and in the depths of my heart a cavern lies

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/37535533.

Rating: Explicit
Archive Warning: Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category: M/M
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Relationship: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Character: Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī
Additional Tags: Sex Pollen, Angst, sex pollen typical dubcon, preceded by brief noncon
attempt, by character too drugged up to know what he's doing,
Intercrural Sex, wei wuxian typical problem solving, that is to say
brilliantly effective but with weirdly little regard, for his own wellbeing,
lan wangji is a useless gay and wei wuxian has no idea, he's very
feelings tho, Self-Hatred, postmortem of the dubcon is an angst genre
fight me
Stats: Published: 2022-03-05 Completed: 2022-03-14 Chapters: 2/2 Words:
8837

and in the depths of my heart a cavern lies

by WhatTheOwlHears

Summary

It was an impressively incompetent kiss, which was a significant fraction of why Wei
Wuxian didn’t identify it as such until Lan Zhan tilted his head a little and started trying to
use his tongue to force his lips open.

Wei Wuxian made a sound like, “Rrrrrrrrrmmmm????” and thanks to a busy pair of
lifetimes honing his reflexes to mostly not be stupid, didn’t open his mouth to object to the
situation.

Notes

first fic on my new account!

ngl this is like,,,,meta-porn rather than the thing itself. cql canon only but if book details
seeped in ah well.
 Chapter 1

Lan Zhan stormed into their inn room, ignored Wei Wuxian’s greeting completely, grabbed him by
one shoulder, and—tore off his belt.

He then made the possible tactical error of letting go of Wei Wuxian’s shoulder to grab at the front
of his robe, and Wei Wuxian staggered onto his feet and back out of reach, only for Lan Zhan,
moving much more decisively, to immediately catch up and seize him by the upper arms.

Wei Wuxian swallowed. Lan Wangji’s face was set into such tense, furious lines he couldn’t read
anything on it.

“What the hell, Lan Zhan,” he said, extremely reasonably he felt, even if about half of it was
bluster to cover the feeling of his stomach dropping away in the horrified certainty that this was it,
that he had finally without even noticing it pushed beyond the limits of Lan Zhan’s strangely
magnificent tolerance for his bullshit, or Lan Zhan had woken up and come to his senses about
how much he’d decided to tolerate and forgive previously, and Wei Wuxian was going to get the
thrashing he deserved and thrown out into the street.

Possibly without any of his clothes since Lan Zhan had, in fact, bought him most of what he was
wearing as well as paying for the room, and if he was this mad might well have decided to take it
all back. Angry Lan Zhan never had had much sense of proportion, not as long as Wei Wuxian had
known him.

When Lan Zhan flung him down onto the nearest bed, rather than the floor or up against a wall or
out the window, he therefore experienced a small spike of relief, which went with the anger into
the all-consuming veil of absolute bewildered confusion when Lan Zhan flung himself on top of
Wei Wuxian and slammed their faces together.

It was an impressively incompetent kiss, which was a significant fraction of why Wei Wuxian
didn’t identify it as such until Lan Zhan tilted his head a little and started trying to use his tongue to
force his lips open.

Wei Wuxian made a sound like, “Rrrrrrrrrmmmm????” and thanks to a busy pair of lifetimes
honing his reflexes to mostly not be stupid, didn’t open his mouth to object to the situation. He did
try to shove Lan Zhan off him so he could speak, but Lan Zhan had always outweighed him and
had gotten his right wrist pinned against the bed somehow with that ridiculous Lan arm strength,
which made his options very limited.

The hand that wasn’t holding him down was pressed between them, still trying to get Wei
Wuxian’s robes open for reasons that he decided probably had nothing to do with wanting to
reclaim them. Wei Wuxian shoved at Lan Zhan’s right shoulder, ineffectually, and thrashed, which
was worse than ineffectual since it drove his body up against Lan Zhan’s hips, where the
undeniable hard presence of a, a shape under all those robes erased any remaining ambiguity about
the nature of this bed-grappling situation.

What the fuck. What the fuck.

Lan Zhan had managed to get inside his lips with a sufficiently forceful thrust of the tongue and
licked back and forth across the front of his clenched teeth, working their mouths together, then
pulled sharply away. “Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian said immediately, then hissed in a feeling he was
going to label ‘frustration’ when Lan Wangji let go of his wrist only to immediately rip his robes
open. “Lan Zhan what are you doing.”

What Lan Zhan was doing was shoving him back down to sloppily kiss down his neck and chest,
and totally ignoring anything Wei Wuxian had to say about it, comments that were strident but not
especially coherent, and then he’d ripped Wei Wuxian’s pants off and spent a second looking at
his dick like he was going to put his mouth there, too, which in spite of everything else about the
situation did get Wei Wuxian’s libido to sit up and take some notice.

Except then instead Lan Zhan was on top of him again, so fast Wei Wuxian didn’t get his mouth
shut in time and now there was a tongue shoving up against his tongue, rubbing and poking at it
and swiping occasionally across the roof of his mouth, and Lan Zhan’s hands seemed to be
constantly alternating between holding and dragging him into place, and busying themselves
between their bodies.

When Lan Zhan drew back again, he didn’t let go of Wei Wuxian at all. His own clothes hung
open, and he seemed to have physically ripped his own undergarment apart. His dick stood up
enormous and red, looking so out of place between the wings of his lovely white and soft-blue
robes it didn’t seem like it was even part of him. “Lan Zhan, stop it, what the fuck,” said Wei
Wuxian, which was not the kind of clever repartee for which he had once been known.

Lan Zhan blinked, once, hard, which was the most reaction he’d shown to being spoken to so far.

Then he grabbed Wei Wuxian by one knee, dragged it up and out to flip him onto his back against
the pillows, and stabbed him in the guts.

With his dick, of course, but even by Wei Wuxian’s standards which included the actual
experience of death, the pain was immediate and severe.

Wei Wuxian yelled, he punched Lan Zhan in the face, he kicked Lan Zhan in the stomach with the
leg that wasn’t being immovably gripped, and half a second later he was plastered against the wall,
stinging, aching, and shivering with shocked disbelief that was, by all rights, a full minute overdue.

He tried not to reflect on how it had taken him until actual pain started to get around to hitting Lan
Zhan about this. Wei Wuxian had never been particularly strong on self-defense.

And something was definitely wrong with Lan Zhan. He thought it was understandable to have
been distracted by that.

The good news was that Lan Zhan hadn’t come after him again. He was still kneeling on the bed in
the same position from which he’d tried to fuck Wei Wuxian, and oh hell he hadn’t even gotten it
in very far and it had hurt that much, if he caught him again and kept going Wei Wuxian was going
to die a humiliating second death.

Lan Zhan wasn’t moving.

He was watching Wei Wuxian, and the locked, grim look on his face had shifted to accommodate
something more, a confusion, a distress. All his muscles kept twitching and Wei Wuxian realized
that not coming after him was taking effort. But Lan Zhan was making the effort.

Which meant he was on a tight time limit to figure this out, but still made him sag with relief.
“You’re still in there, Lan Zhan?” he said. He rubbed his chin. “Blink if you understand me.”

He waited, and Lan Zhan did eventually blink, but it was after long enough and lacking enough in
deliberation that Wei Wuxian thought it was just the inevitable kind. He swallowed.
“Okay, I’m going to come closer, please just stay right there.”

It took an effort of will to push up the hem of one long gracious sleeve and close his fingers around
Lan Zhan’s wrist, and the trembling of the whole limb did nothing to help with his diagnostic, but
fortunately the physical pulse was the least important part right now.

Sure enough, Lan Zhan’s meridians were a mess, and getting worse, his spiritual energy shivering
apart under—Wei Wuxian thought that was probably a poison, which was unfortunate. If it were
possession he’d almost certainly have sensed it from the moment Lan Zhan came in, since nothing
powerful enough to subdue Hanguang-jun and stupid enough to behave this way once it had would
manage to be subtle, but he’d been hoping for a curse. He was good with curses. At worst he could
have transferred it to himself, and Lan Zhan could have restrained him a lot more easily than he
was likely to be able to restrain Lan Zhan.

He wasn’t a doctor. What he wouldn’t give to have Wen Qing here.

“Just one more minute Lan Zhan,” he muttered, poking at the feeling of the poison to try to see
what it was doing beyond the obvious. Lan Zhan shuddered, and he thought maybe he should try
not talking.

It was getting worse, which was a bad sign, but it didn’t seem to be getting worse in the sense of
more poisoned but in the sense the poison had set into motion a problem that was continuing to
spiral, and might not clear itself up even once Lan Zhan’s body finished processing the original
toxin, assuming it survived long enough to do that.

The chances of death looked from here very high.

Lan Zhan’s wrist twisted in his grip and Wei Wuxian was abruptly the one being gripped, dragged
back onto the bed, flattened under a kiss that was slightly less incompetent than before. “Mrrrrrgh,”
he growled into it, and jammed his heel against Lan Zhan’s dick before it could try to go up his
aching ass again. That wouldn’t stop a really determined attempt, but fortunately Lan Zhan wasn’t
thinking super well and had shown a willingness to stop if he screamed, or possibly if punched; he
might yet have to experiment to see which.

No one had come knocking at the door about the screaming. This was a less nice inn than he’d
thought.

Lan Zhan rubbed his dick up against Wei Wuxian’s hip, next to the forbidding heel, and stuck his
tongue down his throat. Wei Wuxian grabbed for his wrist again, diagnosis urgent.

Huh, it was—better? Very, very slightly? Or maybe it had just slowed down how fast it was getting
worse. Yeah, it had definitely slowed down. So Lan Zhan going for him like this might not be just
a symptom of the poisoning, but a response to it that might actually be medically helpful.

Lan Zhan tried to get between his legs again and Wei Wuxian kicked him at the base of the dick,
hoping very hard that this was the kind of jolt that would discourage Lan Zhan and activate
whatever had kept him still that first time, rather than pissing him off and turning this really
violent.

Wei Wuxian summoned up some of his limited supply of spiritual energy and fed it in through his
wrist hold, trying to smooth the flow of Lan Zhan’s.

It didn’t exactly work, but it did seem to change something, and Lan Zhan let out a very soft groan,
his first vocalization since storming in. Possibly that was about having been gently kicked in the
dick.

(Possibly it had been too gently, he was already pressing himself into Wei Wuxian’s thigh again.)

Lan Zhan pushed himself up out of the messy ongoing attempt to simultaneously eat Wei Wuxian’s
face and force-feed him Lan Zhan’s tongue, and blinked, a little more of the earlier confusion
around his eyes.

Wei Ying? he mouthed.

And then the moment of lucidity faded, and his head dropped to bite and suck at Wei Wuxian’s
neck. A highly preferable location, because now he could finally breathe properly! Alright, so
spiritual energy infusions would help, if he had enough, which he definitely did not. He’d save
what he had left for another emergency. He checked Lan Zhan’s meridians again. Still
deteriorating, but definitely slower than when he hadn’t been rutting up against Wei Wuxian and
slobbering all over his neck.

Wei Wuxian had an awful feeling this was one of those conditions where the cure was,
euphemistically, ‘dual cultivation.’ (How the hell had Lan Zhan gotten poisoned with something
insanely rare while on a routine shopping trip?) What, realistically, were his options?

He might be able to incapacitate Lan Zhan, steal his purse, and hire him a prostitute. Lan Zhan
would hate that but he wasn’t going to like any part of this. Assuming the partner didn’t need to be
a cultivator, that was option one. How to figure that out?

Definitely he could not let Lan Zhan fuck him. Wei Wuxian was aware there were techniques to
make that doable and even pleasant, but he did not, personally, know them, and Lan Zhan’s dick
had turned out to be so oversized that for all he knew they wouldn’t even work. Or wouldn’t work
now that Lan Zhan had already tried without, and he was hurting. He refused to check whether
there was blood. His body as it was these days was not durable enough, or good enough at healing,
for that to be anywhere but at the very bottom of his list of options—he could take the pain, but if
Wei Wuxian died like that (possibly an unrealistic concern? but he was sure he’d heard of it
happening) Lan Zhan might legitimately go insane.

Unlike Wei Wuxian, he wouldn’t perceive the entire cultivation world as his enemy when he did,
which should keep the casualty count down, but he might turn on himself and that was obviously
unacceptable.

He’d branded himself, once. It might be a joke coming from Wei Wuxian, but Lan Zhan could not
be trusted to treat himself kindly.

Lan Zhan’s teeth closed on bone and Wei Wuxian grimaced. He was running against the clock. He
really didn’t want to go through all the steps of the prostitute option and have Lan Zhan still
poisoned at the end of it, especially considering they might lose extra time on top of that if his
method of escaping Lan Zhan left him unconscious and there was any delay in reviving him to
make the attempt. Lan Zhan could absolutely die if he messed that one up even slightly. Was there
a third option?

Hm. Okay, new option one. Recruiting a professional downgraded to plan two.

Lan Zhan’s cock had left smears everywhere he rubbed it, but he wasn’t getting so wet that chafing
could be ruled out as a problem. Wei Wuxian eyed it. He might have been willing to brave the high
odds of getting it rammed straight down his throat if he put his mouth anywhere near it, but it had
made it a good inch or two up his ass earlier, and he might be a grotesque savage who did not take
enough baths (this was actually because he didn’t have money, he loved baths) but he drew the line
at shitting on and licking the same thing without a thorough washing in between.

“Lan Zhan,” he said instead, and pushed Lan Zhan’s head between his thighs. If Lan Zhan wanted
to lick him he could do it somewhere useful. (Continue to not think about dogs.)

Directing him away from Wei Wuxian’s dick was surprisingly hard, not because of personal
temptation (it existed but it was so thoroughly under control under the circumstances it might as
well not have) but because Lan Zhan seemed to either really like the idea of sucking it, or to have
noticed and taken personally that Wei Wuxian wasn’t really aroused by all this.

Sorry Lan Zhan! You are terrifying and mortifying enough right now to pretty well counterbalance
your good looks, and your many other virtues are currently not in evidence!

Fortunately Lan Zhan, having been knocked off the rails of his initial fury, was willing to take
direction as long as the direction wasn’t ‘no,’ so Wei Wuxian kept nudging him down when he
nosed up against his cock (which was now showing stirrings of interest because Wei Wuxian was a
mortal man, alright, but he ruthlessly suppressed that) and Lan Zhan’s ability to maintain a train of
thought was so badly degraded that he pretty much focused on whatever was under his nose. Wei
Wuxian’s inner thighs were getting thoroughly slathered in spit. And small bruises and bite marks,
but that was an acceptable loss.

Wei Wuxian checked Lan Zhan’s meridians again, only to have his concentration stutter as Lan
Zhan nosed past his balls. “Ahaha, nope!” he said, wriggling back. “Lan Zhan don’t be gross.
You’re planning to kiss me with that mouth again, right?”

Apparently Lan Zhan’s ability to process words wasn’t completely shot, because recognizing the
phrase kiss me was really the only explanation for him instantly hitting Wei Wuxian like an
avalanche, lips locked, flattening him yet again into the mattress.

Okay, this was fine, this was the next stage in the plan, really. Wei Wuxian made a vague attempt
at kissing back—not easy with Lan Zhan’s total inability to kiss like a reasonable person, but the
flex of his tightly compressed lips excited Lan Zhan unduly—and pressed the spit-slicked insides
of his thighs together around Lan Zhan’s cock, and rocked up to create a slide.

Lan Zhan gasped, and got the idea immediately. He thrust down into the space Wei Wuxian had
created for him, gasped again, and pushed Wei Wuxian’s robes further open to wrap a hand around
one of his hips, which made his heart jolt nervously for a second, but it was just for stability. And
then Lan Zhan was moving steadily, chasing toward a rhythm, and once he had one Wei Wuxian
tried to match it, because if he arched up off the bed as Lan Zhan came down Lan Zhan could get
‘deeper’ before hitting the mattress, which he expected would matter.

That was hard to do against the force and weight of Lan Zhan, who very clearly didn’t comprehend
what he was doing well enough to cooperate, so after what was more than one minute and certainly
less than five Wei Wuxian took a break from that to get hold of Lan Zhan’s wrist again and check.

He’d stopped getting worse. It was working, holy shit. Incrementally, he might even be improving.
At the very least Lan Zhan wasn’t getting closer to death anymore. Which meant getting off like
this should see significant gains even if it didn’t solve the whole thing, which should buy time to
enact plan two if necessary. Wei Wuxian was so good at crisis management.

Lan Zhan changed angles so his cock was running more up the line of Wei Wuxian’s thighs rather
than straight down between them, giving him more overall friction but constantly threatening to
slide up into the cleft of Wei Wuxian’s ass. Which he probably liked and which wouldn’t
necessarily be any more of a problem than any of the rest of it, except for the little jolts of pain
every time he brushed against the…stab zone. It wasn’t serious or unmanageable pain but it did
underline the indignity of it all.

Wei Wuxian kept his thighs together and let his hand rest on the back of Lan Zhan’s head, where
he was nipping his way along Wei Wuxian’s collarbone. “Good thing I don’t have any dignity, huh
Lan Zhan.”

Lan Zhan kept pounding away until Wei Wuxian’s legs were trembling with being kept pressed
together and he’d given up on doing any part of the moving. He caught Lan Zhan’s wrist and
checked. Definite though fractional improvement.

This had better work, because Wei Wuxian might not be able to walk in a straight enough line to
find a professional after this, never mind knocking out even a very stupid and hopefully exhausted
Hanguang-jun. He should have gone around the bed to get some talisman paper before getting back
in grabbing range, increased his options.

You getting close, Lan Zhan? he opened his mouth to ask, and then didn’t, because hearing his own
voice when he knew there wasn’t going to be any kind of answer suddenly seemed like the most
disheartening thing possible. Maybe he should just have let Lan Zhan split him in half, they might
have been done by now.

Wei Wuxian grabbed Lan Zhan’s shoulders and rolled them over onto their sides, so gravity could
do some of the work for him. Lan Zhan stuttered for a second, then gripped his hip and plunged
back in. The slap of skin suggested he liked there not being a solid barrier beyond Wei Wuxian
anymore—should have thought of this position sooner.

His neck was going to be completely black and purple tomorrow.

Maybe he should let Lan Zhan put just the tip inside him again when he finished, to be safe. To
make it more likely the poison’s requirements were met. It wasn’t like he could do more damage
than he already had there, right?

Nope, realistically there was no way to make sure he stopped at the tip. Wei Wuxian double-
checked this logic. Yes it was solid and not founded in terror.

Lan Zhan got frustrated that the tightness of the channel he was fucking into was failing, and
figured out he could hold Wei Wuxian’s legs together with his hands, and after that point Wei
Wuxian just lay there and let himself be used. Lan Zhan rolled them over again, but was now
dragging Wei Wuxian up into him as much as he was thrusting down.

If he’d been less tired and generally wretched and the whole everything of it less shit, he thought
this part might almost have been nice. Maybe he was just getting used to it.

Lan Zhan got wilder, faster, unpredictable. Wei Wuxian hooked one hand around the back of his
neck, sweat-soaked hair between his fingers, and worked the other down to seek out the pulse point
in the wrist again. (There was probably no reason not to use the more accessible throat but wrist
was familiar, the wrist was what he would reach for if he was going to check Lan Zhan’s pulse
normally.)

Lan Zhan’s qi was behaving the same way as the rest of him, wild, swirling. Like this, it was hard
to tell if he was better or worse—ah, no, there it was, all beginning to flow according to a pattern,
narrowing in on a single point—better, yes, definitely Lan Zhan was getting—
Lan Zhan finished, which Wei Wuxian knew first because the inside of his robes was suddenly
wet beneath him, and then because Lan Zhan stopped pounding into him, and then thirdly because
he felt the wild mess of his qi flow steady out and begin to feel something like Lan Wangji’s
meridians should.

And then it kept drifting that way, until Lan Zhan made a very tiny throat sound and pulled his
wrist out of Wei Wuxian’s grip as he drew all his limbs inward for a moment and then, finding the
solid shape of Wei Wuxian preventing him from curling into a ball, rolled over sideways onto the
mattress.

His dick, deflating, flopped wetly over Wei Wuxian’s left leg. Ugh.

Wei Wuxian rolled so they were facing, kept his eyes on Lan Zhan’s face as that unhappy scrunch
smoothed out and his eyes opened, and had the tremendous relief and privilege of watching the
slow dawning of his awareness, of his Lan Zhan.

And then the less pleasant experience of watching the more rapid dawning of absolute horror.

Lan Zhan scrambled back from him, to the end of the bed, which he fell off of, and then sat where
he’d fallen. Wei Wuxian wanted to sit up and—maybe not go after him, respect boundaries, but be
reassuring in some way. But he was doing pretty well to be conscious at the moment, honestly. He
settled for rolling over onto his back again. The pillow tilted his head up enough he could see Lan
Zhan’s face.

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan breathed. Wei Wuxian had never seen his eyes so round.

He managed a proper smile. “Welcome back, Lan Zhan.”

“Wei Ying, I…you…” Lan Zhan’s eyes were flickering all over him now, cataloguing bruises or
reviewing all the places he’d touched, and Wei Wuxian remembered a little belatedly to be self-
conscious, and coerced his leaden arms into folding his robes in, to cover most of it. This only
brought Lan Zhan’s horrified gaze to his face, which didn’t feel any better. “Wei Ying?”

“Do you not remember what happened?” Shit, if he’d considered that might be the case he’d have
hidden the evidence faster.

Lan Zhan shook his head, then said, “I…fragments.”

So it was coming back to him, in pieces. Eventually all of it might. Meaning Wei Wuxian couldn’t
afford any outright lies. Damn. “It’s okay, Lan Zhan,” he said, this smile coming easier. “I figured
it out. Do you know how you got poisoned?”

Lan Zhan’s eyebrows bent in concentration, washing away some of the horror. “The—there was a
fistfight. At an apothecary. Customer demanding a refund. I paused for a moment in case…but
lives were not in danger, and others were intervening. I believe…the complainant started throwing
jars of medicines. One came at my head. I ducked, but—it broke.”

He paused, and a blush made it through his generally gray appearance. “The apothecary asked if I
was married or had a partner, when she saw what I’d breathed. I didn’t understand—she told me to
go to you.”

Lan Zhan’s eyes jerked up to Wei Wuxian. “I didn’t understand,” he repeated, urgent.

Wei Wuxian flopped a hand over his face and laughed. A dumb accident? Really? Better than their
having to go out and handle assassins or a rampaging sex monster in this condition, but really? And
that kind of confusion on top of that. Lan Zhan, so innocent. His partner.

“Well, I’m sure it was for the best,” he said. “Just imagine if it had been anyone else!”

Lan Zhan made an unhappy throat noise, so he probably was imagining.

“They wouldn’t have known how to handle you at all! Think of the blow to Hanguang-jun’s
reputation.” Oh hell, imagine if the apothecary had said nothing and Lan Zhan had kept trying to
do errands. Would he just have grabbed a random person in the street and started stripping them?
What a terrifying poison. She got one quarter of a point restored for avoiding that scenario.

“Wei Ying knew what to do…?” Lan Zhan asked, earnestly baffled and deeply embarrassing.

“I mean!” Wei Wuxian took the hand off his face to laugh it off properly. “Not right away! But I
know you, so I worked it out so both of us got out of it alright.”

A fight on Lan Zhan’s face, and even as messed-up as they both were Wei Wuxian felt like he
could watch that for hours, just Lan Zhan having his own proper complicated subtle expressions.
“Wei Ying is alright?” he asked at last, searching for a re-affirmation of the statement, in doubt.

“I’m fine! I mean, I’m wiped out as you can see but I’ll be fine by tomorrow.”

“Wei Ying was…in danger?”

Ah, shit. Somehow he’d assumed Lan Zhan had grasped that part of his own poisoned behavior
just fine. Probably because of the horror. “Ah, not so much! Just, your poisoned alter ego didn’t
have the best understanding of…human anatomy. I had to…redirect.” Quick, redirect the subject.
“At least, I assume that was the poison, Lan Zhan!” he added, teasing. “Maybe you Lans don’t
learn even the most basic things. Are you just as terrible a kisser when you’re in your right mind?”

The teasing fell very flat. Lan Zhan seemed to curl in on himself once more, diminished inside the
spilled-open, mussed layers of his pretty clothes. “I would not know.”

Wei Wuxian swallowed. “Oh, oh hell Lan Zhan. This was your first time anything?”

Not that his own experience was extensive but there’d been careless kisses and a drunken fumble or
so. And Lan Zhan had had thirteen extra years, and was still like this. Wei Wuxian mentally added
twenty extra mental demerits to that apothecary’s tally. Lan Zhan squeezed his eyes shut and didn’t
answer.

“Hey,” said Wei Wuxian, and found he’d recouped enough energy to roll onto his knees and crawl
toward the end of the bed, albeit with a small grunt of pain at some of the initial motions. Turned
out if he moved, fun story, wearing clothes now made his nipples sting! This had better be healed
up by tomorrow. “Hey, Lan Zhan, come here.”

Lan Zhan opened his eyes, and when Wei Wuxian put his hand out, he tilted his head and pressed
his cheek into the palm of it. Oh, Lan Zhan. Wei Wuxian rubbed back and forth a little with the
end of his thumb. He’d missed him so much. “Here,” he said, and bent in.

Lan Zhan was gentle, this time, hesitant. Not quite shy, because his mouth slid open at the first
suggestion of pressure, but he kissed Wei Wuxian back with enormous care.

“There.” Wei Wuxian smiled as they parted. “No, Lan Zhan, that wasn’t so bad at all.”

The weight behind Lan Zhan’s eyes seemed barely eased. Wei Wuxian stroked his face again.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he tried. “Remember, for me anything is okay, as long as it’s you. It’s just that
wasn’t you, not really. So I kept in mind what the real you would want.”

Lan Zhan’s eyelashes fluttered down against his cheeks. He didn’t pull away from Wei Wuxian’s
hand. “Should have killed me.”
 Chapter 2

Wei Wuxian jerked back, like the words were a new poison. “What? What the fuck? No. No way.”

It wasn’t that he couldn’t have—there was no way he could take Lan Zhan in a fair fight anymore
at all, let alone barehanded, but Lan Zhan hadn’t been in any state to defend himself against
anything complex. Wei Wuxian could have resorted to any one of a dozen tricks in an instant—
there were a few he could think of that wouldn’t even have permanently harmed Lan Zhan, almost
definitely, except by leaving him with the poison. All of which he’d been keeping in the back of his
head just in case the whole time, except the ones he’d only just thought of.

Killing Lan Zhan had definitely been possible. It just hadn’t been an option.

Lan Zhan looked at him with an expression like death. “I remember,” he said ponderously. “You
screamed.” His hands clenched and unclenched again. “I. I put. I. Wei Ying screamed.” His hand
rose to his cheek, the opposite one from the one Wei Wuxian had just been cradling, the one he’d
punched. It wasn’t visibly swollen, just a little red maybe now the flush had faded from the rest of
his skin, but Lan Zhan could clearly still feel the blow in his flesh. “You said: what I would want.
You should have killed me.”

“Fine, I did what I would want, then.” Lan Zhan stared at him and he amended, “Which is both of
us alive, stupid Lan Zhan! There was no way I was going to kill you, it wasn’t even you calling the
shots, it was your stupid giant dick or whatever. I’d rather die.” Huh, Lan Zhan was making him
get stupidly melodramatic. “But I knew you’d hate that, so I didn’t even consider it an option.”
Worse! That was worse! “You do know you were already dying, right Lan Zhan? All I’d have had
to do was knock you out long enough and wait, and you’d be gone.”

Lan Zhan stared at him, clearly not having realized that. “Oh,” he murmured, and rubbed a little at
his wrist, as though feeling the phantom presence of Wei Wuxian’s death grip. And figuring out
what the point of it had been. He let his breath out in a long huff, and took his hand from his own
pulse point. “Still. Anyone who would try to do that to Wei Ying. I would see them dead.”

“Oh wow, Lan Zhan has outlawed me having a sex life ever?” Wei Wuxian joked, and when it fell
dead flat he reversed course, “Right, okay, fine, can we say the person is Poisoned Brain and I
killed it by figuring out how to cure you?”

Lan Zhan shook his head, so apparently he was determined to carry the weight of the world some
more, this time in regard specifically to Wei Wuxian’s ass. Wei Wuxian flopped back flat on the
bed. “Man, Lan Zhan, it’s not like I expected thanks or anything.” They didn’t bother with thanks
between them, wasn’t that the rule? “But I’m not planning to apologize for saving you, either.”

There was a burst of motion as Lan Zhan stood up, and then he stayed in place putting his clothes
back in order, layer by layer until the outer one looked perfectly normal. He found his belt and put
that back on. Then he bowed to Wei Wuxian, still sprawled on the bed. “I am in Wei Ying’s debt,”
he said with great solemnity.

And then he turned and walked right out of the room.

Wei Wuxian lay there and wondered where exactly Lan Zhan intended to go, without his sword
and without any pants. Granted it wasn’t actually obvious he wasn’t wearing them under all that,
his hemlines were so low, but Lan Zhan seemed like he’d be acutely conscious of not wearing
underwear in public. But also his bottom layer probably felt really gross because he’d worked up a
huge sweat. All of him probably felt gross. Wei Wuxian felt pretty gross. If Lan Zhan were here,
he’d complain until his friend ordered him up a bath.

If Bichen wasn’t still on the floor where Poisoned Lan Zhan had dropped it while half-assedly
stripping, Wei Wuxian would assume Lan Zhan had gone home. He guessed he wouldn’t blame
him.

If Wei Wuxian had been able to just go home after some of the awful gross things he’d done, he
definitely would have.

He sat up. If Lan Zhan was out there feeling even slightly like he had, fresh from the Burial
Mounds the first time—

Lan Zhan had left, which probably meant he wanted to be left alone, but sometimes even when you
wanted that it wasn’t good for you.

Wei Wuxian got up, carefully, and found once he was on his feet that while he was absolutely
exhausted, overall he didn’t feel as bad as he’d feared. He went through the mildly excruciating but
worthwhile process of changing into his other set of clean clothes, made sure his hair looked
presentable to a standard of ‘did not just spend half an hour on his back getting fucked,’ scooped up
Bichen, and set out.

He’d been hoping Lan Zhan would come back by the time he was ready to go, but he hadn’t. It
wasn’t that big a town, so he was pretty sure there was only the one apothecary, so he went there
first to make sure Lan Zhan wasn’t there murdering anyone with his bare hands and that the broken
poison bottle hadn’t led to any other obvious drama, which it hadn’t. Additional secret drama
seemed possible, but wasn’t Wei Wuxian’s business right now. It was the right apothecary, though;
they were still cleaning up from the fight.

He wondered if the rowdy customer who’d poisoned Lan Zhan had had a good reason for being
mad, and if the apothecary had his address. To discuss his regard for public safety. Also not the
matter of the moment, though.

Not being up to jumping between roofs right now, he decided to spiral out from here and just look
in any places Lan Zhan might be, as he went.

Wei Wuxian found himself wishing for a walking stick before long. It wasn’t that his legs weren’t
working but he could have used something to lean on. Maybe he should use Bichen as a walking
stick, and see if that drew Lan Zhan out through sheer outrage. That was the kind of thing he would
have done to Suibian back in the day and not thought twice about it, but Lan Zhan’s sword was—

He still kind of couldn’t believe that had just happened.

Lan Zhan kicking him out into the street because he’d finally figured out Wei Wuxian wasn’t
worth tolerating would have been—well, he couldn’t honestly say he’d prefer that, but that was
because he was actually a horrible person who’d rather Lan Zhan be unhappy than hate him. If he
was given the power to make that have happened instead, he—hm. No.

That wouldn’t be right either, changing Lan Zhan’s mind for him, for his own good. Wei Wuxian
had made the choice that he believed would leave him with the fewest and most tolerable regrets;
that was all he could control.

Of course, this debate was assuming Lan Zhan didn’t hate him now anyway. Then it would be no-
contest.
Finally, after more than an hour of searching had the day drawing on to evening, he spotted a
distinctive patch of white, sulking on a rooftop halfway across town from their inn. Wei Wuxian
was glad he’d stopped for a rest just recently, as he started to strategize getting up there. It wasn’t
the easiest building he’d ever climbed, and he wasn’t in the best shape of either life—though also
definitely not the worst! When Jin Ling had actually stabbed him in the guts it had been vastly
more incapacitating, for example.

Lan Zhan was aware of him long before he heaved himself up onto the tiles, but didn’t turn around.
With some people that would have been an obvious ‘go away’ but Lan Zhan was more complicated
than that. Wei Wuxian crossed carefully until he was only a little way behind him, waited a
second, then said,

“Lan Zhan.”

It took just long enough he thought maybe his friend was going to ignore him outright, just leave
him staring at that curtain of hair that was much more of a mess than normal, but then Lan Zhan
twisted at the waist and looked up at him, over one shoulder.

He looked so sad.

Wei Wuxian extended Bichen into Lan Zhan’s reach. “Here,” he said. “I mean, I didn’t have to
search for three months to get it back to you, but.”

Something shifted in Lan Zhan’s expression, recognition, memory; understanding, maybe, of the
circle Wei Wuxian was trying to create, and better. He reached up and accepted his sword.
Lowered it into his lap and looked down at it, at his own fingers on the beautiful scabbard.

“I never,” he said softly, at length, “expected to have this much fellow-feeling for Jiang Wanyin.”

The words hit Wei Wuxian like a blow, like a punch to the mouth, harder than Lan Zhan’s mouth
smacking into his earlier, harder than almost anything Lan Zhan had hit him with all day. He felt
like he barely stopped himself from staggering back under them even though they had no mass;
could not breathe; stood half poised to turn, to go, to run before Lan Zhan could say it any more
overtly, before he had to hear the last thing like home he had being taken away.

He should have known. He had known. Lan Zhan had spoken of debt and walked away from him.

He hates you. He really hates you, now. For seeing him like that. For doing those things. For
making him feel as low and dirty as you. You ruined it. This one good and lovely thing, of course it
wasn’t yours to keep.

Just like Jiang Cheng, he’s reached his limit and he never wants to see you again.

If they’d been on solid ground, Wei Wuxian would have turned and left. He could feel it in his
body; he’d have fled with a slow, deliberate tread, the kind that ate up distance and did not provoke
pursuit. He tended to grasp onto a certain, few things with a lunatic determination sometimes, to set
his feet and never give in on just those vital points, as though to make up for all the things he never
bothered to hold onto at all.

He was a selfish, greedy person and he poured all of that he could into refusing to give up those
few important things. But even in those he had his limits, he could get worn down, he had his
moments when he just—let go. It was so much easier, in the end, to let go.

But right now he had cornered himself with the immovable fact that he had pushed himself to his
absolute physical limits getting up here, and if he tried to climb down again without lying on the
tiles and resting up first he would fall and break his neck. And he didn’t think Lan Zhan hated him
enough to be happy about that.

“I think you’re confused, Lan Zhan!” he said brightly, strategizing how to sit down to recuperate
without making Lan Zhan feel too much like Wei Wuxian was sitting with him, trying to keep him
company despite being entirely unwelcome. “Jiang Cheng was the one handing the sword back,
that time, not having it given.”

He took a few steps along and further up the tiles, around the corner of the roof, choosing his steps
carefully because unsteady legs were hell on the balance, before sitting down facing east, to Lan
Zhan’s north, so he could see him without turning but wasn’t encroaching too close. Lan Zhan
didn’t have to see him at all.

His breath whooshed out of him at the relief of not being standing up anymore.

Lan Zhan didn’t acknowledge his deflection in any way, which was the best he could hope for,
really.

I thought I was the one with the bad memory, he didn’t prod. His days of trying to annoy a reaction
out of Lan Wangji were behind him.

The empty shivering feeling he’d put aside when he resolved to focus on helping Lan Zhan was
coming back.

It doesn’t matter that he wishes I hadn’t, Wei Wuxian told himself. Lan Zhan is alive. That’s more
important. The most important.

He would have saved me without my permission back then, if he could have.

…Lan Zhan had chosen not to drag Wei Wuxian to Gusu by force, when he was living in the
Burial Mounds, and maybe that was because he wasn’t sure it would work and wasn’t sure Wei
Wuxian was dying and wasn’t sure it was morally defensible, considering he had people to protect,
or because he didn’t think it could work if Wei Wuxian didn’t want it to, so it would be no use
forcing him.

Or maybe it was because of his mother, and how he had reason to feel that locking someone up in
the Cloud Recesses to save their life was an intolerable violation.

A violation.

Lan Zhan would rather be dead, than have to live like this.

Ah. So this was how that felt. Wei Wuxian chuckled a little and folded one arm across his
stomach. This wasn’t a new thing, was it? Why was he surprised?

He remembered when Jiang Cheng was trying to die, over his golden core. Because he’d lost what
he needed to be the inheritor of Yunmeng Jiang. Because Wei Wuxian hadn’t protected him. It had
been the worst feeling, then. But somehow he hadn’t realized until now—he’d made people feel
that way too, hadn’t he? Lan Zhan, at least. It was the same. He hadn’t seen how it was the same
thing.

It’s not okay for you to die, Wei Wuxian didn’t have the right to say. Hanguang-jun’s life is so
much more important than mine ever was and hasn’t become a curse upon the world, it’s not the
same thing at all.
“You always…” said Lan Zhan softly.

“Hm? Hah?” Had Lan Zhan stopped, or had Wei Wuxian missed some final hushed murmur.

“You always do this.” A little louder, far more clipped. Lan Zhan was still staring down at his own
hand on his own sword. “Carve off pieces of yourself and hand them away, like it’s nothing. Like
it’s acceptable.”

“Ah, I mean—Lan Zhan…” It doesn’t matter if you accept it or not, you’re alive and I’m not sorry.
“I wouldn’t do it for just anyone.”

He did care about helping people! But for almost anybody but Lan Zhan he would definitely have
taken the risk to their life of going running for a prostitute and hoping they didn’t die in the interim.
If he’d even figured out what was wrong.

Lan Zhan breathed in, and let it out, oddly labored. “I know.” He ran his hand down Bichen like it
was his guqin strings. “Wei Ying’s care is…a heavy thing.”

Wei Wuxian thought of Lan Wangji sealing his own spiritual power in the Guanyin temple. Of
scars. “You too,” he said, sounding sulky in his own ears, and then bit his tongue.

Stupid. Drawing attention to—it wasn’t even that he thought it wasn’t true anymore; he didn’t even
think Jiang Cheng completely didn’t care about him anymore. He’d seen those tears. Hating him
wouldn’t hurt so much if he knew how to stop caring altogether.

Hating him must be tearing Lan Zhan apart.

Wei Wuxian closed his eyes. Behind him, the sun was going down. “Can’t we…can we just put it
behind us? Don’t think about it, Lan Zhan. It really wasn’t that terrible. Just…just go home and…”
If he said forget about me he was going to cry.

Lan Zhan turned toward him again, the sinking sun falling dramatically over his face, dyeing half
of it deep gold and casting the part of it nearer Wei Wuxian into black shadow. “Wei Ying…” His
posture became less perfect; dejection. “Of course. I won’t trouble you any longer.”

Wei Wuxian laughed, the sound oddly cracked. “Trouble me?”

Lan Zhan swallowed. “I know…”

“No. No, Lan Zhan, for crying out loud. I’m not saying this for my comfort. Whatever you think—
whatever you’re imagining. I’m not going to start feeling unsafe sharing a room, or wanting not to
see you, or any such thing. That wasn’t you. I handled it. If you want to be mad at me, that’s—you
know, go ahead! Yell at me about, I don’t know, contamination or not respecting your wishes well
enough or, or standards of conduct, chastity—I’m not sorry I saved you. I’d do it again. But I’m
sorry you hate it. I’m sorry you have to live with this.

“So if you want the reminder of it out of your sight, if you can’t—you don’t owe me anything,
ever. But don’t walk away because you think I want that.” He shook his head. Was he crying? His
eyes were hot, anyway. “Stop trying to be kind when you…”

Wei Wuxian felt the fire drain out of his chest, and let his head fall. What was he saying? Lan
Zhan was going to continue to try to be kind, no matter what Wei Wuxian had done to ruin things
between them. He wasn’t Jiang Cheng, even if he had come to the same inevitable conclusions.

Wei Wuxian flopped back, onto the roof tiles, looked into the blood-tinged pallor of the sky. “You
can be mad, Lan Zhan,” he said. “It doesn’t help anyone to try to crush it down and pretend.”

“I am not angry with Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said, sounding ironically fairly annoyed.

“Hm.”

“Understanding does not mean I approve.”

It had been a long time since Wei Wuxian had found Lan Wangji this hard to understand. He had to
pick that sentence apart, determine why he was speaking of approval and of denying it right after
claiming not to be angry, to figure out what he understood. “Of…Jiang Cheng?” he asked at last.

Lan Zhan nodded. “Don’t have to condone his reactions just because…”

“Because I’ve hurt you the same way, and now you get it. Ah, Lan Zhan.” Wei Wuxian went
flatter against the tile. His body ached. He could feel every place Lan Zhan had bruised and bitten
him and rubbed him raw, and the overused muscles, and the first, harshest pain that he was still
forced to hope wasn’t a meaningful injury because like hell was he taking it to a doctor.

“It is unworthy of me to complain,” Lan Zhan said, subdued. “What I have—done, to Wei Ying…”

“I’m not holding you responsible, I’ve told you!” Wei Wuxian flapped a hand. “I’m happy I was
able to help, understand Lan Zhan? Just stop making it worse because you think you owe me your
grief about it, I don’t want it.”

He was annoyed, a little, at being resented for going to such lengths and making people carry the
weight of his choices, because he never asked them to. They weren’t supposed to, that was the
whole point. He’d worked hard to keep Jiang Cheng from carrying it!

It hadn’t worked, even before Wen Ning gave him away; he’d just left him carrying one end of it
without understanding the shape or cause of the burden, or why Wei Wuxian seemed not to be
holding up his end. He got that now. It hadn’t helped as much as he wanted it to, keeping it secret.
But he had tried!

“I don’t want it,” he repeated to the bloodied sky. “Be upset for you if you want. But not for me,
Lan Zhan.”

“Wei Ying is worth being sad for.”

“Well I know you think that,” Wei Wuxian smiled.

Then, “Ah, I wasn’t actually saying it’s not true. Just, Lan Zhan—it’s not—” He chewed the inside
of his cheek. “This time, it was you who had a problem and me who helped. It wasn’t fun, but once
I figured it out and had a plan the only thing I was worried about was it wouldn’t work, and you’d
die. So it’s really backwards for you to be worrying about me. No matter how it looked, I was in
control of the situation after about the first ninety seconds, so I was fine.

“Lan Zhan is the one who got poisoned and didn’t get a choice. So it actually is fine if you’re mad
at me! I’m just not sorry, because you’re alive.”

It really was a lot like the situation with Jiang Cheng back then, wasn’t it, except this time he’d
been throwing together his plan completely on the fly and there had been absolutely no way to
consult Lan Zhan on his opinion. Or hide it, afterward.

Wei Wuxian sighed.

“If you resent my choosing that solution, I want to know about it, okay?”

Lan Zhan was quiet for a while. “I don’t,” he said at last, quiet and convincing. Then: “Is Wei
Ying really alright?”

“Ugh. My legs are so tired, Lan Zhan.” He flopped an arm over his face, conveniently taking any
wetness around his eyes that might have collected while he was staring at the sky. “Carry me
home, won’t you?”

“Wei Ying…” There was such a weight to the way he said it that Wei Wuxian thought he must
have miscalculated, that the request didn’t reassure Lan Zhan at all that everything could stay the
same, but only burdened him more. “Back to Cloud Recesses?” he asked, dubiously, and Wei
Wuxian snorted. He had told Lan Zhan to go home meaning there just a minute ago, hadn’t he?
Wasn’t he being confusing.

“Kind of a long trip for one go. I meant just back to the inn for now, actually. We can get baths!
Don’t you want a bath?”

“…mn,” Lan Zhan admitted. With feeling. And he wasn’t even the one who’d gotten filthiest.

“Do you want to get a different room first?” It was a little extravagant, but Lan Zhan had money to
throw away on much less important things than giving himself a safe-feeling space to take his
clothes off and get cleaned up.

“Mn.”

“Okay, we’ll do that then.” He felt Lan Zhan drawing close, across the roof tiles, and groped out
one-handed until he found his arm in its sumptuously textured silk, and gave it a pat. “We’re okay,
Lan Zhan. It’s all going to be fine.”

Lan Zhan sighed. After a while he asked, “Does Wei Ying really want to be carried?”

Wei Wuxian made a face. He did lie a lot, didn’t he. “Yeah, actually. If you wait a bit I can get
down on my own, though.”

Lan Zhan made a disapproving sound which was actually a real relief to hear, and knelt down to
scoop Wei Wuxian into his arms. He paused for a long moment before following through on the
motion, waiting to see if Wei Wuxian recoiled or objected, which he wouldn’t have done yesterday
or this morning.

But if Lan Zhan being a little less high-handed about manhandling him around was the worst thing
to last from this whole nightmare, they were coming out way ahead.

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