Spectre
by Rose Thorne
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the material associated with The Untamed and make no money.
He can only watch, fingers aching where they had previously kept desperate hold before it was torn from him, as Wei Ying plummets, feeling as though he too is hurtling through the air. His face is composed in a look of horrifyingly relief as he falls—and he counts that, too, as his failure. A part of his soul is swallowed by the chasm as well.
Lan WangJi finds himself sitting in his own bed in the dark Jingshi, shaky hand outstretched, Wei Ying's name on his lips.
The bed is empty but for him, and for a terrible moment he is lost in the notion that perhaps his miraculous return was the dream, a fantasy constructed in the cruel way only a desperate mind can manage.
Then, footsteps—his gait, quick. Fingers entwine with his own.
"I'm here, Lan Zhan."
In the dark, Wei Ying's smile has a haunted quality, as though he knows what he has dreamt and has his own secret guilt, his own nightmares borne from memory. Lan WangJi has never had the words to express emotion, not easily, and Wei Ying is the same in that way. He understands they may never speak of what haunts them. Even doing so may not ease it.
He finds action easier, and he pulls Wei Ying to him, into their bed, holds the proof of his physical existence close and presses his ear to his chest to hear his heartbeat. Frantic, a bit, as though Wei Ying has also had an awful memory haunt him in dreams tonight, but there, and it enables him to slowly calm in a way he could not, following such dreams, in the months of separation after the fall of Jin Guangyao. Tonight marks the first time he has had the dream since Wei Ying rejoined him in Gusu, the first time Wei Ying has seen this, and the first time Lan WangJi has been able to hear Wei Ying's heartbeat and be assured he truly did return.
Eventually he's aware of Wei Ying's nimble fingers entwined in his hair, gentle massaging of his scalp, of the here and now. There are tears on his face when Lan WangJi looks up, an apology on his lips, and he kisses both away.
Physicality grounds him; he hopes Wei Ying shares that with him as well. Perhaps so, because their hands sometimes tangle as they remap each other's bodies with fumbling desperation, as they work in tandem to chase away the darkness through visceral carnal pleasure.
Afterward, in a knot of bedsheets and limbs, feeling grounded again in the present, in Wei Ying's existence, not at peace but at least at something like it, Lan WangJi can admit to himself this method of coping is likely unhealthy.
Someday, he can hope, they will move beyond it, find words that will help them both, in the future which can now exist for them.
ChrissySky will happily take the blame for pulling me into this fandom, I'm sure. This fermented in my brain and needed to be let out. It's not beta-read, but I hope it reads well. I wanted to write it in Lan Zhan's voice.