A'Yuan required four stories, two cups of water and three kisses before he would settle down into his bed. Lan WangJi, having never had the opportunity to put a small child to bed, was more than slightly bewildered at the process. He remembered from his own childhood being simply sent to bed and obeying his uncle with alacrity. Wei WuXian smiled sadly. "I think my parents must have told me bedtime stories, because I remember telling them to myself when... before Jiang FengMeng found me. After I moved to Lotus Pier, ShiJie would tell both Jiang Cheng and myself stories. It's such a simple and easy thing to do for a child, and helps let them know they're loved. At least that's what QingJie says." Wei WuXian smiled a happy smile at his friend. "I love him as if I had birthed him myself."
"But he sleeps in Wen QiongLin's room. Why?"
Wei WuXian rubbed at his nose. "Well.... He slept in my room back in Lotus Pier, as you know. So when we moved here, he did as well. But back there, I had a workshop, and here?" He waved his hands at the cramped rooms. "It was one big room when we first moved in. We built the interior walls to make three small rooms. QingJie needs her privacy. At the time, we thought A'Ning should have privacy, too. But I was keeping A'Yuan from getting a restful night's sleep with my tinkering. So NingDi offered to take him into his room." He shrugged. "Those two adore each other, so it's not as bad as it could be. And I make a decent bit of money off my tinkering, so...."
"You make talismans?" Lan WangJi looked over the messy table at the scraps of papers strewn amidst proper journals and the occasional wooden unidentified thing.
"Most of what I sell is talismans to keep vermin away or food fresher longer. A cloth merchant lost months of income because several mouse families built nests in their goods."
Lan WangJi picked up a small device. "What does this do?"
Wei WuXian laughed. "In my last time, I called it a compass of evil. I got it to work, but not very well." He took the device and clicked it open. "If there's any yin infused creatures around, the needle will point to it."
"You could sell this to cultivation clans."
"I did. In my last life. They called me Yiling Laozu. Rogue cultivators bought these in droves." He laughed again. "And then I'd see a full fledged clan member using them, so I guess some of the so-called rogues were just pretending to be. Between these compasses and stygian lure flags and radishes, we earned enough money to not starve."
"So why won't you sell them now? This would give our junior disciples a good advantage on their early night hunts."
"The Yiling Laozu who tamed the Burial Mounds and gave consciousness to a fierce corpse was feared by most and respected by few. The coreless Wei WuXian doesn't have any of that."
"Wei Ying is respected by enough people."
Wei Ying could feel his skin heating up at the compliment, so he changed the subject. "Would you like to wash before you sleep? We enclosed a corner of the kitchen so we can bathe with some privacy and we don't have to lug the tub from room to room. Or water."
Lan WangJi nodded, but refused to change the subject. "What is a lure flag?"
"Oh, well, if you were on a night hunt, and you didn't know exactly where the critter was, you could plant a bunch of these flags in a circle or around a pentagram or whatever. The critter gets lured into the middle of the flags, and you can kill it easier," he explained as he lugged water from an outside cistern into the kitchen. "Someday I'm going to figure out how to run water from the cistern directly into the tub. I've thought that if I simply placed the cistern on the roof, we could have some sort of removable plug and the water would just fall into the tub below. But, did you know, Lan Zhan? Water is heavy! I made a small prototype to see how it would work, and the whole thing just collapsed from the weight. It also splashed everywhere, instead of neatly falling down. So..." He dumped one last bucket into the tub. "The idea still needs work." He slapped a heating talisman on the tub and stepped back. "Here you are. If you're not too dirty, I'll use your water when you're done."
"Wei Ying."
The one called suppressed a shiver. How two syllables could contain such a wealth of emotion was beyond his comprehension. It sounded like wanting and needing and hoping and yearning and all sorts of other synonyms. "Yes, Lan Zhan?"
Lan Zhan apparently took the 'yes' as permission because Wei Ying found himself pressed up against the flimsy wall protecting the tub, the older one's mouth nipping at his neck. "I missed you."
"I missed you, too, Lan Zhan." He winced at a particularly strong bite. But when Lan Zhan started to pull back, he wrapped his arms around the other's waist, holding them together. "I like it. I really like it. Just maybe not leave marks where QingJie will see it?"
"Here, then?" Lips softly caressed his shoulder through his robes. "Shall I mark you here like I did before? Where only you and I will know?"
"Yes." He felt nimble fingers moving at his belt. "Lan Zhan?" he hated that his voice raised almost an entire octave through those two syllables. "What are you doing?"
"Do you want me to stop? I can't push your robes aside to get at your shoulders." The coarse peasant cloth did not have the same flexibility as silk robes did.
"Don't stop." As weird as it would be to be partially undressed in front of the jade, he wanted that feeling again. The strong sucking that hurt all the way down to his groin where it hurt for completely different reasons. His belt hit the floor. His head fell back to bang against the wood upon feeling calloused fingertips lightly sliding his clothing to the side. Cool lips pressing light kisses against his skin, the slightly rougher rasp of a tongue tasting his sweat. A hot body holding him against the wall, molding against him, pressing against all the places that felt so good. Then a pinch, a pull, a pang, that slipped into his rapidly moving chest, slid down to stir the butterflies in his stomach, then lower still, forcing his hips to shove outward. "Lan Zhan," he moaned when his mouth was capable of doing something more than breathing heavily. "Lan Zhan, is it pretty?"
"You're beautiful," wasn't quite the answer he was expecting. A strong hand swiped the cloth from his other shoulder. Only the wall prevented the shirt from slipping down to hang from his elbows. Lan Zhan raised his head to look Wei Ying in the eye. "You are the most beautiful person I've ever met."
Wei Ying could feel his face heating up. Lan Zhan leaned back a bit to get a better look at the mark. The reduced pressure allowed Wei Ying's clothing to slide down to his waist exposing his entire upper body. He could feel his entire chest turning bright red in embarrassment.
He'd been seen shirtless plenty of times back in Lotus Pier; why was he feeling so shy now?
"Wei Ying... what happened?" One long finger traced a silvery scar curving under his pectoral muscles down to his belly.
"Zidian is meant to leave a scar, so you remember why you were punished," Wei WuXian whispered; suddenly ashamed, he yanked his shirt back up over his shoulders.
"Wei Ying..." Lan Zhan sounded pained. "Who hurt you?" Wei Ying found himself unexpectedly spun around and his shirt pulled off to flutter into a pile at their feet. "Who hurt you?" Now he sounded like he was crying.
Wei Ying let his forehead rest against the wall. "Does it matter anymore? I was a naughty child; I got punished. If I'd been at Cloud Recesses, I would probably have been hit with your discipline whip."
"You were only a child?" Something cool and slightly moist ghosted over a few more silvery scars. "If they weren't already dead, I'd gladly kill them for this."
"Lan Zhan.... There's no need for that."
"This one looks newer." Fingers slid over yet another curve still slightly lumpy, not yet smoothed by time.
"When the Wen came to Lotus Pier, Wen Chao's whore wanted me punished for what I did to him in that cave. Madame Yu whipped me to appease her." Something wet dripped onto his skin. "Are you crying? Don't cry!" Wei Ying flipped himself around to hold Lan Zhan's face in his hands. He roughly wiped tears away. "They don't hurt anymore. Most of the time I forget they're there."
"How could she hurt you like this?" Lan Zhan sounded lost.
"It could have been much worse, you know. What's her name wanted Madame Yu to cut off my hand. Being whipped a few times? Do you know what still hurts?" He twisted his elbow to show Lan Zhan a mass of scar tissue. "I was only five or six when I got these. A pack of dogs," he shuddered at the word, "decided I was going to be dinner. I hate dogs. Nasty, evil things."
Wei Ying had enough of talking about the past. It wasn't fixable at this point, so why rehash it? "Go take your bath, Lan Zhan," he urged softly. "You'll feel better when you're all clean."
Wen Ning came home while Lan WangJi was bathing. Wei WuXian had pulled his clothes back on properly, so everything that shouldn't be shown was hidden. But he still felt overly warm, wondering if his friend could sense the bruise blooming on his shoulder.
Then again, A'Ning was such an innocent man, he probably didn't know how such a bruise was made.
Wei WuXian wasn't quite as innocent anymore. On a trip via another city to find an elusive herb, he'd decided to buy a book. The proprietor of the book store was quite helpful. 'What does it mean if a man kisses another man and enjoys it?' yielded a significant set of books for men who preferred men over women. 'But what if he likes women, too?' There were books for that as well. He'd bought and read one book from each section and concluded that, while he enjoyed looking at women in general, he preferred to look at one man in particular. The male on male book became extremely interesting (and physically satisfying) when he superimposed Lan Zhan's image over one of the pictures and a blurry version of himself over the other.
And only last week he'd accidentally overheard a backroom session between the candy maker up the street's fourth son and Wen Qing about the use of lubricants to help ease the way when he visited his lover, the second tea shop down the street's first son. They hadn't used any during their first time together, and now he was bleeding down there. She was very clinical in her explanation for how to protect himself while enjoying himself.
Bleeding while or from being intimate was probably not a good thing to have happen. Especially when one didn't have a golden core to heal oneself.
Wei Ying knew exactly where Wen Qing stored that lubricant in the store.
Wei Ying knew that maybe (probably? most likely?) there would come a time when he might need to have it handy.
He was maybe sort of hoping that he might not need it that night.
Bathing made his skin feel even more sensitive. It was as if the washcloth had a mind of its own: pressing over the bruise on his shoulder, lingering over his chest and belly, brushing gently on the inside of his thighs. Wei Ying's mind pretended it was Lan Zhan's hand washing him, touching him.
And then his washcloth wasn't able to be used for washing anymore.
Slightly disgusted with his lack of self control, Wei Ying dried off, dressed in his nightclothes, and began the process of emptying and cleaning out the tub. Wen Qing was going to want to soak in it when she returned from the birth.
And then there was nothing left to do to delay going to bed.
There was only one bed in his room. They didn't even have a pallet for a guest to sleep on.
Unless he slept in Wen Qing's examination room?
Wei Ying squared his shoulders, and slid open his bedroom door. "Lan Zhan?" he whispered. "Are you still awake?"
I was going to post this a few days ago. And then I got hit by covid. So.... I'm feeling better, but the last two days? And this was after getting 3 shots. The body aches are gone and I never had a fever, thank goodness, but I'm starting to cough. And my nose is dripping like a sieve full of water. It's quite disgusting.
0 out of 5 stars. Do not recommend. No tip.
On the good side, I solved my writer's block I was whining about last chapter. All the nonsense that I typed actually made a sort of sense by the time I got to the bottom and required very little editing to clean it up. AND I have the next few chapters blocked out in my mind. So... YEAH ME!
Stay safe and healthy dear readers.
- Aitch.