One Where: a Miscellany/Commonplace Book - x_los - 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī (2024)

Chapter 1: Come On, Ref! (Wangxian)

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Wei Wuxian is a major athlete (I don’t know anything about the various sports ball, so let’s say ‘football’, but only tentatively). Formerly a player himself, Lan Xichen now finds himself in both FIFA management and a tight spot. A bribery scandal has ripped through the governing body’s ranks. The season is in full swing, but almost no one working with the organisation can be considered trustworthy until they’ve been thoroughly vetted, which will take time. Xichen needs someone with an impeccable reputation to arbitrate some of the season’s most important matches who can be Seen to be Clean. Someone unconnected to the major factions in play, hitherto detached from the organisation itself, and knowledgable and cool under pressure. Fortunately Lan Xichen knows the perfect man for the job: his own younger brother.

Lan Wangji, slightly older than Wei Wuxian, has (perhaps temporarily) retired from professional play. Lan Wangji takes the referee gig in part to occupy himself while he rests a serious injury, but mainly to help out Lan Xichen. Lan Wangji quickly becomes highly-regarded in his new role. He’s incredibly tough, but absolutely fair: exactly what the sport needs in this moment.

Lan Wangji ‘discovers’ Wei Wuxian through this position—it was inevitable that they would soon have had to compete, but their leagues and career stages never quite brought them into one another’s orbit before this. Lan Wangji managed to wholly fumble their first conversation (thanks to an internal monologue along the lines of, 'you are too pretty, and so, regrettably, you must die—'), but he thinks he’s really regained his cool since.

The way Wei Wuxian plays makes Lan Wangji’s teeth hurt with how much he wants to be back on the field, ranged with or against this man. It isn’t even fair to say that Wei Wuxian re-ignites Lan Wangji’s flagging relationship with the game (though Lan Wangji was privately feeling somewhat adrift), because the thing is, Lan Wangji has never cared about their sport so deeply before.

The referee position is a god-send that has provided Lan Wangji with a great excuse to attend all Wei Wuxian’s games. He doesn’t even need to feel embarrassed about it. After all, Wangji is helping Xichen! Giving back to the sport! (And sweet Christ, Wei Wuxian’s thighs—)

Wei Wuxian, meanwhile, used to actually like Lan Wangji as a player. He’s retrospectively really embarrassed by how enthusiastic he was about meeting him, now that he knows what a complete asshole the older man is. Jiang Cheng says he’s being ridiculous, but Lan Wangji clearly has it out for Wei Wuxian: all game, every game, Lan Wangji watches him like a hawk. He calls Wei Wuxian out on the tiniest, stupidest infractions, and goes so far as to make patronising comments about how Wei Wuxian is ‘above’ tricky footwork. Which is legal, by the way! It’s a grey area! (For his part, Lan Wangji knows that pass is only technically legal because no one has yet thought to make it officially otherwise. Wei Wuxian is capable of playing cleanly, without a single infraction, and winning spectacularly. Lan Wangji expects him to do so. He does not care what Wei Wuxian's coach told him to do, or what other players commonly do: Wei Wuxian is not other players, and he is never common.) And Lan Wangji goes ice cold when Wei Wuxian whines about a call in the heat of the moment. Or as Lan Wangji puts it, ’disrespects his authority, and thus the game itself’, or whatever.

Nothing about Lan Wangji makes sense to Wei Wuxian (who pays as little attention to the bullsh*t internal wrangling of FIFA as he ethically can, because it’s like HOA drama, really). The man is from money, and he’s retired relatively young—as far as Wei Wuxian can make out, because he wasn’t feeling sufficiently challenged, or some such bullsh*t. But then Lan Wangji immediately takes this thankless referee position, which doesn't even pay that much—no one who made the kind of money Lan Wangji did last year even needs this stupid, unglamorous job! Is he making entire life choices just to annoy Wei Wuxian?

One day Wei Wuxian shows up at the team training area for a workout with his adopted son A Yuan in tow, only to find insufferable ice-prick Lan Wangji already there, using the gym equipment himself. Wei Wuxian knows Lan Wangji is a friend of the family of the coach, old man Jiang. Wei Wuxian supposes that Lan Wangji is within his rights to use the luxe, specialised equipment. It's not Wei Wuxian’s business. Lan Wangji’s former Gusu Lords' facilities are certainly too far away to be convenient, if Lan Wangji is living somewhere from which he can easily commute to referee seemingly every Yunmeng Lotus game (aka, to make Wei Wuxian’s life hell).

Trying to be polite, Wei Wuxian introduces A Yuan. Lan Wangji’s reply is somewhat stilted, because he’s surprised Wei Wuxian hasn’t guessed that Lan Wangji has Google-stalked him thoroughly, and thus knows everything about Wei Wuxian that can be learned from Al Gore’s internet.

What Lan Wangji knows is as follows:

- Wei Wuxian has been romantically connected to men and women in the press, but there’s been nothing confirmed, or long-term.

- A Yuan is a distant relation of Wei Wuxian’s good friend, the Yunmeng Lotus team doctor Wen Qing (formerly with the Qishan Suns, before the recent bribery scandal brought that team down entirely; in interviews, she’s credited Wei Wuxian with getting her a fresh start with Yunmeng).

- Wei Wuxian emphatically does not allow press photos of A Yuan, but refers to him lovingly by his milk name ‘Yuan’ in many, many interviews. He’s seemingly confident that A Yuan’s adult name won't be associated with this one, unless a grown A Yuan wants that.

- Lan Wangji has, of course, sought out and watched every Wei Wuxian-related interview.

Jiang Cheng was supposed to meet Wei Wuxian for practice, but gets roped into mediating some family conflict and has to bail. Disappointed, Wei Wuxian starts getting his stuff together to head home. Lan Wangji, who only goes to this gym because Wei Wuxian sometimes does, congratulates himself on the smoothness of his casual ‘I could practice with you, if you wanted. I'm an Olympic medalist in this, actually.’ (Perhaps Wei Wuxian is not aware of this? It might seem rude or deluded, for a ‘civilian’ to offer himself as a sparring partner for a professional player. Lan Wangji feels he must clarify his position.)

Wei Wuxian blinks at him. “…yeah. I know you are, Lan Wangji.” (In his mind, that smug ‘I’m an Olypmic medalist, —actually—,’ will play on a loop until the end of recorded time.) Unable to politely refuse, Wei Wuxian ends up spending the whole afternoon playing with his worst critic. Lan Wangji thinks this was an astoundingly good date, but wonders about the propriety of taking things further and making it official, given his current responsibilities to FIFA and the organisation itself’s delicate status at present.

Wei Wuxian is grudgingly impressed that Lan Wangji found ways to include, entertain and even successfully teach A Yuan.

…all right, so Lan Wangji’s not Satan, and has a soft spot for the most Lovable Orphan since Wei Wuxian himself. That’s not exactly medal worthy. (And Lan Wangji, of course, is an Olympic medalist. Actually.) But it’s a little annoying that A Yuan seems to like awful Lan Wangji so much! Where is his loyalty to the baba who birthed him, huh?

Things get weirder when Wen Chao, who managed to find a place for himself on another team after the implosion of the Qishan Suns, purposely injures Wei Wuxian on the field with a foul. Lan Wangji is not unprofessional about this, but neither does he handle the matter with the delicacy Lan Xichen has come to expect from his brother. Stuck watching the hospital room’s television, Wei Wuxian’s eyes nearly pop out of his head when he sees Lan Wangji coldly defend his advice to FIFA in an interview. Apparently, Lan Wangji does not think a career ban is at all disproportionate, no. Apparently, Wen Chao’s behaviour has no place whatever in the sport—

Wei Wuxian swears, every new thing he learns about Lan Wangji only makes him understand the man less.

Chapter 2: f*ck Trees (Wangxian)

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Problem one: a drunk, lonely-at-an-international-work-conference Lan Zhan orders a lot of expensive BDSM equipment and has it delivered to Wei Ying’s house.

Problem two: Despite Lan Zhan’s many silent offers to sell his soul to any power listening in exchange for this, Lan Zhan and his best friend Wei Ying are not actually dating. Not at all. Not even a little.

Still blinking sleep out of his eyes, a confused-but-going-with-it Wei Ying accepts the delivery of a full-sized St. Andrew's Cross. It’s wrapped in discreet brown paper, but youcan only wrap a more-than-man-sized sex toy so discreetly. There's a bow on it.

It's the message on the card that really—

Wei Ying hopes this will make more sense after just—a lot of coffee.

A pot later, Wei Ying squares up. Right! Here are the facts as he knows them. Evidently, Lan Zhan (Lan Zhan!) wanted to order this. But he must have been like, afraid there might be a big embarrassing scene (aha, no, not the fun kind) if he had it delivered to his own house. Lan Zhan lives in a good neighbourhood; rich people seemingly all know one another, and are all bastards. (Lan Zhan, good-neighbourhood-afforder, is of course something of a bastard himself, but of a sort Wei Ying can fully get behind.) There is a non-zero chance the rich bastard neighbours would tell Lan Zhan’s family everything, whereupon Lan Qiren would proceed to immediately die of shame. His final words, ‘you did this, Wangji’, would then haunt Lan Zhan until his death, some guiltily-chaste decades later—

But! Lan Zhan knows that Wei Ying works from home. Wei Ying further hopes, and expects, that Lan Zhan knows Wei Ying wouldn’t give a sh*t about a dear friend’s proclivities. Now, rather than being dependent on the sometimes-whimsical migratory patterns of delivery men, Lan Zhan can simply pick up his cross, pop it in an actually-discreet refrigerator box, and bear it over to his own place whenever he likes. Say the dead of night, when even vile Mrs. Mo is soundly asleep.

Wei Ying nods to himself. Right. Fine. This note that just reads 'forward planning, xx Zhanzhan' concerns logistics.

How did Lan Wangji get drunk enough to make this mistake? It might have been any number of things: a pure ‘oops, that is not your seltzer, it is straight gin’ accident, sad ‘drinking alone in house’ attempt after an inspiring viewing of Bridget Jones' Diary (All! By! My! Seeeeeelf—), etc. But in fact, the culprit was Mian 'oh, just try one—' Mian, at the post-conference dinner pub session, with the Kopparberg Pear. Because she is the MVP of reality, Mianmian very sweetly conveyed a blitzed Lan Wangji back to his hotel room. Lan Wangji rambled about his Wei Wuxian thing until he passed out in his bed, and Mianmian had every reason to believe that this was the end of it. She congratulated herself on being a good friend, and then headed back to her own room.

She didn't know about Lan Wangji’s short Drunkenness Refractory Period. She forgot entirely about online shopping.

Lan Zhan wakes with only the vaguest recollection of his own activities the previous night. But email receipts don't lie. Right at the top of his inbox, an ominous message assures Lan Zhan that his delivery, whatever that consists of, is en route. To Wei Ying.

What delivery? Lan Zhan asks himself, somehow suspecting that this is—bad. Very, very bad.

“You can track its approach,” the email assures Lan Zhan.

Lan Zhan blinks frantically at his inbox, muttering a soft, fearful “can I stop it?”

Lan Zhan has never in his life not clicked the ’slow delivery; better for the environment’ option. But now, looking at this email, he vaguely, vaguely remembers tilting his head up in an attitude of defiance and sneering, 'f*ck trees’.

He is horrified at himself.

The thing is, Lan Zhan did not only order one weird …gift? Let’s call them gifts. Sure.

For Wei Ying, all the sex toys (and wow—Lan Zhan is really going through it, huh?) are actually less weird than the box of live chicks. Wei Ying did not know you could mail live chicks. You learn something new every day. Something new, and terrifying.

Lan Zhan is still out of the country, and Wei Ying is left drowning in deliveries and hastily researching chicken coops for these babies. Perhaps Lan Zhan shares his own burgeoning interest in urban farming?

Lan Zhan cannot simply speak to Wei Ying about these deliveries. He's at an international symposium, run ragged with work. That, after all, is the whole reason Mianmian got his lonely, vulnerable, idiotic self to drink some 'very lightly alcoholic' pear cider in the first f*cking place. Lan Zhan is left trying to snipe all the regrettable purchases before they make it out of the warehouse. He does get some, but it turns out that cancelling deliveries between panels from overseas, while in another timezone, is difficult.

He tries to explain the situation to Mianmian, who, rather than apologising for her role in Lan Zhan’s downfall, laughs until she cries. Rude.

Chapter 3: These Several Times, at Band Camp (Wangxian)

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Every summer since the start of high school, Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian have attended an Interlochen-esque chamber music camp for very talented (and often very privileged) children. They have also been hooking up since their first year there. Wei Wuxian is convinced that Lan Wangji is a certified freak: his tastes are adventurous, and his appetite seemingly insatiable. He initiated their arrangement very quickly, which indicates to Wei Wuxian that Lan Wangji uses these sorts of events as opportunities to get around, and regularly hooks up with people at his other extracurricular outings, or back at school. He arrived for their second summer at camp with an actual neatly-written schedule of Things To Try, and subsequent years have brought an endless barrage of new kink. There’s no way Lan Wangji is inexperienced, though Wei Wuxian has no idea where he finds the time. He's so studious and talented—Wei Wuxian supposes Lan Wangji must practice this as diligently as he does his violin.

People who’ve lost positions or competition titles to him and resent it, people who went to junior high with him but didn’t get into Gusu Prep, and expelled from Gusu Prep drama-stirrer Su She are always quick to sneer that Lan Wangji has a reputation. Wei Wuxian regularly invites all of the above to shut the f*ck up. But really, he had assumed as much.

At a recital both of their orchestras attend, Wei Wuxian overhears Lan Wangji tell a classmate that he won’t be going on the optional group activity during the upcoming state tournament, because he will be busy meeting up with his boyfriend. Wei Wuxian can’t exactly be surprised by this. He knows he has no real grounds to be sulky, though recognises that he is: Lan Wangji has never been anything less than polite about being a serial bedpost-notcher. Wei Wuxian decides that he’ll do his sort-of-friend a solid and just make himself scarce, then. He signs up for the trip himself, wondering who the f*ck is horning in on Lan Wangji while he pretends to appreciate the historical temple they visit and, distracted, loses poker games to Nie Huaisang on the bus. Lan Wangji is snippy with him that evening, indicating that he and his current mystery boyfriend didn’t have a great time.

Good, Wei Wuxian thinks nastily, even as he knows he ought to be better than this.

Unbeknownst to Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji actually has a pristine reputation in ‘real life’. The rumours Wei Wuxian’s heard have been built on rivalry, and around:

1. Wei Wuxian himself,

2. Lan Wangji’s shameless use of his own impeccable behaviour to snag desirable camp counsellor positions (and their accompanying excuses to roam the halls at all hours, unquestioned, and dorm access keys), and

3. Lan Wangji’s ensuing propensity to treat the year’s most prestigious training event as an excuse to basically move in with his boyfriend for weeks on end.

Because Lan Wangji believes that he and Wei Wuxian are obviously dating. Why wouldn’t they be? They f*ck every bandcamp!

Lan Wangji spent the period between their first summer together and their second missing Wei Wuxian painfully, stewing and over-thinking. Thus the check-list: he’s a comfort-planner. Lan Wangji views their weeks together as his annual opportunity to cram a year's worth of affection into a few weeks, to store up sufficient memories of Wei Ying to sustain his imagination for the coming year, and to impress the hell out of his boyfriend (and also to play violin, he guesses—whatever). Lan Wangji thinks about summer camp somewhat like a recital. He enjoys playing immensely, but it's also always a culmination of planning, and a performance. He wants to do well, and for Wei Wuxian to tell him so (gratifyingly, Wei Wuxian couldn’t be a more appreciative partner).

Everyone who actually goes to Gusu Preparatory knows that Lan Wangji is in one of those years-long, steady relationships that stands a good chance of lasting past high school. Typical of perfect Lan Wangji to already have that sorted. (This gossip doesn't really get around to Yunmeng Academy, because no one at Yunmeng Academy wants to talk about Lan Wangji except Wei Wuxian himself.) In his quiet way, Lan Wangji is very open with his pleasant but not close Gusu Prep friends about this part of his life, discussing the basics of it with comfortable assurance.

“Of course, my family is rather strict,” he admits. “My boyfriend’s foster mother is as well, in her way. We don't have many opportunities to meet up properly, especially given the distance—let alone to spend the night. Camp's been a blessing. I'm really looking forward to the upper levels of this competition season, when our circuits intersect. Last year we got assigned to different divisions; I was livid, but my boyfriend was admirably mature about it. He pointed out we'd see each other in spring for public concerts, regardless—”

(If Wangji’s Gusu Prep classmates know Wei Ying’s name, they’re all very ‘oh, the famous Wei Ying!’ when they meet him. This surprises and pleases Wei Ying. Lan Wangji cares enough to talk about him! But it’s equally likely that Lan Wangji doesn’t Name Names, and that his Gusu Prep bandmates just conclude this must be the guy from things Lan Wangji’s said, or from how the two of them act together.)

Nie Huaisang, the gossip queen of Qinghe High, plays the harp lackadaisically. His brother is a traditional drummer, and absolutely insisted on Nie Huaisang following his footsteps—Mingjue did not think Huaisang’s offer to try out for marching band triangle was funny. Huaisang is actually fully capable of whining that the first piccolo is absent, then just picking it up and playing it himself. Everyone tends to forget that he’s very good. This is fine with Huaisang, who cannot be f*cked to like, practice and sh*t. Gross. Huaisang operates in all gossip circles and could easily connect these dots. But not even Huaisang, who talks to Wei Wuxian via Messenger nearly every day, mentions Wei Wuxian’s own relationship to him in explicit terms. There’s been no reason to. Wei Wuxian doesn’t bring it up, and Huaisang can’t imagine Wei Wuxian somehow wouldn’t know about it?

Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian also message one another frequently between band camps, competition hotel hook-ups, etc. From Wei Wuxian’s perspective the whole thing is friendly enough, but Lan Wangji is never more than simply chill in these conversations. Wei Wuxian does a lot of the work, and often feels like he’s being intrusive: he types five sentences to Lan Wangji’s every five words. Wei Wuxian assumes Lan Wangji is just always online, because if they’re not in school Lan Wangji tends to respond to messages immediately (he’ll sometimes do so even if they are). He has no idea that Lan Wangji only has Messenger for Wei Wuxian.

They have had entire Messenger conversations about music scholarships and university, what’s best for their careers, and whether they want to take offers at the same conservatory. Wei Wuxian thinks it’s been incredibly helpful to have someone in a similar position to talk all this through with. When they accept the same programme, Wei Wuxian is immensely pleased when Lan Wangji says “it'll be good to see more of you”. He guesses they’re finally friends?!

Wei Wuxian mentions this to Yanli, telling her that it'll be great to know someone to start with, in a new city. Yanli is actually more concerned than pleased. She correctly guesses that whatever Wei Wuxian says or even thinks, Lan Wangji has been a significant factor in her little brother’s choices about his future. She doesn’t want her Xianxian to get his heart broken. Because Wei Wuxian thinks it, all his Yunmeng friends believe that Lan Wangji is some kind of gaypex predator. They’re not sure if Wei Wuxian should keep hooking up with this dude, however hot and talented Wei Wuxian claims he is, if the guy’s not interested in Wei Wuxian as a boyfriend—especially since Wei Wuxian doesn’t really see people during the year, because he 'gets too busy’.

Lan Wangji finally meets Yanli at a competition, and makes a point of talking to her. He’s so honoured to meet someone Wei Ying speaks so highly of. He hears she used to play cello herself? Congratulations on her engagement. This is his brother, Xichen, who’s second clarinet with Shanghai Symphony Orchestra—

Wangji outright radiates ‘please approve of me’ vibes. On the train home, a confused Yanli asks Wei Wuxian how sure he is that this guy has other hook-ups?

At first, Wei Wuxian dismisses Yanli’s confusion. But her having raised the possibility keeps him from outright fumbling the conversation when Lan Wangji, upon Wei Wuxian’s arrival at the conservatory, apologetically explains that his uncle (and even his brother, whose support he’d expected!) thought it would be a bad idea for the two of them to go from a long distance relationship directly to moving in together. Which Lan Wangji thinks is ridiculous, because they already live together (i.e. secretly share the same dorm room, against the rules) every summer. Perhaps next year?

It seems Wangji’s brother and uncle are well-aware that Wangji is in the fourth year of a steady relationship with another boy from his prestigious music programme—a ward of the respectable Jiang family. Wei Wuxian decides to pretend that he absolutely knew they were a couple, and asks Yanli to get everyone on board (her call to Nie Huaisang is particularly entertaining—for Huaisang, who never once suspected Wei Wuxian didn’t understand this?). By the time they’re twenty, Wei Wuxian has even explained the timeline of events, from his perspective, to a decidedly unamused Lan Wangji. Lan Wangji now makes a point of bitchily, regularly checking that Wei Wuxian knows they’re engaged.

Chapter 4: Cut Scene from 'But the Rose'

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In the next weeks, Wei Wuxian devoted most of his time to brutally training his wild new cultivation: beating the foreign, hostile, violent but useful parasite into submission. What he was doing looked enough like standard cultivational meditation to soothe his siblings and assure them he was taking the fight to come very seriously, especially given that he’d never had much patience for such meditation in the past.

He’d thought he was being fairly subtle, until Lan Wangji cornered him alone outside the Nie dining hall and asked, point-blank:

“Why are you avoiding me, Wei Ying?”

Not ‘are you avoiding me?’, or anything easier to talk around—in conversation as in swordplay, Lan Wangji didn’t give opponents many openings to work with. The accusation was especially cutting as Wei Wuxian felt they’d established something like a decent footing in their conversation on the Unclean Realm’s rooftop (back when Wei Wuxian had assumed the resentful energy became especially difficult to reign in around Lan Wangji because he was angry with him).

Wei Wuxian found himself betwixt and between, unable to commit to any course and thus undermining his own work. Telling Lan Wangji to stay out of Jiang’s affairs and then running after him to explain himself. Assuring Lan Wangji they were still confidants and then confiding nothing at all in him. Helpless to countenance either being written off by Lan Wangji or the mortification of being truly seen by him, in his present awful totality.

“I’m just busy, like everyone,” Wei Wuxian said, trying to laugh off the accusation. Luckily, the conversation was discomfiting. This made the resentful energy slow to stir in him—lurking and wary.

“I am not too busy to speak to you and help you, as you said I might,” Lan Wangji said doggedly, looking at Wei Wuxian so intently that he felt pinned. (How was it he did that? Exerted such force of presence you couldn’t help attending to him?)

“Later,” Wei Wuxian said, turning away on his heel and twirling Chenqing, deliberately obnoxious and off-putting.

Lan Wangji turned the attack on him, taking his dismissal as a promise.

“Very well,” he said to Wei Wuxian’s back. “We will speak privately this evening.”

Wei Wuxian looked over his shoulder at Lan Wangji, aware that his eyes were probably showing, if not fear, then some form of vulnerability akin to it. Maybe it was time to find some path besides this push and pull for them to take hereafter. Whether that meant he ought to tell Lan Wangji to f*ck off, or to burden him with things he was sure Lan Wangji didn’t truly want to know any more than he wanted to share them (to watch Lan Wangji’s gold eyes darken with disgust, with pity and sorrow at best), he couldn’t say.

“All right,” Wei Wuxian murmured. Lan Wangji nodded and left him.

Wei Wuxian retired to his room, hoping to make some decision. He couldn’t keep holding Lan Wangji in a vice grip but at a distance like this. It wasn’t fair to his zhiji. But both the prospect of pushing him away more totally and that of drawing him close enough to see Wei Wuxian’s scars made Wei Wuxian so absolutely panicked that he couldn’t keep his black magic, his visible want and fear, under control.

Whole hours slipped away from him in a desperate attempt to contain himself—no, not himself, this thing living in him now. It was hard going, twisting the resentful energy small and docile, tight and hidden. Painful—so painful he sometimes couldn’t help gasping, even screaming. Wei Wuxian didn’t even notice afternoon giving way to the evening, in which Lan Wangji had promised to call.

Chapter 5: Returning the Gift of Space (Wangxian)

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From middle school until the end of high school, Wei Ying pestered Lan Zhan. By the end of this period, however, Wei Ying had grown into an intelligent, empathetic, and, perhaps most crucially, post-pubescent eighteen year old. He had begun to realise that regularly pressing Lan Zhan’s buttons and constantly crashing through his boundaries was not necessarily an appropriate or kind way of showing his interest in and admiration for the other boy. Wei Ying had also become more cognisant of the nature of his own deep need for Lan Zhan’s attention. This burgeoning self-awareness brought with it some seriously crippling embarrassment—like, ‘Adam and Eve discovering their own nudity’ levels of shame-spiralling, here.

Despite knowing he should stop, when faced with the pretty, po-faced man himself, Wei Ying found it almost impossible to quit bugging Lan Zhan—even as he internally castigated himself for being f*cking ridiculous. This was like, harassment, verging on stalking? Was he this kind of guy? And if he was, did he want to be? Why the f*ck couldn’t he just get over a classmate who, very evidently, just did not want to be his friend, let alone anything else?

When they went off to different universities, leaving Shanghai for Hefei and Beijing respectively, Wei Ying forced himself to bite the bullet and cut all contact: go cold turkey, change his phone number, lose his contacts, the works. When Wei Ying decided to cauterise an emotional wound, he didn’t chance letting any trace of infection linger. He didn’t discuss what he was doing and why with his siblings. The situation was embarrassing enough as it was, without adding jiejie’s pity or didi’s mockery into the mix.

Wei Ying’s new Lan Zhan-free lifestyle was, in a word, awful, especially at first. Wei Ying indulged in feeling very sorry for himself over some ‘one that got away’ sh*t he really suspected he didn’t even deserve self-pity over. But you know, he was a big boy. He’d attained Maturity. As long as he didn’t think about Lan Zhan at all (no more responding to Lan Zhan’s polite, bare minimum small talk like it was a request for his life story—to be safe, better make that no responding to Lan Zhan's cursory pity-friendship with his own yawning, inappropriate need at all, if he could help it), he could move on, and go on dates, and have whole entire relationships with people he didn’t have to needle and bully into spending time with him. Growth!

Lan Zhan had, in fact, hated Wei Ying for a good chunk of middle school. However by the end of high school, he considered Wei Ying his closest friend. They’d known one another for years, and spoke every day. Wei Ying was deeply important to Lan Zhan, which made it exceptionally strange when the most talkative, in-your-face person Lan Zhan knew didn’t text at all in the month after they started university. Wei Ying was always the one to reach out, so Lan Zhan assumed that he must be enormously busy. Maybe if Lan Zhan tried contacting him now, he’d be intruding? He wasn’t worried; he’d know if anything had happened to Wei Ying. The boy didn’t breathe without Madam Yu complaining about it to everyone she knew, and after years of their children sharing classes, she certainly knew the Lans.

Another two weeks elapsed, and Lan Zhan’s patience dwindled with the days. He decided to reach out and text Wei Ying himself, only to find that Wei Ying’s number had been disconnected. Strange. Lan Zhan decided to look up Wei Ying’s new number on social media. He didn’t have those sorts of accounts himself, but he knew that Wei Ying did. Or rather, he had: now it seemed he’d none at all, at least under his real name. Perhaps he’d made his accounts private while applying for universities? That was so unusually sensible of Wei Ying that Lan Zhan assumed it must have been done at Jiang Yanli’s suggestion.

Now, there was a thought.

It was easy enough to get Jiang Yanli’s number, and to ask her to share Wei Ying’s new one. Satisfied, Lan Zhan texted Wei Ying, planning on being just a little smug later about Wei Ying’s carelessness in forgetting to update him. When Lan Zhan spent a day left on read, he checked with Jiang Yanli to confirm that the number was indeed correct. A day after that, Lan Zhan tried again. Still nothing. Perhaps Wei Ying truly was as busy as Lan Zhan had initially assumed he must be? He’d chosen a challenging programme, admittedly, but Lan Zhan had never known Wei Ying not to breeze through obstacles like they were jokes.

Lan Zhan made a final attempt, mentioning that they’d both be back home in Shanghai for New Years’. Wei Ying’s civil, cool “did you need something?” had Lan Zhan blinking at the text in shock, and cracking the screen when he slammed the phone down on his desk. Did you need something—did you need something? What kind of response was that?

Lan Zhan began to realise there might be something more going on—something wrong with him—when that wasn’t the end of it, as it by all rights ought to have been. He knew he’d never been fascinating, like Wei Ying. In Lan Zhan’s defence, no one was. He knew he’d always been cool to the other boy, because he’d never known how to respond to Wei Ying’s provocations, his teasing, his crass, fluid, warm brilliance. Lan Zhan wondered if he’d said something wrong, or if he’d not said enough.

He reached out several more times, in tones of rising panic, only to then hear through the grapevine that at some point, Wei Ying had managed to lose his phone and had some whole new number. So Lan Zhan’s last pathetically sincere, worried, nigh-begging texts had very likely just vanished into the ether. Fantastic.

Well, Lan Zhan seethed, forget it, then. f*ck Wei Ying. If Wei Ying had just thrown Lan Zhan away, ghosting him without so much as a civil goodbye when he met more interesting people at university, then Wei Ying wasn’t as kind as he’d always seemed. It had all been a lie, somehow. (Or perhaps, Lan Zhan worried in darker moments, he’d somehow exhausted even Wei Ying’s kindness.) If his only close friend simply didn’t care about him at all, then Lan Zhan would endeavour not to care about Wei Ying either.

Ten years later, freshly transferred to Hong Kong, Lan Zhan found himself blinking in shock at the new co-worker someone was attempting to introduce him to. The man was busy, waving a ‘just a moment!’ hand being him. Lan Zhan was left staring at the back of head of long, thick hair. At a moddish pony tail, tied off with a loud red ribbon. The style was completely different, but even before the other man turned around, Lan Zhan just—knew. How sad was that?

What made this all the more uncomfortable was that in the intervening decade, Lan Zhan had come to terms with who he was, and what he wanted. He’d come to realise exactly why he’d been so deeply invested in his schoolfriend, and so heart-broken at being cast aside. In said intervening decade, Lan Zhan had truly made an effort to move on. He’d even enjoyed a respectable handful of decent relationships. All of which seemed to count for nothing, because this stranger, who wasn’t one at all, turned around with a smile for someone else still on his lips, and Lan Zhan’s breath caught like he was fourteen again. Like he’d no idea what to do with his body. Like nothing he could say would be right, or sufficient.

There Wei Ying stood. Age had not withered him, even as, when they were children, custom had never staled his infinite variety. Lan Zhan had thought he’d been over this. That seemed suddenly, terribly hilarious.

“Oh,” Wei Ying said, giving a strangled cough before straightening up, making that lax, familiar posture alien and professional. “Lan Wangji. It’s—been a while. Welcome to the team!”

Lan Wangji.

Lan Zhan’s eyes narrowed. In this moment, he truly envied the otherwise unmemorable character blessed with laser-vision who Wei Ying had always described as ‘absolutely the worst X-Man, no question.’ Lan Wangji. ‘Welcome to the team.’ This asshole.

Chapter 6: Conduct Friction (Wangxian Femslash)

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It's the 1840s, and two women reign supreme in British novel publishing. Both are writing social novels/conduct fiction, but they go about the business so differently that you’d never realise that they actually went to school together.

‘Wei Wuxian’ is a George Eliot-style feminist, a social novelist with deep leftist commitments. She writes under a male name, but her real, scandal-ridden identity (Wei Ying) is widely known, and some of what people say about her is even true. Wei Wuxian’s fiction has the gothic intensity of the Brontes’ work, and asks several of the same questions as Mary Shelley’s.

Lan Wangji is a social novelist along the lines of Mrs Gaskell, characterised equally by her care, insight and attentiveness to social politics. Her ethical framework is deeply located in religion, and Wei Wuxian never quite knows what to make of the time her old schoolfriend still has for personal respectability and reputation.

The two women correspond extensively. When outraged mill owners call Wei Wuxian everything from an anarchist to a silly whor* for criticising their brutal treatment of striking workers, Lan Wangji defends Wei Wuxian very publicly. The women publish serial novels at the same time, and may be fighting for the same body of subscribers (though it’s not terribly clear whether all this novel-reading in fact simply breeds more novel-reading). Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian also run in overlapping social circles, and attend the same house parties. (And at some point, because the name implies as much, this leads to scissoring: why promise what you won't serve up?)

Before they successfully sort out their decades of pining, they are forced to collaborate on the Household Words Christmas Special (an annual fic challenge by run by Dickens, where everyone works on a joint novel or multi-genre fiction project with a shared theme and arc narrative—the origin of modern Christmas media as a concept). Dickens and Wei Wuxian both just think ghosts are Neat, and should be in literally everything. Or optionally, either Wei Wuxian or Lan Wangji is running something like Household Words or All The Year ‘Round, which publishes a lot of serial fiction by various writers that the magazine-runner edits (Gaskell’s North and South came out in this format). Wei Wuxian has the big Dickens energy in this relationship, but Lan Wangji is more institutionally supported, and thus better positioned to pull such a project off.

Chapter 7: Salvaging Ghost Ships (Wangxian)

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San Francisco is being built on the bones of scrapped ships, and the future of America on cheap immigrant labour. Old boats in the harbour are sedimenting into city blocks, and hungry work crews brought over from a China ravaged by Britain’s imperial wars are constructing railroads that promise to connect the country’s Eastern and Western coasts. This manual labour force is comprised of new arrivals brought over for the purpose, but the managers and go-betweens facilitating these projects have generally lived in America considerably longer.

The Lans, for example, have been in the country for decades, now, and stand as pillars of a California’s rapidly-growing Chinese community. Lan Qiren runs the family’s charitable English school and immigrant assistance centre, both of which are vital in helping newcomers navigate employment and housing issues (if perhaps a little too aimed at taking the comparative-few who, largely by virtue of privilege, will settle here permanently and making perfectly assimilated, respectable American-Chinese citizens of them). But the Lans also facilitate relations between the railroad companies and their labour force, and are thus, to a degree, implicated in the Jins’ policy of seeking out fresh workers in the hardest-hit, most impoverished areas of the mainland. The harsh contracts these workers enter into are nominally consensual, but exploitative as a matter of course.

The Jiangs do good business in Chinatown as merchants, but their ward Wei Wuxian was not born into America or comfort, and does not accept either unthinkingly. The railroad companies and their successors do not look kindly on his efforts to use his legal education and excellent language skills to organise their staff.

Madam Lan's middle class family invested in the declining practice of binding their daughter’s feet as an aspirational gesture. They wanted the best for her, and they wanted the best for themselves: to embody and proudly display forms of wealth and security they’d never fully enjoyed. In the most decorous and appropriate way possible, the girl’s family (‘the girl’ will do: her personal name was of little importance, in her life) essentially sold her to the Lans. The Lans thought her a sound bargain, and brought her overseas to marry a young man who’d never seen her.

Such things happened all the time, and she was lucky enough in her lot. Her new master was lonely, and gentle, and very ready to be kind. But despite her husband’s real affection for her, this new Madam Lan became isolated and depressed. The body modification that had, in her home town, marked her family as grasping and a shade out of touch, but legibly refined, was as inexplicable in her new home as it was hobbling.

No one was kind about her suicide, when it came. No one personally knew her well enough to be. Why ever did she react so poorly, when she’d done well to marry several rungs up the social ladder? Everything that happened to her was not only acceptable, but fortunate! What more could she have wanted?

Out of respect for the Lans (and the real, visible grief of her young husband, who shut up like an oyster in the wake of her loss), the scathing whispers were hushed. In a few years, people forgot the manner of her death. Were it not for her living sons, they’d have forgotten that this nameless Madam Lan had ever lived at all.

Lan Wangji—who grew up helping his mother shift her aching, artfully-broken body from back room to back room, and who misses her without resenting her need for freedom, despite its dear costs—loves Wei Wuxian from the moment the gangly, far-off dot of a boy, traveling alone, jumps up and down on the deck of the ship bearing him into the harbour. His dark little figure is waving at all the people gathered below, as though he cannot wait to meet the whole world. Lan Wangji loves the way Wei Wuxian stumbles into him when he disembarks, still unsteady on land—laughing apologies and grabbing a flier for the language school before being whisked away by the Jiangs. (His weight in Lan Wangji’s arms as light and easy as mother’s had once been, when hardly anyone has touched Lan Wangji in the years since her loss.)

He loves the other boy’s outright bewildering topolect when he comes to classes, his sweetly terrible pronunciation of all the English words he tried to learn on the boat over, and how uncanny-quick he learns the pitch of Lan Wangji’s own English. Loves his softness, even as a rough, boisterous youth: the gentle way Wei Wuxian changes the subject when he inadvertently bullies a tipsy Lan Wangji into saying more than Lan Wangji ever intended to tell anyone about his mother’s death—a subject of torrid gossip Wei Wuxian arrived too late to hear anything of, and does not seem to relish now, for all he usually mocks Lan Wangji for being too stiff, over-perfect. Loves Wei Wuxian’s corresponding hardness: his unshirking, unrelenting commitment, as a grown man, to others’ fullest liberty, though it puts him in real danger from people who’d prefer to see him dead at the bottom of the bay, who’ve money enough to make their visions real.

Over the years, Wei Wuxian changes Lan Wangji’s whole person—the whole scope of his life, without Lan Wangji’s comprehension or conscious consent. Lan Wangji thinks of his mother: remade for the mere idea of a man, and sent across the world for just the prospect of his fulfilment. The notes of their lives strike the same, but the key and the resulting songs are altogether different. If Wei Wuxian’s work is sometimes thankless, frequently dangerous, and often leads to lean days, then Lan Wangji would bear that work with him. Would provide sufficient gratitude of himself, would share in the danger and the hunger. Lan Wangji does not hesitate to express the whole of his sentiment to Wei Wuxian, because he owes the memory of his mother, and the chains of yuanfen that have brought he and Wei Wuxian together in this place, the fullness of his resolution.

Chapter 8: Hole in One (Jiang Cheng/Jin Zixun)

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For his brother's sake, Jiang Cheng has spent a great deal of time in the company of a man he deeply personally distrusts and dislikes. Surely curing Jin Zixun (which will help clear Wei Wuxian's name, and thereby keep both Jiang Cheng’s idiot brother and the doomed people he’s throwing himself away on safe for another day) can't bethatmuch worse than having to spend three months on a field trip with Lan 'Conversation' Wangji was?

Jiang Cheng is more annoyed than worried; in her letter, Wen Qing promises him the whole affair will be very straightforward. The treatment will involve a liberal, direct application of Jiang Cheng’s potent yang energy to Jin Zixun’s cursed, yin-infected wounds. Wen Qing startles Jiang Cheng by casually, indelicately claiming that the process will be ‘as easy as wanking off’, but says she’ll explain more about how this is actually going to work at the designated rendezvous point.

Due to his demonic cultivation, useless-as-usual Wei Wuxian is apparently too yin-heavy at the moment to just do this himself. Besides, Jin Zixun says he doesn't want the dreaded Yiling Patriarch anywhere near his exposed chest.

Chapter 9: A Qing, A Cad

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Newly-married, Wei Wuxian looks to repairing the rest of his familial relationships. Yet all he and Jiang Wanyin’s attempts at ‘enemies to brothers’ are derailed, time and again, by their own abrasiveness, a jumble of sedimented recriminations, and the roulette of complex resentments Jiang Wanyin calls a personality. Neither realises it, but the core thing preventing their reconciliation is the absence of one special person: Jin Zixuan. When the Peaco*ck was alive, no matter what passed between the brothers they could always band together to hate this despicable man. Even in a war zone, Jin Zixuan could be relied on to find a way to make a spectacular ass of himself! It was truly incredible stuff. Seriously, this f*cking guy.

Alas, now Jin Zixuan is too dead (and at one of their hands, as well! (sort of)) for this strategy to be effective: sh*t got real. But things look up for the Prides when Jin Rulan develops a crush on an inappropriate person: a scoundrel. A cad! A Qing.

Initially, every middle-aged cultivator in the middle kingdom is inclined to pity the waifish sole-survivor of the Yi City massacre. She’s an orphan, twice over! And as Ouyang Zizhen was the first to observe, when you scrub off all the caked blood, she’s just so cute! She takes Jin Ling’s stammering, annoyed-by-this comment to that effect (because Jin Ling is roughly as socially adroit as the jiujiu who reared him) and runs with it. She tells all her age-mates that she’s courting the Jin sect leader, who finds himself scrambling to pretend he isn’t half as shocked and pleased to hear this as he is.

For form’s sake more than anything, Jiang Wanyin bitches about her inappropriate background and lack of dowry. This leads him directly into an unintentionally hurtful and personal argument with Wei Wuxian about what the f*ck Jin Ling, quite possibly the richest boy in China, would even do with a dowry if A Qing had one. Jiang Wanyin doesn’t get any sleep that night, left cursing himself for every accidental implication that Wei Wuxian had had no business mixing with the great families.

The pointed comments which the acting Lan sect leader condescends to make at their next meeting, expressing cool, polite interest in the young Jin sect leader’s burgeoning relationship, let Jiang Wanyin know that his brother must have also stewed over the fight, and expressed as much at length to his very partisan husband. Fantastic. Just whant he needs, Wei Wuxian ‘us against the world’ing him with the albino Peaco*ck.

But if A Qing is breathing, A Qing is running a scam. The good will of the cultivation world is tested when, in the span of a single cultivation conference, A Qing manages to temporarily pickpocket Zidian and Chenqing and then, to distract people when she’s accused of this at the banquet, to thoroughly embarrass Jin Ling by snogging a shocked-immobile Ouyang Zizhen. Who subsequently cries, because that, as he bleats to anyone who will listen, was his first kiss!

While they’re dealing with the consequences of this (namely mopping boy-tears, the rogue A Qing slipping away without priceless spiritual tools, but with price-ful silverware and a chunk of Jin Ling’s ever-shaky dignity), Wei Wuxian tentatively glances over at his shidi.

“f*ck that guy,” he mutters loud enough to Jiang Wanyin to hear (having decided that, in cases such as these, ‘that guy’ is a gender-neutral term).

“Yeah,” Jiang Wanyin takes up with enthusiasm, “yeah, f*ck that guy!”

Wei Wuxian dusts off his signature shijie special: a lecture he likes to call 'someone can have a big dick, and still not be worth your time’. It will, of course, need to be adapted for this new demographic; he's working on it.

He even asks Jiang Wanyin for advice! Granted the request is not ‘oh shidi, you’ve become such an accomplished sect leader and cultivator in my absence, whom I can only respect—please teach me your ways and allow me to be your loyal office assistant’ (more along the lines of, ‘Jiang Cheng, you once liked a woman. What do people go in for, with women? I tried brainstorming this with my husband, but he was just useless—’), but it’s a start. It’s all highly promising, even if Jiang Cheng also does not know what Wei Wuxian should replace the ‘big dick’ part of the argument with; there does not seem to be a direct analogue.

Chapter 10: Three Ways With Sex Pollen (Wangxian)

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Funny and/or emotionally compromising Wangxian sex pollen fic, set during:

- the Cloud Recesses training year

- the ‘Sunshot to Burial Mounds settlement’ span

- the hunt for Nie Mingjue’s body, or

- the post-canon, pre-marriage period.

Some Options:

1. Sex pollen as a Wen weapon of war.

2. Sex pollen only affects people without strong cultivation. Lan Wangji shrugs it off, while a coreless Wei Wuxian is a mess struggling to pretend he’s fine.

- Lan Wangji can meditate and use his core to clear his qi, but Wei Wuxian cannot. Thus Lan Wangji catches him trying to sneak out of the inn that night to seek some professional help or a friendly stranger, and is livid that even in this situation, Wei Wuxian won’t seek his aid.

3. The reverse: sex pollen uniquely affects people with a golden core. Lan Wangji, with his famously strong cultivation, is absolutely wrecked. He believes Wei Wuxian is equally affected, and secretly, some part of Lan Wangji is deeply pleased to have this excuse for them to make love.

- The danger level on the sex pollen can vary to taste. A coreless Wei Wuxian offers relief (in part in order to keep the loss of his core a secret), but feels incredibly guilty for taking advantage of Lan Wangji under false pretences.

- Wei Wuxian instead refuses to sleep Lan Wangji because the other man is heavily drugged and he isn’t. He likewise refuses to explain himself, but suggests that Lan Wangji should bear this alone, or offers to find him a different companion. Lan Wangji is crushed. Despite their both being, as Lan Wangji believes, deeply affected by the pollen, Wei Wuxian is resisting him like it’s nothing. He’d no idea of the depths of Wei Wuxian’s distaste for him.

- Not being affected himself, Wei Wuxian can’t really judge how severe the pollen’s influence is. Given that Lan Wangji is so perpetually inscrutable he doesn’t have much to work with, and thus wildly oversells his own performance. Lan Wangji surmises that Wei Wuxian is trying to use this as an excuse to enable the two of them to be together. This is sweet, but ridiculous.

Obviously Wei Wuxian having his core circa the Cloud Recesses training arc, or Lan Wangji knowing about Wei Wuxian’s missing or imperfectly-restored core, could yield fics with a variety of different pining tensions.

Chapter 11: Putting the Papa in Papapa (Wangxian)

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When he was young, Lan Wangji had given little thought to his father. He'd never had any emotional connection to Lan Haozhi as a person. It was the ever-vacant space the man might have taken up in his life—which Lan Wangji’s uncle had never made an attempt to claim, and which Lan Xichen had been too young to fully occupy—that had sometimes pained A Zhan in his childhood. Which occasionally ached still, like the joint of a lopped-off limb did when the rain came.

Lan Wangji had never wanted his father: he’d wanted a better one. Someone attentive, simply present, who wished to be so. Someone who would care about and for him, who would cherish his safety. Someone willing to bear responsibility. Someone to protect him—though Lan Wangji knew that the world could be cruel, and did not always align itself so as to honour the depth and truth of a person’s goodwill. If the world had respected devout wishes Lan Wangji knew that his mother would have stayed in it, to guard and to guide him.

Something sparked in him when he met Wei Wuxian. The other boy’s attention, his affection, his humour—so much about him stoked a strange, new hunger in Lan Wangji.Wei Wuxian moulded what it was that Lan Wangji needed, carving out a space for himself in Lan Wangji after his own shape.

“Call me gege,” Wei Wuxian had needled and teased, meaning little by it. But Lan Wangji had found he wanted to.

The course of their lives afterwards had only piled kindling and fodder onto the low-burning but strong, steady fire of Lan Wangji's longing. Lan Wangji watched Wei Wuxian give all of himself to A Yuan. He watched him love the child in adversity, and kill to avenge him. It did not matter to Lan Wangji that his beloved had ultimately failed to protect his people: it mattered that he'd tried so hard to do so. And Wei Wuxian had been so powerful that only he could destroy himself, in the end.

Now that they have been united in marriage, Lan Wangji watches Wei Wuxian parenting their son with a tender hunger. The way Wei Wuxian shepherds their juniors along—laughing, but careful, and peerlessly dedicated—warms Lan Wangji through.

Of course it would have been wrong, at such a time and in such circ*mstances, but what would Lan Wangji have given, when he was these juniors' age—when he'd been his awkward, teenage-self—to be at the receiving end of all Wei Wuxian’s charm? To have before him all of unorthodox, dazzling Wei Wuxian’s knowledge, his born-out reputation for excellence, his easy authority? His bedrock reliability. His care.

'The only thing I truly knew as a youth,' Lan Wangji muses to himself, 'was how to impress adults. If Wei Wuxian, as he is now, had supervised me on a night hunt such as this, I expect I would have excelled myself to secure his approval. I imagine I would have done anything, that gege might look at me. Might choose and keep me.'

At times people have taken Wei Wuxian's capacity for lightness and his willingness to yield in small things to mean that he will not prove inflexible where he is certain. At times, people have taken his willingness to serve—his strength in this respect—as evidence that he cannot himself command.

Lan Wangji has seen Wei Wuxian dance a thousand dead men into battle. Lan Wangji has seen Wei Wuxian raise a dear and perfect son on scant, half-rotten food, on dirt, on his own heart's blood. Lan Wangji has always understood Wei Wuxian in the fullness of his complexity, where the world has sometimes failed to.

When the children have dispersed on his instructions, Wei Wuxian nudges his husband with his shoulder.

"Lan Zhan," he half-sings, "whatever are you thinking of?” Attentive to Lan Wangji's silence, as he often is.

“That I should like to have been in your charge, as the children are,” Lan Wangji replies, levelling his husband with a frank look.

Honesty with both himself and Wei Wuxian has not always come easily to Lan Wangji. But he has had almost two decades to learn both the necessity and the trick of it. Lan Wangji wants his husband in several ways, for many reasons. Now that they are wed he tells Wei Wuxian each one, as he works them out himself. This setting and this night have given form to things Lan Wangji hitherto but nebulously knew.

Wei Wuxian blinks, taking this in. A lazy smile stretches across his mouth.

“Would you have been good for me, Lan Zhan?”

“I would have been the best,” Lan Wangji answers him, without exaggeration. “For you.”

We Wuxian bites his lip, then releases it.

“We’re not leading a group tomorrow, you know.”

“I do,” Lan Wangji concurs. This is in fact why Lan Wangji has chosen this moment to speak: to give Wei Wuxian time to consider Lan Wangji's somewhat unusual request to be permitted to love his husband in a new manner.

“Gonna call me gege again?” Wei Wuxian teases with a smile, toying with Chenqing in the way he unconsciously does when roused. It always strikes Lan Wangji as outright filthy. He dislikes others so much as seeing this, even though he knows they can have little idea what it portends. He suspects that even Wei Wuxian himself has hardly picked up on his own tick.

“And whatever else you might like,” Lan Wangji says, giving his husband permission to toy with the idea in its fullness. Shixiong, shizun, xiongzhang, a die. Anything, so long as it is another word for Wei Ying.

He reaches for Wei Wuxian, who, without looking at him, takes Lan Wangji's hand in his own and gives it a firm squeeze.

“We’re on duty,” Wei Wuxian reminds him, with the automatic responsibility he’s carried, worn under his levity, since he was Jiang’s first disciple.

Lan Wangji has always found it very attractive.

“I’ll f*ck you back at the inn,” Wei Wuxian promises, his eyes still scanning the tree line for signal flares from their charges. “You seem to be in the mood for that.” His lip curls in amusem*nt.

Lan Wangji wants everything, and he wants Wei Wuxian to provide it. This will do for now. And tomorrow—

“Yes, gege,” Lan Wangji says—very primly, to make his husband laugh.

Chapter 12: Some Ways with Dark Lan Wangji (Wangxian)

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I find a lot of campy Dark Lan Wangji fic viscerally compelling, but it strikes me as odd how these fics often depict Lan Wangji’s thought process as over-simplified and ropey in order to accommodate their premises. Someone very intelligent, rational and morally fixated like Lan Wangji might well hyper-justify his own actions (with more than just a pious veneer of the local equivalent of ‘because Jesus said so’). People naturally justify themselves all the time: you can be intelligent and awful. It’s possible that the reader (for an initial period of suspense) and other characters within the fic would find a dark Lan Wangji’s choices reasonable and defensible. The justifications might well be watertight, because the first person Lan Wangji has to convince is himself.

This, I think, applies not just to fun, campy Dark Lan Wangji fics, but also to fics that work with the afterimages of Lan Wangji’s various traumas as they might play out and aren’t primarily interested in extending pity. Such sympathy can, at times, be woobifying, evacuating the character of specificity and agency. I’m thinking, also, about social historians describing criminal East End London 19^th c slum dwellers as the poor who fought back. The forces that made these people indigent were socially considered non-criminal, for all they were ethically repulsive. Resisting that power, even in small ways, was constructed as criminal. We might conceptualise noncompliance and outright resistance in the face of discipline and trauma as ‘criminal’, in this sense: a refusal to be the Good Victim. There are, I suspect, some productive ‘dark’ characterisations and stories hidden in the folds of this fabric, which we might find if we smoothed it. MDZS itself is interested in this question, and begins to stage it with Lan Wangji’s Burial Mounds insurrection against the Lan elders.

A Dark Lan Wangji wouldn’t necessarily need to believe his actions were moral, either. He might believe, rightly or wrongly, that the world or specific parties therein owe him compensation. He could be disenchanted, or believe that the ultimate outcomes of bad actions would be good.

Generally, I like to see Dark Lan Wangji stories give me evidence of a mind at work rather than relying on a sort of caveman/‘dick with legs’ version of the character (a characterisation which is, admittedly, a sound enabling short cut for some plots, and/or a source of eroticism in its own right for some readers), because I can no longer see Lan Wangji himself in that—and he is, of course, half the reason I’m here.

A few potential story sites:

- Deeply, all-in facilitating Wei Wuxian’s demonic cultivation during the Sunshot campaign. This cultivation is possibly physically bad for Wei Wuxian, and certainly psychologically so. Moreover, it’s something Lan Wangji may understand that Wei Wuxian will come to regret when time’s passed and he’s thinking more clearly. Wei Wuxian will eventually also feel guilty for having dragged Lan Wangji into a position of complicity with what he’s doing by virtue of their friendship. With very little further compromise to his idea of himself, Lan Wangji could allow Wei Wuxian to decide for himself how much he owes Lan Wangji in exchange for Lan Wangji’s having sullied himself and worked so hard for him.

- Sometimes you’ll meet a couple consisting of one lovely and one awful person. You’ll wonder how the hell they’re a thing, or if it’s a safe situation for the Nice partner. It’s not necessarily an abuse dynamic: sometimes a couple like that is a unit, absolutely in sync in private life and enabling one another to get what they want. The Yiling Patriarch does things Hanguangjun can’t, and there’s room to explore there.

- The two of them could collectively go down a ‘Lan Yi was right'road: ‘look what happens again and again in the cultivation world, with the Xue, the Wen, the Jin. Lan Yi didn't have anyone to check and support her, because Baoshan Sanren bowed out and ran away from both her partner and what needed to be done.’ Together, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji could repair their grandmothers’ mistakes.

I think this is a really scant treatment of the many fruitful things you could do with those character notes, but the whole purpose of this collection is to clear out the Scrivener file, not add to it! So rather than pushing on with this not-quite-my-narrative-area-of-expertise listicle, I’ll leave it there.

Chapter 13: 2020 Untamed Kink Meme Prompts

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Unclaimed Kink Meme Prompts

- Especially Good at Expectorating

With Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang on board, the Yin Iron Boys' Road Trip turns into a series of irritatingly butch competitions, designed so that Lan Wangji actually loses at something for once in his life. He cannot and will not 'spit furthest'. However it turns out he is truly amazing at Gay Chicken. And Wei Wuxian is a *very* competitive person.

It's okay to say 'I want to spend the rest of my life with you' if you follow it up with 'no hom*o'.

- The Gentlemanly Tarts

A crack team of NH, LWJ and WWX must SWEEP a poetry competition for plot reasons. They have to take the top 3 spots, but the competition for who will be which becomes brutal. The tie breaker spontaneous poetry rap battle is blistering. Maybe they have to form a pub quiz style team for it, and WWX is banned from choosing the name after suggesting The Gentlemanly Tarts.

BONUS FOR LAYING DOWN SOME CHINESE HISTORICAL POETRY KNOWLEDGE.

This prompt brought to you by That One Avatar Short and the stuff in Murasaki's diaries about occasional Heian Japanese court poetry.

- Remarital Rites

Jiang sect refuses to recognise the marriage of the Chief Cultivator and the Yiling Patriarch as legal in all formal circ*mstances, because Jiang Cheng was not invited. Wangxian are eventually forced to throw entire second/first formal wedding to placate the Jiang Clan, who keep telling people their reinstated senior disciple Wei Wuxian is Single, possibly ready to Mingle. (LWJ is Not Pleased.)

- Wei Wuxian: Disney Princess (Hunchback of Notre Dame fusion)

If Wei Wuxian were a Disney Princess, he’d be Esmerelda. Unfortunately LWJ is not the hot cop who learns not to be a cop, he’s the Frollo. Look at the repression. Look at the weird secret refugee child. Look at the desire to keep child and desire-object in a box. The hair ribbon fondling. The religious associations. The Chief Cultivator/Justice energies.

He has the hottest song, and we all know it. Hot Cop doesn’t even sing. Dark Fire, baby.

-13 going on 30

It doesn't fully hit LWJ how much WWX has grown up until burial mounds!WWX f*cks up an experiment and is briefly replaced with his school-age self. Luckily, LWJ is lurking nearby, supposedly night-hunting, actually checking up on WWX.

LWJ quickly figures out what's happened. WWX is thrilled LWJ is paying so much attention to him, and very vocal about that. (LWJ wants to invent the phonograph right then and there to record that forever.) WWX is also very eager to tell LWJ everything--they’re zhijis, after all! But er, can LWJ explain what’s happened with his core?

Wen Qing also says WWX’s WIPs were Extremely Important--and they certainly are bubbling away pretty fiercely. Unfortunately WWX now has no idea what they were. He and LWJ have to figure out how demonic cultivation works from his confusing, impressive notes very, very quickly.

- Fortunate Sons

The cultivation world has its eligible bachelors list, but the Matchmaker/Fortune Teller industry does a similar casting forecast for all the principal cultivators based on their birth dates, hours, etc.

They may or may not even have met yet, but fortune telling’s exemplar, the pride of the industry, is the amazing astrological compatibility of Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian (who may or may not believe in this stuff).

Matchmakers are furious these two aren’t yet engaged--what a waste! Driven to extreme frustration by this perversion of their craft, the Aunties get wasted at the astrology conference and vow to make it happen, enlisting the aid of long time patron and lifetime troll Nie Huaisang.

(I'd prefer if the fic wasn't a big 'f*ck uuu' to the matchmaking/fortune telling/destiny conceit? like, we get it, you don't believe in DESTINY!!/you're not Calvinist, cool story bro--)

- Box of Twinkies

Whether or not they chose to do so, Meng Yao, WWX and Xue Yang must compete in a Best Twink competition. (Nie Huaisang may well be involved/mad he is not.)

- Iomanthe

Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe features a guy whose mom is a fairy so she looks like 20 forever. Someone sees him meeting his scantily-clad fairy mom in the park and assumes he's picking up a prostitute, which pisses his fiance right off.

Sizhui's dad has not aged while dead, and/or has been reincarnated in a body roughly Sizhui’s own age. You can see how people would get confused. (In the light opera the protagonist's dad is a bit of an equal-opportunity 'Highly Susceptible' hottie fancier, but LWJ would of course be a Not Even Slightly Susceptible (unless your name rhymes with 'fey bing') chief cultivator.)

- Miss Baltimore Crabs/Stygian Tiger Mother

Since adopting a son, WWX has gone from twink to MILF (self-identified). He’s managed to get little Sizhui into the same exclusive, pre-k to secondary school he very nearly got kicked out of on multiple occasions, and when the science fair comes around, the most innovative modern cultivator of his generation is determined to ensure his little radish takes home gold. That will show everyone who thinks he and Sizhui aren’t good enough for this place!

Crazed with feral show mom energy, WWX will work his ass off to win fairly (to the extent a parent enormously helping is ‘fairly’). But he’s not above screwing the judges!

Cloud Recesses school principal Lan Wangji, who has known and wanted Wei Wuxian since they were going to school here themselves, also answers to ‘judges’. He would like to point out that WWX’s sweet, clever son, cared-for and carefully, wonderfully-educated by his doting father, is very likely to surpass all the other students even if WWX doesn’t lift a finger to help. He would really like to just observe here that there is not, in fact, a gold medal *to be won*. He is very into PTA Monster Yummy Mummy WWX. He is very, very tired.

- High Society

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji got married very young, at 18 or some such, and divorced not long after due to miscommunication drama. WWX believes LWJ hates him now and wants nothing to do with him. LWJ’s constantly thinking ‘feel like pure sh*t just want her back--’

A few years later, for Wen Bullsh*t Political Reasons, WWX is planning to have a lavender wedding with Wen Qing. It’s pure ‘green card’ stuff: Wen Qing needs leave to remain because she’s in trouble with the government back him, and WWX, high on mlm wlw solidarity, refuses to let anything bad happen to her.

‘Never thought I'd die fighting side by side with a twink.'
‘How about an annoying guy you know?'
"f*ck you Wei Wuxian, we're friends." (Wei Wuxian clutches his heart in pure untheatrical shock.)

They tell everyone it’s real, that they’re adopting a-Yuan (or that he’s their child out of wedlock).

LWJ knows about the impending wedding (though he doesn’t know what’s really up) and moves back to his house: right next door. He could actually be pro-active for once, determined to subtly convince WWX he’s still the man for the spousal job. (Has he even properly filed the divorce papers, or would he ‘ ‘ ‘ forget ‘ ‘ ‘? He has for sure not changed his will, or he's updated it after the divorce and his estate still goes to Wei Wuxian. He's a 'still wearing his wedding ring' kinda guy.)

(Lan Xichen figures it out because of some sh*t Meng Yao told him about how there's not like a warrant out for Wen Qing, per se, but it's Understood, very ‘aha, try the airport, see what happens’. He's gently hinting to LWJ that objects in the mirror are gayer than they appear.)

(In High Society, there was a Frank Sinatra shaped person to Tempt the WWX shaped person, but he was ancillary to that plot anyway and honestly WWX would probably just be like ‘oh sorry, I wasn't paying attention, I saw Lan Zhan gardening this morning and that was me gone for the day.’ 'It was 3pm.' ‘Yeah, this morning.’)

It’s a good prompt to take you from scrambly TOO MANY FEELINGS teen Lan Zhan to adult daddy powers Lan Zhan, who has levelled up in confidence, determination and smoothness. Maybe wwx does refugee crisis humanitarian work now, while lwj has grown into the baddest bitch human rights lawyer whose hobbies include traditional music and respectfully jacking it to his old wedding video. (Too Pavlovian trained, can’t come now without hearing a wibbly ‘oh, Lan Zhan—'. If you’re not looking at the face of a smiling, crying Wei Ying when you climax, is it even sex? Unclear.)

Claimed Kink Meme Prompts

- Lan Wangji's Accomplishments

A gay Regency AU where no one can shut up about Lan Wangji’s Accomplishments. At any given moment, Wei Wuxian is one lucky card game away from buying a racehorse and naming it Lan Wangji’s Accomplishments.

Wei Wuxian may *well* have tried to wrest back control over the gossip Discourse by getting and racing a really sh*t Lil Apple pony that CANNOT win and going like WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS NOW???. If he did, Lan Wangji would not give Mr. Wei the satisfaction, and would deadpan be like 'what a horse, you truly have an Eye for these things Mr. Wei, w o w.'

This prompt brought to you by the bachelor list and the fact that Lan Xichen has Elinor Dashwood energy, but Lan Wangji unnervingly combines Marianne Dashwood energy with Big Darcy Energy. You think he’s not the Marianne, but only because your mind is limited by gender and him trying not to be the Marianne just real f*cking badly. He *wants* to cultivate Colonel Brandon energy, but Colonel Brandon would never steal a chicken.

Fill: Come to Gusu

- Yiling Faketriarch

There are scores of crappy fake WWX disciples selling talismans, so how can we be SURE LWJ never had truly regrettable drunk sex with someone in a WWX costume who was just like 'yeah, sure strange hot man, call me whatever’?

LWJ tries to confess tearfully, like 'baby, while you were dead--STOP LAUGHING THIS IS MY DEEPEST SHAME!!'

Spare him from actually losing his virginity to a terrible cosplayer if you like, go dark, have him do it intentionally and serially--anything is fun.

Fill: Vega Threads her Loom in Vain

- Threatened With a Pleasant Time

Something horrible has happened! Lan Xichen and Jiang Yanli have realised they’d make for a GREAT arranged marriage, and will just have chill peaceful lives together.

Possibly, Previously On:

In a fight with Lan Qiren, Lan Wangji announced he was NEVER going to marry and produce an heir. Lan Qiren asked Lan Xichen if he was being serious. Lan Xichen was like 'um. Yes?'

After this, Lan Xichen had a Think about the future of the clan. A marital alliance with Jiang might not only produce an heir, it could shore up embattled Jiang, counter Jin's ambitions, and might, given some time and support from Jiang and Lan, ease the Wen remnant/exiled WWX crisis. (Thus keeping Wangji from Not Crying, But Wishing To Cry all the time.)

Maybe Yanli went to Yiling with Jiang Cheng to sort this, nixed the proposed stabbing ‘solution’, failed to see the lotus pond of feelings, and when Xichen wrote her like ‘dear Maiden Jiang, possible ideas?? How do you feel about this?’, she was receptive.

Not even Jin ‘over-invested in Lan Xichen’ Guangyao is interested in stopping this, because he suspects Jiang Yanli would absolutely be chill with a side arrangement. So it’s Jin Zixuan who’s having a melt down, like ‘WWX YOU HAVE TO HELP ME SAVE YOUR SISTER FROM A RESPECTFUL YET LOVELESS MARRIAGE!!’

WWX is full-on ‘Well, well, wellllllllllllllllll. Who would have thought? Not me!'

Zixuan has to convince WWX that he is a better choice for Yanli than the NICEST, prettiest man in the cultivation world. WWX observes that this political match is occurring in part because Jin Terribledad really wants his amulet. If Jin Zixuan really cares, he’ll have to get his dad to be WAY less overweening, ensure the protection of the Wen remnants so that WWX can publicly destroy the amulet, expose his own sect's bullsh*t and make it worth the while of the people he’ll need to help him--

But that’s only part of the equation. What about the heir affair?

Jin Zixuan sees WWX dadding it up and has his first ever thought. ‘If Wangji--marries--then Heir, then Xichen free to actually marry my creepy brother, then creepy brother help, then profit for Zixuan????’

There is but one lever to lean on. "Brother. Gege, me old chum. Yanli is so nice. She's so NICE. Xichen--he likes NICE people. He doesn't love Yanli now! But he might COME TO. Iiiii didn't like her at first! But that’s the thing! She wears on you--"

(Any of this, I'm not fussy, it's just Idea Orphanage Hours.)

Fill: Jin Zixuan Vrs. Consequences

- Tossing Flowers

There's a scene in the novel&audio (https://modao-zushi.fandom.com/wiki/Tossing_Flowers) where wwx is f*cking with lwj by having some spirits he's controlling (who look like regular hot chicks) come up to lwj in the street and flirt with him/give him flowers. lwj follows them up to wwx's weird bower to be like 'I see you are summoning ghosts recreationally now'/give his Consider Gusu! travel agent speech, but honestly wwx is lucky lwj didn't call him on it like '...sure hot chicks who totally aren't spirits controlled by&connected to wwx. sure. let's f*ck. why. not.'/'oh I really could not tell they were ghosts. gosh.'

wwx could be like 'oh, it's so--funny, I'll um, 'play along' or like 'surprise lwj it's just me!! oh you seem mad, I guess I disappointed you and owe you now--'.

Emotionally involving sex via/involving/initiated by non-sentient residual spirit energies (maybe wwx has to REALLY work to control it all/feels EVERYTHING). LWJ knows exactly what's up&is possibly working to a Plan.

Fill: Blossoms of Yunmeng

Chapter 14: And That's How Regina George Died./No, I'm totally kidding. (Wangxian)

Chapter Text

The mirror of a passing bus clips Wei Wuxian outside his school building. Lan Wangji, who saw the whole thing, brings his unconscious classmate to the hospital (possibly the bridal-carry was excessive: he wasn’t thinking very clearly at the time). Wei Wuxian is fine, overall, but has suffered a mild concussion and some memory loss. When he wakes, he finds Lan Wangji curled up sleeping in the chair beside his bed. After the doctors have checked Wei Wuxian over and explained the situation, he thanks Lan Wangji for getting help and asks if they know one another—unfortunately, he can’t remember.

Before he can stop himself, Lan Wangji, for perhaps the first time in his life, radically distorts the truth. He’s been assigned to supervise Wei Wuxian’s detention sessions this semester, and has spent each one crushed under the weight of an agonising infatuation like this is The Crucible. However he tells Wei Wuxian that over the course of the past months the two of them have become best friends who enjoy and are constantly in one another’s company. It’s so sad that Wei Wuxian has forgotten!

Lan Wangji never never actually lies: they have indeed spent every day this month together (in class, after school activities and detention). A part of Lan Wangji is horrified with himself; the part that proved more irrepressible viewed this problem as a golden opportunity to get close to Wei Wuxian in disguise.

Wei Wuxian takes this in stride, letting his senior bring his homework to his house, spending hours on the phone with him every evening while they work or relax, and being exceptionally confiding and affectionate when he returns to school. Eventually a deeply guilty Lan Wangji confesses everything to Wei Wuxian, who finds Lan Wangji’s conviction that he’s a sinner hilarious and is charmed by the world’s dumbest scam. He admits that after a week or so he actually remembered the past months perfectly, and assumed Lan Wangji had just been telling the truth from his (admittedly really surprising) point of view. Wei Wuxian had been touched, and now he’s even more touched by the weak, weak sauce of Lan Wangji’s Machinations.

“‘Oh but Wei Ying, you already agreed to have a study session with me!' Lan Zhan this is like, the least sinister dubcon I can f*cking—and then you went and told me anyway!”

They end up dating, but it takes another several months because Lan Wangji thought even the regular study sessions were a very bold move on his part.

Chapter 15: Buffy Plots as Untamed Fic

Chapter Text

- Normal Again: circa the Burial Mounds settlement arc, a curse hits Wei Wuxian right in the ’sublimated discontent with his whole life at present/longing for the security and belonging of he associates with a normal life/troubled relationship with his own extraordinary talent’. Seemingly flitting between universes, Wei Wuxian comes to believe that really, he’s a farmer in a mundane, magic-less universe (possibly this is his incense burner fantasy, avec house husband Lan Wangji). Maybe his natal and adoptive parents are all alive in what he believes to be the ‘real world’, or at least died peaceably; his sect-siblings are also still alive. Of course like Buffy, a Wei Wuxian who’s being told that he needs to destroy his dream-world is incredibly dangerous.

- Older and Far Away: instead of Dawn trapping everyone in the family home during Buffy's birthday party, a post-canon Sizhui, who’s sick of people leaving and dying, curses his eternally-slinking-off Xian-ge, his depressed-about-it father, and his even more depressed uncles to stick around and Be Family for f*cking once. It could be a bad decision on Sizhui’s part, an unintentional curse, something that takes advantage of Sizhui’s uniquely strong magic and trauma (and possibly his denial—he may have smiled and told Xian-ge that of course it’s fine if he goes travelling again, and thought he meant it), or an accidental externality of he and the other juniors’ wishes and powers. Jin Ling, for example, is also pretty vulnerable to wanting reparative, cloying closeness while being deeply in denial about that.

- Where the Wild Things Are: substitute in your preferred medievalism for ‘frat house’; bonus complete absence of Riley. A cursed sex pollen building entraps Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian, possibly during the Sunshot campaign (or a similar period of tension).

- Something Blue: as a result of something like this episode’s shenanigans, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji wind up engaged during the Cloud Recesses training arc. After the curse fades, Wei Wuxian, embarrassed, tries to laugh the whole thing off. Lan Wangji is not a teenaged boy to be ‘laughed off’: engagements are for life, not just for Qixi.

-Tabula Rasa: but at the Guanyin Temple.

- Once More, with Feeling: This was mongrelmind’s idea initially!

For roughly fifteen minutes, the Lan Clan is smug about their IMMENSE natural advantage here. But once they realise they will have to sing about Feelings, both the horror and the silence spells set in. Hoist by their own petards, they are no longer even a little smug. Suddenly, they are very, very interested in breaking this curse.

This is especially true once they realise that applying silence spells is not a tenable medium-term solution. Such blockages increase the threat of qi deviation from the curse. Further, a strong, developed qi is its own source of risk, in this. Every Lan elder and main line family member starts looking at seclusion like it’s real tasty.

Jingyi is frustrated by always ending up a backup dancer. Zizhen, who is eating this sh*t up, advises him just to go with it. Jin Ling thinks they are both lucky not to have trauma powerful enough to instigate a musical number. He himself (the Dawn) has twice opened his mouth to siiiiiii—only to be immediately kidnapped.

Jiang Cheng sniffs the air, sensing—drama. He is pulled East—but why?

Wei Wuxian, wielding a series of pop numbers, sexy beats and joke songs, is an absolute expert at fending off dramatic power ballads. Everyone wants to know how he’s manipulating the spell so masterfully: years of emotional repression and deflection, baby. Learn him.

Chapter 16: The Luckiest (Wangxian)

Chapter Text

Shanghai, 1930s

Lan Wangji is descended from an order of semi-monastic Miraculous keepers. He and his brother, sons of the main line, have trained their whole lives to be either guardians or wielders. At fifteen, Lan Wangji barely manages to defeat his older brother for the privilege of bonding with one of the two most powerful kwamis: the black cat.

Wangji won the spar to determine this by, in the heat of the moment, disarming Xichen in a way that a more collected Wangji feels was dishonourable. He attempts to give the black cat to his brother, but Xichen demurs. In battle, Wangji responded exactly as he needed to in order to win. That is the level of responsiveness and aggressive acuity that wielding demands: Wangji simply wanted it more. Besides, the kwami is its own master, and it called the match. It’s chosen him. Xichen himself is content to primarily act as a guardian, wielding in the field only when a true and specific need arises.

Other sects have characterised the black cat as a force of chaos, but Lan has never seen their charge that way. The black cat is a destructive force, certainly, but it is directly ranged against the over-lush fecundity of the luck or creative Miraculous. Luck and creation cannot exist without misfortune and destruction. The black cat offers structure and stasis, limitation and co-constitutive support.

Wielders’ personalities determine both the costumes they assume in the field and their relationships with their kwamis. The kwamis have adapted themselves, since they entered into relationships with humanity at all, to communicate with wielders from vastly different times and cultures, who’ve spoken all manner of languages. The kwamis’ immortal essences are the same; the vessels they’re poured into alter. Another isolated boy who longed for companionship might have thought to give his ‘black cat’ a little bell, as though it were a pet, or like he himself was asking for affection; this boy is incapable, even subconsciously, of extending that kind of whimsical grace to himself.

Lan Wangji is pleased when the costume that responds to his readiness is perhaps a touch too luxuriant, if examined up close, but faultlessly mature. He is relieved. It would have been horrible to have exposed himself before his elders and the whole city as unworthy of this office. How could people have confidence in him, then? His very appearance ought to be reassuring.

Lan Wangji is more eager than he can admit to himself to meet his counterpart. The piáo chóng Miraculous is always fundamentally linked with his own. Their wielders share the close affinity of comrades, but they often prove more deeply connected—the yuanfen that’s brought them together in these roles lending itself to multiple manifestations. Some believe these two wielders are almost always soulmates.

Lan Wangji has never voiced an opinion on the issue out loud. He has never, even to himself, admitted that this was why he had to beat Xichen out for the role, by any means necessary. Xichen is a popular university student, who has quite a few intimate friends. What would he do with a single, destined partner? But Wangji craves one—an answer to the loneliness the unfortunate circ*mstances of his birth and the rigour of his calling have thrust upon him. Someone who understands him.

Which is why the initial joint battle is such an outright disaster, and leaves Lan Wangji furious enough to cry. The hermit guardian Baoshan Sanren was supposed to choose a truly worthy soul, as per usual. And maybe she did (though it seems really unlikely, from where Wangji is standing). But she appears to have had no time to train her candidate, at all. Where did she find this clueless boy, who doesn’t take the role seriously and who, worse still, makes the both of them look foolish in public? Doesn’t he understand how important it is that Shanghai looks to the two of them and feels a sense of security? What on earth is that loud, too-flashy, too-tight costume supposed to tell people—that they can get it here?

A ladybug-wielder is different each time, but they are always chosen for their ability to handle the oldest kwami’s demanding power-set and immense potential. A ladybug is defined by a strong mind and a stronger heart, that sets itself against all evil. Is this assignment a joke to the venerated immortal? Is Lan Wangji one? This bumbling, laughing idiot is supposed to be his partner?

And then, within a day, in the wake of the total failure of their first battle, the new ladybug wielder comes up with a plan Lan Wangji could never have thought of. He swings himself over Shanghai’s new, towering buildings like he’s afraid of nothing, like he was born to fly. He saves the city and acts like it was easy, and he only staggers and lets the blood show when people have stopped looking at him. He is unserious; he makes the citizens feel like the danger must be equally so. Piáo Chóng laughs, and the people he’s protecting gather their courage and laugh with him. The new ladybug tells his black cat where to go and what to do to support him, and Lan Wangji does it readily, anticipating the commands, because he understands now that Baoshan Sanren has not chosen a hundred and a hundred ladybugs to fail now. It could never have been anyone else, and Lan Wangji is, already, hopelessly in love with someone whose very existence teaches him new ways of being resourceful and kind.

Now that his little brother is actually wielding a Miraculous rather than in constant training for the role, Lan Xichen insists on enrolling Wangji in Shanghai’s fanciest preparatory school. It’ll be good for him to make friends! Wangji makes Head Boy within the year, while contending with a clever, irresponsible, obnoxious junior called Wei Wuxian, a scholarship boy who simply will not leave him alone.

Admittedly this Wei Wuxian—isn’t an uninteresting person. Lan Wangji is, eventually, very glad of his friendship; Wei Wuxian reminds Lan Wangji, at times, of the most important person in his life. But Lan Wangji is preoccupied with wishing said ladybug would give him the time of day. Who is this ‘handsome classmate’ Piáo Chóng won’t stop talking about? Can he catch Piáo Chóng in mid-air during a battle and manage the tucked roll that gets them to the ground without broken bones? Lan Wangji thinks not!

Years later, Wei Wuxian is considered a calamitously failed wielder. Piáo Chóng declared the traditionalists’ refusal to actively involve themselves in worldly affairs morally irresponsible. He attempted to use his powers for political ends, which had been forbidden for a millennium. After all, the families controlling the kwamis are, as a rule, respected and powerful; they generally benefit from structures remaining as they are, and do not consider it ‘political’ to shore up existing regimes with their aid. The Immortal Baoshan Sanren was an old, old exception to the rule.

When they came to exact justice for Wei Wuxian’s having violated a code he had never agreed to, and did not believe in, Wei Wuxian faced down the full cohort of his peers. He nearly died for his convictions: almost everyone believes he did, and thinks the ladybug Miraculous itself lost or destroyed.

Lan Wangji, who failed to protect him, still holds and uses the black cat Miraculous. There was, initially, talk of stripping him of his powers. But the black cat kwami is loyal, temperamental, and famously dangerous. It won’t unbond from Lan Wangji until he dies: his detractors would have to face Wangji, the Lan as a whole (who have exacted their own due punishments, and consider the matter settled, now) and the kwami itself. Besides, since Wei Wuxian’s fall Lan Wangji’s usage of his power has been dedicated, and faultlessly decorous. The community of guardians and wielders is therefore, on the whole, happy to overlook Lan Wangji’s past willingness to draw on them in defence of his partner. It was long ago, and Wei Wuxian was, in general, an error best forgotten.

Lan Yuan, Lan Wangji’s adopted son, is like most children: he doesn’t know much about his parents’ pasts. He does know that in a coffin below the house, his baba lies sleeping. His breath rises and falls, the steady motion like that of a water clock—as though something outside his own body is turning the wheel of him. Baba clutches a fractured, gilded representation of a ladybug, and his face is set in a final expression of panic that Lan Yuan’s small hands can’t soothe away. Lan Yuan knows, because A Die has explained it to him very, very carefully, that Baba is a precious secret.

As he grows A Yuan learns—because he sees as much—that A Die is constantly trying to fix both Baba and the cracked gem clenched in his stiff fingers. It’s ironic, in a bitter way, that the office has been left to him. Baba is the one whose mind always offered up the shocking connections that made such things easy—who innovated like he breathed. It was Baba who managed to save an infant A Yuan when a bomb fell near his clan’s shikumen and the fire spread (licking up the plaster walls, running up the stairs and knocking hot holes in the wooden doors): Baba, who was made of miracles.

When he is older, Lan Sizhui, now granted a Miraculous of his own, knows that he will smile at the guardians, and tell them the sort of things they wish to hear. Then, he will do whatever it takes to help A Die bring Baba back. He will even stand against the lot of his peers, if it should come to that—just as Baba himself once did. A Yuan believes in his A Die’s constancy. In his diligent loyalty. In his sharp intellect, which has been dedicated, for the last decade, to methodically whittling down the possibilities ranged before him. Sooner or later, Lan Wangji is going to crack open the seal between Wei Wuxian and the world.

A part of Sizhui even hopes that when Baba returns, he will prove unforgiving; Sizhui knows that A Die still burns with loss, and with quiet hatred of the people who did this. Let Baba come home, then, in red and black and shining, world-changing power. Let the whole city be snapped back, and the wasted years of discontent roll away. The powers of the world should not get to simply decide that miracles are too chaotic—a strain on the system, which they can afford to do without. The comfortable men A Yuan must smile at for the time being should not get to elect to elevate order and death over freedom and life, to satisfy their taste for stasis rather than growth. And they won’t get away with any of it; not when Piáo Chóng comes home.

Chapter 17: Treading a Circle (Gormenghast Fusions Walking Peake's Orientalism Right Back 'Round)

Chapter Text

1. Wei Wuxian was Lan Wangji’s foster brother, and was, by right of his ancestral privileges as milk-mate to the young Count, allowed to attend school in the castle with the well-born boys. One hot dull day, Wei Wuxian slipped out the schoolroom window, leaping nimbly to the tree in the courtyard and shimmying down to the ground.

“f*ck the Lore,” Wei Wuxian called back to his whistling classmates, absolutely unthinkably. “And f*ck Gormenghast, too!”

With that, Wei Ying (henceforth Wei Thing) disappeared into the forest. He did not return to recant his blasphemies, or to do anything else. Their teacher, a Lan Elder by the unfortunate name of Bellgrove, slept on, and when the man woke he did not even notice that he was down a pupil.

All this came as a great shock to Lan Wangji. Had it not been perfectly understood that Wei Wuxian would be his Countess when the two of them were grown?

Lan Wangji stomped off to visit his older brother, and nearly smashed into the Master of Ritual’s assistant en route. Jin Guangyao’s smiled in that ‘I am thinking about poisoning you right now; how is your aunt?’ way of his and bowed to his Count, offering apologies as profuse as insincere for this slight inconvenience to the second son of the line—as though he hadn’t just been caught sneaking out of Lan Xichen’s secret room.

Both young men wished, deeply and sincerely, to either garrotte or to get away from one another, whichever came first. Unfortunately for them both, Wangji and Xichen’s uncle, the acting Master of Ritual, wheeled around a corner. Spotting an audience he surged down the hall towards the youths, his cane seeming to function like an extra limb and to drive him on at even faster speeds than conventional ambulation could have afforded him.

“I knew it!” Lan Qiren said when he reached a decorous shouting distance, adjusting his ceremonial volume of Lore under his arm. Lan Qiren was a man who always thought he ‘knew it’, regardless of whatever ‘it’ might be.

“I knew that Wei Wuxian would discredit the Stones—a wild boy! Born of an intense, dangerous passion! Mother too attractive—unseemly! Him, just the same! No respect for the Lore!”

“No, sir,” Jin Guangyao agreed with a simper. It did not endear him to Lan Qiren, who only snarled and smacked his assistant with the (very heavy) scroll in his non-tome hand.

Lan Wangji felt it beneath him to respond. Truly, none of these people understood him, and Xichen’s illicit boyfriend was, frankly, just the f*cking worst. It was up to him to handle this. He would have to slip away to the woods and convince Wei Wuxian to return, or—

The idea came to Lan Wangji, sudden and strange and brilliant. Might they not—might they not run away together?

2. It doesn’t fit, but @mongrelmind is right to suggest that bird-fancier Nie Huaisang is a bit of a Countess Gertrude. Further, he only comes out of himself to defeat the narrative’s Steerpike, whereupon he blossoms. Once the crisis is over, he doesn’t really care anymore and slinks back out of the spotlight for a snooze.

Huaisang is also a fairly good Prunesqullor.

3. ’baby you can drive my car’: a Titus Alone fusion

Wei Wuxian is the Muzzlehatch to Lan Wangji’s Titus. Chenqing as the car, the Wen Remnants as the zoo (I’m sorry, Wen Remnants—for like, so, so many reasons). Wen Qing as Anchor, the only human cool enough to emerge out of the bushes to be like ‘hey girl, I’ll f*ck you later in the narrative’ (and to have Juno just be like ‘damn, wow’ and really go for it).

Truly, this is the kink meme prompt no one was bold enough to request.

4. Lan Xichen runs a second-hand bookshop (it doesn’t break even or anything: Xichen has a trust fund and nothing better to do with it) called Fuchsia’s Attic. This would be outright unbearable, if Xichen weren’t so f*cking nice. Both Lan brothers have an uncomfortably resonant relationship with the Gormenghast series, but only Lan Xichen, Steerpike Apologist, thinks that this is something they should admit to other humans while not under torture.

Lan Xichen has much he ought to be embarrassed about. Wangji cannot decide which his of elder brother’s glaring crimes against literature and/or humanity is worse:

1. the copy of ‘Stuckness in Peake’ Wangji discovered in their shared apartment above the bookstore (in a communal space!), or

2. the DVD of the Rhys Meyers BBC miniseries, which Xichen just lets touch the other DVDs on the shelf rather than hiding it with his p*rnography in an appropriate display of contrite shame (Wangji of course knows where his brother keeps his p*rn stash. Wangji avoids this out of respect, and because he has no personal interest in “TeddyBearTwink 4: This Time It’s Fursonal”, which is, apparently, about hirsute men rather than, as Wangji might have expected, furry fetish—it’s the principle of the thing.)

Wangji looks upon the anti-hero’s ratty face on the DVD cover, more in sorrow than in anger. His brother is a weak man. Couldn’t even fully commit to the furry thing.

Once, in an adolescent fit of irritation and just to f*ck with Xichen, Wangji spent an entire 48 hours maintaining that Titus Alone was ‘the best book in the series’ because Steerpike was not in it. Wangji found that he could not support such a terrible lie for any longer than that.

There is only one man whose takes Lan Wangji trusts: his classmate, Wei Wuxian, who stans Juno, Gertrude, and Prunesquallor. Who is really into Boy in Darkness and the creepy short stories. Whose acuity and taste never cease to amaze Lan Wangji.

“That sheep,” Wei Wuxian pronounces wisely in a conversation occasioned by the shop’s name when he comes over for dinner, “is f*cked up.”

Lan Xichen pauses for a moment to absorb the full impact of this koan.

“Thank you, Wei Wuxian. I can see why Uncle thinks so highly of your insightful comments in English class.”

“Honours English,” Lan Wangji says, helping.

“Yes,” Xichen says with an eye-roll. “Yes, thank you, Wangji. How could I forget that the you two met in honours English?”

How indeed?

Wei Wuxian initially laughs off Lan Wangji’s attempts to solicit his fuller opinions on the text.

“I’ll slide into close reading, Lan Zhan. You’ll get so bored.”

“I will,” Xichen admits cheerfully. “Because you’re a high school kid. No offence. But Wangji absolutely will not.”

“Thank you, Xichen,” Wangji says—and he actually means it. Like the white rook Mr Chalk, his brother has proved himself a commendable wingman. Wangji vows not to tell any of Xichen’s boyfriends about “TeddyBearTwink 4: This Time It’s Fursonal”, ever again.

Chapter 18: Succatthis (Wangxian)

Chapter Text

Lan Wangji, a monk, had absolutely not intended to summon a powerful incubus to the mortal plane. However since he had inadvertently done so, it was only right that he take responsibility for mitigating the harm that the creature would doubtless wreak unsupervised. ‘Wei Wuxian’ claimed he wasn’t even an incubus: just a regular, run-of-the-mill demon. But Lan Wangji could not be fooled by such a feeble lie. No lesser creature could have possibly been so preternaturally seductive.

“Are you sure you’re not just very, very hard-up?” Wei Wuxian asked, sceptical.

Lan Wangji was, in fact, certain on this point: he ruthlessly meditated away any untoward urges, and was ever a model of good conduct to his brothers and sisters in the order. He was renowned for his unusually strict adherence to his vows. Which meant that all of which was beside the point. The point was that, if left unchallenged, this Wei Wuxian would inexorably steal the yang essence of the unwary to prolong his unholy life, dragging his prey into both sin and body exhaustion. It was therefore up to Lan Wangji to offer himself in their place, trusting to his stringent adherence to the codes of his order to protect his body and soul.

“I’m literally not—doing anything,” Wei Wuxian observed, rolling his elegant neck as though inviting the pure monk before him to sink his teeth into it. How could anyone resist this wicked temptress?

Lan Wangji gave him a look of disbelief, which made Wei Wuxian’s fascinating silver eyes (certainly an incubus thing) flash in anger.

“Seriously, I am across the room—”

Lan Wangji laid himself on his back in his bed, and gravely announced his intention to be the sole sacrifice to the fiend.

“That’s really not necessary,” Wei Wuxian tried to put in.

Lan Wangji rolled to face the demon, his eyes narrowing. “As I said,” he pronounced distinctly, “the only one.”

That ought to clarify his stance on the incubus claiming multiple victims. Lan Wangji wondered whether he alone, with his feeble, mortal body, could possibly withstand the creature’s unholy passion. He supposed the answer was immaterial; he was willing to die in the attempt. It would not, Lan Wangji thought as he caught Wei Wuxian’s gesturing arm and pulled the demon down on top of him, be a terrible death, by any means.

Afterwards, Lan Wangji shook his head at the insatiable thing passed out and drooling on his pillow. Satisfying Wei Wuxian’s needs had truly exhausted them both. Lan Wangji wondered whether herbal tinctures worked on demons?

A week later Wei Wuxian turned up at Lan Wangji’s desk in the scriptorium, well and truly annoyed. Lan Wangji was surprised to see his lover out of bed so early—after their previous nights together, he’d been too exhausted to rise before noon. Lan Wangji attributed this lethargy to the strain of travel between the demon and mortal realms; he resolved to procure some strengthening tea for his demon, as well as some lozenges, for the whole—throat… situation.

“So!” Wei Wuxian said, sounding excited, but not happy. Lan Wangji found his own tall form compressing slightly before the indignation of his slight but fierce demon, whose hands were planted firmly on his (appetisingly grippable) hips (thus drawing attention to his lithe, button-neat little waist).

“So, Lan Wangji. It turns out that if a demon is forced to sustain itself on a frankly unlikely amount of sexual energy, the demonic body adapts! It further turns out that while one normal human male can in no way sustain an incubus—”

Lan Wangji felt his hackles rising at the implications of that statement. He found himself prepared, as ever, to meet the challenge Wei Wuxian issued, and to keep the world safe from a demon as fiendish as he was sensual.

“—a sufficiently thirsty, repressed human, can—Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan, are you even listening to me?”

“Mm,” Lan Wangji replied, but the sound was accompanied by a (highly suspicious) thoroughly appraising glance. Wei Wuxian was swimming in a set of his own jiāshā. Lan Wangji knew he really ought ask the order’s quartermaster to tailor some robes to Wei Wuxian’s slighter dimensions. But whenever he observed the effect in question, Lan Wangji found himself too distracted, and then too otherwise occupied, to immediately do so.

“You can’t be thinking about sex again already. You cannot, I absolutely forbid it. Lan Zhan, put me down! Lan Wangji!”

Some of the things Lan Wangji had said regarding his mother’s history (when they lay together in bed after making love, simply talking about anything that came to mind) had made Wei Wuxian strongly suspect that Madam Lan had been a succubus herself; that she’d died before her sons had matured, and thus before she could easily explain her origins to them; and that the brothers had, on account of this, never been aware of their own true natures.

Lan Wangji’s older brother Xichen, a monk of the same order, had been strangely relieved to hear Wei Wuxian’s theories regarding their demonic history. Apparently it ‘really explained some of the trouble he’d been having, with certain aspects of his vocation’. (Rumour had it that benign Lan Xichen was an ornament to his vows, in all but one respect.)

Wei Wuxian wished Lan Xichen and his ho urges well, especially as Lan Xichen had, when Wei Wuxian had asked the man what he thought Wei Wuxian ought to do, agreed with Wei Wuxian that it was probably better not to tell his deeply restrained half-demon little brother about all this.

And so whenever Lan Wangji alluded to his own continuing work to sate Wei Wuxian and prevent his wholesale sexual conquest of the Middle Kingdom, Wei Wuxian would simply pat Lan Wangji’s head (of glossy, super-humanly lovely, dead giveaway hair).

“Yes, of course, dear,” Wei Wuxian would coo. “You’re inordinately noble to do it. A very long-suffering monk, simply the bravest of warriors against the darkness.”

Either ignorant regarding sarcasm or choosing to pretend he was, Lan Wangji would preen and nuzzle into his husband’s chest (because Lan Wangji had not thought all this intercourse appropriate, outside of a marital bed). Wei Wuxian then would roll his eyes where the half-demon could not see. Honestly, the things he put up with for this man!

Chapter 19: Wei Wuxian's Delivery Service (Wangxian)

Chapter Text

Wei Wuxian, a trainee witch, sets out on his traditional proving journey with only his familiar (a slinky black cat he calls Suibian) for company. For most young witches, the proving marks their first departure from their home towns for longer than the duration of a family trip. The Weis, however, have always travelled: Wei Wuxian’s mother is a renowned cultivator-witch, who goes where the need is and works with the support of her magicless but adoring husband. Wei Wuxian fears that the great challenge of his own quest will actually be settling into one place for a year.

He heads for the large, seaside town where his father’s best friend lives, and where his parents met during his own mother’s quest-year. If anything goes wrong, at least Uncle Jiang will be around to look out for him (even if his wife is terrifying, and has seemingly never gotten over how, before Uncle Jiang even met her, Uncle Jiang and his best friend apparently shared schoolboy crushes on Wei Wuxian’s mom—Cangse Sanren occasionally still teases Uncle Jiang about that).

It has been two years since the Weis last passed through the area, and in that time Wei Wuxian, having no fixed address himself, has only managed to exchange a scattered handful of magically-directed letters with his friends in the town. There’ve been changes in the interim. Yanli has left her family home to open a bakery, and actually married that snooty boy who could never manage to be properly nice to her.

Wei Wuxian initially has little time for his beloved big-sister figure’s hanger-on, but the man (for he is one now, if only just) has acquired a certain steadiness in the past years. Zixuan, who came from a well-off family and was rather expected to bring Yanli into their business rather than to follow her into this fledgling enterprise, mostly just shuts up and lugs the bakery’s flour sacks. He seems not to mind dirtying his clothes doing it—not the way he used to fuss, at least. He’s wearing more sensible clothes for doing anything than he used to, as well. The point is, it seems he’s actually good to Yanli. Wei Wuxian, whose own father is a good husband after a similar fashion, grudgingly approves of Jin Zixuan after all—though he’d never admit it.

“I suppose people do grow up,” he tells Suibian with a sigh, scritching her wiggling rear.

“That’s the whole point of all this,” she reminds him, meaning either his own proving or something more philosophical. Like her master, Suibian can be obscure, when it suits her.

Jiang Cheng nominally still lives at home, but he spends the bulk of his time at his sister’s bakery, avoiding the minor squabbles and nagging that characterise the Jiang family residence. He’s always a little wary (a little jealous) of Wei Wuxian’s ‘witch bullsh*t’, but he swallows his grousing quickly at any offer to share a flight.

When Wei Wuxian arrives, Yanli puts him up in the attic above the bakery. At dinner, however, Yanli apologises—she knows he always hoped, always promised, to spend his proving year here. But in his absence, another young witch has settled in town. He’s made it through his own proving year and established himself. Isn’t the custom ‘one witch to a town’?

Wei Wuxian scrunches up his face in defiance of this unknown interloper. That’s old fashioned. This place is large enough. They can surely share, Wei Wuxian insists (with more confidence than precedent to back him).

Lan Wangji, trainee witch (grade 2), is surprised and annoyed when his formal visit and announcement of his own prior claim on the town is met with a ‘so what’ sort of shrug from Wei Wuxian. Beside him, Bichen’s snow-white hackles raise. Suibian just gives her a bored look and, infuriatingly, begins to clean her own bum in Lan Wangji’s general direction. Wei Wuxian is hardly better himself—his training, as Lan Wangji explains to his elder brother in a flurry of messages, is wildly irregular. His knowledge is patchy, his demeanour shocking: he will give witching a bad name!

Lan Wangji is a potion witch; Lans are always potion witches. It is a rigorous, necessary calling. If Lan Wangji sometimes daydreams about specialising as a curse-breaker, or a monster combat specialist like the famous Cangse Sanren (and no wonder Wei Wuxian is so arrogant, with a mother who's already half-legend) in addition to his craft, that’s neither here not there. The whole point of witches is to serve their communities. Lan Wangji has, accordingly, neatly specialised and set up his shop. He undertakes only what he knows he will execute perfectly. The work he does is good, and wanting to shine additionally—to excel and surpass himself—is immodest. To be a witch is to live in careful balance with the expectations of the mundane world, which can come to hate things that are different—even if (perhaps especially when) that difference is extraordinary.

Wei Wuxian’s bizarre chosen brief of ’solving problems’ feels like cheating. He runs errands half the time, which is almost mundane. His weird side-gig in pop psychology is frankly baffling. Worst of all, Wei Wuxian is insultingly good at everything—or if he’s awful, he hardly seems to mind. He just carries on until he pulls off whatever he’s trying to do, or even comes to excel at is. Wei Wuxian is always after Lan Wangji to tell him about his potion work, like he hardly hears it when Lan Wangji invites him to leave his laboratory, his shop, and, if possible, the entire province.

People—respond, to Wei Wuxian. They come to him with problems they think Lan Wangji is above. When he settled in this town, Lan Wangji established (as his uncle had advised him) that he was to be treated respectfully, in accordance with the honour afforded his profession. Some cat stuck up a tree was not the province of the young Hanguangjun. Not every scraped knee was a cause to run to the potion witch: people should not be encouraged to take undue advantage of his power, or of his position all alone here in a strange town. People can and do pressure children, or seek to misuse power beyond mortal reckoning: Lan Qiren has experience and a point.

So, people saw Lan Wangji’s resting mulish expression, the high tilt of his chin and the bright-white of his cape, and they assumed an entire personality from there. When Wei Wuxian arrives, Lan Wangji is respected. And, he is lonely. And he thinks, he does have salve for that scraped knee. And he could easily fly up and fetch that stuck cat, if anyone... spoke to him. If they asked him the sort of things they ask Wei Wuxian, who seems never to have heard of self-preservation: to have been born with no filter against the world.

Lan Wangji doesn't have Wei Wuxian’s arrogant habit of trying to tackle problems way bigger than himself: of thinking he could be the answer to anything life throws at the town. Lan Wangji does think Wei Wuxian’s approach has its own dangers, and that not all of his family’s cautions were valueless. But all the same, when he looks at Wei Wuxian (who is too bright to avoid seeing, even if one wanted to), Lan Wangji can't help but feel stifled, and small—like a fiddly machine that sits in his laboratory turning out perfect potions. Mixing, in their set stages and proportions, recipes that have outlasted whole regimes: magic of which ‘Lan Wangji’ is a mere custodian, or executive function.

Wei Wuxian, largely unaware of Lan Wangji’s stirring discontent with his lot, likes it here. He likes the Jiang siblings, and helping out at the bakery. He likes Nie Huaisang, who he meets in the forest—falling off a tree while trying to stalk a rare bird. He adores the prickly artist, Wen Qing, who he meets deeper in the ancient wood. Wen Qing, who lives alone with her shy younger brother in a queer, fabulous little cottage, who paints and paints until she gives the finished product her sharp, decisive nod and says it’s done. That it will do.

He likes the strange, fierce herb witch Lan Wangji, who seems at once proud and to have no real idea how amazingly talented he is—to have no notion of the grace and decision he brings to his work. Wei Wuxian likes the steel and commitment in Lan Wangji’s eyes, and the steadiness of his hand on the eyedropper as he makes some desperate mother the charm against colic—the low, soothing notes of his voice, which makes a mother only a few years older than the two of them believe that this will work, and that her baby will no longer be in pain, and that she, at last, will be able to sleep through the night.

The townspeople look at Lan Wangji with faith and gratitude, like they look at Wei Wuxian's mother when she saves a village. And strangely, Wei Wuxian feels just as proud as he does then. Hanguangjun could do anything—Wei Wuxian thinks he’d hardly need a sword or a broom even to fly. Witchery is largely a matter of faith, and Wei Wuxian can’t wait to see how powerful Lan Wangji will be when when Lan Wangji finds faith in himself. As he must; as Wei Wuxian can see he is doing, as the weeks roll by—the cadence of passing time as unhurried and sure as Lan Wangji himself is. This is a secret pleasure of growing where one is planted: the ability to watch leaves uncurl in days that run like minutes, and to be there, all the while, as lovely things unfold.

Wei Wuxian has begun to think that maybe he was wrong about himself, when he thought he’d have trouble staying in one place for a whole year. He wonders whether this is the sort of thing a trainee witch is supposed to learn, along with independence and the craft: the secret magic of themselves. Perhaps Wei Wuxian is supposed to be coming to understand that for all he’s always loved travelling with his parents, he is sort of person who longs for others’ settled company. The sort of person who wants roots, and a community. Who, told he could go anywhere in the world, elected a plain straw bed in a spare corner of his chosen sister’s little house, and a town already claimed by a stupidly pretty, hilariously grouchy herb witch.

Wei Wuxian lies in bed at night thinking of all this as he falls asleep stroking a sleeping Suibian. And he becomes a real witch, a little more every day.

Chapter 20: The Hitchiker's Guide to the Middle Kingdom

Chapter Text

The juniors begin writing up a collaborative guide book for working cultivators. As their own knowledge of the world is not vast, they convince Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian (via correspondence; he’s travelling) to lend their expertise to the project.

Editor Lan Sizhui is trying to maintain a friendly, professional tone throughout the volume. Unfortunately, usually-circ*mspect Lan Wangji consistently derails this effort. Hanguangjun can be relied upon to note a local site of historical interest, but can equally be relied upon to never once refrain from observing, for example, that a town’s lamentable public sanitation is due to the terrible corruption of the province’s officials. (Do not remove the following. HGJ.) Let anyone who reads this note these mens’ crimes against the people of the locality, which, to this cultivator’s personal knowledge, are as follows—

Seeking further contributors, a roped-in Jin Ling approaches his still-living uncle. No, his other—anyway! The point is that Jiang zongzhu’s descriptions are outright negligible.

‘Fine, I guess.’

‘sh*tty.’

‘Acceptable meat.'

‘Never again.’

The collation team groans when it comes time to compile an entry and they realise they have only Jiang Wanyin’s account to rely on.

Wei Wuxian offers up a truly surprising number of thorough restaurant reviews, some of which subsequently make it into the establishments’ own advertising (his 5-pepper ‘heat scale’ really takes off).

A brothel starts advertising itself as Yiling Patriarch approved. The madam is surprised and somewhat alarmed by the sudden, unannounced arrival of the Chief Cultivator, who claims he has not come to meet any of her girls. He is, in fact, interested in learning more regarding her advertising claims. Very interested.

It turns out the madam’s assertions are wholly legitimate and well corroborated: a lonely looking man answering to that now-famous (retconned, attractive-again) description came in for their music night, proceeded to get gently drunk in the corner, complimented the wine and tipped the qin player quite well indeed. He then departed without patronising the upper gallery. The madam stands by her word! Nice bloke, she thought.

Lan Wangji sadly wonders whether it is too pathetic to try tracking Wei Wuxian down by following his submitted restaurant reviews, or just—the regular amount of pathetic.

Chapter 21: Welcome 2 the Suck Zone

Chapter Text

Lan Qiren, his brother, Wen Ruohan, Jin Guangshan and Jiang Fengmian were (and, unfortunately, still are) Zongzhu: China’s answer to KISS. The hair, the makeup, the guitars, the whole f*cking thing. Wen Ruohan has been On Drugs for decades solid. At this point his resting state is delusional abstraction, cut with spikes of aggression to keep things interesting. Occasionally he’ll kick up a tyrannical ‘lead singer’ diva fuss (or try to leverage the Zongzhu brand to open an unwise theme park), only to once again subside into his stupor. He is a sad shadow of the man who once bit bats’ heads off live on stage in the name of punk. Or glam-rock. Or something. His degree of commitment had always been clearer than its exact subject.

These days, Wen Ruohan is perennially accompanied by:

1. his reasonably competent son,

2. his annoying son,

3. his niece-cum-long-suffering-manager, Wen Qing (who looks at job openings at McDonalds with a kind of poignant longing), and

4. a roadie, Xue Yang (who may or may not have killed a guy this one time in Kyoto? No one’s sure).

Jin Guangshan has slept with every groupie who ever met his boringly predictable standards. There have been an astoundingly number of these, over the years. Jiang Fengmian is Mostly Normal. Lan Qiren also falls into the coveted, evidently narrow Mostly Normal bracket. This is a special point of pride for him given that his own brother has been doing time for the better part of a decade, now. This has left Lan Qiren raising the two sons of ‘Qinhengjun’ (as he’s known when he’s performing) and a folk-rocker who made Stevie Nicks’ flirtation with cocaine look chaste.

Lan Qiren is taking nurturing these boys’ immense genetic talent and keeping them on the straight and narrow very seriously. By god they are going to learn to drum on the beat. They won’t sleep with a single groupie, and they will never have any kind of Life Crisis and turn to Christian rock. They’re not white, it's not happening. Do you hear that, Twin Jades?

“Yes, Uncle.”

“Good. Now let’s win this talent show. I want Fengmian’s awful momager wife to go home and angry-cry into bowl of the virgin’s blood she drinks to sustain her complexion. I can’t believe they adopted Cangse Sanren’s kid, just to make up numbers—”

Despite immense efforts at suppression, Lan Qiren sometimes realises he's become a Show Mom and has to drink about that. Because he's a Lan, this usually involves imbibing one hard lemonade, feeling tipsy and falling asleep. Sometimes, however, it involves getting out Guitar Hero (which Lan Xichen tricked him into buying on the pretext that it was educational), blitzing through the levels (some of which include Zongzhu’s own songs—Ruohan apparently sold the rights on a Ludes day), and winning with an impressive score. Lan Qiren then whispers 'still got it' to no one, with a single, solemn nod. And then he falls asleep on the couch, and must, upon his discovery there the next morning, endure his nephews solemnly referring to him as ‘The Guitar Hero’ for a full day.

Chapter 22: Attempt to f*ck the Impossible

Chapter Text

Superborb pointed out that fandom’s penchant for animal fusions somehow never runs to the whole ‘no sex no fuss, lay your eggs, go and don’t come back’ model of reproduction.

This, of course, reveals the potential for fic where every Sect has their own competing reproductive system.

- Jiang doesn’t believe in speciation: attempt to f*ck the impossible.

- Baoshan Sanren’s Mountain is egg-dumper territory.

- Nie cultivators stage epic hom*oerotic fights to the death. Afterwards, a bored and disinterested female in heat will allow herself to be mated, she guesses.

-The Yu are simply hyenas.

- Wens reproduce via asexual calving (“like f*cking normal people”—Wen Qing, foremost medical mind of her generation, Very Tired).

- Lans are, incontestably, on some penguin sh*t. (Superborb observes that Jingyi in particular is an Adelie penguin: notoriously ready to rumble.)

- Jin do threatening courtship display dances, like Birds of Paradise:

Jin Zixuan, bouncing aggressively around his target in a circle: Notice me, Yanli!

Yanli: What the f*ck, what the fuuuuuck—

Chapter 23: Miss Gusu (Wangxian)

Chapter Text

Lan Wangji glared at Wei Wuxian. The killing intent in his eyes would have slain lesser men, and had done ‘ere now.

“You are not taking this pageant seriously.”

Wei Wuxian only shrugged, pouting at his competitor.

“What,” he drawled, “the pageant you hate? The pageant you’re only participating in to uphold your family’s honour?”

Lan Wangji winced, then immediately tried not to because Uncle was right, macroexpressions would give him lines. It would also spoil the foundation his older brother (who Wei Wuxian irritatingly referred to as ‘the former Miss Gusu’) had so carefully applied not an hour ago. Lan Wangji had been distracted at the time, and well on his way to appearing at the first event in costume as a blotchy cloud. Lan Xichen had given up on watching him try, grabbed the applicator puff from Wangji’s limp hand and done it himself.

None of this had been Lan Wangji’s fault: the Nie contestant had been helping Yunmeng’s Wei Wuxian wriggle into elaborate tailored robes that truly did things for Wei Wuxian’s hips.

Wei Wuxian rolled his shoulders with infuriating insolence. “For all the talk, ‘Miss Cultivation World’ is just a trumped-up beauty contest—”

“Stop calling it that.” Lan Wangji took a deep breath to calm himself. “The rankings of young gentlemen are an ancient, traditional celebration of the six arts.”

“Oh come on Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian snapped. “You hate this sh*t way more than I do. For me, it’s an excuse to dress up.” He did a twirl. Lan Wangji’s eyes followed the movement of his robe-skirts helplessly, and with due appreciation.

“But you, Lan Zhan—they asked you what your ideal date was, and you said, and I quote, ‘April 25, because it’s not too hot, and not too cold.’ Literally no one believes you didn’t understand the question! You were just being a bitch!”

“Prove it,” Lan Wangji responded automatically.

Wei Wuxian raised an eyebrow, was silent for a moment. Then, he cackled.

“You should have gone with ‘Hanguangjune’.”

Lan Wangji felt his lip twitch, and tried hard to suppress it.

“I’ll bear your advice in mind for further interviews of that nature."

...he really shouldn't. And he was absolutely going to.

"There will be several, when I win.”

“When you win?” Wei Wuxian raised his eyebrows, taking a step closer to his competitor. “Lan Wangji. You think you can beat me in this valueless, meaningless competition?” Wei Wuxian tsked. “Not a chance.”

Lan Wangji swallowed. He felt himself in grave danger of widening his eyes, which would put their slick black liner and layered blue shadow at serious risk.

“I’ll see you at the chariot driving,” Wei Wuxian said as he took a step back. He then spoiled his own sultry tone with a cheeky “try to reign in your enthusiasm.” Because he was the worst.

Lan Wangji watched him go, thinking hard about alternate uses for dressage harnesses and their accoutrements. Then attempting to think hard about anything else, because an erection would absolutely ruin the lines of this outfit.

Chapter 24: Legal Aid (Wangxian)

Chapter Text

The somewhat ominously-named Wing Yip Compound sits behind a massive decorative gate. The large, Chinese-style building contains South England’s biggest Asian restaurant supply store, the only dim sum place in South London, a vendor of tchotchkes, scattered other restaurants, many empty shopfronts and, somewhat surprisingly, a Chinese-language legal aid office. The windows announce as much with somewhat grungy, hand-written signs. When he visits, Lan Wangji, aches to replace them with something professionally printed. Not, Wei Wuxian would observe, that this would matter to the people reliant on his services—it might, Wei Wuxian has explained, even put off the people who most need him. It could make them think the assistance on offer will be too expensive for them, or too official to be sympathetic and quiet about the irregularities of travel and subsistence the world forces upon people and then punishes them for.

Nominally, Lan Wangji comes here every week for dim sum (only to find Wei Wuxian working through the weekend, despite his always promising his partner-attorney Wen Qing he won’t). Actually, Lan Wangji prefers the intimate blue-black slickness of Michelin-starred Hakkasan, all the way across town, and Wei Wuxian knows it.

“I think you come for that good ‘bitch, you live like this?’ rush,” Wei Wuxian says with a grin over the homey but unexceptional turnip cakes. Wei Wuxian continues to chatter as Lan Wangji tries not to find that hurtful, even said in jest. “The QC descends upon us from the lofty Inns.”

“You could easily return to the Inns yourself,” Lan Wangji reminds him, sounding tarter than he wants to. He deeply dislikes it when Wei Wuxian draws attention to or tries to insert additional distance between them.

Wei Wuxian was once disciplined by the bar for doing something complicated, legally disreputable and ethically necessary to defend a client. That period of prohibition has, at last, elapsed: Lan Wangji will not admit aloud to having marked each month with loss. Yet from the day of Wei Wuxian’s disciplinary hearing and despite his reprieve, Lan Wangji has never seen Wei Wuxian rounding the curve of Temple Church, or found him lounging in the cloistered shade of those quiet courtyards. Has never heard him taking the stairs all at a bounding run; has never caught sight of his grin across the dark-timbered hall where Shakespeare first gave Twelfth Night.

Without him there are no Revels, and Grey’s Inn earns its name. Lan Wangji used to think of what he and Wei Ying might do together, in this place; now he lingers on the saddest, loneliest Dickensian tributes to the profession and this, its ancestral hunting ground. From Pickwick on, people were always dying alone in these old rooms. Practically only Eugene Wrayburn and Mortimer Lightwood had made the thing work, with their sweet, humble mess of shared chambers. Very gay, as well—Lan Wangji has always thought that must have been intentional.

Wei Wuxian’s smile grows fixed, and his eyes slide away. He twists the turnip cake on his chopsticks and accidentally pinches off an awkward little chunk he’ll have to spear, to eat.

“This is the heart of the community—well,” Wei Wuxian amends himself, “one of the city’s diaspora communities—anyway. I need to be here.”

Here, under the baleful shadow of Lunar House: the Home Office’s dread processing centre. The viciously ugly, cold building the government forced its would-be citizens to report to: the dirty white tower where the paparazzi had lined up to snap pictures of the refugee children coming in from Calais in an effort to spread rumours that the boys were secretly men, who ought to be thrown right back into the channel—to drown, for all they cared. They’d had family in the country, and were legally owed asylum. A stronger impetus still: they had been children, for that all war and hunger had gobbled up the fat of their cheeks and the youthful levity of their expressions. Most fundamentally of all: they had been suffering, needful human beings.

Lan Wangji knows why Wei Wuxian chose to come and chooses to stay here, and Wei Wuxian knows he knows. All Lan Wangji can do is them both the grace of raising some question that does not sit in them and in the world, horrible and unanswered. He does not know what else to do. He does not know how to stop wanting Wei Wuxian back in his trim suit, in his old rooms, in his old place at his own side—receiving every atom of the considerable respect he deserves.

“You need,” Lan Wangji seeks clarification, “to be next to the tacky ceramic Buddha shop, specifically?”

“Yep,” Wei Wuxian says, popping the word and rocking back in his chair. Across the aisle of the restaurant, an auntie glares at him for it. Embarrassed, Wei Wuxian sits properly (earning her narrow-eyed nod of provisional approbation).

Lan Wangji glances at the window which shows them the rest of the mini-mall.

“That crudely-painted cat has not stopped waving at me since we sat down. It’s sinister.”

“You can’t exorcise the cat, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian shakes his head with the sigh. “It’s only tacky. It’s not outright evil to be cheap and mass produced.”

“Have you tried?” Lan Wangji asked, unconvinced.

Wei Wuxian rolls his eyes. “Of course I've—this is like the time Xichen-ge tried to Liberate Nie Mingjue's singing fish plaque. You Lans must learn to let the aesthetic foibles of we lesser humans go.”

“He did let it go,” Lan Wangji says, stout in defence of his elder brother’s actions and taste, “when he dropped it in the bin. It’s free, now. As are we all.” It was only a pity that his elder brother had missed Huaisang’s ‘hilariously ironic’ singing bird clock in his purge.

Wei Wuxian has never invited Lan Wangji to join him in his practice, here. He’s never asked any favours of his schoolmate and former colleague. Never sought any collaboration, or asked for the use of Lan Wangji’s now vastly-greater resources. Lan Wangji wishes he’d do any of that, rather than brushing off his own prompts. Wishes he could impose so much as to offer himself. Wishes he weren’t convinced he was also doing valuable work towards the same ends as Wei Wuxian, from a position that affords him greater proximity and access to the type of power that over-rides deportation orders by force rather than relying on all-too-often ineffective pleas.

Wei Wuxian stabs that stray bit of turnip cake with finality, and the meal comes to its end. Lan Wangji gets groceries at the wholesale shop, as he does most weeks. Lan Wangji gets slices of cake from the little bakery. Lan Wangji takes a bus, and then a train, and then a tube. Across town, he shuts the door of a very good flat behind him and puts his bags on the table. He wishes it were a worse flat that had Wei Wuxian in it. He wishes he knew what to do to fix the world, or even just his own.

Chapter 25: Starbucks of Betrayal (Wangxian)

Chapter Text

Lan Wangji made the terrible mistake of glancing inside the (hateful, tacky, neighbourhood-despoiling) Starbucks as he passed it. (Haight-Ashbury had once been a place of honour: now this!) Double-taking (and wishing he’d not taken even once), Lan Wangji slammed to a stop, dropping his farmer’s market tote bag and indie cafe oat milk turmeric late right there in the street. He left his thankfully-empty tote in the road, where it lay, soiled—like his own innocence.

Without another thought, Lan Wangji marched in—conveniently, just as the older man sitting at a table with his son, his young cousin and his nephew stood. Presumably to go to the rest room, or perhaps to go die: Lan Wangji did not greatly care which. (That was not quite true: he certainly had a preference.) The man’s back, however, was to Lan Wangji, and so he didn’t catch the death-glare the irate father levelled at his retreating head.

Unfortunately Lan Sizhui saw both that baleful look and its giver perfectly. His father’s narrow-eyed gaze then swivelled to Sizhui himself, who swallowed.

“You said he’d never find us here!” Sizhui hissed to Lan Jingyi.

Jin Ling scrambled for his sunglasses and popped them on, as though he could feasibly pretend to be someone else after Lan Wangji had absolutely, indisputably clocked him.

“My routine was unexpectedly disturbed,” Lan Wangji said, cooly. “I was forced to attend ‘hot yoga’.”

He let Sizhui divine his likely mood from the information presented to him. Lan Wangji hated many things in this life, and that roster included:

1. disturbances to his routine;

2. thoughtless ’innovation’ in traditional meditation practice;

3. equally capitalism-driven chain coffee shops such as the one he now stood in; and

4. the man who’d just left this table.

“How was I supposed to know the normal yoga studio was closed?” Jingyi hissed at his cousin, sounding nearly as defensive as he did panicked.

Jin Ling was still pretending to be some kind of foreign national, who’d gone on holiday by mistake.

“Dad,” Sizhui tried, “it’s not what it looks like—”

Throughout this conversation, Lan Wangji had not appeared to move. His arms were actually clasped behind his back. Yet Sizhui knew that he must have done, because his own phone vibrated with an incoming text from—yep, there it was, from baba.

‘You’re where?’

Jin Ling’s screen lit up simultaneously: ‘With WHO?’

“How the f*ck do they do that?” Jin Ling asked no one.

“Why didn’t I get a text?” Lan Jingyi addressed the same disinterested party.

“It’s just,” Sizhui defended himself, “if I ask either of you a civics question, you derail the whole thing into a debate about the nature of justice! Every time! Baba won’t stop quoting Foucault!”

As Sizhui spoke, Lan Jingyi tried to subtly nudge their incriminating pile of textbooks behind his own body.

“I flunked the last assignment for ‘deconstructing its assumptions’ like you said! A Die, I don’t need to ‘truly engage with the Analects’ right now, I want to pass seventh grade!”

Lan Wangji had excellent hearing, and thus detected the opening swing of the bathroom door. He took his cue to dramatically sweep away, with a parting promise to “speak of this later.”

Lan Wangji was not going to ruin what little remained of his peace by getting stuck making small talk with Jin Guangyao.

In the wake of these betrayals, Lan Wangji did not even go on to the farmer’s market as he’d planned. Back at the house he watched the tote bag spin in the washing machine, contemplating the sodden disorder of his own family life while he waited for Wei Wuxian to come home.

Which he did, with a great bang of the door. “Our baby boy? With Chinese-American Psycho himself?”

Lan Wangji sighed in answer. Lan Xichen had, in the past, assured them that he was “almost certain” Jin Guangyao had never actually murdered anyone, but Lan Wangji felt the poignant accuracy of Wei Wuxian’s rejoinder (“eh, he looks pretty murdery, in my opinion”) nonetheless. Besides, Lan Xichen had briefly dated state-certified piece of work Xue Yang; Lan Xichen’s judgement was suspect, at best.

Wei Wuxian flung himself down on Lan Wangji on the couch, clinging to his husband like an infant koala.

“The son I bore with my own loins has forsaken our teachings to seek advice from a man who wears an ironic trucker hat. Lan Zhan, we are bad parents, and I am ready for death.”

Lan Wangji shook his head in sad acknowledgement. Of course Jin Guangyao, his brother-in-law via Jiang Yanli’s marriage (and, though Lan Wangji absolutely did not acknowledge this, Jin Guangyao’s weird Thing with his own brother), was a horribly competitive single parent in his own right. Lan Sizhui could not have known that Jin Guangyao would never let them live down their son’s turning to him in his hour of need. Woe unto them, that this was the uncle Sizhui had trusted. Lan Wangji even got along well with Jiang Wanyin, in comparison. The man was not without his merits. He had, for example, adopted the admirable custom of groaning like he was dying whenever Jin Guangyao began a sentence with ‘well’.

(“I wasn’t even going to say ‘well my Rusong’!” Jin Guangyao would snap.

“Conditioned response, sorry.”

Jiang Cheng did not sound it, because he was not. For this and this alone, Lan Wangji loved him.)

Lan Wangji contemplated their bleak situation with his customary philosophy.

“When the family fights, everyone loses.” He paused for a moment. “Unless you kill them. Problem solved.”

Wei Wuxian leaned back to give his husband a suspicious look.

“Lan Zhan, baby, wasn’t your mother in jail for murder for a while there?”

Lan Wangji nodded solemnly.

“My mother had a saying: ‘bitch deserved it.’ Which I have always found poetic and beautiful—”

Someone tried to open and close the front door very, very softly.

“A Yuan,” Wei Wuxian wailed at a volume that Lan Wangji, pinned under him, had not been entirely prepared for. “A Yuan, you’ve killed your parents, with your own tiny hands—”

“I told you we should have hidden at my house!” they heard Jin Ling hiss.

“Baba will have told Uncle Jiang Cheng, which means he’s already at your house. And Jingyi’s mother would pelt us with mahjong tiles. She hates Jin Guangyao worse than any of them after the PTA Takeover.”

“The tiles are heavier than you think,” Jingyi said, clearly experiencing some form of shell-shock flashback. “And there’s so many of them. Those hard little squares just keep coming, and coming—”

“This,” Sizhui tried to promise, “will just be—really loud. And around dinner, really vegan.”

“Are you still interested in ethical eating, A Yuan?” Lan Wangji asked his son, cooly. “After your adventures with Starbucks?”

“I was valedictorian—” Wei Wuxian wailed.

“Co-valedictorian,” Lan Wangji, the co, reminded him.

“I was co-valedictorian, and suddenly I can’t even help,” Wei Wuxian sniffled, “with seventh,” Wei Wuxian sobbed, “grade,” Wei Wuxian (still on top of his husband) writhed dramatically, “civics homework?”

“Hush, darling,” Lan Wangji consoled him. “I’ve already tried to recall A Yuan to righteousness; he won’t be moved. ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!’”

“…is it too late to risk the mahjong tiles?” Jin Ling asked.

They decided it was not.

Chapter 26: bro, I noticed you weren't wearing our friendship bracelets while you were giving me head. is everything okay? (Wangxian)

Chapter Text

Friendship bracelets are all the rage this year at Gusu Lan Prep. Wei Wuxian has many friends, and has correspondingly given and received many such proofs of affection. Lan Wangji, however, has only exchanged one such token (because brothers aren’t friends, he thinks, eyeing Jiang Wanyin’s bracelet on Wei Wuxian’s wrist with sour dissatisfaction).

Wei Wuxian is duly impressed by the present, though he doesn’t realise the implications of Lan Wangji’s having braided his family’s special ribbon, which he usually wears around his own wrist, into it. (Partners, Lan Wangji believes, are indeed friends: his family has a whole spousal ribbon-touching rule to clear up exactly this sort of ambiguity.) Wei Wuxian appreciates this gesture from his usually-reserved best friend so much that he readily agrees to Lan Wangji’s suggestion that his bracelet would look best worn alone, on Wei Wuxian’s right wrist. Not touching any other bracelets.

Lan Wangji does not say, but privately feels, that even putting the other bracelets on Wei Wuxian’s left wrist is a bit much. He would just really feel more comfortable if Wei Wuxian chose to wear them some other way—shoved in a back pocket, for example. He knows this would be too much to ask, however, and so instead, he magnanimously suggests that perhaps Wei Wuxian would like to wear these other offerings as anklets.

“But Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says with an awkward smile, “anklets are the sh*ttiest form of jewellery?”

“Yes,” Lan Wangji says with a nod, pleased that Wei Wuxian gets it. “And Jiang Wanyin is the sh*ttiest form of brother.”

At school the next day, before Lan Wangji even sees Wei Wuxian, Jiang Wanyin finds him. He is, as ever, quick to voice his displeasure. “Bro,” he hisses (they are not ‘bros’) (in any sense), “you got me relegated to anklet?”

Ah. So Wei Ying was receptive to his suggestions. Lan Wangji allows himself to silently radiate smugness.

“It could be worse,” he says to Jiang Wanyin, which is as much a threat as it is a commiseration. “It could, perhaps, be a toe ring.”

Jiang Wanyin pales and departs, shaken—awakened to the existence of a fresh hell of dire consequences. Like Lan Wangji's dug out a sub-basem*nt.

After this, Nie Huaisang grows canny. He is currently on Wei Wuxian’s right ankle, and newly-sensible of the prospect of demotion.

“I’m not a left ankle man, all right?” he says, tapping his phone anxiously on the lunch table. “Like, I respect myself, because someone has to. I can't slip any lower!”

“Quit whining and place the order,” Wen Qing snaps.

They all know Nie Huaisang has the biggest allowance of any of them (thanks to a decade-spanning 'but dage' whining campaign: the stuff of legends), and they are all aware that they need to up their game. Wen Ning’s eyes grow watery at the whole ‘toe ring’ prospect.

The Best Friends necklace (matching parts for Jiang Wanyin, Nie Huaisang, Wen Qing and Wen Ning) enjoys a halcyon two day period enthroned alone on Wei Wuxian’s neck. It is the ‘best’ component that truly makes Lan Wangji’s eye twitch, and sends him to the art wing with an air of determination. He eventually emerges with an intricate, aesthetically-pleasing tooled leather necklace, which he gives to Wei Wuxian, asking him to ‘please wear it always.’

“Is that a straight-up BDSM collar he made himself?” Nie Huaisang whispers behind Wei Wuxian’s back, horrified and impressed.

“Wei ge,” Nie Huaisang says when they’re free of this awkward public proposal scene, “are you really going to wear that all the time?”

Wei Wuxian rolls his eyes, like Nie Huaisang is the one who doesn’t get it.

“If I don't wear Lan Zhan's friendship bracelet and this torque thingy every day, will people even know I have a best friend?” Wei Wuxian shakes his head. “I'll look like a loser. I’ll have even worse luck getting dates, and I already have zero luck!”

Nie Huaisang thinks very seriously about pointing out that no one is going to rush to ask out a boy who goes around as thoroughly branded as Lan Wangji’s personal property as it is possible to be, but decides against it. Their classmates evidently like living, and Nie Huaisang shares their sentiment.

Nie Huaisang truly believes the crisis of revelation will come at last when Lan Wangji says he won’t be ordering a class ring. Jiang Wanyin immediately seizes the opportunity to escalate hostilities.

“Oh we were all thinking of getting them, right Wei Wuxian?”

Lan Wangji purses his mouth so small that Nie Huaisang wonders whether a local black hole lurks under his tongue. Lan Wangji ends up spending what must be the entirety of his eighteen year old savings on something he calls a ‘friendship ring’.

“A friendship ring with a diamond?” Brave, brave Wen Qing asks cooly. “And that inscription?”

Lan Wangji glares at her and flounces off. Jiang Yanli reaches over and pats her little brother’s arm.

“I think its sweet that Lan Wangji got you a promise ring, A Xian.”

“He knows we’re not Christian, right?” Jiang Wanyin asks, and Jiang Yanli elbows him hard in the ribs.

Wei Wuxian rolled his eyes. “Jiang Cheng, not that kind of f*cking Promise Ring. It means like—‘promise to be pals’!”

Wei Wuxian’s aerial finger quotes rescue neither that sentence nor his friends and family’s lost respect for his perspicacity. To think Wei Wuxian is supposed to be some kind of genius!

This sad parade of incidents renders it unsurprising when, years later, Wei Wuxian’s friends and relations are informed (by Lan Wangji) that the two of them have been a serious, exclusive couple since sometime in high school. He can provide the exact date, upon request. He looks eager to do so (which, for Lan Wangji, means a slightly parted mouth and a degree of increased eye-shininess), but no one obliges him by asking.

“I would have told you guys earlier, but I just thought they were brojobs,” Wei Wuxian says with a shrug. “That we f*cked a lot—”

“Exclusively.”

“Yeah, of course Lan Zhan, exclusively—as friends.”

“I don’t know which of you shames me more,” Wen Qing says, truly considering the question. “You for thinking it, or you,” she nods at Lan Wangji, “for letting him.”

“Wei Ying needs to be gently coaxed,” Lan Wangji says, defensive.

Nie Huaisang refrains from saying anything about Lan Wangji’s definition of subtlety. Nie Huaisang has changed a lot since high school, but perhaps the most persistent element of his personality is that he wants to live.

Chapter 27: The Irresistible Lan Qiren

Chapter Text

Wei Wuxian’s heterodox cultivation experiments result in Lan Qiren getting absolutely smothered in love potion—the sort that draws others to you.

There is no era in which this isn’t funny. Please imagine all the potential victims of Lan Qiren’s powerful allure across time: Wei Wuxian himself, Madam Yu, Wen Ruohan, Jin Ling. The possibilities are boundless, as is Lan Qiren’s drive to whack each Possibility off his person.

When a besotted Jiang Wanyin refers to Qiren as ‘Lan ergege’, he claims a chunk of Wei Wuxian’s fragile sanity and takes years off his second life. However a post-canon Lan Qiren would, for just a moment, consider it. There’s one place on Earth that Wei Wuxian hesitates to barge into, and by god, Lan Qiren could be that place’s master. Jiang furen, here he comes—

No. No, he couldn’t. But in the midst of a patented Wei Wuxian f*ck Up of these proportions, it truly is tempting.

Chapter 28: The Many Breakups of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji (Wangxian)

Chapter Text

Wei Wuxian had dumped his adoring, perfect boyfriend Lan Wangji on no fewer than seven occasions. It had never taken.

Lan Wangji had naturally found the first attempt emotionally eviscerating, but within four days he’d discovered (because Nie Huaisang had told him) that Wei Wuxian’s maddeningly undisclosed ‘serious reasons’ largely involved his fear of holding Lan Wangji back. The two of them had been talking about moving in together; Wei Wuxian hadn’t money enough to split the rent on the sorts of places Lan Wangji was suggesting, and Lan Wangji hadn’t seemed willing to compromise on quality. This, Wei Wuxian had decided, was both in itself significant and a microcosm of all the ways he’d financially burden Lan Wangji in the future. Nie Huaisang had pretended to let this information slip, but Lan Wangji recognised a close friend exercising his ‘right to disclosure when you believe a friend is ruining their life’ when he saw it—Lan Xichen pulled that lever with maddening frequency.

Receiving this information had led Lan Wangji to immediately catch a bus across town. He’d banged on the door of Wei Wuxian’s admittedly awful flat and, upon its being opened, shoved his wrecked-looking, red-eyed still-boyfriend up against the wall so abruptly that Wei Wuxian had dropped his consolatory personal tub of Ben & Jerry’s.

“No,” Lan Wangji had growled around a series of desperate, breathless kisses, “we are not ‘broken up’, f*ck you Wei Ying, Wei Ying—”

And then he had.

After that, every time Wei Wuxian tried this Lan Wangji would calmly ask “is it for stupid reasons?”

Invariably: yes, it was. Or rather, the reasons themselves were not stupid. They were Wei Wuxian’s anxieties: the random detritus and major issues that governed the mood of his beloved, who was loyal, innovative, brilliant and compassionate, and whose best qualities ensured that he perpetually overloaded himself.

Wei Wuxian wanted to break up because he hadn’t touched his flute in a month. Whenever he’d had time to relax, he’d been too tired to feel technical or creative in that manner. And music was so important to Lan Wangji: they’d met through orchestra. It was already bad enough that Wei Wuxian couldn’t follow Lan Wangji into professional practice. From now on, he would only ever fall behind. And here he was, not even making an effort. Soon he’d be laughably bad at this—at the whole reason they’d come together in the first place. He wouldn’t even be the person Lan Wangji had liked as a teen, let alone some refinement of him.

Wei Wuxian wanted to break up because he’d been so depressed over the last week that he’d barely managed to make himself food. Which meant that Lan Wangji had done it for him, which was just—so f*cking pathetic? He wasn’t even meeting his own basic survival needs, the way any adult ought to be able to.

Wei Wuxian wanted to break up because he’d been financially irresponsible about in-game purchases. He’d spent like 300 RMB on outfits in that Kim Kardashian game Lan Wangji hated. And like, what the f*ck even was that? If he was this bad with money in small things, and this sloppy in his principles (what about this celebrity industrial complex bullsh*t didn’t Wei Wuxian hate, and know better than?), then how was he supposed to be someone’s partner, and like, someday a dad? Because Lan Wangji absolutely wanted a kid! And so did he, in theory? But could he handle a kid if he couldn’t even responsibly manage the wardrobe of a 2-D avatar?

Wei Wuxian was on his fifth coffee of the morning. He was facing an arbitrary thesis deadline and having an imposter-syndrome induced freakout, complete with deep, panicked, ratcheting breaths, about how he did not get Deluze. It was like he was broken, he could not get this. This reading had taken him three days. Three days. What did that mean?

Lan Wangji knew that for all Wei Wuxian's determination, there were many things he'd hardly ever had to work at. Wei Wuxian had always been able to follow anyone’s thinking with enviable ease.

“So,” Wei Wuxian gulped, seeming almost to choke on the word, “I just—I think—”

Lan Wangji could feel (like the barometric pressure in the air changing before the sky cracked and heavy rain sluiced down) that Wei Wuxian was going to say the kind of words that always cut Lan Wangji to the quick. They did so even though he knew how little those words signified, beyond another flare of Wei Wuxian’s desire to punish, and to protect people from, himself.

To forestall them, he wrapped Wei Wuxian in his arms. The flat of his palm pressed down on Wei Wuxian’s back, slowing the rhythm of those fast-hitching breaths.

“Wei Ying,” he said into the space between near-sobs, “things worth doing are often difficult.”

He waited for Wei Wuxian to nod against his neck in acknowledgement before continuing.

“I have struggled, all the years I’ve known you, with things that you found simple,” Lan Wangji then admitted.

Wei Wuxian scoffed, as though the idea was laughable. Lan Wangji frowned.

He’d often concealed that sort of effort from Wei Wuxian out of a desire to seem Wei Wuxian’s effortless equal in all things. He wondered now whether he’d wanted Wei Wuxian to think well of him more even than he’d wanted his beloved to know him: to see that they were both struggling, human creatures, and to understand that there was no shame in growth. It seemed likely enough. People were often foolish, in this respect. The last thing Lan Wangji desired was for Wei Wuxian to see him as some cold, inhuman standard, measured against which Wei Wuxian would tell himself he came up short. Lan Wangji would not allow himself to serve as another stick Wei Wuxian could use to beat himself with.

“I met those challenges, eventually,” Lan Wangji said, stroking Wei Wuxian’s hair. “Though it was often far more difficult than I let you know. You have not hit some limit in yourself. Do you believe people work that way?”

“No,” Wei Wuxian breathed against his cheek, into his own hair. “No, of course not. We’re not little machines, we’re.” He swallowed. “I’m being a child, I know. But I—”

Wei Wuxian’s long breath felt like weeping. Moved through his body, under Lan Wangji’s hands, like weeping.

“This is not an environment that shows you at your best,” Lan Wangji said, continuing on before Wei Wuxian could protest. “Is your programme kind and fair to others?

Wei Wuxian gave a wet snort. “No, it’s not.”

Lan Wangji knew Wei Wuxian would have more to say on this point, but he wanted to keep this conversation settled on Wei Wuxian. Letting Wei Wuxian deflect it onto other matters, however genuine his concerns regarding them were, would not serve his purpose.

“And are you the exception? Is it kind and fair to you, Wei Ying?”

He could hear that Wei Wuxian was outright crying, and trying not to.

“You came here to do good,” Lan Wangji whispered.

And how could Wei Wuxian not do it, when he was good? When he darted through life like a bright lantern, bobbing and weaving through the forest dark.

Wei Wuxian was not like him, who endured a situation with grit teeth and a coward’s silence. Wei Wuxian made things harder for himself. It was often his tragedy; it was often the only way he knew of moving in the world.

“So do it to spite them,” Lan Wangji said. “Throw your glory in their teeth.”

Nothing Wei Wuxian passed through could diminish or unmake the core of him. Lan Wangji would ensure it: would protect Wei Wuxian even from himself.

Wei Wuxian laughed, and calmed like a sky wracked with storms might when the thunder had rippled out to the edges of the horizon, and diminished. Wei Wuxian rallied, and worked through the weekend. He turned in a full five act reconstruction of Love's Labour's Won rather than the seminar paper that had been expected of him. It was the type of petty, easy brilliance that enraged people, and which Lan Wangji had come, over the years, to find characteristic of Wei Wuxian, and surpassingly beautiful. It was wonderful thing given to the world, submitted in place of rote banality. For as long as they lived, and after, it would be lastingly lovely.

Lan Wangji did not always know what he ought to do—let alone what they ought to. He did not know how to make his partner’s way in the world easy. But he knew, now, how to ensure that Wei Wuxian did not travel alone. Not so long as that wasn’t what he actually wanted or needed. Lan Wangji was learning how to be a good partner. It did not always come automatically and easily to him, this delicate business of knowing what one ought to say to ease a sore and heavy heart. Still, Lan Wangji worked at it, and learned by repetition. He found Wei Ying, and the science of being his, at once the most demanding and the most valuable study he had ever undertaken.

Chapter 29: Strong Poison AU (Wangxian)

Chapter Text

In Strong Poison we meet Harriet Vane, a writer of detective novels on trial for murdering her terrible ex-boyfriend. Lord Peter Wimsey (the protagonist of this 1930s series: a brilliant detective and sometime-spy with severe shellshock) falls in love with her at first sight, works to exonerate her and saves her from execution. Layers of guilt, obligation and the fraught power differences attendant on their gender and class mean that it takes roughly five years and four books for them to get married. Harriet’s lesbian best friends have opinions on the situation, which largely boil down to ‘for Christ's sake Harriet, get on with it!’ (This is not a case of ‘I think they're gay’, the book series has many inarguable, plot-important gay couples portrayed both positively and negatively.) Harriet does not Get On With It: she instead descends into her feelings about academia for a whole additional book, and it’s pretty great.

I think you can see why I’d want a Strong Poison fusion. If some modern AU is going to land Wei Wuxian in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, you can’t just not give me Lan Wangji visiting constantly, suggesting prison marriage. Nothing short of death or pure ignorance would keep him away. The only thing that could is perhaps Wei Wuxian himself (say, if he pitched a huge crying fit begging Lan Wangji not to come and promised to write daily—but even then, I have my doubts).

Chapter 30: Brady Bunch (Wangxian) (and More)

Chapter Text

It was naturally surprising that Cangse Sanren, long missing and presumed dead, had returned to the world after having been entrapped by a curse for almost a decade. She and her husband had been transformed into deer; her body’s new form had muddled her mind all the while, but her strong, intact golden core had given her a lifespan unnatural for the species. One day a hunter had downed a doe, and had been horrified to hear a human scream from the animal’s mouth. The clever man had brought the wounded deer to the nearest minor Sect. There, Cangse Sanren had been healed and restored to herself, and the hunter had been duly applauded and rewarded for saving the famous cultivator’s life.

It was tragic that Wei Changze, with his weaker core, had succumbed to a hard winter some years before. Yet none of this was outright shocking; if cultivators lived in a world of strange miracles, where the wondrous was commonplace, they also lived in the every-day world, where sorrow was equally mundane. For his part, Wei Wuxian was glad to have any living family returned to him.

No, the outright shocking thing was that Lan Qiren, who’d apparently been carrying a torch for Cangse Sanren for decades, had been eager to rekindle that old flame—even knowing full well what sort of step-son he was letting himself in for! He had, at length, succeeded in his efforts. A little over two decades after he’d fallen for wild, disreputable Cangse Sanren, Lan Qiren was marrying her.

“How can she like him?” Wei Wuxian hissed to Jiang Wanyin, smiling stiffly through the marriage ceremony. “I know all her other old boyfriends are married now,” he dodged his brother’s elbow, having anticipated that he’d be driven to try and land a hit in his own mother’s defence, “but is a life with a rule-obsessed Lan fuddy-duddy truly better than remaining single?”

Jiang Wanyin looked at him, then at Lan Wangji. He then looked back at Wei Wuxian. Then back at Lan Wangji.

“What?” Wei Wuxian asked.

Jiang Wanyin sighed. “I f*cking hate you.”

“I mean, I know that, but what?”

Lan Wangji heaved his own deep sign, and went immediately from the ceremony to the library pavilion to look into whether male cousins by marriage could legally marry. Once he reassured himself that they could, Lan Wangji acted immediately: his uncle could hardly make his accustomed complaints about Wei Wuxian’s inappropriateness as a partner and the folly of a proposal now.

Wei Wuxian was very surprised to learn he would be marrying an insistent Lan Wangji, but not, he discovered, at all opposed.

These unions were not without their culture clashes. Horror struck the Lan family when Cangse Sanren and her son decided to bond, after their years apart, by discussing their sex lives. Apparently the Weis had no problem with such disclosures, and found the Lans’ reticence a species of weakness. Lan Wangji and his uncle avoided one another’s sober glances. The Lan Sect was founded on marital love, and defined by its deep-running, unspoken passion. The men of the main line had believed nothing could put them off their spouses and the act of love. But no: their partners had ruined it. It was all over. The Lans were but shells of themselves, now. It was a very difficult two to three days of mourning. Of healing. Of deciding to simply pretend that wasn’t happening and get on with their (sex)lives.

Wei Wuxian conquered the bulk of his remaining resentment of his new step-father when his mother gave him a baby brother to coo over. Due to inadmissible terrible jealousy regarding his usurped position, Jiang Wanyin was snitty about the entire subject. He tried to assuage his bruised feelings by lording the catastrophe over Wen Ning (who he’d previously resented as a pretender to the ‘Wei Wuxian’s little brother’ throne, before all this nonsense had begun). Even these efforts were spoilt by Wen Ning’s placid refusal to understand and demonstrate a sensible fear of Jiang Wanyin’s ire. It was like Lan f*cking Wangji all over again. The Wen bastard crocheted a baby blanket? Jiang Wanyin hated that guy, and wondered whether he could and should learn to crochet. But like, better.

Chapter 31: Xuanwoo (Wangxian)

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Wei Wuxian tried to insist that he and Lan Wangji had not—absolutely had not!—made love in the cave of the Xuanwu.

“I was bleeding out!” he shouted as Jiang Yanli tugged the tunic over his head, craning his neck to avoid yelling in his shijie’s ear as she smoothed his hair, fussing with the braid she’d given him after his hasty ceremonial haircut with a spiritual-sword.

To Wei Wuxian’s surprise, the rescue party that had come for them consisted of both what seemed to be most of Jiang and a good chunk of currently-occupied Lan—including formerly-missing Lan Xichen, who Jiang Wanyin had apparently run across en route home. For his part, Lan Xichen had been coming to see whether Jiang could lend Lan aid to rout the Wen. Jiang Fengmian had agreed to the plan, and so the whole group intended to march East after sorting out this present emergency.

Jiang Wanyin snorted at his brother. “You really expect us to believe that would stop you?”

“His leg was broken!” Wei Wuxian appealed to Jiang Fengmian, who perhaps had not been told this. “I had to take my clothes off to shock him into spitting out poisoned blood!”

Madam Yu raised an eyebrow, which indicated that this last offering had really not helped his case.

“Ten days alone in the dark,” she said, crisply. “You’re probably pregnant by now. Man pregnant,” she concluded ominously.

“That’s not even possible!” Wei Wuxian shouted.

“You’d find a way, A Ying,” Jiang Fengmian said cheerfully, clapping a hand on his shoulder.

Madam Yu clucked her tongue in grim agreement.

Wei Wuxian’s various shidis piped in with their own burning inappropriate questions.

“So like, was it seven days of pure sex, or were there breaks?”

“Did you somehow use sex to kill the turtle?”

“If so, how?” The sharp-eyed shimei who’d offered up that one looked fascinated, and very prepared to take notes.

“You,” Wei Wuxian said, pinned helplessly while Jiang Yanli tied the strings of his red tunic, to help it better fit his shape, “are too young to know—to even ask such things! Aiyah, what am I saying, what things? We used chord assassination, like regular people! We did not f*ck in the cave with the rotting turtle! How is this romantic to you? Did this shixiong never teach you standards?”

“You’re right,” Lan Xichen said with a hum, gliding up in that annoyingly soundless way of his. “Those are, indeed, rather crude terms for lovemaking, and inappropriate in this case.”

Lan Xichen turned to speak to Jiang furen, almost as though no one else was present. “It’s a pity Lan can’t host the marriage, given the circ*mstances, and that Uncle cannot attend.” ‘And put a stop to this,’ he did not say, instead opting to continue blithely on. “But I am Sect Leader—my consent is binding.”

Madam Yu nodded. “Better to regularise the situation and formalise our alliance immediately.”

Lan Xichen, who had brought his red-eared little brother with him, turned and tenderly patted Lan Wangji cheek.

“Congrats on losing your manginity.” His wide smile crinkled his eyes. “My baby boy!”

“Please,” Lan Wangji managed after a moment, “never again refer to my, or anyone else’s, manginity.”

Lan Xichen blinked at him, perplexed.

“But that’s what Mingjue ge calls it!”

Lan Wangji amended himself. “Additionally, please never again tell me such things.”

“I am not getting married in a field!” Wei Wuxian said with a stomp of his foot, his brain having shorted out from processing this whole series of absurdities.

Jiang Wanyin sorted. “Big talk from someone who lost his virginity in the rotting turtle cave.”

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian whipped around, finding Lan Wangji in the crowd: conspicuous in a borrowed red tunic. (Why, why had shijie brought these?) “Tell them this is ridiculous!”

“I refute the insult to your honour, of course,” Lan Wangji said. “I refuse to accept blame for a sin I had not the pleasure of committing. The venue, I do not greatly object to.”

Wei Wuxian blinked at him. “The venue?”

Lan Wangji nodded solemnly. “As xiong zhang says, representatives of both our families are present. And after all, the idea is not wholly without romance.”

Wei Wuxian continued to stare blankly, and Lan Wangji politely prompted him—his cadence clearly one of quotation.

"On the moor is the creeping grass, covered with dew-drops so full and round. There was a man: beautiful and bright, hisfeatures so delicate and charming. By chance we met each other, and he and I were happy together.”

There was an awkward pause. Lan Wangji cleared his throat.

“As you see, there is precedent.”

“Oh,” Wei Wuxian said, wide-eyed. “Oh, Lan Zhan.” He took a helpless step towards his impromptu fiancé.

Madam Yu rolled his eyes. “And I’m supposed to believe these two kept chaste for a xun, unchaperoned? Thank the gods I insisted on coming along to see this sorted out decently.”

Jiang Fengmian tactfully did not remind her that both aiding Lan and accompanying Jiang Wanyin had been his own ideas, both of which she had resisted in the strongest terms before announcing she’d join the party herself, ‘to ensure neither rescue was botched’. Marriage, whether celebrated in a shrine or in a field, was all about compromises.

Chapter 32: Options for a Wangxian Tam Lin Retelling

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I lightly touched this cord in Started, but since Mongrelmind is a giant fan of this border ballad, we’d previously discussed options for more thorough-going fusions. There have been, I believe, a couple of Wangxian Tam Lins and adjacent works since we first spoke about the prospect. But given that the topic’s been profitably reworked by fantasy authors many times (https://tam-lin.org/library/fiction.html), I can see no danger in duplication.

"She asks him whether he was ever human, either after that reappearance or, in some versions, immediately after their first meeting resulted in her pregnancy. He reveals that he was a mortal man, who, falling from his horse, was caught and captured by the Queen of Fairies. Every seven years, the fairies give one of their people as a teind (tithe) to Hell and Tam fears he will become the tithe that night, which is Hallowe'en. He is to ride as part of a company of elven knights. Janet will recognise him by the white horse upon which he rides and by other signs. He instructs her to rescue him by pulling him down from the white horse - so Janet "catches" him this time - and holds him tightly. He warns her that the fairies will attempt to make her drop him by turning him into all manner of beasts (see Proteus), but that he will do her no harm. When he is finally turned into a burning coal, she is to throw him into a well, whereupon he will reappear as a naked man, and she must hide him. Janet does as she is asked and wins her knight. The Queen of Fairies is angry but acknowledges defeat."

Metaphorical:

- Have a pre-incarnation meeting, a la the Chinese classic Story of the Stone, or a conversation (circa the Qixi vow, or the Cold Pond vow) where they discuss the necessity of holding on through changes. Lan Wangji then has to ‘hold on’ through his initial annoyance/discomfiture, the demonic cultivation, the Burial Mounds settlement arc, Wei Wuxian’s death and the Mo Xuanyu reincarnation. Use epigrams to clarify the structure of the arc.

The theme of transformations can hold the parallel together and guide the story. Such a treatment could dwell on the changes the act of holding on requires Lan Wangji to make within himself, allowing the bildungsroman aspect Diana Wynne Jones develops in her treatment of Tam Lin to have some muscle. (Mongrelmind observes that this could draw on Fire and Hemlock’s logic: its balance between holding on and letting go.)

More Literal Treatments:

- Wei Wuxian as Tam Lin for a the ‘sexy Yiling Laozu vibe’; use dark magic to fill the fairy queen’s role in the original plot. Wei Wuxian had to give up his humanity for plot-aligned reasons, and Lan Wangji asks whether anything can fix that. They could know one another previously, or not (personally, I usually prefer their knowing one another—it tends less to Any Two Guysism).

- Lan Wangji as the child resulting from a union such as this, or some similar Selkie, Crane Wife kind of set-up (as a parent, Tam Lin is in a kind of prison). "When asked about her condition, she declares that her baby's father is an elf whom she will not forsake." Attendant estrangement and trauma.

- "Most variants begin with the warning that Tam Lin collects either a possession or the virginity of any maiden who passes through the forest of Carterhaugh. When a young woman, usually called Janet or Margaret, goes to Carterhaugh and plucks a double rose, Tam appears and asks her why she has come without his leave and taken what is his. She states that she owns Carterhaugh because her father has given it to her.

In most variants, Janet then goes home and discovers that she is pregnant; some variants pick up the story at this point."

This whole fic could hinge around a very literal night hunting issue, where one of the protagonists sleeps with the other out of Interest, perhaps to get out of the forest (willingly, but kind of as an exigency). It wouldn’t have to be mpreg, but it could be. Mongrelmind points out that “Sizhui needs to be born SOMEHOW”.

- You could use a set up like this to play on tensions between them regarding property/belonging versus wandering.

Lan Wangji could be very positive that this is his forest. It was his father’s before him. His name is on the title papers. (Lan Wangji’s title could either be mystical or worldy: he could be your elf or your Janet.)

An anarchist dryad cultivator Wei Wuxian could wonder what the f*ck papers are. Does he mean: talismans? He could, alternatively, get it, but find the contention ridiculous, because f*ck properly, and/or feel Lan Wangji should simply get over it.

Wei Wuxian could also be firmly convinced this is Jiang land, actually.

Gongyi Xiao's hyper polite way of asserting his Sect's territorial control over Bai Lu forest in SVSSS is really interesting and worth remembering as a strategy, here. (https://faelicy.tumblr.com/post/611252979631292416/chapter-29-bai-lu-forest )

- Mongrelmind suggests that Lan Wangji could already be haunting the burial mounds when Wei Wuxian gets dropped in (an idea I’ve read once, but could stand to see done a variety of ways).

Chapter 33: Yuri!!! on Ice: Notes for a Cold Fusion

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These castings don’t function together, but individually, I stand by each.

There is a general fandom consensus that in a Yuri!!! on Ice situation, Lan Wangji would be the Victor. But between Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian, one of them is a humiliating drunk, and it is not Wei Wuxian. One of them is effortlessly good at everything he touches, and it is not really Lan Wangji (who is mindfully, effortfully good at everything he touches, after methodical practice). One of them would spontaneously move to Japan without anything resembling proper warning—I think you get the gist. Further, as @aeriallon observed, it would be very like Wei Wuxian to not fully understand what his flirting was doing to his fellow skater.

Nie Huaisang has Big Phichit Chulanont Energy. Big 'Shall we skate?' vibes here.

Jiang Cheng and Lan Jingyi were considered for the role of Yuri Plisetsky, but ultimately Jiang Cheng could never be Yuri Plisetsky (because he could never win anything) (not even this part) (‘But have you considered—’ Jiang Cheng’s feelings? Not even once.). This important decision comes down to one question: ‘which character reminds you the most of a rabid ferret?’ It can only be Xue Yang. No other cast member is sufficiently unhinged.

Madam Yu is a dead ringer for Lilia Baranovskaya, ballet coach. This unfortunately suggests she’s the ex-wife of a Lan Qiren Yakov Feltsman. The divorce was not amiable, but they still coach together. …and have sex.

Chapter 34: THE MORALITY OF CHENGXIAN

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There’s been a lot of Discourse about whether Chengxian is incest, whether it’s world-endingly bad to write Immoral Fiction!!™, etc etc. Please don’t voice your opinion on the question in the comments: I do not care. Besides, there is no need to discuss the matter further, because I have devised a solution!

We need to write a terrible fantasy novel (like every day, I know) called THE MORALITY OF CHENGXIAN!!

The cover: exactly a Gor novel, but with Chengxian (apologies in advance to Wei Wuxian, who will certainly be cold in the metal bikini thing).

The tone: full on Houseplants of Gor.

The subject: entirely and exclusively Tumblr debates, but described like Gor’s weird slave fetish economy, with unrelenting breathless gravity.

This is the only way to process these endless, circular, real-stakes-free arguments with the seriousness they deserve, so that we can heal as a community. This, and a lot of fan-art Gor parody covers.

Chapter 35: Jin Ling's Unexpected and Unwelcome Family Vacation, and How It Was Resolved (Wangxian)

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Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan married young, and divorced young, too. Their mothers—childhood best friends—had always been very keen on the idea of their union, and had applied no little pressure towards that end. Confusion on both Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan’s parts as to what they themselves wanted, hurtful misunderstandings and Jin Zixuan’s failure to stand up to his irredeemably terrible father had eventually caused Jiang Yanli (with her brothers’ staunch support) to leave both her husband and the country in which his prominent, wealthy family loomed large.

The Jins could have happily forgotten all about Jiang Yanli, were it not for the fact that she’d had a son who she’d taken abroad with her. A son who was, technically, the heir to Jin’s substantial holdings. It didn’t take long before Jiang Yanli’s former father-in-law, her ex-husband’s half-brother (ever-eager to curry said father’s inconstant favour), her ex-husband’s cousins and the whole pack of more distant Jin relations began to murmur about the jumped up, ungrateful bitch who’d had the audacity to up and leave the country with their Zixuan’s boy.

The thing was, if they just sent a relative of Jin Ling’s to pick the child up and bring him back home, as they felt they’d every right to—well, they’d have him, and Jiang Yanli wouldn’t. The matter would then be de facto settled: the boy would be all the way in China, and Jin’s resources would frustrate any external claim on him.

And so, Jiang Yanli found out why her son didn’t come home from school one Wednesday via a cooly polite voicemail, left while she was still at work. Yanli was frantic, furious, and on the phone to both her brothers in under ten minutes.

Jiang Wanyin stayed in Wuhan to manage the firm that had fallen to him after the death of their parents a few years before, and to pull all the levers he could from inside the country. Wei Wuxian flew out immediately to stay with and support his sister, and to see whether anything might be done legally from this end. He was an attorney, so knew he might be able to help.

From the Didi to the airport he advised his sister, first and foremost, to contact the Chinese community organisation she already had a relationship with. Jiang Yanli had enrolled Jin Ling in language classes at their Centre, so he didn’t lose his mother tongue. This sort of thing, Wei Wuxian told her grimly, slinging his bag onto his shoulder as he hopped out of the car, wasn’t without precedent. They might well know where to start, and whether she should go to the police.

When he arrived, Wei Wuxian barged into his sister’s modest terrace house to find Jiang Yanli having tea with, and being calmed down by, a cool, collected man in a tweed jacket. Jiang Yanli squeezed Wei Wuxian’s hand hard when he offered it to her, but continued speaking. Her brother could hug her when her guest left—the conversation was evidently very important.

The stranger listened to Jiang Yanli and gently, intelligently outlined her options in slightly British-accented Mandarin. It turned out that Jiang Yanli’s chosen neighbourhood—affordable for a middle class single mother with a good job, and so (prices in the capital being what they were) a little down-at-heel—was largely populated by immigrants, who had elected one of the country’s lean crop of PoC MPs. The Chinese community group had told Jiang Yanli that they had a very good member of Parliament, who should be her first port of call.

Lan Wangji, QC, had received Jiang Yanli’s polite and deeply distressed email and come to personally talk through her options with her. He blushed slightly when a man—who’d flown across the world at the drop of a hat to help his sister, who was still ragged from a long-haul flight, and who was also, indisputably, one of the most gorgeous people Lan Wangji had ever seen—made sure Lan Wangji was Labour, thanked him profusely and sincerely for coming, and then grilled him on whether this was a matter for Interpol. This rapid inquisition was laced with a particularly excoriating (particularly attractive-to-Lan-Wangji) commentary on how the patriarchal sexism of Chinese policing and the foundational racism of its British equivalent had enabled this sh*tshow in the first place.

Lan Wangji clarified that the resolution of this probably would not be easy, considering what Ms. Jiang (Yanli, please) had given him to understand about her former husband’s family. He further promised to exert all his experience in her defence, as was his duty.

Jiang Yanli began crying at the mention of how long an Interpol case might take, and consequently, Wei Wuxian was in the middle of a particularly elaborate description of how exactly he’d like to castrate Jin Zixuan (And just pluck that peaco*ck bald—didn’t Romans used to eat them, like, all the f*cking time? When had that venerable custom died out?) when the doorbell rang.

Wei Wuxian went to answer it, audibly punched whoever had called, and then hauled that very same Jin Zixuan (now embellished with a black eye) into the living room to explain himself.

Jin Zixuan did so, immediately. Wei Wuxian was fairly shocked to hear that he’d quit his job with his family’s firm and essentially disowned himself when confronted with a plan he’d not at all agreed to, presented as though it were a pleasant surprise he should be grateful for. The only reason Jin Zixuan didn’t have their son here with him now was his concerns about the legality of bringing Jin Ling across an international border—how tired the child was from the first flight, how scared he might be if his father were stopped and questioned.

He’d left Jin Ling with his own mother, who’d been as affronted to learn about all this as he had been. Jin Zixuan falteringly told Jiang Yanli that this was all such bullsh*t, because of course she could take care of Jin Ling. She was the best person he knew. He didn’t want to be associated with anyone who would hurt her; he’d hardly been able to stand being associated with himself when he had.

“I just wanted you to know that I want to help,” Jin Zixuan said, falteringly. “A Li, I think you're doing just—just great with Lingling. I’ve gotten the legal stuff rolling on the mainland side—I spoke to your brother. Well, your other—” He glanced at a still-glaring Wei Wuxian, and coughed. “Anyway. I'll—I’ll go now.”

“You flew here just to tell me that?” Jiang Yanli asked, through tears. “A Xuan, you left your family? Where will you even go?”

“I mean, I didn’t tell you that because—” Jin Zixuan stuttered. “A Li, I don’t want you to feel obligated, I just—I should have done that years ago. For you. For me, f*ck.”

Rolling his eyes at Lan Wangji with surprising discretion and a trace of warmth, Wei Wuxian told his sister that they’d be leaving—that she should WhatsApp him later. Particularly if her ex gave her any trouble.

With a parting glare and a brief, habitual exchange of rude gestures with Zixuan, Wei Wuxian left, tugging Lan Wangji’s sleeve to get him to come along (which Lan Wangji did, after extending a similar offer of further assistance).

Out in the raw morning air, trailing a little suitcase behind him, Wei Wuxian stretched. He turned his head over his shoulder and asked Lan Wangji if he knew of any decent hotels in the area.

After a moment’s hesitation, Lan Wangji commented that he lived not far from here, and had a spare bedroom.

“Moving a bit fast, aren’t we gege?” Wei Wuxian teased.

Lan Wangji grabbed the handle of Wei Wuxian’s rolling bag in response. When Wei Wuxian scrambled to get it back, Lan Wangji reminded Wei Wuxian that he’d had a shock, followed by a long, tiring flight, and that Lan Wangji had not.

“First and foremost, you certainly need to rest,” Lan Wangji said, glancing at Wei Wuxian’s red eyes and sallow cheeks. Worry and sleep deprivation and done a number on Wei Wuxian; he’d spent the flight so restless his leg had rattled the tray table like a minor and particularly grating earthquake, drafting out potential cases against the Jins on co*cktail napkins.

“That will take some hours. Then, I’ll order curry. So in fact,” Lan Wangji said, looking him dead in the eye, “we won’t be moving hastily at all.”

Wei Wuxian barked a startled laugh.

“Is it tough, being—please, correct me if I’m wrong, here—the only gay, Chinese-British MP?”

“Mm.” Lan Wangji looked him up and down. “Not at the moment,” he said honestly.

Jin Ling returned from his abrupt, bewildering vacation none the worse for wear. Given that the situation had somehow resulted in his parents living together again (and seeming happier than he could remember either of them ever having been), the full-time presence of one of his favourite uncles and some kind of wholly new, weirdly-accented uncle for his already impressive collection, Jin Ling really couldn’t see what all the fuss had been about.

Chapter 36: Lan Clan Western Astrology

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Lan Zhan’s birth date is January 23rd which makes him a Capricorn-Aquarius cusp. This explains everything. Per Mongrelmind, “Boy oh boy, I love it when the stars just look down and whisper ‘huge bitch’.”

Wei Wuxian won’t think Capricorn is ‘absolutely the least sexy sign’ when their modest but comfortable retirement plan kicks in. "Don't worry about the mortgage, baby. It's amortised.”

Mongrelmind asked if all Lans were, therefore, Capricorns. “Are you only allowed to bone down during march in Cloud Recesses?”

This is absolutely true. They call it Boning Month and schedule all their erotic poetry open mic nights then. Lan Xichen, born October 8^th, is a shameful Libra outlier: proof his parents were not on the right path. (Even Wangji's Aquarius cusp is Dubious.)

‘Bone in January,

have a son.

Twink and sword daddy,

can’t choose one.’

That’s what the elders always say. #wisdom

Chapter 37: Ten Short AU Ideas: Xue Yang Edition

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There are a lot of fics where Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan have peacefully adopted A Qing and Xue Yang, which seems to bode very f*cking ill. Gentlemen, your son is obsessed with one dad and going to knife the other in his sleep: I don’t know if we can just gloss over this. It’s never once treated as the prelude to psychological horror, but honestly it probably should be? Xue Yang loves you, Daddy.

Rosemary Clooney’s Come On-A My House has Xue Yang fanvid energy. The outrightthreatening musical bridge. He loves your hair, and he will be giving you candy, whether you want some or not.

The other obvious option is 50 Cent's Candy Shop, but is it too het?

I would believe almost anything about Xue Yang’s level of sexual experience, from ‘he's slept with everything going: farm animals, Sect Leader Yao, you name it, he’s done it twice’ to 'he is a total virgin, incapable of driving' because his sexuality is so all over the place and sublimated into other things that he's never even thought about it. Honestly, being a strangely over-sexed virgin fits his whole 'I could play Wei Wuxian in the movie!!' vibe.

Hang on, why isn’t there fic where Xue Yang is playing Wei Wuxian in the biopic?

“wlw wangxian waffle house jukebox inquiry agenda (@drdulosis)

now accepting arguments for which mdzs character would be MOST likely to fall victim to a multilevel marketing scheme. funny and serious answers both embraced.”

Every answer to this question is both justifiable and hilarious. Which character can this not be made to work for? None of them.

Xue Yang believes he's conning the con, but he is in fact: being conned. He ends up sleeping in a beat-up grey Honda station wagon full of Avon products. Enraged, his smile falls as he realises he now possesses $5,000 worth of foundation that doesn't even match his skin tone, like, at all.

Nie Mingjue’s spirit uses inquiry to show Wei Wuxian all the dodgy corpse face-f*cking that’s been going on around here. Wei Wuxian is duly sympathetic regarding this disrespect. Desecrating his body as a magical ‘f*ck you’? That's rough, buddy. Sad times.

Wei Wuxian duly informs Lan Xichen that Jin Guangyao’s been cheating on him with the head: getting head squared. Jin Guangyao’s ‘I never cheated; (severed) head doesn’t count!’ arguments are less than convincing. But how did this even come to pass? Jin Guangyao is—well, not classy, not with that father, but he would at least take your ass to Red Lobster?

Clearly, Xue ‘Tupperware Party’ Yang led Jin Guangyao away from the path of righteousness and down the path that rocks, i.e. encouraged the disembodied-mindf*ckery. Xue Yang is absolutely of the “save the head, man! You might want it for later. Doggy bag, bro.” school of thought. This is a man who looks at a corpse and thinks, “you gonna eat that? If you're not gonna f*ck that head, can I?”

The Xue Yang arc can be read as an ‘evil stepdad’ Disney Original Movie from hell, with a Parent Trap or Lost Boys vibe.

Alternatively: Xue Yang decides he’s gonna Be A Good Parent to A Qing, who has been de-facto adopted much against her will. Xue Yang believes that Xiao Xingchen will find this new look so sexy that even if Xiao Xingchen discovers Xue Yang’s true identity, he’ll think, “oh, but we have a child together, I can’t just leave him—“

Consider, then, Xue ‘Dad Jokes’ Yang. (Xiao Xingchen can barely get his own dad jokes out, because he starts laughing so much at his own hilarity three words in.)

Lan Xichen could climb in the shared NieYao coffin: they’d budge up and make room. This isn’t the Xue Yang/Xiao Xingchen shared coffin, which Song Lan shows up and attempts to ooze in on top of, like the cheese layer of a French onion soup (Suddenly, Xue Yang is vegan.).

‘Sue Yang’ is the best autocorrect typo, because it posits the existence of “A Boy Named Sue Yang”.

Before you interact with Xue Yang, you have to make sure your shots are up to date. Mongrelmind observes that this is how he successfully infected Xiao Xingchen: “he's from the mountains, there's no way he ever did his shots”. Once again, we are haunted by the consequences of Baoshen Sanren’s problematic anti-vax stance.

Chapter 38: Ten Piece RomCom Wangxian Chocolate Box Collection

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You've Got Fail, featuring a small business driven under by Lanmazon. Bookstore owner Wei Wuxian thinks there's no way Lan Wangji is the very erudite stranger he chats to.

It eventually turns out that A Yao was not, in fact, 'a nice guy, great with labour relations’.

‘But I wanted the company to be good for you, A Huan! And the share prices are—please, stop stabbing me!’

Chop Around the Corner

Emphatically vegan Lan Wangji versus Wei Wuxian, a local butcher's assistant at Nie Deli who learns how to cook tofu for love.

‘How about ma pao tofu?'

‘There is beef in that.'

Wei Wuxian, crying: ‘Not—primarily!’

(Once, when I was vegetarian and a pastry chef, I was taking out the day's garbage when a blood-covered butcher's assistant was like, ‘hey, girl—’. I thought, ‘wow, I am almost impressed you'd go for this right now. I will tell the Cheese Counter Lesbian I am way more interested in of these events—’)

His Girl Friday

Either of them could do either role.

Kiss Me Kate

I don’t know how, but I know it’s right.

Freaky Friday au to fix Madame Yu and Wei Wuxian's relationship (and along the way, to make things better between her and Jiang Fengmian) (…but not in a weird incest way).

Wei Wuxian the Virgin

Someone had a great fic idea, which I thought could be extremely fun in multiple iterations: if you pass a lot of highly refined energy between two people for days, you are effectively dual cultivating and can accidentally create a child. In the fic, this results in a ‘BUT I NEVER EVEN GOT LAID?!?!’ Wangxian post-Xuanwu baby surprise. This idea deserves much exploration, but for now, please consider:

A post-canon Jane the Virgin Wangxian with baked-in cdrama Telemundo commentary. Ouyang Zizhen is the primary story-follower-cum-narrator, but he’s bullied his fellow juniors into participating (just ground them right down with time).

Lan Sizhui: Zizhen this is too weird, those are my dads, I—

Ouyang Zizhen: That’s not the line!

Lan Sizhui: *deep sigh* “….. and then, they held hands.”

Ouyang Zizhen: Never be ashamed of where you came from!

Jin Ling: I mean, I would be.

Lan Jingyi: A scene ago your dad literally made your mother cry for the third time in a five minute walk.

Jin Ling: Do you want to live?!

Lan Jingyi: That’s my secret: Zoomers never want to live.

Hold on, is Sizhui the turtle-cave hand-holding baby? Or did Wangxian only have a kid after the main plot?! Dios f*cking mio.

Ouran Host Club, but it was Lan Xichen's idea.

Xichen just thought the whole concept was lovely! Wangji, why won't you participate? It's such a great way to make friends! A chance to socialise with the guest disciples, to have tea and chat in a calm, welcoming—please stop struggling and put on the nice—hanfu—WANGJI, COME BACK HERE!!

Dexter's Lab AU where Mandark!Lan Wangji doesn't realise that Wei 'no lab safety procedures!!' Wuxian is both his nemesis, the Dexter, and his mysterious hypnotic artistically/athletically gifted obsessional love interest, the Didi.

A Hogwarts-style AU where everyone was deeply anti-Wei Wuxian until he defeated the dark lord and died doing it. Wen Sizhui is raised by his remaining distant kin. The surviving Wen have almost entirely retreated from the wider magical world, and when Sizhui does come into contact with other wizards he hears all kinds of wild rumours about the adopted dad he can barely remember (Wei Wuxian still comes in for criticism spliced with sanctification due to his crucial role in the last battles). Professor Lan Wangji is in an odd, Snape-like position of serving as teacher and protector of the child of someone he was and still is in love with.

Disney Princess Wei Wuxian with undead squirrels and sh*t. Mongrelmind suggests Wei Wuxian as Fiona in Shrek: accidentally causing a bluebird to explode while singing, then awkwardly clearing his throat and telling Lan Wangji “yeah, so. That’s a work in progress. Anyway—”

Chapter 39: Ten Short AU Ideas: Meng Yao/Jin Guangyao Edition

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Do you think you could fit like, a Cheerio in Jin Gungyao’s dimples? I bet Jin Ling has tried. Jin Ling was truly privileged as a child; he had so many great opportunities.

Meng Yao stays for the Cloud Recesses Training Arc, and Huaisang’s attempts to get Meng Yao laid inside a month include Incidental Wangxian as a trial run, proof of concept sort of thing (which also serves to get Xichen to stop constantly worrying about his brother—freeing him up for thoughts of love, or at least thoughts of shagging). Huaisang likes to play a game through on easy mode first, just to get a feel for it. Now Jade Runner II is go.

If Jin Guangyao had a daemon (inevitably, a gold monkey), he would also make his daemon wear a tiny matching hat.

(Xichen gets a male peaco*ck, like ‘guys I’m g a y’. Lan Wangji is somewhatchagrined: brother is embarrassing me everyone. Wangji himself has a nice, respectable white snow leopard. It is also male, but you might not immediately know!)

A 3zun Tristan and Isolde in which Meng Yao is supposed to deliver Lan Xichen to Nie Mingjue and seduces him en route. ‘Oh no, we seem to have drunk from the goblet! Some crazy spell is making us—’

Relatedly, Mongrelmind suggests a 3zun Gawain and the Green Knight AU in which Nie Mingjue is the Green Knight/Bertilak, Jin Guangyao is his wife and Lan Xichen is Gawain.

Honestly, Meng Yao for every fairy tale. The Little Mengmaid. Mermeng?

Everyone is sleeping on Meng Yao: wedding planner. It’s shame that all we saw of him in Action was weird evil sound effects on the eve of Jin Zixuan’s wedding, which vaguely implied there was a knife! in the floral arrangements. He has more to give! And not all of it is knives!!

Arguably, Nie Mingjue wanted Wen Ruohan dead because Wen Ruohan killed his loving father: a man who accepted all his sons. Jin Guangyao killed Ruohan with his own hand, but the circ*mstances meant the Nie Mingjue didn't see that as an act of service done for him which he should thank Jin Guangyao for, which could over-ride Jin Guangyao's other actions. However Jin Guangyao might have expected that Nie Mingjue would,precisely because it would have meant a lot to him if someone had attempted to avenge he or his mother in that way.

Meng Yao sneaks around the Nie sect trying to patch up his cultivation training (which is more holes than substance) without exposing quite how bad the situation is. He slowly improves, trying to keep his incidents of falling into a pond while learning to ride a sword to a minimum. Eventually, via bribery, he solicits the aid of Nie Huaisang: an ‘I’ll help you weasel out of fencing practise if you teach me how to stand up on this two-inch-wide death trap’ arrangement. Jin Guangyao knows that Nie Huaisang can fly perfectly well, he’s just very lazy. Tell Huaisang about an interesting sale in town and he’s gone.

In a modern AU, Scrum Master Jin Guangyao prides himself on being a servant leader. He will cover you in blood and post-its. By the time he is done, it will no longer be a white board.

Lan Xichen has a brilliant idea to fix his unstable poly triad! Can anyone guess?

Nie Huaisang: NOT A KID, XICHEN.

Lan Xichen: Oh no, aha, I was going to say—um. Well, you don't think so?

Lan Xichen the next day, having had no other ideas in the interim: Hey Wangji, can I borrow A Yuan?

Lan Wangji: Absolutely f*cking not, no, thanks for asking. *Proceeds to sit on A Yuan in seclusion, like a hen with an egg.*

Lan Xichen sighs deeply. His only other plan was: group t-shirts that say '3zun to the moon’. Alas, no one is particularly receptive to his Vision.

Chapter 40: Ten Short AU Ideas: Nie Clan Edition

Chapter Text

Modern Nie Mingjue’s Daddy energy takes the form of his having a favourite weed whacker he’s named Baxia.

Nie Huaisang enters drag balls, and Nie Mingjue mills about the dressing room like ‘are ya winning, son?’

‘Always, da-ge.’

Per Mongrelmind: Nie Huaisang, beaming, after having made away with most of his competition: ‘We'll have to wait and see, but I sure hope so!’

All along Qin Su was just Nie Mingjue in a wig. Qin Pseud. ‘Missing,’ eh?

Jin Guangyao's tall, burly, hirsute wife gave a dainty bow. Waxing her upper lip (a daily necessity), Qin Pseud tried to remember her own murky past—’

“He never let me top,” Jin Guangyao tried to explain his crimes. ‘Like, n e v e r—”

Modern AU in which Nie Mingjue is a therapist. He will help you battle your anxiety! You better not be hiding your feelings from him. He will know, and he will force you to hug it out!

Lan Xichen, Wen Qing and he run a clinic as effective as it is feared. Nie Huaisang is the receptionist, and breaks patient confidentiality on the regular. Just all the time (as Wen Ning sobs, “please, stop! I am a nurse, this is Wrong!”).

Nie Huaisang picks up Jin Guangyao’s abandoned hat. He’s clearly taking it home to do a big sh*t in it.

Every time someone says ‘da ge’ I think of Da Bears and I wonder if Da Gays have a full football team, or what. (Actually this may be too American for broad appreciation. I don’t know how much cultural colonialism—I mean, osmosis—works on this eldritch sh*t.)

Relatedly, you could do an Untamed/Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? fusion/rewrite: Oh Da Ge, etcetera.

Lan Xichen insists that it’s not fair that Meng Yao never got a chance to attend the Cloud Recesses lectures!

“I know Mingjue needs you, but he’ll listen if I tell him you ought to stay. There aren’t many Nie disciples here as it is. Huaisang needs extra support to master this material and progress—”

Pounded in the Butt by the Cultivation World’s Inability to Deal with Systemic Abuses of Power

Chuck Tingle versions of major events in CQL, because ‘pounded in the butt by the burial mounds and later by my husband’s spiritual sword’ is, unfortunately, canon. Mongrelmind suggests ‘pounded in the butt by my inability to not resort to murder when dealing with my exes’, and tragically, there’s almost no character this isn’t true for.

All along, it’s been Nie Huaisang writing the Tinglers. He does the Photoshop covers (by hand) with a wistful sigh.

“Da ge always loved my art—”

Nie Mingle was, tragically, from his mother’s womb untimely ripped: he came out with a little baby six pack. Nie Furen’s tragic childbed death was the price of bringing such a swole babe into the world.

Nie Mingjue: Sorry, Mom. *clenches fist* Even as a baby, I was Too Swole. These shoulders were simply too powerful. I can only avenge you by using them in battle—

He can carry Huaisang and Meng Yao both under his left arm, and just Xichen under the right.

Xichen: I’m a big boy!!

Mingjue: *sob* You are, Daddy is so proud—

Mongrelmind observes that Meng Yao and Huaisang are both very upset they have to share an arm: like schnoodles refusing to peaceably look out the same car window.

In a modern AU, only Nie Huaisang remembers their past lives and his advice is all Like This.

Nie Huaisang believes that Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian have been together since their schooldays. He further believes that by making sure Lan Sizhui and Lan Wangji are at Mo Manor directly after Wei Wuxian’s resection, he is delivering Wei Wuxian directly to safety, and to family members who will immediately begin helping him investigate the last summoning curse mark. Why would Wei Wuxian not tell his partner about all this?

Wei Wuxian is very bemused by Nie Huaisang’s Reading, and a furious Nie Huaisang begins to question reality.

“But what about the death-glares Lan Wangji gave me whenever you and I were physically affectionate as teens? But what about how Lan Wangji defended you against everyone?!”

“Huaisang, we were—never—also oh my god, why would I just tell my trusted loved-ones things? Ffffff, like who does that?”

Chapter 41: Ten Short AU Ideas: Jiang Clan Edition

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Wei Wuxian reads trashy web novels, which her sister Jiang Wanyin endlessly mocks. Wei Wuxian tells Jiang Wanyin that Jiang Wanyin could never write one, and so, inevitably, here Jiang Wanyin, lesbian virgin, is: staring at the screen of her computer for a hopeless forty five minutes, cursing her sister’s name. Finally she manages to title the document 'Well... of... Boneliness’.

When reading her sister’s (eventual) Masterpiece, Wei Wuxian, lesbian non-virgin, is somewhat confused.

“Why,” Wei Wuxian must ask, “is everyone always scissoring in this!?”

Jing Wanyin is defensive about her (terrible) work. “Because that’s the main event, Wei Wuxian! The most important--you know, it's like, the core thing everyone does!”

Wei Wuxian looks at her. “…oh, wow.”

Jiang Wanyin begins to sense that she has, in fact, f*cked It. “...shut up.”

Wei Wuxian exhales slowly. “Oh, honey.”

A red-faced Jiang Wanyin tries to get her manuscript back. “Shut up!”

Jiang Wanyin is most furious that she can never mock Wei Wuxian’s terrible p*rn habit again. Her every attempt is met with pitying sympathy, reminders that sexuality is nothing to be ashamed of, and offers of educational links.

Jiang Cheng (Chengxiang edition) could style out having f*cked noted Wei Wuxian Wannabe Xue Yang in custody and crazy grief. Lan Zhan might also make that terrible mistake, but afterwards he’d be hideously angry with himself.

Jiang Yanli would absolutely make resentful turtle soup with the Xuanwu of slaughter.

Jiang Yanli: You’re just going to waste six tons of meat? But it's so magical!

Wei Wuxian: Shijie, the turtle ate humans.

Jiang Yanli: Nobody's perfect!

Superborb asks: Is it cannibalism if an evil turtle ate humans and you then eat it?

This is truly a question for the foremost Confucian scholar present, if Lan Wangji ever regains consciousness.

“Laccaria amethystina, commonly known as the amethyst deceiver, is a small brightly colored mushroom […]. While not inherently toxic, in soils that are polluted with arsenic, it can bioaccumulate a high concentration of that element.”

If Jiang Wanyin were a mushroom.

Someone once tried to give Jiang class anxiety about being the smallest, least significant of the Great Sects, and Madam Yu simply spit on them. Very literally. Have you seen her decor? Jiang does not experience Anxiety, Madam Yu only gives people anxiety. And it is the best anxiety: you will be haunted for decades, and that is a promise.

Look at Madam Yu, do you think she came from a lower class family? Do you think she would marry down? No. And if she chose to, she would elevate where she landed. Who does she look like, Changse Sanren? (Husband, don’t answer this.)

Jiang Fengmian hasn't spoken in public without permission in fifteen years; he has no intention of trying to get the old band back together today.

Jiang Wanyin and Lan Wangji share a bizarre bonding moment when they both cry over the birth of Wei Wuxian’s baby. Someone sneers at Jiang Wanyin about this, and Lan Wangji will have none of it. Tears at a serious, joyful life event are very mature and masculine; why would they be shameful?

Jiang Wanyin absolutely rolls with it. These are men’s tears! Perhaps the interlocutor is not himself man enough to understand the profound chivalric and filial feelings that sometimes move true men?

After this, whenever Jiang Wanyin cries (like unto a little bitch), he’s sort of defensive but mostly sneering. What of it? Man’s tears!

Sensing he’s created a monster, Lan Wangji just demurs when Jiang Wanyin looks to him for agreement, managing an awkward nod. Sure. Whatever Jiang Wanyin needs.

When Jiang Wanyin sees Ouyang Zizhen crying about Absolutely Nothing, sorry I mean a Sad Tale he heard, Jiang Wanyin nods approvingly. Now there’s a real man. Lotta promise in that kid. Take note, everyone—

There’s a sex pollen epidemic in the cultivation world, and Wei Wuxian isn’t allowing Lan Wangji more than fifty feet away from him. If Lan Wangji became infected, he would not be sensible and simply f*ck a friend: he'd probably just die. And Wei Wuxian can't have that sh*t.

Luckily, he cheerfully informs the Lan disciples as he proudly displays his binding talisman, many years ago now, he invented a Husband Leash—

Lan Jingyi winces.

“You're making this weird, Senior Wei.”

Wei Wuxian scoffs at him, affronted. “I’m making it weird? Me, not The Terrible Sex Curse?!”

Lan Jingyi has cause to regret his failure to adhere to Senior Wei’s Safety Protocol Buddy System, Complete with Friend or Husband Leash (Which Is Not Weird, Jingyi!) when he winds up in a forest, infected, staring down an also-infected Jiang zongzhu.

“It’s my first time,” Lan Jingyi admits, biting his lip.

After a moment, Jiang Wanyin gives him a small nod. “Me too,” he says, gruffly.

Lan Jingyi blinks at him, and before he thinks, mutters, “hah. Sad.”

Jiang Wanyin’s glare and pointed silence could kill. His pent up, not even a little experienced ‘sex’ nearly does.

(Mongrelmind offers: “I mean we all f*ck about but... JC just is a forever virgin”.)

Lan Wangji stared into the distance, remembering Wei Wuxian.

“He was but a ten, and yet I, an eleven, found solace in his company—“

Jiang Wanyin blinked at him. “What the f*ck?”

“Apologies,” Lan Wangji shook his head. “I am physically unable to hear frequencies lower than those produced by an 8.5.”

Jiang Wanyin blinked at him much, much harder. “What,” he tried once more, “the f*ck??”

Lan Wangji sighed and spoke loudly, as though to a very elderly person.

“Your obscure ‘seven’ language is a mystery to me, Jiang Wanyin. If only Wei Wuxian were still with us, he could interpret for me. But, alas—”

Jin Guangyao simply assumes that Jiang Wanyin is trapped in some lopsided 3zun-esque love triangle, and tries console him accordingly.

Jiang Wanyin is deeply confused by Jin Guangyao’s ‘that’s rough, buddy’ brand of sympathy, and increasingly weirded out by what he suspects the man is alluding to.

“That’s my brother—” he tries to clarify, in case Jin Guangyao has somehow missed this incredibly basic information.

Jin Guangyao nods emphatically. “I know what that’s like—the bro-zone layer.”

Jiang Wanyin wonders if this confusion is coming from Jin Guangyao’s own inability to imagine having access to a Lan and a spare, and not f*cking or trying to f*ck both.

“So,” Jin Guangyao (appallingly) nudges him, “which one do you want to marry and which one do you want to kill and regret forever?” He is very matter-of-fact about this. It is clear that for Jin Guangyao, these are simply The Two Genders. “Come on,” he coaxes, “you can tell me.”

Later, Jiang Wanyin will decide firmly on:

Marry: none

Kill and (Nonsexually!!) Regret: ALSO NONE THIS ISN’T BLOOD IT’S VICTORY WINE.

But though the man evidently, at least in part, knew what he was talking about, Jiang Wangyin feels himself none the better off for Jin Guangyao’s ‘charitable interest’.

Five times Jiang Cheng attempted to call the cops on Lan Zhan.

Chapter 42: Ten Short AU Ideas: Lan Clan Edition

Chapter Text

Post-canon Wei Wuxian shaves Lan Qiren’s beard again, as a throwback OG prank: almost a tribute to Cangse Sanren. He accidentally unleashes Sexy Lan Qiren upon the world once more. Horror-struck, Wei Wuxian wonders what he has done—this is like the Tiger Seal all over again!

Lan Wangji: People often say I resemble my uncle in his youth—

Wei Wuxian: Please unsay this. Please bad memory, come to my aid! Miss Remembering I see what you have done for others—

In a modern AU, literature student Twin Jades get weirdly intense debating Madwoman in the Attic in seminars and seem to take it Too Personally. Their ‘what about Bertha Mason?!’ energy makes it awkward for the whole class.

‘Right, but what about the romance?’

‘What romance.’

‘...and a big thank you to Lan Wangji for deigning to weigh in this week. Right, moving on—’

Lan Wangji has calculated that you need fifteen incidents of class participation to receive an A in this course. He read the syllabus beforehand and decided to save them all up for this week.

“清蘅君 clear/clean = qing and heng = a type of fragrant herb”;

Qinghengjun and poor Zewujun are both cursed with weed names. I can only conclude that this family has been renowned for the quality of their pot for two generations at least.

Lan Yi and Baoshan Sanren split over Lan Yi's heretical cultivation of the hard strains that give users hallucinations. She thought she could handle it, but somehow in her high confusion Lan Yi bought an entire Dairy Queen franchise and then had to run that sucker for years. Baoshan Sanren was right all along.

Remember Cat from Red Dwarf? Lan Jingyi is that, but for the Cold Pond cave rabbits. He came out with a ribbon and Lan Xichen said that they had to respect this Being as a member of the family, obviously.

Cangse Sanren’s biggest problem with Lan Qiren isn’t his dangerous incompetence on night hunts, it’s that his elder brother has her martial sister in custody—or, as he’s calling it, ‘marriage’. Cangse Sanren hasn’t tried to break her shijie out because she is aware of the severity of the accusations against her. The Lan’s testimonials say the murder was unjustified, but Cangse Sanren doesn’t believe it.

Lan Qiren dryly observes that her elder martial brother also left the mountain, fell under evil influences and was slain by his companions: the situation is hardly unprecedented. Cangse Sanren is quick to rejoin that she didn’t see that situation unfold with her own eyes either, and that it doesn’t necessarily sound any more credible.

Thirteen Years fic, but it’s just Lan Qiren really enjoying the peace and quiet, living his best life while Wei Wuxian is dead.

The best part of the Lan Clan post-canon family portrait is how clearly Lan Xichen just wanted a nice picture for his cave wall. He came out of seclusion for this, and no one but Wangji is taking it Seriously. The theme was their instruments!!

Wei Wuxian has been a bad influence on he and Wangji’s child, who is just distracted now. A Yuan was a good baby, he used to pose adorably and watch the birdie: now this sh*t.

(There were at least fifty Jin clan group portraits, but Jin Guangyao suggested ‘a fun one' with him front and centre. Mysteriously, all the other negatives then burnt in a fire which took out the whole lab. Only this one survived. And it's not like Jin Zixun can take another, so here we are!! *dimples*)

Given Cultivator lifespans, are the Lan Elders as rule-bound as they are because they’re very old? Say, two hundred years old-old?

Relatedly, the long-term implications of longer cultivator lifespans with limited ageing suggest that fandom could easily set more stories not five years post-canon, but twenty, or forty. Doing so might result in fic that feels distant from the characters as we know them, which would commensurately be of less interest. However the core cast should still be hale and combat-ready at sixty and far older, capable of shaping the cultivation world as established adults with adult self-command and competence. Even the question of who they are at sixty, if that’s at all different, is not without interest.

Each and every one of Lan Jingyi’s early attempts to get laid involves him imitating either Hanguangjun or Senior Wei, because he thinks that’s like, how it’s done. ‘Are you the Hanguangjun or the Senior Wei in your relationship?’ After all, no one else is getting laid around here! These two represent Lan Jingyi’s entire knowledge of sexuality.

When his ‘Hanguangjunsona’ does not net positive results, Lan Jingyi is chastened. It was presumptuous of him to believe he could be gendered Hanguangjun. Perhaps he is a Senior Wei?

Lan Jingyi flips an interior switch (as it were) and throws himself up against a tree.

“Oh, Ouyang Zheeeeen! It’s so mean of you to torment me like this!”

Ouyang Zizhen has never be more confused in his life. Is this—is this possession? If so, he is not qualified to deal with this on his own!

(It’s tough to decide who the worst possible person to come help (and thus to hear Ouyang Zizhen’s description of these happenings and Lan Jingyi’s behaviour) is. Every choice is uniquely awful.)

Once again, the air is crisp. Winter is nigh. It is No Nut November. Lan Qiren believes he will meet this challenge with the austere dignity he brings to all that he does (after all, he lives his No Shave November truth year-round). True, regular masturbation is good for one's health. But so is practicing self-denial!

This year, however, Lan Qiren is finding living up to his own expectations for himself difficult due to the arrival of curiously attractive new-minted sect leader Nie Mingjue. As the nights and their beards swell, so does the tension. Will they make it through Movember un-nutted? Will they finish their Nanowrimos--

Unwanted Bonus: As I was popping this in the window, I thought of the Jades' p*rn site Cum 2 Gusu and made myself sad. So now I want everyone else to be sad with me.

Chapter 43: Aphorisms (But Not In A Nietzsche Way)

Chapter Text

* If Lan Wangji had a fandom p*rn writing pseudonym, it would be his incense burner account.

* In a Modern AU, Nie Mingle would unblinkingly refer to his significant other as his ‘manfriend’. Lan Jingyi would hear this and start to call other people’s partners their ‘manfriends’. Lan Wangji would glare him down, but this would not stop Lan Jingyi. Very little can.

* Eventual Goals: write a fic where no one knows Wangxian are a thing and gives them sh*t about it. Write a fic where in no scene does Lan Wangji cry. Gonna get there one day. *clenches fist*

* Lan Xichen should really rock a scarf-and-sunglasses, 50s starlet look. That's his Vibe.

* Modern AU Madam Yu as a ruthless psychotherapist.

* The Book of Odes provided me with a terrible Chengxian prompt, so I give it away hoping it will find a mother who can love it: 49. 鶉之奔奔 - Chun Zhi Ben Ben.

* The Getting JGY With It remix.

* Who called it Yunmeng Reconciliation and not Enemies to Brothers?

* Do you think Jiang Yanli's tinder profile/fetlife name is HotusRoot? It might be. I want this for her.

* Only Wei Wuxian could successfully tell himself that this was a 'friends' gesture.

* 'It seemed that Jiang YanLi didn’t understand why he’d begin to explain such things to her out of the blue. Logically, at such a time, it was probably best to say a few superficial words like ‘Young Master Jin is so well-learned’ or ‘Young Master Jin is so calm’. However, what he just said was the most common of common sense. It was nothing but finding words when there were none. Such obviously fake flattery, it was likely that Jin GuangYao was the only one who could say them with a straight face. Jiang YanLi could only nod again. Wei WuXian guessed that she had been nodding on their whole way.' (MDZS)

This is so f*cking Walks with Mr Darcy.

* A modern Wei Wuxian likes big dramatic Catholic art. He has no spiritual connection to it, he's just a goth. Jewelled saints' relics? f*ck him up.

* Wangxian are absolutely an Obnoxious Christmas Couple, despite being Asian and emphatically not Christian.

* The Jin have never done anything that would supply anyone with a basic necessity, like a potato or something, in their collective damn lives. They gold plated a curly fry for the Gram once: that’s it.

* What’s the better random xianxia music video, Erasure’s “Always” or Rihanna and some ancillary white men's “Princess of China”?

* Wei Wuxian tries to name their kid Lan Ho on the grounds that this will ‘save time’. “It lets the people know the scoop up front.”

* As someone with difficult ethnic hair I can assure you that the blood pool is actually very clearly a spa concept gone wrong (a la placenta hair masks). Nevertheless, I applaud Wei Wuxian’s efforts.

* What if Xue Yang is the good twin, and somewhere out there there’s a Xue Yin, who’s much worse?

* Lan Xichen is that bitch whose letters home from Cultivator summer camp all start “my dearest mumsy and popsicle—“

* A wlw Lan Wangji doesn't have much Gender Stuff going on, but is nonetheless very into being called Wei Wuxian’s husband.

* The fic prompt energy of this weird life situation works for about half the cast.

* Jin Ling sells ‘Jingyi: he's not special' t-shirts at their high school. He doesn't need the money, he just believes in the message.

* You ever think about how much money Jiang Wanyin spent on Jin Ling's Quinceañera?

* The best proof that Zixuan is secretly capable of being a good person is Mianmian's interest in him. Her friendship is a letter of recommendation.

* Is there any special Jin cultivation? I mean I know Charge It To Daddy, but are there other proprietary moves?

* You could have a Wei Wuxian fic called “Arrested for whor*crimes”. This is as far as I got, it’s 5am. That’s fine, though. I am valid.

* Lan Xichen mom favs people’s social media posts.

* I can’t believe there’s a figure skating AU and it’s not called “Jades of Glory”. What a mistake.

* I don't care about the new Taylor Swift album or the pairing, but grudging congratulations to the Chengxian community on their new fanvid material.

* We pretend modern Lan Wangji hasn’t arranged the entire Tori Amos oeuvre for guqin, but he has. We’re just lying to ourselves.

* Further, a particularly self-hating Wei Wuxian has picked out Lan Wangji’s breakup song for when Lan Wangji finally dumps him, and it’s Ani Difranco’s “Swim”.

* Jiang Cheng's peacefulness level has never reached 6/10. Not once

* Tik Tok is the Mo Xuanyu of Vine.

* Wen Qing transcended time to go to the Leonard McCoy school of medicine.

* Mianmian will cut all ties with her family over like, salad. *standing* “I told you i didn't like chicken Caesar. This it is, I'm out. YOU WERE WARNED!”

* ‘Friends’ started calling Lan Xichen The Bi-Cycle after he insisted he could do it with a girl, “if the need arose”.

* Lan Wangji should run a merry maids service with Jingyi and Sizhui called Bichen! (The exclam is in the name, that's not me man.)

* The Untamed with Nie Huaisang as the main character is just the Revenger's Tragedy. And we’d all watch Untamed: Huaisang Cleans House.

* Qi deviates, style never does.

* I will only buy social media AUs where Wei Wuxian is a fashion blogger and Jiang Cheng is a gaming streamer if, while he’d never do it on air, Wei Wuxian can totally destroy Jiang Cheng.

* Everybody thinks they’re the Wei Wuxian of their own life, but sometimes they’re actually the Xue Yang.

* Wen Ning and Wen Qing's messenger handles are Wensome and either ThatFeelingWen or ThatUnfeelingWen

* You’re probably taller than Jin Guangyao, but looking down on him is the last thing you’ll ever do.

Chapter 44: Ten Short AU Ideas: Lan Wangji Edition I

Chapter Text

Lan Xichen wears far more colour than his brother because he’s recognised as an adult Sect master, and he’s not in mourning (and optionally, because he’s also considered to be someone’s recognised cultivation partner: a significant rite of passage). Once married himself, Lan Wangji can at last wear symbols of his triumphant coming of age: lush, deep-dyed robes in navy, in peaco*ck blue, in rich sage and lush heather.

My partner did a remix for another fandom which involved wizards recording music and accidentally (in fact, via the intervention of a bitchy friend, on purpose) recording their thoughts while playing as well. This feels like some high-key Wangxian bullsh*t.

Five Times Lan Wangji circumvented an entire janky fic plot. Just looked at an incipient trope and said, ‘no.’

‘Oh, some jealous confusion over Wei Wuxian’s conversation with Wen Ning!”

Lan Wangji entertains this for two seconds before realising Wei Wuxian is a giant virgin who's all talk, and that in all probability, nothing whatsoever is going on there.

“Scrooge is Scrooge in part because of his sad, traumatic, and lonely childhood after the death of his mother, a facet of his past that adaptations often gloss over."

*takes a big puff of plum pudding infused joint*

Christmas Special Wangxian where a bitter Lan Wangji f*cks Ghost of Christmas Present!Wei Wuxian.

Every MXTX novel: Today on Queer Eye for the Doesn't Know He's Queer Guy, we bring three ex-boyfriends (unacknowledged) to their true loves' (unacknowledged) 'bitch you live like this?' sadness shacks and let them do chores!

Wei Wuxian spends half his time in fics putting up silencing talismans. This is a waste of paper, which must get expensive. Plus it looks like they have a serious fly infestation: tacky. Literally.

Given that they plan to have sex every day, I think this couple is clever enough to plan accordingly. It’s time for decorative noise-cancellation home sigils and arrays. In fact, probably every cultivator house has this sort of amenity. The real problem arises when cultivators stay in normal inns and family homes, and simply assume they’re similarly equipped: no.

The new Jiang disciples hastily reconstructing Lotus Pier, however, were neither as careful as the original builders nor as good with sigils as Wei Wuxian himself. Thus everyone hears Lan Wangji elaborately sh*t-talking his host, then having prolonged, embarrassing sex with his husband.

The consequences of this are somewhat unevenly distributed. Lan Wangji simply decided to stop being embarrassed about anything when he was seventeen, and he has not looked back since. He said what he said, and he absolutely did who he did.

Lan Wangji is a seasoned BDSM scene total top, whereas Wei Wuxian is absolutely inexperienced. Lan Wangji is, however, eager to go vanilla for his perfect new boyfriend. He can manage that, right? For love!

If Isis can stitch Osiris back together, then MDZS Lan Wangji is just being lazy. Surely he can gather up Wei Wuxian’s fierce-corpse-rent bits. Embroidery project!

Lan Wangji’s daemon is this rabbit that made a shiv. You can tell because of the one-ear-up ‘yes, and?’ facial expression.

A Great War-era Lan Wangji travels the world discrediting spiritualists, solving crimes and trying to talk to his (supposedly) dead lover—who really could do most of the things these charlatans pretend at.

Chapter 45: Ten Short AU Ideas: Lan Wangji Edition II

Chapter Text

Lan Wangji is a supremely irritating lifestyle Youtuber who believes his own bullsh*t absolutely . Born very rich, he still lectures everyone on Minimalism. ASMR everything, hydrating is so important. Bunny livestream.

Mongrelmind: He solves hard sudoku and comments on how elegant they are.

Lan Wangji has yet to properly say anything to Wei Wuxian about his abiding infatuation with him. Lan Jingyi, however, assumes this is all a done deal. He himself would never leave any situation ambiguous! Lan Jingyi thus takes it upon himself to act as Town Crier, telling random people who they meet in the course of nighthunts to ‘listen up, bitches: this Ho Xuanyu guy is taken as f*ck, so don’t try anything.’

For some reason, Lan Wangji does not appreciate his assistance.

Since the incident in their youths when Wei Wuxian saw Lan Wangji clad in thin, wet robes in the Cold Pond (and got a good gawk in while he was there), Wei Wuxian has somewhat indulgently presumed that if the two of them ever managed to get together, he would be the better-endowed party in the relationship.

It occurs to an adult Wei Wuxian that the ‘Cold Pond’ was, now that he’s thinking about it, not the best environment in which to form such judgments. It turns out (and Wei Wuxian is pretty miffed about this!) that Lan Wangji is a grower, not a shower, and that Wei Wuxian’s previous estimates were—off. By several inches. In all directions.

Wen Qing tries to make Lan Wangji understand the severity of Wei Wuxian’s missing core situation. For some reason, an otherwise intelligent man seems not to be getting this, at all.

“Look,” Wen Qing says, “I took out his entire energy reservoir. To recover, he’d need almost unheard of levels of energy transference. As in someone incredibly powerful dumping huge amounts into him over the course of several years.”

“You are telling me,” Lan Wangji seeks clarification, “that he will require a vast amount of dual cultivation with someone potent and compatible?”

He seems almost annoyed with her, for some reason?

“You are seriously informing me,” Lan Wangji stresses, “that this whole time, Wei Wuxian's entire, disabling problem could have been addressed by daily medicinal dual cultivation?”

Wen Qing blinks at him.

“Wow. Oh, wow. I never even considered—f*ck.”

Lan Wangji sighs deeply. “I understand. You were never desperately attracted to him. Because of this, you lacked the Insight, the Vision—” He shakes his head. “Thankfully, this has never been a problem, for me.”

For too long we have been afraid of the hideous truth that Wangxian send god-awful year-end family photo cards. The attached letter informs the recipient that little Sizhui won yet another Quizbowl. These missives radiate such smugness that the envelope alone has been known to make people dizzy. Jiang Yanli collects the photo cards proudly; Jiang Wanyin has attempted to eat one in rage.

Nie Huaisang ran out of options, got desperate and used his own body to summon Wei Wuxian. This represents the only reality in which Lan Wangji struggled for upwards of five minutes to reconcile himself to sexual attraction to ‘New Body, New Me’ Wei Wuxian. He really has to take a moment before he can sexualise Nie Huaisang.

The Book of Odes often slaps, but sometimes it also slaps some guy who’s been dead 3,000 years directly in the face:

Look at a rat, – it has its skin;

But a man should be without dignity of demeanour.

If a man have no dignity of demeanour,

What should he but die?

Look at a rat, – it has its teeth;

But a man shall be without any right deportment.

If a man have not right deportment,

What should he wait for but death?

Look at a rat, – it has its limbs;

But a man shall be without any rules of propriety.

If a man observe no rules of propriety,

Why does he not quickly die?

(Poet, who hurt you, oh my f*cking god?)

Lan Sizhui, 13: Father seems to be doing better, lately. Do you think therapy is helping?

Lan Xichen: It's giving him a creative outlet, at least. Oh, there he is now—Wangji, what are you doing with that pigeon?

Lan Wangji: I am sending Jiang zongzhu a special poem I have written for him.

Lan Xichen: May I see it?

Lan Wangji: No.

Lan Xichen: Will it cause a diplomatic incident? ...is your silence a ’yes'? Wangji. Wangji, PUT THE PIGEON DOWN--

Lan Wangji had anguished, meaningless hook-ups with Yiling Patriarch cosplayers while Wei Wuxian was dead, who they now sometimes run into (and who are sometimes interested in a rematch). Mongrelmind believes it’s funnier if this is set in an MDZS transmigration universe: Wei Wuxian is now in his twink final form, rather than his strapping Yiling Laozu body of yore.

Wei Wuxian knows full well that Lan Wangji is perishing of embarrassment, but cannot resist pouting and giving his husband sh*t. They run into some beef-monster of a Faketriatch, and Wei Wuxian can’t help wondering, very loudly, whether Lan Wangji wishes he was stacked, and is unsatisfied by their marital bed.

“Lan Zhan, if you have a feeder fetish, you should just say so!” Wei Wuxian sighs. “I knew something was up when you wanted to buy me lunch at the Burial Mounds—”

Lan Wangji rolls his eyes, his face still hot with shame from the humiliating reminder of some of the least respectable by-blows of his life-long obsession with his husband. “You were starving to death.”

“Sweetheart,” Wei Wuxian says, adopting a lofty tone, “you need to accept your kinks—mmph!”

Lan Wangji is desperately in love with his husband; it does not follow that he is, therefore, above shoving a bun firmly in his mouth to shut him up.

Any time someone suggests Lan Wangji being emotionally prepared for any kind of threesome I wonder whether he’s successfully cultivated to immortality and somewhere in that process I missed twenty-plus years of very, very good therapy (not pictured here).

Of course it’s possible that during the entire period Wei Wuxian was dead, Lan Wangji exclusively went to therapy. And couples’ therapy, for good measure. (Wei Wuxian was forced to participate via Inquiry.)

“The guqin is my husband,” he explains to the therapist, euphemistically. “Say hello, darling.”

Yet again, Wei Wuxian fails to respond to Inquiry. Lan Wangji sighs, shaking his head.

“I’m just not getting through to him—”

A nerve in Mianmian’s brow spasms. She succeeded from the Jin clan and got her psychology degree, and it’s come to this—

Lan Wangji can play the guqin incredibly fast (as per minute two of this), but due to the firm Lan Clan prohibition against vanity and public display, he hardly ever does. One must not Flex on one’s opponents.

One day, however, Lan Wangji and his students must dance a ghost to death. Lan Jingyi is beside himself with expectation and excitement, and indeed, he finally gets to see Lan Wangji’s legendary ‘you know I had to do it to ‘em’ attack.

Chapter 46: Ten Short AU Ideas: Wei Wuxian Edition

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Mo Xuanwu:

A terrible misprint in the summoning spell (read: Wei Wuxian spilled turnip soup on the page of handwritten notes) results in a very apologetic Mo Xuanyu haring after a giant, angry, magical turtle possessed by the spirit of Wei Wuxian.

‘So, um. You still gonna avenge me, brah? Brah??'

Lan Wangji is, predictably, still DTF.

Tired of everyone’s bullsh*t, Wen Qing informs Wei Wuxian that she and he are dating, now.

Wei Wuxian blinks at her.

“Wow, I'm so—flattered? You're so scary!”

Wen Qing nods. “Yes, you are. And yes, I am.”

Lan Wangji gets wind of this and corners Wen Qing, furious. What is she doing, how could she betray him like this?! He told her about his crush in confidence! (Read: she accused him of being ‘a giant simp for Wei Wuxian’, and he said, ‘mm’.)

Wen Qing cooly looks him over. “Gosh, you'll just have to actually f*cking talk to Wei Wuxian to fix this, won't you? I mean, it’s your call. I could just f*ck your little boyfriend on the third date. He's fairly cute.”

Lan Wangji steams in his own juices, like a soup dumpling.

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are mercurial about sex, and intensely into whatever they’re in the mood for on a given evening. From day to day, Lan Wangji has no idea whether he’s going to walk into the house to face a demanding pillow princess or a red-eyed demonic cultivator tossing a spreader bar from hand to hand like it’s Chenqing. Lan Wangji loves the variability and is very good to go with whatever the spinning wheel of Wei Wuxian’s preferences lands on.

It becomes weird for people to talk about how Lan Wangji ‘appears in chaos’ when he gets married to: Chaos. Everyone knows he appears in chaos very frequently, there’s no need to make a Deal of it. However Wei Wuxian, patriarch of making a needless Deal of it, will casually announce he’s topping tonight by muttering something like “hey, Lan Zhan, I’ll be light, you be bearing.”

An indignant Lan Jingyi asks whether Senior Wei meant to wait until he and his husband were alone to say that. Because they are all still here. Just—right here.

Wei Wuxian is perfectly aware Lan Wangji likes him—or, as Wei Wuxian sees it, that Lan Wangji believes he likes him. Wei Wuxian simply knows this is a terrible idea for Lan Wangji to pursue, and believes he’s protecting Lan Wangji by never acknowledging, discussing or entertaining the subject.

Post-canon Wei Wuxian assumes that, relative to Lan Wangji, he is immensely sexually experienced. He assures Lan Wangji that he need not worry about first-night awkwardness: he and Wen Qing once got really drunk and made out, and she touched his chest (no tongues or anything, they didn’t get crazy). So he is basically an expert.

Lan Wangji blinks at him. “Was it cardiopulmonary resuscitation, Wei Ying?”

Wei Wuxian considers. “Come to think, she did call it something like that—anyway,” he proceeds, “one time, when we were fifteen, Nie Huaisang also touched my leg. Then you walked in, and I got distracted.”

Lan Wangji sighs deeply.

“Wei Ying, I played Inquiry for you, every day. I branded my own chest to remember you. I know you died a virgin. I have mourned that particular loss to humanity for over a decade. But in my grief, I too was driven to drink. In my weakness, there have been,” he says, gravely, “Other Twinks.”

Wei Wuxian’s lip warbles. “And you did cardiopulmonary resuscitation with them?”

Lan Wangji nods, acknowledging his guilt.

Wei Wuxian is a vast Mess of a virgin on Grindr, but tries to save face by pretending he's experienced. It's embarrassing for literally everyone. You can see his address on his profile. He’s used his Linkedin headshot. He will earnestly tell people, upon request, “I guess my co*ck is a normal size?”

Wei Wuxian tries to complain about his poor success rate to a long-suffering Lan Wangji. Why is no one interested? “I am a very sexual person, Lan Zhan!”

Lan Wangji sighs, because—yes. Yes, in a sense, that is true.

Everyone is somehow surprised Wei Wuxian believes in anarchist commune farming, like he's not a third generation leftist the Jiangs tried to send to public school. Well done, he's f*cking the Prefect, are you happy now?

Mongrelmind believes Wei Wuxian was actually a mole from the start, and that he succeeded in his mission to radicalise the establishment by basically Lysistrata-ing Lan Wangji into being Antifa. “Lan Zhan, you gotta quote the Communist Manifesto before you can get into my robes.”

Fellas, you ever turned a cop?

Mongrelmind: You ever been so hot you turned a cop without even showing a little ankle?

The cover art for the MDZS audio drama looks like a candid family photo.

‘A Yuan tried to share his grass toys with the rabbits, but they started eating them. Now I’m stuck cleaning up the mess, and Lan Zhan is pissy because ‘this is not their vet approved food’. He did tell me to take the bunnies away from A Yuan if I was going to go into another room, but it was one quick phone call! I do not think I am an irresponsible parent or pet owner—‘

(LizardFe suggested this is the origin story of the permabanned Yiling Mommy Blogger.)

Inside a month of marriage, Wei Wuxian gets sick of Lans using the Gusu topolect to keep information from him. He sets out to learn it, and mentions this quest to no one. Lan Wangji catches him out very quickly but sits by silently, allowing everyone else to get spied on. It serves them right for underestimating his husband.

Chapter 47: Ten Short AU Ideas: Whole Cast Edition

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Sometimes the phrase Modern Cultivation AU makes me think about an Early Modern Cultivation AU, wherein the Clans are just Asian trading families chilling in Venice, it’s all weird velvet cod pieces and everyone gets way too into commedia dell'arte.

(Mongrelmind: Can you ever get too into commedia dell'arte?

Me: *looks at grad students* Yes.)

A fic about the Six Arts everybody has to master coming in handy unexpectedly. The charioteer chapter should be called "Drive My Pony", in honour of Ginuwine.

12 Angry Cultivators:

For cultivators,a ‘jury of your peers’ is always comprised of fellow adepts (like in Clouds of Witness, when the Duke of Denver is tried for murder). There are so many good potential trials in canon.

Su She tries to do an entire Sweeney Todd thing after getting banished from Lan: Su Shave Spiritual Sword Barbering.

My Hero Academia fusion universe, set at UA with the core cast.

Modern AU where the characters form the cast of a Chinese Star Trek reboot.

We see elements of a huge, historically-inflected public reading culture in the series with storytelling as a profession and domestic poetry recital as fairly normal. It’d be excellent to have more fics wherein this gets explored.

Per ‘ Shoes People Have Worn Specifically To Upset Nie Huaisang: A Thread’ (https://twitter.com/jelenedra/status/1329156606970404864?s=20 ):

I would like to nominate Lan Wangji for clear sparklyjelly shoes . You're always going where the chaos is, if you brought the chaos on your own feet. Imagine the terrible power of Lan Wangji looking Nie Huaisang dead in the eye and murmuring, monotone and unflinching, "do you like my shoes?"

Nie Huaisang’s fan shakes in his hand, with—fear? Rage? Who can say?

There's a lot of glitter, and it’s undeniably a powerful Choice, yet it’s so deeply evil? Someone is a fight-bringing lord today.

Wen Qing and Lan Xichen get wasted together and decide to just tell people things, egging one another on in writing letters through the night until the pass out.

‘Honesty is so important!!’—drunk Lan Xichen, probably.

They wake up in the morning afternoon and start to wonder how fast messenger pigeons even are. Like, maybe they could catch them mid flight??

Mongrelmind: Wen Qing and Lan Xichen just Much Ado that sh*t up send Wei Wuxian Lan Wangji’s horny poetry.

If you wanted, you could take the line ‘in the era before the Avatar we bent not the elements, but the energy within ourselves' as an indication that xianxia was the chronological predecessor to ATLA, with some cultivators having basically invented bending (what is defeating the Fire Lord but (re)learning how to melt his core?).

I’ve seen an AU where Lans are Fire Princes go past, and it does make sense, but aesthetically Lan is very Northern Water Tribe, and in terms of being monks and scholars, they’re more Air Nomad.

Mongrelmind suggests Wei Wuxian as a blood bender, and I agree with her (‘Baxia the earth's core da ge’), that Nie is definitely on some Earth Kingdom sh*t.

Chapter 48: An Offer You Can Refuse (ZhanCheng)

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Year in and year out, Jiang Wanyin hardly speaks but to command subordinates. His family is gone, save for an infant who can offer only a child’s welcome but limited consolation. Jiang Wanyin’s few remaining comrades and peers are not speaking to him: too embroiled in his own brother’s declining health and the commensurately mounting pressures of running his own Sect to spare the time, in Huaisang’s case, and absolutely uninterested in forgiving Jiang Wanyin for his part in Wei Wuxian’s death, in Lan Wangji’s.

At a Conference some years after Lan Wangji’s emergence from Seclusion, Jiang Wanyin manages to get the goading he can’t resist just right. He lands an acid remark about Lan Wangji’s apparently having a child, yet no wife to speak of. Jiang Wanyin sees pain crackle across the other man’s face—there it is, there, in the crinkle around his eyes!

Jiang Wanyin was a little brother, once, though he’s now the only child of no parents but stone slabs. He was bred a brat, in expectation of indulgence. He knows to press when he sees a fracture, and so, quick as anything, he says the worst of it: that of course, he knows full well it’s not a wife that Lan Wangji is still dressed in mourning for.

Jiang Wanyin knows that Lan Wangji knows that, for Jiang’s part, Wei Wuxian went absolutely unshriven. Not a stick of incense, not a paper coin, not one grain of sacrificial rice. Lan Wangji’s defiant mourning is all Wei Wuxian has to his name.

Some part of Jiang Wanyin hates that Lan Wangji can mourn, while his own feelings and position are too complex to permit such trappings of ritual where Wei Wuxian is concerned. Most people don’t even guesswhy Lan Wangji has eschewed colour for years now, and don’t dare question him. They keep their whispers low.

When his own Sect burnt, Jiang Wanyin had to force himself into purple: to dress as the king of nothing at all. To make a mockery of himself, in order to show a strength they manifestly lacked. There was no time for fuller mourning—just his sister’s worried eyes and his brother’s weak and quavering jokes and both of their unsteady hands on him, urging him into their father’s mantle after it had been recovered from the site of their people’s slaughter.

Grief is a thing Lan Wangji has won for himself through bitter work, but even so: Jiang Wanyin spitefully envies Lan Wangji the luxury of processing his sorrow and thus ever releasing any of it, or of transforming it alchemically into some less brittle and more useful state. Jiang Wanyin likewise covets Lan Wangji’s apparent stability, when they are each the second child of both a Great Sect and a troubled marriage. Grace seems simply to live within Lan Wangji, in a way it never has dwelt in Jiang Wanyin. (And Jiang Wanyin is clever enough that can’t help knowing that even dead—even having died a traitor to their whole world—the remaining people he and Wei Wuxian would ever have called close still give the lion’s share of their attention to his brother. Didn’t Jiejie, in the end?)

At this reference to his bastard, Lan Wangji finally deigns to recognise Jiang Wanyin’s continued existence. Further, he actually speaks to Jiang Wanyin. Lan Wangji is, as ever, intense, but at present he is animated by a viciousness that Jiang Wanyin hasn’t seen the like of from him since Wei Wuxian’s initial disappearance during the Sunshot Campaign. Lan Wangji propositions Jiang Wanyin, if you can call his blunt instrument of a demand a proposition—his assurance that Jiang Wanyin owes Lan Wangji this, as a paltry instalment on a greater debt that can never be recuperated. Jiang Wanyin understands that if they do this, Lan Wangji will resolutely pretend that Jiang Wanyin himself isn’t even present. Jiang Wanyin supposes no one has more practice at being a pale imitation of his brother than he does.

Only Lan Wangji could pull off saying such a terrible thing without any shame. Because whatever the answer is, the fact remains that Lan Wangji is not ashamed to brutally and degradingly remind Jiang Wanyin of the contempt he holds Jiang zongzhu in.

Jiang Wanyin finds himself hysterically wondering how hard Lan Wangji would hit him if he asked whether they could take turns playing a part neither of them is intrinsically suited to. Jiang Wanyin honestly can’t say whether he’d want to f*ck some immitation of his brother. Whether he’d even be able to see it through, anymore than he could lie with some facsimile of his jiejie. His mind jerks away from it as though he’s tried to touch hot iron, and his nerves have seized. But Lan Wangji is right, in that—well, what else would the two of them do, just hold one another? He can’t even think it without sneering at himself. Jiang Wanyin had never felt comfortable giving his living brother that sort of touch, or asking it of him. He couldn’t say to Lan Wangji, ‘play at being a part of my life. Pretend to be this aching, missing severed-limb of me. Stay.’

He wonders whether Lan Wangji is trying to make similar elemental substitutions; whether what Lan Wangji wants is, itself, almost as far away from a f*ck, but untranslatable through other mediums, given what—given who—he has to work with. Jiang Wanyin experiences a moment’s seething envy of Lan Wangji, who still has a brother. Who has some f*cking illegitimate or chosen child. Who has yet a living guardian. Who has anything, and is angry he doesn’t have everything.

Jiang Wanyin sneers and treats the ‘offer’ like an insult, which he knows it was intended as, and like a joke, which he knows it wasn’t.

Lan Wangji resumes his silence, as though Jiang Wanyin and his own white-hot anger never pierced it (a rage wrapped up in pale, cool cloth, which no one but Jiang Wanyin and a permenantly-tense Zewujun seem to feel the deep, screaming thrum of, every time Lan Wangji walks among the Sects).

In years to come, Jiang Wanyin remembers this as his last real conversation with Lan Wangji. He initially believed that he successfully provoked Lan Wangji, but he comes to doubt it. Perhaps Lan Wangji wanted something to stand as punctuation to their whole life-long acquaintance: wanted something to burn out the memory of his begging Jiang Wanyin to spare his own brother, to stop. Now, Lan Wangji can remember the last words between them as something expressive of his own power and hatred. Carrying the same desperate need, but colder and harder. And with none of the begging.

Jiang Wanyin thinks less of the words themselves—the ephemeral moments of speech—and more of the abiding silence that structures them. The vacant spaces before and after that poisonous conversation between Jiang Wanyin and one of the few people he ever thought of as a friend. The stillness of the family rooms in his home (unoccupied now, but for himself and servants), which becomes so absolute in the night, when all the people who call Jiang Wanyin ‘master’ and who’ve homes to go to return to them.

He thinks of the unpopulated vagueness of his own, heirless future: Jiang living on to be, what, a subsidiary part of Jin, via his nephew’s inheritance? The five great sects collapsed to three, inside a generation. To two, if Nie Huaisang should falter. To one, if Jin should look upon rebuilding, scholarly Lan, which had felt morally bound to tax itself at every stage of the war far more than still-fresh Jin had ever done, with a covetous eye. And then the Sunshot Campaign would have been for nothing but the substitution of Jin for Wen: of money for raw power.

Charged above all things with presenting a strong front for his Clan and his dependants, there is no one Jiang Wanyin can even whisper these concerns to. What Clan? Jiang is only him and the ‘lesser’, maternal half of a child. The Sect is him, a very few survivors and now-integrated cultivators from what had once been Jiang's cadet clans, and opportunists who found their way to Jiang after its devastation. Who he’d taught himself, after Wei Wuxian had slunk away like a harried hart and their jiejie married out. Helplessly, Jiang Wanyin mentally measures his disciples against their predecessors, their dead counterparts—but even they had not been strong enough to stand against invasion.

Sometimes Jiang Wanyin remembers that terrible conversation with Lan Wangji and thinks, ‘I should just have said yes.’ Food is better than starvation, whatever it costs. He could scarcely have pretended to be his brother without imitating Wei Wuxian’s characteristic riot of noise. At least for a night, this bedroom of his wouldn’t have been death-quiet, tomb-still. And he and Lan Wangji could hardly love one another less than they do now.

Chapter 49: Have Your Cake (Cakeverse AU Ideas)

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Meng Yao had never minded the food he and Mother had to eat in lean times, so long as there was enough of it. He could smile honestly when he told Mother that he couldn't taste anything amiss with the soup she'd purchased from a vendor at the day's end, at cut-rates.

Even now, in Nie, where the dinners were hearty and ample, Meng Yao thought little of their taste. From how others talked of the hit of cumin, or the unctuous burst of lamb fat, he presumed he'd not acquired the trick of appreciating Qinghe cuisine. Perhaps because he’d been reared so much farther south, its flavours remained more strange to him than comforting. Meng Yao pretended, though, to fit in among his compatriots. Food was food. He liked what they liked, and they didn't need to know that he consumed plain bread with equal relish.

Everything changed when sect leader Nie began taking meetings with Meng Yao while running through sword drills. Because smell was a chemical sense, predicated on the ingestion of particles in the air. And when he drilled, Nie zongzhu sweated.

Lan Wangji wondered what exactly Wei Wuxian was complaining about. Gusu's medicinal herbal soups didn’t taste of anything, to him. They were nourishing and healthful. Was there any difference between one such dish and another?

He mentioned this to xiongzhang, who chose his reply with evident care.

“Wangji, most Lans feel as you do. It’s part of why we honour a prohibition against the eating of meat, and it’s more common than people think, among Cultivators, to be one way or the other. But most people find our diet—stringent. Mother did. I’m like Mother, in this.”

Wangji frowned. “Or the other?” he repeated.

Xiongzhang now looked actively uncomfortable. “There is—a kind of oppositional equivalent, to how you feel. Not simply neutral, but—”

“When you kissed mother’s cheek,” Wangji interrupted Xiongzhang’s fumbling, “when you smelled her hair, it was more than the nursemaids'.” Because she was Mother, Wangji had always thought. “She was like flowers.”

Like what people said of sugar. It had been years since Wangji had planted a kiss on his elder brother’s cheek, but he remembered gege had been the same, when Wangji had still called him that.

“Not,” Lan Xichen said gently, “for me.”

Elviaprose theorises: “ Maybe what’s even less known is that you can be both a fork and a cake, though it’s rare even to be a fork and forks don’t know if they’re cakes unless they meet another fork who senses the cakeness”.

Cakeverse AU finally offers a good answer as to what happened to Wei Wuxian’s original body (it’s pretty forked up, though).

Jiang Wanyin’s version is a bitter 'why couldn't you stay with me as my second in command?' called “Second Serving”.

Lan Wangji’s is really elegiac, called “Final Helping”. Lans only eat meat on very special occasions.

Superborb suggests that “ it's all fun and games until everyone gets Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease”, and advises them not to eat the brains.

Unfortunately, that’s the juicy bit. And Lan Wangji has always loved Wei Wuxian for his mind.

(Jin Guangyao’s fic with Nie Mingjue’s body is called “have your cake and eat it too”.)

Alternatively, lots of people are forks, but everyone knows about the Twin Cakes of Gusu. Aeriallon suggests they are a GBBO Technical Challenge level affair: delicate towers of pastry, elegant, flawless fondant, edible flower petals, etc. Lans could taste like angel food (so white and poncy), or tres leches: sweet base cakes you pair with something fresh and/or intensely flavourful.

Jins are chiffon: overly-complicated, and deflate too easily. Aeriallon suggests that Jin Guangyao is a small petit four.

In a way, such a scenario is pure Lan Wangji romantic crack fever dream material: ‘Oh, Lan Zhan, your sem*n tastes so good, I want to survive on it and nothing else—’

Lan Wangji’s ‘cakeverse’ incense burner dream eclipses even ‘adolescent library dubcon’ levels of embarrassment for him, and when they wake up Lan Wangji cannot look Wei Wuxian in the eye.

“I don't want to talk about it. More even than I usually do not want to talk.”

Elviaprose, learning about the cakeverse: this is a lot to... digest.

Superborb believes Jiang Wanyin would be normal, and not get the appeal of any of this sh*t. She suggests Wei Wuxian would also be normal, and able to appreciate Shijie’s Soup accordingly. Lan Wangji assumes Wei Wuxian is pursuing his cakeliness as a fork, “but no! Wei Wuxian finds Lan Wangji’s ~personality~ appealing”.

I said that Jiang Wanyin would be the first to respond ‘what personality.’

Superborb: Jiang Wanyin is cursed with siblings with terrible taste in all worlds.

Chapter 50: OG Idea for 'I Started From the Bottom/And Now I'm Rich' (Omake)

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ok so this is absolute trash, but: wwx f*cks up trying to break out of stasis after the wen remnants leave, and accidentally sends himself back in time to right before cloud recesses or lotus pier (1 of the two) gets totalled, and decides to black widow his way through this (offering the tiger seal as a dowry). everyone hears he's marrying *wen ruohan* and is like what the f*ck, and he's like wen chao you can call me papa--just to be a total dick, but then he's like oh NO to think my sons in law caught red handed trying to kill their father, GUARDS--oh what am I saying I can do this myself, CORPSES-- and he dumps Wen on Wen Qing who is like what the f*ck and wwx is like i owe you just--so so so so much ok. don't question it.

and then he does the same thing to jin guangshan and is like I want primary wife status tho aha and guangshan is like--for that amulet I'd do a LOT and he's so Eager to re-enter the cultivation world on good terms/he says it's to piss off madam yu and everyone knows she loves her sworn sister and HATES Wei Wuxian

and then wwx is like gosh to THINK I found out this dodgy sh*t about my brand! new! husband! who has insulted poor madam jin SO horribly, I'm sure no one will ask questions if he killed himself in belated shame for his misdeeds

I really do think Jin Zixuan and Yanli can take it from here--

and lwj is like LISTEN. IDK WHO ELSE YOU PLAN ON MARRYING, BUT I AM PROPOSING RIGHT NOW-- and Xichen is like are you f*cking insane Wangji

this guy killed his last two spouses in like Night 1 each time and he has the tiger amulet and seems UNBALANCED wtf wtf

and wwx is like... deal

and it's the night of and wwx is like it may shock you to know I've never actually er. consumated, a marriage before and lwj is like not at all tbh

and wwx is like aren't you scared I'll kill you? and lwj is like not even a little

but also if that was the price for helping you/having you, all right

and it's morning and xichen is like OH MY GOD IS IT FUNERAL TIME and wangji is just like hey. morning, all.

you sleep well? not me, but i don't give a f*ck

Mongrelmind: I gave SEVERAL last night

Don't know if you heard the screaming

*deeply sober finger guns*

Me: lwj can optionally have figured out it's time travel

and is like so were we together in the future you came from? and wwx is like no and looking back that was one of the problems with that timeline honestly

Mongrelmind: it was how chill wwx was about Zixuan and Yanli that sealed it for him

he's like they already got married and he's accepted it that is the ONLY WAY

before that he was *chalkboard gif but with Abacus*

Me: wen qing is like the weirdest part was how much he wanted to hug me??

Mongrelmind: He shook Jin Zixuan's hand

It shocked Everyone

Me: loool he was like hey. i get the feeling that really, you're an ok guy who loves my sister

but cannot talk for sh*t

just

incapable of normal human conversation

but you'd like to build her a dumbass lotus pond, wouldn't you? yeah. that's the type of weak sh*t you're like. if lan zhan does it it's sexy, but you--eh. it's Admissable

after jin guangshan dies madam yu is like WEI WUXIAN WHAT THE ACTUAL f*ck ARE YOU EVEN DOING and he's like you know madam yu, if you died I would regret it eternally, but in with genuine sorrow for the only mother figure I remember--admittedly a bad mother, who subcontracts any actual labour out to her own daughter, but it's what i've got--would be this deep, burning regret i never once just punched you in the face. and I like to live without regrets.

and she's like what did you say? wwx, with insulting slowness: terrible moooooother-- madam yu: right! right.

yanli is like A-XIAN and he's like... not sorry. &it's DRAG OUT, like she tries to whip him and he GRABS ON like 'my pain tolerance is so high good f*cking luck' &by the end they're both just destroyed&like ...good talk

Chapter 51: OG Idea for 'The Same Cloth' (Omake)

Chapter Text

You know probably there’s some well to do middle class cloth merchants’ family whose 3rd daughter got told as a kid she had the potential to be a cultivator, so she begged her parents to let her train with a small sect and bc she was the third daughter and they worried about appropriately dowering all the kids they said, well if it’s what you really want? &then when she was like 25 they just stopped hearing from her&had to assume something had HAPPENED, but sometimes Xichen or wangji end up in that part of the country and greet their grandparents in passing in the street, and they know but don’t know how to say or think it would matter now bc she chose not to tell her parents she was in prison for murder

&its this bizarre alternate world of cousins who look like them and have nothing to do with cultivation at all and who comment on how good their robes are and don’t even begin to guess wtf happened

just doing dishes man

Just having thoughts

Probably during both seclusion periods they think ‘I might have been much, much happier as a silk merchant’

If Lan and Jiang lost a l o t of people during the raids tho that’s—a good family to start with if you’re going to test for disciple abilities? They already produced a strong cultivator, probably send them some pamphlets

Chapter 52: Indecent Promposal (Wangxian)

Chapter Text

Wei Wuxian had thoroughly rehearsed his arguments to convince Lan Wangji to attend prom with him. He had come into the conversation prepared for the battle of a lifetime. He thus deflated somewhat when Lan Wangji immediately acquiesced.

“What,” Wei Wuxian blinked. “Just like that?”

None of this was a joke to Wei Wuxian, per se, but he had been significantly spurred on by Jiang Wanyin’s telling him he’d never manage this because Lan Wangji so clearly despised him.

At a loss in the face of his unexpected triumph, Wei Wuxian started to explain to the already-compliant Lan Wangji that their going together would show his brother up and be hilarious, because no one believed it would happen, which was just rude because he and Lan Wangji were friends, actually—

“I don’t care why you think we’re going,” Lan Wangji interrupted him. “My tie colour is navy. If you attempt a powder blue suit, there will be consequences. It’s never funny, and you can’t ‘make it work’.”

He turned on his heel, leaving a still-bewildered Wei Wuxian in the hall. For a moment Lan Wangji doubted the wisdom of his having introduced the classically terrible Baby Blue Suit concept when there was a chance Wei Wuxian would take his dire warning as a challenge—but no, Wei Wuxian would have gotten there on his own, and sooner rather than later. Best to try and head it off at the pass.

At home, when telling Lan Xichen about his day, Lan Wangji was outright smug.

“Now I don’t need to take your advice,” Lan Wangji said, pouring them both glasses of water from the pitcher in the fridge. He shuddered at the mere memory of Lan Xichen insisting he needed to ‘talk about his feelings’. “Wei Ying is locked in.”

He would not, therefore, have any opportunity to make Lan Wangji furious by attending the event with some girl.

Xichen rubbed the bridge of his nose, and Lan Wangji felt a pang of concern. Ge looked very tired.

“Wangji,” Lan Xichen said, “have you talked to Wei Ying about university, and where you’re both going? Because that’s coming up in autumn, and it might separate you. And if you never say anything, Wei Ying will probably date someone during those years. Somehow who is not you.”

All Lan Wangji’s sympathy for his brother’s pinched-face exhaustion evaporated in an instant.

“Why,” he asked stiffly, taking Xichen’s water back, “would you say something so hurtful?”

Lan Xichen brought his hand to his mouth, bit a knuckle in frustration and then released it.

“I’m just stating—the f*cking—you know what?” Lan Xichen adopted a stiff, manic smile. “I’m going to go make dinner!”

Lan Xichen pressed water out of the tofu and thought longingly of squeezing his beloved little brother’s head against the griddle with a spatula after the same fashion. After the meal (alone in the living room, because Uncle was away and Wangji had slunk off to his bedroom, still sulking), Lan Xichen poured himself a glass of wine. Against the advice of his better angels, he looked up Wei Wuxian’s older sister on RenRen. By now, Lan Xichen had heard all about Wei Wuxin’s family. There was hardly a Wei Wuxian adjacent subject that Lan Xichen was not a wholly unwilling expert on.

‘Hey’, he typed into the message request box. ‘I’m know we’re strangers, and I’m so sorry to contact you out of the blue like this. But listen—your brother, Wei Ying. Has he ever mentioned my brother?’

Within two minutes, ellipses popped up.

‘Is this ‘LAN ZAAAAAAAAAN’S’ brother??’ She continued only a moment later, probably having checked and confirmed that it was even as she was typing. ‘Xie tian xie di, I’m so glad you reached out. Listen; I am not a murderer. Can we get bubble tea in a public place and just—’

‘Yes,’ he typed, not even waiting for her follow up message to finish coming through. ‘Yes, absolutely. When? Where?’ His need to unload regarding Wangji’s years-long drama was so great that it over-rode all his usual polite hesitance: he sensed a long-suffering kindred spirit, here.

It took Lan Wangji three weeks to realise that Jiang Yanli and Lan Xichen had become bitches who brunched. He had not, at first, wanted to countenance a notion that filled him with such well-founded terror.

“Where did you two meet?” Wangji asked, as calmly as he could manage.

“Oh, just RenRen,” Lan Xichen said, which provided Lan Wangji with no good answers as to how they’d come into contact in the first place.

“You don’t discuss me, do you?” Lan Wangji asked, certain that Ge would not thus betray him but wanting reassurance on this point nonetheless.

“Oh yes,” Lan Xichen nodded, “constantly. And Wei Ying. I mean we talk about a lot of other things as well, because Yanli is a lovely girl, but we absolutely discuss you both, at length.”

Lan Wangji felt a little like hyperventilating. “That is... not what you’re supposed to say.”

“Mm,” Lan Xichen agreed. “Hey, isn’t that what I told you after your second confession attempt was spoiled by your own stubbornness, and you just ended up lecturing Wei Ying about—what was it, fire safety?”

“Library etiquette,” Lan Wangji corrected him, in a small voice.

Lan Xichen ruffled his hair in the most annoying fashion possible. “Library etiquette,” he agreed with a smile. “Classic. I’ll have to tell Yanli about that one.”

Chapter 53: Moving Castles (Wangxian)

Chapter Text

Wen Yuan could not say why he felt compelled to silently walk past the rows and rows of beds that held his sleeping classmates, and then to slip out of the tall window at the end of the Institute’s dormitory. All day, he’d been restless. He’d asked his classmates if they too heard the strange melody that had woken him in the morning and lingered at the very edge of audibility, and not a one of them had said yes. So Wen Yuan had gone to bed still in his school uniform, and had waited for every wakeful breath around him to subside. Then he’d shimmied down a tree and walked straight into the waste, following—as became clearer, the closer he grew to it—the sound of a dizi. He made away with nothing but a rucksack, stuffed with food scrounged from the dining hall, his favourite book, a scratchy woollen blanket and his winter coat.

For days now, Wen Yuan's classmates had whispered about the Yiling Patriarch. The infamous wizard had brought his fearful dead forest close to the hills outside the town. It wasn’t that Wen Yuan didn’t believe the rumours about all the terrible things the man could do or had done; he didn’t know enough to either credit or doubt them. Anyone who dared to get close enough, however, could see the cultivator’s power for themselves: could watch the eerie march of dead trees, plucking up their roots and moving in a procession at once lumbering and stately. The bone-fingered forest rolled across the land, crushing spring flowers that bounded back up in its wake: trampled, but still quick.

Ultimately, neither talk nor evidence had swayed When Yuan’s decision to walk. Something in that haunting song had struck a cord in Wen Yuan’s muffled memory, and so little ever did. Sometimes he almost thought he heard his name, whispered in the spaces between the notes.

The wood seemed almost to part to admit Wen Yuan, who found, at its centre, a queer little bright-painted cottage. Its door swung open before him, untouched.

The Yiling Patriarch was not at all what Wen Yuan would have expected, had he formed any certain expectation at all. He was tall, too-thin and handsome. He moved quickly; he looked tired. He smiled at A Yuan to make him comfortable, when a man as powerful as he was hardly needed to care about anyone’s comfort. A Yuan understood that the patriarch had probably lured him here; he didn’t seem at all surprised by the boy’s arrival. His purpose in doing so, however, remained uncertain. And it seemed that the patriarch did not live alone. He had a powerful familiar in the fire, who he introduced as his friend, A Zhan.

“Of course, he wasn’t always a fire spirit,” the Yiling Patriarch said as he ladled A Yuan bowl of congee, which was streaked through with a clear red ribbon of chilli oil. He sighed and shook his head. “What a pity. I swear, when he transformed, the world lost its handsomest—A Zhan, don’t throw sparks at me like that, it’s rude!”

Wen Yuan was finding it difficult to credit the Yiling Patriarch’s pitch-black reputation in the face of the man’s having made him breakfast. School never flavoured the congee like this. The institute went in for unvarying bland, healthful fare, every day. The patriarch’s cooking was queer, but Wen Yuan found it was to his taste.

Wen Yuan took in the words, then started in surprise. “You mean he’s a man, trapped like that?”

“Mm,” the fire crackled, adjusting itself on the logs. The Yiling Patriarch took up a poker, twirled it in his hand and precisely shifted the pile to shake off the ash and better accommodate his companion.

“It’s a stopgap,” the patriarch admitted. “The attack was supposed to destroy his soul. Instead, it snapped his soul’s connection to his body. I’m working on putting him back together again.”

“How awful for him!” Wen Yuan said. To strike at a man's soul like that, to aim at the immortal part of him that must survive to be reincarnated, seemed a blasphemous piece of cruelty. “Is it even possible,” Wen Yuan asked with gentle sadness, “to heal such a thing?”

“I,” the patriarch said, light but steel-certain, “will make it possible. Just give me time.”

Wen Yuan shook his head. “But that poor man! How long has he been like this?”

“Well,” the patriarch drawled, his smiling eyes sharpening. “How long have you been at the Institute, A Yuan?”

“I—” Wen Yuan began, then frowned. “I’ve always been there, I guess. I don’t have any family.”

“Hm,” the patriarch said, drawing a hand to his mouth. “That’s the funny thing, with curses. It can be difficult to say. And that can make them still more difficult to break.”

Wen Yuan was startled when the patriarch offered to let him stay. He claimed he needed an apprentice, and that Wen Yuan looked a likely boy. After all, he heeded the call of the patriarch’s dizi, which was evidently a promising sign.

Before agreeing, Wen Yuan asked if the patriarch truly hurt people. He knew the question itself was dangerous. The type of man who’d have to admit to doing so might well not take kindly to Wen Yuan’s having asked such a thing. Of course he could be lied to, but then he wouldn’t be worth much to a man who wanted a stooge in such matters if he balked at even the prospect.

“I have, sometimes,” the patriarch admitted. “In defence of others, and sometimes even in revenge, though I’m not proud of those days. Never because I wanted to, A Yuan. If you ever feel I put myself in the wrong in that regard you’ll be free to leave, with money in your pockets and my best wishes. I’ll vow it on A Zhan, all right?”

Maybe it was the flavour lingering on his tongue—or perhaps the drowsy, comfortable warmth of that living fire—that made Wen Yuan felt safer in this house than he could remember ever having felt. He decided to trust the Yiling Patriarch, and agreed to serve as his disciple.

For all the cottage grew its own spare bedroom when it admitted a new inhabitant—becoming a blooming, sprawling thing seemingly of its own accord—the Yiling Patriarch did not take kindly to his home being invaded by an accumulating gaggle of wayward teens.

They’d found Ouyang Zizhen transformed into a tree. Wen Yuan had gone out to the forest the woods had walked into to cut some less-cursed firewood and had run right back in, chalk-pale, to tell his shizun that the tree he’s started to fell had trembled, shaking its branches, had wept sap tears and begged him not to strike. How was that less cursed? Wen Yuan had bleated, shock making him indignant. Once restored to himself, Ouyang Zizhen claimed that he’d been out searching for the lost Jin heir, had been separated from his party and had accidentally sprung an old trap from the war.

They’d found Lan Jingyi, a distant offshoot of the famous Lan cultivator clan, stuck at the bottom of a lake. His whole branch-clan was apparently suffering such strange mishaps with their magic. They’d had sent scouts far and wide, he among them, to seek the light of their sorcery. It was this Hanguangjun’s custom to roam the land, aiding those afflicted by strange phenomena. If anyone knew what the prodigious Lan libraries did not, it would be this famed roaming scholar, Lan Wangji.

Over the course of this explanation, the Yiling Patriarch’s expression grew wry.

“Yes,” he said, “as it happens, I’m also seeking Lan Wangji. After a fashion.”

Lan Jingyi frowned, and said (rather too frankly), “but I heard you two are, you know, yuānjia.” He meant ‘famous, destined mortal enemies’.

The patriarch coughed. “Well. We’re certainly yuānjia. But I’ve always thought people in such circ*mstances as ours should converse regularly, as civilly as possible.”

The fire behind them crackled, as though it was chuckling at them.

“Shut it, A Zhan,” the patriarch snapped.

For his part, the normally taciturn A Zhan suggested that Lan Jingyi travel with them and explain all he could of what had befallen the Lan branch-sects’ cultivation, while seeing whether he could find anything pertinent in the patriarch’s library.

“I’m actually rather busy at present,” the patriarch put in. “I haven’t time to mind children. The Burial Mounds are no place for them!”

“What about him?” Lan Jingyi asked, indignantly gesturing to Wen Yuan.

“That’s different,” the patriarch said. “He’s my—disciple. He works here.”

“And him?” Jingyi persisted, pointing at Ouyang Zizhen in turn.

“He’s just here by mistake!” the patriarch huffed. “We’re returning that one!”

“I’m also a disciple,” Ouyang Zizhen offered. “Unofficially, I mean. I’m learning a lot!”

“Yes,” the fire popped. “For one, he’s no longer quite so liable to separate from his party and leave himself vulnerable to danger. We should encourage that in him.”

“What I’m doing here is dangerous, A Zhan,” the patriarch contended. “I can’t keep company and do what I might need to!”

“I disagree,” the fire said, with a single, pointed flare. “Your unwillingness to rely on others because you feel it might put them at risk is in fact precisely the attitude that resulted in this situation. If I had seen through your attempt to bundle us off—”

“You—”

Looking exceptionally annoyed, the patriarch curled his fire into a brazier and brought it upstairs to his room, muttering angrily to it all the while.

“He does that sometimes,” Wen Yuan told his new friends. It could get really cold down here, on the odd morning. The Yiling Patriarch would eventually slink back in with the hearth fire, apologising for having had it in his own bedroom overnight and looking far more awkward about that than the sentence seemed to necessitate. Wen Yuan's shizun was a mysterious, multi-faceted man, who sometimes made weird jokes about how ‘hot’ A Zhan was, in any form. (Because he was a fire, now. Get it?)

At such times, A Zhan’s responsive flicker reminded A Yuan of a long-suffering sigh. The embers themselves seemed somehow disappointed in the fearsome wizard.

The patriarch would only pout. “Come on, A Zhan, don’t look so put out—”

Apparently, another of his shizun’s facets was a blithering terror in the face of even small dogs. However the very persistent wonder dog that followed Wen Yuan home from the market one day, before Wen Yuan had known that (‘Fairy’, according to its name tag), would not be shooed. It trotted up to the fire, whining, while the patriarch cringed in the corner. It was A Zhan who quietly observed that the colours of the dog’s eyes did not match one another, and suggested that the dog might contain two souls rather than just one.

“Oh no,” the patriarch said, glancing over the hands he was holding across his face. “You don’t think—”

The fire sighed, a log shifting down. “It is the child’s dog, so in fact, I do.”

“How should I know that?” the patriarch asked, defensive. “All these slathering hellhounds look alike to me—”

Fairy (and Friend?) yipped, sounding quite put out.

“Sorry,” the patriarch said. “I’m sorry—A Yuan, hug the dog for me.”

A strange request, but A Yuan supposed many apprentices had more arduous duties.

Apparently, the appearance of the dog necessitated a trip to Yunmeng. Tension crept into the Yiling Patriarch’s shoulders as they grew closer, and the fire flared up bright and hot.

Wen Yuan went with the patriarch to visit a strange local potentate. He wasn’t one of the ones that usually consulted them. He was a lot more angrily familiar with the patriarch, for one. While Ouyang Zizhen and Lan Jingyi conveyed the dog to the man's home, he berated the Yiling Patriarch so fiercely for not having finished his degree and instead ‘running off to play wizard’ that Wen Yuan felt the need to speak in his shizun’s defence.

“But my shizun is full of magic, sir!” Wen Yuan protested. “He couldn’t just ignore that—”

“‘He’s full of magic’?” The man in the purple hoodie repeated, sounding at serious risk of vomiting. “He’s certainly full of something, aren’t you—”

A sound like a crack in the world. Wen Yuan fell, like his knees had been swept out from under him.

Wen Yuan blinked, finding the patriarch and this strange man hovering over him. He felt as though no time at all had passed, but it must have done, for them to have moved.

“Are you all right?” the patriarch asked, his great dark eyes flooded with a tender concern that touched Wen Yuan. He managed a nod, and the patriarch gave a relieved sigh.

“So you can’t use my name,” the patriarch said. “Not where he can hear it, because he keeps doing this, and afterwards he doesn’t even remember—you really don’t recognise him?” he asked, almost desperately. “Or Jin—the dog?”

The man, now pinched and serious, shook his head. “What the f*ck is going on?”

“I’m figuring that out,” the patriarch said, his mouth setting into something hard and determined.

Chapter 54: Portraiture (Regency Fusion) (Wangxian)

Chapter Text

The Jin’s Phoenix Mountain Hunt was a glittering affair, undertaken on an opulent scale. Its very lavishness seemed to provoke mirroring attitudes of fantastic indulgence in the assembled company. Though no great fan of pomp, the energy of the ball found Wei Wuxian mischievous and wild, almost indecorous in it. He’d made a daring corsetry decision, cinching for an exceptionally dramatic waist, and then proceeded to dance every set. When the evening had been well advanced, he’d taken up a dare in archery on the lawn. He’d wobbled on his feet, but had not missed the target once. He’d then declared to all his friends that he felt perfectly well—that he would even take another glass of punch, if one was to be had.

Lan Wangji hadn’t said a word to caution him—not even when Wei Wuxian had shrugged off his constricting outermost robe to achieve a better angle with his bow. He’d been too dazzled to do anything of the kind. And as it happened, Wei Wuxian had known what he was doing. It was ultimately Lan Wangji who had proved lacking in decorum and control. All Wei Wuxian’s pieces of laxity were fundamentally innocent: the true trespass was Lan Wangji's alone.

Overheated after his triumph at the range and then pressed back into the sweltering crush of a ballroom filled with hundreds of bodies in motion, Wei Wuxian had stumbled, practically swooning. Lan Waangji had caught him. Wei Wuxian had only laughed about it (while Lan Wangji had prayed that the lithe length of Wei Wuxian’s body would conceal the burgeoning erection disturbing the fall of his own trousers from onlookers).

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Wei Wuxian said, patting his arm. “Just dizzy from the contrast. But this next one’s a gentle country line, and I did promise Wen Qionglin I’d show him the trick of it. Here,” he said, handing his punch glass to Lan Wangji. “Put that somewhere for me, if you would be so good? I’d drain it, but I think I’ve had enough for one night.”

Watching Wei Wuxian whirl away into the crowd, Lan Wangji tried to steady himself by finishing off his own lemonade. It was only a moment later, looking down at his hands in confusion, that he remembered he’d been holding two glasses, and realised he’d drunk the entirety of the wrong one.

Lan Wangji’s sterling reputation could naturally have survived such an accident, such a trifle as one drunken ball. When he’d pulled Wei Wuxian away from the floor as the man finished a quadrille, he’d entertained cloudy thoughts of simply being alone with Wei Wuxian in the estate’s over-manicured gardens. But Wei Wuxian had called his name to ask where he was taking him. Lan Wangji had glanced over his shoulder at that smiling mouth. Had swept Wei Wuxian ‘round, throwing his back against a marble column. Had pushed forward and kissed him feverishly, fully in sight of no fewer than four onlookers. There had been no decision in it. Wei Wuxian had spoken, and Lan Wangji had helplessly answered, as honestly as he could. Whether intoxicated or judge-sober, his feelings were unaltered.

Wei Wuxian had looked up at him, his eyes wide with shock and his chest heaving. Lan Wangji had still been thoroughly drunk, and had struggled to understand Wei Wuxian’s increasingly panicked explanations to those who’d witnessed them embracing. According to a flustered Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji hadn’t known what he did. Lan Wangji was only getting him back for years of Wei Wuxian’s pranks, he’d meant nothing by it—

No one had been particularly inclined to listen. It didn’t seem as though the thing could be brazened out. By the next morning, the consensus was that somehow Wei Wuxian, the Jiang’s poor relation, had managed to seduce Lan Wangji into ruining him. Earlier in the day Wei Wuxian had publicly pulled at Lan Wangji’s familial ribbon, which weighed heavily against him. Wei Wuxian’s whole light, care-free personality seemed to weigh against him, in public opinion.

The following afternoon, Lan Wangji presented himself at the house Jiang Yanli was keeping in town for the duration of the season. Wei Wuxian was technically in his elder sister’s care, and so it was to her Lan Wangji addressed himself. He laid out his regrets and his profoundest apologies, then stressed his willingness to enter into an immediate engagement—respecting, of course, whatever boundaries Wei Wuxian himself might set for the resultant union, in the face of such a lapse as his.

Lan Wangji was certainly embarrassed by his poor decision-making, which had made Wei Wuxian’s always-ambiguous position in society yet more delicate. But to a degree, dislike it in himself though he did, Lan Wangji was also relieved. Even thrilled. Because even if Wei Wuxian never wished to consummate the marriage Lan Wangji’s indiscretion had rendered necessary, the very fact of it meant Lan Wangji would have him forever, and no one else would. Wei Wuxian would be his to provide for. No one would be able to suggest that Wei Wuxian was Jiang zongzhu’s natural son, or that he was merely the jumped up son of a steward who the Jiangs had over-indulged, if Wei Wuxian were the husband of the second young master Lan. Wei Wuxian’s perpetual material insecurity and the too-easy dismissals that dared encroach upon his personal reputation as a man of good character would alike find permanent answers in this union.

“I expected you’d say something like that,” Jiang Yanli told him. “Unfortunately, so did my brother.”

She passed Lan Wangji a sealed letter, which he tore open and read on the spot. It was from Wei Wuxian, and was all apologies for his part in the affair. He knew, of course, that the whole matter was just a joke, or an accident. How unfair that Lan Wangji was suffering for it in the estimation of society! Wei Wuxian refused to ruin Lan Wangji’s prospects, or to blight Jiang Yanli’s. So he’d taken it upon himself to sail for the continent without leaving any forwarding address. He’d taken sufficient funds for some months, and hoped to support himself with his painting on a more settled basis.

Lan Wangji’s mind raced with thoughts of the dock schedule and packet ships, and whether Wei Wuxian had left from Gravesend, from Dover, from Liverpool—but if Wei Wuxian didn’t want to be tracked, he wouldn’t be so easily found as that. He was maddeningly clever. He picked up languages with facility, and already spoke several. And if Wei Wuxian wanted nothing to do with him, then did Lan Wangji, who’d ripped England from his former schoolmate in an instant, have any business haring after him?

So that was the matter settled, then, entirely to the satisfaction of Lan Wangji’s uncle and all their set. What a favour Wei Wuxian had done him in departing from the scene. How Lan Wangji loved it.

When she herself received one, a sympathetic Jiang Yanli offered Lan Wangji an address at which Wei Wuxian could be written to. Lan Wangji often pressed a desire to visit his friend, almost to the point of incivility. Wei Wuxian always demurred. His letters were sent on from Rome, but he would offer no fixed abode beyond that, or even any particular, traceable detail. ‘Somewhere in rural Italy’ offered Wei Wuxin ample opportunity for picturesque vignettes, and Lan Wangji nothing at all to go on.

In Wei Wuxian’s absence, Lan Wangji’s role in his sudden and abrupt departure faded from popular memory. Wei Wuxian’s association with dynamic, shocking events persisted and indeed only grew, in concert with his burgeoning reputation as an artist. (Lan Wangji spent a week in an ecstasy of panic when rumour confidently asserted that Wei Wuxian had died en route to Messologi, headed there to fight for the much-abused nationalists partisans. In fact, it had been Lord Byron: a substitution Lan Wangji frankly thanked heaven for.)

Wei Wuxian himself never came to England, but his canvasses appeared in his stead and dominated fashionable exhibitions. Lan Wangji wondered whether it was odd to be moved almost to physical passion by the sublime, volcanic might of Wei Wuxian’s depiction of Mount Etna: surely not? A depiction of Gusu (from memory, of course) cut Lan Wangji to the quick. Nor did Wei Wuxian confine himself to landscapes; he appeared to know a surprising number of people willing to model in the nude. Lan Wangji wondered how annoyed it was seemly to be about this, even in the privacy of his own mind. If he and Wei Wuxian had, in fact, entered into any accord, he’d have been absolutely at ease, utterly secure in Wei Wuxian’s personal honour. But as he could rely upon no such understanding, Lan Wangji admired the excellent paintings with a mulish expression. He could not help remembering that Wei Wuxian had never asked him to model.

(In fact, Wei Wuxian’s sketchbooks and the marginalia of his notes were positively cluttered with Lan Wangji, taken from memory. He never presented such things for sale. They were a vulnerable and private matter, with him.)

Years passed in this fashion, and the young ward Lan Wangji had adopted after Wei Wuxian’s departure grew to adolescence. Jiang Yanli kindly informed Lan Wangji that her correspondence with Wei Wuxian had grown far more regular of late, waxing in tandem with her brother’s artistic success (in accord, Lan Wangji grimly suspected, with Wei Wuxian’s ability to support himself, and thus both his means for communication and his willingness to confide the particulars of his affairs to his sister). Jiang Yanli, pretending at casualness, informed Lan Wangji that she and her husband would be holidaying on the continent this year, in such and such a village. There was a small community of English expatriates in the environs, and it would be so pleasant to run into Lan Wangji abroad.

Lan Wangji took the hint with fervent gratitude. Once in town, he mentioned that he’d be very interested in his ward, Sizhui, undertaking to paint the scenery with some local master. Sizhui's uncle Xichen was a noted talent himself, and has been so good as to teach his nephew the rudiments of the art. Still, a student ought to be exposed to different styles and masters. When finally re-introduced to Wei Wuxian (living under an assumed name), Lan Wangji claimed to be here at all because Sizhui had needed to go abroad for his health, having been concerningly frail last winter (an announcement that confused Sizhui himself, who had never suffered worse than a cold in all his years with his father).

“Is he frail as well?” a bemused Wei Wuxian asked of loud and excitable Lan Jingyi.

“No,” Lan Wangji sighed, “he simply invited himself.”

“It’s my Grand Tour!” Jingyi chirped.

“I’ll bet it is,” Wei Wuxian muttered.

Sizhui and Jingyi swiftly found themselves smitten with Mr Wei, who seemed to them the most talented man alive (even if he was also the uncle of Jin Ling, who Lan Jingyi declared outright odious at every opportunity occasion provided him, and on some he made for himself). Lan Sizhui found Mr Wei oddly familiar, though of course he couldn’t have met him inside the last decade. It was still more unlikely that they'd encountered one another before Papa had taken him in, in the dimly-recollected days when Sizhui was just another pupil in Miss Wen Qing’s charitable school in the slums.

“Isn’t it odd he never married, though?” Jingyi mused one day in the cafe they frequented (having been drawn, as usual, to one of their favourite subjects). “A man as charming as he is! Jin Ling, however did it happen? Did he just never want to?”

Lan Jingyi had a habit of sneering at Jin Ling, then turning around and demanding conversation of the other boy whenever he liked. It was rude, but then so was Jin Ling. Lan Sizhui didn’t know whether he could rightly say anything to either of them about it.

“As someone who is not impressed by my uncle on a semi-professional basis,” Jin Ling sniffed, “I have never given it much thought.”

“To be fair,” Lan Jingyi offered magnanimously, “I doubt you’ve ever given anything much thought in your life.”

A local boy sidled up to the party before two of its members could work themselves into a proper lather, introducing himself (in surprisingly good English) as Ouyang Zizhen. He plopped down at their table, seeming wholly unconcerned with such niceties as invitations.

“Excuse me, I couldn’t help overhearing your discussion of Mr Wei, the most singularly fascinating man it has ever been my privilege to meet—”

Probably, Lan Sizhui thought, young Mr Zizhen had been unable to help overhearing because he’d been listening very intently for the past ten minutes. But that would have been rather rude to observe. The poor young man was clearly of a friendly disposition, and had little company here his own age.

“I happen,” Ouyang Zizhen leaned forward, “to have heard something myself as to why Mr Wei is yet unattached! Evidently long ago, in the country of his birth, he was engaged to a Mister June.”

Lan Jingyi began to look suspicious. “Hanguangjun?” This was the appellation society had given Lan Wangji.

“Yes!” Ouyang Zizhen nodded. “A Mr Hanging-June! You know of him? Oh, how exciting! Apparently the two were great friends, and at a hunt ball Mister June kissed Mister Wei. It was only a jest, but unfortunately Mister Wei was compromised by it. Mr June was willing to marry him, spoiling his own lofty prospects, but Mister Wei left his homeland rather than force his friend into such a thing against his will!” Ouyanz Zizhen sighed deeply, placing a hand on his chest and even choking up a little. “How noble!”

Jin Ling choked on his grappa. Lan Sizhui tried to imagine any circ*mstance in which his papa would kiss anyone as a joke. He found it starkly impossible.

The situation grew stranger still when Lan Xichen took it upon himself to interfere, writing his dear friend Jiang Yanli a polite letter in which he wondered whether her much-admired brother might we willing to paint his own, while Lan Wangji was in the country. Lan Xichen commissioned a large-scale portrait at great expense before Lan Wangji knew enough to object to the proposal, and Wei Wuxian could hardly refuse either the money or a request from his own beloved sister.

“Well, this should spark a great deal of interest in society!” Wei Wuxian teased when Lan Wangji sat for him. “A portrait like this—finally getting married, are we?”

Lan Wangji didn’t answer, but fixed Wei Wuxian with a very pointed look.

“Goodness,” Wei Wuxian marvelled as the day wore on, “you’ve such admirable control over your body! You pose so well, and don’t fidget at all. I could never do it half so nicely. You’re being terribly good for me, you know.”

Lan Wangji found such praise surprising, in that it suited tastes he had hitherto been unaware of. They spoke all the while Wei Wuxian worked. Wei Wuxian took unprecedented care with the portrait, never declaring himself satisfied with his efforts. It was so hard, he insisted, to capture the fundamental character of this sitter, whose very evident beauty served almost as a distraction from his more essential qualities.

Even when the piece became his own marriage portrait, Wei Wuxian remained dissatisfied with his work.

“Thankfully,” he said to his husband, “I’ve the rest of my life to achieve the desired result. Hurry up and age, will you? Shove a little of your ethereality out of the way, so I’ve a chance of getting at the best bits of you.”

“Of course, Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji agreed. And if he could have he’d have done it, too, just to satisfy his husband’s whim.

Chapter 55: "Are the Shades of Pemberley to Be Thus Polluted?" (Regency Cultivation Fusion)

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A terrible rumour reaches Lan Qiren. Apparently his young nephew, Lan Wangji, has employed the scandalous demonic cultivator Wei Wuxian to deal with the persistent ghost infestation making his country estate unliveable. Worst still, Wangji is said to actually be courting this rapscallion! Lan Qiren knows his nephew would never lower himself in such a fashion.

…all the same, even the whispers of such impropriety cannot go unanswered. Qiren will simply clear everything up with a visit.

If Wangji should have compromised himself, Qiren reflects while his horseless, sword-powered carriage glides north, the problem is not precisely one of class. The Lan themselves cultivate, of course—even considered as a profession (which is another thing altogether!), these days ‘paid cultivation’, the very notion of which still makes Qiren shudder, is something like architecture, or engaging in the civil service. A gentleman of the gentry may undertake such a thing without besmirching his name.

Lan Qiren, however, cannot entirely approve of ‘these days’. After the French wars, many Great Sects such as the Jin enclosed their lands, pushing the small holders they’d traditionally been responsible for off to uncertain destinations in favour of investing in unsightly factories and engaging in immoral speculation. The Jin have, undoubtedly, done well for themselves out of it. The chimney-piece in Koi Tower alone—

The Rosings Parks chapter wherein Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji have a lot of sex while Yanli and Zixuan are out is called ‘Nothing in the Closet: Happy Thot Indeed’.

During the courtship period, this fic could lean hard into Lan Gothic. “My ancestors have all suffered the same curse of love as our forefather. Behold this eldritch portrait! Does it not resemble my brother and I—”

Qinghe is in Scotland (or, per Mongrelmind, Niecastle). People think Lan will be like Home Counties, but they’re f*cking Yorkshire. Jin is Home Counties. Wen is Lancashire. Jiang is possibly Cornwall; the Sanrens are off in Wales. Meishan Yu is in Ireland.

Chapter 56: "Come to Gusu" Comment Fic

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A comment on “Come to Gusu”, the very fun fill for a prompt I left on the MDZS Kink Meme, got Mongrelmind and I thinking about the rest of this story-world.

"And yes, I definitely imagined Nie Mingjue as the most Epic Country Gentleman.

Please imagine the first adult meeting of Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue. He's been invited to go hunting by young Nie Huaisang but unfortunately has gotten lost on the way to the lodge. The landscape is totally unlike that of Gusu and he finally stumbles upon a handful of farmers toiling in the fields. One of these farmers is an absolutely STRAPPING young man. Tanned and handsome and Lan Xichen cannot tear his eyes away from that indecorous display of bosom. Cue his absolute horror when he finds out that this is Nie Mingjue, his childhood friend, and also that Nie Huaisang had given him the absolute wrong directions and he's nowhere near the Nie hunting lodge. Guess he'll have to spend the night at Qinghe Park!"

Country gentleman (and amateur Daddy) Mr Nie glowers around in a frock coat, attempting, at all times, to get everyone to go for a bracing ride. When Xichen pre-empts him with a gentle “darling, the guests have actually come for a small music recital. Could you turn my pages?” Mr Nie readily complies, looking bemused but fond.

Meng Yao, the unrecognised natural son of Jin Guangshan, is their estate steward, their lawyer, and (in a less-public capacity) their partner. He lives in town (not exactly savouring a rural idyll, himself). Everyone else is in an Austen universe, but Meng Yao is a proto-Dickensian lawyer with some full-on morally grey Plot Bullsh*t regarding his inheritance and associated vengeance scheme in the works. You're living in 1812, he's living in 1842.

Wei Wuxian is high on early French feminists. He keeps trying to talk people at parties into reading Vindication of the Rights of Women, which he refers to as “truly a banger”. English popular discourse swung hard reactionary after the French Revolution, but Wei Wuxian unfashionably maintains that perhaps the true crime here was not so much the Terror itself as pushing the peasantry to the point where such a backlash became almost inevitable. But what would he know? He’s just the only person present whose father wasn’t a gentlemen.

People have asked Wei Wuxian to stop essentially calling Wordsworth a weak take-backsies bitch without the fundamental courage of his convictions, but no. Wei Wuxian never will. More like ‘Prelude’ to a beat down, if they ever meet in company.

From “Come to Gusu”’s Author’s Notes: “Chickens are definitely offered. Old ruins are explored. Dresses are ripped, bodices are in danger, Lan Qiren's nerves are his constant companion and Wei Wuxian definitely gets caught in the rain.”

Wei Wuxian himself knows exactly how a simple and unobjectionable exploration of the picturesque ruins on the Lan family’s grounds ended in he and Mr Lan Wangji’s being trapped together in an underground grotto. (Wei Wuxian took this opportunity to reflect on moral and practical lessons imparted by The Monk: nothing good happened in gothic caves.) However other people might not be willing to credit the highly rational explanations behind these events.

“What a disaster!” Wei Wuxian complains. He’s sprained his ankle trying to climb back up the rock face and is attempting to rest it, as though a quarter of an hour’s enforced stillness will mend a fairly serious injury. “If they see us emerge together I’ll be ruined, which is annoyance enough, but then you'll feel you have to marry me—”

“I’m trying to find the exit, Mr Wei,” Lan Wangji says, cutting his grousing short. “Pray stop distracting me.”

Wei Wuxian rolls his eyes at Lan Wangji’s touchiness. Wei Wuxian doesn’t believe his personal silence capable of summoning an unblocked passageway into existence, so he doesn’t pay Mr Lan any mind.

“I know it’s insane for anyone to think you would ravish me in a grotto. What are you even supposed to do?” Wei Wuxian laughed. “Perch me on a stalagmite while using my mouth? Tie my hands to stalactites and have your wicked way? Hardly convenient—certainly not decorous enough for Mr Lan! But people are like that. Willing to believe anything sufficiently salacious, I mean, or at least to say they do, provided it will cause trouble for someone wholly unconnected with themselves.”

Water drops plink into the pool. In the darkness, Lan Wangji offers no response.

“Mr Lan?” Wei Wuxian asks, concerned. Could something have happened to him?

“Apologies,” Lan Wangji answers. “I—I must walk to the other side of the cave. To check it for apertures. I’ll return instantly. I need but a moment.”

In the end, their glorious escape requires significant inglorious crawling. Thankfully, this puts Wei Wuxian’s weight on his knees rather than his injured ankle. Eventually they emerge in a field, rather farther from the house than is comfortable. Wei Wuxian attempts to hobble back, only for Lan Wangji to sweep him up in his arms.

“I can manage on my own,” Wei Wuxian points out. He’s been doing it, depending on one’s perspective, for either an hour now or the better part of his life.

“You can, if you’re willing to severely hurt yourself,” Lan Wangji agrees. “And naturally, you are. I, however, am not willing to be a party to that.”

It’s raining. Lan Wangji purses his lips.

“You’ll catch a chill,” he murmurs. “I ought to have taken better care of you.”

Wei Wuxian thinks too much about Lan Wangji's hand at the back of his knee, because the alternative is thinking about the curve of Lan Wangji’s neck in front of his face.

“You’re practically folding me in half,” Wei Wuxian sulks. At this range, he can actually hear Lan Wangji’s teeth grit.

“Would you be so good,” he manages, “as to be silent while I’m attempting to carry you?”

“It’s simply a factual observation!” Wei Wuxian huffs. “Lord, does nothing I do please you? You've got my poor legs shoved right up against my chest—don’t drop me! I’ll stop, I’ll stop. Goodness, you’re sensitive!”

Wei Wuxian does not acknowledge that his own too-tight grip on Lan Wangji’s neck played its part in threatening to topple them both.

All the fussing and brittle flirting that Wei Wuxian is using to mask his nervousness fades away as Lan Wangji walks. When the tension has bled out of Wei Wuxian’s frame, he’s left lax, quiet and receptive. It is then that Lan Wangji chooses to speak.

“Do you remember when I broke my leg riding, when we were children? You tried to carry me home on your back. You brought me roadside flowers every day while I convalesced. You mocked my book of sonnets. It was only when you teased me that I realised you yourself knew the better part of them by memory.”

“Did I?” Wei Wuxian asks, lightly. “Well. Most people know Shakespeare, I hope.”

It sounds rather emotionally involving. Like just the sort of thing that might cause him to reflect on the alterations his position in the world and sense of self-worth have since undergone. It’s very liable to make him stop and consider what he’s doing at present, in trying to sell himself off to the highest bidder: in compressing his own sentiments until they take up no space in the world whatever. Wei Wuxian can’t have that. It is, therefore, generally easier to pretend such things never happened at all.

And it is unspeakably, quintessentially Lan Wangji, to recall that rather than the time in school when Wei Wuxian swapped out his Cicero for one of the nastier bits of Catullus. Lan Wangji translated a whole page before he noticed. Wei Wuxian could have bitten the very-handy lobe of this insufferable man’s ear for refusing to allow one of Wei Wuxian’s best-ever pranks a spare inch of space in his voluminous and well-ordered recollection.

And who is Lan Wangji to judge him, as Wei Wuxian suspects he does? Lan Wangji’s brother is only throwing him into the Season, and such gatherings as this, so that Lan Wangji himself might marry. They are alike, in that. (And after years of Lan Wangji’s acting as though he were far above these sweaty ballrooms and idle matchmakers, too!)

“By the by,” Wei Wuxian asks, making something jaunty and permissible out of a question too personal to rightly ask, “how is it going? Your whole bridal quest, I mean?”

Lan Wangji hesitates a moment before answering. “…I am finding it unexpectedly frustrating.”

Wei Wuxian doesn’t know why he’s a touch surprised to receive a decent marriage offer at last. Obtaining just that has, after all, been his whole purpose in coming here and immersing himself in the Season: in putting himself forward, like a little show pony. Not only will a marital arrangement provide for his own sustenance, it will also give him scope for philanthropy. Wen Qing is too occupied and too fundamental to the project to marry, while he is relatively expendable, and pragmatic regarding disposing of himself as an asset. He’s already clarified his position on helping Wen Qing with her school in the East End to his fiancé. That good lady is willing to express a legal settlement in writing. The whole thing couldn’t be neater.

What’s truly surprising is the extent to which Lan Wangji, of all people, seems taken aback by the news. Wei Wuxian feels more than a little looked down upon by his old schoolmate, but tries to swallow his hurt.

“It truly is perfectly amenable to me,” Wei Wuxian insists. “I'll try to earn my keep—to make her a good home, and to be a good companion. There are many ways to be happy in a marriage, after all. Ms Qingqi isn't cruel, and we’ve similar political sentiments. I've only had a few offers, and this is the best of the lot.”

Of course he’s already cheapened himself by going into trade, as it is. Old-fashioned people still don’t regard that. Still, Wei Wuxian has maintained some standards. He’s not yet grown desperate enough to willingly downplay his entire personality—to become the sort of simperer the wealthiest and worst people seem to like best, despite already being provided with abundant examples of the breed by a world eager to flatter them at every turn. Such disguise might indeed elicit a better match, but this short-term gain would inevitably yield to the long term friction incumbent on a marriage entered into on false pretences.

“Does she love you?” Lan Wangji asks Wei Wuxian, blunt. The question and its manner of delivery are surprising. Lan Wangji is habitually direct, but he is usually conspicuously eloquent even in Spartan taciturnity.

Wei Wuxian gives him an unimpressed look.

“Really, Mr Lan. She used the words, naturally. But honestly, of course she doesn’t. She hardly knows me. I suspect I’m not someone one marries for love.” He gives Lan Wangji a wistful smile. “But I’m neither bitter about my circ*mstances nor incapable. I’ve my friends to think of, and the causes I can advance. I’m happy enough in that.”

“You’d throw yourself away for money?” Lan Wangji sneers. “For Jiang’s debts, which you evidently believe me unaware of? For Wen Qing’s future—I see you’d do this for anything, so long as it isn’t yourself. Well, then. If you’d marry anyone going, then let it be me.”

Wei Wuxian’s smile grows strained, but he knows Lan Wangji is trying to help. Somewhere under the cutting words and the mocking offer is kindness. Lan Wangji has ever been too good a person for it to be otherwise.

“Oh, no,” Wei Wuxian shakes his head. “No, I couldn’t do that. You are certainly someone who ought to marry for love, if anyone in the world is! Certainly not as a favour to me.”

Why can’t Lan Wangji see that he’s found a solution? Wei Wuxian has fixed several problems at once, using only the imperfect medium of himself. He is to be congratulated, not—not disrespected, and—

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, the wholly inappropriate form of address startling, from his mouth. “Would you have me beg?”

Chapter 57: The Book of Hos: Meditations on Horniness (Wangxian)

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Lan Wangji’s having cultivated to immortality means that hundreds of years after it was written, people still come up to him to enthuse about how his poetry collection (unfortunately translated into a more modern form of Chinese as ‘Meditations on Horniness’) truly moved them. Apparently living forever means never living anything down.

Lan Wangji usually attempts to cut these conversations off by disclaiming authorship, which leaves some of his aficionados blinking in confusion.

“But sir, scholars generally agree that you—”

After all, the author could have been absolutely anyone. Just anyone at all with access to the paper the Lan Clan made specifically for inner-clan correspondence. And accordingly watermarked. (But it wasn’t his brother, please don’t suggest that about Zewujun.)

He does not regret the somewhat salacious content of the collection itself. No sentiment is merely ‘horny’ if sufficiently apposite chengyu have been employed in its expression. Lan Zhan mournfully reflects, however, that if all one can grasp is metaphor, one becomes very, very adept at bringing it off.

Wei Wuxian, also immortal and still wilfully oblivious (three centuries, and still going strong!), likes to tease Lan Wangji about how his impassioned poetry will have the maidens swooning at his feet. Some decades ago, in order to live peacefully, Lan Wangji began to pretend that ‘the maidens’ was Wei Wuxian’s cute nickname for himself. (Wei Wuxian’s other nickname for himself is ‘Mianmian’; Lan Wangji is can never speak to that poor woman informally again.)

Now, when Wei Wuxian says “oh, the maidens will just love you in that robe”, Lan Wangji can simply say “thank you, Wei Ying” rather than rage-cracking another tooth. When one lives forever, dentistry can become something of an issue. Lan Wangji will sometimes ask what ‘the maidens’ want for dinner today. Wei Wuxian will offer his own surmises on the point, which are of necessity tied to his personal preferences. Close enough.

Chapter 58: ‘Treasures of the Gusu Lan Settlement’ (Wangxian)

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Nie Huaisang grabbed Wei Wuxian by the lapels, shaking him vigorously. In the intensity of his feeling, he seemed unable even to form words. He dragged a confused Wei Wuxian deep into the bowels of the Cloud Recesses library pavilion, where he emphatically pointed at an innocuous-looking shelf and jibbered (quietly: this was a library).

Wei Wuxian rolled his eyes, certain that whatever it was, it couldn’t be that good. He grabbed a random volume from the shelf and began reading. After a moment, his eyes bugged. He swivelled his head to look at Nie Huaisang, who nodded frantically.

“Wei xiong, when I tell you I nearly fainted from sheer joy—”

Wei Wuxian began to riffle through the shelf’s titles. “What, all of this?”

“Yes!” Nie Huaisang said. “It’s all really raunchy erotic poetry!”

“My respect for the Lan Clan has truly reached a new height,” Wei Wuxian said with a shake of his head, perusing an elegant stanza celebrating the soft, ripe peaches of Caiyi Town.

“Can the content of a poem truly be ‘raunchy’, if the sentiment is expressed in eloquent terms?” mused a third voice.

The intrusion was so unexpected that Wei Wuxian nearly dropped the book. He recovered it and gripped the precious volume of p*rnographic odes protectively to his chest, glaring up at Lan Xichen’s benign, smiling face. It looked all the more cheerful next to his brother’s cold expression. Of all the people to find them here—though Wei Wuxian supposed that Zewujun pretty much owned the place. The same was true of Lan Wangji, who additionally practically lived in this library, and seemed to particularly delight in following Wei Wuxian around it (and the Cloud Recesses generally) to tell him off for crimes against the Sect’s bylaws.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian tried, ostentatiously flicking his thumb through the pages, “aren’t you embarrassed to have this sort of material in your hallowed halls?” (The unexpectedly spicy tomes were simply shelved next to prim treatises on agricultural cultivation, magical and non.)

Lan Wangji raised an eyebrow. “No.”

He nodded at the volume Wei Wuxian was gesturing with.

“Those odes were composed by my great aunt, Sect Leader Lan Yi. They are much admired for their complex interlocking metrical schemes. The better part of them are dedicated to your own Grandmaster.” He held Wei Wuxian’s gaze. “Scholars generally assume she is also their subject.”

Wei Wuxian froze. A bright flush crept over him, and his mocking grin settled into a weird rictus.

Zewujun politely pretended not to notice Wei Wuxian’s discomfiture, and nodded along. “According to the accepted interpretation, her work’s many references to the female form are metaphors for managing the yin energy of the body.”

Wei Wuxian made a dubious face. What, even the one he’d seen first? ‘A Comparison Of the Pleasures of Association With Daoist Nuns and Buddhist Sisters’?

For his part, Lan Wangji tsked.

“Many ‘scholars’,” Lan Wangji added, “have indeed been sadly limited in their thinking. And unable to read.”

“Wangji,” Lan Xichen chided. “Metaphor and frankly indisputable literalism can coexist! Why not both, eh?”

It began to dawn on Wei Wuxian that the Lans might well have seen things other people wouldn’t believe. Perhaps Lan Wagngji had only reacted so strongly to Wei Wuxian’s taunting offer of p*rnography because he’d recognized a relative?

Before mercifully leaving, Zewujun kindly reminded the guest disciples of an upcoming clan musical recital they were welcome to attend. Wei Wuxian did, and barely survived an elderly Lan physician’s strumming a guqin while intoning “I want to f*ck you like an animal; I want to feel you from the inside”. The assembly’s polite, respectful clapping and comments on the pleasing tonal variations after the performance were very nearly the precipitous end of him.

The more Wei Wuxian studied the library’s erotic poetry (later) (alone), the more convinced he became that Lans would balk at saying anything crude, but would also, without blinking, write a fifty stanza epic on something called ‘docking’, which Wei Wuxian had hitherto lived in entire ignorance of. Yes, the content was conveyed entirely in euphemisms. But once you worked those out, by every god, it was graphic. These offerings were occasionally accompanied by visual art: elaborate coy woodblocks that, once properly understood, were absolutely filthy. They made Wei Wuxian’s best (well, Nie Huaisang’s best, technically) look like stick figures with the words ‘big f*ck?’ written in the corner. No wonder Lan Wangji had been so stunned and insulted by the outright adolescent texts placed before him!

Wei Wuxian reflected that actually, Lan Qiren seemed quite an atypical Lan. The air of utter disdain for all such matters he assiduously projected evidently rendered him rather unusual, considering his upbringing. When Wei Wuxian pointed this out as he and the Jades walked to Caiyi to deal with a waterborne abyss, Zewujun coughed delicately.

“Uncle is still—preoccupied by an early disappointment, in that regard.”

“He keeps a favourite ink drawing of your mother.” Lan Wangji put in, utterly spoiling his brother’s attempt at diplomacy and making Wei Wuxian choke on the wine he was slugging from his flask.

Zewujun winced. “Best not to say anything.”

Wei Wuxian found he thoroughly agreed.

After his resurrection, Wei Wuxian knew he should not have been surprised to find that his new husband had made his own contributions to the library during Wei Wuxian’s absence: works of intense, poignant and graphically pointed longing. The Lans evidently prized this insanely thirsty collection as a rising classic and treasure of the clan: there was a whole supplementary volume of criticism regarding Lan Wangji’s use of metaphor. Lan Jingyi had copied out one of the absolute worst ones in large-scale calligraphy, to decorate his room!

Wei Wuxian had thought to get his own back by making notes on Lan Wangji’s drafts, when he found them on the Jingshi: actual commentary, of course, but after his own particular style. ‘Much like my ass, you split this infinitive.’ Lan Wangji saw what he was doing and read him for filth, which was to say he read him, out loud, a portion of his own cultivational memoirs, destined for eventual inclusion in the sect’s biographical records.

“You record our—our marital relations?!” Wei Wuxian said in a muffled shriek, red-faced.

Lan Wangji sighed. “My love, I record all our great achievements so that later cultivators may benefit from our knowledge and honour our great exploits. Everyone should know my husband’s excellent reputation for innovation and skill—especially in fields he particularly excels in.” Dual cultivation was still cultivation, after all.

Some two thousand years later, the museum exhibition ‘Treasures of the Gusu Lan Settlement’ indeed featured both ample cerulean-ware and poetry that the curators, in a bid to seem ‘down with the kids’, referred to as ‘the ancient Chinese version of WAP’, by Hanguangjun. (Exhibition catalogue available upon request.)

Chapter 59: 'Oh Those Dramatic Lans!'

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‘Oh Those Dramatic Lans!’ is a popular series of ‘historical romances’ (aka thinly veiled Wangxian RPFics) published by Ouyang Zizhen. They sell well; Nie Huaisang has a standing subscription. Zizhen is always careful to begin with disclaimers. His work is about Lans long ago, not anyone living today who you might be aware of via other channels, and absolutely not anyone who may or may not be a paternal figure to his friend! So anyway, Bae Buxian and Lan Bangji—

Lan Jingyi’s ‘man on the street’ eyewitness accounts have proved invaluable inspiration throughout the composition process. The juniors' samizdat turns them a tidy profit. All goes well until Lan Qiren finds a copy.

Lan Qiren is not a stupid man. He has not survived this long and outlasted this much drama just to qi deviate now. Oh no. Rather than insisting the operation shut down, he contributes some truly astounding erotica to the ‘Oh Those Dramatic Lans!’ Brand. This is absolutely freaky sh*t the juniors were fully unprepared for. They were at poorly-written ‘no lube no prep’ dub con scenes stuffed (like poor Wei gongzi) with flowery euphemisms; Lan Qiren is serving a whole song-cycle on sounding rods. If this ends up putting the juniors off entirely, forcing them to shut themselves down while cowering in abject terror while Lan Qiren sneers that they are cowards who lack a true appreciation for the arts, who is to say that this was not his greater plan all along?

Chapter 60: The Yiling Laozu p*rn Market Boom

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Perhaps the trouble started when Ouyang Zizhen, unfailingly devoted correspondent, wrote up a flowery (but thorough!) account of both the events that had transpired at Yi City and the second burial mounds raid for his female cousins. They shared his interest in adventure and romance, and one of them was an accomplished young painter, highly susceptible to inspiration. Thanks to a woodblock artist with an eye for a profit and a friend with a printing press, her graphic rendition of these happenings spread widely.

There was, of course, already a significant demand for stories about and depictions of the Yiling Patriarch. Though the Patriarch, monster-under-the-bed at large, and Wei Wuxian, heroic lover, had seemingly little in common, this newest phase of Wei Ying’s fame relied on the cultural space the former depiction had already carved out. His swift elevation in popular esteem as a romantic character was thus not so much the product of a meteoric rise in fame as of a paradigm shift in the nature of his popularity.

Whatever the trajectory of all this, the result was that during the year Wei Wuxian wandered the Middle Kingdom after parting from Lan Wangji, the market for romance and p*rnography featuring both men outright exploded. Nie Huaisang quietly collected notably early or well-made examples. This only made sense, given that such works were almost bound to appreciate in value among connoisseurs. Initially, the artisans of Yunmeng and Gusu were sufficiently partisan that the man each province considered their local boy was depicted as by far the prettier of the two. Yet within a season, vigorous trade ensured that cross-regional depictions became somewhat standardised. This was, in some senses, simply a wise business decision: it hardly hurt for both protagonists to be unutterably pretty. It helped that the source material (reality) had been so thoughtfully amenable to the market’s needs: nature had truly gone harder than she’d need to, here. In an age when both men enjoyed high popularity, people who’d actually seen either of them were more willing to lend their efforts to the cause of art. When the Yiling Patriarch had simply been a threatening figure whose depiction was supposed to ward off thieves and menace lesser demons, no one had reminded talisman artists he’d once been considered handsome, because no one had bought these things for his jaw-line.

At first, Wei Wuxian had responded to the vagaries of reputation with a degree of amusem*nt, some philosophy and a little detached contempt. After all, infamy had seen him dead, once: the fact that people now used the idea of him to other wholly inaccurate ends was rather in keeping. He responded with a good deal more embarrassment when the illustrations he flicked through in booksellers’ shops began to feature not just more accurate depictions (excepting the strange, persistent, monstrous hugeness of Lan Wangji’s hands across several titles—what was that?), but even clothing he actually owned. At one point, the very outfit he was wearing even as he read. Now, granted: at present he owned all of three outfits. This wasn’t as strange a coincidence as it might have been. But still!

Wei Wuxian felt an ethical duty to suck it up and inform Lan Wangji of All This. He thus wrote to his zhiji with apologies for his own unwitting role in this strange (d)evolution of his friend’s previously-spotless reputation (though this seemed to be not so much ‘defamation’ as very weird, orthogonal celebration). Wei Wuxian said he’d thought it best to inform the Chief Cultivator, in case he remained unaware of what was being said of them in the field. Wei Wuxian knew that Lan Wangji was busy and apologised for intruding on his day with such trivialities, but thought that though perhaps people wouldn’t mention such things to Lan Wangji’s face, this change in Lan Wangji’s reputation might well have unforeseen impacts on the chief cultivator’s guanxi.

Upon its receipt, Lan Wangji perused this letter with an unamused expression and considered the response he would not send.

“‘Dearest Wei Ying, thank you for this month's dispatch of sad, lonely masturbation material’, is what I would say, if you had any fixed address—”

Lan Jingyi read every story starring his beloved Hanguangjun and his almost-equally-esteemed Senior Wei he could get his hands on (though Lan Sizhui asked him to please, please at least not leave the stuff lying about on tables, for the sake of his own sanity). A visiting Jin Ling sneered at Lan Jingyi’s significant collection.

“I’m sick and tired of people being crass about Uncle Wei and Hanguangjun’s noble warriors’ bond!” Jin Ling huffed. “Never including their finest moments, which surely—”

“Are you trying,” Lan Jingyi interrupted him, “to claim that this is not a sex thing?”

Jin Ling reeled back as though slapped. “What the hell? Of course it’s a sex thing? Duh? But if you downplay their zhiji-hood,” he shook his head seriously, “just—why bother continuing to live? Look at a rat.”

Lan Sizhui was impressed by this very apposite (if very mean) reference to the Shi Jing. Lan Jingyi was impressed by Jin Ling’s hitherto unanticipated taste in romantic literature: it turned out they shared many favourite works, though Jin Ling primly assured them he skimmed the sex scenes, “because that’s my uncle. I don’t have so many left that I can afford to be careless with them!”

Recalled to propriety by this reminder of the filial duty not to look at one’s elders’ junk, Lan Jingyi winced.

“Sizhui, I’m sorry I made you have to face the horrible possibility of your sort-of-parents banging. I get it, it's weird.”

Sizhui made a complicated facial expression. “Well, it—is a bit weird, yes. But mostly the whole thing bothers me because Xian ge writes me weekly, but no one knows where he is, or when he’ll be back, or even if he ever plans on coming home. Father is just miserable about it. And here's all this material,” Sizhui waved his hand, “about how they’re happily together. And I want that, and I know wanting that is why father reads his weekly letter looking—” Sizhui exhaled. “I can’t even put words to how he looks. Xian ge was dead for most of my life, and now that he’s not, the closest I’ve come to actually seeing him in months is on some book cover where his eyes take up fully a third of his face and he's mooning over father.”

Sizhui flopped back on Lan Jingyi’s bed. His friends could offer only awkward silent commiseration. (This was, coincidentally, also the only form of silence either boy was capable of while fully conscious.)

“And you’re right about the zhiji thing,” Lan Sizhui said after a moment. “Clearly the lynchpin of their relationship is their extensive shared history and their ongoing quest for moral alignment in an uncertain world. What the hell is with this Dark Yiling Patriarch trend? Because I was there, and the only ho-ing that went on was related to subsistence agriculture. People are very willing to sexually glamourise the refugee crisis they didn’t help alleviate, I see.”

“Sizhui!” Jingyi said in delighted shock.

Sizhui shrugged. “I said what I said.”

Chapter 61: Wei Wuxian's Secret (Wangxian)

Chapter Text

Wei Wuxian was surprised that anyone wanted to buy their radishes at all. The vegetables were, like their farmers, somewhat haggard and scary-looking at present. After that shocker, the fact that their prospective customer had come to the very edge of the Burial Mounds and was waiting to catch them going to market was almost unremarkable. The prospective customer was humbly dressed, he seemed determined, and he wanted the entire wheelbarrow (or rather, the contents thereof; he had promised to subsequently return the wheelbarrow). Clearly he needed the lot, and the Burial Mounds’ finest were ‘the lot’ he could afford.

“Why,” asked Wei Wuxian (who no one has ever called incurious) “do you want them?”

“Why do you care?” the blushing man countered—which was fair enough, if a bit Jiang Cheng-esque. Wei Wuxian figured this man, too, must have a brother he sometimes found highly irritating.

Wei Wuxian arched an eyebrow at the radish-fancier and waited; he called this one ‘the Lan Wangji special’. Predictably, after only a few seconds, the man began to look a bit chagrined. “They’re aphrodisiacs, aren’t they?” he muttered. “I’m only just married. I want her to be happy.”

Wei Wuxian felt himself softening. The man before them was roughly he and Wen Ning’s their own age, if not a little younger.

“And she’s not, I take it?”

The man gave the feared Yiling Patriarch a vicious glare, and Wei Wuxian held up his hands. “All right, all right. I just feel like there might be a better solution to issues of this sensitive nature than stuffing your no-doubt-lovely bride full of radishes.” Like, surely a carrot, or something? Wei Wuxian didn’t really know much about this aspect of female experience.

“A jie,” Wen Ning reminded him quietly.

“Qing jie!” Wei Wuxian said, clapping the ever-reliable Wen Ning on the back. “She’ll know what to do. She usually does. Come along, young master. You’re in luck! We’ve got the most competent doctor in the Middle Kingdom in our company, and as for discreet—who’d talk to us?”

Wen Ning took the radishes to town on his own, while Wei Wuxian turned around and walked back to Demon Subduing Palace. In his experience, just expecting people to follow you often worked better than trying to convince them to. Wen Qing, who they found at work in the scanty garden, listened to the man’s quiet description of his problems while tilling. She offered him a prescription, and then took his money and his ardent thanks for it. She was calm and professional, and their visitor praised her effusively while Wei Wuxian walked him back to the gate. (It probably didn’t hurt that she was beautiful, Wei Wuxian supposed. This fellow was newly married, not newly blind.)

“I,” Wei Wuxian announced to Wen Qing upon his return, “have had a vision, Qing jie.”

She greeted this announcement with a deep sigh reminiscent of the sound an animal made directly before skulking away to die. “Not again.”

“Yes, again!” Wei Wuxian nodded, taking her shoulders in his. She was sitting down, ripping the bitter but edible leaves off vegetables they’d lay in for winter. “You have unparalleled medical expertise.”

“I’m aware,” Wen Qing said flatly.

“Whereas I—please stop rolling your eyes, it’s really deflating, Qing jie! As I was saying, I have some revolutionary ideas regarding talisman development, if I do say so myself.”

“And you do,” she gave him. “Very frequently.”

“Hurtful, Qing jie. Now, we mutually have the care of a few score people who need to eat this winter. Do you suppose many that husbands suffer from impotence, like that young man you have eating ginseng with every meal and meditating so he’s less nervous? What about unwanted conception? Or wanted, but frustratingly difficult conception?”

Wen Qing put down her greens. “You’re serious, aren’t you? There are already doctors—”

“Whole embarrassing, expensive doctors’ visits,” Wei Wuxian agreed, “just for a little, every day problem like that, when the whole thing could be circumnavigated. Who needs a Great Sect to visit, when you’ve a raised threshold to keep out hopping ghosts and some painted wards against low-level demons? Only people with more severe or persistent problems would need take up a physician's time.”

“A cultivator can tell whether a girl’s pregnant with a simple qi circulation, weeks before an herbalist could do the same by feeding you an herb and seeing what colour your urine turns,” Wen Qing admitted. “Could you make a talisman that could circulate qi and then show the result?”

Wei Wuxian shrugged. “Tell me what the circulation establishes, and we’ll see.”

Wen Qing was dubious right up until their stacks of lubrication and sexual disease prevention talismans sold out, two solid weeks in a row.

“…what other visions did you have?” she asked Wei Wuxian.

When Jiang Wanyin visited, Wei Wuxian kept rather quiet about their improved state of affairs. A Yuan was wearing a smart set of new robes, which Jiang Wanyin thankfully didn’t think to question. Wei Wuxian had cracked Yiling’s brothel market (spending whole afternoons assiduously charming various Madams, providing a few free samples and listening to customer feedback and requests), and there had been little presents all ‘round to celebrate. By the time Lan Wangji visited, the place wasn’t plated in gold or anything, but it certainly looked far sharper than could have been expected. Lan Wangji, who’d seen the Wen remnants at their lowest, looked ‘round with shock. He felt rather foolish for having brought qianqun pouches full of staple goods that he’d carefully smuggled out of Lan’s larders. (The offer of them seemed to touch Wen Qing nonetheless. Lan Wangji supposed that in showing understandably-cagey people that they were not friendless in the world, the goods had still served a purpose.)

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji asked, somewhat trepidatious, “what did you do?”

“Nothing, personally,” Wei Wuxian said with a grin. “But I’ve certainly enabled others! You know, served the common people. Gone where the action is, as it were. All very your sort of thing.”

Lan Wangji now gave him the Lan Wangji Special. It was even more effective direct from the source. Wei Wuxian pouted about how Lan Wangji wasn’t any fun, and then gave up the game.

“Did you know—and I ask this rhetorically, because almost no one knew, and if anyone did, it would not have been you—that there’s just a vast market for talismans that make dild*s vibrate, or self-thrust? Empathy-fuelled strap-ons? A ‘lube from nowhere' spell with a ‘clean me up after’ kicker? Wen Qing's patented erectile-dysfunction cure?”

Lan Wangji took all this in, then offered a slow nod of acceptance. Of course this was what Wei Wuxian had gotten up to after running away from society with a handful of wrongly-persecuted war refugees: revolutionising the sex trade. Naturally.

“It's tough to make these when you've never had sex yourself,” Wei Wuxian confided to his zhiji. “After that Incident with the f*cking machine that would not stop, we now do rigorous testing—” Wei Wuxian continued blithely on, despite Lan Wangji’s having involuntarily made a squawk like a spanked goose. “But still—maybe I should actually have some sex to really, I don’t know, grasp the market? Not with Qing jie, though. Too weird.” Wei Wuxian’s expression was one of deep contemplation.

Lan Wangji grabbed his arm and proceeded to vigorously volunteer, fighting off Wei Wuxian's protestations that this was too much assistance to expect of Hanguangjun! In the morning, Lan Wangji clarified Lan’s stance on monogamy and sex before marriage: the former was necessary and the latter was strictly forbidden, which made it very convenient that they had, technically, already gotten married some years ago.

Chapter 62: hom*ophrosyne (Wangxian)

Chapter Text

For thirteen years, Lan Wangji has been weaving his husband’s burial shroud. The tapestry-work is indeed intricate. Whenever you look at the piece, you are certain to find some fresh element: a picked-out blood red bird, a leaping rabbit, a figure in the background—a child at play. Magic sings in each stitch of it: a spell for every thread. Even for an artist as skilled as Lan Wangji, the project is monumental. He is always particular about his craft, and seems unbothered by the time the shroud has consumed: the whole years it has eaten up, like a silkworm consuming a tree’s worth of mulberry leaves. Whenever anyone insinuates that Lan Wangji might be overtaxing himself, the Second Jade gives them a look that could freeze a bonfire in an instant.

His brother knows that at night, Lan Wangji carefully unpicks almost everything he wove during the day—so carefully, that his hands might not shake with rage as he works. Or rather, unworks. His uncle knows, and says nothing. In the past he was freer with his tongue on such subjects, and only indifferent good came of it. Some of the suitors prowling around Lan Wangji—this living remnant of the infamous Yiling Patriarch, who is himself a prince among cultivators—must have guessed. Further, they must know that they are why Lan Wangji wastes his hours thus. For Hanguangjun cannot marry again until the shroud is complete, and thus the Yiling Patriarch’s great relics of power can fall into no other man’s hands.

Their son realised long ago. Still a child, with a child’s burning sense of righteousness and a fresh grief, he burst into his father’s rooms early one morning. His mouth opened to protest the flagrant disrespect of the host that circled the Cloud Recesses, but shut itself up silent when he found his father hard at work—unmaking a beautiful thing, for the memory of love. Sizhui set his jaw against voicing any complaint, and thus adding to his father’s troubles. He learned thereafter to smile in adversity, for those his smiling might give some scant ease.

With a word of permission, Lan Jingyi would help Sizhui try to slay the lot of them. He says so often enough, and Lan Jingyi speaks boldly and freely, but never idly. It is a word Lan Sizhui fears to give: for what will become of them, if all these grinning, freeloading enemies decide to stop grinning at once? Lan has already weathered one war in living memory, and was wounded deep. No Lan cultivator is ready to undertake demonic cultivation: Lan Sizhui’s other father’s bow is useless in his hands, too long and heavy yet for him to draw.

One morning, while the civil invaders are still sleeping off the previous night’s excess of drink, taken at their sober hosts’ expense, Lan Sizhui walks out into the courtyard to find a strange man. He is holding and soothing the oldest of his father’s rabbits: the sweet black buck that his father babied through a long illness in the winter, despite knowing that soon there would come a day when no such care would be enough to stave off its death. That day has evidently come. The little thing shakes in the stranger’s palm as the man whispers ‘shh, shhhh’, stoking its spine with a heavy hand. Sizhui rushes over when he realises what he’s looking at, but there is no time, and nothing he can do. The rabbit stills, and then is gone.

“Let me,” says Sizhui. He takes the still, small thing and sets it down in his basket of fresh linen with gentleness.

“Shall we bury it?” the stranger asks. It is a fair question, but Lan Sizhui shakes his head.

“Father,” he begins. Swallows. Stops. Begins once more. “It was special to him. He’ll want to be here, to see the thing done well.” This, Sizhui does not tell a man he does not know, will hurt him.

The man nods, and Sizhui notices that his eyes are kind.

“Are you here to court my father?” Sizhui asks, not bothering to smooth his voice’s sharp, displeased edge. To join the ranks, Sizhui should say. If this man is only here for that—to make an instrument and a laughing-stock of Hanguangjun, who has done great deeds and has an upright spirit, and who ought to be venerated for both, then his gentleness is only a pose and a lie.

“Are you A Yuan?” the man asks in turn rather than answer him, with a curious expression. His soft eyes are amused, now.

“Mm,” Sizhui says, though most suitors don’t bother to know his given name. This one is at least thorough, if depressingly repetitious in his ultimate aims.

“Then I’m afraid it’s a bit late for that,” the man says. He looks A Yuan over, finding the young man’s sword at his side and his aspect fresh and ready. “I take it you’ve been preyed upon by a host of parasites who covet your father’s beauty and his deceased husband’s magic, then?”

Sizhui says nothing, but the stranger reads assent in his careful non-expression all the same, and nods as though he expected as much.

“And have you any near friends you can call to your aid, A Yuan?” the stranger asks, conversationally.

Lan Sizhui frowns at him. Is the man testing whether he is vulnerable? He doesn’t seem to be. Lan Sizhui has not led the sort of life that has left him wholly without brothers-in-arms in a crisis. “There’s my kinsman, Jingyi, and our comrade Zizhen. Or if there’s time for him to come, my cousin—”

“Jin Ling,” the man nods. “Good, good. Send your best servants to them all, if you’d be so good. And keep the rest of them out of my way, so they’re safe. I’ve have a very frustrating decade. Daddy’s about to be quite busy.”

Lan Sizhui is still reeling when the man strides forward, shoving the hall door open with great black billows of resentful energy.

“Rise and shine!” the man calls mockingly, bringing a legendary flute to his lips and wielding it against enemies who would exile him for his dangerous magic while coveting the very power they claimed to shun (not to mention his husband). Not three minutes pass before Hanguangjun appears, sword in hand, to join the fray. He takes his place at his husband’s back without commentary—what he has to say to Wei Wuxian is not for any audience.

Lan Sizhui knows that his father will still mourn his rabbit, when Sizhui tells him of the loss. But now he rather thinks that on the whole, Lan Wangji will consider this rather a good day.

Chapter 63: Too Much of A Good Thing (Wangxian)

Chapter Text

Initially, it was an accident. A talisman array gone sideways brought Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian into contact with a younger version of the later, in his fully-realised ‘Yiling Laozu’ period. Wei Wuxian made a very specious argument about how, because they’d technically celebrated multiple marriage ceremonies, Lan Wangji deserved multiple husbands (provided they all answered to ‘Wei Ying’): purest Deng Xi bullsh*t.

In many respects, Lan Wangji was a strong man. The opportunity to soothe his abandonment issues with a surfeit of husband was, however, devastatingly appealing to him. Lan Wangji therefore forewent any criticism of his husband’s unusually feeble rhetoric. There were, after all, more pleasant ways for the three of them to spend an afternoon together.

Wei Wuxian could hardly watch Lan Wangji enjoy something that much without finding opportunities to reproduce the effect, with variations. They thus found themselves embroiled in such happy coincidences rather more frequently. Lan Wangji would never be unfaithful to Wei Wuxian: not only was he too upright to contemplate such a violation of his (multiple) marital vows, he was wholly disinterested in doing so. Yet at the same time (as their rather surprising and revealing trip to a world where he and his husband were both women had definitively confirmed for him), there was no form of Wei Wuxian he wasn’t drawn to.

During the week Lan Wangji spent looking after a time-travelling head disciple Wei Wuxian in addition to his husband, a Lan elder tried to express sympathy for his ill luck. Surely one Wei Wuxian was too much to handle. Wasn’t this week outright killing him?

Lan Wangji didn’t voice an opinion on the subject, coolly turning their discussion to other matters. In fact, Lan Wangji spent this period almost intoxicated with happiness. Yes, the constant sex chafed, but Wei Wuxian had been right: this was the best birthday present ever. The Wei Wuxians tended to synergistically accomplish a great deal together as well, when they had occasion to collaborate like this. This did tend to involve more explosions, but the results were undeniable.

It was Lan Xichen who raised a question that had fleetingly occurred to Lan Wangji, but which he preferred not to think about.

“These Wei Wuxians seem to all come from universes with counterpart Lan Wangjis. Aren’t you afraid they’ll take revenge for your week-long interdimensional husband-nappings?”

Xiongzhang knew Lan Wangji well, after all—stubborn possessive streak and all. Lan Xichen remembered a five-year-old Lan Wangji’s commitment to sulking for days over being told to share his favourite book with a little school fellow. For all the years between then and now, Lan Xichen guessed that Lan Wangji would not take to his husband’s sudden absence with markedly better grace.

“We return them,” Lan Wangji said, defensively. “Wei Ying says that no one will be able to pass through the barrier he’s set up without his permission,” he added after a moment.

Xichen only sighed. For his own part, this was not a line of conversation he particularly wished to pursue. The consequences seemed, to him, inevitable. Once other Wei Wuxians saw the spellwork enabling all this, they would hardly be able to refrain from sharing the secret with their own pouting husbands and retro-engineering said Lan Wangjis their own ‘birthday presents’ and the like. But Wangji was evidently unwilling to be dissuaded, or to be parted from his toys by such trivialities as ‘logic’, or ‘basic consequences’, or ‘the understanding of sharing possessed by even a five year old, provided they are not you at that age’. So on Wangji’s own head be it.

Accordingly, one week Wei Wuxian winked out of existence. He went with a big poof that no one present was sufficiently fluent in contemporary British English to find appropriately amusing. He left behind him only an under-appreciated joke and a bitchy note from another Lan Wangji, assuring Lan Wangji Prime (self-appointed) that this absence was both temporary and his just deserts.

Lan Wangji Prime (self-appointed) read the collection notice with a sour expression and a sense of internal conflict. Yes, all right, so one of him was having fun, but at what cost?

Lan Wangji tried to see the week as an opportunity for focused attention to his duties: to really get on with that overdue paperwork, and to catch up on his reading schedule without such distractions as co*ckwarming getting in the way of careful annotation. He learned some exciting magical music, and had a few dinners with his brother (only a few, because Lan Xichen radiated an absolutely unbearable ‘I told you so’ energy; Lan Wangji couldn’t even vengefully observe that his brother’s most recent relationship decisions had ended in multiple homicides, because that would have been disproportionately mean). When Wei Wuxian returned, Lan Wangji was chastened. He vowed to henceforth only indulge in, say, an annual husbandry spree.

Chapter 64: Parent Trap

Chapter Text

Everyone knows that Wen Ruohan had twin grandsons, and that after his sons fell, they were his only living heirs. Everyone presumes that the boys died in the war. In fact Wei Wuxian has spent the past years in the Burial Mounds with a toddler on each hip, too busy even to attend his own nephew's Hundred Day celebration.

Lan Wangji attempts to convince Wei Wuxian to return to Gusu with him, shamelessly arguing that it would be better for the children. This is true, but it is not Lan Wangji’s primary reason for making such an emphatic request so frequently. Wei Wuxian agrees that it would, absolutely, be better for the boys. However even if Wei Wuxian himself weren’t persona non grata, if strong, twin cultivators just the right age were to show up in Gusu, exactly who Lan is harbouring would eventually occur to someone. Wei Wuxian won’t put their safety at risk like that.

One child, though—Wei Wuxian swallows, clearly hating what he’s about to say. One boy would raise no such questions. Either of them—Lan Wangji ought to pick. Wei Wuxian finds he can’t—that he can hardly even bear to look at the twins while he suggests such a thing. The Dafan Wen knew only that one of the boy’s milk name had been ‘Yuan’ (which boy was unclear). The nurse who’d brought them to the village had been been injured escaping from the slaughter of a baggage train, had made for the only sympathetic place she could think of, and had died shortly after arriving there. The Dafan Wen thus called the boys Dayuan and Xiaoyuan, making what they could of scant materials in this as in the rest of their lives.

“You’ve enough orphaned disciples running around the Cloud Recesses, I expect.” Wei Wuxian said, forcing his voice to distant coolness. “What’s another? He’ll blend right in.”

Lan Wangji swallows. How can Wei Wuxian think that Lan Wangji will take this child, who Wei Wuxian has raised practically as his own through a period of leanness Lan Wangji can only imagine, and just drop him in the communal creche like an unwanted thing, considering it a dispassionate act of charity? A favour done, at best.

“Tell Gusu Lan and the rest of them what you like,” Wei Wuxian says shortly. “Say the boys were never here—say I ground their bones to make my bread. Say anything but that we’re surviving. And to that end, it’d be best if you didn’t come back. It draws attention we can ill afford. Let the world forget about us.”

“If that is what you want, Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says, feeling hollowed out. For the whole of this last year, Wei Wuxian has pushed Lan Wangji away and reeled him back, seeming unable to ask him to leave and mean it. Lan Wangji had expected, or hoped, to at least have this too-widely-spaced pearl-string of days together, while he struggled to make a hostile cultivation world amenable to Wei Wuxian’s return. He found he had forgotten Wei Wuxian’s capacity for swift decision and for brutal compliance with whatever course he’d chosen, whatever its costs. Lan Wangji had believed himself exempt, thinking his zhiji would surely never sever their connection outright. He was, evidently, mistaken.

Wei Wuxian offers him an ugly laugh. “Lan Wangji. What I want hasn’t mattered for years.”

He thanks Lan Wangji for his charity with a bow, and it lands like a slap.

Lan Wangji hopes, at least, that Wei Wuxian will respond to his diligent reports as to Xiaoyuan’s welfare. That he will spare a moment, or an inch of paper, to assure Lan Wangji of his own continued existence. But Wei Wuxian does not.

Lan Wangji seethes about this. Resentment wells up in him and then eases away, revealing the heart-aching loneliness underneath. Wei Wuxian refused to let callow men kill blameless infants and grandmothers: this is what that choice cost. It isn’t Wei Wuxian’s fault. The blame lies with the sort of men who committed or simply countenanced that violence. Lan Wangji’s own high birth and considerable earned status can only serve to make Wei Wuxian’s difficult situation more perilous.

The better part of a decade later, two rogue cultivators associated with Baoshan Sanren’s disciple Xiao Xingchen, following their martial aunt Cangse Sanren’s example, arrive for the Gusu Lan lectures. Lan Wangji is surprised to realise that he knows one of them. Not the girl, Xiao Qing, with her strikingly unusual eyes, but the boy with her. It seems that at some point, Wei Wuxian’s martial uncle paid him a visit. Lan Wangji supposes that Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan might well even be using Yiling as a base. Wei Wuxian must have allowed his ward to travel the wider world in his sect-uncle’s company. And now, with or without Wei Wuxian’s knowledge and permission, the boy ‘Xiao’ Dayuan (no courtesy name, as yet) has come to see what all the fuss is about. If he is still the boy Lan Wangji remembers, Dayuan would hardly have been willing to let his martial sister have all the fun without him.

Perhaps, if Wei Wuxian had been consulted, he’d thought that Lan Sizhui would not necessarily still strongly recall his brother. That was often the case, even with twins who closely resembled one another in infancy. Perhaps Wei Wuxian had simply found himself unable to deny Wen Dayuan a chance to meet his own brother again, whether or not Dayuan is aware of their connection.

At first, Wen Dayuan’s unorthodox methods challenge and even discomfit faultlessly polite Lan Sizhui, who finds their similarity unnerving (tugging, as it does, on his clouded, private memories of his own youth, before Father took him in and raised him as his own). And he’s right to suspect Xiao Dayuan is hiding something from him. Wen Dayuan might not know he has a brother, but he certainly knows and guards the secret of his hidden Clan, led by Wen Qing and Wei Wuxian.

The true trouble begins when, due to one of Lan Jingyi’s pranks going terribly wrong in a way that makes it look as though the Yuans were at fault, Lan Qiren assigns the boys shared accommodations so they can work out their differences. It is his worst call regarding ‘boys who ought to spend more time together and speak at length’ since the Wangxian Library Detention Fiasco.

Chapter 65: Lan Marital Lecture Demonstration 20c (Zewujun Era)

Chapter Text

The Lans are great believers in and advocates of accurate and ample sex education. Before any Lan is granted permission to marry (barring exceptional emergency circ*mstances), they undergo mandatory premarital counselling. This is overseen by an ancient golden orchid lady, who has been married since roughly the dawn of time. (If the Lans were aware of such a person, they would agree that her vibe is very Dr. Ruth.) This process takes months. There are exams.

Long before that, however, every lecture-generation of Lan youths is obliged to watch a formal, respectful, and extensive display of the act of love between married couples. These exemplary pairings are comprised of various genders, and are specifically chosen so that they include no immediate family of any youths obliged to attend the lecture hall that year. It’s all very decorous.

Or at least, it’s all very decorous until someone observes that Lan Sizhui has already sat his educational lectures, and that all but one of the Cloud Recesses’ various male-male couples are:

1. currently incapacitated (Lan Rui’s hip injury has acted up again, whereas the Lees are in counselling for marital conflicts, so it would be enormously indelicate to ask them to demonstrate sexual felicity, at present),

2. unavailable (secluded meditation, cultivational wandering, research commitments and consanguinity conflicts, respectively) or just

3. off-rotation this year (the Lus have done three demonstrations out of the last five, and believe they’ve given enough to the cause, thank you very much!).

And so, the ancient lesbian (who the entire clan has by now forgotten the personal name of, and only refers to as ‘grandmother’) squares her jaw and corners Lan Wangji, who she still thinks of as a cracking-voiced little boy. She informs him there is an empty space in the roster with he and his new husband’s names on it. Education, she reminds this overgrown-adolescent, is so important. Or does Hanguangjun think himself above education?

Lan Wangji—who is nearly forty, actually—clears his throat and attempts a delicate evasion.

“I feel it might undermine the authority of my position—to take part in—”

“Young man,” grandmother interrupts him. “I demonstrated the sacred marital arts for a decade, in my day. Your father and uncle were in my classes. Do you feel the authority of my positioned has been weakened?”

Lan Wangji swallows. “No, grandmother.”

She nods. “Good, good. That’s enough of that. Weakened! Nonsense.” She snorts. “Our records state that cultivation partners Lan Yi and Baoshan Sanren undertook the duty in their own time, so I don’t know why either of you should think yourselves above your ancestors! You and your husband will demonstrate on Thursday afternoon.”

She sails away. Lan Wangji is left wondering how he is supposed to go about explaining the coming storm to Wei Wuxian. (Let alone all the respectful Lan erotic poetry about how Lan Yi and Baoshan Sanren’s demonstration made many an impressionable disciple long for the perfume of a golden orchid.)

As Lan Wangji feared, explaining this to Wei Wuxian is not a problem because of his husband’s modest horror, but because of Wei Wuxian’s twinned shamelessness and weird dedication to pedagogy in the most unlikely scenarios.

“If the other clans only knew!” Wei Wuxian shakes his head. “Nie Huaisang would never rest. I can’t believe I never managed to find out about this while I was here—”

“It is not p*rnographic,” Lan Wangji reminds him. He remembers his own stiff (no, not like that) (for the most part) adolescent attendance of the Marital Lectures, and his efforts to provide his cohort with a shining example of Lan decorum and gravitas in the face of All This. “It is a solemn educational experience.”

“Sure,” Wei Wuxian pats his arm. “Sure. But all the same, at seventeen, I would like to have seen it. Just to have—partaken in the education. But do you think you’ll be able to handle it?” Wei Wuxian asks, glancing at Lan Wangji’s midsection in a slightly insulting, evaluating sort of way.

Lan Wangji opts not to inform his husband that he is fairly sure he could achieve an errection for his sake mid-typhoon. Outside.

“I will manage,” he says, because short of one or both of them dying again. he sees no easy way of getting out of this. He has tested himself directly against Grandmother, and has found his will and spirit wanting. Taking to the road can only be a temporary means of escape. Significant family members still live here, who they will sometimes have to visit. And when they do, they will be in for it; Grandmother knows everything that goes on in Greater Gusu, and is shockingly spry.

Lan Wangji finds consolation in the fact that the Marital Lectures’ qi-barier is just as he remembers it from his own time on its opposite side: opaque and sound-proof, on the youths’ end, so that demonstrators can neither see nor hear the gaggle of spotty, doubtless excruciatingly-embarrassed eighteen year olds looking on. Lan Wangji is then horrified when his hideous exhibitionist of a husband spoils the illusion by chatting to the junior disciples as they set up.

“Now,” Wei Wuxian begins, voice light but firm—his night-hunt lecturing tone, gods help them, “what’s really challenging about a blowj*b is, of course, managing your teeth.”

Lan Wangji’s hand shoots out to grip Wei Wuxian’s arm, hard. He is certain that his own expression is one of wide-eyed mortification.

“What!” Wei Wuxian squawks. “You said it should be educational! That’s the whole point! So, I’m taking you seriously. If they're old enough to risk their lives killing demons, they're old enough to learn how to f*ck. Or does Lan ergege not believe I have valuable experience to provide? Careful, there is a right answer and a wrong, ‘sleep on the Jingshi porch’ answer to this one—”

Lan Wangji takes a deep breath and releases his husband’s arm. He receives a loving pat in recognition of his efforts to man up.

“Relax,” Wei Wuxian soothes him. “This is going to be fun, Lan Zhan.”

Lan Wangji can hardly argue with that. He has never before not enjoyed this act between them. And Lan Wangji supposes that if they’re going to—do this, they might as well go all-out. Never let it be said that either of them was lacking in talent or commitment.

In the end, they take hours. One is, after all, supposed to display many techniques: the entire afternoon is reserved for the Lecture, with only the caveat being that instructors ought not to interfere with Lan’s scheduled meal times. The Second Jade and his husband accomplish so much dual cultivation, in such elaborated configurations, that the juniors declare themselves exhausted by even watching it all. The personal spiritual weapon wielded by their Second Jade alone is awe-inspiring. Truly, this is the power of fully-realised senior cultivators of Hanguangjun and the Yiling Patriarch’s standing! And sitting. And lying down, with one leg craned over the other man’s shoulder—

Some young cultivators are scared by the couple’s indecorousness. Others, inspired. All are, one way or another, impressed.

“It was like an advertisem*nt for cut-selves,” a stunned Mei Lin (18) declares afterwards.

(Unbeknownst to the youths, the male-female and golden orchid couples scheduled to demonstrate on subsequent days, having heard about All This, make a true effort to go harder than is their wont; to truly up their game, as if to say ‘well, we’re fun too, kids! There’s nothing uninteresting about the vagin*, that’s for sure!’)

Grandmother says nothing about their demonstration beyond telling Lan Wangji and his husband that they’ve done well, and that they will thus also be demonstrating for next year’s group. Wei Wuxian nods, as though he expected as much, and tugs his silent, terrified husband, who’d (foolishly) thought himself well out of this sh*t, away home.

Lan Sizhui is not forced to Witness his father figures personally, but he wishes on every god that this could prevent his experiencing the fall-out of their actions. Truly, he considers bitterly, this is just like being alive at the height of the public perception of the Yiling Patriarch as a threat and dealing with the unjust aspersions cast upon his family as a result! (Well. Lan Yuan supposes he was alive then, he just hadn’t really understood much about anything at the time beyond ‘hungry’, ‘Xian ge tall’, ‘Ning ge easy target for snack begging’ and an ‘injury—>Qing jie’ pipeline.)

Why, though, why do Mei Lin and all the rest of them feel some pressing need to come up to him with the eyes of warriors who’ve witnessed a thousand battles? A merciful few are shocked into embarrassed silence by the sheer audacity of Xian ge’s antics, but he can truly do without his more resilient shidis and shimeis’ remarks that his fathers are just—just so impressive.

“Please, stop,” he begs Mei Lin, who flushes and shakes her head.

“No, um. I mean, they're—very good teachers. I learned so much! ...maybe too much.”

Lan Sizhui wonders whether it is possible to bypass qi deviation and land directly on a kind of qi detonation. He further wonders whether it might be possible to take his fathers with him.

Chapter 66: How to Lose A Guy in Ten Gays (Jiang Wanyin/Nie Huaisang)

Chapter Text

During the period when his brother was dead (and the rest of their family with him—though only Wei Wuxian had the stubbornness or the decency to come back), Jiang Wanyin fell into bed with the senior disciple of a minor sect. His evening with Meng Xiyan was a low-key affair. It was nice. She was nice, and competent, and Jiang Wanyin quite liked her. The morning after, he couldn’t stop grinning: a soft, young expression he’d not worn in years, that stretched his face in ways that had become unfamiliar.

They could get married—that would only be appropriate, after such a minor indiscretion as this. No one would dare criticise Jiang zongzhu for getting slightly ahead of himself, and the Jiang furen position would represent a sound advancement for Meng Xiyan. He could get to know her better, and eventually they might well fall in love. Unless a match was truly ill-starred, couples living and working together mostly did grow close. His parents’ union hadn’t always been harmonious, but even they had cared deeply for one another. At last, despite the burden of the office Jiang Wanyin had assumed, he would have a trusted companion he didn’t need to constantly display a sect leader’s commanding self-assurance for. At last he might have some friendly company, in the evenings—just someone to be with, who he might speak confidentially to.

And then every such thought was dashed when Meng Xiyan thanked Jiang Wanyin for a nice night with a clap on the shoulder, said she’d see him around, and then made no particular effort to do so.

Ah. So, he’d evidently read that wrong. Back to the whole ‘dying alone’ plan it was, then.

After Wei Wuxian’s resurrection, Jiang Wanyin caught wind of some stupid bet Nie Huaisang had made with his still-estranged brother. It involved Huaisang’s asking to court Jiang Wanyin casually, and then seeing how long it took Nie zongzhu’s irritating ass to get dumped. Of course Huaisang planned to help the matter along by behaving appallingly, if necessary, to ensure his victory: anything short of breaking off the relationship himself was fair game. Huaisang claimed he’d manage to annoy notoriously-prickly Jiang zongzhu sufficiently inside a week. Wei Wuxian, however, claimed that Jiang Wanyin’s staying power was not to be thus underestimated.

And in a way, Wei Wuxian was right. In the face of Nie Huaisang’s increasing bewildered exasperation, Jiang Wanyin was teeth-grittingly determined to keep their relationship going. Mock him, would they? Just because he’d never been in a relationship and was incredibly lonely? Well first, he would ruin their stupid bet. And then Nie Huaisang would end up married to him, and then Jiang Wanyin would finally have any adult family again! Did Nie Huaisaing think ‘bad sex chicken’ was enough to scare Jiang Wanyin? After a solid, nigh-uninterrupted decade-plus of sexually mature ‘just-my-own-fist’icuffs, there was literally no floor for Jiang Wanyin’s expectations!

Eventually Jiang Wanyin realised he might still have some adult family: namely a brother who took a very expensive, very stupid bet in a weird Wei Wuxianish attempt to get him laid, and a new husband. Nie Huaisang, Schemer of Schemes, was rather annoyed to have been softly revenged-upon by Wei gongzi, who he thought he could trust and who owed him his second-life. Like, very literally! But ultimately, Nie Huaisng supposed he was now the proud owner of an attractive, forgiving husband who was bound and stubbornly determined to love him. He was bit shouty, yes, but so was dage, and Nie Huaisang had loved dage! They would make it work.

Chapter 67: Ten Short AU Ideas: Wei Wuxian Edition II

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Every other fic is trying to tell me, ‘luckily, there was a convenient jar of oil in Wangxian’s guest room in Carp Tower/the Unclean Realm/Lotus Pier/a random inn—’

No. Stop! Poison lube is absolutely how I’d try to assassinate the very-targetable Noted Ho, Wei Wuxian. Have these men never heard of STDs being transferred via the semi-permeable anal membrane? Poison can be absorbed that way too: lube roulette is the most dangerous game. Carry your own supply!

One friend opined that “at least he’d die doing what he loved”. Phnelt, however, believes that Lan Wangji “can burn out the poison with his golden core and/or super-powered yang sperm. The poison just makes it sort of tingly, like cinnamon lube.”

There’s inherent unexploited comedy in show, novel, audio and donghua versions of the cast hanging out (and everyone being like, ‘f*cking beefy novel Lan Zhan floating about bitchily, whateverrrrrr, arms like trees, we hate him.’*) Donghua Wei Wuxian horrified by the total lack of Cornetto in alternate realities.

Any version of Lan Wangji is down to f*ck any version of Wei Wuxian: this, too, is funny.**

* Later textual analysis makes me think people seriously oversell the extent to which book Lan Wangji is a Brick House, for gong reasons. That line about Lan Wangji still looking like a scholar in the scene where Wei Wuxian jumps down from the tree—once again, what we’re dealing with here is a willowy femme, because MXTX is a vast lesbian. (I mean, I don’t know that.) (I just know that.)

** Don't ask about the chibis. You know the answer, you just don't like it.

Wei Wuxian’s post resurrection reputation was truly redeemed by his invention of a ‘no mess no prep’ talisman that changed the life of every gay man in the Middle Kingdom.

“It’s based on some stuff Wen Qing said once, but I don’t think she would want her name on this one. I’m just calling it Elimination: shout out to Lan Qiren’s insistence on observing a proper order of operations in cultivation practice, a beacon to me throughout my life—”

In a modern AU, Wei Wuxian has called Lan Wangji ‘the Big Boi to my Andre 3000’ to Lan Wangji’s face. Lan Wangji wishes he could even think about dumping Wei Wuxian, or just like, making him sleep on the couch, sometimes.

Wei Wuxian is a long-suffering kindergarten teacher, charged with keeping both Xue Yang and Mo Xuanyu alive and teaching them about sharing and how to read and sh*t. Lan Wangji studied education with Wei Wuxian at university, but went on to teach high school English at the super expensive prep school his family owns. He emphatically did not do early education, and is in terrified awe of Wei Wuxian’s ability and willingness to cast himself into the fire that is a horde of grubby five-year-olds coated in finger-paint.

Post-canon, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji essentially read as the same age. This older Wei Wuxian has strong ‘Eraserhead from BNHA’ Bored Teacher Energies, and seems to have experienced his years of death semi-consciously. His ‘twenty-two’ was full of PTSD and war crimes; it's really not that comparable with the next generation’s experience of young adulthood.

However, there could be a fic where it’s sad, rich and interesting that Lan Wangji now has life experience Wei Wuxian doesn’t. This ‘age difference’ could enable a soft reframing of Wei Wuxian’s relationships with Lan Wangji and even Jiang Cheng, who could feasibly see Wei Wuxian as more of a younger brother, now. Lan Wangji might find it nice to be something of a ‘gege’ to Wei Wuxian: to take care of him a bit and offer experience and protection, when he always felt Wei Wuxian was so many steps ahead of him.

For the juniors, perhaps one of the most uncomfortable things about Wei Wuxian’s situation is how close to their own age now Wei Wuxian was when he was cast out of society as the Yiling Patriarch. Apparently you can go from being a chief disciple to a war hero and then to a valueless public enemy, all inside a couple of years. Wei Wuxian’s fate draws attention to their own disposability in the eyes of the cultivation world, their sects, and even their own families. If they're not useful as heirs, chief disciples, etc., the institutions they’ve grown up in may turn on them.

Not everyone making decisions regarding Wei Wuxian’s fate was like Jiang Wanyin, himself an overwhelmed youth. There were a lot of full adults involved, like Jin Guangshan—many of whom are still knocking around, like sect leaders Yao and Ouyang, et al.

Wei Wuxian asks Lan Wangji whether they can we be friends. He intends it as a clear levelling up of their relationship: a recognition of mutual respect and esteem. Lan Wangji, who already considers them close, reads the request as a gentle but firm attempt to shut down his own infatuation, which Wei Wuxian has evidently become aware of. Lan Wangji assents (what else can he do?). Wei Wuxian is really pleased. He believes they’ve communicated openly and honestly, and inveigles himself more deeply into Lan Wangji’s life (which is both satisfying and actively painful for an ever-more-infatuated Lan Wangji).

Wei Wuxian undertakes a post-canon bureaucratic quest to get Lan Wangji's co*ck classed as a spiritual sword, just to annoy the people processing the paperwork. The cultivation world refused to recognise Wen Ning's fightin' chains as a personal spiritual tool he shouldn't have to remove at cultivation conferences. In revenge, a defensive Wei Wuxian decided to Get Petty. He’ll drop the matter if they will.

A terrible Sex in the City AU wherein Wei Wuxian’s column is called ‘Just Wei Ying In’.

Nie Huaisang is, of course, the Samantha.

Wen Qing is the Miranda.

Singeli sanely suggested Lan Xichen for Charlotte, but my personal Rogue Call is Jiang Cheng.

Lan Wangji is ‘Mr Big’: he is also fairly insulted that his pseudonym and entire characterisation are just based on his penis. Yes, it is large. But he has so much more to give! …yes, even more than these nine inches!

Chapter 68: It's just a jump to the left/And then a step to the right (Wangxian)

Chapter Text

Wei Wuxian only heard fragments of the explanation. Not a qi deviation, but some sort of experimental cultivation gone awry, resulting in, drumroll please, actual time travel! Dangerous, certainly. But even if it had been half-luck: what an achievement! Wei Wuxian was outright fascinated, but he knew that Lan Wangji—that any form of Lan Wangji—must be far, far too responsible to disclose the specifics of his situation, decades before the constituent techniques were developed.

His intellectual curiosity thwarted, Wei Wuxian’s busy mind was forced to occupy itself with less scholarly concerns. So that was what Lan Wangji would look like when he was older, was it? He was already very striking, but adulthood was apparently preparing to be kinder still to the Second Jade. His voice rolled thunder-deep, now. Wei Wuxian could hardly hear it without a shiver plucking his spine like a qin string.

Before Lan Wangji had been escorted away by Zewujun, he’d evidently felt the weight of Wei Wuxian’s gaze on him and turned his head. Caught staring, Wei Wuxian had swallowed, his eyes wide, and straightened up. And then, on this day of wonders, the most curious thing of all had happened. Lan Wangji had smiled at him, the corner of his mouth helplessly tugging up. Lan Wangji’s eyes had lingered before, in response to some comment from his brother, he’d at last turned away.

Given all that, how could Wei Wuxian not at least check Lan Wangji’s Jingshi to see whether this unusual visitor could be persuaded into any innocent conversation?

Lan Wangji trusted his husband Wei Wuxian to sort out the array they’d stumbled into (only possible on the end of the time corridor in which said array existed) and retrieve him. If he couldn’t, no one alive could manage the feat. Since someone had set up the array in the first place (using runes Wei Wuxian himself had developed, to add insult to injury), the thing was masterable. And that meant that a motivated, determined, brilliant Wei Wuxian would certainly discover its secrets in short order.

Meditating in this adolescent version of his own home was certainly unusual, but in another sense it was simply a quotidian chore. Still, Lan Wangji missed Wei Wuxian’s presence about the place. It had been years since he’d spent a day without his husband near at hand—he’d kept the early promises of his marriage, after all. (Which in itself presented him with a queer challenge, stuck here. He had hardly ever, due to the intervention of unfortunate circ*mstances, missed their ‘every day’, and did not relish doing so now.)

A strange sound intruded on Lan Wangji’s already-restless, insufficiently focused concentration. A scrabbling under the floorboards—though the warding on the house’s timbers had ensured he’d never had a problem with rats or wild animals before. It was as though a person—a cultivator, who could see and slip past the Jingshi’s protections—was crawling under the house in an effort to sneak in and find out what was going on in a space that was even more off limits than usual. Someone bold. Someone clever enough to avoid the door wards.

Lan Wangji had one guess.

With a sigh, Lan Wangji waited, tracking the sound, and then pulled up a particular loose floorboard to reveal the dirt-smeared, well-loved face of his favourite gremlin.

“Hello, Wei Ying.”

“Lan Zhan!” He had the audacity to try a surprised blink. “I dropped Suibian, and she rolled right under your house, so I just—wait, did you call me Wei Ying?”

Helpless in the face of his husband, Lan Wangji smiled, shaking his head.

“Use the door.” He could hardly pull him up through the slat—Wei Wuxian must have been aiming for the pocket of access provided by the back garden.

Wei Wuxian gave an awkward laugh and shimmied back out of sight, while Lan Wangji poured water from his pitcher onto his handkerchief to clean his someday-husband’s dust-covered face.

This was a version of Wei Wuxian he’d never come to know intimately. Lan Wangji wished he could tenderly oversee teaching a younger version of him to properly appreciate their Wei Ying, or at least to admit to doing so. Perhaps such a thing would have resulted in Wei Wuxian’s having a less painful time of the coming trials that would befall them both. Or if no change Lan Wangji could make here would result in any alteration (and he was afraid almost to try—to destabilise the delicate series of catastrophes and miracles that had taken Wei Wuxian from him and then given him back: to upend the hard-won survival of their world), the sweetness between them would have happened, even if Wei Wuxian couldn’t remember it.

Wei Wuxian sat still and good for Lan Wangji as Lan Wangji softly washed his face with a look of fond exasperation. This grown Lan Wangji was so assured in his own body and its movements—so confident in his affection. Wei Wuxian, who’d planned to ask a thousand questions, sat silently under the onslaught of tenderness. He realised he’d never liked anyone quite as he liked the man Lan Wangji would become.

A score of years in the future, Lan Wangji swallowed hard as he watched an indolent yet energetic flute-twirling Wei Wuxian pace up and down the cave Lan Wangji had appeared in. Wei Wuxian brimmed with strange power and snapping, humming thought, muttering to himself while he worked out what to do. He’d fussed over ‘adorable baby Lan Zhan’ and then set him to work helping; Wei Wuxian was treating Lan Wangji with the fondness a man might show his chosen succeeding disciple.

Lan Wangji hardly thought himself fit for such an worthy office at present. He hoped his clumsiness wasn’t obvious, or if it was, that it wouldn’t damage Wei Wuxian’s evidently high opinion of him. It was just—the man was so attractive that Lan Wangji could hardly stand up straight. He didn’t even know what to do with his hands! Regular Wei Wuxian was already insultingly, distractingly appealing. Grown, adult Wei Wuxian was so hot he was outright hurting Lan Wangji’s feelings.

“Aiyah,” Wei Wuxian sighed, biting his lip, having evidently come to some impasse in his thinking. He glanced over at Lan Wangji, noticing the he’d gotten a little disheveled from outright running to get Wei Wuxian the wood he’d asked for to burn (and thus activate) the talismans he’d drafted. Lan Wangji looked like he’d stumbled trying to carry it all in one go: there was a leaf stuck in his loose-flowing locks.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Wei Wuxian said, making a ‘come here’ motion with his hand and just expecting Lan Wangji to oblige him (which he did) (readily). “Let me fix your hair.” He did so, handling Lan Wangji’s ribbon with a practiced air and tucking a stray lock behind Lan Wangji’s ear when he was done.

Wei Wuxian sighed and shook his head, looking at him. “So little! So cute!” he muttered, pinching Lan Wangji’s cheek.

Lan Wangji just let him. Why not? He was going to die here, just from being proximate to Wei Wuxian. Dead, he wouldn’t even be able to be sent back to his own time time, much less survive long enough to go night hunting with Wei Wuxian here in the future. That, of course, would cause a paradox; Lan Wangji hoped that his last act on Earth (dying because of Wei Wuxian’s unendurably erotic flute-handling) would thus at least render him really interesting to Wei Wuxian.

Chapter 69: 'Build Your Core With Dual Cultivation' Not As Fun As Advertised (Wangxian, NC-17)

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Wei Wuxian initially assumed that his husband’s promise to help him develop his frail new core via daily dual cultivation was merely a sexual overture. He’d thought a lot of things, when he’d first gotten married. For one, he’d considered Lan Sizhui’s habit of always knocking before entering the Jingshi overly formal. When he absently mentioned as much to Lan Wangji, his new husband’s mouth had twitched as though he’d wanted to say something. Ultimately, he’d kept his silence. Within a month, however, Wei Wuxian was deeply grateful for entirely logical, habitual Lan politeness, and had come to deeply appreciate their child’s circ*mspection.

It turned out that Wei Wuxian had married the biggest nerd in the cultivation world (himself excepted). Lan Wangji seemed never to have met a gruelling training regime he didn't love. He took his commitment to growing and maintaining his husband’s core absolutely seriously. To that end, Lan Wangji orchestrated edging sessions lasting several hours, wherein he helped Wei Wuxian conserve his jing—and wasn’t that such a polite way of putting Lan Wangji’s habit of ruthlessly stifling his husband’s completion, again and again? Lan Wangji would only let Wei Wuxian find a seedless release when he’d swallowed his own yang energy back down into his dantian, where it sat like a warm, glowing ball of medicine. And that was just the start of Lan Wangji’s routine of cool, proper perversity.

The man kept—right out in public, as though it were the least embarrassing thing in the world!—a fat jade lingam, for cultivation purposes. He expected Wei Wuxian to do far more than contemplate it. Lan Wangji thought it fair to ask Wei Wuxian to slide right down the cold, hard stone and meditate while his husband did his absolute worst to him. The thick, abstract phallus warmed inside Wei Wuxian, but grew no less unyielding. It rather reminded Wei Wuxian of his husband. On other occasions, Lan Wangji hardly even paused when Wei Wuxin whined that he couldn’t handle another drop of his husband’s yang-rich spend: Lan Wangji simply eased a plug into Wei Wuxian to keep him full, cleaned himself thoroughly and used his husband’s mouth instead, apparently labouring under the misconception that only Wei Wuxian's ass was exhausted. By the time he was done, Wei Wuxian was almost thankful for having been tied in an upright position (to ‘help him endure the treatment’). He’d barely have been able to move, under his own power. Lan Wangji’s diligent adherence to a treatment schedule of relevant medicinal herbs ensured that he could do this all day, if he felt it necessary (and he often did).

There were sound cultivation reasons for Lan Wangji to keep his husband perched on his lap, pinned on his co*ck, while he worked or while they slept. He circled a cord of qi between them, and if Wei Wuxian should ever pettishly pull it taunt, Lan Wangji would make time to f*ck the restlessness out of his husband. Wearing a toy inside him to keep him ready for his husband’s use was simply a good way to stimulate Wei Wuxian’s strong, Jiang-trained water-phase meridian, and to thus bolster his overall cultivational health. The same could be said of Lan Wangji's leaving Wei Wuxian to potter around the house stuffed with talisman-activated toys that never stopped teasing him, or of feeding Wei Wuxian aphrodisiacs that left him reeling with lust.

Wei Wuxian sulked as though he were being bullied, but really, he could hardly resent being Lan Wangji’s special project: the locus of his husband's considerable attention and care, as spoilt as he was thoroughly used. Lan Wangji wanted him around for decades to come, and was willing to do all the considerable, necessary work, and to exercise his significant reserves of self-control, to help ensure that. Wei Wuxian forced his husband to confess that, Wei Wuxian’s core issues aside, Lan Wangji had ached to exhaust and discipline and keep Wei Wuxian very well since Wei Wuxian been a skinny, precocious brat taunting him in the library pavilion. The pressing medical need to secure a lifespan for his partner equal to Wei Wuxian’s stolen promise and his own expectations sometimes felt to Lan Wangji like reality justifying his personal whims.

Wei Wuxian could never comfortably occupy a passive role for long. He, after all, was the technical innovator in this relationship! Lan Wangji was a little shy about body modification, but Wei Wuxian had no such hang ups, and Lan Wangji definitely appreciated the results (self-lubrication due to compatible qi flows was a game changer—Wei Wuxian was almost tempted to present his results at the next cultivation conference, just to see what happened). His true triumph, however, came when (after a great deal of research) he sweetly informed Lan Wangji that it would be very, very good for him to have a baby. The case study he’d written up was very convincing, but Wei Wuxian would like to think his evocative description of the potential pregnancy sex had its own role to play in Lan Wangji’s enthusiastic acquiescence.

Wei Wuxian knew very well that Lan Wangji was going to try and one-up him, after this: he couldn’t wait to see what his husband would come up with.

Chapter 70: YUNMENG: We've mostly finished rebuilding it now!

Chapter Text

Jiang Wanyin’s irritating newly-resurrected brother refuses to visit Yunmeng. Jiang zongzhu is far too stubborn to simply invite him, or to say anything like ‘sorry I violently chased you away from the ancestral shrine of our family members in a desperate effort to pick a fight, bro’. There is, therefore, but one solution available to him. He must start an obnoxious, absolutely omnipresent Yunmeng tourism campaign designed specifically to make Wei Wuxian homesick so that he asks to visit, entirely of his own accord. (The boost to Yunmeng’s tourism economy will provide plausible cover: a ‘nice-to-have’.) It is truly a shame that Jiang Wanyin lives in ?? BCE, because ‘Yunmeng!’ sounds a lot like the ‘Young Man!’ part of “YMCA”, which might, in another era, have offered him a ‘natural 20’ PR coup. The parody ad is right there.

The posters are, admittedly, sometimes a little too direct for broad appeal:

‘YUNMENG: We've mostly finished rebuilding it now!’

‘Soup: no one does it like us.’

‘Spice: we can both provide and use it!’

‘Archery: We Bother’

‘Do You Miss Colours And Conversations Conducted Above A Sedate Murmur?’

‘Yunmeng: you can talk during meals!’

‘Yunmeng Will Give You Something To Shout About!’

A few months pass without the desired result. Jiang Wanyin drafts another winner, nodding to himself.

‘The closest thing you have to a living relative is probably here; it's not as if you can just roll up to Baoshan Sanren’s lesbian mountain.’

In Jiang zongzhu’s throne room, Jiang’s chief disciple, charged with getting these posters printed and distributed, bites the inside of her cheek.

“Sect leader, do you think this one is perhaps a bit too—specific?"

“No,” Jiang Wanyin answers her.

“And—” she coughs. “And, you’re sure you just want this next run put up in Caiyi Town and Jinlintai?”

Again, Jiang Wanyin nods. “Specifically around Carp Tower, yes.” He knows that f*cker is visiting Jin Ling. He himself could travel, but he simply will not give the smug bastards running the Gusu Tourism Board, with their now decades-old 'Go East!' bardic jingle, the f*cking satisfaction.

“Sect leader—” his disciple tries, not knowing what to say, exactly, but feeling some impulse of loyalty that prompts her to attempt to call any kind of halt to this cringe behaviour on the part of her liege lord.

Jiang Wanyin only sniffs. “I said what I said.”

One of Huaisang’s many attempts to increase the tourism profile of the Unclean Realm involves an artisanal dairy and the creation of the gimmicky and frankly lacklustre Qinghe Brie. ‘A taste so smooth it’ll keep your Qi from deviating’.

Qinghe is clearly a hard yellow cheese country, suited to Emmental affairs. This is the sort of flavour driven thinking Huaisang needed to bring to bear: the story of the Mongolian-influenced yak cheese the region could excel at and give the world remains untold. Instead Huaisang went for the Brand, and is now stuck eternally giving away free ‘Qinghue Brie’ painted fans because “I ordered a gross!”

“Yeah you did, buddy.”

“Shut up Wei gongzi, I’ll kill you again!”

Chapter 71: Two Lesbians Get Annoyed About the Conventions of Modern wlw Wangxian

Chapter Text

Me (mid-September, 2020): It’s interesting that modern au m/m Wangxian often tries to preserve athleticism in some way: modern cultivation, swimming, running, football, hockey, fencing, hiking, simply exercise/strength.There’s a lot of wlw modern au fic now, but with the exception of two mentions of roller derby, I’ve never seen so much as ‘strong arms’.*

Even if it’s simply a matter of what people are writing or reading the wlw for—that’s pretty Telling? Not necessarily in a simplistic ‘internalised misogyny’ way, though that’s always in the room. It becomes a more complex question of embodiment and recognition. Male bodies as sites of fantastic capability, female bodies as evacuated receptors for Softness. WLW fic is often mundane rather than modern cultivation (or, if set in canon, eschews depiction of cultivation per se), painstakingly non-penetrative, and less erotically constructed both because it has less of a Woolfian ‘Chloe liked Olivia’ tradition to draw from and because women don’t know their bodies as capable.

Things you pretty much never see in the wlw Wangxian: biting, fisting, athleticism, pain-tolerance, skill discussed as such, invention/innovation, toys, including straps. So much of the mlm tropes or the 'same energy'/what the cis female body can uniquely do wlw acts just do not pop up? I do see why people would shy from portraying toys or penetration as at all necessary to a wlw experience, out of not wanting to construct such play as a series of compensations for masculinity, or due to wanting something unique out of wlw fic.

But, I think that's all secondary to the deep tentativeness the format inspires. Also, slash writing is wildly mechanically fantastic: no one needs to clean an hour in advance before anal, multiple org*sms all over the place. But that Idealised Sex quality just drops re wlw, I think not even necessarily in deference to realism but out of a cluelessness as to what Ideal WLW might be.

It is really funny when people get mad at the Chinese source text for Magical Self-Lubrication when... Western Slash is exactly that Fantastic and/or actually about women, in Joanna Russ’s “Another Addict Raves About K/S” sense. We've just come to a different set of conventions which include, what, one more layer of Realism? And of course it's very—‘oh but we all have an Ao3 based set of norms! Why aren't you up to speed with that conversation?' Child, not everyone everywhere is having the same conversation.

I saw this exact rant on a discord for what must have been the millionth time this week, and it was emphatically stating that 'we all moved on, re: negotiations of consent! Why hasn’t MXTX?’ Which of course obscures that Anglofandom worked on Consent the for the entire 80s and 90s, worrying it like a rosary, and now we’ve arrived in a very historically contingent Place. And you're mad commercial Chinese mlm content is not also occupying that exact spot? Er. Does MXTX even read English?

‘O, but how can she not know, how—’ Fellas, I have a pretty good idea, as to how she might. not. share your exact context. here. And to the extent lit written mostly by women and mostly for women is also mostly about women, the issues it’s negotiating will be hugely informed by the material contexts of the authorship and primary readerbase, who do not share in a global, uniform experience of patriarchy in action

Aeriallon: “Even if it’s simply a matter of what people are writing or reading the wlw for—that’s pretty Telling?” That's SO telling. Why extroject strength onto male bodies only? I have a theory (unproven) that wlw sex scenes are also way shorter, for no good biological reason (because shouldn't it be...the....opposite…?). And I’ve never found a wlw slow burn that actually burned slowly.

Me: There are a lot of reasons I don’t find most femslash satisfying, but personally, in its present state, it’s a struggle for me. It feels like a thing I ought to like, rather than a thing I do. And I actually don’t think that has anything like as much to do with internalised misogyny as it does with wlw’s comparative leanness as a representative tradition.

Aeriallon: A Lot of LOT of reasons. I mean, I’m 50k into writing a novel about two women and I encounter those reasons every time I open the document, so I Get it. Just, as a consumer, I am also sad. Where is my 100k wlw Wangxian slow burn of literary quality that also features tying up Wei Wuxian and making her go down on Lan Wangji’s strap? This shouldn't be that difficult, people! But if you want something, you have to write it, something something transformative works something.

Me: I can't believe I have not read fisting queen Lan Wangji. Where is my girl, with her big skilled hands and her 'you can take it’, with her forearms Wei Wuxian can't look directly at in public. Lesbian Lan Wangji has adapted the whole Tori Amos canon for the guqin, and she will play the entirety of Boys for Pele while Wei Wuxian is tied up and slowly slipping down a toy far too large for her (and then politely ask what Wei Wuxian thinks of the chord progression while wiping Wei Wuxian's tears away, because she’s just not sure about it).

“But does it work, or is it merely a cheap conceit? ...oh you can't talk around the gag, hm.”

“When I said I loved rabbits, I meant it in the broadest possible sense, Wei Ying.” (‘A breather' is a 5 min period when she turns the rabbit off.) Or: useless lesbian Lan Wangji tries to explain she loves rabbits and suddenly finds herself a pet owner due to the even greater lesbian uselessness of Wei Wuxian, the most difficult-to-hit-on woman in the world.

Aeriallon: *crying* “Stag sh*t, slag pit, honey bring it close to my lips yeah" ON THE GUQINHow do I meet this Lan Wangji, is she on Lex, or?

Me: Lan Wangji never thought she needed a girlfriend. She researched and then purchased the best Hitachi wand. She was fine.

Aeriallon: But then here was Wei Wuxian, with her stupidly tiny waist and her parkour—

Me: Was it Extra Lesbian to still be obsessively hung up on her crush from when she was fourteen? Wen Qing said so, and Wen Qing was nothing if not reliable—

Ever since modern cultivator Wei Wuxian had bragged about how well she could 'ride Suibian' as a teen, Lan Wangji (who had misheard ‘Suibian’ as ‘Sybian’ and gotten way too excited)—

“No, no, Suibian, my sword?”

“So you,” Lan Wangji swallowed, “ride Suibian every night? What, um. Sheathed?”

Wei Wuxian just looked at her, not sure which of them was an idiot. “The sword can't fly? If it's sheathed?”

Wei Wuxian very proudly shows off her vibrator talisman in class, while Lan Wangji fumes. How could Wei Wuxian so shamelessly do this, in class, where Lan Wangji can’t easily copy it—

Aeriallon: Tired lesbian Aunt Lan Qiren showing the sex ed film and everyone just dying of mingled embarrassment and curiosity.

Me: The eroticism of using talismans your girlfriend designed. Wei Wuxian's work is crazy popular and Lan Wangji is jealous that half the world is, at one remove using Wei Wuxian’s clever fingers to get off, and/or uses the talismans and spelled objects herself thinking about Wei Wuxian.

Incidentally, why—when you have magical devices everywhere, and when Wei Wuxian is on record as the world's greatest tinker—do more people not do Wei Wuxian’s sex toy parade? He or she could not go ten minutes without Putting a Bird/Talisman On It. There is no femme Wei Wuxian who doesn’t roll in on resentacles like behold my advances in dild*nics!

A final thought: a clarity bell is just a ben wa ball, if you detach the tassel and you're brave enough.

* A/N: More recently, I have seen a few fics with a very Jock Femme Lan Wangji and an ancillary Jock-Adjacent Wei Wuxian. These are often actually weirder, for me. It can sometimes feel like the writer picked either brains/characterisation or physical strength in a way that really doesn’t map onto similar mlm content and is, to me, way more fundamentally unappealing than any Arms Like Noodlesism. (In part this is, admittedly, down to the whole basketball shorts and bar scene stuff not being at allllllll My Lesbian Experience (tm). Like, I’m not the LesLorax here, I know for a fact that there are other perspectives on this.) And this isn’t to say that Brains and Characterisation and Moral Engagement are necessarily synonymous, though they’re overlapping. It's more that I feel the fics in question can ask me to make choices and compromises regarding characterisation and story-focus that I both dislike and don’t know that equivalent mlm stories ask me to make. It’s also true that for all there are a fair amount of modern wlw Wangxian pieces now, the sample size remains small: maybe some of the sense of ‘pick one’ comes from the smallish pool itself not offing a breadth of treatments.

Chapter 72: 'ma there's a weird f*ckin stray cat outside, it looks like grandma--' (Jiang Wanyin; Wangxian)

Chapter Text

Lan Wangji, who could hardly bear to sit anywhere near Jiang Wanyin even in mutual total silence, was on the other side of Dafan Mountain when Wei Wuxian summoned the Ghost General. Upon seeing this, Jiang Wanyin knocked Wei Wuxian unconscious with a blow from Zidian and dragged him back to Yunmeng.

Wei Wuxian absolutely expected to be tortured; that was very much how the past few years of life (which he’d actually been around to experience) had gone. And, in a sense, he was. Wei Wuxian was confined to his old room in Lotus Pier. Several times a day, Jiang Wanyin (who’d taken his so-called ‘stupid mask’ off him, first thing) came to deliver food and to yell at him. Jing Wanyin had grimly introduced Wei Wuxian to Jin Ling as his dajiu, while stressing that while not actually as directly responsible for the deaths of Jin Ling’s parents as advertised, Wei Wuxian was bad! Very, very bad! (For his part, Wei Wuxian was just pleasantly surprised to still be considered a relation.)

Let Wei Wuxian take you through a day in the life of, ‘the boss’: he woke up circa noon and did some backlogged Jiang clan paperwork. Jiang Wanyin arrived with lunch (or, as Wei Wuxian called it, breakfast). The soup was only okay, on purpose. Jiang Wanyin took the completed papers, and screamed a bit. Then, he started to cry. He usually then told Wei Wuxian to “f*ck off”, and then left himself. More paperwork, Jin Ling visit. Dinner, repeat performance from Jiang Wanyin. All the while, a vicious guard dog (Fairy: spiritual, plump/‘robust’) patrolled the premises (rolled around in the hallway outside the door).

Jiang Wanyin was, in fact, treating Wei Wuxian something like a misbehaving runaway cat. He’d confined his older brother to his room in shame, until he could learn not to run out into the world and get himself killed.

“You know,” Jin Ling said, observing Wei Wuxian through narrowed eyes, “for my Evil Uncle, you’re kind of lame.”

“You know,” Wei Wuxian returned, “for the son of the best woman ever to breathe, you’re a bit of a little sh*t, and it’s all your dad’s fault for polluting her perfect miracle blood with Jin nonsense.”

Jin Ling frowned, but shrugged. Like, he’d met his paternal grandfather, so. That sounded fair enough.

After a couple weeks of inprisonment, Wei Wuxian was startled to find Lan Wangji climbing through his bedroom window.

“Oh,” he managed, wishing for the mask Jiang Wanyin had taken off him. “It’s—nice of you to visit?”

Lan Wangji, who’d finally untangled his snagged robes from the sill, lurched forward. Kneeling, he clasped both Wei Wuxian’s hands in one of his, bringing the other up to cup Wei Wuxian’s face.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji breathed, his eyes vast and full. “I am so sorry to have failed you again. Not until Lan Sizhui, in passing, told me further details of his time at Mo Manor, and of the Dafan Hunt, did I realise it was you, returned to us. Are you well? Has Jiang zongzhu hurt you?”

He looked near tears! Lan Wangji, of all people! Wei Wuxin panicked, jerking out of his friend’s hold.

“I’m fine, I’m fine! He’s just guilt-tripped me a lot. Typical Jiang Cheng. See?” Wei Wuxian pulled his robes open. “Not mark on me. Even my old brand is gone.”

“So I see,” Lan Wangji muttered, staring at Wei Wuxian's bare chest and seeming lost in thought. He shook his head to clear it. “Regardless, you must come with me, Wei Ying.”

Wei Wuxian pursed his lips. “Oh, I really don’t think he’d like that—”

“I do not trust him with you,” Lan Wangji insisted.

Wei Wuxian waved his hand dismissively. “I know I’m confined and all, but that’s just Jiang Cheng. He can't discuss his feelings—”

Lan Wangji stared at him expressionlessly. “Wei Ying, he destabilised a rock formation you were hanging from so that you will be forced to jump, killing yourself to prevent me from falling with you.”

Wei Wuxian winced. “So, admittedly, he does need to work on his communication skills!”

A decade out of patience with the entire Jiang Wanyin question, Lan Wangji tried a different tack. “I require your help solving the mystery of the cursed severed arm, and of Wen Ning’s apparent survival.”

Wei Wuxian looked intrigued and tempted, so Lan Wangji pulled out the big guns. “I believe A Yuan would very much like to be properly re-introduced to you.”

Jiang Wanyin was not even a little mollified by Wei Wuxian’s having left a note. When the three of them next met, he didn’t bother to address Wei Wuxian himself. It was Lan Wangji who had to contend with Jiang Wanyin’s steely-eyed demand to, essentially, return his cat.

“Yeah!” Jin Ling said stoutly, backing him. (“Aww,” cooed Wei Wuxian.)

“Don’t help,” said Jiang Wanyin.

Chapter 73: The Most Dangerous Door Game

Chapter Text

No one can truly deny Jiang Wanyin’s right to set the door games for Lan Wangji upon the occasion of the Second Jade's marriage to Wei Wuxian. It seems, however, especially unfair: after he suggested something “nice and easy, like, I don’t know, five hundred push-ups! Oh, or sight-reading and performing a complex passage of music!”, Lan Xichen was gently dissuaded from setting any of his own for Wei Wuxian. (An auntie who’d married in had been forced to take Zewujun aside and gently explain life beyond the Cloud Recesses to him.)

All of Jiang Wanyin’s door games are physically possible. Considered as a set, they also comprise a gruelling battle of wills that Jiang Wanyin is not at all secretly hoping Lan Wangji will lose.

Jiang Wanyin creates an unpleasant concoction so frightening that the Jiang disciple who bears it to the table looks as though she might be sick (and if she were, the result would look rather a lot like the stuff in the jug she’s holding). Lan Wangji downs it, reels, then slams his palm down on the table and forces himself upright. He glares at Jiang Wanyin, who gives a tight nod.

The quiz about Wei Wuxian is harrowing, but even with his private insights into his brother’s childhood at his disposal, Jiang Wanyin doesn’t expect this battlefield to be the one that offers him victory. To his credit (?), Lan Wangji is way too obsessive for that. The Yunmeng Greasy Thrice-Fried Rice (vegetarian edition) from a hawker stall is, likewise, just a means of stalling for time (though Lan Wangji consumes his heaping portion as though fast food is, to him, a wholly foreign country he will not willingly visit again).

The day’s true setbacks come in the form of Lan Wangji’s turn in drag. Though Jiang Wanyin had his hopes for this battle (considering his foe’s prissy decorum), Lan Wangji looks very good and appears to know it. He also seems untouched by anything resembling shame. When Lan Wangji is asked by a Jiang disciple to reveal embarrassing details about his sex life, Jiang Wanyin believes that at last, he has his opponent. Unfortunately, Lan Wangji decides that this is a fight he can win. Within a minute even Nie Huaisang looks uncomfortable. It is Jin Rulan who begs the Chief Cultivator to stop. Jiang Wanyin is only thankful young Jin Ling broke first, so that he does not have to live with the knowledge that he himself conceded defeat.

All that is left—Jiang Wanyin’s last, best hope—is the spicy food challenge.

“Scared?” Jiang Wanyin asks conversationally as they take seats across the table from one another.

Slowly, Lan Wangji shakes his head no.

Jiang Wanyin nods, sneering.

“Yes, I'm sure you've been working on tolerating chillies. You knew you would face me.” Jiang Wanyin, however, brings out a box with Dongyang importation marks. In it sits a small, lacquered covered bowl, which Jiang zongzhu opens to reveal tuberous green root. It is a horned, ridged thing. It looks like the man grasping it: angry. Jiang Wanyin holds out a hand, and a Jiang disciple obediently passes him a grater. Looking at Lan Wangji all the while, Jiang Wanyin begins to pulverise this no-doubt expensive vegetable, grinding it directly onto the white plate another disciple sets before him.

“You’re unfamiliar with this, I see.” Jiang Wanyin smirks. “The nature of this spice is chemically different than chillies. I don’t care how many peppers you ate in preparation for your marriage, Lan Wangji. You are powerless against wasabi.”

Lan Wangji stares at the growing pile.

“Jiang Wanyin. Do you know that you are a very petty man with too much time on his hands?”

Jiang Wanyin shrugs. “Jin Ling is an adult now. What else is am I supposed to do?”

He pushes the plate across the table. Lan Wangji tilts it, contemplating his fate. A hand lands on his shoulder—perhaps the touch of a well-wisher, condoling with him on his imminent demise. Lan Wangji looks up to find his adopted son at his side.

“Someone challenged to door games can all upon the help of his groomsmen, Father.”

Lan Wangji blanches. “Sizhui, no!”

Lan Sizhui offers him a small, serious smile. “Don’t worry, Father. I have been training from infancy for this day.”

With one gulp, Lan Sizhui downs the whole pile of wasabi. He clenches his hand to his head, fighting against the sudden sinus onslaught of the reeling, stinging spice. Sizhui pants, downing a full jug of water, which washes down his front and outright soaks his fine wedding clothes.

Even Jiang Wanyin is horrified by this shocking turn of events. He turns to Hanguangjun. “You’d let a child suffer in your place? Are you a man, Lan Wangji?”

“I am, in fact, about to be your brother-in-law,” Lan Wangji counters, sweeping his streaming-eyed son up in his arms and triumphantly bearing this fallen warrior over to the drinks buffet.

Jiang Wanyin shakes his head, acknowledging a painful loss.

Chapter 74: The Importance of Being Out of Earshot

Chapter Text

Retrospectively Lan Qiren had no idea how he had missed the signs, which had been roughly as obvious as the thousand characters carved into the rock of the Chalk Wall at Qutang Gorge. While Wei Wuxian had attended lectures at Cloud Recesses, Qiren supposed he’d simply interpreted Wangji’s banter with the other boy as antagonistic rather than flirtatious. In Wei Wuxian’s absence, however, Lan Wangji outright unfurled the ragged banner of his teenaged heart, making the height of Lan Qiren’s retrospectively-humiliating Cangse Sanren Pining Period look tame.

The evidence against Wangji was prodigious:

- haring off to search for Jiang’s missing head disciple in the middle of Lan’s own siege recovery efforts,

- upon his return, indulging in many a deep sigh (roughly one every incense-stick’s measure),

- wistful glances at the moon,

- asking Lan’s foremost expert in Rites how soon after a mourning period a marriage proposal might, entirely theoretically, be considered appropriate,

- a request put to the disciples that handled the sect’s calendar for a marriage horoscope for Lan er gongzi, to determine an auspicious date,

- and a near-constant barrage of unsubtle Knowing Looks from Xichen.

By the time (mid-Sunshot campaign, after a serious injury) Lan Qiren looked in on a feverish Wangji, settled in to help Xichen care for the boy and there heard things he could never unhear, Lan Qiren had had about enough of all this. Wangji had clearly gone feral with longing, and had committed himself to being, in equal measure, raw and insufferable about it. Against his will, Qiren had been dragged from blissful ignorance to full enlightenment. And so help him, if Lan Wangji said ‘Wei Ying’ in that gooey voice once more in his hearing, Lan Qiren would ground the boy for another three months, just for bringing shame on the clan.

A part of Qiren wished that Lan Wangji was a different sort of boy, whose calm affection for a suitable object could slowly ease Qiren, as a parental figure, into letting go of stale, aged anger. Qiren was prepared to grudgingly loosen up, to reckon with his repression (somewhat), and perhaps even to learn from a mistake or two. But Lan Wangji was besotted with a boy who’d been the world’s most irritating teen, and had then gone on to invent a whole new way to mass-murder. So none of that would be happening.

One does not teach for decades without hearing students talk sh*t about one whilst unaware that one is within hearing range. It wasn’t even the first time Lan Qiren had caught Wei Wuxian specifically in the act. It was, however, the first time he’d overheard Wei Wuxian gossiping about him after returning from the dead, in conversation with Lan Qiren's own great-nephew, who had secretly also been Wei Wuxian’s quasi-son all along: Lan Qiren could safely say this was a new one, for him.

To cut this off before Wei Wuxian said something unguarded (or rather, more so than usual) and to keep himself from committing any indiscretion regarding eavesdropping, Lan Qiren stepped plainly into sight. Sizhui saw him, his eyes widening. Wei Wuxian, with his back to Lan Qiren, did not.

“I’m not even that annoyed about it,” Wei Wuxian said, answering something Sizhui had put to him in a surprisingly calm, reasonable tone he’d somehow acquired with age (probably, Qiren thought grimly, by robbing it off someone). “He doesn’t necessarily know it, but your shifu is angrier with himself than he is with me. He’s not dealing with it well, but I can understand his being ashamed—he made some terrible mistakes. He passively enabled war-crimes, which almost got you killed before he’d even met you. He’s, you know, permanently damaged his relationships with the only family he has in defence of a clan and ideological commitments he was actually undermining.”

Sizhui’s eyes were begging Senior Wei to stop. They flickered towards Lan Qiren like the boy had a beach’s worth of sand stuck in them. Lan Qiren had seen Wei Wuxian take many things: lives, liberties, chances, and a sizeable chunk of Lan Wangji’s sanity. Apparently, though, he did not believe in taking hints.

Wei Wuxian just sighed, contemplatively. “It has to be awful to hold yourself and others to such a high standard, only to realise, too late to do much about it, that despite committing your whole life to Lan principles, you’re actually the dangerous embarrassment. How can I be that angry, when he really did try to do the right thing as he saw it? The poor man’s just stuck now, and he'll likely never be able to unpack that, or forgive himself, or, I don’t know, regain some self-resp—”

Wei Wuxian finally looked over at a scarlet-faced Sizhui.

“He’s behind me, isn’t he?”

Sizhui made a choking noise.

“Came in at the beginning, or?” Wei Wuxian nodded. “Yep. That’s what I thought. Cool. Cool, cool, cool.”

Whistling awkwardly, Wei Wuxian simply left. Fair enough: no acknowledgement of this conversation could hope to render matters less uncomfortable. Sizhui gave his shifu a stilted, half-hearted hug, because he was a good boy. He was also Wei Wuxian’s boy, and thus Lan Qiren was tempted to check his back for a talisman reading ‘you tried’.

Chapter 75: A Yuan: Baby Fever (Wangxian)

Chapter Text

You know how Venus sets Dido up to love Aeneas via his kid being super cute? Bitch invented the rom com, thanks Venus. Ergo, a modern Wangxian where either of them extensively interacts with A Yuan before meeting the boy’s parent. Whoever the non-parent (perhaps working as a teacher, doctor, or social worker) is, they think themselves Seasoned and Cool. But this child is an engraved invitation to baby fever. Further, A Yuan adores his dad and will. not. stop. talking about how amazing he is. The recipient of this gossip wonders whether it’s even possible to develop a crush on someone you haven't seen, but who you see ample evidence of, and whose amazing parenting you hear about constantly.

Maybe A Yuan’s bag lunches feature hot dogs cut into octopuses, and teacher Lan Wangji wonders about the person who takes the time to make something that a little boy will eat in an instant fun and special. Or Lan Wangji is a paediatric specialist who has yet to meet Wei Wuxian because Wen Qing is always the one to take A Yuan into appointments. She's the family's regular physician and a friend/relation, and given that it's her field and she's here during the day as it is, it makes sense for her to handle the hospital side of things while Wei Wuxian works. If Lan Wangji is a music teacher, he and Wen Qing might have been in high school band together for years, and she set up the appointments and does the drop offs and pick ups. (Possibly Lan Wangji hears about the mythical Wei Wuxian (or the reverse) from everyone he knows before actually meeting the man.)

A Yuan used to have a barrage of medical issues related to his pre-adoption period, and a lot of medical phobias—his chart is a nightmare. But these appear to be clearing up: this kid seems to have blossomed under his new guardian’s care.

Via A Yuan’s extensive chatter, which is always peppered with extensive praise of his father, Lan Wangji has been given to understand that Wei Wuxian is, unquestionably, the handsomest man in the world. When Wei Wuxian actually walks in and manifestly is, Lan Wangji acknowledges that he was warned, and yet unprepared.

I brought the seed of this into a Discord (essentially the above), and Singeli riffed extensively and excellently:

“a yuan is polite but not in that cowed way that some children have, that shows they're afraid of adult wrath

he's just a cheerful little being who's respectful because he's curious and observant

and someone has encouraged those qualities

also someone packs an hilarious lunch for a yuan every day, maybe wen qing but lwj doesn't think so somehow, because of its...oddity

all the components are there, it's nourishing and well-rounded

but somehow lwj can't see wen qing making panda bears out of hot dogs and toothpicks

or making meticulous ants-on-a-log matched with cheese sandwiches cut into car shapes

apparently a yuan had food issues, like would hide stuff in his pockets for later, and lwj thinks his heart is melting when he sees him soberly finishing off his carrot roses and vegetable bun (that has a smiling face pinched into the dough) without hoarding them, apparently his father's ingenious solution

and also of course a yuan goes home bearing tales of his wonderful teacher lwj who is ever so nice and kind and he can play so well, and he's always listening and he has very pretty eyes. and also he seems a little sad sometimes, maybe he doesn't have anyone to make him hot dog octopuses, baba? can we make extra for him?”

Chapter 76: 'Well, SOMEONE from Lan is marrying Wei Wuxian—' (Wangxian) (Or is it—) (No, it is.) (Unless—)

Chapter Text

The Lan Elders begin to make noises about containing powerful Wei Wuxian with an arranged marriage to a nice, stable Lan: specifically, to Zewujun. After listening to the Elders’ extensive arguments on why the calm, socially-adroit and eligible young sect leader is the perfect—in fact, the only—choice to bring Jiang’s deeply talented and dangerous first disciple in line, Lan Wangji sullenly takes to painting tragic mountain landscapes, composing longing poetry, and cutting down huge sections of mountain’s bamboo forest that did nothing to anyone. When asked why he has decimated the mountain (as in literally taken out like one-tenth of the vegetation), Lan Wangji will only claim that he’s fine. After a moment, he adds that he hopes and expects his brother will be very happy. These are not the answers to questions anyone asked.

For two days after the Elders reach a resolution on this point, the artist formerly known as Meng Yao (who is very invested in Lan Xichen not marrying a (different) murder twink) tries to play this as he usually does by subtly nudging people into following their own impulses and thereby doing what he needs them to. Lan Wangji, however, exasperates Jin Guangyao as no one ever has before. Nie Mingjue is stubborn, but Lan Wangji is unshakeable. The young man seems grimly determined to make himself evisceratingly miserable. He refuses to so much as ask his brother not to do this. Jin Guangyao is juggling running a sect under Jin Gongzhu’s nose, his usual ambient scheming, and a new emergency plot to get this marriage proposal cancelled before Jiang catches wind of it (and inevitably accepts, on account of their current tactical weakness and deep need of powerful friends). All Jin Guangyao needs Wangji to do is say the sentence “it should be me” in company, and he is about ready to start pulling the boy’s shiny hair like reins to compel him to just spit it out.

Unaware of Jin Guangyao’s descent into… well, not 'into madness', so much as into a more frustrated flavour of madness, Lan Wangji indulges in his new pastime, ‘looking at the moon while weeping silently’. Lan Wangji knows that taking his own life would make xiongzhang unhappy. He’ll spend some time pursuing his cultivation alone, then, so that when the time comes he might be able to face his brother and… his new brother-in-law with dignity. He will bury himself alive in punishing quests. If, after the marriage, Lan Wangji finds that the pain of watching his brother enjoy his own heart’s desire is simply unbearable, Lan Wangji supposes that he can always disappear whilst engaged in such a venture. That is, after all, how Wei Wuxian’s parents met their sad end. It happens all the time.

That is how Lan Wangji manages to undertake an engagement quest without realising he is doing so. He leaves the Cloud Recesses, and in the coming weeks he occasionally resurfaces to drop treasures (the like of which have not been seen outside of the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) at the gates of Jiang and the feet of her confused disciples, muttering “a wedding present for Wei Ying”. He elegantly scurries off again before anyone can properly speak to him or ask what they’re supposed to do with a f*cking qilin. What does a qilin even eat?

Wei Wuxian accepts these legendary romantic gifts, forming his own conclusions about what he is de facto agreeing to in doing so. By the time someone gives you more than one mysteriously glowing peach with serious health benefits, the whole pattern of behaviour becomes difficult to dismiss.

Lan Wangji makes the mistake of stopping over at the Cloud Recesses. It has been nearly a month since he stepped foot in his home, and he feels guilty. Xiongzhang is undoubtedly wondering at his brother’s strange coldness at what ought to be a joyous hour, and what is this whole affair but a testament to Lan Wangji’s unwillingness to hurt the two people he loves best in the world?

Jin Guangyao must have more informants in the Cloud Recesses than the back hill has rabbits. Lan Wangji has barely laid himself down with a deep sigh in a bed that will forever be a cold and lonely one before his brother’s ‘friend’ raps at the door. Jin Guangyao refuses to be ignored, to heed an eventual polite dismissal, and then even to respect the sanctity of Lan Wangji’s private residence. It seems he will have an audience, whether Lan Wangji chooses to grant him one or not.

“Get up,” Jin Guangyao seethes, pushed past politeness—wearing a scary, manic, twitching smile and pacing across Lan Wangji’s rushes. “We need to fix this!”

The proposed ‘team up’ is, to Lan Wangji, an unexpected and wholly unwelcome prospect. Jin Guangyao tries a few unsuccessful angles (it seems that Lan Wangji can’t imagine Zewujun might do better (which, f*ck’s sake)) before finding a crack he wedges into an opening.

“I don’t think such a marriage will make Wei gongzi very happy,” Jin Gungyao insists.

“How could it not?” Lan Wangji asks in a hollow, defeated voice. “My brother is like me in almost every respect, but my superior in each as he is in years. If I could make him happy, as I think I could, how much more so xiongzhang? He is what Wei Ying deserves.”

Jin Guangyao has to strongly resist the urge to just hop in place to release his sheer bottled spite. He feels he ought to tell Lan Wangji that if Wei Wuxian so much as bares Lan Xichen’s shapely ankle, he is a dead man. There are, of course, several reasons that would be a bad idea. For one, this is Lan Wangji’s house. He knows where the weapons are, and can get to them in response to such a threat faster even than Jin Guangyao can whip out some handy garrotting wire.

“They will only ever be content, Lan er gongzi,” Jin Guangyao says instead of shaking the little blockhead. “If married to a kind man who respects but does not truly love him, your Wei gongzi will shrivel like a flower planted in the wrong soil. Zewujun could endure almost anything, to do well by all his responsibilities. But that is not the life that those who care for Lan Xichen would desire for him. You must speak to your brother, if only to ascertain his certainty as to this course!” There is simply no way Jin Guangyao can bring the topic up himself—that would be far, far too revealing!

Having secured a promise to at least do that from this stupid, terrible boy, Jin Guangyao slinks off to the guest quarters (which he resents for not being the Hanshi almost as much as he appreciates them for displaying better taste than all Guangyao's father’s wealth has ever managed to bring to bear in Koi Tower).

The next day, over tea, Lan Wangji tentatively raises the subject of his brother’s impending union.

Lan Xichen leans back, considering Wangji words. Then, with slow deliberation, he splashes his now-lukewarm tea over his little brother’s face.

Lan Wangji blinks, sadly. Yes, this is indeed what he deserves for questioning—

“You think I would do that to you?” Lan Xichen asks him. “Wangji. Wangji, sweetie. You idiot. For the last month, you’ve—” Xichen shakes his head before succumbing to hysterical laughter. “Me and—and Wei gongzi?”

Apparently, Lan Xichen had intended to let the general idea of a Lan-and-Jiang-via-Wei union become firmly entrenched in the Lan Elders’ collective consciousness. They loved nothing better their own ideas, and once they settled on anything, they could prove difficult to budge. After the whole thing thus solidified, he’d planned to suggest that actually Lan Wangji, with his firm, recognised moral rectitude, was the man for the ‘temper Wei Wuxian’ job. Lan Xichen's foremost skill as a rising sect leader was delicate Auntie and Uncle Management.

Hardly daring to hope, Lan Wangji blinked up at him. “But Jin Guangyao said—”

“A Yao believed this?” Lan Xichen sought confirmation. Apparently, this was even funnier than Wangji’s credulity. “And you—you got Wei Wuxian a qilin—”

“As a wedding present!” Lan Wangji insisted, really developing a pout now.

“f*cking hell,” gasped Lan Xichen, who Lan Wangji had never before heard curse.

Chapter 77: Ten Short AU Ideas: Whole Cast Edition II

Chapter Text

Lan Qiren’s terrible public access radio show, Qiren Now.

Lan Wangji: *youth pastor voice* And do you know who else rose from the dead, to save my soul—

Baoshan Sanren runs the Whole-Man Disposal Service. At some point in the past, she stopped the trash-compactor mid munch, held up her hand and said “wait. I can use that one.” This is why Xue Yang is only missing one finger, now wears a garbage man’s uniform and says ‘beep beep motherf*ckers’ to clear the road when the squad rolls through (the modern automobile horn, like the automobile itself, having yet to be invented). Xue Yang tells people he has been Upcycled; this is a matter of opinion.

Baoshan only stopped to consider Xue Yang’s potential utility because Xiao Xingchen asked if they could keep him. Initially she thought her apprentice meant ‘to practice on’, but no, it was pity or some sh*t.

When Lan Yi suggested she should have a little yin iron, as a treat, Baoshan in turn suggested that she could always branch out into Woman Disposal. Sure, the strap was good: but no strap is better than justice.

Wen Qing is the on-duty floor manager who picks up Madam Jin’s call, asking how she can help. Koi Tower—right, and the street address? Oh, it’s the whole street. Well, fair enough then.

Cue the ominous sound of qi-powered sweeping machines.

Elviapose asked for a CQL fusion with the Dua Lipa video “New Rules”.

“Some day the wereflamingos of lotus pier are but a myth. Yet in the water their true natures are reflected and revealed. The power of their cultivation is a bargain with the land, a sacrifice, a transformation. Gusu may have its ‘old rules’, but more recent laws have been devised to contend with what the Jiang cultivators have become.

1. Do not let them in—for once permitted entry, the beasts have free reign, and removing them may prove difficult.”

(I’m not photoshopping Jiang Cheng’s head onto a flamingo for you, you will have to do this yourself.)

There’s a line of hair braiding: ‘welcome to Nie clan, bitch.’

Mongrelmind contends that “Nie Clan knows how to get over a man and braid hair, they are hired for this.” We then collectively debated whether Nie ‘Die Mad’ Mingjue (who coffin-wrestles Jin Guangyao’s ghost for a hundred years: truly a case of ‘if you're under him, you ain't getting over him’) ever moved on from anything in his life. Perhaps by the standards of this canon, yes, but Spiders Lan Wangji is an outlier, who should not have been counted. ...spiders Jiang Cheng is also an outlier—

(Relatedly, is there coffin spirit f*cking fic? I haven’t looked, I just assumed.)

Wei Wuxian, interrupting cultivator awards ceremonies like he’s Kanye: Yeah, that’s cool and all. Good job on your... whatever. But have you guys thought about: my sister figures? *gesturing emphatically*

Lan Xichen: Guys, this seems so important. Let him talk.

Wei Wuxian: So first off: siblings, right?

Xichen: Mm, yes, please continue.

Nie Mingjue: *offers thunderous applause*

Jins: *try to clap, but they’re not feeling it and you can tell*

Someone should have gotten to Mingjue and said “hey, did you know Wen Qing loves her dopey little brother? Did you know she and Wei Wuxian are like: siblings?”

Mingjue: f*ck, f*ck, I—okay.

Lan Qiren runs a nice, totally apolitical Edinburgh Fringe Festival aimed squarely at rich Londoners. He hates the increasing prevalence of comedy, but it pays. He personally finds Comedy Against Humanity style stand-up immensely distasteful. Just considering improv as a concept gives him a severe eye-twitch.

Lan Xichen is just trying to run a venue, and it’s very hard, guys. (He’s in charge of the Space UK, Underbelly or C venues: one of those somewhat bougie cluster groups.) The rest of the Untamed cast is largely directing plays. Wei Wuxian was born to run a really excellent but wildly over-ambitious Fringe show.

The Ouyang, who compile the cultivation world’s Eligible Bachelors List, also run a Most Tasteful Clan ranking. While not allowed to properly compete, they Honourably Mention themselves every year. Everyone is grudgingly okay with that. For generations, however, Jiang and Lan have fought over the top two spots. They trade positions every time someone builds an elegant new shed or makes a fashion error. Lan Yi’s bold hairpiece choice once shamed the clan for four months, but she brought it all back with White Guqin. While Wei Wuxian is dead, Jiang Wanyin makes an attempt to get intentional body-mods considered, hoping to dethrone Lan for good over Lan Wangji’s cheesy Wen brand tattoo.

The Ouyang used to have to rank the Xue Clan, and honestly that was always a mess. Everyone is glad they disbanded, if only for this reason. Nie Huaisang wishes he had been born an Ouyang: compiling the Hotness list, wearing colours, judging people—what a life!

MXTX characters by their favourite 19th century Britlit:

Lan Xichen: Something by George Eliot.

Jin Guangyao: Possibly Woman in White, for Count Fosco and bitter illegitimate sibling power imbalances. If not, Jane Eyre.

Xue Yang: Absolutely some Decadents trash.

Jiang Wanyin: If Chengxian, Wuthering Heights. If not, maybe Nicholas Nickleby.

Lan Wangji: North and South.

Wei Wuxian: David Copperfield. (David Copperfieldspends the whole novel not realising how deeply ,deeply gay he is, Wei Wuxian is just like ‘god, why is this so relatable?’)

Nie Huaisang: If pre-brother death, Emma. If post-brother death, I kind of want to say Daniel Deronda.

Nie Mingjue: He Knew He Was Right (I'm sorry, I can't not).

Jiang Yanli: Sense and Sensibility.

Wen Qing: I initially thought Carmilla, but then decided this was cheap. Lesbian Vibe is not her whole personality. Mongrelmind suggested she could be into weird fin-de-siècle sexy-scary sh*t. I got annoyed that I’d said Brit Lit, because I sort of wanted to give her that wild, queer, unfinished Dostoevsky novel that’s from a female point of view.

Madam Lan: Tess of the D'Urbervilles, alas. (She can take it, she's Hardy.)

Lan Sizhui: A Princess and the Goblin or Secret Garden kind of kid (he does keep discovering weird asshole cousins tucked away random places).

Jingyi: Claims every book he ever read either sucks entirely or Changed Him.

Jin Ling, holding up a check-out line best seller: Hey Jingyi, is this the worst literature humans have ever conceived of, just a war crime, or a profoundly beautiful work, which has reshaped my entire—

SVSSS bonus round:

Shen Yuan: hate-reading The Monk

Luo Binghe: Persuasion. (That's Bingmei, for Bingge it's Dorian Grey or Vathek.)

There are several Sherlock Holmes stories in which Holmes and Watson visit old an friend of one of theirs from school out in the country, who’s asked for their help because there’s something up at their family manor. The Wells and Wong series describes an entire culture of wealthy Chinese people sending their kids to English boarding schools in the Edwardian and interwar periods. Along these lines, or with this public school setting or period and vibe, one could write a Sherlock Holmes style Untamed AU in the UK or Hong Kong, with cultivation.

Rynleaf wrote a 'PriestBun’ fic, and I felt a bit bad about MXTX not having a similar wildly-extrapolated 'anonymous danmei writer 4 anonymous danmei writer' ship. Rynleaf suggested a wild SVSSS solution: transmigrator!MXTX/Qin Su. “...what if Qin Su is also a transmigrator, and it's Cucumberplane except Women?”

I thought it’d be hilarious if a transmigrating MXTX and her fiercest feminist Chinese academia critic wind up as Madams Jin and Yu, respectively.

“Why do you never meaningfully include women?”

“Why are you so hot sneering at me like this?”

“You wrote me as an evil MILF, this is your fault! I guess I should be grateful I'm not Madam 'background trauma' Lan, I have a name and everything!”

Madam(s) Not Appearing in this Narrative Nie were also both transmigrators. They took a good look at their surroundings, faked their own deaths and now run a B&B with a sh*tty modern pun name. They keep chickens.

Chapter 78: Bach Lore (Wangxian)

Chapter Text

Once a generation, the Ouyang Clan compiled their famous indices. This census tracked the changing state of the factions that comprised the cultivation world over the centuries. The Ouyang Lists marked the size of clans, the disposition of their territories, the talents of their scholars, and the politically-significant matter of prominent young cultivators’ marriageability. This ranking of the relative eligibility of cultivation world’s gentlemen was the subject of great popular interest. Ouyang did sometimes find occasion to alter their rankings after publication, but as they were compiled with great initial care, such amendments were infrequent. Only quite serious misapprehensions or changes in a cultivator’s circ*mstances merited a reconsideration.

The Ouyang senior cultivator in charge of this aspect of the indices was thus rather surprised to receive an emphatic letter from her chosen second, Lan Wangji, that dared tell her her business. Just as though she hadn’t ranked the boy’s father before him! She’d placed him third, and his brother Qiren fifth—young Fengmian between them, with honest and sweet (but blunt-nosed, hot-blooded and ill-starred) Nie Chengwen behind and Jin er gongzi coming after, to bring up the rear of the Great Sects’ contingent. Lan Wangji was, of course, a polite boy, who merited his place. Thus his pertness came wrapped in silk.

“On the third day of the eighth month, your vassal Lan Wangji obediently salutes you—”

Ouyang Shujing snorted. ‘Obedient’ her old bones. Apparently, little Wangji believed she had “made a grave error” in ranking the Jiang’s ward, Wei Wuxian. Ouyang Shujing could understand if Lan Wangji had written to protest at a boy without property’s being placed so close to himself in the calculation—if Wangji felt that their very proximity devalued his own birth and achievements, and might thus blight his prospects. But no! Wangji evidently thought Jin Zixuan, the pearl of Jinlintai, nothing to Wei Wuxian, and would have Jiang’s penniless chief disciple elevated further still! The idea was ludicrous.

“You have not met him,” the letter insisted, “and where Wei Ying is concerned, to meet him directly is all. Some riches admit of no counting. The points in his favour are too manifold to list, but include his earnest purpose, his lightness of heart, his care for others, his grace—”

Shujing rolled her eyes and reached for her tea. This really was above her pay-grade. (And it seemed that for all his merits, Lan Wangji might be far less ‘eligible’ for marriage to young ladies than she’d previously appreciated.)

It took many letters and a great deal of conniving for Lan Wangji to lure Jiang’s head disciple to a night hunt bordering on Ouyang Territory, some months after Wei Wuxian had left Cloud Recesses in moderate disgrace. Lan Wangji was initially annoyed that Wei Wuxian had brought his irritating brother with him, but then considered that the contrast between them might prove instructive.

“I fear we must tarry with you for the night,” Lan Wangji said to Ouyang’s second disciple, who hastened to assure these important guests that their staying with the family would truly be no trouble.

“We wouldn’t have had to, if Lan er gongzi hadn’t gotten us so lost in the marsh,” Jiang Wanyin snorted.

He opened his mouth to complain further, but cut off abruptly with a yelp. Wei Wuxian had whacked his brother’s shins with his bow behind their backs, never letting his own pleasant expression falter. For his part, Wei Wuxian had been far too surprised and pleased by Lan Wangji’s invitation to hunt with him to mind a little (admittedly unexpected) clumsiness with directions.

Wei Wuxian had a bath before supper. When he’d finished, he was surprised to find Lan Wangji knocking at his door. Lan Wangji looked over Wei Wuxian’s fresh clothes (very presentable spare robes from his qiankun) and nodded his approval.

“Are you refreshed?” Lan Wangji asked. “At your best?”

Wei Wuxian gave him a confused smile. “How could I be otherwise, when my favourite person’s come to see me?”

A flush crept across the tips of Lan Wangji’s ears, but he nodded decisively. “On good form,” he muttered, seemingly to himself, as though that had been an answer. “Come; there is a lady you must win over.”

Wei Wuxian surveyed him. “Care to tell me why?”

Lan Wangji shook his head and led him out. “Not yet.”

“A mystery, then. Interesting.” Wei Wuxian obligingly followed him, adjusting the fall of his sleeves to make himself more presentable. “And what will you give me, if I manage it?” he asked.

“Anything you like,” Lan Wangji said. His lip twisted wryly at the corner. “Indeed, all I have.”

Wei Wuxian laughed. “I’m not so greedy as that. I’d settle for your being just a little impressed with me, Lan Zhan.”

Lan Wangji stopped outside a certain door and knocked, turning properly to face his companion. “Wei Ying. I am always deeply impressed by you.”

The effect of these words on Wei Wuxian was instantaneous. His skin flushed, his eyes brightened, and he looked every inch what Lan Wangji thought him: the most charming boy born inside a decade.

A maid answered and took Wei Wuxian, thus attired in his best expression, to speak with Ouyang Shujing. Shujing continued to watch him carefully all through dinner. She saw how the boy worked carefully to soothe his sharp-edged brother, to endear himself to the ladies of the house and to include taciturn Lan Wangji in the conversation.

Afterwards, Wei Wuxian was shocked to discover he’d somehow risen on the list of eligible bachelors, on account of being (according to the letter he received to inform him of his elevation) “as charming in person as I was promised”, and “owing to new information I have recently received as to another candidate’s general eligibility.”

Wei Wuxian answered a request from Lan Wangji for another hunt, chiefly so that he could apologise for somehow stealing his friend’s place on the list, demoting both Lan Wangji and Jin Zixuan a rank in the process. (Ouyang Shujing would never say it, but that poor gongzi, rich, handsome and faultlessly well-mannered as the boy was—provided nothing even the slightest bit unusual occurred to upset Zixuan's careful ideas of propriety—had all the personal enchantment of a turnip.)

“I should never mind being beneath you,” Lan Wangji said in answer, when they met in a private dining room he’d taken at an inn in the town reporting a disturbance. A second later he flushed, discreetly biting his lip rather than awkwardly attempting to rephrase that.

Wei Wuxian blinked shrewd eyes at him. “At Baling, you had me speak to an Auntie. You wouldn’t quite say why.”

Lan Wangji nodded. “The Elders of my clan agreed that I could choose any spouse I liked, so long as that person was unrelated to me and considered more eligible by an esteemed independent authority.”

They had, of course, been being sarcastic. The Elders had only meant to assert their right to long discussions of appropriateness and dowries. Lan Wangji had not appreciated their flippancy, but he would take it. He had it on good authority—from is brother’s own mouth—that Lan Zongzhu would hold the Elders to precisely what they’d agreed to. ‘Be careful of idle words, lest they turn serious.’ Surely Lan’s own masters had not flouted such an important precept?

Lan Wangji drew a deep breath, screwed his courage more than any hunt had ever required him to and arrested his companion’s eyes with his own intent gaze.

“Wei Ying, you have surpassed me in an objective reckoning. And yet I dare presume to ask if you will have me.”

Wei Wuxian goggled at him. Sputtering and bewildered, he made a strange squawking noise. Perhaps, if she could have seen him like this, Ouyang Shujing would have reconsidered her high opinion of him. In Lan Wangji’s more nearly-concerned and more careful estimation, nothing on earth could have shaken Wei Wuxian’s position at the very summit of a list that contained only his name.

“No! What? Well, well of course I—Lan Zhan, you!” Wei Wuxian burst out laughing, seeming not to know what to do with himself. He clutched his own sides; he threw himself at Lan Wangji. He gasped into Lan Wangji’s neck, “I can’t believe you—”

And suddenly he was crying, and then apologising, saying he’d no idea why, and really, really? And yes. Of course, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

“What a lot of trouble you went to to get me,” Wei Wuxian laughed, after they’d gulped down wine and a much-watered-down cup of something that had once been. The thing done, privately, and consummated: any other celebration or contestation rendered an after-the-fact formality.

“I would,” Lan Wangji admitted, “have gone through far more trouble than this, if necessary.”

Alternatively, post-canon Lan Wangji has massive beef with some seemingly-random Ouyang auntie. Wei Wuxian observes that so far as he knows, this is one person who’s never even tried to kill him. Lan Wangji must have wholly unrelated issues with her, but what could they be? Lan Wangji admits that it is about Wei Wuxian, and classism, and a long, long fight that he and this elderly woman once got into about Wei Wuxian’s unduly low bachelor-ranking. Wei Wuxian finds this so stupid and adorable that he can hardly believe it’s real.