[ open post: Lan Wangji, training ]

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji is upside-down.

This is not unusual for him, although he is more used to practicing this in the company of students, his brother, or his husband.¹ Recently, however, his mind has come up against more turmoil than he would prefer, and turmoil of a variety that is unusual for him. It can't go amiss to return himself to the basics of his training.

He is in a small enough room, largely bare aside from the stick of sandalwood incense² he has set burning on a side table. Its scent drifts into the hallway, and anyone who follows it to the source may see a white-clad cultivator standing on his hands.

Well: standing on his hand. Lan Wangji needs one only to keep himself aloft, his body straight as an arrow. His hair is pulled into a ponytail so that it may pool off to one side over his neck and onto the floor rather than spilling in all directions, the long ends of his forehead ribbon tucked into the same tie and falling in the same way. He is in trousers and an undershirt of a decent heft, in deference to the fact that he is arguably in public.³

With the hand that is not currently holding him up, Lan Wangji is holding an ink brush. He is copying, from memory, the lines of a sutra.

¹Wei Ying is not good at it. Particularly not in his second body.
²This may explain it to anyone who has been wondering why he always smells faintly of sandalwood himself.
³If he does this in their quarters, Wei Ying insists it must be done with nothing on his torso at all. Lan Wangji invariably becomes distracted. Now anyone else is welcome to distract him (in a different way, ideally).

Comments

[lightbearinglord]

Without a great deal of success, Lan Wangji attempts to hide his smile in a sip of tea. Nobody but Wei Ying himself could have stopped Lan Wangji from marrying him, but he is surprised at how it touches him to have unconditional approval from someone whose opinion he values.

"And you and Galahad?" he asks, maybe teasing just a little -- but sincerely curious, too.

[wickedwit]

Claudius tilts his head in sincere consideration, teacup in hand. "The people I love are so varied," he says, "Though I've only fallen into a deep love -- a love I can't claw my way out from, no matter how I try -- twice. There was a time where I'd gotten quite adept at finding the exact moment where I felt too much, and it became too dangerous, and then I'd make myself scarce. I tried to make myself scarce with Gertrude, and ..." A flickering hand gesture. "You know how that transpired. And I tried to leave Galahad to God, but I would always think of him in silence. There's something in him, some kindred soul that speaks to mine, and it makes me wish to quiet myself so I can hear it whispering. Sometimes -- thou shouldst know -- I speak to him, and I understand how Wei Wuxian looks at thee, and laugh at thy looks as though thou hast unveiled whole stories unspoken." Claudius laughs at himself. "Perhaps there's a balance in that, for a fork-tongued man such as myself. My first love taught me to speak, my second love to listen anew."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji could almost smile again, if it were in his nature to dole out smiles more readily, at the description of a love that ensnares without escape. He has been in that kind of love for more than twenty years.

He drinks a mouthful of tea and hopes for an easier span of decades for Claudius, and his Galahad by extension. "I couldn't speak of how I felt for Wei Ying," he admits, "until it was nearly too late. He broke the silence with a qin string on the verge of slicing his throat. I could only say his own words back to him."

[wickedwit]

It's an image vividly-drawn, the urgency of near-death drawing hidden feelings to the surface like blood to a bruise. Wryly, Claudius recalls his own melodramatic oaths when he thought he could die at any time -- but he doesn't regret a one of them. "With thine own eloquent inflection, I'm sure," he says. "'Tis well. Thou spokest in a language thou couldst be sure he understood. A shared book of thy love."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji huffs out one of his silent, tiny laughs. He had not been eloquent at the time. His voice and body shook and he was in such shock, so overcome with the happiness of knowing his feelings requited, that he wept into Wei Ying's hair in front of his brother, in front of Jin Guangyao and his underlings, and felt no shame. "You are mistaken when you call me eloquent. That skill falls to you."

[wickedwit]

"I speak enough for the both of us, I know. I've enjoyed it," Claudius says with all fondness. "I look forward to many more conversations over tea."

[lightbearinglord]

A lifetime of near-silence has, at the least, given Lan Wangji the ability to infuse any small gesture with a wealth of meaning. He finishes the last of his tea, and nods, and means thank you again, and I expect enough of these conversations that we will eventually lose count.