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[consignation]

jiang wanyin

missives | encounters

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[consignation]

[ jiang cheng's hand connects with lan wangji's cheek, a slap delivered with all the strength of errant tofu. it's the strike of a displeased cat, a push of hand to skin where the force is not at the point of contact but in the shove that follows. ]

Shut up. You don't know anything. You don't deserve him.

[ voice yet hoarse with tears, jiang cheng scowls through watery, red-rimmed eyes. ]

He carries home with him, makes it wherever he rests his head. Don't tell me you don't feel it.

No matter how bad things get, no matter how bad things ever get, he makes some stupid joke and suddenly you're furious and you're home.

[downswing]

( His cheek stings, blooms prickled in the way of surface that is not brutalised but teased, tentatively, with friction. Drunkenness slows him — first to blink slowly, balefully, and watch Jiang Cheng's hand as if it is a weapon unknown, materialised abruptly before him.

Belatedly, he rakes his teeth against the thenar swell of Jiang Cheng's palm, narrowly failing to latch. Gummy, slipping, wet. When he laughs, it's as nothing, a skipped moment of aberration snagged from the cloth of the universe. Unnatural. )

How'd he... could he... he... ha. Ha...? How could he do you to me...?

( Do they know, did they consider? Wei Ying, that mad saintly woman Wen Qing, forging their miracles from blasphemy? Wangji bats more than finds Jiang Cheng's front, stumbles too far left, first. Then skids back to hover, and seeks out warmth, where Wei Ying's core sings and churns, and how could they do this to him? )

Half of him. That... that's my soulmate. Should I...? ( His fingers spider out, still devoid of touch. ) Hello. ( It knows him, this core. Isn't that the way of fairytales and legend? Those who wed and bed and cultivate together, is this not part of what it means to be who they are, this core, gifted away? ) What meaning, then? For you? Who are you?

( Not dust motes or debris on the road. Not hardship, not scattered wind, barely light trickling and trinkets of touch, barely an illusion.

What is it, when your soulmate's core is transplanted to another man? A distribution of your duties? Jiang Cheng cannot ever suffer or go unprotected, not when he carries Wei Ying within him. Forced kinship, when none was sought. Jiang Cheng, become now closer to Lan Wangji through obligation than the sect Gusu Lan, than countless distant relatives of the clan.

He will sicken, bile bundling in his gut. Since knowing, he has sickened. Every time he raised sword against Jiang Cheng, he might have culled a part of Wei Ying. )

Adopted you. Didn't... didn't deserve th — ( His mouth is too raw, too dry, allow him when he chases with one hand his wine cup and depletes the last of it in greedy gulps. ) That either. But we are, here we are.

( And yet, here they are. )

[consignation]

[ lan wangji paws at him and jiang cheng allows it to happen, befuddled, squinting in hazy, distant intoxication. attention summoned to it, wei wuxian's core burns an aching hole through the fabric of his being, an ill-fitting stopper against the churning emptiness left by the war. there have been nights when jiang cheng would have liked nothing more than to claw it back out of him with bare hands just not to feel the crushing weight of its obligation anymore.

he never asked for this, never wanted it, would never in a million years have accepted it given half the chance.

he does not bring up everything that was robbed from him. lan wangji would never understand being made to make half of all his life's worst decisions fully blind. ]

Maybe not, [ jiang cheng concedes instead, though he spits the words out as though they sear his tongue on the way out. ] But at least I see him for what he is now. What do you see him for, Lan Wangji.

When you look at Wei Wuxian, what do you see besides all you failed to do?

If he's the other half of your soul, why doesn't he feel like home?

[downswing]

Shuttu...

( Easy, instinctive, primitive. They teach the silence spell to latch and weave and hold all but in the nursery, talent expressed as natural dominance when dozens of undisciplined Lan infant-disciples exert their strength on each other. On men beyond the clean, it cuts an even simpler cast — the family knows to expect it, to search in the victim's energies where it's taken root with infestation. Strangers are unsuspecting.

When Wangji calls it on Jiang Cheng's mouth, hand still warm on his brother-in-law's lapel, it's a pretty plaything, the trinket of a game. He laughs, but chokes on it, staccato. )

Haaaaaa... hummm. Ha...? ( He has drunk too much, too well. Too little. He searches the glistened trail of wine spilled on hard wood, like morning dew, and finds not one drop spared. Animal, Jiang Wanyin must have drunk. Jiang Wanyin, who ever does as he likes. )

Why aren't you... afraid of anything? Any... thing. Anything at all, you keep... talking. Talking. Talking.

( Striking, cutting, was it fire they used when Yunmeng went for the Wen? Wei Ying never gave up his clan's secrets, not even when he no longer bore the mantle. What was it Jiang Wanyin did, looming over his brother, at cliff's edge? Nearly spat down. This hellish mouth, like a rusted prison's door, Wangji thinks, these maws could chew the world. )

You've got his mouth. ( Family, it runs, and there's no blood between Wei Ying and the Jiang, but there it is, the manner shared. Rapid, loose, irreverent. He thinks he doesn't know when the spell dissolves like gossamer thread pulled, pretends the matter eludes him. But knows, he always knows, when fondness strikes, Don't keep Wei Ying's mouth shut, even on another man. ) And you keep talking.

( So talk now. ) Why don't you say... say... nice thing? A nice thing.