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[consignation]

jiang wanyin

missives | encounters

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[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.