Vega Threads her Loom in Vain

Wei Wuxian’s cheeks still felt hot, but he had recovered his breath. He rubbed his face against the sheets to try to push the hair off his face. Lan Wangji, annoyingly, still had his hair confined in the braid he had put it in for the night, but his ears and chest were still a little pink, too. He was propped up on one elbow, and he looked back at Wei Wuxian, who felt something rising up in him that might be a giggle, and pushed it down. He didn’t want Lan Wangji to think he wasn’t—

“That was amazing. You were amazing, Lan Zhan.”

Lan Zhan gave the smile that almost no one ever saw. “Wei Ying was also… very good.”

Wei Wuxian let out the giggle that had been building inside him. “I was not! I was so much not!” Wei Wuxian had come in his pants the second Lan Zhan bit his neck, and would have died from embarrassment, if Lan Wangji had given him time to think about it. Lan Wangji had not.

“How did you get so good at sex, Lan Zhan?” he teased.

Lan Zhan immediately fell off the elbow he was propped up on, face down on the bed.

“Lan Zhan?”

Lan Zhan made a faint noise into the bedding.

“Lan Zhan?” Wei Wuxian poked Lan Wangji’s naked shoulder, and then stroked it with his thumb. There were some fading red lines that Wei Wuxian had probably put there with his nails, so Wei Wuxian rolled closer and kissed the marks. “Have I killed you with demonic sex magics? You’re the first, so I didn’t even know I had this power, Lan Zhan.”

Lan Wangji rolled back, away from Wei Wuxian, so that he could see his face, or would have been able to, if Lan Wangji weren’t covering his face with an arm flung across it. His cheeks looked pink, what Wei Wuxian could see of them.

“Practice,” said Lan Wangji, into his own elbow.

“Well, give me some time,” Wei Wuxian said, “I’m sure my demonic sex magics will get more powerful.”

Lan Wangji’s mouth did something interesting. “I got better through practice.”

Wei Wuxian rewound the conversation. “Um. Well, that’s okay, Lan Zhan.” He didn’t really know how he felt about it, but he could see that Lan Zhan was— upset? Embarrassed?

Lan Wangji pulled down his arm and looked at Wei Wuxian, in what Wei Wuxian could tell was a tremendous effort of bravery. “Wei Ying. I have— Wei Ying was not my first.”

“Okay. All right,” said Wei Wuxian, trying to project— acceptance? Support? “That’s. That’s okay, right?” He wasn’t sure why he was asking, except that Lan Wangji did not seem to think it was okay. “I mean.” Wei Wuxian stopped and thought about it for a second. It had been thirteen years, and he hated to think of Lan Wangji being lonely the entire time. Had Lan Wangji fallen in love? He couldn’t imagine Lan Wangji loving someone and then leaving them, so if there had been someone, they must have died, which was— upsetting. Poor Lan Wangji, people kept on dying on him.

“What happened to them?” he asked. Nice. That had sounded neutral and non-judgmental.

Lan Wangji covered his face with both hands, and made an embarrassed moan. “I have no idea.”

This did not seem like how Lan Wangji would talk about losing his beloved. His other beloved.

“I—” Wei Wuxian regrouped. “I mean. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. Unless there’s someone outside the door waiting to join us, I don’t think I really care.” He thought about this further. “Or another child. Do you have any more children, Lan Zhan?”

“No,” said Lan Wangji into his hands.

“Then it’s fine. It’s just me, now, right?”

The hands came down, and Lan Wangji reached out to touch Wei Wuxian’s face. “Only Wei Ying. Always, only Wei Ying.”

Well, apparently not always, but Wei Wuxian thought being dead was an exception to most obligations, and he knew Lan Wangji was his, now. He smiled into Lan Wangji’s palm. “Then I don’t care. It’s fine. And besides, it’s a good thing one of us knows what they’re doing.”

But later, after Lan Wangji brought them breakfast, and they ate, after they both set about their separate business of correspondences, after the midday meal, and sword-practice with the disciples. And after a stiff and terrible meeting with the Lan elders about Wei Wuxian’s precise status within Cloud Recesses where Wei Wuxian was extremely aware of the bite mark on his neck, they met back at the Jingshi.

Lan Wangji was already settled at the table when Wei Wuxian returned, in all the stiff and extravagant armour of his Lan robes and hair-piece, and Wei Wuxian felt everything in his body come alive with the desire to peel him out of those clothes like a lotus seed, to find the Lan Zhan underneath them. “Lan Zhan!” he said, with sudden urgency, but when Lan Wangji looked up at him, his gaze was tightly shuttered.

“Lan Zhan?”

Lan Wangji looked down, and then gestured to the side of the table. Wei Wuxian obediently sat at the table opposite Lan Wangji.

Lan Wangji bowed his head. Wei Wuxian considered leaning across the table and craning his head to meet Lan Wangji’s eyes, but clearly Lan Wangji wanted to do… something. If Wei Wuxian could bear it, he should probably let him. He put his palms on his thighs and started counting silently. He reached thirty-two before Lan Wangji spoke.

“I did not begin to travel outside Gusu again until six years after I brought Sizhui back.” Six years after his death, Wei Wuxian translated. “I was not aware of the reputation the Yiling Laozu had gained, outside the cultivation sects.”

Wei Wuxian felt he himself only dimly grasped this, so he listened attentively, even though he had no idea why they were having Yiling Laozu story-time.

“When I travelled, it felt like I was hearing about the Yiling Laozu— everywhere. Sometimes people claimed that certain actions were caused by the Laozu’s spirit, and other times I heard that someone had uncovered the Laozu’s secret methods. I would investigate these claims.”

Someone had, so investigating those claims had been wise, even though Lan Wangji had not been looking in quite the right places, as it happened.

“I also encountered—” Lan Wanji looked up to meet Wei Wuxian’s gaze, and then looked away again, this time at the far wall. “There were certain people who admired the Yiling Laozu. Not cultivators, but among the common people.”

“Oh?” said Wei Wuxian, because he didn’t think he had met any of these people.

“I asked— There was a man who— A youth.” Lan Wangji stopped to contemplate. “We were both younger, then. He had styled himself after the Yiling Laozu.”

“What, dressed in resewn radish sacks?” Wei Wuxian asked, trying to figure out how the Yiling Laozu would have been remembered..

“I think… I think something like what you wore in the Sunshot Campaign,” said Lan Wangji.

Wei Wuxian remembered, he thought, that at that time he had been mostly wearing whatever clothing he could steal from Wen cultivators before he killed them. He didn’t want to look like a Jiang disciple, he knew what he was doing wasn’t anything Yunmeng Jiang could condone, so he pieced together what he could, trying to avoid anything that prominently displayed the Wen insignia. His signature look, apparently, came from being too stubborn to ask anyone for anything, even clothes.

“I asked him, what was it about the Yiling Laozu he admired, and he said that the Yiling Laozu had broken the monopoly of the sects, taken cultivation out of their hands, and given it to the common people.”

Wei Wuxian thought about this. If he had done that, it had been purely by accident and very badly, but he supposed that he had, a little.

“I saw that he admired you, and I liked— that. But he also—” Lan Wangji made eye-contact again, and looked away. “He had a bawu, not a dizi, and I don’t think he could play it, but he had the trick of spinning it in his fingers. He saw me watching him, and he said ‘Come with me, gege,’ and then he led me into a— A yard. Somewhere?” Lan Zhan was moving the fingers of one of his hands, still set in his lap, as if unconsciously.

“He took me into a yard, I’m not sure whose, and then he— I kissed him.”

Wei Wuxian came alert in every part of his body. His ears were alert, his toes were alert, he felt like a bell that had been rung and was vibrating a long tone without fading. “Lan Zhan!” he said, without intending to, and Lan Wangji turned his face away like—

“No! Lan Zhan!” said Wei Wuxian, abruptly realizing what was happening, that Lan Wangji was telling him this because— Wei Wuxian half shuffled on his knees and half rolled himself like an acrobat around to Lan Wanji’s side of the table. He pushed himself against Lan Wangji’s side, so that Lan Wangji didn’t have to look at him, but did have to feel him. “Lan Zhan, it’s okay, I’m not— you surprised me. Tell me. You can tell me, I mean. If you want to. Was it good? I want it to have been good, for you,” he said, spilling every thought out of his mouth as it came to the top of his mind in no kind of order.

Lan Wangji relaxed against him, a little. “It was… probably not very good, because I pushed him up against a gate, and used my hand on him, and then he used his mouth on me, and he was very talented with his mouth, but I cannot have been particularly skilled.”

“Did you like it?” asked Wei Wuxian.

“Some of it,” admitted Lan Wangji. “I liked— I liked the moments when— When it was just bodies, and remembering how to— You were there, for me, also,” he said, a bit stumblingly.

Wei Wuxian shivered. “I was there?”

“You— There was something of you that he was seeking to— And if I could see it, there, too, it meant you were not— gone. Entirely. Afterward, sometimes— I did not like it.”

“Oh,” said Wei Wuxian, imagining. A courtyard, Lan Wangji, the ghost of the Yiling Patriarch. “Sometimes?”

“I felt— alive again, afterward, but also, it made everything hurt, again,” said Lan Wangji, simply. “I sought out that person again, a week later, but I could not find him. I do not know if something happened or he simply… lost interest.”

Wei Wuxian thought that if he had been innocently spinning his flute in a market square and been accosted by the Second Jade of Lan in an amorous mood, he would have stood in that market square spinning his flute for a month in case it happened again, but he didn’t say so.

Lan Wangji looked at Wei Wuxian sideways, now, meeting his eyes more easily. “I sought out… other admirers of the Yiling Laozu.”

“Oh?” said Wei Wuxian, who had thought that was the extent of it, but now realized this story was going to continue unfolding.

“Not all of them were interested in… me, but if they were willing to discuss the Yiling Laozu, I didn’t count my time as wasted. But some were.”

Wei Wuxian reached over and took Lan Wangji’s hand, and held it in both of his. He pressed it gently open with his thumb. “Do you want to tell me?”

“There was one who I encountered… several times, who was quite demanding. He gave me directions when I was unsatisfactory, and I liked to— I liked to imagine you telling me how you liked it. The first time, he told me to get on my knees, and I liked it.”

Wei Wuxian shivered. He thought about bringing Lan Wangji’s hand to his mouth, but he didn’t want to distract Lan Wangji from this story.

“I liked– I liked being on my knees. I liked how you held my mouth open with a finger inside it. I liked it. I liked how you didn’t take off your robes, only pulled them aside, how you pushed into my mouth.”

Wei Wuxian pulled Lan Wangji’s hand up and began mouthing at it without making any conscious decision, and only noticed when Lan Wangji inhaled.

“Tell me more, Lan er-ge, what else did I do?” said Wei Wuxian, a little breathless.

“He—” said Lan Wangji, and then stopped, moved to face him. “You had your hand in my mouth like this,” he said, twisting the hand Wei Wuxian held, so that his thumb was inside Wei Wuxian’s mouth at the corner, so that his mouth was held open. Wei Wuxian made a noise in his throat.

“You held your cock and pushed in, beside your thumb,” said Lan Wangji, and moved his thumb in Wei Wuxian’s mouth, stroking his tongue. “I was clumsy, and didn’t know how to be careful with my teeth, but you,” he moved his thumb, out, pushed at Wei Wuxian’s lips, “you just arranged me for your pleasure, and I liked it. I liked it and I came to completion on my knees and you kept going, you didn’t even slow, and I liked that too.”

Wei Wuxian said something garbled around Lan Wangji’s thumb.

“I went back looking for him, the next time I had a chance, and when he saw me, he smiled. He told me to rent a room. I was—” Lan Wangji leaned into Wei Wuxian’s neck, and inhaled there. “I felt like I was going mad. I rented the room, and he took me upstairs.”

Wei Wuxian pulled at Lan Wangji’s hand until his mouth was free. “I took you upstairs.”

Lan Wangji bit his neck, again, and Wei Wuxian shuddered and managed, through a heroic effort, not to come in his pants, this time. “You took me upstairs. You asked me if I wanted to be fucked, and I— I didn’t know, but I— I thought if you wanted to fuck me that was what I wanted, so I said yes. You had me take off my robes and lie down and you had a pot of something, some kind of grease, and you held my legs apart and I felt like you–”

Wei Wuxian remembered that feeling. “You felt like I was seeing— like all of you was being seen.”

“Mn,” said Lan Wangji, and Wei Wuxian giggled into his hair. “You were— a little hasty, but I liked that you were eager, and you weren’t careless. And. At first, I liked that you were inside me, that you had— made room for yourself, inside me, I liked that you were there, and that there was nothing between us. But then I liked—”

Wei Wuxian pulled back enough to see Lan Wangji’s face. He was blushing.

“He wasn’t a cultivator, so his strength was only common, but I liked to be underneath you, you everywhere. Also— when you moved it felt— good.”

“Very good,” agreed Wei Wuxian, realizing he was going to need to learn enough from Lan Wangji so he could be at least as good as his proxy who had had almost ten years to grow in Lan Wangji’s imagination. But perhaps Lan Wangji would enjoy teaching him.

“I think he had an arrangement with the inn-keeper to take a commission,” said Lan Wangji, in a rather different tone, “because he took me back there several times. But then I ran out of reasons to visit Yunping, and brother asked if there was something interesting in Yunping because I seemed so keen to visit, so I— stopped.”

“Oh no,” said Wei Wuxian, a little saddened. “Stopped entirely?”

“No,” said Lan Wangji, “but I tried to be a little more circumspect. There were other Yiling Laozus, and I— if they seemed amenable, I let myself pretend, with them. Some of them had a certain trick of— of movements or of speaking that made it easy to pretend, even if they didn’t have your face, or body.” He paused. “I think one of them was a woman.”

“You think?” asked Wei Wuxian. “Was this one who—”

“Well, I took you from behind, with that one, so,” said Lan Wangji, not sounding very bothered by the uncertainty.

Wei Wuxian had run into a tree-limb, once, while going full-speed on Suibian. This felt like that, but instead of painful, it was wildly sexy. He made a gurgling noise.

“After a while, though, xiongzhang started sending me out with junior disciples who were not ready to go out on their own. I do not know if he thought— Anyway, it began to seem somewhat pathetic, and silly, to pretend, and I— also Jiang Wanyin began to increase his persecution of those who associated themselves with the Yiling Laozu, so my— self-delusion seemed likely to endanger others.”

“Lan Zhan, no,” said Wei Wuxian, pulling Lan Wangji closer, again. “I’m glad for anything that made you less lonely. I’m glad I was there for you, even a little bit.”

“Wei Ying is not— I regret that Wei Ying was not my first,” said Lan Wangji, but he was relaxed against Wei Wuxian, half in his lap.

Wei Wuxian stroked Lan Wangji’s back. He himself had a very confused, very stiff erection, but Lan Wangji seemed only half-way in the mood, so he was a little hesitant when he said, “Do you want… We could go find a gate for you to push me up against, and I could be your first, this time, if you like?”

Lan Wangji was quiet for a very long time, but Wei Wuxian waited. Finally he said, “There is a back gate that no longer opens behind the cold springs.”

Wei Wuxian smiled. “Do you want me to find some darker robes, gege?”

Lan Wangji was silent for another, very long moment. “It is possible that— I have already obtained a set.”