Work Text:
Jiang Cheng tells him about The Core. Or no, not The Core, that’s still safe and sound inside Jiang Cheng, but A Core, Jiang Cheng’s original core, which – horrific. It’s a horrific conversation. It is exactly as horrific as Wei Wuxian would have imagined, if he’d ever imagined it, which he hadn’t. He’d never even guessed. He – years, decades, his whole stupid fucking life, both his stupid fucking lives, he’d thought – he’d had the nerve to think – He –
“Knock it off, moron, you’re spiraling,” Jiang Cheng (who has apparently been some kind of hypocritical secret-keeping liar virtuoso(??) for the past thirty years(???). Wei Wuxian had thought that was his job) says, shaking open Wei Wuxian’s fist where his nails had sunk into own soft palm. Jiang Cheng is still a hypocrite; his hands are shaking too, and his eyes are red and swollen. Wei Wuxian wants to kill him. Wei Wuxian wants to pin him down safe so he can never leave Wei Wuxian’s sight again. Wei Wuxian wants to kiss him, and kiss him: his mouth, his hands, his sore red eyes, the whip-scars that line his body like strokes of red ink, like faultlines.
“How could you,” Wei Wuxian says. Croaks. “How could you do that to yourself. How could you do that to me. How dare you think I’d ever want that. I love you too, I love you, but how could you.”
“Yeah,” Jiang Cheng says, and unclenches Wei Wuxian’s other fist.
Wei Wuxian wraps his open, shaking hands into the front of Jiang Cheng’s robes and pins him down so he can never leave Wei Wuxian’s sight again. Wei Wuxian kisses him, and kisses him, and Jiang Cheng kisses him back: their mouths, their hands, their eyelids, their faultlines – all the places where they tore themselves apart, all the places where they healed.