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stufftippywrote · 4 years

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resonance

pre-wangxian, set in episode 24 and canon-divergent from there. DO NOT READ THIS unless you are at least 46 episodes into the show. This is for @notenoughgatorade, whose prompt was too spoilery for me to include here.

"I'm sorry. It's what Wangji asked me to do."

Those are the last words Wei Wuxian hears before passing out.

When he wakes, he's in a room too spotless and austere to be anywhere but Cloud Recesses. How did he get here? Did Lan Xichen -- Lan Xichen, of all people! -- drug his drink? That's the last thing he remembers, drinking with Lan Xichen in Yunmeng. Did he seriously get drugged and kidnapped? He didn't think anyone born a Lan had a devious bone in their body.

He gets up, fighting a wave of dizziness that nearly blacks him out. He's definitely been drugged, or put under some spell to reduce his faculties. The dizziness fades after a minute or so, and Wei Wuxian pokes around the room. There are some music books sitting on a low table, a careful arrangement of white flowers in a vase, a folding paper screen at the far end of the room. And the bed he woke up on. Is this someone's bedroom? Wei Wuxian wanders to the doors, slides them open with the intent to step outside and view the room's name on the placard above the door.

He can't even take a step. Lan Zhan is standing right outside, stone-statue-still. He carries his guqin under his arm, and his gaze connects with Wei Wuxian's immediately, a stare that could wither a stone.

"Ah!" The exclamation flies from Wei Wuxian's mouth before he can stop it. "Lan Zhan, of course it's you. Is this your room I'm in? What am I doing here? Did Zewu Jun kidnap me? Isn't it against about a hundred of your Lan sect rules to kidnap somebody?"

As he speaks, Lan Zhan muscles forward, forcing Wei Wuxian to step back. He lays his instrument on the low table, next to the books. "We brought you here to help you," he says, seating himself carefully behind the guqin.

"By kidnapping me? What, are you going to play more songs for me? Didn't you play for me while I was unconscious in Qinghe? What else could you possibly do?"

"You said you would let me help you," Lan Zhan says by way of reply. He tunes the guqin briefly, listening intently to each tone and adjusting the tautness of the strings. "Sit down."

"I don't want to sit down," Wei Wuxian complains. "I want to take a bath. Lan Zhan, why do I smell so bad?"

"You've been sleeping for two days."

"Two days?" Wei Wuxian is well and truly sick of losing time Three days in Qinghe, two days here... "What the hell did Zewu Jun give me that put me to sleep for two days?"

"It shouldn't have kept you asleep that long." A crease of consternation furrows Lan Zhan's brow. Wei Wuxian has an immediate urge to kneel down beside him, use his thumb to smooth out that imperfection in Lan Zhan's otherwise perfect face.

"Maybe your brother made a mistake on the dose."

This makes the crease deeper. "He wouldn't."

Wei Wuxian sighs. "Either way, can I bathe?"

"Later. Sit down." Lan Zhan opens one of the music books, peruses it briefly, and lays it down, open, on the table.

There's not much for Wei Wuxian to do at that point except for obey him. He drops onto the bed, sitting cross-legged. "So how are you going to help me, then? Play me more healing music?"

"I've been learning new scores," Lan Zhan answers.

"Oh, and you think you've found the perfect one?" Wei Wuxian laughs. "The one that will heal me and take all the demons away? Make me good as new, innocent as the snow? Perhaps it will also take away my thirst for liquor. Perhaps I'll dedicate myself to the Lan sect's discipline and etiquette afterward."

A flash of anger in Lan Zhan's dark eyes. "Wei Ying. Stay silent and listen."

He begins playing then, and the music is unfamiliar, definitely something Wei Wuxian has never heard before. The tempo is slow, almost tentative, as though he were playing an extended Inquiry and waiting for a response before every next note. Wei Wuxian listens attentively -- it's pleasant, at least, listening to the sound of the guqin -- and tries to relax.

The relaxation is short-lived. All at once, deep in his stomach, he feels something tense and release. He shivers with a sudden coldness in his gut, although the room is comfortably warm. It leaves him feeling empty and hollow inside, and it reminds him of something he'd rather not remember.

The sound of the guqin abruptly ends. Lan Zhan looks over at him and doesn't stop looking. He just stares, as seconds fall away in the quiet room.

Wei Wuxian's uneasy, both with the situation and the silence. "I like that one," he says breezily. "It's a little different than your usual fare, but there's something nice about the melody. What's it called?"

Lan Zhan looks at him for another long moment before saying, "Resonance."

"Resonance?" Wei Wuxian gets up, stretches his limbs. He has been asleep for so long, after all, and his muscles are still stiff. "Is it the one that's going to cure me of all my wayward ways? Because I hate to tell you, I still wouldn't mind a drink right about n--"

Both speaking and moving halt. He suddenly doesn't have room to budge an inch. Lan Zhan is right there, barely a hand's breath away, and his eyes are huge, dark pupils wide.

"Give me your hand," he orders.

"No! Why should I?" Wei Wuxian backs up a step. Lan Zhan follows him, step for step. Still he's alarmingly close, and Wei Wuxian can't escape it.

"Give me your hand," Lan Zhan repeats, and this time he moves quick and grabs Wei Wuxian's wrist, forcing it forward.

Wei Wuxian bursts out with an explanation of surprise, the kind that probably shouldn't be spoken in the Cloud Recesses. Lan Zhan's face doesn't budge. He lifts his other hand and places two fingers on Wei Wuxian's pulse point. Closes his eyes. Stands perfectly still, as though listening.

"Yes, congratulations, I still have a pulse, can I have my hand back now?" Wei Wuxian does his best to pull away. It's no use. Lan Zhan's got him fast by the wrist, and now his eyes are open again, that gaze boring into Wei Wuxian's eyes like he's trying to see through him.

"How?" One word, on the end of Lan Zhan's tongue, his lips forming the shape of it long after it's left.

Wei Wuxian doesn't know what he's talking about. Or at least, he hopes he doesn't know. "How what?"

Lan Zhan drops his hand at last. Wei Wuxian flexes it, as though it's been cramped. "Resonance builds spiritual power," Lan Zhan says.

Wei Wuxian can't think of anything to say but "Oh."

"It builds spiritual power by causing the core of the player to resonate with the core of the listener," Lan Zhan goes on. "Both can feel that connection."

"Oh." Wei Wuxian makes a show of laughing, but realization is dawning within him, an awful sunrise. "Well, that's what that feeling was," he lies.

Lan Zhan holds out his hands. "Transfer some of your spiritual power to me."

"What?" Wei Wuxian's heart has dropped to his knees. He can only think to evade, evade as long as he possibly can. "Why?"

"Just do it." Lan Zhan grabs his hand again, presses Wei Wuxian's fingers to his wrist.

"No! I'm not giving you any, you have plenty of your own. Let go!"

"Wei Ying."

"I thought the song was all about building up my spiritual energy. Now you want to take it away?"

Lan Zhan's eyes narrow. "You can't do it."

Wei Wuxian falls silent.

"You can't," Lan Zhan repeats. "Can you?"

And as hard as Wei Wuxian has fought to keep his head, keep his secret -- as much energy as he's expended trying to protect himself -- he feels himself running out of road to travel. "I just don't want to."

Lan Zhan's eyes soften. His hand on Wei Wuxian's wrist loosens. "What happened?"

Wei Wuxian can lie to anybody, at any time. He's always been able to. Stories come tumbling off his tongue like rain off a rooftop, noisy and never-slowing. But his lies dry up here, truth revealed like the sediment of a river that has run dry. Dirty and unruly and as exposed as a raw nerve.

He pulls away from Lan Zhan's grasp, sinks back down onto the bed. "Please don't ask," he says, a last-ditch effort.

Lan Zhan takes a moment to look at him. Then he drops to his knees before Wei Wuxian, looks up at him with searching eyes.

Whatever willpower, whatever easy evasiveness Wei Wuxian still had left, evaporates. He's taken apart by that look.

"You have to swear never to tell anyone," he says.

By the time the story is finished, Wei Wuxian has dropped to the floor across from Lan Zhan, leaning his back against the frame of the bed. His neck was still stiff and needed support, and more importantly, the moment needed them on the same level, eye to eye. It was both easy and hard to tell Lan Zhan the truth. Pieces of it hurt like he could feel it happening all over again. But when that happened, Wei Wuxian could reach out with his gaze and find strength to go on in Lan Zhan's eyes. There he found both strength and a kind of gentleness that he wouldn't have been able to continue without. Now, with no more words left to say, he looks there again to find the strength not to run away.

Lan Zhan is silent a long time, enough to make Wei Wuxian nervous. What if he doesn't approve? What if he says he has to tell someone? He can't imagine Lan Zhan breaking his word, but he also couldn't imagine Lan Xichen drugging him. He can't be sure, at this point, what these men of the Lan clan are capable of.

At last, Lan Zhan he takes a breath. "So the reason you don't use your sword..."

"Yes." It's strangely relieving to admit it.

“And the reason you were asleep for two days.”

“A drug meant for a cultivator. Tricky of you.”

Lan Zhan pauses. "And the reason you've started using these tricks..."

Wei Wuxian winces. Of course his mind would go there. "No!" he exclaims. "No, that's different. I use them because the power is there already. It wants to be used. And I'm good at it, Lan Zhan, I have control over it. I know you think I don't, or won't, but I do."

Lan Zhan doesn't answer. His eyes dart downward.

Fine. If he's going to be like that, Wei Wuxian has his own question. "How did you think to use this piece? Did you suspect...?"

"No." Lan Zhan looks almost sad. "I thought it was about balance. If your spiritual power because stronger..."

"...maybe I'd be less likely to use the magic you don't approve of," Wei Wuxian finishes for him. He sighs, slings one hand behind his head, and scratches the back of his neck. "I suppose this must be a great disappointment. You thought I was cursed and you could cure me. But it's not like that, and you can dream of healing me or curing me all you want, but I've made my choices and I'm satisfied with them."

“Wei Ying.”

“No! I don’t want to hear it. You have no right to try to heal me from something that can’t be healed.” There’s a coldness settling into his heart now, an outrage vibrating low in his bones. “I’m not sick, Lan Zhan, I’m not cursed. I’ve made choices. They aren’t the choices you would have made. I understand that already. But you can’t change them. And you can’t make me be like you.”

Lan Zhan is silent too long. He should have spoken by now, just a few words, something cold and judgmental, but he hasn't. Instead, he just looks at the floor, a gaze that could burn a hole through the wood.

"What I did for Jiang Cheng," Wei Wuxian goes on, "was my choice too. I'll live with the consequences. You don't have to. I never needed your help, so you're welcome to stop helping. I'm not sure why you cared enough to kidnap me in the first place."

At this, Lan Zhan's gaze flies to Wei Wuxian's face. He opens his lips as if to speak.

"Do you know what I do need right now?" Wei Wuxian says. "An ally."

Lan Zhan's mouth shuts again, but his eyes widen.

"You've heard them talking about me," Wei Wuxian goes on. "You know I don't care what they think of me, but they are going to try to stop me eventually. I'm not going to let them stop me, Lan Zhan. You know that. And you can't stop me either. So stand with me instead." He leans in, reaches out with one hand. "Now that you know everything, if you care, Lan Zhan, be there with me." Be there for me, he doesn't say, but he knows it's understood all the same.

For a crushing moment of silence, he's afraid Lan Zhan will stand up and go. He could. He might. He could reveal Wei Wuxian's secret, tell everyone, condemn him along with the roundtable of fools that are running this campaign. He could prove himself to be everything Wei Wuxian used to think he was. He's revised that view over the years they've known each other. Was he wrong?

Then a warm hand slides into his. "Wei Ying," Lan Zhan says, and his gaze is steady and clear. "I’m already there."

Relief floods Wei Wuxian, a wash of cool comfort down his spine and into his limbs. Tears itch at his eyes.

He doesn't need anyone. He's told himself that over and over, and it kept him alive for three hellish months, brought him out of there stronger and smarter than ever before. But to know someone will be there ... it's like having a foundation he didn't have before, like standing rooted on solid ground.

And that will be enough for now. To sit here together, without a wall of lies and judgment between them. Trust, strong and resilient as truth, grows in the garden of their joined hands. There was only ever uncertainty on the horizon, but something sure, something real, begins here with the two of them, and who knows how it will blossom.

He gives Lan Zhan a smile. He doesn't quite get a smile back, but those eyes on his are still clear and bright.

#wangxian #pre wangxian #notenoughgatorade #the untamed spoilers #SERIOUSLY DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN 46 WHOLE EPISODES #untamed #the untamed #mdzs #cql #stuff tippy wrote

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