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Chapter Text

Someone is kissing Wei Wuxian. He should hate this. His wrists are pinned above his head, he’s given up attempting to wrench them free. He’s rather given up fighting at all - which is insane, he acknowledges this. He had tried, after all, and found it futile, both his wrists and his chin are held firmly but gently in place.

But the kiss is… good. That shouldn’t matter, he knows that rationally, someone is taking something from him, something precious is being stolen. His first kiss: he’d been saving it for - well, that had been unlikely anyway, a fantasy even, but he’d been saving it all the same. He’ll mourn it later. 
 But he’s absolutely certain that this person means him no harm. How could someone who kisses him like this mean to hurt him? It had started forcefully, obviously, he didn’t agree to this, but despite the intensity of the warm mouth against his, the heat radiating off the body only inches from his, despite the little bites and the domineering tongue, the kiss is somehow infused with affection. He can cope with this, though his mind is spinning and he can’t think straight. Absently, he’s shocked by the force of his body’s response, how much he responds to being restrained and made to accept. He’s sure he’d feel differently if he truly believed himself in danger, but his pulse quickens, arousal and nervousness and shock racing each other down his spine.

He thinks the person may be about to pull away, the lips on his retreating once again into the cautious hesitance that had marked their first brushes against his, and he’s relieved, mostly, but there’s a little part of him that’s -

“What the fuck is going on here? Get off of him!” Comes a shout, nearby but not close, a voice that Wei Wuxian does not recognize. The body holding his freezes, the face only inches from his. Wei Wuxian hears footsteps, only a few at first, but the demanding, provocative shout has obviously drawn the attention of anyone in a nearby radius, because quickly he hears more people, from multiple directions. More voices, more footsteps, the quiet whispers of swords cutting through the early autumn wind. The hand holding his wrists trembles, but he is not released, and he’s not certain why, but he doesn’t try to break free, though he’s sure he could, now. He doesn’t even make a move to remove his blindfold. His face is hot, and he feels caught, though he was clearly doing no wrong. He should feel relief, but all he feels is tense.

“What on earth is going on here?”

“What are you doing to him?”

“It’s obvious what he’s doing-” 

More voices that Wei Wuxian doesn’t recognize, overlapping, hard for him to pick out, or understand, not that he’s trying, because all he can hear, buzzing around him, a name, a title really, repeated over and over in a chorus of voices:

“Hanguang-jun?”

He mouths it to himself, as he hears it, sure that it’s wrong. He feels dizzy, his mind races. It couldn’t be, it’s impossible, he needs to remove blindfold, he has to see, when - 

“A-Xian? Are you okay?”

Wei Wuxian freezes at his shijie’s voice, gentle in her inquiry, but something hard in her tone. The person in front of him - could it really be Lan Wangji? - is still frozen, and Wei Wuxian finally tugs one wrist free. It goes easily, and Wei Wuxian shoves the blindfold up and out of the way and - 

It’s him, it’s really him, and Wei Wuxian is so overwhelmed he might pass out but it is, it’s Lan Wangji staring firmly at the ground, it’s Lan Wangji’s hand still holding his other wrist and Lan Wangji’s leg between his. Lan Wangji’s lips, kissed red and slightly shiny with spit. Wei Wuxian’s heart stutters, he can hardly believe it. Does this mean - Lan Wangji hates him, doesn’t he? Why would Lan Wangji kiss him, after years of nothing but arguing about Wei Wuxian’s cultivation, years of Wei Wuxian’s heart aching every time he overhears the mean-spirited gossip about their fights? What does it mean?

“A-Xian?” Jiang Yanli is close by and looking at him with wide eyes, nearer than anyone else, some odd dozen cultivators drawn by the shouts and ensuing commotion. Jin Zixuan is a few paces behind her with a look on his face like he’d bitten into a piece of fresh-seeming fruit to find it rotten on the inside. In his disorientation, what flashes through Wei Wuxian’s mind is distaste to see him with Jiang Yanli.

“I’m okay, Shijie, I promise.” He gives her a bright smile and tugs his other wrist free from Lan Wangji’s hold. Lan Wangji allows it, still staring resolutely at the ground as Wei Wuxian ducks away from him toward his shijie.

“A-Xian… it seemed like…” Jiang Yanli hesitates, looking between Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji.

“It looked like he was forcing himself on you,” says one of the onlookers, who is shifting his weight uncomfortably, and Wei Wuxian thinks he might recognize the voice as the one to have shouted initially. There’s a susurrus of disbelief and accusations rippling through the assembled people.

Well, yes, he expects that it had looked like that. It had rather been like that. Yet despite that, Wei Wuxian no longer has space within himself to be upset, the yawning chasm of him full somehow, of something else, something that climbs his throat and chokes him silent. He’s confused, now, more than anything, shocked and awed and elated and he even dares hope.

Though he’s looking at his shijie, from the corner of his eye, Wei Wuxian sees Lan Wangji somehow tense further. Feels it, even. He’s always aware of Lan Wangji when he’s near, as if attuned. He can’t believe he didn’t recognize him. He turns his head to try to catch Lan Wangji’s eye, but he’s still staring at the ground.

Wei Wuxian has an idea. It’s probably a bad one, Lan Wangji will hate it, Wei Wuxian hates it, but it’s all he can think of. This is the kind of thing that could ruin Lan Wangji’s future, his life. Wei Wuxian cannot allow that to happen, not ever and certainly not on his behalf. It doesn’t matter that he did it, not to Wei Wuxian, only the why. Lan Zhan can have anything he wants from Wei Wuxian. He dares to indulge himself in hope.

Lan Wangji kissed him. Wei Wuxian hopes he wants this, or will at least prefer it to the bleak alternatives. Wei Wuxian can worm his way out of it later when it inevitably backfires. He hopes this works.

Wei Wuxian forces a bright smile onto his face. It’s not hard - he just has to remember that he has just had his first kiss! With Lan Zhan!

“Ah, I can see how it must have looked that way,” he says breezily, reaching to grab for Lan Wangji’s arm, still clutching the tree where he’d had Wei Wuxian’s wrists moments ago. He tugs, and through what Wei Wuxian thinks is more of a stupor than any real willingness, Lan Wangji allows him to reel him in, and Wei Wuxian holds his arm lightly. Lan Wangji finally looks up from the grass at his feet to stare at him, his face blank, with just a hint of confusion clouding his brow that Wei Wuxian only notices because he expects it. Wei Wuxian gives him a small smile and squeezes his arm. He turns his head to look at the speaker, a young man with a broad face in the colors of the Qinghe Nie sect, still shifting nervously from foot to foot. Wei Wuxian takes a deep breath, and then a plunge.

“However, did it look like I was resisting?” He asks, injecting lightness into his voice. “Hanguang-jun may have caught me by surprise this time, but it was not unwelcome.”

Another, louder wave of murmurs ripples across the onlookers, and Jiang Yanli looks confused. Lan Wangji, who is the one Wei Wuxian is truly paying attention to, freezes again and Wei Wuxian pets his arm lightly. There’s no time to ask permission.

Everything is happening so fast. Wei Wuxian can barely think straight. Lan Wangji kissed him. That has to mean something. 

“I think we have to tell them, Lan Zhan.” He looks at Lan Wangji as he says it, but makes sure to project his voice. Lan Wangji is still frozen, his eyes searching Wei Wuxian’s face, but something flickers in Lan Wangji’s eyes when Wei Wuxian uses his birth name. Wei Wuxian can’t ask the question he wants to, so he gives Lan Wangji a reassuring smile instead, mouths a quick “sorry,” and looks back at Jiang Yanli.

“I apologize for keeping secrets, Shijie,” he starts, his heart racing. There’s no turning back from what he’s about to say. “But Lan Zhan and I have been… involved… romantically, for some time. We are in love.”

Time stops for one brief moment of stunned silence.

And hell breaks loose.

Jiang Yanli blinks rapidly at him, and behind her Jin Zixuan’s eyes narrow and his nose wrinkles unattractively. Even further behind him, the gasps and whispers are louder than ever. The only person who fails to react is the one Wei Wuxian needs to. He’s just staring at Wei Wuxian, dumbfounded confusion and disbelief in the set of his eyebrows, the infinitesimally downturned corners of his mouth. Wei Wuxian makes smiling eye contact and tugs lightly on Lan Wangji’s arm. There is a silence that is a beat too long, his grin almost starts to slip, and then Wei Wuxian’s heart feels like it might explode out of his chest as Lan Wangji’s lips - the same ones he’d just been kissing! his brain less-than-helpfully supplies - twitch and his brow smooths. It’s almost a smile, and Wei Wuxian feels like he can finally breathe again.

It’s not until he hears a tentative “A-Xian?” that he manages to tear his eyes from Lan Wangji’s to turn to look at his shijie.

She doesn’t need him to say anything. She knows him more than anyone, and even if she didn’t, he could not possibly fake the way he looks at Lan Wangji, it's only by some blessing that no one had noticed it before now. No one had ever thought to look. But now, she’s studying him, and she knows. So when she smiles and reaches out to take one of his hands to clasp between both of hers, Wei Wuxian feels something he didn’t even know was tight uncoil in his chest. She asks no further questions, just smiles at him serenely, with something like hope in her eyes, and his heart clenches, just for a moment, knowing how much he has worried her in the recent years. Wei Wuxian smiles back at her so softly that he almost - almost - doesn’t notice that Lan Wangji disentangles his arm from his grip. However, nothing could be enough of a distraction to prevent Wei Wuxian nearly choking to hold back a gasp when Lan Wangji entwines his fingers with Wei Wuxian’s. The unfairness that Wei Wuxian’s most secret, most unlikely teenage fantasies, the dreams he had awoken from and promptly locked away in a box in his mind and refused to acknowledge, are coming true around him and he has to pretend that they are commonplace to him is simply too much!

“Now, of course,” Lan Wangji says softly but firmly, addressing Jiang Yanli, “Wei Ying and I will marry, if the Jiang clan will grant their approval.”

Wei Wuxian cannot suppress his sharp, shaky gasp of surprise this time, but it’s okay, because he’s far from the only one. Wei Wuxian feels dizzy, faint. Like he’s underwater, sound and sensation coming from a great distance. This can’t be real; a fever dream perhaps. A trick of some sort, because even his dreams these days are a dark pit far, far removed from this fantasy he’s play acting -

Lan Wangji squeezes his hand.

He feels so solid, his hand so hot in Wei Wuxian’s. How could he ever have thought him cold?

“I could never be displeased by anything that brings A-Xian happiness,” Jiang Yanli is saying diplomatically, “and I am sure that this is also the case for my -”

“Wei Wuxian! I have heard people whispering your name all over the mountain! What have you done now?”

Wei Wuxian no longer has the wherewithal to withhold himself. He hadn’t noticed anyone leave the area, but he hadn’t really paid attention, either. Nothing, Wei Wuxian supposes, travels faster than a juicy rumor, especially one about him. But Lan Wangji is holding his hand. Lan Wangji had pinned him to a tree and kissed him. Lan Wangji had said to Shijie that he will -

He throws his head back and laughs in response to Jiang Cheng’s dramatic and timely entrance onto the assembled scene. It’s several long moments before he composes himself, tears in his eyes, one hand in his shijie’s, one hand in Lan Wangji’s. What has he done? He looks at Lan Wangji, whose face is a careful, tense neutral, closed to Wei Wuxian. He squeezes Lan Wangji’s hand back briefly, and something changes in his eyes, passing so quickly that he almost misses it. But it was there, and it gives him strength. 

“What have I done? Gotten engaged, I think.” He looks to where Jiang Cheng is approaching as he speaks, Sandu gripped in one hand, Zidian crackling in ring form on the other. All Jiang Cheng does at first is snort derisively, which is an understandable reaction, considering the number of pranks, jokes, and teases he has been both complicit in and a victim of over the years. But as he comes closer, his face changes as he surveys the scene in front of him. His eyebrows shoot upward, and then back down as eyes narrow suspiciously, and a deep, sneering frown settles across his mouth.

Lan Wangji lets go of his hand, and for a moment Wei Wuxian thinks his bluff is about to be called, that Lan Wangji is about to admit wrongdoing, admit that Wei Wuxian is covering for him. The idea that to Lan Zhan, kissing him could be something he would feel the need to express contrition for, to confess guilt for, makes Wei Wuxian’s stomach twist. He misses the tight, comforting warmth of Lan Wangji’s hand in his dearly.

But then Lan Wangji takes a single step between Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, still close enough that their shoulders brush. His shijie drops his hand as well and hurries to stand at his other side; with both hands suddenly free, he feels oddly bereft.

"However,” Lan Wangji says evenly, as if he’s simply continuing his previous comment to Jiang Yanli, “elopement is, of course, an option.”

Wei Wuxian’s heart beats even faster, somehow, and he can feel his face heat. However, he knows Jiang Cheng, and as he might have predicted, those simple words that set Wei Wuxian’s heart ablaze have similarly provoked Jiang Cheng - his fiery temper that is. From the slight upturned set of Lan Wangji’s mouth that Wei Wuxian can see in profile, he wonders if he’s deliberately needling him. How unlike Lan Zhan! Wei Wuxian suppresses a grin.

“Let Shijie and I handle him, hm?” he says quietly, near Lan Wangji’s ear, because though he’s privately reveling in Lan Wangji’s wry humor, Jiang Cheng’s face is turning an alarming, mottled red. As funny as it might be, this is the first of what Wei Wuxian expects will be many hurdles in carrying out this plan, and it doesn’t need to be more difficult.

Lan Wangji seems to shiver as the front of Wei Wuxian’s shoulder brushes the back of his own, and even more so as Wei Wuxian’s breath tickles at his ear when he speaks. He turns his pale, lovely face to Wei Wuxian’s and nods slightly,

“Mn,” he acquiesces. He’s looking at Wei Wuxian with an unfamiliar expression in the set of his eyes, one that is so dangerously soft that Wei Wuxian thinks he might die of it. His breath hitches, and his mind unhelpfully replays how it felt to kiss those warm, pillowy lips and it’s all he can do to tear his eyes from Lan Wangji to take several steps toward Jiang Cheng. His shijie follows alongside him, presenting themselves united, and Wei Wuxian is incredibly grateful to her. This still feels too surreal for words; her presence helps him feel real.

“Ah, Jiang Cheng. Let us find somewhere to talk, and I will tell you the whole story. Both of you.” He says in a conciliatory, almost conspiratorial voice. He glances at Lan Wangji, who looks very much like he’d also like to hear whatever story Wei Wuxian is about to concoct.

“I would like to know this whole story, as well,” says yet another new voice, this one even and calm.

Wei Wuxian looks at Lan Wangji, who is looking at his brother, side by side with Jin Guangyao as they dismount their swords. Despite being hard pressed to look away from Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian catches movement as Jin Zixuan hurries over to Jiang Yanli and says something quiet to her before retreating, and if any part of him could focus on that, he’d be disgusted, but his own dramatic feelings are eclipsing even his distaste for Jin Zixuan in this moment. 

“Xiongzhang,” Lan Wangji greets flatly. “You’re here.” He does not say anything to Jin Guangyao, which tells Wei Wuxian that Lan Wangji is keeping himself together about as well as he is, which is to say, barely.

“Zewu-jun, Lianfang-zun,” Wei Wuxian acknowledges in turn. Jin Guangyao inclines his head, but Lan Xichen is already responding to Lan Wangji.

“Is it so odd that I am here? I heard very distressing hearsay about my brother’s behavior and came to find out what was truly going on.” His face is just as composed as his brother’s, holding a placid smile smoothed over the tension that is in his words.

Wei Wuxian bites back a wince and fights back the urge to cover Lan Zhan’s clenched fist with his own hand. He’s not sure whether touching Lan Wangji will help or hurt, right now. He turns back to Lan Wangji.

“If Zewu-jun would accompany us, so that we only have to do this once?” He glances back towards a bristling Jiang Cheng. The hint to Lan Wangji is a clear one, they’ll need to keep their story straight, so they’ll need to do this together. Wei Wuxian hopes that Lan Wangji will let him do most of the talking, he’s good at making stuff up. He should; lying is forbidden by his sect’s rules, and Wei Wuxian knows that whatever story he tells will at least have a kernel of truth - his feelings for Lan Zhan. He can admit what they are, even if only to himself, after so long keeping them hidden even from himself, in this moment, this unreal moment where he’s maybe getting everything he has always refused to indulge himself in wanting, in the absolute worst way he can imagine.

There’s an uncomfortable moment where Wei Wuxian thinks someone might refuse, not least of all Jiang Cheng, who appears to be muzzling himself by clenching his jaw tightly enough that he wants to wince in sympathy. He opens his mouth, likely to say something unwise, but it’s Jiang Yanli who speaks first.

“Enough spectacle has been made of this private matter.” Her manner is gentle, but brooks no argument. Wei Wuxian sighs in relief when Lan Xichen nods gracefully in agreement with her words, though his lips are pressed into the thin line of a suppressed frown.

“I believe I know somewhere you may conduct this conversation, if it is amenable.” Jin Guangyao offers graciously and Lan Xichen inclines his head. Jiang Cheng nods stiffly with a huff. Wei Wuxian lets out a breath of relief. Today is the strangest day of his life, and there have been a lot of them. It’s starting to hit him, though, and he needs to come up with something good, fast -