This small confession draws a brief glance of slight fondness from Lan Wangji, who is otherwise continuing to sit very still, his back very straight. Wei Ying has asked him for an express warning each time he is about to say something overly romantic, so that Wei Ying may brace himself. Lan Wangji occasionally complies. Imagining Crowley similarly uncomfortable is... endearing. The demon truly is growing on him.

"I say very little of what I think," he says, slowly, "as you know." Reaching for honest words just now has the feeling of battling through a dangerously overgrown forest, where every step must be evaluated and then earned. "It was not only you I encountered while under that spell." If it had been only Claudius and Wei Ying, he thinks he could have endured the day much more easily. But it was not.