at him, and leaned forward a little, before rocking back again to sit upright, watching Lan Wangji almost sidelong. He hadn’t yet changed for sleep, which wasn’t remarkable, since he often stayed up long past curfew, using the stillness of a dark Cloud Recesses to let his mind expand along its many winding paths.
“Don’t work too late,” Lan Wangji told him. They hadn’t slept much the night before, due to the hunt.
And due to other activities they had, perhaps unwisely, snuck in during their few hours alone before it.
If that was to be their last time together (it could not be) at least it had been good. At least Wei Ying had draped himself bonelessly happy across his chest afterward, and his eyes had crinkled with love.
Now they were creased with worry, though he was trying to hide it.
“I will be fine,” Lan Wangji told him.
He would be perfectly well. There was no need to worry. Even if it came to the worst, and he could not be cured, Wei Ying should not be afraid for him.
“Of course!” Wei Ying agreed. “Hanguang-jun would never be brought low by something so petty.” He wasn’t quite teasing, though, not yet. Because it wasn’t over, and he was still concerned.
Lan Wangji let his face soften in amusement, anyway.
Wei Ying grinned, a quick, flashing, glossy thing.
“I can get a pallet in here or go borrow one of the extra guest rooms, when I do get tired,” he offered cheerfully, as if this was not at all a strange thing to say. “So I don’t disturb you.”
“Wei Ying doesn’t disturb me,” Lan Wangji said, with a faint frown. His husband often came to bed long after he had, or rejoined him there, after slipping out again for several hours after they'd gone to bed together initially. Sometimes this woke him up—sometimes it was particularly meant to, and they made love in the languidly urgent way that waking in the middle of the night brought on him, and slept tangled in each other’s arms without cleaning up properly at all. Other times, he slept through Wei Ying slipping under the covers, and woke in the morning to his husband pressed soft against his side or sprawled over his body.
“Right, right.” Wei Ying’s smile failed to reach his eyes.
“Wei Ying should rest,” Lan Wangji determined. “Go change for bed.”
Wei Ying did not always oblige him, even when he was very firm. But he did today, without any hesitation. He changed efficiently, without looking around at Lan Wangji or attempting any flirtation.
Lan Wangji appreciated that, as he would have struggled to know what to do with himself just now in the face of his husband’s usual charms, but he also appreciated even now the long pale line of Wei Ying’s body.
He had only grown more beautiful, the longer he’d spent in it, eating well, building muscle in accordance with his own needs and preferences rather than Mo Xuanyu’s, and lounging in the sun, warming his face with it. The only way he could have been more beautiful was to regain his old appearance, and even that...only if he wanted it.
Sometimes Lan Wangji thought he wouldn’t, that even if it were offered he would hesitate, would fear going back. His beloved so hated to be chained to regret.
Wei Ying turned, found him looking, and smiled gently. Then he came and climbed into bed, under the covers, and doused the lights with a gesture.
Lan Wangji lay in the dimness, lit by moon through paper, frowning.
Wei Ying was not touching him.
Wei Ying was lying decorously at his side, probably closer to the edge of the bed than he would really prefer, and making no contact at all.
Wei Ying, Lan Wangji reflected, was very inclined to touch. He touched all sorts of people, especially the people he loved, to convey every manner of affection. There was no requirement of any particular form of intimacy to exist, for Wei Wuxian to want to touch someone he liked. Furthermore, Wei Ying’s own feelings and preferences had not undergone any forcible change, and would undoubtedly take more than a day to evolve very far naturally.
Therefore, he was avoiding contact for Lan Wangji’s sake.
Ridiculous.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said, and reached out to drag his husband into his arms.
Immediately, he felt much better, distresses he had not even noticed smoothing away. Wei Ying had not touched him at all since before the curse, which made it at least ten hours longer than he was used to going without some sort of touch between them, and he had been missing it, in some deep nagging way he hadn’t truly noticed until it went. And more than that, something in him always settled, a deep syrupy contentment at feeling this single precious life against his skin, warm and sweet and breathing. The weight of Wei Ying’s body, half on top of his.
It was a tense weight, though, curled stiffly even as Wei Ying burrowed his face into Lan Wangji’s shoulder. “Lan Zhan,” he said thickly. “Don’t—don’t force yourself.”
Ridiculous. His husband was so, so ridiculous. “I am not.” Lan Wangji tightened his hold, as though emphasis could prove his point for him. Wei Ying let out a little oof of breath. “Wei Ying.”
“Lan Zhan.”
“I still love you.” It was difficult to say—much harder than praising Wei Ying. Too direct. Even in their most intimate moments, he rarely ever put such clumsily overt words to his feelings.
Difficult but worthwhile, as it always was when he realized Wei Ying needed to hear a reassurance; the body in his arms slackened with a relief so profound Lan Wangji was stung. “Wei Ying,” he said, with a hint of reproach.
Did his husband really think so little of him? Did he seem so utterly shallow, or so deeply obsessed by desire, that in its absence Wei Ying imagined there would be nothing left to bind them?
Wei Ying rubbed his face into the front of Lan Wangji’s shoulder, a motion that never failed to charm. Even the time he’d thoughtlessly done it with a runny nose had been equal parts endearing and revolting. “Sorry, Lan Zhan,” he mumbled. “Just, the way she worded it wasn’t especially clear, I couldn’t ask in front of everybody but I wasn’t sure—it might have been that you didn’t. Want another person at all.”
Ah. Lan Wangji imagined it—himself, slashed free from every bond, or at least all those that drew one into intimate partnership. Standing apart. More content alone than with any companion.
Just as he would have wished, at fifteen, a lifetime ago. He held Wei Ying tighter.
Had the curse extended beyond mere lust? Lan Wangji tried to decide if he had paid Wei Ying less attention these past hours than he would have normally, with such a set of distractions. He didn’t think so. Wei Ying had spent most of that time within his sight, and seemed well enough, giving Lan Wangji no cause for worry.
Once they were alone, though—had the curse affected his feelings, in a subtle way, or was it his relentless attraction to Wei Ying that made him so impossible to look away from, usually, even when he stopped doing anything to draw attention to himself? He still felt all this affection, and had a horror at the thought of being without his husband. He still found him beautiful.
Lan Wangji had not tried seriously to untangle the complex braided web of things he felt about Wei Wuxian for a very long time, not since he had chosen to title the whole furious mass ‘love’ and accepted it into his heart. He was in love. He had been in love for a very long time. He was still in love.
But he supposed he might be gaining some insight, in the immediate future, into exactly what impact his lusts had on his other feelings. This was not self-knowledge he particularly wanted to have, but he would not refuse it.
...and Wei Ying had been so willing to accept it. So ready to be dismissed from his own bed and his own home, as though even yet he believed they were Lan Wangji’s alone, and he merely suffered to occupy them. To think Lan Zhan does not love me anymore and let that be the last word, the end to it.
Wei Ying would never wish to stay where he was unwelcome.
Wei Ying had always liked, so much, how thoroughly Lan Wangji made him feel wanted.
Lan Wangji swallowed, and made his grip relax. “Of course, this is not—the marriage you agreed to,” he said carefully. “If this persists, if Wei Ying would prefer to separate—”
Wei Ying shoved himself up with both hands, Lan Wangji’s loosened arms falling away on either side of him. “Aiyo!” he exclaimed. In the dim light, he looked outraged. “Lan Zhan!”
His knee had slipped between Lan Wangji’s thighs, very near to putting pressure on his most intimate parts, and usually no matter the circumstance nothing could have prevented a stir of interest. Even very grave subjects had trouble holding his attention, when he was in bed with his very healthy and entirely unfucked for the day husband, and such a touch hinted.
It was distracting in a wholly different way, to feel that stirring of distraction wholly absent.
“You ridiculous man!” Wei Ying said to him, frowning down. “What are you saying! You think I married you just to get your dick every day?”
Lan Wangji moved his eyes pointedly to the side of Wei Ying’s face and blew out part of a breath in a soft sniff.
“Don’t give me that! You’re under a curse that affects how you feel about me, anything could have happened in there and I wouldn’t know it. I’m not any different than I was a day ago!”
There was merit to this argument. Lan Wangji ignored it. “Then Wei Ying ought to fight,” he said firmly.
“Ah? What am I fighting? The curse? I have been, as much as your uptight Lan doctors will let me get a word in.”
“Fight to keep me.” Lan Wangji didn’t know exactly what it was he wanted Wei Wuxian to do. He couldn’t force feelings, and many of the ways to try to do so were monstrous. “Even if a curse did….” It was abominable, to imagine his own heart changed so, altered until it did not know itself. “Loving Wei Ying is the easiest thing in the world. Make me love you again, were I forced to stop.”
“Ahhh.” Wei Ying covered his blush and eyes at once with one splayed hand. “I don’t know how I made such a thing happen in the first place! How could I recreate that magic.”
“Being Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said, idiotically but with conviction. “Is enough.”
“Nnnnngh. Terrible man.” Wei Ying wriggled in discomfort, but happily. Lan Wangji wrapped an arm around his waist again.
“Don’t go,” Lan Wangji told him. “Just—don’t give up so easily.”
“I wasn’t giving up,” Wei Ying grumbled, dropping his sharp chin onto Lan Wangji’s collarbone. “I was trying to respect your space.”
You didn’t the first time, Lan Wangji could have said. You didn’t respect that great open space around me the way almost everyone did, and that was one of the reasons I couldn’t look away from you, when we were young. Your shoulder against mine in that cavern driving me to bite in pure frustration, your fingers toying with my ribbon, your laugh running up and down my spine.
Instead he simply hummed an acknowledgment, and squeezed his husband’s waist, and ignored the ache of the pointy chin.
Don’t leave me, he thought. Then he decided these things evidently needed to be said. “Never leave me,” he said, appalled at how good it felt. For so long, he would never have allowed himself to make such a demand, for fear of becoming a villain, a jailer. “Even if I tell you someday that you should. I’d be wrong.”
Wei Ying stirred. “Lan Zhan,” he objected, perhaps feeling his own measure of concern about forcing things that should never be forced.
“The Lan Wangji that said that would be…” He shook his head. Not himself. In terrible need of being set to rights. Wei Ying should not mind the opinions of such a person.
“Mmn,” Wei Ying said, a complicated thoughtful noise. “But Lan Zhan—I’m not saying I’m not selfish, that I wouldn’t do whatever it took to turn a Lan Zhan like that back into my Lan Zhan. But if it couldn’t be done, wouldn’t I have to respect his wishes?”
His husband was a good man. Lan Wangji knew that—had held to belief in it for a long time in the face of contrary evidence, and been vindicated—but was stricken by it again often, now that they were so intimate, now that Wei Ying was a constant presence in his life as a living person rather than a memory. “Attempt the impossible,” he said flatly.
Wei Ying chortled into his neck. “Yes, alright.”
“If you were sure,” Lan Wangji allowed grudgingly. He didn’t want to bind his husband with a promise to do anything immoral, anything he would regret. Wei Ying had regrets enough. “But just because I said it wouldn’t be reason enough to believe.”
“Ah, Lan Zhan never lies.”
“That does not mean I say the truth.”
“I know,” Wei Ying said with a sweet little sigh of a yawn, and let his body slacken atop Lan Wangji’s. “Ah, we’ll figure it all out tomorrow.”