[ 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

[sagramore]

Sagramore has only met Lan Wangji once, under considerably different circumstances, and he definitely does a bit of a double take. On the other hand, Shen Qingqiu has taken him flying on a sword, so perhaps he shouldn't be surprised by anything any more. And he does have fond memories of their last conversation (himself barely awake, Lan Wangji pursuing music, the tantalizing word husband applied between men).

"Good morning," he says mildly.

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji glances toward Sagramore with no change in expression. After a brief moment of thought, he sets down his ink brush and flips neatly back to a more typical standing position so that he may bow. "Young master Sagramore."

[sagramore]

"Impressive wrist strength," his dark eyes crinkling in spite of his solemn expression.

[lightbearinglord]

With something like amusement, Lan Wangji looks down at his own hands and briefly flexes the wrist of the one that had been holding him aloft. "It is a common training technique of my sect."

[sagramore]

"How are you today?"

[lightbearinglord]

The question earns Sagramore a blank look, although not one of offense, only of surprise. Lan Wangji considers the question. "Well enough," he says finally. It's a vague answer, but it's the best one he has to a relative stranger. That said, he and Sagramore have not crossed paths since Sagramore's arrival, and so he asks, "Have you been well here?"

[sagramore]

"Excellent, as it happens. Very fortunate. --I've thought about you and your husband."

[lightbearinglord]

Another look of muted surprise crosses Lan Wangji's face. He tucks his hands behind his back and tips his head very slightly to one side, his typical way of inviting his conversational partner to elaborate if they would care to.

[sagramore]

An expressive shrug. "It makes me happy to know it's possible."

[lightbearinglord]

That is not a smile, but it is an expression of warmth, such as it is in Lan Wangji's terms. "My husband is from Yunmeng, the Jiang clan. Their motto is know it to be impossible and do it anyway. He can be stubborn."

[sagramore]

"Your husband sounds exquisite."

[lightbearinglord]

He is, Lan Wangji could say. He is brilliant and too clever for his own good and so deeply kind and loyal that it killed him.

He could master his expression entirely and allow none of that overpowering fondness to slip through. But in this moment, he doesn't bother, though the resulting effect is still subtle. "Mn," he agrees, one clipped syllable to encompass twenty years of love. "There is someone you wish to marry?"

[sagramore]

He makes a dismissive gesture. "There's someone who makes me wish the opportunity existed. But there always has been. I fall in love too easily; it's my character flaw."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji dismisses this supposed character flaw easily. He loved Wei Ying from shortly after they met and that has never changed.

"Create the opportunity," he suggests.

[sagramore]

Sagramore laughs. "My own sacrament of marriage?"

[lightbearinglord]

Why not? is the general message of the way Lan Wangji's brows twitch up. "We awaited no one. We made our bows without witnesses."

[sagramore]

"Perhaps I should. Are bows traditional where you come from?"

[lightbearinglord]

"Mn. Three: to the heavens and the earth, to the parents, and to each other." There's a tiny infusion of fondness, again, as he speaks of that final bow. That one had been performed after they finally came to understand the entirety of their feelings.

[sagramore]

"And that seals it?"

[lightbearinglord]

As far as Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian are concerned, yes. "We needed no wedding." It was a disappointment to Uncle, but Wei Ying had been subjected recently to so many unkind eyes; Lan Wangji likes to believe it was also a kindness not to make Lan Qiren pour all his resources into throwing a wedding ceremony for a man he regarded with such suspicion.

[sagramore]

"Ah, the wedding is different from the covenant. What would you do for a wedding, if you had had one?"

[lightbearinglord]

The thought of it alone is slightly wearying. "We would have worn red, and had a procession, on a day selected as auspicious for the match. My clan would have been in attendance, with my uncle as host." He does not speculate as to whether Jiang Wanyin would have bothered to attend. Likely not. "There would have been a banquet."

[sagramore]

"That's more familiar to me. But not of interest to the two of you?"

[lightbearinglord]

There are several reasons that a wedding was not preferable. They are not worth getting into. "It is between the two of us," Lan Wangji says. "Wei Ying knows what he needs to know."

[sagramore]

"It's very romantic," fondly.