lightbearinglord | [ closed post: delivery for Hanguang-jun ]

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[ closed post: delivery for Hanguang-jun ]

The morning after the dance¹ sees Lan Wangji in one of the better moods that has visited him in quite some time. Wei Ying was happy last night: truly happy, the kind of happiness that chases all the ghosts out of his head. It is so much better to see than the false smile that graced his face for several days following their confrontation with Jiang Wanyin.

Lan Wangji, content and light of heart for once, has found a small parlor not far off the entryway of the mansion, and he is sitting cross-legged on a floor cushion, hair down, with his qin laid out on a low table before him as he strums a few thoughtful chords. It has been some time since Lan Wangji composed something, but there was so much unfamiliar music the night prior. It has made him want to begin again.

Now, surely nothing could possibly improve his mood even more at a time like this. And surely everyone in the mansion had an equally romantic and enjoyable evening.

¹Time is a flat circle. No further questions.

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Claudius sighs, rather grateful for Lan Wangji's insight -- both rabbits are relatively calm, but the white rabbit does need the most soothing. Also: Crowley.

"Aziraphale may also come to reflect on the past with romantic fondness. Nothing's as hopeless as Crowley believes. And Crowley, I will note, Aziraphale would never have conjured a single rabbit for me if you weren't present. He certainly wouldn't have conjured two."

Crowley sighs. "It's because we're used to doing favors for each other. He performs a temptation, I perform a minor miracle. I provide the wine, he tells a silly but ultimately entertaining story-- and he likes it when I listen to what he tells me to do," he adds, a little sullenly. "When he looked at me, his expression said Crowley, whatever you do, do not make me summon a nigh-unimaginable amount of rabbits. I had to go along with it."

Crowley is not helping his point or any point. We're not even sure why he's telling Claudius all of this.¹

¹And that's not even in the footnotes.

This description of devotion softens Lan Wangji's face anew. It is surprisingly familiar: I provide the wine, he tells a silly but ultimately entertaining story. He, too, would do nearly anything that Wei Ying asked of him. He hid bottles of Emperor's Smile under the floorboards of the jingshi for years for the hypothetical enjoyment of a dead man.

"You love him," he says, as if in agreement with some point that Crowley has made. Perhaps he is being overly blunt, but what is the use in dancing around this?

Claudius is also pinning him with a Look, so there's no escaping the statement. Crowley desperately wishes he had an emotional support rabbit of his own right now.

He nods, a nod that's simultaneously both solemn and awkward. "For a long time," he confirms quietly. "There's just been so much-- stuff in the way of it that I didn't realize until now."

Unfortunately for poor Crowley, the weight of Lan Wangji's gaze on him is quite heavy just now. It may, at least, help with the utter solemnity of his demeanor that he is now using one finger to pet the brown rabbit's cheek. "It was the same for Wei Ying."

"I presume thou mean'st the man," teases Claudius, "not the rabbit he gave thee." He smiles, and it's full of its own fondness -- Lan Wangji's romantic stories¹ always move him. "No doubt he told himself, like a demon tempting an angel, that he was only encouraging thee to break the rules of thy sect ... but looking back and reminiscing, he'd given thee a sweet and loving gift. You were like that, Crowley. You told me about the kindnesses you'd done for Aziraphale, with such casual disavowals -- the same way you talk about exchanging favors, as if favors can't also be romantic gestures²."

¹ Even if those are stories are one sentence.
² It's kind of like when you have a crush on a guy, and then you meet him as a kid, and he's so cute you want to make him a plate of crispels. And then things are weird for a while, but you clear the air while under the influence of a truth spell, and later at the wedding dance you arranged for him and his husband, his husband points out you're in love. And then you think back and realize the plate of crispels was a romantic gesture. This is just a random example.

"Sure, maybe on my part, and maybe I see that now, but--" Crowley gestures, a mildly helpless one. For some reason, it suddenly all feels so overwhelming. "Remember when I took that nap for a week? I think I need to do that now. Except I just need to just sit and think for a week."

A little frown pinches Lan Wangji's brow. He pets the white rabbit's cheek as well, in order to remain equitable with his affections, as he says, measured, "Meditation can be helpful." Still, he tosses a glance of concern at Claudius about the matter.

"I have heard good things about meditation," Claudius says, in light-heartedly helpful tones that belie the equally concerned look he gives Lan Wangji. "But you know, the inclination to sit for weeks on end and think can also be a sign of melancholia. Is this a purposeful, meditative sort of thinking, or is it more like brooding?" Was Crowley just 'taking a nap because he was bored' during most of the 19th century, or did something make him melancholy? These are questions Claudius worries about.

Crowley completely and absolutely misses these looks of concern. "No no, it's just... there's thousands of years of history. It's all jostled in my head along with endless memories of--" He gestures vaguely towards the ceiling, the sky. "It takes a while to sift through all of it. A week for me is like... like if a human sat and thought and, er, I don't know, blogged or whatever they do for half an hour."

Whatever blogging is, this explanation does little to alleviate Lan Wangji's apprehension about Crowley's wellbeing. He can hardly claim to understand thousands of years of history, nor would he pretend to, but he believes he understands something like the mortal equivalent of such a thing. "After the events surrounding Wei Ying's death," he offers, keeping his voice even, "I required three years in seclusion."

The admission surprises Claudius, having heard the truth of Lan Wangji’s seclusion while under a truth spell — a complex situation, to say the least. Someone who doesn’t make a study of Lan Wangji’s minute expressions might not notice, but Claudius admires how even he keeps his voice, with the kind of calm that wouldn’t disturb an anxious rabbit.

It’s gratifying, in its way, to see one friend share concern for another. Sincere concern wasn’t a feature of Claudius’s more shallow friendships, and Claudius feels far more for Crowley than certain pining dukes he’d pretend to console while quietly mocking in Ilyria. There’s a compulsion to protect his friend’s heart, to surround him with commiserating kindness and warmth — and, once again, someone who hasn’t made a study of Lan Wangji might not see the warmth in him. But Claudius does.

He stays quiet, proffering his fingers to the brown rabbit in the crook of Lan Wangji’s arm.

Crowley looks up and over at Lan Wangji; he's learned a lot about him since the first time they met¹ but there's still a lot he doesn't know, clearly. "Must have been agonizing," he offers, sympathy in exchange for a personal piece of information.

It brings him back to the time when the bookshop was burning, the fact that he couldn't find Aziraphale (though he thought he could still feel his presence on Earth somewhere, but how much of that was in his head?) -- but with everything happening, he still had to swallow down the panic to deal with the rest of the Apocalypse. He can't imagine thinking that Aziraphale was permanently discorporated -- or worse, gone back to Heaven for all of eternity.

¹His name, for one, and the fact that he isn't divorced.

It is easier now, with the gift of hindsight, to look back on his seclusion without excessive pain, but agonizing is an entirely apt description. Lan Wangji had no way to know that Wei Ying would, through an accident of fate and the misfortune of others, return to him years later. He was dead, torn apart by his own unorthodox cultivation, with no body to recover and no one alive who loved him¹ to share in Lan Wangji's grief.

Lan Wangji resettles the rabbits in both of his arms and lowers them slightly so that they are easier for Claudius to reach as they snuffle at his fingers. "Mn." After all of their endless difficulties communicating, perhaps it is fitting that in this, he and Crowley should need very few words to understand one another.

¹Sorry, Jiang Cheng. I know you love Wei Wuxian, but Lan Wangji doesn't think you do.

As Claudius delicately strokes the cheek of the little brown rabbit, he reflects and realizes he's also unfamiliar with the practice of friends exchanging genuine sympathy and vulnerability when neither of them is drunk. It's really not the time for him to exclaim aloud that he's just realized another Danish cultural problem. Or to say he went into his own, self-imposed isolation when he feared losing Gertrude to the king's wrathful jealousies, and came away with the idea that the only solution was to have another king. He can't recommend retreating to one's own thoughts, even if he doesn't regret the means by which he freed Gertrude.

"Crowley," he says instead, "you had something to ask Lan Wangji, didn't you?"

"No?" Crowley says, raising an eyebrow at Claudius.

Claudius sighs, and rolls his eyes. Honestly, Crowley does have too many thoughts in that head of his. Claudius can't blame him for forgetting small things when his mind's crowded with pining. "Lan Wangji," he says, smiling. "Thou toldst me once that when Wei Wuxian returned to life, he played a song that thou remembered'st, because thou hadst written it for him. Wouldst thou play it for Crowley to hear, too?"

Whatever Lan Wangji expected the question to be, a request to hear this song was not it. He looks at Crowley with muted surprise and hesitates, but only for a moment. There was a time when no one but Wei Ying had ever heard that melody, but that time is past. Wei Ying played it on a stalk of bamboo for the juniors and Wen Qionglin and even Jiang Wanyin to hear. Also, Lan Wangji is abysmal at saying no to people he loves.

Carefully, he returns the rabbits to Claudius' arms and tells them, still quite serious, "Shushu will hold you now."

With those two safely ensconced, Lan Wangji can return to sit behind his qin, shaking out his sleeves crisply and setting his hands to the strings. He looks up and waits for Crowley and Claudius to sit as well.

Edited 2024-01-04 21:52 (UTC)

With the same care he'd use when cradling the newborn prince Hamlet for his mother, Claudius sits cradling the two rabbits, making sure the movement's not too sudden. To Crowley, he shoots a pointed look. "Take a seat, Crowley," he says, friendly as can be while still having something of the tone of an order.

Crowley gives Claudius a look in return, but he does sit. How he's sitting doesn't look particularly comfortable, slouched with one leg up on the chair -- but he makes it work.

There is a short-lived pause. Lan Wangji is far from self-conscious about performing. That is not in his nature, and even if it were, he knows how skilled he is at playing the qin. He is only taking in the surreality of the moment, of sitting on the precipice of playing the most personal composition of his life for two people from other worlds. A tiny smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, there and gone again, the proverbial sunlight over snow. With that, he begins.

It would be impossible to play this song without thinking of Wei Ying. Lan Wangji has never tried. When he wrote it, he was burning up, a boy made of ice thrust without warning into the suffocating heat of a summer's day. His mother had been dead for nine years, and he had intended never again to feel anything as keenly as he felt her loss. All of that resolve cracked in two when he caught a boy with a beautiful face trying to sneak Emperor's Smile into the Cloud Recesses past curfew. Lan Wangji stopped him, told him the rules, and threatened to punish him. Wei Wuxian only smiled, a smile like every cold word out of Lan Wangji's mouth delighted him, and danced with him, their swords aglow in the moonlight, across the walls of the Cloud Recesses.

He plays through it all, the strings alive under his hands and his qi: Wei Ying's head in his lap, the heat of his damp forehead under Lan Wangji's hand. Wei Ying demanding a song and Lan Wangji powerless to deny him, furious with him and enchanted by him. Wei Ying cast into the Burial Mounds, emptied of his core and left for dead, clawing his way out reshaped and haunted and still the brightest thing Lan Wangji had ever seen. Wei Ying throwing him flowers, Wei Ying blindfolded with a bruised-red mouth, Wei Ying aflame with righteousness and spitting a countdown at Jin Guangshan. Wei Ying out of control, his shijie dead and his tattered black robes fluttering around him. Wei Ying gone and Lan Wangji alone in the jingshi, back where he had started but with thirty-three lashes on his back and a sun-shaped brand on his chest, his body a freshly-constructed monument to his years of longing.

The last time Lan Wangji performed this piece for Claudius, he was shamefully drunk, and they were not yet friends, whatever Claudius said. He presumes he did it passably well, although his memory of that is poor, because he is so familiar with the melody. This time he will do better, with all the artistry he earned across days and nights with nothing but his books and his qin to keep him company. Claudius, who is dear to him now, will likely appreciate the improvement, and there is Crowley and the newly-realized ache of his own disobedient heart to consider. Lan Wangji's fingers are deft on these strings he knows so well.

If there's one thing -- one human thing -- that Crowley understands well, it's music. He was there at the premiere of Messiah in Dublin, had a small hand in "Lisztomania"¹, greatly enjoyed the jazz age, had a fascinating conversation with Bob Dylan that he still thinks about every once in a while, etc etc.

And so, even though his body language may be protesting that no, he doesn't need a love song played for him to truly understand his feelings for Aziraphale, he's heard At Last by Etta James thanks... he is in fact listening carefully. And it is a beautiful song. He doesn't know Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian's history that well, aside from the bits and pieces he's heard, mostly when one or more of the people involved in the conversation were drunk, but he can sense the depth of emotion in it.

Longing, sadness, happiness, a touch of anger, fondness, and plenty of love. Love is complex. Love contains a multitude of emotions. It reminds him of what Aziraphale said when they entered Lower Tadfield again, that he felt an aura of love surrounding the place. Crowley didn't sense it himself, but he imagines that this song is how it would have felt. Aziraphale would most likely also say the same about this song -- and with that thought, Crowley's expression softens just slightly.

¹Even more ironic that Liszt is one of the two composers in Heaven.

Claudius made a study of Lan Wangji's smallest expressions, but small softening moments like this can be just as hard to catch in Crowley. By now, Claudius considers himself a fair hand at guessing what Crowley is thinking, mostly from the pitch of his voice or the type of disavowals he makes, along with the undisguised warmth that sometimes creeps in when he's sentimental. He knows Crowley's face, at rest, only looks louche and vaguely dissatisfied with shades to hide his eyes. But Claudius sees the slight change in Crowley, and knows he was right to insist on this.

Love is a multitude of emotions, and absolutely maddening. In Claudius's experience, it unbalances every humor, sending a man through eddies of melancholy and delight. And Claudius's instinct, as always, is to spin the story the way he'd most like it to go¹ with swiftness and efficiency. But ailing hearts need pasttimes and company. Music inspires sympathies -- it makes fellow feelings heard. Claudius can, he thinks, hear so much more of it this time, having the words to the music, knowing what to listen for, and he notices Lan Wangji using all his skill. After the song ends, he commends it, saying, "That was even more beautiful than before. My thanks for indulging me, friend." He'd clap, but his arms are full of rabbits. Claudius has them held at a good angle for admiring Lan Wangji's playing¹.

¹ Which he will. Don't get him wrong. This is about slowing down and not scheming for the moment.
² They might be able to recognize quality qin playing yet, but the important thing is to expose your children to culture while they're young.

It is easy, still, to lose himself in this song. He has not been married for long, in comparison to the length of time that saw him mourning Wei Ying's death or the years of turmoil before it. The memory of their third bow, of Wei Ying's flushed cheeks and shining eyes, can still catch him like a blow to the chest. I want to night-hunt with you for the rest of my life.

Lan Wangji glances up from Wangji's strings in time to catch the uncharacteristic warmth on Crowley's face, and in time to briefly catch Claudius' eye about it. Seeing how Claudius has arranged the rabbits pulls another smile from him as he gently flattens a hand on the qin strings to silence them. "I prefer it with dizi accompaniment," he says. He truly is in an indulgent mood, because then he hums a little of the dizi part, low and clear in the small room.

Crowley knows that both of them caught the expression on his face. He knows it. Therefore, it's fine if he stops having feelings now¹. Crowley inclines his head at Lan Wangji in thanks. "As ABBA would say," he says, dryly with just enough of a touch of warmth, "thank you for the music."

¹Citation needed.

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