Wangji,
I hope this letter finds you well.
Please forgive my recent lapse in correspondence. I have been kept busy in the happiest of ways at Lotus Pier, and between my duties as an instructor and my privileges as a guest, I sometimes only recall my debts to you as an absent brother once I am already abed and it is too late to pen a reply. Even now, I confess that I write to you not because I have suddenly grown less forgetful, but because there is a rather delicate matter on which I must beg your guidance.
You see, I have recently made a spectacle of myself in front of someone I respect and admire very much, and while there were external factors at play, I can blame no one but myself for the outrageous things I said and did. Likewise, it is up to no one but myself to put things right. The difficulty lies not in the apology but in making abundantly clear that I have no wish to trespass upon his personal boundaries. In short: what should one do after acting in an immodest and presumptuous way with a friend one esteems very highly? I would be grateful for any word of advice you may have to offer; you have years of experience not only as Chief Cultivator but as a father and husband, which makes you a voice of authority on matters in which I am only a novice. More to the point, I trust your judgment far more than I do my own, these days.
Please give my regards to Wei-gongzi and young Sizhui – and young Jingyi, if Wei-gongzi happens to read this over your shoulder.
All the best,
Your brother
…
That morning, Lan Xichen finds himself at Jiang Wanyin's office door, his hand frozen in the act of knocking.
Behind him, a pair of servants walk by, chattering away with baskets of linen in their arms. Sunlight filters weakly through the clouds above. The sky is painfully reflective today, and pale grey as the iced-over surface of the lake. The servants and disciples have all begun wearing extra layers and lighting hearth-fires to beat back the winter chill. Lan Xichen doesn't enjoy freezing weather as a general rule, but today he finds himself grateful for it. If he weren't worried about falling sick and causing even more trouble than he already has, he would have tried to take a cold swim in the lake by now.
A long one.
"Zewu-jun?"
He starts, lowering his arm. A passing servant with a covered hamper has stopped on her way to the kitchens. "Are you looking for someone?" she asks.
"Yes," he says, attempting a smile. "Jiang-zongzhu."
She nods at the door. "He should be in there."
"I know. Thank you."
She dips her head in lieu of a bow and walks away. Lan Xichen turns back around to face the door.
He can't stay out here forever. For heaven's sake, he is old enough to be able to confront his own mistakes. Do not be of two minds. He has already spent hours wrestling with his own cowardice, imagining every wild scenario in which he slips away from Lotus Pier unheard and unnoticed as some kind of meager redress for his behaviour last night. Jiang Wanyin was right: his first instinct is to give way, not to stand his ground. To leave without giving notice would be nothing short of insulting. And to leave without owning up to his errors would contravene both the laws of his sect and his own conscience. If he is dismissed … well, that is a different matter. He will go meekly. It would only be just.
But the prospect is so painful that he can't bring himself to move.
"Please excuse me," a quiet voice says.
Lan Xichen steps backward. Another servant has appeared, this time carrying a serving-tray loaded with bowls of food and a tea set. "Are you here to see Jiang-zongzhu?" he asks, transferring the tray to one hand.
"Yes," Lan Xichen says, "but –"
"I'll let him know you're here," the servant says. Then, before Lan Xichen can protest, he slides back the door and steps inside. "Zongzhu," he announces, "Zewu-jun is here for you."
Well, Lan Xichen thinks. Serves me right for trying to postpone this conversation. He shuts his eyes, takes one last fortifying breath, and then tucks an arm behind his back and follows the servant inside.
Jiang Wanyin appears to be poring over his bookkeeping records, which are laid out neatly on the desk along with a dripping brush and inkstone. He acknowledges neither of his visitors. The servant puts the tray down and bows out of the room; and just like that, they're left alone together.
Lan Xichen allows his gaze to linger – for one last, selfish moment – on the man behind the desk.
Jiang Wanyin, whose letters lie concealed in the Hanshi like a secret treasure. Jiang Wanyin, whose character contradicts about a thousand rules and yet who remains a better example of integrity than almost anyone else Lan Xichen has ever known. Jiang Wanyin, who loves his nephew; Jiang Wanyin, who cannot bear to be second-best; Jiang Wanyin, who would rather die than abandon his pride. Jiang Wanyin, who guards his home as fiercely as a river guards its bedrock, and yet who informed him only yesterday that he may remain at Lotus Pier for as long as he desires.
There can be no thought of that now, of course. But it was still an astonishingly generous thing to say. Lan Xichen wishes – not for the first time since he awoke this morning – that his drunken self had a little less appetite and a little more sense.
He approaches and folds himself down on the other side of the desk.
"Good morning."
Jiang Wanyin grunts something that might only with generosity be called a return greeting.
Lan Xichen waits, sitting with correct and tactful posture, hands folded, gaze cast down in self-reproach. Jiang Wanyin deserves the chance to rebuke him for his conduct last night.
But he does not. Instead, he dips his brush into ink and dashes off a few quick calculations in the margins. He does not give Lan Xichen so much as a sideways glance.
Fair enough.
"I owe you an apology," Lan Xichen begins.
"No need," Jiang Wanyin snaps immediately, as though he has been waiting for it. Then he catches himself and scowls down at his accounts. "I mean … What for?"
"For being so forward with you last night." Lan Xichen has rehearsed this – rehearsed it! As if he were fifteen years old again! – but that still leaves him with the enormous mortification of saying it all aloud. "It was inexcusable."
The brush stops, held suspended over the paper.
"You were drunk, weren't you?"
"Yes."
"Off a single shot?"
"I am afraid so."
Jiang Wanyin looks up to deliver him an incredulous look. "How?" he demands. "No one's tolerance is that terrible."
But Lan Xichen is not to be sidetracked. "I would not have done what I did last night if I were sober."
"Didn't you say you had a method of circulating the alcohol through your body or whatever?"
"Yes, but …" Heavens, this is embarrassing. "I was convinced that I had chosen the right cup, but I had not. The liquor overwhelmed my system before I knew it."
"You don't say."
"And it was quite strong," Lan Xichen adds doubtfully. His head was spinning quite badly last night, but he isn't sure if that was due to the alcohol or to … to …
No, it had to be the alcohol.
"No offense," Jiang Wanyin says, thankfully confirming this, "but anything will feel strong if you've never been allowed to drink."
He puts the brush down, lays aside the topmost sheet to dry and begins perusing the next. The silence that follows is a little less taut, a little more reminiscent of all the meals they've shared together this winter. Against his own better judgement, Lan Xichen lets his spine relax, his hands unclench in his lap. Then Mingjue's disappointed face flashes across his mind. Where is his backbone?
"I am sorry," he says quietly.
Jiang Wanyin sighs through his nose and lifts his gaze again. "What for? Your only mistake was in agreeing to anything Wei Wuxian said."
He looks annoyed, but that's almost reassuring. Annoyance is better than fury. Annoyance is better than revulsion. Lan Xichen exhales. "Yes. I should have deferred to your prior experience as his brother and sect leader."
"Yeah, you should have." Jiang Wanyin taps his fingers on the table. His eyes are narrowed. "You didn't black out, did you?"
"Ah … no."
"What else do you remember?"
"Pardon?"
"What else do you remember, besides being inexcusably forward?"
I remember almost kissing a poem into your throat. "Just that I made a complete fool of myself." Which about summarizes everything he did, so it's not strictly a lie. "I would understand if you did not wish to see me for a while. I can remove myself from Lotus Pier until –"
"What?" Jiang Wanyin says sharply. "What gave you that idea?"
Lan Xichen glances back up at him and finds that the scowl of annoyance has become a scowl of objection. Hope flutters, unwarranted, in his chest. "Jiang-zongzhu …" He hesitates. Leaving would be the proper thing to do, but he lost the right to preach propriety about three outrageous acts ago. "You must have been exceedingly uncomfortable," he says helplessly. "I thought –"
"Uncomfortable?" Jiang Wanyin sounds insulted. "You of all people don't have the power to make me uncomfortable."
"I know," Lan Xichen tries again, "but –"
"Zewu-jun, you were drunk. It was an accident. Let's just forget about it." Jiang Wanyin looks away. "Do you even know how many times I've gotten drunk and done stupid things?"
"No?"
"Exactly. Because I don't keep count, and neither does anyone else who has a right to know. It's not the end of the world." He reaches for the serving-tray and picks up the teapot. "Besides" – he pours, inexpertly but with great determination, into a glossed and painted cup – "you said you didn't want to leave."
"I did?"
"Yes. Last night."
"Oh," Lan Xichen says faintly. "Well … it is true. I do not."
"Then don't." The cup is pushed toward him across the table.
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
Jiang Wanyin goes back to his bookkeeping, as if this puts an irrefutable end to the discussion, and they lapse into silence.
Lan Xichen hesitates. Then he picks up the tea and takes a sip.
All right.
So this is … not what he was expecting.
Jiang Wanyin has never before scrupled to upbraid him for his actions. Orto take offence at the actions of others. Everything that happened yesterday – does it really not bother him?
Lan Xichen might have been ready to accept, with great relief, that being embraced so shamelessly was not enough to scandalize him. And he might have been ready to hope, with due caution, that Jiang Wanyin would not mind a sober repeat performance one day. But that Jiang Wanyin could have mistaken his embraces, his flirtations, his offer of warmth, for anything but the prurient overtures of a too-honest drunk, doesn't so much shock him as beggar all belief. I can remedy that. Heavens, what a disgrace. It should have damned him. It should have given him away at once. If by some miracle it has not – as must be the case, since he is not being made to answer for it – then Jiang Wanyin must have assumed there was no difference between that offer of warmth and the physical affection Lan Xichen had already lavished upon him.
It isn't right, of course, to rely upon another's ignorance or inexperience in order to save face for oneself. But Lan Xichen has no alternative. The only way he could have acted more ignobly last night would have been if he'd taken off his ribbon and strung it around somebody's neck.
He sneaks a look at his companion over the rim of the cup.
Jiang Wanyin is frowning down at his papers, but it is the perfectly ordinary frown of concentration, not displeasure; with one elbow propped up on the table and his fingers curling before his mouth, he looks just like the youthful acolyte Lan Xichen remembers from twenty years ago. His topknot is tied with a violet ribbon, his robes chosen to match. The base of his throat is snugly wrapped in four layers of gradually darker purple silk. Thin winter sunlight passes through the windows behind him and illuminates his left hand, the tendons, the knuckles, as he drags a thumb along the clear-cut angle of his own jaw.
Lan Xichen looks away, mouth gone dry.
What would he even say if he were asked to justify himself? That he hadn't meant to? Hadn't wanted to? That he has not already forced himself to look away like this on a thousand prior occasions, knowing what happened the last time he let himself be so enchanted by another person? Lying is forbidden, and he has learned better than to shut his eyes against inconvenient truths. He should count himself lucky not to have alienated, with a single thoughtless, drunken mistake, the one man who owes him no allegiance but whose presence in his life he very much wants to keep.
"This might take a while," Jiang Wanyin says, startling him. He looks up from his accounts to give Lan Xichen a direct, clear-eyed look, one that says the matter is closed as far as he is concerned. "You don't have to stay, if you have work of your own to do."
Not a dismissal, but an invitation to remain and keep him company. Lan Xichen smiles.
"Oh, no," he says. "I am happy where I am."
Perhaps he could write to his brother and get a second opinion.
…
Xiongzhang,
Thank you for your letter. Do not worry about writing back every week. I know that you are busy, and hope that your teaching continues to find success. Perhaps someday we could host another delegation of students from each sect, like in the summer I met Wei Ying. Apart from the diplomatic and educational benefits, I would like to meet the junior disciples you have told me about; they sound like bright and worthy students.
You may always ask me for advice, but I do not think I can properly understand your situation from my own experience. I have had very few highly-esteemed friends over the course of my life. Moreover, I have only acted in an immodest and presumptuous way with one of them, and as he is now my husband, modesty is no longer an issue. But Xiongzhang's character is inviolable, so if you have apologized, this person should need no further proof of your good intentions. It is not your responsibility to make them have faith in you. Additionally, Jiang Wanyin would be a hypocrite to judge anyone for making a spectacle of themselves, and if you do not choose to remind him of this then I will do so myself.
Wei Ying says hello and sorry. He will not say what happened, but he assures me that no harm came of it. Please let me know if this is accurate.
Sizhui hopes you will come home soon, as do I.
Wangji
…
The air between them clears like mist beneath the sun. Jiang Cheng was expecting awkwardness, of course, but only from himself; he's the one who never knows what to say to the people he cares about when it matters. Never in his life did he expect to have the First Jade of Lan kneeling to him like an ordinary supplicant, delivering apology after heartfelt apology. It didn't make him feel vindicated – it just made him feel guilty as hell. There he was, thinking of how nice those competent musician's hands had felt on his waist, and there Lan Xichen was, thinking only of punishing himself for infringing upon Jiang Cheng's already questionable honour. It would make anyone want to expire on the spot.
But now that Jiang Cheng has gotten a taste of physical contact, he can't bring himself to go hungry again. The next day, when they cross paths on a boardwalk near the shrine and stop to talk, he lifts his hand and rests it briefly on Zewu-jun's shoulder before they part ways. And the day after that, when they go together to see Old Man Luo about the timber, he touches Zewu-jun's arm to point out a bracket of tied-together cedar sticks, there for the benefit of anyone wanting to check the quality of the goods. Every time, absurdly, Jiang Cheng has to brace himself as though walking onto a swinging plank-bridge of dubious structural integrity; and yet every time, Lan Xichen rewards him with a smile that restores his courage.
It's a small thing, that smile. Almost shy. And dearer than any number of faceless, melancholic letters.
He keeps getting that strange swaying sensation, the same precipitous drop in his stomach, whenever Lan Xichen draws near enough to touch. Now that he's been held by him once, it is difficult not to want to be held by him again – to be the sole focus of his attention, and satisfy all the hungry, jealous desires of his hungry, jealous heart. Jiang Cheng ends up pacing his quarters restlessly at the end of each day, unable to put a finger on what's frustrating him and utterly refusing to think about the moment he nearly made the worst mistake of his life and kissed the First Jade of Lan. That was a fluke, obviously – no different from flying by sword at mountain-height and considering idly, dizzily, what would happen if you tipped over the side and let gravity take you. Flustering, but ultimately irrelevant. If only he could figure out what to do about any of it, he'd be calmer. If only he knew what it was.
One day Lan Xichen tells him what is clearly supposed to be the beginning of a funny anecdote, in the experimental, somewhat scattered way of someone who has not told a lot of jokes. "So in the end, the Hu sect put a gigantic barrel of pickles in their public square with the words 'Ambassador of the Zhou Sect' painted on it –"
Jiang Cheng bursts out in appreciative laughter, and realizes only after a full minute that Lan Xichen appears nonplussed. "Oh, sorry," he manages, pressing a fist against his mouth. The pavilion where they've just finished their midday meal is not public, per se, but it a sect leader ought to control himself better than that. "Was there more? I thought that was the punchline."
Lan Xichen watches his chortling subside like he can't decide whether to be confused or very pleased with himself. "No," he admits. "The punchline comes when three different people from around the city try one of the pickles and all think it tastes differently. Or … no, I am telling it wrong. There is a different pun in how each of them describes the taste … To insult their rival sect, you understand. It was much cleverer when Jingyi told it to me. Oh, well," he says disconsolately, giving it up. "You will have to feign ignorance when I try telling you again six months from now."
"Ohhh," Jiang Cheng says. "I thought they'd pickled him. The ambassador."
Lan Xichen covers his mouth with one long, trailing sleeve. "Well –" His voice lilts with a hidden smile. "That would certainly have solved a few of their problems."
"And created a bunch of new ones. But gods, I wish it were a viable option," Jiang Cheng says wistfully, thinking of all the sect leaders and functionaries he would have loved to stuff inside a barrel. "If Yao-zongzhu could go and get himself pickled, he'd do everyone a favour."
"I would prefer to be salted, myself. Or preserved in alcohol."
"Are you that eager to get drunk again?"
Lan Xichen flushes.
Jiang Cheng, who realized what he was saying even before it left his mouth, wants to turn and dive off the pavilion into the nearest inlet of the lake. "I'd put you in cold storage, myself," he adds hastily. "If you voluntarily go into the Cold Springs every other day, it won't make much difference. I've been in there, it's fucking freezing."
Lan Xichen, inexplicably, flushes harder. "You are right." He locks his gaze on the table in front of them, his ears bright red. "Cold storage might be better."
"Assuming you don't freeze to death at Lotus Pier first."
"It is not the cold I am worried about."
"No?"
"I spent three years alone in the Hanshi. This feels like the height of summer by comparison." Lan Xichen lifts his head and looks out across the frozen lake, the surface of which – it occurs to Jiang Cheng belatedly – might be a bit difficult to breach on the first try. Maybe if he took a running leap? "You know, I think I have had enough of cold storage to last me a lifetime. I would rather be eaten straight off."
"With salt?" Jiang Cheng asks dryly. "Or with liquor?"
"With Yunmeng spices."
"You won't do for anyone in your sect, in that case. You all have the spice tolerance of infants."
"Well, yes. That is the idea." Lan Xichen recovers his composure and smiles across the table at him. "What about you, then? How would you prefer to be eaten?"
"With great reluctance."
"Not with herbs? Spices? Emperor's Smile?"
"All of those put together couldn't save a terrible meal."
"Nonsense! You are not such a hopeless case as that."
"I am the equivalent of fermented salt and vinegar. Find me one person among the four great sects who wouldn't mind eating that."
Lan Xichen's eyes twinkle merrily, as if at some private joke. "Yao-zongzhu would surely take pity on you."
Jiang Cheng makes a face. "I hope I give him indigestion."
Lan Xichen laughs outright. Jiang Cheng grins back, feeling as though someone has set off sparklers behind his ribcage. Before he can say anything else, a servant appears at the threshold of the veranda and bows.
"What is it?"
"A letter, Zongzhu. For Zewu-jun."
"Oh?" Lan Xichen says, as the servant approaches and offers him an envelope with both hands. "Who is it …"
He trails off, staring down at it.
The servant bows and departs. Jiang Cheng makes a mental note to check his own office desk for fresh correspondence. "Anyone important?" he asks.
Lan Xichen says nothing for a moment, studying the letter in his hands with a shuttered, indecipherable expression. Then he says, distantly, "Yes." And again, "Yes. It is from Nie-zongzhu."
Ah.
Jiang Cheng looks at him sharply, assessing his features. Zewu-jun sounds calm enough, but his face has gone white so rapidly that anyone looking at him would think he's about to be violently ill. "You weren't … expecting it?"
"No." Zewu-jun's voice is toneless. "I was not." He stands, then, and gives him an apologetic look. "Forgive me. I think … it would be better if I read this alone."
Jiang Cheng frowns, but nods. "Of course. If you need anything …"
Lan Xichen dips his head. "I know. Thank you." He turns in a swish of robes and descends from the pavilion. A passing trio of juniors bid him hello as they pass, and he nods to them too before disappearing around the next corner.
Jiang Cheng watches him go, something uneasy turning over in his stomach.
To his knowledge, Lan Xichen and Nie Huaisang haven't exchanged a single word, either in writing or in person, since Guanyin Temple collapsed. He doesn't know the whole story, but he was there when Nie Huaisang cried out his warning and Lan Xichen, whose confidence in his own judgment had already been shattered utterly, stabbed his oldest, most intimate friend through the heart. Jiang Cheng was there when Lan Xichen, sitting hollow-eyed on the steps of Guanyin Temple, asked Nie Huaisang if he was sure about what he'd seen, and Nie Huaisang shook his head and said only, "I don't know, I don't know …"
That by itself is reason enough to try and protect one from having to speak with the other. But these days, Wei Wuxian talks about Nie Huaisang with the faintest slant-eyed wariness, watching him across the room the way an expert gambler might watch a shrewd and blank-faced opponent over their hand of cards. He and Jiang Cheng generally don't discuss Guanyin Temple – in the same way that one generally does not discuss an unmarked grave, in the hopes that no terrible revenant will be summoned from it by the act of acknowledgement – but Wei Wuxian occasionally makes an oblique reference to Nie Huaisang's role in the whole mess that plucks uncomfortably at Jiang Cheng's suspicions. Anyone whom Wei Wuxian thinks he should be careful of is someone of whom the rest of the world should be very afraid.
In any case, Lan Xichen won't be able to speak to Nie Huaisang without pain for a long time. The letter might therefore be a good thing: once Lan Xichen returns to his duties as head of Gusu Lan, he'll have no choice but to deal with whoever sits the Unclean Throne. But Jiang Cheng worries anyway, because he would rather dig up that unmarked grave himself than see his friend suffer. He waits in the pavilion for half an hour, and when Lan Xichen does not reappear, decides to return to his office and delve back into his work.
Less than half an incense stick has time to burn down before there's an adept knocking on his door to inform him that Zewu-jun has not shown up to teach his afternoon class. The juniors are apparently still waiting for him in the courtyard. "So send for him," Jiang Cheng says crossly; he was just about to round off a series of mental calculations, and now he'll have to start all over again, on paper.
But the adept says, "We have. He didn't answer the door."
"Then check the docks. The library. The eastern pavilion."
"There was a shadow moving in his room, Zongzhu. I don't think he's … anywhere else." The adept bites the inside of her cheek. "Should I … um … trouble Xu-shixiong to act as substitute?"
Jiang Cheng frowns. Normally, he wouldn't brook negligence from his teachers any more than he would brook negligence from himself, but he hasn't any idea what could be in that letter. Lan Xichen went ashen-pale just from reading the sender's name, and heaven only knows what the contents might be. If he forgot about his class and ignored a knock on the door, he must not be feeling like himself at all. "Never mind," he says, pulling an extra cloak down from the wall. "I'll take this one."
The relieved adept walks back with him to the courtyard, where they find the cohort of twelve- to fifteen-year-old juniors waiting for their absent teacher. Their eyes widen to the size of banquet dishes when they see him. Jiang Cheng pretends not to notice their half-cowed, half-starry-eyed expressions and puts them through their paces until the winter sun dips beneath the nearest rooftops. Then he barks a dismissal and sweeps out of the courtyard, making a mental note of each student's weak points so he can relay them to Zewu-jun later.
No – not later. Now. Hours have elapsed since that letter arrived, and Jiang Cheng's anxiety is rising the longer he goes without confirming that his friend is all right.
But when he goes to Lan Xichen's quarters and knocks on the door, there's no reply from within.
"Zewu-jun," he says, not entirely succeeding at keeping his voice neutral. "You missed your session with the middle junior cohort."
There's a long silence. Then Lan Xichen's muffled voice comes through.
"I know. I am … I do not feel entirely well."
"What happened? Is something wrong?"
"It is nothing. Forgive me. Could we –" There's a hitch, as though Lan Xichen has come up short against something. "Could we speak later?"
Jiang Cheng finds that he has unconsciously laid his palm flat against the door, tilting forward until his forehead nearly touches the frame. There's nothing technically objectionable about this response, but he doesn't know how to proceed. He's silent for a moment before asking, lamely, "Are you coming to dinner at you shi?"
"No. Go ahead and eat without me, please."
Jiang Cheng hesitates.
This isn't precisely a new dilemma. When he was still writing letters to the First Jade of Lan, what feels like a thousand years ago, he kept having to check himself on what he could and couldn't say. To ask, or not to ask? To persist, and risk giving offense, or to beat a tactful retreat? Letter-writing gave him time to think it through and temper his penchant for calling bullshit, but in person, his reactions and their immediate consequences must be gauged faster than that. So against every better impulse, he says, "All right. Call for the servants if you need anything."
Silence.
Reluctantly, Jiang Cheng drops his hand and peels away from the door. He has work to do, and Lan Xichen will surely tell him what the matter is when he's ready.
Surely.
Jiang Cheng returns to his office and flips mechanically through his paperwork.
It's not enough to distract him. His hands keep clenching and unclenching around weapons that aren't there: the hilt of a sword, the handle of a whip. He gets up to pace and completes less than half a circle before pausing by the windows, where dusk is falling over Lotus Pier. The lake is a pale slice of white behind the tangled webbing of trunks and tree branches on the shore, their dark silhouettes like brushstrokes on silk. The mountain ridge in the distance is no longer visible, but its outline holds clear in his mind's eye, ragged as the crest of a lapping wave.
You said you could not see it without feeling as though it were just a step away, like if you flew toward it, low over the water, you would reach it in the blink of an eye.
It still baffles him that Lan Xichen could quote him on that so exactly. Did he really have nothing better to do in the Hanshi than commit Jiang Cheng's letters to memory?
Not that – okay, yes, he might have reread Lan Xichen's letters a few more times than necessary himself. But he wouldn't confess to that under any compulsion save torture. And in any case, he only remembers how the important letters go, the ones where Lan Xichen told him something real and honest about himself. Not the ones where he described whatever he saw from the windows every day.
Although there was one … Jiang Cheng remembers asking him, at one point, why he bothered rising before dawn when nobody cared what he did in seclusion – in as delicate and sensitive a way as possible, of course – and Lan Xichen responding that he did it to watch the sunrise. That it calmed him. That it made him think of music. Jiang Cheng stares unseeing into the distance, drumming his fingers on the table with A-jie's old jewellery box, and tries to recall how it went, but his overtired mind refuses to capture the exact wording from memory.
You shi comes and goes, and Lan Xichen does not return. Xu shi comes and goes, and Lan Xichen does not return. By the time hai shi arrives, it's pitch black and freezing cold outside, and Jiang Cheng has made up his mind to call bullshit after all. He blows out the candles, shuts the office door and turns to march through the central compound, toward the guest quarters. Lanterns have been lit in their hanging brackets along the boardwalks. He could have navigated Lotus Pier blind and deaf, having spent long years reconstructing it, but each light gives off a halo of warmth for which he's thankful: it has grown singularly cold since the sun went down. He takes a right turn and another right before finding himself at Lan Xichen's door.
It's far past the hour of a Gusu Lan disciple's curfew, but that hardly signifies . The last time Zewu-jun locked himself into a room by himself, he didn't come out of it for three years. Jiang Cheng will be damned if he lets that happen again.
He knocks.
"Zewu-jun?"
No reply.
He knocks again, more firmly this time. The faintest suggestion of candlelight flickers behind the papered latticework door. If Lan Xichen isn't asleep, then he's deliberately keeping silent. "Zewu-jun, you said we would speak later. It's later now." He hesitates. "Are you all right?"
Nothing.
"I'm coming in."
When there's no answering yes or no, Jiang Cheng slides the door open and steps inside.
The rooms within are dark and full of shadows. Drapes hang framing the sectioned-off sleeping space in the back, and a low, square table sits positioned in the middle of the carpet. Somebody's unfolded letter lies on the table alongside a single flickering candle, burnt nearly to a stub. This timid light, as feeble as a traveller's cookfire in a vast and starless forest, makes the walls seem faraway and indistinct and borderless. It gutters in the icy draft as Jiang Cheng shuts the door behind himself.
On the left side of the table kneels Lan Xichen: back straight, hands folded, and perfectly motionless.
"Zewu-jun."
His shoulders tense.
Jiang Cheng cuts across the room and kneels by his side. One hand settles on the table's edge, the other coming to rest lightly at Zewu-jun's elbow. When he does not say anything, Jiang Cheng breaks the silence himself.
"You're not all right," he says grimly.
Lan Xichen sucks in a breath, as if struggling past a compressing weight on his chest. Then, with some difficulty, he says, "No. I am not."
Jiang Cheng studies his profile. The slanted cheekbones, the uneven slope of nose, the hollows beneath his eyes. When was the last time he slept the night through?
"I will not be much company tonight," Lan Xichen adds quietly.
"I'm not expecting you to be," Jiang Cheng says, ignoring this attempt at polite dismissal. He looks at Nie Huaisang's letter where it lies open on the table, held down by a small object he took at first glance to be a paperweight. It's a jade token, shining softly in the candlelight. "Is that yours?"
"It is now."
"Whose was it, then?"
"An old friend's." Lan Xichen's voice has no inflection in it at all. "You may as well read it. I do not mind."
"Have you moved at all since the sun went down?"
Lan Xichen does not seem to hear the question.
"Have you eaten?"
No response.
The candle flickers on an invisible current of air. Jiang Cheng picks up the letter and bends closer to the light, squinting to make out the elegant calligraphy.
Zewu-jun,
Please accept my humblest wishes for your continuous good health and that of your family.
For as long as I can remember you have admired the winter season for its sharp and monochrome beauty, so I have lately been thinking of you and those who were once dear to us. You were always closer with your sworn brothers, my Da-ge and Liangfang-zun, than you ever were with me. I don't blame you for that; we didn't have anything in common except the two of them, and once they were gone, what more was there to say? The only reason I have refrained from offering you my condolences these last four years is that I never felt it was right for me to do so. After all, it is my fault that Lianfang-zun died at the end of your sword. Because of this I have been repeatedly advised to keep my distance and let you come to terms with the loss on your own. Even so, I apologize for the suffering I have caused you. It is truly regrettable that events played out the way they did.
This token fell into my hands soon after the temple collapsed. I am sure you will recognize it. Lianfang-zun was your closest friend and beneficiary, so I am returning it to you, to keep or give away as you like. Mementos belong with the people who value them most, don't you think?
Once again, I offer my deepest regrets and apologies, and hope that should you ever find yourself in Qinghe, you will condescend to pay us a visit in the Unclean Realm.
With the greatest respect,
Nie-zongzhu, courtesy name Nie Huaisang
Jiang Cheng puts down the letter.
"I had forgotten," Lan Xichen says dully. "I had completely forgotten."
"Forgotten what?"
"What I had done. What I had not done." He sways forward, a tree branch bending under the weight of snow. "Everything. I keep … being selfish."
What part of putting oneself through three years of solitary confinement constitutes selfishness, Jiang Cheng has no idea. "Don't talk like that," he says, low. "You're the least selfish person I know."
"You do not understand. I cannot … cannot do this. I cannot let myself –"
Lan Xichen stops, squeezing his eyes tightly shut. Jiang Cheng grips his elbow, trying to keep him present, to pull him back from whatever unseen precipice is threatening to reopen beneath him. "You can't let yourself what?" he asks.
"Be happy," Lan Xichen says.
The candle-flame shivers on its wick.
Jiang Cheng stares at him, amazed and aghast. When he finally regains the power of speech, it's not with the gentle sympathy the situation probably calls for. "What?" he sputters, because there is no other possible response to such idiotic, self-sacrificing altruism. Then, only slightly more coherently, "What? Yes, you can!"
"No. I do not –"
"I forbid you from saying you don't deserve it. Understand? I forbid it. You are not allowed to say these things under my roof."
Lan Xichen finally opens his eyes, but only to give him a look of profound exhaustion. "Please, Jiang-zongzhu. Do not feel obliged. It is late, and you must be tired –"
"I'm not tired," Jiang Cheng snaps. "I'm pissed off. I don't know how you got it into your head that the rest of your life is forfeit because your sworn brother lied to you and manipulated you, but I'm telling you now that you're wrong. Nothing in this letter justifies the idea that you don't deserve to be happy."
"Of course it does." Lan Xichen sounds weary. He stares unseeing down at the letter, blank and distant. "I was so blind. Monstrously, unforgivably blind. It was not just one mistake; it was the same mistake, over and over again …"
"What mistake?"
"I placed my faith in the wrong person. I ignored the anxieties of a trusted friend. I saw nothing but that which those around me wished me to see, like a child. Like a fool." Lan Xichen recites this litany of transgressions in a swaying, half-conscious monotone, like a nightly prayer he can no longer taste on his own tongue. "I chose peace of mind and the illusion of righteousness above all else, and it cost so many innocent people their lives … And in the end, I could not even act on my own judgment. Instead, I acted on the judgement of another, just as I have done my entire life –" He stops, and takes a wet, tattered breath. "By that point, I was less afraid of dying by his hand than that he was about to make a fool of me all over again. But no one else made me do it. I killed him, I alone, and his blood will be on my hands forever. I will never be able to wash them clean."
Jiang Cheng's stinging throat closes on his first instinctive, clumsy words of sympathy. The only person I can be truly angry with is myself, for if I had had just a little more faith in him, everything might have turned out differently. His chest is a bellows constricting under pressure, and he can't even tell if it's grief or just the antiseptic twist of pity in his heart.
Zewu-jun gives him a bleak look. "Will I?" he asks.
"No," Jiang Cheng says.
In the silence, the candle makes hushed little whiffling sounds. Zewu-jun turns away. Then he whispers something into the fathomless, hallowed dark, and it takes Jiang Cheng a moment to process what it was.
"I could have stopped it."
If Jiang Cheng had not sworn never to lie to him, he would have lied now.
"Yes," he says.
"Then how can you possibly say I deserve anything like peace?"
"Have you already forgotten what happened at the Burial Mounds? There's blood on my hands, too. I'm as guilty as you are."
"It is not the same."
"Bullshit, it's not the same. Your sins are mine, remember? I killed my brother, and I did it for all the wrong reasons." The words come fast and entirely without permission. "There's no repenting for something like that. And even if there were, no one would commend you for it."
Lan Xichen gives him a look like a wounded animal, darting his eyes over Jiang Cheng's face. Jiang Cheng continues, bitterly, "Everyone back then said, 'Good riddance! Well done!' I hated it so much, I wanted to scream. But no one would have listened. Zewu-jun, we're the only ones keeping tally of what we did and what we could have done differently. We're the only ones trying to figure out who betrayed who first, and when, and whether it even matters in the end. You're punishing yourself for his sake, aren't you? You think if you don't devote the rest of your life to penitence, you'll never repay the debt you incurred by killing him?"
Lan Xichen closes his eyes, and with a hollow, funereal resignation, bows his head.
Of course he does.
"You want to make the selfless choice," Jiang Cheng says, fumbling to put into words what he knows to be true. It's not his greatest strength – in fact, it's made things worse for him nearly all his life – but he has to try. "It's in your nature. You would never knowingly try to make the selfish one. But there isn't any other choice this time, understand? It's selfishness or death. Either you – you turn your back on everything, and condemn yourself to eternal misery as some kind of cosmic recompense for killing him, or you live, and you never pay it back. You do everything you can to make the world better than he left it." He loosens his grip on Zewu-jun's elbow. "I can't … speak for you, or decide for you. But I know which one I'd rather you chose."
Lan Xichen listens without saying a word. That handsome, carven profile, cast in firelight and shadow, says enough: his eyes are shut, his brow furrowed, the expression on his face a rictus of pain as though he's walking barefoot across a frozen river, straight into an annihilating headwind. Slowly, wordlessly, he folds over like a man with a knife driven though his gut, and bows until his forehead rests upon the table's edge. Then he takes a ragged, convulsive breath.
Jiang Cheng leans forward, trying to catch his eye. "Zewu-jun," he says, as gently as he knows how. "Hey. Look at me."
That hunched and silent figure refuses to obey. His hair, restrained only by a simple hairpiece and the cloud-patterned ribbon, has slipped heavily over one shoulder, and shields his face from view. He doesn't seem to have heard a thing.
But Jiang Cheng knows him better now, and he knows better than to leave well enough alone.
"Look at me," he says.
Lan Xichen inhales, as though bracing for the deathblow, and looks at him.
The candle has burnt down to almost nothing, and so very little, apart from his profile, can be discerned. One slanted cheekbone, painted in a tongue of firelight. The uneven slope of his nose, all limned in gold. It's just enough to make out his expression. He doesn't look overwrought anymore, just lost and numb with grief.
And there are gleaming wet trails, like snowmelt, where the first tears have slipped down his cheeks.
"You're crying," Jiang Cheng says, stricken.
Lan Xichen buries his face in his hands. "I do not know what is wrong with me."
"No …" Jiang Cheng wraps an arm around his trembling shoulders, drawing him closer, into the crook of his own arm. "Hey – Shh …"
Lan Xichen doesn't fight him. He lets his brow come to rest against Jiang Cheng's collarbone, and Jiang Cheng, without even thinking about it, pulls him into an embrace.
It is not pity that moves him, nor sympathy, nor forethought of any kind. He abandons his kneeling position and slides to the floor, and Lan Xichen crumples into him like a beggar at his sheltering doorstep. He is well and truly crying now, in awful, smothered gasps, fingers bunching in the front of Jiang Cheng's robes as if they can shield him from all the starving ghosts in the world. Jiang Cheng tightens his arms around him and begins rocking back and forth, gently, like he once did for Jin Ling as a baby.
One night, a long time ago – when he was maybe eight years old – he walked into A-jie's room without knocking and found her crying on her bed, holding one hand clapped over her mouth; she'd perfected the act of crying in obedient, irreproachable silence, sitting curled in on herself as if to make the heartache smaller. Lan Xichen is just the same. He keeps letting out these stifled, disjointed sobs, his whole body shaking with the force of it – but he doesn't make a single goddamned sound. He doesn't even seem to register the inarticulate shushing noises Jiang Cheng is making, nor the quiet rocking motion of their bodies. He weeps like someone who hasn't let himself weep in years, maybe decades. Who knows, with an eldest son? For all his sympathetic words to Jiang Cheng in the Hanshi all those months ago, he too must hate to lose control in front of other people. His grief for Jin Guangyao has so far been the numb and anaesthetic kind, petrified along with every other strong emotion.
And now at last it is thawing.
Jiang Cheng's robes are growing hot and damp with tears, his knees beginning to protest their uncomfortable position, but none of that matters. Jiang Cheng has long since shut his eyes and tucked his face into Lan Xichen's hair, knowing there is nothing he can do now but let him cry.
Lan Xichen's breathing slows after a while. His chest still shudders with every inhalation and exhalation, but his hands, fisted in Jiang Cheng's robes at waist level, have lost their initial frantic grip. He too has slid from his kneeling position, and now curls slumped against him in a posture of absolute exhaustion. If they stay here any longer, one or both of them will fall asleep.
And that would be all right. They're far past the time when they couldn't touch one another. If it would bring Zewu-jun a measure of peace to fall asleep like this, Jiang Cheng would let him. He'd make a bulwark of himself and never mind his straining neck, his aching back, if it would help Lan Xichen wade out of this river-current and find his way to shore.
It's strange. He's felt similar things about Jin Ling, A-jie, even Wei Wuxian … but they're his family. He's loved them for as long as he can remember. To love someone you weren't born loving isn't something you can remember, only something you can learn. And for all that he's a sect leader with twenty years of hard lessons under his belt, this is one lesson he's never had to learn before.
And yet.
Jiang Cheng may be a novice, but he's no coward. Every new and terrible thing he learns about himself, he looks in the eye; and what he wants, he fights for. If he didn't, the decimated Jiang sect would have become a protectorate of Lanling Jin after the Sunshot Campaign. His nephew would have grown up entirely at Carp Tower under Lianfang-zun's watchful eye. If Jiang Cheng didn't fight for what he wanted, Wei Wuxian would have gotten married at Cloud Recesses instead of at Lotus Pier, and the two of them would never have reached this priceless armistice. Again and again and again, he exacts a future different from the one that's coming to him, because to roll over and give up has never been his nature.
And it's not like he's done fighting. He wants Jin Ling to prosper as sect leader. He wants to hear Wei Wuxian call him Sizhui's uncle. He wants …
Lan Xichen stirs, nestling more tightly into his chest.
He wants …
"Jiang-zongzhu?"
Jiang Cheng rises up out of his thoughts.
"Hm?"
A brief silence.
"I'm tired." It comes out as a whispery gust of air, half-muffled against his chest. "I'm so tired."
"I know."
There's a long pause as Zewu-jun's fingers adjust their numbed grip on the front of his robes. Then he says, even more softly, "I don't want to repeat my father's mistakes."
Jiang Cheng doesn't know what those were, but it doesn't matter. His answer would be the same. "You won't," he says.
"How do you know?"
"I won't let you. I promise."
Lan Xichen makes no response. Jiang Cheng rubs his back, trying to transmit his own conviction. "Okay?"
"Okay," Lan Xichen whispers.
The candle-flame shrinks and finally, soundlessly goes out.
Jiang Cheng doesn't know how he sits there with Zewu-jun slumped against him, half-lying on the floor. When he opens his eyes, he finds that they've adjusted to the darkness. He can make out the yawning mouth of an entryway where the sleeping area is normally curtained off, gauzy drapes tied back on either side of it.
"Zewu-jun," he says quietly. "You need to sleep."
No reply.
"You don't want to wake up tomorrow with a headache."
Nothing.
Jiang Cheng pats his shoulder. "You still awake?"
Lan Xichen's breathing has gone quiet, his body limp as though exhausted of its energy reserves. When it registers that he's asleep, Jiang Cheng's heart gives a funny little twinge in his chest.
He's been permitted so much already, and yet – and yet –
Cautiously, he shifts his weight until he can get his knees under himself. Then he scoops a hand under the crook of Lan Xichen's knees, and with the other arm still wrapped around him, clambers to his feet. The First Jade of Lan is heavy with muscle – astoundingly so, even for a cultivator – and lifting him should have been difficult, given that Jiang Cheng is on the point of passing out with exhaustion. But it isn't. Somehow, carrying him to the bed and laying him down turns out to be the easiest thing in the world.
Lan Xichen's arms slip down and fold across his abdomen. Jiang Cheng kneels to work the boots off his feet, trying not to jostle him too much. This, too, is easy; easy and thoughtless. He lines them within reach of the bed and stops to consider the hairpiece. He ought to take it out so Zewu-jun doesn't wake up with a headache for real, but he's not sure how to manage that without touching the sacred ribbon.
In the end, he decides not to risk it. He's already taken too many liberties. He pulls a blanket over him and moves to stand, only to feel someone's hand latch onto his wrist where it's braced on the wooden bed frame.
"You are leaving?"
Jiang Cheng looks down.
Lan Xichen is squinting up at him through what must be red and swollen eyes, only half-aware. The words he spoke came out slurred and barely distinguishable. "I … yes," Jiang Cheng says, uncertainly, as though it might be a trick.
"Don't."
"What?"
"Stay," Lan Xichen mumbles. "Please."
The entreaty couldn't be any clearer. Disbelieving, Jiang Cheng perches gingerly on the edge of the bed.
Lan Xichen closes his eyes again, as if reassured, and in another moment his breathing evens out in sleep.
Jiang Cheng feels a knot rise in his throat.
He remembers, now, how that letter went. There are too many things I would regret missing, Lan Xichen wrote to him, when Jiang Cheng asked why he never gave up rising before dawn. I love watching the stars vanish and the sky change colours. When the air is clear enough, I watch the sun rise over the distant mountains, and it sets my heart at ease, if only for a little while. And it all happens without being set to music. How strange that something so magnificent can also be so silent, and so ordinary.
Yes, Jiang Cheng thinks, as he turns outward to face the darkness. Just this night, he'll stay, and guard Lan Xichen from whatever ghosts torment him in his sleep. How very strange indeed.
…
He drifts in and out of a fitful doze that night. It's been years since he's kept vigil at anyone's bedside like this, years since his presence was the only antidote to monsters and night terrors Jin Ling would trust, but his spine settles into the familiar posture of hours-long endurance without much thought. Lan Xichen's fingers lie relaxed around a fold of deep violet robes. His brow has smoothed over like a stretch of sand washed gently by the tide. Only his eyes, worn around the edges, show the age and anguish he will have to shoulder again come morning. Jiang Cheng's resolve to keep watch until sunrise lasts exactly until fatigue overtakes him and he falls into an intermittent drowse.
When he awakens properly, a grayish light is filtering in through the windows, and he can make out the grainy texture of the floor beneath his boots. The furnishings are coming into blotchy focus.
Dawn has come.
Lan Xichen stirs faintly beside him.
Jiang Cheng drags a hand over his own face, scrubbing away the fatigue. With a spine-cracking pop, he twists his back to one side and then the other. He rolls his neck, and winces when he feels something that definitely shouldn't have been out of alignment snap back into place. When he looks back down, Lan Xichen is blinking up at the ceiling with a serene, if puzzled expression, as though trying to remember something important but very far away. Then his gaze drifts to Jiang Cheng, and he frowns.
"Wanyin?"
Even hoarse with sleep and crying, his voice makes Jiang Cheng's courtesy name ring as sweetly as a chiming clarity bell. Jiang Cheng grunts in acknowledgement.
"You are – still here?" Lan Xichen pushes himself up onto one elbow, squinting at him. It's an unrefined, ordinary, human expression, and utterly entrancing. "Why did you not go back to your rooms?"
"You asked me to stay."
Lan Xichen stares at him and opens his mouth, but whatever it is he means to say, it fades. He looks quite stupefied.
"What is it?"
"But … I did not mean for the whole … Heavens, have you not slept all night?"
"I slept," Jiang Cheng says. "I think." He can't tear his eyes from the piece of hair stuck to Lan Xichen's cheek, pressed there by the pillow. He wants, absurdly, to comb it back with his own fingers; their murmuring sounds far too intimate in the otherwise silent room. "How do you feel?"
"Better, thank you."
"Good."
"But are you alright?"
"I'm fine," Jiang Cheng starts to say, only to interrupt himself when his jaw cracks open in an enormous, traitorous yawn. Lan Xichen winces.
"You must be exhausted."
"I am as sprightly as," it comes out slurred, as Jiang Cheng is trying to clamp his mouth shut again, "a new chicken. Spring chicken. Whatever. It's not like I had other plans for the night."
"You really do not do anything by halves."
"No."
They're silent for an interminable stretch of time. Lan Xichen locks his gaze on his own hands, knitted in his lap. Then slowly, cautiously, as though trying something new for the first time, he extends forward and lets his brow rest against Jiang Cheng's shoulder.
"Why did you not befriend me sooner?" he asks.
Jiang Cheng blinks down at him.
"What?"
"Four years ago. Ten years ago. Twenty." Lan Xichen's voice is so terribly soft. "We have wasted so much time being strangers to one another. Why did you not come and kick my door down while I was in seclusion, like you said?"
He must be joking. "You would have thrown me out."
"I would have embraced you wholeheartedly. I probably would even have broken down and wept in your arms, then and there." Lan Xichen swallows. "I would have given anything for you to emerge from your own letters and scold me into some semblance of my old self. But you did not. You were polite when I deserved to be shouted at, and you listened when I didn't deserve to speak. You made me a gift of your friendship when I had lost every right to a second and third and fourth chance at such a thing, when I thought I would be alone for the rest of my life and grateful for it. It is greedy and childish and arrogant to wish for more, and yet I find myself wishing that … that you had done all this earlier." He stops to breathe, and then asks, "Why did you not?"
Jiang Cheng, too sleep-deprived to be astonished, gives it due consideration. Lan Xichen is right: it is a childish question. It's entirely unfair. But if Lan Xichen learning what it's like to be selfish, he's still leagues behind Jiang Cheng, who has spent his whole life wanting more from other people than he ever had a right to expect. "You didn't befriend me either," he says at last.
"When?"
"Sixteen years ago. When the three of you formed the Venerated Triad."
Lan Xichen shifts until his brow, the ridge of his nose, is pressed against Jiang Cheng's upper arm.
"We left you alone," he says. "Forgive us. Forgive me."
By way of response, Jiang Cheng leans his cheek on the top of Lan Xichen's head. The gesture feels familiar somehow, but he can't remember where he might have seen it before. He's so sleepy. And Lan Xichen's hair smells nice, like camellia oil. "It's fine," he mutters. "I managed. I don't think I would have accepted anyone's help at the time, anyway."
Lan Xichen fiddles with the blankets. It's an uncharacteristically nervous gesture, but when he speaks, his voice is sure and steady as an upswung water-sleeve.
"I know you are going to say that I do not owe you anything. But the fact is that I owe you my happiness and my integrity. And yet I have been … dishonest with you."
"What do you mean?"
Lan Xichen hesitates. Then he shifts reluctantly backward into an upright position. With his knees bent beneath the blankets, he looks like an informal young man: flesh and blood, not jade. He folds his white-knuckled hands over each other in an assumption of tranquility and lifts his gaze to Jiang Cheng's face.
"I have been dishonest. I have kept something from you which, if you were aware of it, would make my presence here at Lotus Pier uncomfortable for you. I cannot keep taking advantage of your hospitality and your friendship by virtue of omission."
"I seriously doubt," Jiang Cheng says, "that anything you've done could make me revoke my hospitality and friendship."
Lan Xichen fixes his gaze on a loose thread in the bedcovers. "But it could," he says. "Of course it could." The hands folded in his lap bunch together, trembling. "Do you remember the night I got drunk?"
Outside, the sun breaks the horizon, and reddish light spills across the dark wooden floors of the room.
I know the other poem, you know.
Jiang Cheng says, "I remember."
Lan Xichen clenches his hands so tightly that the trembling stops. "What if I told you …" He wets his lips and tries again. "What if I told you that I have … thought about …" He still won't look at him. "That I have wanted …"
Oh. So that's what this is about. "It's not a crime to want a drink every now and then."
Lan Xichen blinks and lifts his gaze. "I beg your pardon?"
Jiang Cheng makes his voice as kind as possible, which is to say – not very. "No one except your uncle would throw anyone out of anywhere for wanting to get drunk. The world isn't so black-and-white. You're saying it wasn't an accident, aren't you?"
Lan Xichen stares at him, and stares at him, and stares at him.
Then he makes a sound like an aborted, half-hysterical laugh, and puts his face in his hands, apparently trying to control himself. Jiang Cheng hardly has time to open his mouth before Lan Xichen emerges from the cradle of his palms and looks up at him – and smiles. It's a wry little thing, that smile, yet full of relief. "Yes," he says. "Precisely. It was not an accident."
"Well, well. Zewu-jun is human just like the rest of us."
"Indeed. I hope I have not forever disgraced myself in your eyes."
Jiang Cheng makes a noise of derision. "Oh, please." He leans forward. "I'm going to tell you a secret: everything I do is out of selfishness. I first wrote to you to make my brother happy, and I kept writing because it made me feel less alone. So whatever you do, don't waste your gratitude on me."
Lan Xichen shakes his head. "You misunderstand. I am not grateful to you, Jiang-zongzhu. I am grateful for you. More than you can know."
Jiang Cheng frowns at him.
"'Jiang-zongzhu'?"
Lan Xichen blinks. "Pardon?"
"Are you going back to titles already?"
"I … don't follow."
"You called me Wanyin just now, when you woke up. Or do you not remember?"
Lan Xichen pales. "I must have been … That is, forgive me. I did not mean to. I thought I was still –" He drops his gaze, breaking off.
If Jiang Cheng were at all a tactful person, he'd leave it there. But tactfulness never was one of Sandu Shengshou's strong suits.
"Still what?" he asks.
A sunbird on the lake sings out a few notes, soon joined by the flowerpeckers that have clustered together on the bare plum tree just outside.
"Still dreaming," Lan Xichen says quietly.
And if Jiang Cheng were an iota less sleep-deprived, maybe he would have thought about it properly. Maybe he would have heard something else there, unspoken, avowed. But as it is, the only thing he understands is that Lan Xichen is once again asking forgiveness instead of asking permission. "Just use my name," he says patiently.
Lan Xichen looks up, as if startled.
"It's not like anyone else does," Jiang Cheng adds. "If at least one person doesn't remind me what it sounds like, I'll end up forgetting it."
"You must not," Lan Xichen says faintly. "It is a beautiful name. But are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure. If I weren't, I wouldn't be giving you permission."
Lan Xichen opens his mouth –
And hesitates.
"Go on," Jiang Cheng prompts him.
Lan Xichen hesitates again.
Then he says, unsteadily, "Wanyin." A crimson flush spreads across his cheeks and down his throat, disappearing beneath the collars.
Wanyin. This is what Zewu-jun will call him from now on, no doubt until they both grow old or until Jiang Cheng says to call him something else. Knowing it is one thing, but to hear his name so pronounced, like music, is – unbearably sweet. His name, held like a jewel on the tongue. His name, formed on the lips like a secret. Let no one else but Lan Xichen call him this. He doesn't plan on ever granting the privilege to anyone else.
Averting his eyes, Lan Xichen absently lifts a hand to the silver hairpiece still in his hair, off-kilter after a full night's sleep, and with both hands starts trying to pry it free. Jiang Cheng gestures at it with his chin. "Do you want some help with that?"
"No, no. I have it."
Lan Xichen disentangles the hairpiece and sets it beside him on the bed. Freed, his hair drapes itself over his shoulders in a languorous waterfall motion, long enough that the tips nearly touch the bed. With it unbound around his face like that, Lan Xichen looks unarmed and unshielded, as though the ceremonious veneer around him has vanished into thin air. He looks as soft and bare and disheveled as a man just awoken in his lover's arms.
Because only a lover, or a close family member, would ever ordinarily be permitted to see such a thing.
Jiang Cheng's whole face goes hot, as if with sunburn. He averts his gaze.
"I should go," he says. "Let you get changed."
"And get some sleep yourself," Lan Xichen says gently. "You will be no good to anyone in your present state."
"What present state? I'm fine." Jiang Cheng rises to his feet, and immediately staggers as all the blood goes rushing to his head; or out of it, hard to tell which. Lan Xichen stands and catches him by the elbows.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine – relax –"
"I should not have compelled you to stay," Lan Xichen frets, exerting just enough upward pressure to let Jiang Cheng find his balance again. "You have more responsibilities here than I do. You cannot afford not to sleep."
"Zewu-jun, we've been over this. You couldn't compel me to do anything I didn't want to do." Jiang Cheng presses the heel of one hand against his eyes, partly out of dizziness, partly because if he looks at Lan Xichen right now he will do something completely stupid, like try to embrace him, or reach out and catch his face between his bare hands and then do something worse. Lan Xichen with his hair unbound is so beautiful that it hurts to behold him. It hurts because it is an extraordinarily bad idea to offer up one's heart on a silver platter, no matter who you're offering it to, and because if only Jiang Cheng had befriended him earlier, if only he'd had the courage to reach out like this twenty years ago, then maybe things would have turned out differently.
Once in a lifetime, murmurs Lan Xichen's voice from several months ago, branded into Jiang Cheng's memory. The Lans only love once in a lifetime.
He steps numbly backward, out of reach.
"I know you will say it is not my fault," Lan Xichen says, "but I am sorry that you spent a sleepless night because of me."
"You're damn right, it's not your fault. I don't regret it," Jiang Cheng says, summoning up his self-assurance. "If you try to apologize again, I'll have to fight you. And we both know how that turned out last time."
Lan Xichen touches the backs of his fingers to the underside of his jaw, as if in remembrance. "Yes," he says, and drops his gaze.
At least he knows when he's beaten. "I'll have the servants bring you something to eat," Jiang Cheng says, and turns and strides across the room.
Lan Xichen's voice stops him at the door.
"Wanyin."
Jiang Cheng pauses.
How did it go, again? After a hazy nap in autumn … aroma of tea leaves … pine branches swaying …
Oh, well. He was never very good at the literary arts. Jiang Cheng takes a breath and looks over his shoulder.
Lan Xichen's hands are clasped at his abdomen, as if he's only just stopping himself from wringing them together. He lifts his eyes to Jiang Cheng's face.
They are dark, and shining.
"Thank you," he says.
And what answer could anyone possibly make to such a thing, except for yes, always? What answer, except I'd do it again in a heartbeat?
Jiang Cheng regards him soberly for a moment. Then he lowers his gaze and bows from the shoulders, deeper than he's bowed to anyone in years. He rises, turns, steps across the threshold and shuts the door behind him without looking back.
Every bird in the winter-stripped plum tree outside startles and takes flight when he emerges, chirruping and rattling the branches. He stands there a moment, staring blindly, inhaling lungful after lungful of icy air.
High above Lotus Pier, the stars are vanishing, and the sky is clear as dusted glass. When the early morning sun peeks out from above the distant treetops, he throws up a hand to shield his face, but it's no use: his eyes are dazzled, and by no sun that will ever, ever set again.
…
He's scheduled to hear out his council in the audience hall that morning, so instead of going to bed, he asks an attendant to help him change into a different set of robes and washes his face to make it look less like he hasn't slept all night. When he sweeps into the audience hall, they're already waiting for him: four cultivators and one ordinary scholar, all of whom he brought into his sect one by one in the years following the Sunshot Campaign. They fold their hands together and bow as he takes his throne. "Let's get started," he says shortly, checking the angle of the sun in the eastern windows. He's undeniably late. "What's the first order of business?"
The scholar steps forward and takes a deep breath.
When he finishes speaking, Jiang Cheng blinks a moment and refocuses on him. His councilmembers are watching him expectantly. Clearly, something important has just been said which he completely missed. "I'll consider it," he says, his go-to politically correct response whenever he accidentally stops paying attention to what someone is saying. He inhales through his nose to stave off a yawn. "Anything else?"
The scholar purses his lips. Behind him, the other councilmembers exchange a glance.
It goes on like this, fruitlessly, for maybe a quarter of an hour until a servant bows up to Jiang Cheng's throne with a tea tray. "Compliments of Zewu-jun," the servant says quietly, once given permission, "and he says it would give him great pleasure if you drank some straightaway, before it cools."
"It helped, I hope?" Lan Xichen says later that evening, when Jiang Cheng joins him for dinner. He watches Jiang Cheng round the table and sit, his expression somehow tentative. "I thought it might be better to risk interrupting your council than let you go through it – unarmed."
"Zewu-jun's judgment is impeccable," Jiang Cheng says dryly, accepting the cup of tea Lan Xichen hands to him. "I wouldn't have heard a thing they told me, otherwise. So thanks."
"Not at all. I took the liberty of sending one of your own servants to you."
"It's not a liberty when you've been staying here for months."
"Even so."
They're about halfway through the meal when there's a knock at the door. Jiang Cheng half-rises to answer it, but Lan Xichen is already there, laying a quelling hand on his shoulder. "Let me," he says, with a quick smile.
Jiang Cheng finds himself sitting back down. Lan Xichen goes to the door and speaks in quiet voices with the visitor.
"– a matter which was not taken care of during the council meeting earlier today."
"I believe there will be another tomorrow morning."
"Yes, Zewu-jun. But Counselor Pan wishes me to ask Zongzhu for the honour of an audience tonight."
"Please ask the esteemed counselor to wait until tomorrow. Your sect leader will be retiring early this evening."
"Yes, Zewu-jun."
"If you could pass on my regards."
"I will, Zewu-jun."
The door slides shut. Lan Xichen returns to the table with a placid expression and picks up his bowl, ignoring Jiang Cheng's raised eyebrow.
"I'm retiring early, am I?"
"Yes."
"On whose orders?"
"You need rest, Wanyin. You cannot keep borrowing from tomorrow for the sake of today."
"You know you can't actually make me go to bed early."
"No. I can only ask and hope that you will acquiesce." Lan Xichen levels him with a weapons-grade look of entreaty. "Please, Wanyin. Rest early tonight. If only to set my mind at rest."
Jiang Cheng presses his lips together.
"I am asking as your friend," Lan Xichen says softly.
"Fine," Jiang Cheng grumbles. "Fine. But not any earlier than zi shi. I still have work to do."
Lan Xichen smiles. "Of course."
It's not that Jiang Cheng can't think straight – he's stayed up far longer than this, especially in the months after the Sunshot Campaign – but he's distracted enough that when Lan Xichen suggests a brief walk after dinner, he agrees without thinking. They make a slow, leisurely round of the boardwalk terraces beneath the winter sky, Lan Xichen debriefing him on that day's classes while Jiang Cheng mechanically keeps pace; the only thing required of him is the occasional hum of acknowledgement. Then he blinks and realizes they've wound up at his own quarters. He turns accusingly to his companion.
"When did we get here?"
Lan Xichen gives him a sympathetic look. "I think you are more tired than you know."
"Zewu-jun!"
"I am not asking you to go to sleep, only to retire to your rooms. If you do not, you will inevitably find something else to occupy your mind and your hands, and you will hardly wake any better-rested for it."
"You sound like a mother hen."
"Wanyin. If I had been an assassin, or an intruder, this would have been a very good opportunity for me to do you some mischief. You are lucky that my intentions are pure."
"Pure intentions aren't always good intentions," Jiang Cheng says tartly. "Just like how impure intentions aren't always bad ones."
Lan Xichen's lips part in a delighted smile, and Jiang Cheng realizes, too late, that that probably sounded exactly like something Wei Wuxian would have said. "You're not even bothering to bully me properly," he mutters.
"Will I have to?"
"No. But only because you saved me from having to attend another meeting." He opens the door with all the haughty showmanship he's capable of and adds, "Put in a little more effort next time."
"Well, in that case," Lan Xichen says thoughtfully, "then perhaps next time I will carry you in myself."
The wooden door frame nearly breaks off in Jiang Cheng's hand. He whips around, only to find Lan Xichen regarding him with arched eyebrows. "I did not walk to the bed myself last night," he says. "I would remember."
Jiang Cheng scowls. "Maybe you flew."
"Maybe." There's a knowing gleam in Lan Xichen's eye.
Jiang Cheng shuts the door between them, the only gesture that will both salve his pride and put an end to the conversation.
(He doesn't see how just outside, Lan Xichen touches the door, very lightly, and his touch lingers. His fingers drag down the wood, and then fall away, one by one.)
Springtime breathes through Lotus Pier in a single warm exhale overnight, making snowmelt dribble from the rooftops. By the time Jiang Cheng emerges from his quarters, the icy, cutting edge to the air has been replaced by a texture like watersilk. He goes to the audience hall to consult with Counselor Pan, as promised, but cannot afterward bring himself to go back to work. Instead he finds himself in the pavilion where they received Nie Huaisang's letter.
There's a party of fishermen on the lake, poking their bait and string through slushy bits of ice on the water. Jiang Cheng leans his forearms on the balustrade and watches them for a while, absentmindedly working the stiffness out of his fingers and knuckles.
All his life, he has treated the idea of romance with an uncharitable mixture of disdain and exasperation. Why his brilliant, cocksure brother would go completely stupid over literally the most boring person in the world, he would never know. To say nothing of A-jie and the peacock. I'd never make such a fool of myself, he has always thought, not without a little superiority. I'd never be so delusional. Not about anyone. He always took such pride in his own dignity, his lack of attachments, the fact that in thirty-eight years not a single person has ever made him lose his head. Not in the romantic sense, anyway. Why else would Wei Wuxian tease him about his so-called courtship? Because he knows, the bastard, that of all the harmless accusations he could levy against his brother, the one that would really rankle is the accusation that Jiang Cheng would ever let himself get besotted with anyone.
What would he say, if he knew he'd been right?
Jiang Cheng, ah, Jiang Cheng! Decided to do me one better and go for the First Jade after all, huh? Well, well! My shidi has always been ambitious. I won't say "I told you so" on the one condition that you admit I'm the best and wisest shixiong in the world and that you should have listened to me from the very beginning. How about it?
Yeah. Nothing helpful.
Forget him; what would A-jie say?
A-Cheng, that's wonderful! Zewu-jun is a kind and honest man, and I don't see any reason why he should refuse you. Are you going to send for the matchmaker so our two families can talk?
No, that's just depressing to think about. A-jie might actually have been the one to negotiate for her younger brothers' marriages when their parents died, but with her gone there's nobody left who would have the right or the desire speak on Jiang Cheng's behalf.
What would his younger self say? That arrogant, fifteen-year-old version of himself, who regarded the prospect of falling in love with skepticism if not outright distaste? What would he say, if he knew his older self would one day succumb to the same brand of idiocy that afflicted his brother?
Ugh, not you too. At least yours isn't an asshole.
True enough. He could do worse.
But that doesn't mean he wants to feel like this.
Lan Xichen isn't for him. He never has been. He might truly be grateful for Jiang Cheng's companionship, hospitality, and support, but if Jiang Cheng were to speak out – if he betrayed himself with so much as a thoughtless gesture – he'd be robbing Lan Xichen of all those things together, of the one undemanding, uncomplicated gift that's in his power to give.
Lan Xichen isn't here to stay. He's going to leave, just like everyone else. And when he does … when he does …
There's a soft tread on the floor of the pavilion behind Jiang Cheng.
When he does …
Lan Xichen appears, settling his hands gently on the balustrade.
"Good morning," he says.
Jiang Cheng takes a deep breath.
"It seems like spring has arrived overnight." When Jiang Cheng doesn't reply, Lan Xichen follows his gaze to the fishermen. The surface of the lake looks like frosted steel. "What are they looking for?"
"No idea," Jiang Cheng says. "It's not warm enough to be fishing yet."
"So they are attempting the impossible."
"I guess."
They lapse into silence. Lan Xichen is not looking at him, but narrowing his eyes into the winter sunlight, illuminated, with a strand of hair blown across his cheek by the wind. He seems content to stand there and let it caress his face.
Jiang Cheng forces himself to tear his gaze away. He hadn't even meant to look.
But when Lan Xichen draws something out of his sleeve and turns it over in his hands, Jiang Cheng can't help but glance down at it. Lianfang-zun's jade token gleams as purely as though it's been polished every day for the last four years.
He swallows. He casts his eyes back over the lake and says, "You miss him."
There's a pause.
"Yes," Lan Xichen says quietly. Then, "No." Another pause. "I do not know."
"What are you going to do with it?"
"I am not sure yet."
"Put it back in circulation?"
"I could. But then it would be as though every jade token I saw were this one. I do not want them all to be tainted in my eyes." Lan Xichen exhales. "I may just throw it into the waterfalls at Cloud Recesses."
"Isn't wastefulness against the rules?"
"Yes." Lan Xichen gives him a sad smile. "But I have already broken so many of them." The unspoken rings clear: What's one more?
Ahead of them, on the lake, one of the fishermen gives a triumphant shout and holds up what must be a tiny wriggling fish. His friends all laugh and clap him on the back in exaggerated congratulations. Jiang Cheng smiles a little, despite himself.
Lan Xichen breaks the silence after a while, with a quiet carefulness that belies the casual nature of the question.
"I have a favour to ask of you."
Jiang Cheng looks at him, eyebrows raised. "Well, that's a first."
"What? Oh, surely not."
"You've never asked me for anything before."
Lan Xichen opens his mouth as if to argue, but then pauses, clearly running through the past year and a half in his head. "No," he says finally, in a wondering tone. "You have just given me everything without my asking. Which is a bit mortifying for me, as I am about to ask for even more. But I won't apologize," he adds, correctly interpreting Jiang Cheng's scoff, "because I know what you would think of that. You have told me often enough to stop apologizing and start asking things for myself."
"So the great Zewu-jun can learn."
"Certainly."
"Well, let's hear it, then. What's this favour?"
Lan Xichen looks down at Jiang Cheng's hands where they are braced on the wooden railing of the pavilion: tough, calloused hands, scarred across the knuckles. His lips part. He hesitates, looking absurdly as though he is gathering his courage for something.
"Zewu-jun," Jiang Cheng prompts.
Lan Xichen's gaze flicks to his. Then, with less courtesy and far less measured grace than he usually speaks with, he blurts out, "May I visit the Jiang ancestral hall with you?"
Jiang Cheng's spine pulls taut. He straightens, still gripping the balustrade tightly with both hands. Lan Xichen hurries to add, "Just once, if it would not be inappropriate. I know it is not my place, but …"
It's a transparent opportunity to interrupt if he wants, but Jiang Cheng's thoughts are moving strangely slowly. "Why do you want to see the ancestral hall?" he asks at last.
Lan Xichen can't seem to meet his eyes. His expression looks as though it might be cut apart with a single harsh word; like it might bloom, with a kind one. "You once said that … it was a sad place for you. That whenever you sat vigil there for your family, you did so alone, because there was no one left who would understand what you had lost." He drops his gaze. "I was not there for you twenty years ago, or ten years ago, or four years ago. Few people were, I think. But I would like to be here for you now. No one should have to mourn alone, and – and you are my friend." He covers Jiang Cheng's right hand with his own, his palm settling over the knuckles. "If it would make you uncomfortable, then please, tell me so at once. But if not …"
Jiang Cheng hears him as if from a distance. He can't look away from Lan Xichen's hand, which for some reason is sending a hot shivery sensation through every single one of his nerve endings. Part of him wants to snap that his family's shrine is not to be trespassed upon by foreign sect leaders. Another part of him wants to break down crying – although, to be fair, that part never takes long to surface. Yet another part wants to throw his head back and shout at the universe: Is this your idea of a joke? Twenty years of mourning alone, and now, now you want to console me? Now you want to give me – him? The First Jade of Lan, the pride of the whole cultivation world, a man I'll never in a thousand years live to deserve, all for a gracious few hours' vigil? How much more will you taunt me? How much more will you give me just for the pleasure of taking it away?
"But if not," Lan Xichen says softly, his hand shifting forward so he can curl his fingers around the heel of Jiang Cheng's hand, "then let me … pay my respects to your parents. Please." He smiles a warm, hesitant, crooked sort of smile, one that crinkles his eyes at the corners. "I have much to thank them for."
And here's the funny thing, after all: Jiang Cheng could have withstood far more terrible things than this. He could have withstood kindness, and honesty, and compassion. He could have withstood beauty and grace and nobility of character. He might even have withstood the unique empathy of a person who has known him since boyhood and, by a vicious twist of fate, suffered all the same hurts. He has withstood them; all these months, he has withstood them. Zewu-jun possesses both the qualities of a gentleman and of an old friend, and until today it has been no hardship to accept that and be grateful.
But he never could have withstood this.
"All right," he says.
Lan Xichen's smile grows unbearably bright.
They go to the ancestral hall that evening. Jiang Cheng walks in with a faint rushing noise in his ears, like the wind through reeds on a summer evening. He kneels in front of his dead family's tablets, and Lan Xichen sinks down next to him, in the same place where Lan Wangji his brother once knelt. In silence they light incense sticks, and in silence they bow once, twice, thrice to the floor.
When they rise for the third time, Jiang Cheng risks a glance. Lan Xichen has already closed his eyes, and with his hands folded respectfully before him, appears to be carved from stone. His brow creases. His lips move soundlessly as he addresses Jiang Fengmian, Yu Ziyuan and Jiang Yanli in some kind of anxious private query. Apart from that, his form is perfect. His robes don't so much as wrinkle.
Jiang Cheng looks back at the memorial tablets and despairs.
Help me, A-jie, he thinks. Help, help, help.
…
