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The heat of the water finally looks to be doing some good, those terrible tremors shaking Jiang Wanyin’s form seem to be abating, the brittle, breaking edge of him melting down to blank misery. The man lies against the walls of the tub, hunched down so the water covers him to his neck, and simply stares at nothing.
His own hands are shaking, a fine little tremor, but he does his best to ignore them, ignore the horrible, clawing fear, the memories, affection, connection, compassion.
He stays nearby in case the man needs something, needs help, needs rescuing in case the urge to drown himself momentarily takes over.
He is frightened for Jiang Wanyin. He has a terrible empathy for the way the man is feeling— he has felt that way himself, in the past, and when he has— Well. He is still standing, he is still here, but there were moments when it was very tempting to do something to stop that from being the case.
Jiang Wanyin is not alone, like he has been alone, Jiang Wanyin will not have to endure it himself, will not have to save himself without any help. That’s all he can promise. He will not abandon the man to that soul eating despair.
After his mother’s death. After he was kicked down Koi Tower. After Da-ge caught him killing his commander. After the first time he tortured someone for Wen Ruohan. After he killed Wen Ruohan. After it became clear Da-ge was never going to forgive him.
Again and again he has pulled himself back together, no hands to help. Again and again he has walked that knife’s edge where one false move and that is it, that is the end of him.
He will not let this be the end of Jiang Wanyin.
In these few days he has come to value the man greatly.
It has been a very long time since someone treated him as well as Jiang Wanyin has treated him. Even that, even the name, the man is a Sect Leader, but has given him permission to use his courtesy name even in public. He doesn’t do it, because image is important, but the offer still touches him.
Jiang Wanyin is very attentive, even if he tries to hide it. Attentive, observant, generous, kind— also worryingly trusting and naïve. He does not think he could have so readily accepted someone into his life who had warned him that they had orders to kill him.
He has told Xue Yang he is trying to seduce Jiang Wanyin as an explanation to why they are spending so much time together. It had been convenient when the idea first popped into his head, but now, in honesty, he feels a strange kind of guilt— Though that is probably because of the filthy smirk Xue Yang had on his handsome little face earlier, the insinuations, the comments about Sect Leader Jiang’s looks, his welcoming personality.
He now knows what the wretched little man saw, and he feels for the violation Jiang Wanyin obviously feels in response.
He doubts Xue Yang will write to his father about it, the man barely conceals his disdain for pretty much all of Lanling Jin, but especially his father, and he has suggested they don’t send messages from the Cloud Recesses that might be intercepted— but the thought of his father knowing about Jiang Wanyin’s relationship with Wei Wuxian just seems like another violation.
As is the fact that someone out there has stolen the Jade phallus Jiang Wanyin was using to pleasure himself. If it’s Xue Yang they will, unfortunately, soon know about it, because he will not be able to conceal the fact, he will be gloating, making insinuations, trying to humiliate Jiang Wanyin, but if it’s not Xue Yang— Who could it be? No one else he can think of makes a likely candidate for being responsible for that particular violation.
So many violations. It is as if the man is cursed, walking through the world radiating some special kind of energy that attracts people to hurt him. He refuses to be one of those people.
It is odd, he is already so attached. Fond.
The future he is desperately crawling towards, the possibility of a life at Yunmeng Jiang in which he does not despise himself, has not lost any of its early charm. He keeps having these silly thoughts, keeps imagining that maybe one day he can just be Meng Yao as Meng Yao would have been, if misfortune had not also loved his mother. Jiang Wanyin actually seems to enjoy his company, when he’s being himself.
The man has a surprisingly good sense of humour, even if the stifling duty of his role in life means he feels he has had to repress it.
He glances at the figure, small and huddled, in the bath. Jiang Wanyin will laugh again, will smile, will have better days. Together the two of them must be able to carve a way into the world to find some peace. They just have to get through this experience first.
If things go well Xue Yang will not question the idea of using Jiang Wanyin’s historical connection to Wei Wuxian— and also his current high status in the Cultivation World— to gain access to the Stygian Tiger Seal, to get a better chance at framing Wei Wuxian for taking it, and as a way to take Jiang Wanyin by surprise and more easily kill him without the battle prowess that they have both heard of becoming a problem. He has tried to make sure the little monster knows the supposed plan is to retrieve the Stygian Tiger Seal first and only to go after Jiang Wanyin when it’s in hand.
The last thing he wants is Xue Yang getting ideas into his vicious little head and going after Jiang Wanyin by himself— at all really, but especially before the Seal is successfully destroyed and all their energy can be focussed on stopping him. The thought that Xue Yang might even have the smallest chance of succeeding, of even just hurting Jiang Wanyin, distresses him more than it should. He is pragmatic, he has always been pragmatic— but even the most pragmatic of men can sometimes find themselves capable of attachment.
He finds it odd that no one before now has ever even mentioned in passing what a good man his new friend is— but then he hadn’t noticed before either. If you had asked him a week ago what he thought of the man he would have said Jiang Wanyin seemed always uncomfortable around people, like he was desperately holding back some rude comment— which, it turns out, was probably true— except replace rude with honest or perhaps forthright. Jiang Wanyin doesn’t lie, every criticism he’s hears the man make is grounded in truth.
The man is standoffish, is the thing, probably nervous of judgement or being negatively compared to Wei Wuxian— always one of his father’s favourite weapons against his friend, and unfortunately grounded in the truth of experience, though why anyone, let alone Jiang Fengmian, would be unable to see Jiang Wanyin’s own brilliance standing next to the brilliance of Wei Wuxian is increasingly beyond him.
Wei Wuxian is brilliant, there’s no denying that. Brilliant and eye-catching and charismatic. He has all the brash, arrogant, limitless personality of the main character of a cheap romance story, and maybe that’s why he always draws the eye away from Jiang Wanyin.
He is also an absolute bastard of a man, cruel, thoughtless—
He glances at Jiang Wanyin, seeing if he needs anything, but the man still hasn’t moved. There is still steam coming off the water, it’s not getting cold yet— he fears his friend won’t even notice, so he will have to watch, act, encourage the other man out of the bath instead of letting him sit and get chilled.
Heat and the cleansing power of water together should be some comfort. The first time he, himself, felt like he was breaking apart was the only time he ever had anyone to help him. His mother, after the first time he had been forced to trade his body for her safety, after days and days of pretending everything was fine, that he was fine, until the lie was poisoning him— But he couldn’t tell her what had happened, no, he could never hurt her like that. Not after the painful, demeaning things she had let happen to her in exchange for the promise that he wouldn’t be touched, a promise it turned out no one ever intended to keep.
It would have killed her.
He had told her he was sick, but what he really believed he doesn’t know, only that she must not have suspected the truth. She had filled up her wooden bathtub just for him, perfumed the water with the scent she always wore, and helped him into it, brushing back his hair from his face and humming a soft, sweet song all the while he lay there, feeling like he was dying.
For all that everyone has ever dismissed her as nothing more than a whore his mother was a good woman. She was kind, she was generous, she was a gentle woman, even to the rival prostitutes. She would help anyone she could, she would council the younger girls, and he knows there was more than one occasion where she deliberately put herself in the way to receive a particularly vile, verbally demeaning client that would otherwise have chosen one of the more innocent flowers of the brothel.
Most of the other women were nowhere near as kind as she was— none of them were there by any real choice, some had made their way in themselves as children from the streets, desperate for a roof over their heads and food in their bellies, some as young girls thrown out of their homes, but like his mother many of them were sold by families in need of money or to pay off a debt— they had all known cruelty, and they all knew they only had so many years in which they could hope to attract a man to take them on as concubine— or, if they were really lucky, wife. It was a cut-throat business— yet his mother is still one of the most selfless people he has ever known, and Sisi kinder than most. For all the vaunted superiority of the Cultivation World, in his opinion two whores were better people than ninety nine percent of them.
Jiang Wanyin seems to be in that rare one percent.
Er-ge is a good man, but there is sometimes something cold, strange, unreadable about him that he fears is rooted in judgement, and Da-ge— Da-ge is undeniably righteous, but unchecked righteousness is always punitive to those that fail to live up to its extremes.
Jiang Wanyin has welcomed him without expecting him to change.
Perhaps it will all fall apart in time. Perhaps he’ll see another face to the man. Perhaps—
He hopes not. He hopes Jiang Wanyin is actually just Jiang Wanyin, not a mask, not a lie.
There is a good chance the man is, since the person he has seen this night, the person visibly falling to pieces before his eyes, is still the same man as he is coming to know, except with the hurts and the vulnerabilities fully on show, instead of poorly concealed.
He finds himself very angry with Wei Wuxian.
He gets the very strong impression that the man has never, ever looked and actually seen Jiang Wanyin.
But thoughtless is also a good way to describe the Sect Leader of Yiling Wei. The Stygian Tiger Seal, for example— The thing makes his skin crawl. A desire for power he can understand, with power comes access to resources that can be used to keep you safe, but he doesn’t think that even in his most desperate hour would he be willing to trade power for something that feels so much like it will turn out to be a trap in the long run.
Wei Wuxian— for as much as he is definitely going to corner the man some day in the future, where no one can see them, and hurt him— in a nonfatal way, of course, but there are plenty of nonfatal ways to hurt someone that will make that someone wish you were merciful enough to have granted them death instead— is a much braver man than he will ever be. Or stupider, but could an idiot really have made such a thing, for all that you’d have to be an idiot to want to wield it?
His father really is a fool.
A worthless man in Jiang Wanyin’s words.
He is personally toying with the idea of slitting Xue Yang’s throat once this is all done, dismembering him, packing him into a box and sending it to his father with his letter of formal separation from Lanling Jin. It seems fitting, with the man’s interest in things that anyone with decency would consider an obscenity.
He can’t go back, he won’t go back— on top of the demeaning way the man treated him on that last morning, on top of being kicked, again, like he is nothing more than a thing to be kicked, there was what he had not told Jiang Wanyin, the comments his father had made about his new friend’s mother, what he had wanted to do to her, the way she would reject his advances, her coldness, her frigidity, how she didn’t know her place, what a stupid, uppity bitch she was, and how her son is turning out just like her.
It was the final straw. He doesn’t know why it was the final straw, only that it was, to hear that man talk about his friend’s mother, the mother the rest of the Cultivation World was busy honouring, in such a way—
The anger he had felt had stunned him. He had been desperate, desperate, that Sect Leader Jiang should have meant his offer, afraid the man did not, fighting with himself about the loyalty he owed his father, his head feeling like a storm— but the moment Jiang Wanyin had said, ‘If you are loyal you will always have a place at Yunmeng Jiang,’ the storm had finally subsided.
He has only grown more certain since. This is what he wants. He does not want to be Jin Guangyao— and he fully believes that if his mother had really known his father’s nature she would not want it for him either.
She was a good woman.
Jiang Wanyin shifts a little in the tub, drawing his attention back to the man. His friend’s face is still blank, his body still hunched in on itself, but the way he’s moved reveals more of that horrendous scarring to the eye.
A Discipline Whip— he knows the scars they leave too well, he knows what the handle feels like in hand, the sensation of dark eyes watching him hotly as he wields it against someone who has displeased his lover— displeased Wen Ruohan.
His friend has been tortured. Tortured and, he suspects, sexually assaulted. Though whether the two things happened at the same time is up for question.
He is fairly sure the scars come from the part of Jiang Wanyin’s story the man had glossed over with “after Wen Ning helped Sect Leader Wei rescue me from the Wens,” and he can believe the sexual assault may have as well, as leaving a giant, gaping hole in your narrative may be a way to avoid acknowledging something but it’s a pretty terrible way of preventing the person you’re talking to from forming suspicions.
He can believe it. He knows too well of Wen torture techniques. At least he had never had to—
But the only reason for that is that Wen Ruohan had quickly become covetous of him, possessive, insistent that the other man be the only person he ever touched like that— as if rape and sex were simply the same thing.
For some, maybe, but not so much for those that have been on the receiving end of one and chosen the other.
Perhaps that is unfair, for whatever else Wen Ruohan was, the man was deeply troubled, and troubled when they went to bed together as much as any other time.
Ah. Memories. Memories he does not want to remember.
For a moment he wishes he was in the bath with his friend. A bit of warmth and the cleansing power of water would do him good as well.
One of the myriad of things that bother him about what Jiang Wanyin told him is, even if the Wens did sexually assault him, whether Wei Wuxian has done so as well. He can believe it, that’s the thing. The way Jiang Wanyin described their early courtship—
His friend had been preoccupied with his own emotions, own responses to things, his own self-consciousness, his own embarrassment, his own unsurety whether Wei Wuxian meant any of his advances, his own feelings that he was making too much out of nothing because of how his father had reacted, that it was like the predatory nature of how the other had behaved has completely eluded him.
He knows what it feels like, the touching, the comments about your body, the eyes always on you— it changes things, warps things, takes your body and makes it feel like it’s neither yours nor a body, like it’s a thing other people have the right to put their hands on when they want to. An object. The only difference is that he never had any pre-existing romantic feelings for anyone that made him feel like that. It was never a boy he had a serious crush on doing that to him— but the fact that Jiang Wanyin did have feelings for Wei Wuxian before Wei Wuxian started his bullshit does not excuse it, does not change the fact that Wei Wuxian harassed him, preyed on him, took control of the relationship from the start and conducted it as he pleased with little deference to what Jiang Wanyin wanted.
Yes. It is easy to believe that Wei Wuxian may have pushed the boundaries he had already pushed against, graduated from sexual harassment to sexual assault—
He certainly sounded forceful enough in some of Jiang Wanyin’s descriptions, even if they were all coloured by self-recrimination.
But he has no proof. No proof even that Jiang Wanyin was sexually assaulted, beyond a suspicion.
It may just be a reaction to torture that has made the man touch shy, prone to flinching— but that would almost deny it was the fact that Wangji walked in on him pleasuring himself that was the final straw that led to this breakdown. The way Jiang Wanyin described Wangji looking at him— the language was the language of violation.
He finds himself angry with Wangji as well, the man is so obstinate, to just go barging into Jiang Wanyin’s room because of some perceived wrong committed against Wei Wuxian— But Wangji is Wangji, he cannot believe the man would ever intentionally walk in on someone when they were doing what Jiang Wanyin was doing, and he imagines the man is now very repentant. He had certainly sounded more repentant than he thinks he has ever heard Wangji sound.
What a world to live in, one where Lan Wangji is somehow Jiang Wanyin’s romantic rival.
It’s not that Wangji is not beautiful, the man certainly is that, his looks probably more objectively perfect than Jiang Wanyin’s, but— It feels a little like he is betraying Er-ge to think this, but Wangji isn’t exactly warm, and he is kind of— difficult. Difficult to get to know, sometimes difficult to like.
Then there’s Jiang Wanyin—
Wei Wuxian must have peculiar taste. Not that it matters anymore, even if Jiang Wanyin was feeling forgiving, he isn’t. He sees no reason to feed his friend to the Demonic Cultivator’s lusts.
Why someone could go to bed with Jiang Wanyin for all those years without loving him is beyond him, strange— but then, he has only had Jiang Wanyin’s side of the story, perhaps things are different from Wei Wuxian’s. He doesn’t really feel like finding out, though.
He finds he doesn’t care about the perspective of a man who could so easily call his lover frigid, to the point it seems to have wormed its way into Jiang Wanyin’s head. Especially if the reason for that alleged “frigidity” is that Wei Wuxian has either failed to notice his lover has been sexually assaulted, or sexually assaulted him himself.
Things will be better once this is done, once they can go back to Lotus Pier and escape everyone.
It feels like every time he turns around Da-ge is there, glaring at him, hovering over Jiang Wanyin like he’s about to do something awful to the man. It— Well. He does not want to think about how it makes him feel.
It doesn’t help that, for all he wants to focus on his outrage, his annoyance, the more active irritation of it, and not— those other feelings— worry also keeps intruding. Da-ge did not seem well. He was obviously in pain, and that pain was equally obviously—
Da-ge is dying, he reminds himself of that. Dying— and even if he knew how to fix it, the man wouldn’t let him.
Maybe Wei Wuxian knows something—
Wouldn’t that be good, if the man had some use after all, if the man really did know where to find the legendary Baoshan Sanren— but that is another part of Jiang Wanyin’s story that bothers him.
Everything he has ever researched about Golden Cores— and he has done more research than probably anyone else alive— tells him that they don’t work like that. They cannot be regenerated once destroyed. Especially not when the method of their destruction was Wen Zhuliu’s Core Melting Hand— which is another thing he has read extensively of in the Wen archives, and seen in person, when Wen Ruohan summoned the man to use it against enemies he wanted humiliated, eternally weakened, but kept alive.
But Jiang Wanyin undeniably has a Golden Core, and Jiang Wanyin told him that at one point he did not have a Golden Core.
For a moment earlier he’d wondered— but no, it’s not possible. Though if it was— Wei Wuxian is the type to just abduct some poor fool, have them cut open, their Golden Core transplanted into someone else. Such a thing is not so dissimilar an obscenity to making the Stygian Tiger Seal, is it?
If he did do that, he obviously didn’t tell Jiang Wanyin about it—
But such a thing is next to impossible, even the one report of a success he had read, submitted by Wen Qing, had said the recipient had died shortly after, and he cannot imagine there is a physician out there that even only matches her skill and knowledge, let alone surpasses it.
A pity, that, because theoretically removing Da-ge Golden Core and replacing it with one from a donor might at least slow, if not outright halt, the progression of his Qi Deviation.
—
Would anyone really notice, or care— other than Wangji, of course— if he just abducted and questioned Wei Wuxian for a bit about a few things? He’d let him go, after. Well, depending what he said regarding his treatment of Jiang Wanyin he’d probably let him go.
Ah. What an uncomfortable surge of guilt and resentment.
Da-ge is right, he is not a good man, not a righteous man.
There is one aspect of his life he can be good in, though. The water is no longer steaming.
‘It must be getting cold now,’ he says, slowly approaching the tub so Jiang Wanyin can see his movements, so he doesn’t startle the man.
The other man grunts, but eventually starts to shift, moving to push himself up until he’s standing shakily. He really is very slender, strong, body covered in lean muscle, but his impression that the man uses stiff fabrics and the cut of his clothes to appear larger than he is has been more than confirmed.
Naked and distressed it makes him seem very vulnerable. Breakable.
He holds out an arm and lets Jiang Wanyin choose where to touch him to support his own weight out of the tub. The trembling really has stopped, but the man seems weak, exhausted by his outflowing of emotions.
He fetches a cloth for his friend to dry himself, then helps him dress until he’s ready for bed, wearing simple white cotton under robes. ‘Wine,’ Jiang Wanyin says as he helps the man sit on one of the seating mats, ‘I heard you ask Zewu-jun for wine.’
‘I did,’ he replies, fetching the jars. Emperor’s Smile, Er-ge got them the good stuff.
He pours them both a bowl, watching his friend take his with slightly shaky hands. Good, it looks like he’s strong enough to hold it without spilling. Wine muddies the mind, makes men fools, but sometimes it is the best way to sleep. Jiang Wanyin looks very much like sleep is something he needs.
His alcohol tolerance is good, but he still only sips at his bowl, drinking enough to ease a little of the fraught edge he feels, but not enough to lose his senses in case Xue Yang attacks. Jiang Wanyin drinks more, drinks deeply, pausing for a moment to say, ‘I forgot how good this wine is,’ and ‘It was always one of Sect Leader Wei’s favourites.’
He apologizes, feeling like he should, for reminding the man, but Jiang Wanyin waves him off. ‘It reminds me of when we came here to study— Things were good then, between us. I mean, he had noticed Hanguang-jun, he kept flirting with— but he had not yet forgotten me. Sometimes I miss it, not being Sect Leader, being able to take a break without it feeling like the world is coming apart. Spending time with him, having fun, talking to Huaisang-xiong— these days even that man doesn’t even bother writing to me. Busy, I suppose, painting fans and chasing boys and girls.’
He hides a wince. He hadn’t even realised the two of them had been friends, the other man has never mentioned Jiang Wanyin in front of him.
He does sort of miss Huaisang, but Da-ge gets so defensive and angry, insistent that he’s corrupting the other— It’s stupid. Why should Huaisang have to sacrifice himself to his family’s way of Cultivation? If he had his way he’d not only let the man do what he wants, but dispose of Da-ge’s sabre as well.
All they lead to is death, Da-ge is an amazingly talented cultivator without it. There is no practical use in choosing a sabre over a sword, it’s just a way to try and distinguish Qinghe Nie from the rest.
He decides to stay in Jiang Wanyin’s room this night, in case Xue Yang attacks, or in case Jiang Wanyin’s despair gets the better of him. He offers to sleep on the floor, but that just gets the man frowning at him in confusion and insisting he share the bed. ‘You won’t touch me, you’re not like that, you don’t go around touching people in ways they don’t want,’ is the first, reassuring part of what the man says, the second, more worrying part is, ‘Anyway, I’m me and you’re you, why would you want to anyway?’
As if Jiang Wanyin is not the beauty he is. As if a man with no principles would not try to take advantage if they could. But he is a man with principles, maybe imperfect principles, but enough principles to feel disgusted at the thought of pressing a person in so much distress for something they would not want to give.
He swears to himself, as long as they are friends he will do everything in his power to save his friend from being used in that way ever again.
Jiang Wanyin curls up on the far side of the bed, swaddling himself in the pale, silk covered blankets, until they cover his ear. He strips down to his underrobes and climbs in the other side of the bed, pulling the covers over himself and closing his eyes, using a quick burst of Qi to extinguish the lamps.
It’s dark. In the dark he can hear Jiang Wanyin’s breathing.
He reminds himself that the room is sealed for privacy and protection, that Xue Yang can’t get in, that even if the man does find a way he has several daggers in the qiankun pockets in the sleeves of his under robes.
Even a man as unsettling as Xue Yang will die like any other man if he slits his throat.
Killing has become far too easy. He hopes that when Jiang Wanyin sees that part of himself the man does not finally find something to reject him for.
It takes a long time to fall asleep. It has been a long time since he slept in the same bed as someone else, even if they aren’t touching. The last person was—
Maybe that’s why he dreams what he dreams.
Working away, grinding away, between Wen Ruohan’s thighs, the man’s hair like silken tentacles across the covers of his bed in the Nightless City, dark eyes barely slits, a flush on pale cheeks, strong hands with sharp nails clawed into his shoulders.
That neck arches, that pretty head is tossed back, and he leans down to nip at the exposed column of a pale throat the way the other likes so much, but his teeth sink in, flesh parts, something spurts into his mouth, tasting of blood and corruption, rotting flesh.
He flings himself backwards, away from the figure gone cold and still instead of warm and wanting.
Cut open where he cut him open, spilling black blood and rotting guts onto the bed, still, lifeless.
He’s naked. He looks down and the blood and the rot are covering him too, smeared upwards from his gory crotch, like his dick was the weapon that killed the man and not his sword.
He heaves, instinctual, body trying to expel everything he sees, hands scrabbling at his own skin, smearing the muck around as he tries to scrape it off.
No. No. no no no no no no no nonononononononono —
A noise. The sound of voices, hundreds of voices, raised in adulation. He looks up. The bed is on a platform, around it stairs leading down to a dark, blood red space that seems to stretch forever, and in that space hundreds of pale figures, bodies stripped to the skin, all of them kneeling, worshipping him.
Da-ge. Er-ge. Jiang Wanyin. His father. His brother. His cousin. Everyone. Everyone. The whole Cultivation World. Even Xue Yang—
He lurches upright, breath catching in a great, heaving gasp. A dream. A dream. Nothing but a dream.
‘Meng Yao?’ he hears a soft, mostly asleep voice. ‘You ok?’
‘Dream,‘ he manages, voice sounding strangled.
‘Oh,’ he hears, and then a moment later the rustling of the bedclothes, a hand reaching out, closing over his wrist. ‘It’s safe. There’s no one here but us.’
He finally manages to convince himself to lie down, finally relaxes, finally closes his eyes without the sight of Wen Ruohan’s rotting, disembowelled body playing itself again and again across his mind.
Jiang Wanyin still holds his wrist, and it’s easy, so easy, to shift the appendage in the man’s grasp until they’re holding hands instead, one warm point of contact across the cold bed between them.
Sleep is elusive, but eventually he falls—
Only to jerk back awake at a tiny voice crying out. Jiang Wanyin—
The man is on his hands and knees, halfway down the bed, hunched over and trembling. ‘What happened?’ he demands, looking around for an enemy.
‘Dream,’ the other manages, an echo of him earlier.
It takes some coaching to get the other back into the bed, Jiang Wanyin once more trembling as much as he was earlier. For a long time they lie in the darkness, neither of them sleeping, hands tangled once more.
The rest of the night is unsettled, the two of them both having nightmares on and off. He remembers some of his, but not all, and the ones he does— By the time the morning comes he feels sick and uneasy, an ocean of red washed over the inside of his mind. Jiang Wanyin hardly seems any better, the sense of exhaustion he desperately wanted to free the man from just as strong as the night before, and when the other rolls over it reveals dark circles beneath grey eyes.
The last few hours they ended up sleeping tangled up, Jiang Wanyin’s back to his chest, his arm slung around the man’s slight waist. It was the only good sleep he thinks either of them got.
Warmth, comfort, a body pressed to his with no expectations other than innocent contact.
‘I need to get out of this room,’ his friend says, voice sounding tired and croaky. ‘I cannot remember the last time I slept so poorly. I can’t bear looking at these walls any longer.’
‘A walk?’ he suggests, forcing himself to sit up, exhaustion fogging his mind. ‘A walk and then breakfast, the chilly morning air might help us clear our heads.’
Jiang Wanyin readily agrees, the two of them dragging themselves from the bed to get ready to leave the room. It’s early, the sun barely up, as they set out on a random path, walking close together in silence, all his jokes, all his amusing little comments, all his words feeling dried up.
They stroll around for an hour or so, just existing, letting the cool air sooth the heat of their bad dreams, until they find themselves in a clearing— Isn’t this where Wangji keeps those rabbits that are allegedly not his pets?
Yes, it is. Little furry forms start emerging from wherever it is they sleep, approaching the two of them cautiously. ‘Oh,’ Jiang Wanyin exclaims, looking around them at the rabbits. ‘They can’t be for food, and they’re not pets, because pets aren’t allowed— They must have just found their way in here and been allowed to stay.’
He is about to suggest they leave, but Jiang Wanyin has squatted down and is holding out a hand to a rabbit for it to smell as if the little animal is a dog. He does not think Jiang Wanyin would benefit from running into Wangji just now, and this is one of the places it’s more likely. Out of the same sensitivity to his friend’s feelings he does not correct the man, tell him they are pets, and whose pets they actually are.
Jiang Wanyin lets out a rueful little chuckle. ‘Oh, they are cute. I’ve never had much to do with rabbits other than those that—’ a tiny pause, ‘Well. I’ve never had much to do with living rabbits anyway.’
They really should go, but this may be the most relaxed he’s ever seen his friend. Does Jiang Wanyin like animals?
It seems the answer is yes, because moments later his friend is sitting on the grass, surrounded by rabbits, several of them competing to sit on his lap. ‘Their ears really are soft,’ the man says, sounding momentarily very sad, before a soft smile comes across his face as the rabbit he’s petting leans into the touch. ‘You should sit,’ his friend says, ‘Pet some rabbits.’
He’s not really an animal person himself, but if it’ll please his friend— Turns out they really are soft, and cute, and definitely prefer the way Jiang Wanyin pets them to his own attempts.
It’s sweet. A soft, sweet, stressless moment— until he catches movement out of the corner of his eye, turns his head just enough to see Wangji standing frozen, staring, but before the man can wreck Jiang Wanyin’s morning he must see sense, must still feel some shame for what he intruded on last night, because he retreats with one final, unreadable, look at his friend surrounded by the rabbits.