…
"Ball lightning?"
The senior disciple nods. "North of Yunping. Locals report several instances of it appearing and vanishing in the same area of forest and agricultural fields, one burn injury, so far no fatalities. They say it sometimes disappears with a minor explosion and leaves behind a sulfurous smell."
"How long since the first appearance?" Jiang Cheng asks, frowning.
"The earliest was reported this morning around yin shi, so – half a day?"
"Any traces of resentful energy?"
"None that we could find, Zongzhu."
Jiang Cheng drags a hand over his jaw, thinking. Then he puts down his correspondence and rises from his desk.
"Send a message to Yunping. I'm going to take care of this myself."
"Yes, Zongzhu. Shall I arrange for a team –?"
"No need. I've already dealt with something similar." Jiang Cheng tightens his bun as he strides out of his office, in the direction of his own quarters. He'll need a cloak, a few talisman papers and perhaps a spirit-trapping net if they're to neutralize this … ball lightning, or whatever it is. "I'll be back by morning. If you haven't heard from me by noon tomorrow, something's gone wrong, in which case send for my second-in-command."
"Wei-da-shixiong?"
Wei Wuxian hasn't shown his face at Lotus Pier since the night he tricked Lan Xichen into getting drunk. "He's not here. Your Xu-shixiong's the next most senior."
"Understood."
"And tell no one else that I've left."
"Yes, Zongzhu."
Jiang Cheng rounds the next corner and runs into a scowling, sun-wrinkled man in Jiang robes.
"Going to take care of a little ball lightning, I see?"
"Ke-daifu," Jiang Cheng says, scowling back. "Quit eavesdropping. And quit meddling in things that aren't any of your business."
"Not my business? The last time you went out without backup, you came back bleeding like a stuck pig."
"I do not go on night hunts without backup –"
"Because I'm here to tell you otherwise! And need I remind you what happened the last time ball lightning appeared in Yunmeng?"
"I destroyed it."
"And nearly got your arms paralyzed for your trouble."
"It wore off in less than a day, and – you know what? Forget it. I'm not having this conversation with you." Jiang Cheng brushes past him. "If by some miracle you don't have any actual duties to take care of, feel free to impart whatever advice you're here to give and get lost."
"Of course, Zongzhu," says Ke-daifu, falling into step with him. "Here's some: don't go alone. Lightning isn't a force to mess with."
"I know that." Jiang Cheng raises his left hand, displaying Zidian. "Do you?"
Ke-daifu looks unimpressed with the threat. "At least take Xu-gongzi with you."
"Xu Ying's my acting deputy. He needs to stay."
"Young Andiao, then."
"Not experienced enough."
"Qin-laoshi. Song-laoshi. They're as experienced as it gets."
"They're teaching."
"So take Zewu-jun. I know for a fact he has the evening off."
Jiang Cheng's hands clench into fists.
"… No."
"Why not?"
"Because. He's – our guest. He's not supposed to risk his life on night-hunts for us."
Ke-daifu sniffs. "He already risks his life managing your temper."
"Watch it, old man!"
"Well, what did you expect when you invited the First Jade of Lan to stay the winter? If you don't even ask, it'll be like you don't think he's capable enough. You don't want to insult him."
"That's exactly why he's not coming."
"And what is that supposed to mean?"
They've nearly reached his personal quarters. Jiang Cheng bites his tongue before he can snap that he doesn't know how to act around Lan Xichen anymore and would rather not actively seek out his company until he can be sure he won't betray his own – his own – feelings. "None of your business. If you value your hide, you won't breathe a word to him about this. I'm going alone and that's final."
Jiang Cheng turns back around only to find himself face-to-face with Lan Xichen, who has stopped just in time to prevent them from running headlong into each other.
"Wanyin," he says, startled. "Ke-daifu. Is everything all right?"
If he's done anything today besides sit still and play the guqin, nobody could tell from his immaculate appearance. Jiang Cheng, whose robes have been disarranged in several different places since he got up this morning, and whose hair isn't tied back quite as tightly as it was before he had to put out some fires with his council, feels the back of his neck go hot. "Zewu-jun," he starts.
"It is not, precisely," Ke-daifu interrupts. "I'm afraid Jiang-zongzhu is about to go on a dangerous night hunt, and he is going alone despite all my advice to the contrary."
Lan Xichen looks between the two of them. "Is that true?"
"Ke-daifu is overreacting," Jiang Cheng says stiffly. "As per usual. I've dealt with this sort of threat before."
"Is it a serious one?"
"Just a species of ball lightning. It terrorized Yunping the last time it appeared, but I took care of it."
"And got injured in the process," Ke-daifu says under his breath.
Jiang Cheng sends him an irate look, but the damage is done. Lan Xichen immediately says, "Then let me go with you. I could not forgive myself if something happened to you when I could have prevented it."
"Oh, for the love of – Nothing is going to happen to me!"
"Nevertheless, I have been here for nearly two months, and we have yet to night-hunt together. You would not object to indulging your guest, I hope?"
"I would, actually, if it meant putting my guest's life in danger."
"Zongzhu," Ke-daifu says warningly.
"Please do not think of it as my personally offering you help," Lan Xichen says, with a straight face, "but as an offer made by Gusu Lan to Yunmeng Jiang, in the interest of cooperation and mutual affection between our sects."
Jiang Cheng makes an indignant noise, something between a scoff and an expulsion of breath. "You can't make this about politics."
"I do not have to. What would happen to the relationship between our sects if something befell you while I was here?"
"I'm sure I wouldn't be around to care."
"Stop being so bullheaded," Ke-daifu says exasperatedly. "Zewu-jun is trying to save you some face. Just let him go with you so I don't have to spend the night wringing my hands like an old widow, wondering if you've finally gone and gotten yourself killed."
"I'm not going to get myself killed!" Jiang Cheng growls, but it's no use: Lan Xichen just nods and says, "No, of course not. If you will give me an incense stick's length of time, I will join you here and we may be off," before bidding farewell to Ke-daifu and disappearing around the next corner. Jiang Cheng is left staring after him, tense for reasons he can't name and disgruntled for reasons he very much can.
"That's settled, then," Ke-daifu says.
"No one in this place listens to me anymore."
"It's for the best, Zongzhu. Two cultivators are better than one, though I still think you should bring a team."
"Oh, leave off. I'll be as safe as a hatchling in Zewu-jun's keep," Jiang Cheng says irritably. "We've both faced worse than some stray static charge wandering around the forest. What's the worst that could happen?"
…
Night has long since fallen upon Yunping when a muffled explosion startles a flock of crows into the sky. This is followed by smoke sifting through the treetops and a furious yell louder, even, than the explosion itself.
"MOTHERFUCKING SON OF A BITCH!"
Beneath the pine-boughs, where the ball lightning hovered a moment before, there is nothing left but a cloud of pungent-smelling smoke. Jiang Cheng struggles up from where the discharge flung him across the clearing and smack into a tree, spitting vitriol and curses; struggles not because of exhaustion or injury, but because he literally can't move his arms. They're hanging loose at his sides, dead and unresponsive from bicep to fingertip.
In retrospect, it may not have been the best idea to use Zidian on it. The moment one struck the other, what felt like a thunderstorm-grade electric discharge zapped through the whip, vaporizing the lightning ball and just as instantly numbing his arms. Which is the exact same fucking thing that happened last time. He's had unpleasant prior experience with losing the physical functioning of parts of his body, so his first impulse is to start hyperventilating; but this he suppresses with deep breaths in through the nose. There are more mature ways to react, after all. Swearing extravagantly, he fetches up against the tree trunk for support and hisses through his teeth when the back of his head collides with it.
To take stock of his injuries: paralyzed arms, bruised skull, battered dignity. Not bad, all things considered. It could be worse.
Too bad Lan Xichen doesn't realize that.
"Wanyin!"
He hurtles across the clearing in a flurry of pearlescent robes and seizes Jiang Cheng by the shoulders, the upper arms, the elbows, frantically scanning him from head to toe. "Are you all right? Were you hurt?"
"I'm fine," Jiang Cheng says automatically, and contradicts himself by immediately cursing again when he can't raise his hands to brush Lan Xichen off. "Fuck!"
"Did you hit your head?" Lan Xichen leans down, forcing him to look him in the eye. "Focus on me, please. Are you in pain?"
It takes a moment for Jiang Cheng to focus on him as requested, but only because it's hard to switch gears when one is too busy seething. "I said I'm fine!"
"Are you dizzy at all?"
"No."
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Would you relax?" At Lan Xichen's expression, Jiang Cheng sighs and relents. "Three."
The furrow of distress in Lan Xichen's brow relaxes fractionally. "What happened? I saw a flash of light, and then next I knew, I was lying across the clearing. Did the lightning vanish?"
"Something like that."
Lan Xichen seems to notice his arms hanging limply at his sides. "What's wrong?"
"Got hit by lightning. Can't feel my arms. You know how it is."
"What? But how – why are you not – that is enormously worrying!"
"It'll wear off eventually," Jiang Cheng mutters, not a little embarrassed to be held in full face of Lan Xichen's anxiety for him. "It did last time."
Lan Xichen reaches down and takes one of his hands in both his own. "Do you mean that you can't feel this?"
His hands are dry and warm where they press over Jiang Cheng's knuckles, his palms. "No," Jiang Cheng says. "I can feel it. I just can't make them move." He has never been more grateful for the cover of night.
"So you have not lost all sensation?"
"It would hurt if you stabbed my hand right now, if that's what you're asking."
"Wanyin."
"It's fine. Look, I can feel where your hands are without looking. You're tracing my life line," Jiang Cheng says, forcing himself to hold Lan Xichen's gaze. "I'm not paralyzed, just … temporarily inconvenienced. You have calluses," he adds nonsensically. "Like a swordsman."
"I am a swordsman," Lan Xichen says. He stopped tracing Jiang Cheng's lifeline the moment it was pointed out to him. "You are sure it does not hurt?"
"Yes, I'm sure. Do you see my sword anywhere?"
Lan Xichen casts a look around the clearing. "There." He removes one hand from Jiang Cheng's, then the other, lowering it to his side instead of dropping it. Jiang Cheng follows him across the clearing and lets Lan Xichen slide Sandu back into his sheath for him.
Which is when the first raindrop lands on his head.
Lan Xichen blinks and holds his hand out, palm-up. Jiang Cheng has only a moment to close his eyes and curse everything and everyone under heaven whose name he knows before there's a flash of lightning, a titanic stroke of thunder a few miles distant, and the sky cracks open in pouring rain.
Lan Xichen shakes out his hand. "We ought to hurry." He draws his sword and sets it to hovering freely at mid-calf, parallel to the rapidly dampening earth. Then he proffers a hand to Jiang Cheng. "Ke-daifu will be able to help you."
"Ke-daifu doesn't find out," Jiang Cheng says. The rain is starting to trickle into his eyes and behind his collar, which makes it difficult to focus on anything specific. He doesn't understand what the hand is for. "What?"
Lan Xichen hesitates, for no apparent reason. Then he says, "You cannot ride without the use of your arms."
Oh.
Fuck.
"We ride together," Lan Xichen adds, as if the message could have been missed a second time.
"I'd rather walk."
"That could take hours. And with your arms out of commission, you cannot defend yourself from anyone or anything that might still be lurking nearby. This is the safest and fastest option."
"Riding on the tail-end of a sword is for children. And non-cultivators."
"Wei-gongzi travels between Gusu and Yunmeng in this way, if I understand correctly." Lan Xichen's voice is infuriatingly reasonable, and quiet beneath the steadily drumming rain. "Does that make him a child? Or a non-cultivator?"
Jiang Cheng looks away, teeth clenched. His arms are hanging limply at his sides, his robes singed, his boots already soaked through, his tied-up hair on the point of total collapse, and yet all of that would be nothing compared to the squirming embarrassment of standing in such close quarters with Lan Xichen. On one sword. "I just don't want to, all right?"
There's a massive surge of wind as the rain intensifies, passing through the forest around them with a whooshing sigh like the sea. Great smattering droplets batter the hanging branches overhead. Jiang Cheng glances back up, trying to see through the blurring effect of the rain, and feels his heart sink.
He's not sure what to call the expression on Lan Xichen's face. Eyes cast down. Lips pressed together. His outstretched hand drooping low in midair, as though he can't quite bring himself to retract it. He does not look as though he truly wants this.
"I know," he says at last. "I am sorry. But … if you wish to make our return to Lotus Pier as inconspicuous as possible, it would be best if we returned together, soon, and in one piece. Will you not consider it?"
Jiang Cheng wavers.
If Ke-daifu gets wind of his injury before it wears off, he will without a doubt give Jiang Cheng grief about it for the next ten years. If he tries to make the return journey on foot and something happens to him along the way because his arms don't fucking work, it would be a thousand times more ignominious than sneaking back into Lotus Pier and never telling anyone what happened tonight.
"I will not let you fall," Lan Xichen says.
Jiang Cheng shuts his eyes.
He really is defenseless like this.
"Fine," he mutters. "Fine."
He stomps across the clearing and steps up onto the waiting sword. After a moment, Lan Xichen's outstretched hand falls back to his side. He looks up at Jiang Cheng with an apologetic, forced-looking smile.
"I am going to put my hands on your waist. Is that all right?"
He's always been a little taller than Jiang Cheng, if one didn't count the elaborate crowns. Now Jiang Cheng looks down at him – at his upturned brows, the divot in his jaw, the clear drops caught in his lashes, like tears – and thinks with a surge of self-hatred how repulsive this must be for Zewu-jun to do, how odious it must be to offer such a solution when … when …
They say Lans tend to love only once in a lifetime.
But like it or not, this is the only sensible solution; which is to say, the only solution that won't make them jump through very obvious, very awkward hoops to avoid touching each other. Anyone in their position would do the same, so what is there to be bitter about? Jiang Cheng despises the thought of Lan Xichen touching him under duress, but he can't say anything about it without being disgracefully rude. So he says nothing at all, and Lan Xichen takes this as permission to mount Shuoyue beside him.
The sword holds steady, but Jiang Cheng, reflexively shuffling aside to make room, bumps into Lan Xichen and loses his balance. Lan Xichen seizes him around the waist and pulls him flush against himself: a grasping, reflexive movement, like righting a vase about to topple off a table. Jiang Cheng finds himself pressed half against Zewu-jun's chest. "Your pardon," Lan Xichen says, and adjusts his grip. They're cheek-to-cheek now and beyond all semblance of propriety. By the time he wraps his other arm around Jiang Cheng's back, pressing the useless right arm between them so it won't throw off their balance mid-flight, Jiang Cheng has forgotten how to breathe. He can feel the whole magnificent topography of Lan Xichen's figure through their increasingly waterlogged robes.
Lan Xichen puts his mouth at Jiang Cheng's ear to ask, "Are you secure?"
Jiang Cheng, suppressing a shudder, manages to force out some kind of affirmative noise.
"All right. Hold on."
If Jiang Cheng were in full possession of his sarcastic faculties, he would have demanded how in hell he was supposed to do that with both his arms unresponsive, but he isn't, because the last time they stood pressed together like this Lan Xichen was severely intoxicated and whispering Jiang Cheng's name into the sensitive juncture of his throat. Then they're rising from the clearing and taking off through the rain, and all Jiang Cheng's remaining power of concentration goes into trying to stay on the sword.
Lan Xichen was right: he couldn't have flown back to Lotus Pier by himself. No cultivator can ride a sword without at least one functioning arm to guide them and compensate for shifts in direction and weight, to say nothing of riding through pouring rain; a single mistake would drag them over the edge to their death. Wrapped in Lan Xichen's embrace like this, trying not to plant his face into that sturdy, soaked-brocade shoulder, Jiang Cheng focuses on matching his centre of gravity to that of his companion and making of himself as convenient a passenger as possible. Zewu-jun is capable of staying aloft even while holding onto a second person like a ship's mast to her prisoner, but that doesn't mean Jiang Cheng should make the job more difficult for him. He's embarrassed himself quite enough tonight without repositioning his feet at the wrong moment and knocking the First Jade of Lan off his own sword.
Lan Xichen's jaw bumps against his cheek. His other hand, clasped beneath the one on Jiang Cheng's waist, spreads wider, the smallest finger curling around Jiang Cheng's hipbone. Jiang Cheng feels an unwilling jolt in the pit of his stomach.
How strange, he thinks, and how prodigiously stupid, that even with the lashing wind, and the rain like needles in his face, all he can think of is the intimate weight of Lan Xichen's arm around his waist, and how it envelops him with complete self-assurance against that palpably muscled chest. Surely, it isn't necessary for them to be pressed together this close; surely there ought to have been some space left between them. They're not in such mortal danger that they couldn't have afforded to hold apart from each other. Lan Xichen doesn't have to be so damn self-sacrificing about it.
In fact, how can he be so blasé about this? Do such embraces mean so little to him that he can offer them professionally, expecting nothing? Aren't his Lan sensibilities even a little offended by such impropriety?
Or is the desire to be generous with his friends so deeply ingrained in him that he sees nothing improper in it at all?
By the time they reach Lotus Pier, the world is painted in dark slashes of black and purple, and Jiang Cheng has worked himself into a fine, sulking temper. They land on an empty dock within the inner compound, where the guards on duty have hidden themselves from the rain. Jiang Cheng breaks from Lan Xichen's hold and jumps backward, awkwardly, onto the wet wooden planks. His robes weigh twice what they should. Lan Xichen steps down with more grace; his own clothes must be likewise soaked through to the innermost layer, but he could move elegantly with iron fetters on both his ankles, so whatever.
Anger has resolved itself into a decision behind Jiang Cheng's breastbone. If Lan Xichen's composure hasn't been shaken yet, then he won't mind lending a little more of his assistance.
"Come on," he orders.
Lan Xichen's expression is difficult to make out in the pouring rain, much less read. But he sheathes his sword and follows without a word of protest.
They weave through Lotus Pier, too drenched to bother ducking under roofs or awnings. Jiang Cheng tries to put vengeance into each squishy, waterlogged stride, but it's no use: he can neither stomp nor storm the way he wants to. Lan Xichen, who probably assumes that something else will be asked of him to end the night hunt, does not raise any questions.
When they arrive at his personal quarters, Jiang Cheng curses under his breath: the servants were instructed not to leave any lights burning, so the room that greets them now is cold and dark as a winter tomb. Then the door quietly slides shut behind him, and he turns.
Lan Xichen stands there waiting, his face shadowed and indistinct, rainwater pooling on the floor beneath his robes.
Time for Jiang Cheng to put on the thickest face he has ever managed in his life.
"I need your help with something," he says.
"Of course."
Lan Xichen's tone is quizzical, and nothing more. Jiang Cheng gestures with his chin down at his own clothes.
"Help me take these off." Then, before mortification can set in: "I can't call the servants. Ke-daifu will be insufferable if he finds out, and I don't want it known that Zidian can be used against me in any way, shape or form. You're the only one who knows what happened tonight, so help me with these and we need never speak of it again."
Lan Xichen does not reply.
The drumming rain fills this new silence. Jiang Cheng's fingers twitch with the reflexive desire to curl into fists; the lightning's effects must be wearing off, if his involuntary movements are returning. He waits.
But the First Jade of Lan has turned to stone before him, a carven statue with one hand still on the pommel of his sword and the other hidden in one long, dripping sleeve. He makes not a single movement, and not a sound.
"I mean … you don't have to," Jiang Cheng says, after a moment. "If it doesn't wear off by morning, I'll just – tell everyone I'm indisposed and don't want to be disturbed. My clothes will dry eventually."
It's difficult to tell, but it seems like Lan Xichen opens his mouth, as if to say something. Thunder rumbles overhead.
"You know what, never mind." Jiang Cheng looks away. "I shouldn't have asked. You're not a servant; this isn't your job."
"No," Lan Xichen says.
Jiang Cheng stops short.
"No," Lan Xichen repeats, more quietly this time. "I will help."
Neither of them move, for a moment.
Then Jiang Cheng clears his throat and nods across the room. "There's … a hearth, over there. And some candles."
Lan Xichen breaks from his stillness with a vertiginous, wavering uncertainty, like a slice of rock sliding from its mountaintop. He glides through the darkness toward the sunken hearth. Jiang Cheng, given one last moment of privacy, shuts his eyes against the silvery afterimage.
Jiang Cheng, ah, Jiang Cheng … If you want him to stay, why don't you just ask him?
There's a whooshing sound behind him, like a fire-breather blowing a mouthful of wine through a torch. Jiang Cheng turns to find the hearth filled with freshly burning coals, and behind it Lan Xichen hanging his cloak up by the door. His darkly glimmering robes look as though they've been embroidered in heavy gold thread where they catch the firelight; and where they don't, they reflect a deep crimson colour, like new blood or weddings. Jiang Cheng toes off each sodden boot and positions himself as close to the sunken hearth as possible without letting his robes catch fire. Lan Xichen comes to join him, and without any sort of preamble, reaches politely for Jiang Cheng's robes. But his hands stop halfway, curling back as if from a bonfire.
He probably doesn't know where to begin.
"The cloak first," Jiang Cheng says.
"Yes," Lan Xichen whispers.
His fingers must have gone numb too, because he fumbles the first clasp. The second comes undone a little more smoothly. He scoops up the cloak before it can deliquesce to the floor, and Jiang Cheng rolls his neck from side to side, resetting his squared shoulders. The cloak goes up by the door. Lan Xichen returns, his hair a stark contrast against his moon-white robes, and raises his hands again. They are illuminated in extraordinary detail by the firelight: the crease of each first and second knuckle, the ridges of vein, all the textural flaws of human skin unseen by daylight and at a distance. They are beautiful hands, but they hesitate. Jiang Cheng gives them a moment to hover at his waistline before delivering another hint.
"Belt."
"Ah," Lan Xichen says. His voice is queerly strained, in the manner of a person focusing on several things at once. "Of course."
His fingers trace the first, wider belt before finding the clarity bell looped over the second, thinner belt tied on over it. When Jiang Cheng feels them slip, several times, on the knotted loop of the clarity bell, he forces himself to break the silence again.
"Do you have it?"
"Yes," Lan Xichen says. He has bowed his head as demurely as any servant, so that his hair shields his face from view. "My apologies. It is … a bit different from the other side."
He goes silent, as if thinking of something else. Jiang Cheng, for no reason at all, holds his breath. It feels like a spell has been cast over the room, one that might either be very easy or very difficult to break.
When Lan Xichen speaks again, his voice is hushed, barely audible beneath the rain.
"I never thought I would do this for anyone."
The burning hearth whuffs and sends a lick of smoke through the biggest log, cracked down the middle. Jiang Cheng wets his lips. "You mean …" He stops, gathering himself, and tries again. "You've never …?"
"No!" Lan Xichen says, and it comes out sharp and a little scandalized. He catches Jiang Cheng's gaze and drops it. "No," he says again, more calmly. Bending to his task again, after another few tries, he manages to separate the clarity bell from the belt and hooks it over a nearby ornamental screen, the one Jiang Cheng usually shoves to the side whenever he finds it in his way. He plainly doesn't mean to elaborate.
Jiang Cheng feels something unpleasant bubble to life underneath his ribs.
"Right," he says. "Sorry. Forgot who I was talking to."
Lan Xichen pauses with his fingers on the knot of the second belt. There's no mistaking Jiang Cheng's tone: bitter as the frost and twice as cold. "What do you mean?" he asks, after a moment.
"Aren't you Zewu-jun, the unparalleled First Jade of Lan?"
"I cannot lay claim to 'unparalleled'–"
"Are you or aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Well, there you have it. Your blood runs cold." Jiang Cheng casts his gaze across the firelit, shadowed room, searching for something that will take his mind off Zewu-jun's dexterous hands at his waist. "No wonder you didn't want to help. You're breaking, what, fifty different rules right now?"
"Seventy-six."
Jiang Cheng's gaze snaps back to him. "You're joking."
Lan Xichen shakes his head. His lips have twisted into a self-deprecating facsimile of a smile. "It is not that I did not want to help. I did," he says. "I do. It is only that –" He stops, as though he hears something in his own voice that Jiang Cheng does not. "I was only … surprised, that you asked for my help at all."
Jiang Cheng watches him start undoing the ties of the widest belt. "Why?" he asks.
"Because you are proud," Lan Xichen says, without looking up. "Anyone could see it in the way you carry yourself. But I have seen it in the way you refuse help from others, even when it would not lose you any face. How anything you are loathe to leave imperfect, you take upon yourself. How you refuse to bow to failure" – he slips the largest belt from around Jiang Cheng's midsection – "and take great satisfaction from every victory."
"I think 'great satisfaction' is a bit much," Jiang Cheng says.
Lan Xichen makes no immediate reply. He lays the belt to rest over the back of the ornamental screen and turns to lift Jiang Cheng's vest-like overlayer from his shoulders. It's sturdy and sleeveless and has somehow absorbed more water than winter wool has any right to absorb. He pushes it back over Jiang Cheng's shoulders and starts tugging it down his arms for him. They're close together in the darkness, now, a mere handsbreadth apart. Lan Xichen won't lift his gaze. He folds the overlayer in half and drapes it over the screen. Jiang Cheng is left in a dark blue zhongyi with iridescent patterns embroidered into the fabric, buckled at the throat and held snugly across the chest by a series of tiny hooks down the middle. The sleeves are held secure by purple wrist guards, which in turn are tied in place with braided black hemp. Lan Xichen stares at the throat-buckle for a long moment. Then he swallows hard, and reaches for it.
"The bracers first," Jiang Cheng corrects him.
Lan Xichen snatches his fingers back. "Of course," he says. "I beg your pardon."
He sounds mortified. In fact, his face is starting to look distinctly rosy in the firelight, although that's probably just his body reheating itself after their icy flight through the rain. He takes one of Jiang Cheng's wrists in both his hands and turns it over a few times, searching for the knot. He finds it tucked between the vambrace and the forearm, and they're silent for a minute while he sets to work undoing it, nimble fingers picking apart the hemp with motions not unlike the plucking of guqin strings.
Then he says, conversationally, without looking up, "Do you remember when you knocked me down in that sparring match, and … tilted my chin up with your sword?"
Jiang Cheng jolts out of a mesmerizing fantasy of Zewu-jun undoing the vambrace and then sliding two fingers beneath the sleeve, along the hot, thirsty skin of his inner wrist. "What?" he asks; then, cheeks on fire, "I mean – yes, why wouldn't I?"
"Was that not an act of great satisfaction? Of a conqueror with his prize?"
Oh, like an act of gloating, or of mockery. "I won that fight by a hair," Jiang Cheng says, wincing inwardly. "I haven't conquered you yet."
At this, strangely enough, Lan Xichen looks up at last. Firelight plays across his brow, his cheekbones, his dark eyes glowing softly with coals.
"Have you not?" he asks.
The hearthfire crackles.
Jiang Cheng frowns.
There's – something cryptic, something obliquely suggestive, about this quiet reply, but he can't quite put his finger on it. Lan Xichen's eyes are curiously intent upon his face, as though any moment now he is supposed to come to some kind of long overdue conclusion. But surely there's no sense in arguing about who won a sparring match that took place weeks ago.
Lan Xichen drops his gaze. He pulls off the hemp braid tying the vambrace to Jiang Cheng's forearm – when did he undo it? – and folds it over the rest of the damp garments on the ornamental screen. Then he pries the bracer off one-handed, and cradling Jiang Cheng's wrist in the other, slides his fingers beneath the sleeve cuff to let fresh air run beneath it. Jiang Cheng feels a surprised twinge of gratitude for the gesture; he hadn't even noticed the feeling of discomfort until it was given relief. Then he feels a twinge of something very different, and his face goes as hot as if he'd stuck it inside a well-stoked oven.
Lan Xichen lowers his wrist back to his side and picks up the other. Then he asks, with unconvincing nonchalance, "Is that really what you think of me?"
"Hm?"
"That my blood runs cold."
Jiang Cheng, startled, makes an involuntary noise that is not quite a scoff, and not quite an exhalation, but something in between that conveys how transparently obvious the answer ought to be. "If you did," he says, "nobody could tell the difference. Trust me."
"Do you have any idea of the self-restraint it takes to make it so?"
The hempen braid slithers off. "Please," Jiang Cheng says. "What would you need self-restraint for?"
Lan Xichen's grip tightens, using only just a fraction more pressure than before. "If you knew what I dreamt," he starts, unsteady, "you would not –"
And he stops. His knuckles whiten, yet he stops, as he always does, and doesn't deign to continue. The bubbling thing under Jiang Cheng's ribcage decides to become anger, a hot little fire that sharpens his teeth and drips poison on his tongue. "No, go on," he says. "Tell me. What do you dream of that's so scandalous?" The question is too caustic to be joking. "Teatime?" Even he can hear the edge in his own voice. "Polite conversation?"
Lan Xichen looks up at him, stricken, with the vambrace in his hands. "Or something worse?" Jiang Cheng offers. "Handholding, perhaps?"
Lan Xichen frowns; and then asks, with what sounds like genuine doubt, "Are you – mocking me?"
Jiang Cheng looks away, teeth clenched.
It was a low blow. He knows that. It was entirely uncalled for and an example of first-class hypocrisy besides: as if he's ever been overpowered by lust himself, or wanted anyone else to be on his behalf. But appetite is one thing and ego is another, and the knowledge that Lan Xichen truly thinks nothing of helping him like this, except to be surprised at Jiang Cheng's capacity for humbling himself, is mortifying in the extreme. He didn't even realize he had … hopes.
Still, to show Lan Xichen his scorn is neither acceptable nor excusable, when he hasn't done anything besides not be interested. "You? No," he says, after a moment. "But handholding isn't anything to write home about, or so I've heard."
Something difficult to name passes over Lan Xichen's face. "You are goading me," he says.
"No."
"You think I do not know what passion is."
"I didn't say that."
"I am not a fool. You think I do not feel what ordinary men do. You think that because I do not speak of these things, I must be altogether heartless."
"I don't think you're heartless," Jiang Cheng says. "I just don't think you'd ever let your heart overrule your head."
Lan Xichen puts down the vambrace. "This is what comes of having four thousand rules. We teach our disciples to be better than human, and when they fail they are punished; and when they succeed, the world forgets that they are human at all." His tone is unexpectedly bitter. "I never thought you would so wholeheartedly believe in the Lan sect's reputation."
"I don't. I just believe in yours."
"Why?"
"Because you're equal to it." Why else? It's more than can be said for most Lan sect cultivators. It's more than can be said for most people with a name to themselves, period.
Lan Xichen looks at him another moment, frowning. Then he turns his attention to the buckled collar of the zhongyi and unfastens it, slowly, in silence, apparently mulling something over. When it comes undone, his gaze lingers for a moment on the now-exposed apple of Jiang Cheng's throat, then drops to the iridescently patterned fabric under his hands. "No more than anyone else," he says at last. "Reputations are worth little, in the end."
"Reputations are everything," Jiang Cheng objects hotly. "How far do you think I could've gotten if people weren't afraid of me?"
"Perhaps not as far as you did," Lan Xichen concedes. He has still not taken his eyes off the zhongyi, nor his grip off the undone fastenings off the buckle. "Perhaps not as quickly. But you are not your reputation, as I have learned; and as you tend, I think, to forget. I had hoped that you had learned the same about me. The Twin Jades," he says abruptly, with a kind of suppressed self-contempt. "As though we were made of stone. Am I really not flesh and blood to you, then?"
Thunder reverberates through the sky overhead: a deep, sonorous growl like the sundering of mountains. Jiang Cheng can feel his handle on the conversation slipping. "No," he says. "Of course you are. Look, Zewu-jun –"
"How long are you going to call me that?"
Jiang Cheng feels like he just missed a step on the stairs. "What?"
Lan Xichen's eyes gleam with all the embers in the hearth. "You have license to use my name," he says, as though this is a perfectly ordinary thing to tell someone. "You know you have. If I am flesh and blood to you, as I am to no one else, surely you of all people have the right to dispense with that title for ever."
"It wouldn't be appropriate."
"Why on earth not?"
Rain billows in torrential gusts against the roof, the sliding doors. Jiang Cheng sets his jaw and says nothing.
"Friends call each other by their given names," Lan Xichen says, after a brief silence. "I wish to hear you call me by mine, that is all."
Jiang Cheng's skin tightens with a sort of stinging shock, as though he's been doused with icy water and then with scalding tea. It wasn't supposed to go this far. He's starting to feel like a wild animal cornered on the street by some well-meaning stranger. "Listen," he says, "I'm a bit tired. If you could just take this off and be done with it, I'd be grateful."
Lan Xichen searches his face for a long, long moment. Then he lowers his gaze, and his fingers drift downward, to the first hook. "Here?" he asks.
"Yes."
"I see." His bent head makes his hair fall in a heavy curtain, shielding his face. "Would you mind repeating what it is you want me to do?"
With any other person, in any other context, Jiang Cheng would have thought they were trying to be funny. But he's never felt less like laughing in his entire life. "Take off my zhongyi," he says.
"Ah," Lan Xichen says. "Of course. I am sorry." He doesn't sound especially contrite. "But until you address me by name, I must respectfully refuse."
Lightning flashes, illuminating the room in half a heartbeat of pale violet light. Jiang Cheng furrows his brow.
"Excuse me?"
"It is only right."
"Is this …" He doesn't even know what he means to say. A joke? A trick? "You're serious?"
"Yes. I mean what I say." Lan Xichen traces one of the iridescent patterns with his thumb. "Address me by name, and I shall do whatever you wish. I promise."
Thunder rumbles.
Not a joke, then. A direct attack. An open challenge. Jiang Cheng would never, ever have expected this of him – not Lan Xichen, the paragon of willful courtesy. "So it's extortion now," he says, only barely keeping his voice level.
"No," Lan Xichen says quietly. "A bargain."
"I'll pass."
"If Ke-daifu finds out about your injury –"
"Then I'll manage him."
"And if you catch cold?"
"It's not like it'll kill me."
There's a pause.
"I see." Lan Xichen slips his thumbs into the zhongyi's central fold and unhooks the first clasp. "You would rather risk your health than use my given name. You would rather walk twenty li than share my sword. Remember that I know you, Wanyin. It is not propriety that stays your hand." He unhooks the second. "So what is?"
Jiang Cheng opens his mouth to snap something defensive, like that's my business, or don't ask me when I've already answered, but something stops him. It's true – he's been rude to Lan Xichen before, and quite unapologetically. Why rebuff him now? To counterbalance the categorical impropriety of what they're doing? To maintain some semblance of control over his own feelings? He doesn't know how to explain his adamant, entirely automatic refusal, even to himself. But he owes Lan Xichen the truth. He frowns, and then answers, falteringly, "I … I don't know."
They're both quiet for a moment. Lan Xichen undoes the third clasp, the fourth, and the fifth before speaking again.
"Does it offend you? That I ask?"
Jiang Cheng hesitates. "No."
"Does it surprise you?"
"No."
"Then why not accept, when I offer it freely?"
It feels a little bit like someone taking a knife and placing the tip on a scabbed-over, barely-healed gut wound. You were there at Guanyin Temple, Jiang Cheng wants to howl. You know what he did. You know why. If it were a choice between death and accepting what his brother would freely offer to him, he would have cut his own throat before letting either of them walk up that mountain.
And it's this thought that finally makes his resolve waver. How can such a simple gesture – one no doubt exchanged a hundred times by a hundred ordinary people every day, one he hasn't exchanged with a single person in decades – remind him of his own vivisection? He wants to say yes, very badly so, but it scares him; he craves it, but it makes him want to crawl out of his own skin; and if he walks away without it, it will be worse than if Zewu-jun hadn't offered at all. What is wrong with him? A person's given name is a friendly privilege, not a bodily sacrifice; why shouldn't they be on intimate terms with each other, when by all rights they ought to have passed that milestone ages ago? Why is he digging in his heels like this, when using someone's personal name is such a harmless little thing?
Maybe you're just afraid, whispers a sly voice inside his head.
And that does it.
"Lan Xichen," he says hoarsely.
Lan Xichen's fingers stop on the last hook.
The name is a finely chosen one: noble, virtuous, everything a highborn cultivator might wish for their eldest son. But unlike the names of most noble, virtuous eldest sons, it leaves a dazzling taste on the tongue – pine trees and sunlight through mist and fresh tea-steam curling through the air. They've known each other for twenty years, yet this is the first time Jiang Cheng has addressed him to his face with no honorific. An illicit thrill runs through him, as if he's done something forbidden; something he really, really doesn't have the right to do.
Lan Xichen glances up, only a movement of the eyes. His expression seems to say: Well?
"There," Jiang Cheng says, uneasy at having ceded ground and resolved to die before showing it. "Are you going to keep your word, or will I have to do everything myself?"
Without breaking eye contact, Lan Xichen undoes the final clasp. The zhongyi falls open. Jiang Cheng turns his back on him in wordless permission.
"Was that so difficult?" Lan Xichen asks softly.
"Don't push me, Your Excellency."
"But someone must." Lan Xichen's fingers touch the collar of the zhongyi, the seam of his shoulders. "Say it again. Please."
In for a penny. Jiang Cheng wets his lips. "Lan Xichen."
"Without my family name."
"Xichen."
"Ah …" It's almost a sigh. There's a silence, and then: "I know it was rude of me to insist. But I like it too well to really be sorry." Lan Xichen curls his fingers around the edge of the garment, then works it over Jiang Cheng's shoulders and down his arms. "Will you say my other name, now? Just once?"
"Your birth name? Why?"
"Humour me."
"But – we're not –" This renders Jiang Cheng momentarily too aghast for coherency. "Do you even know what you're asking?"
"My courtesy name was not an issue," Lan Xichen says, which is either a blatant falsehood or a happy case of short-term memory loss. "Why should this be any different?"
Jiang Cheng half-turns to glance over his shoulder, and Lan Xichen, folding the zhongyi over his arm, flicks his gaze upward. The hearthfire dances as a tiny spark in his eyes.
He's serious. He's being serious. "Because it's for family!" Jiang Cheng splutters. "And for – shameless people, like Wei Wuxian!"
"Your brother and mine called each other by their birth names while they were still in school."
"Yes, and look where that got them!"
There's a heartbeat of a pause. Less than a heartbeat.
Then Lan Xichen asks, his tone light as anything, "Married, you mean?"
This takes Jiang Cheng so much aback that he turns all the way around to frown at him, half confused and half indignant. He's the one who nearly bit his tongue off to avoid saying and for lovers, so how can Lan Xichen allude to the possibility of such a thing with a straight face? It almost sounds like he's implying – but no, surely not; he'd never.
The train of thought stops short.
Would he?
When it becomes clear that he's having difficulty gathering his wits, Lan Xichen breaks the silence. "A terrible fate, to be sure," he says quietly, arranging the wet garment a little more evenly over his arm. "But not the worst imaginable."
Jiang Cheng is no longer staring at him. He's studying him, brow creased, trying to work out why the world seems different now that he isn't looking at it through a mirror.
Would he?
His expression must have changed somehow, because Lan Xichen breaks eye contact first. "If you do not want to," he says, "then of course I will not force you," laying the zhongyi over the ornamental screen. After a moment's hesitation, he turns and busies himself tidying up the already immaculate furniture, flicking his fingers here and there to extinguish a candle or arrange the bedcovers more neatly. It's unclear if he's trying to smooth over an awkward pause or preserve Jiang Cheng's modesty by looking at him as little as possible, but either way, the effort is redundant. The awkwardness lingers, and modesty is – for the first time tonight – the very furthest thing from Jiang Cheng's mind.
A thousand shardlike memories have refracted anew into his eyes, jangling into one another like wind chimes: Lan Xichen, one hand dipped into the starry lake, smiling sidelong at him through the darkness; Lan Xichen, profoundly drunk, whispering a long-lost poem into his throat; Lan Xichen, resplendent in the sunlight, asking to visit the family shrine with him; Lan Xichen, lifting his gaze, asking as though it were the most immaterial thing in the world: Have you not?
Jiang Cheng's vision blurs. The floor tilts beneath his feet.
Have you not?
No.
It can't be; he hasn't. Of course not.
But then what? Is he trying to – to insinuate these things on purpose? It can't all be in Jiang Cheng's head; his imagination isn't that good, and he's not so delusional as to sense warm feelings directed toward himself where there are none in truth.
Is this a game to him, then? All in good fun, as Wei Wuxian might once have said?
The thought is a bitter one, and he doesn't even really believe it – but it's an easy enough lifeline, ready to hand after forty years of familiar use, and the accompanying flush of indignation curbs what would otherwise have been a swell of panic. He won't know why he did it, later; he'll curse himself and rage and fume and bury it all in unsent letters with some of the worst mortification he's ever known in his life. But that doesn't matter right now. Disbelief, in war, is always one of the first things to die, and what follows on its heels is an all-too-familiar rush of terror mixed with absolute defiance.
"What are you doing?" he asks into the darkness, the silence. "We're not finished."
Thunder reverberates through the sky overhead: a deep, sonorous growl like the sundering of mountains. Lan Xichen stops dead.
Jiang Cheng's fingers twitch reflexively, trying to form fists. His heart beats like a war drum in his chest.
Don't do it, don't, this is going to hurt –
After what feels like eternity, Lan Xichen half-turns toward him. His one visible eye catches the last remaining candle and reflects it, like a tiny rushlight.
"We are not?"
"There's still my shirt."
Lan Xichen turns the rest of the way toward him. At this angle the candlelight no longer reaches his face, and his expression is hidden in darkness.
"You're not breaking any rules when it's to help someone," Jiang Cheng adds, having no idea whether or not this is accurate. "If it helps ease your conscience."
"Yes," Lan Xichen says, oddly, "but –"
"You wanted to know why not. Take my shirt off, if you want to know so much. I'll show you."
"I … I could not presume upon –"
"It's not a request, Zewu-jun. Do as I say."
Lan Xichen flinches. It's the barest, minutest twitch, only just suppressed, but the sound of his own title clearly does something unpleasant to him. Jiang Cheng feels a pang of remorse. It is not propriety that stays your hand. His skin has gone feverish-hot with the furious galloping of his heartbeat. He is so, so afraid, and he doesn't even know of what; wouldn't it hurt more to destroy a true attachment than a little fledgling interest? Even now, he isn't sure which is the reflection and which the mirrored truth. Turn this way, and Lan Xichen appears just as he did before: serene and self-possessed, matchless and untouchable, further out of reach than the moon. But turn another way, and he looks … he looks …
Jiang Cheng wrenches around, hoping the motion will hide the tautening of his shoulders.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter how Lan Xichen looks, and it doesn't matter what he said or what he might have meant, because Jiang Cheng has paid dearly for assuming people would stick around before. If he doesn't do this now, he'll never get up the nerve to do it again.
No footfall sounds behind him. No rustle of clothing disrupts the silence.
Yet a moment later, fingertips graze the collar of his shirt, and Jiang Cheng needs to shut his eyes against the terrible thing he has set in motion.
Help me, A-jie.
The fingertips travel across his collar, then lightly down his back, brushing the fabric that's come unstuck from his skin and not a hairsbreadth closer.
Help, help, help.
After a moment he realizes what Lan Xichen is searching for. "There aren't any ties or buttons," he manages. "You'll have to cut through it."
"Ah," Lan Xichen breathes out. "A moment."
The fingertips disappear. Jiang Cheng fixes his gaze on the opposite wall, jaw clenched. He'll be damned if he makes a sound.
There's a careful pinch at the back of his collar. Then a ripping noise, accompanied by the tug of his shirt as it comes apart under whatever blade Lan Xichen had stowed away in his robes. A feather-light touch brushes the two halves aside, exposing him from the nape of his neck downward, and Lan Xichen inhales sharply.
By now the thunderstorm outside is abating. The wind has withdrawn, the rain no longer drumming but pattering faintly on the roof overhead, and that is why Jiang Cheng hears the indrawn breath so well. Convenient, he reflects dully. He was expecting to hear it. He would have been disappointed if he hadn't.
But then something happens that he wasn't expecting at all.
He nearly jumps out of his skin, it startles him so badly, and the phantom touch on his back disappears at once. "Forgive me," Lan Xichen whispers.
"No," Jiang Cheng says, his own voice unrecognizable. "Go on."
He could swear he hears Lan Xichen swallow.
Then the pad of a single fingertip alights on the upper corner of his bare shoulder blade, right where the scars begin.
"Who did this to you?"
There's a pause, mainly because Jiang Cheng has to breathe in and out three times before he can make himself answer normally. "The Wens," he finally says, without much success. "Who else?"
Lan Xichen does not answer him. His fingertips find the jagged end of the longest scar and follow it slowly downward, from Jiang Cheng's shoulder to the opposite hip; and as they move, they tremble. They tremble so badly that Jiang Cheng can almost imagine the wounds reopening under his touch.
He knows well enough what Lan Xichen must be looking at, even if the lighting is mercifully poor. During the Sunshot Campaign, he'd occasionally be seized by vanity and arrange two mirrors opposite each other so that he could examine the ravaged mess of his own back: a violent crisscross of lacerations, like hatchet marks in a tree stump. They are not charitable reminders, and so naturally he has never thought about them with any kind of charity; but now, combined with the shock of someone touching them – touching him – there is the added shock of that touch being an exceptionally gentle one. Lan Xichen's fingertips sweep lightly across his back, as if across a bolt of fine silk, and linger only a moment where the scars taper off at the hip before choosing somewhere more respectful to go. The accompanying heat of his open palm betrays each successive caress, and in its wake, when the heat fades, Jiang Cheng's skin tingles with the remnants of electricity.
And still Lan Xichen does not speak. When he chooses a different scar to trace, he does it without asking permission, and when he skates his fingers across the place where they meld into a single ghastly, shining mass, he does so in perfect silence.
As well he might. There is very little that can scar a cultivator – apart from life-threatening tools of punishment, like the Lan disciplinary scourge, and cauterizing wounds like those left by the Wen branding iron. A single whipping, even a torturous one, shouldn't have left scars like these.
He must be wondering what did.
"This is why," Jiang Cheng bursts out, unable to bear it any longer.
Lan Xichen pauses with his fingertips resting on the juncture between Jiang Cheng's bare throat and shoulder: a single point of contact more terrible, somehow, than any branding iron. "I do not understand," he says.
"What's there to understand? Look at me!"
"I am looking." Lan Xichen's fingers trace a pensive circle over the juncture. "But I am not sure what it is you want me to see, apart from the scars of a good man."
Jiang Cheng screws his eyes shut. "Don't."
The fingers are snatched back. "I am sorry. I did not intend –"
"No, it's – that's not what I meant. Zewu–" Jiang Cheng cuts himself off, and takes a breath to gather his courage. The Lans only love once in a lifetime, and yet: have you not? "Xichen," he says instead, haltingly. "This is – what I am. I'm not a good man, and I'm certainly not a nice one. I know you think well of me, but I don't want you to …" He trails off, casting about for the right words.
"To what?" Lan Xichen asks softly. "Delude myself?"
"Yes."
There's a heavy pause. When Lan Xichen speaks again, it is carefully and deliberately, almost lower in pitch than the thunder.
"You must have quite a poor opinion of my judgment."
"You've been wrong before," Jiang Cheng says, ruthlessly. "I say you're wrong again now."
"And I say to you that you are blind." There is now a true note of exasperation in Lan Xichen's voice. "Yes, my judgment has failed before. Yes, I paid the price. Do you think I have learned nothing after all this time?"
Before Jiang Cheng can reply, a pair of hands have taken him firmly by the shoulders and turned him around, and Lan Xichen is leaning down just enough to bring them to the exact same eye level.
"Wanyin," he says, with wholehearted sincerity that would have made lesser men duck and squirm away like children, "you are a capable, formidable, impressive person, and accomplished in things most people could only dream of. But trust me when I say you could not tell a pleasant lie to save your life."
Jiang Cheng thought he'd resolved himself on instantly discrediting anything Lan Xichen might say to comfort or contradict him, but there is a ring of wry truth to the statement that forbids his denying it, aloud and to himself. He lets out a half-unwilling puff of air: not a laugh, but a concession to one, an acknowledgement of what might have counted as a point well scored in different circumstances.
"You have never pretended to be anything other than what you are," Lan Xichen adds, with a small, bittersweet smile. "Not for anyone." His hands slide from Jiang Cheng's shoulders to his elbows, thumbs pressing into the creases of rain-damp skin. "This is your past, and your privacy. That you would choose to trust me with it I am honoured beyond measure, but if you thought it would make me think any less of you, then you have misjudged me."
"I don't want your condescensions," Jiang Cheng says.
"I do not offer them."
"I don't want your pity, either."
"I do not pity you. Jiang Wanyin, I think the world of you. I think more of you than is my right."
Jiang Cheng searches those dark and earnest eyes for sympathy, for uncertainty, for revulsion, and finds none. He almost wishes he did; at least then he'd know what to do with them. If he acts on what he thinks he's seeing and turns out to be wrong, he won't just have fucked up, he'll have fucked up catastrophically. But if he's right – what then?
If you want him to stay, why don't you just ask him?
His thundering heart begins to slow.
What then?
Attempt the impossible, surely.
That's all there is.
"Would you …" He clears his throat. "Could you let down my hair?"
Lan Xichen's breathing ticks up a notch. His lips move, as though his eloquence has failed him at some critical moment; he presses them together, and swallows. "Yes," he says, hushed in the thickening silence. "Of course."
And he slides both hands into Jiang Cheng's bound-up hair.
This time Jiang Cheng cannot suppress the full-body shudder that goes through him, as though an icy broadsword has been laid upon his throat. Lan Xichen steps closer, or perhaps draws him in closer, and all at once, by some strange conjuration, there is nothing left in the whole wide universe but him: his thumb splayed along Jiang Cheng's cheek, the curve of his palm cradling Jiang Cheng's jaw, his smallest finger on the nape of Jiang Cheng's neck. The heat is insupportable, like holding one's hand over an open flame. Lan Xichen reaches out with the other hand and tugs the ribbon from his hair. There's a rotating motion of his wrist that suggests he's winding it around his fingers; Jiang Cheng feels it only peripherally, and could not have said for sure. He has gone absolutely rigid, braced as if for bloodshed or surgery, because he knows, he knows that what comes next is going to hurt. The knife, and its parting from his body – how couldn't it hurt? He's stumbling through the darkness alone, and the distant torchlight that guides him is the very thing he is most afraid of. He stands on a bridge overlooking a terrible chasm, and there's a figure in moon-white robes beckoning to him from the other side. There is nowhere to go but forward. Or back, if he wished to be a coward. But he's never had the luxury of going back for anything.
The guan takes more time to untangle, and by the time Jiang Cheng feels his leaden bun unravel and collapse, sopping wet, against his back, they have not once broken eye contact. Lan Xichen lets his curled hand come to rest tentatively against Jiang Cheng's heart, through the ragged shirt still plastered to his chest. Do it, Jiang Cheng thinks wildly. The opening gambit is yours. There is only one move in this duel: one strike, one disarmament, and it will be over – although which of them will emerge victorious then, he cannot say.
Lan Xichen leans closer, and stops. His lips part. His gaze drops to Jiang Cheng's mouth. When he speaks, it's with a kind of hoarse desperation.
"Tell me again," he says. His thumb drags, once, across Jiang Cheng's cheek. "Tell me again that my blood runs cold."
"Why?" Jiang Cheng asks, equally low. "Are you going to prove me wrong?"
Lan Xichen's breath hitches.
You don't know either, Jiang Cheng has time to think, in one final, astonished moment of clarity. You don't know what happens after this.
Lan Xichen leans forward. His pulse beats hard in his throat, as in in terror. Then with the hand still cradling his jaw, he gently tilts Jiang Cheng's face up to his, and moves to close the distance left between them.
Jiang Cheng shuts his eyes.
A soft knock sounds at the door, three successive taps followed by a servant's voice.
"Zongzhu?"
They are standing too close together for any sort of neat separation into different spheres of personal space, but the one they do manage is admirably swift. Lan Xichen recoils so violently that his palms, snatched back from Jiang Cheng's face, feel like matches struck against a tinderbox, and takes a single stumbling step backward. Jiang Cheng, being possessed of less poise and minor arm paralysis, fully staggers, less jarred by the loss of support than by the reminder that the world still exists beyond the presence of a single other person. There is now a full arm's length between them, and it is rapidly growing colder. "Yes?" he snarls at the door, furious with surprise and embarrassment; he's as dazed as if a true lightning bolt has split the ground at his feet, and his only recourse is in the strength of his own temper. "What is it?"
"May this one ask if the night hunt was successful? Ke-daifu told us all to keep an eye out for your safe return."
Lan Xichen whirls around, hiding his expression. His knuckles have gone white around the ribbon and hairpiece still clutched in his hand.
"Everything's fine!" Jiang Cheng growls. He's half-naked and disoriented and thoroughly scarlet in the face, but sure, as far as his health is concerned, everything's fine. "Go to bed! And tell that prying, busybody excuse for a doctor where he can stick his safe return!"
"Yes, Zongzhu."
The gap beneath the door dims again, as though someone bearing a lantern has walked away down the corridor.
Jiang Cheng's heart hammers furiously inside his chest. Lan Xichen's shoulders have gone stiff and straight as an altar table.
"Forgive me," he says. "I did not … I should not have …"
"Zewu-jun –"
"You need not say anything. It is my fault. I am – I am sorry."
"Zewu-jun!" Jiang Cheng says sharply, but Lan Xichen is already at the door, his robes catching the dying firelight in the brazier.
"I must go. Forgive me."
The door opens onto darkness, and then he's gone.
Jiang Cheng stand there, stupefied, as a fresh draught raises goosebumps on his skin. He wonders why it's suddenly gotten so cold.
Then it comes to him: the candles are all dead, and the heat of Lan Xichen's palm is already fading from his scorching cheek.
…
