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3point14rsquared · 2 years

Note

I am enjoying all the snippets from the renouncement 'verse. I was just wondering how did the marriage negotiations between LXC and JC go?

After everything was said and done, and Lan Xichen retreated into seclusion, he sincerely expected to remain there for the better part of a year.

There was no need for him to leave the Cloud Recesses. Wangji had been crowned as Chief Cultivator, and he traveled frequently between the sects while carrying out his duties; so Lan Xichen sealed the doors of the Hanshi and settled down to reflect, hoping to remain undisturbed until he was ready to face the world.

In entering seclusion, he had failed to account for the fact that he was perhaps the most social creature the Lan sect had ever produced, and that he had five very devoted juniors who would--and did--set up a vigil in his garden in hopes of his return. The upshot of it all was that Sizhui and Jingyi dragged him out of seclusion by the third week and made him eat a twin hotpot down in Caiyi, after which they ushered him to a nearby inn to meet with a certain “mysterious guest.”

“That’s not a mysterious guest,” Lan Xichen said flatly, when he spotted Jiang Wanyin mowing through a dish of frozen strawberry cream in the dining room. “That’s just Sect Leader Jiang.”

Jiang-zongzhu looked up, spotted Lan Xichen, and immediately tried to drown himself in a cup of wine. It was an unconventional way to wipe iced cream off one’s face, in Xichen’s opinion; but it worked, so he hung back by the door until Jiang-zongzhu’s face was spotless before gliding over to meet him.

“What brings you here, Jiang-zongzhu?” he said, dropping into an empty chair so gracefully that he could hear the stars igniting in the children’s eyes. “I thought you had taken over as regent of Lanling.”

“I did,” Sect Leader Jiang nodded. “But I heard that Hanguang-jun has taken up residence at Lotus Pier with my shige, so I wanted to hear what Lan-zongzhu thought of the matter.”

Lan Xichen blinked.

“I have no say over Wangji’s comings and goings, Jiang-zongzhu,” he pointed out, deciding not to mention the smudge of cream under Sect Leader Jiang’s chin. “As long as he and Wei-gongzi are well, I will be happy for them both.”

Jiang Wanyin brought his hands down flat on the table. “So you know?” he demanded. “You knew that Hanguang-jun was courting my brother?”

“My brother has been in love with yours for over twenty years,” Lan Xichen sighed. “If he had started courting then, he would have saved himself and his chosen one a great deal of grief. And I approve of it wholeheartedly, regardless of the jianghu’s wishes on the matter. The two of them have earned their joy by now, don’t you think?”

“No! No, absolutely not,” hissed Jiang-zongzhu. “Hanguang-jun hasn’t so much as mentioned marriage to Wei Wuxian. He sleeps in Wei Wuxian’s bed, and he lets Xiao-Yu call him father, and he hasn’t given my shixiong any assurance of his protection! Now what do you think about that?”

Lan Xichen’s jaw dropped. He thought that Wangji would have proposed marriage immediately, and remained at Lotus Pier at his beloved’s side because doing so would allow them to court and care for their new baby son in relative comfort, but for Wangji to have failed to mention marriage in the first place...

“How do you know he hasn’t proposed marriage? Wei Wuxian might have decided to keep their engagement secret for the present.”

“Wei Wuxian can’t keep anything secret if it has to do with Lan Wangji,” Jiang Wanyin said, unimpressed. “You remember what they were like when we studied here, don’t you?”

“Even so, I cannot believe that Wangji has taken liberties with him. Perhaps he wants to wait until you return home to Yunmeng, so he can bring Wei Wuxian to Gusu the moment he asks for his hand.”

“But he can’t do that! It’s hardly proper. He’s the xiandu now, so even he can’t wriggle out of doing things decently.”

“I very much doubt that he would want to ‘wriggle out’ of anything, as you put it.”

“Maybe! But Wei Wuxian will try to elope with him, just wait and see,” Jiang-zongzhu lamented. “They’re not going to have a fit wedding unless someone makes them do it. What will people say?”

Xichen tilted his head. “Do you honestly think that either of them would care?”

Jiang-zongzhu stared at him, aghast.

“You mean you don’t?” he gasped. “No one will respect their marriage if they don’t keep the wedding traditions, and you know it as well as I do!”

“Regardless, I do not command Wangji in such things,” Lan Xichen said gently. “I can advise him, of course, but my sway in his private affairs ends there. Would you like me to write him a letter?”

Jiang Wanyin seemed to gather himself up, as if he were gathering his courage for something: a breath before the plunge, of sorts, though Lan Xichen could not imagine what the plunge might be.

“No, not yet. I want you to tell him that his closeness with Wei Wuxian is raising suspicions about the new xiandu favoring Yunmeng Jiang, and that we are in no position to bear such sentiments with A-Ling’s authority still unestablished at the Jinlintai,” he declared, after a beat of silence. “If he marries Wei Wuxian within the year, the jianghu will be more interested in the marriage than his supposed favoritism--and after the wedding, no one will be able to tell which of his reformations come from Wei Wuxian.”

Lan Xichen poured himself another cup of tea.

“Very well,” he said, before pouring it down his throat in one. “I’m listening.”

“And that was how it all happened,” Lan Xichen says guiltily, trying not to look at the floor. “Shufu, how should I tell Wangji?”

His uncle stares at him, completely blind to the bit of eggplant stuck in his mustache, and gurgles like a fish out of water before burying his face in a napkin.

“I will say nothing more on this,” he vows, fixing Lan Xichen with a beady glare. “You have made Wangji’s bed for him, and now he must lie in it. You’d better write as soon as you can.”

Lan Xichen nods disconsolately and drags himself back to the Hanshi, suddenly wanting nothing more than a bath and a good long sleep. But the juniors are waiting for him on the porch, twiddling their thumbs and sunning themselves like a quintet of blue and white lizards; and the moment Lan Xichen enters the courtyard, they spring to their feet and run towards him, clutching at his sleeves and hanging on for dear life while he tries to edge towards the door.

“Well?” Jin Ling demands. “Did you and Jiang-zongzhu finish the contract? Is the marriage going to go through?”

Suddenly, Lan Xichen is very much aware that while Sect Leader Jiang must think himself the mastermind behind Wangji’s possible wedding, several defter hands than his have been working behind the scenes: including his own sixteen-year-old nephew and Ouyang-zongzhu’s son, Zizhen.

He throws back his head and laughs, ruffling Jin Rulan’s hair on his way up the steps, and wishes--as he has seldom wished for anything before--that Mingjue were still here to savor the coming months beside him, and share in the preparations for his little brother’s wedding.

“It is,” he says, with a soft smile illuminating his face like a candle. “Good work, Jin Ling. They’re going to be happy, I’m sure of it.”

#Thank you Stilton!#Good job junior quartet #LXC getting pulled out of seclusion by the juniors is a great idea

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3point14rsquared · 3 years

Note

Stilton, I was the anon who said that Wangxian getting together before Nightless City would make canon events extra heartbreaking and now I know just how 💔💔💔💔 the Qiongqi Dao ambush became 😭. For a less angsty prompt, something from Wangxian's happy year at the Burial Mounds with A-Yuan

(brief note: this verse is entirely prompt-based, so please send in more prompts/reblog for more updates!)

Cloud Recesses, Gusu Lan to Yiling City

(care of Master Xie Yanling, addressed to Lan Wangji)

Didi,

To address the problem you mentioned in your last letter, I think Wei-gongzi might have better luck with a Lan-made spirit-trapping pouch to cleanse your crops of resentment. Such mild resentful energy may not respond to Cleansing, and he mentioned that larger spirits keep answering whenever he uses Chenqing, so I think your only solution may be to pick out the resentment piece by piece. However, I know nothing about resentful cultivation, so you need not feel obliged to try it if Wei-gongzi does not agree, but I have enclosed a package of spirit-trapping pouches just in case. If you have no use for them, they can always be sold, or you can save them for night-hunts in the future.

Please inform Young Master Wei that a delivery of twelve white-jade figurines will be coming with the next trader, and he will recommend a jeweler in the next town whom you can sell them to. I regret to say that we still do not have enough silver to spare, but I have nearly half of my future bridewealth left, and there is no better use for it than to aid my brother and my future brother-in-law. Write to me at once if you need anything, and give my best to Xiao-Yuan!

All my love,

Xichen.

Lan Wangji finishes his brother’s letter with a soft smile on his face, taking out the silk spirit-trapping pouches to show to A-Yuan before putting them back into their box. He has not been back to the Cloud Recesses in over six months, though he warned no one of his departure before he left; he came to see Wei Ying and bring him news of his sister��s engagement, and then he ended up staying the night before Wei Ying asked him to live at his side, and be with him always.

It was never a choice, in the end. Lan Wangji would have chosen Wei Ying over his own fated zhiyin, even before his soulmate died on that horrible day in Heijian, so choosing Wei Ying over his sect and his family takes only a split second.

Together, the two of them have transformed the Burial Mounds into a home. Lan Wangji is no stranger to hard labor, and Wei Ying’s stubborn resolve could outstrip Shufu’s even at its weakest, so they went to work together and wrangled the resentment-ridden forest into a line of neat potato fields, chopping down the trees for firewood and long sections of log for houses. Not long after that, the Wens were all able to go to their own warm homes every night, and dine on large bowlfuls of rice and potatoes and turnips every day.

And what the Burial Mounds could not provide, they have ample money to pay for--because Lan Wangji sold his silver hairpiece in the village, and turned out all his emergency funds so that A-Yuan could keep his little stomach full of all the rich beef and vegetable stew a baby of two could want. During his last monthly check-up, Wen Qing was so pleased with his progress that she actually praised Wei Ying for it, and Wei Ying himself is growing strong and golden-skinned in the fields, so that he can wrestle with Lan Wangji in the evenings for A-Yuan’s entertainment and push the market wagon alone instead of relying on Wen Ning.

I am happier here than I ever was in the Cloud Recesses, Lan Wangji thinks, blushing like one of Sishu’s ripe tomatoes as Wei Ying breezes by with a shovel and kisses the top of his head. You have given me the world, my heart, and you said you had nothing to give!

“Oh?” Wei Ying teases, making Lan Wangji blush even harder at the realization that he said that last aloud. “When did I say I had nothing to give, hmm? Who was it that combed your hair and cooked spicy porridge for you last night?”

“It was you, my heart,” Lan Wangji acknowledges, folding his brother’s letter back into its envelope. “And if I were not a cultivator, I would have spent the morning having runs in the latrine.”

Wei Wuxian throws his head back and laughs. “But Lan Zhan, A-Yuan ate it too! And he was fine, wasn’t he?”

“I ate his share for him.”

Wei Ying pouts at this, and continues to pout until Lan Wangji kisses him a few times to make him smile. “What did Zewu-jun say?” he wonders, trying to catch his breath when Lan Wangji pulls away for a moment. “Is he well? What about Lan-xiansheng?”

“They must both be doing well, or Xiongzhang would have told me,” Lan Wangji assures him. “But he suggested the use of spirit-pouches to make the lotus seeds safe to eat. Shall we try it tomorrow?”

“Aiyah, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it!” Wei Ying cries, striking his fist with his palm. “We can’t get the traces of resentment in the crops to listen without holding everything else back, so we’ll have to clear the plots one at a time.”

Suddenly, he frowns and glances at Lan Wangji’s belt. “I don’t know if one pouch will be enough, though,” he mutters. “How old is yours, xingan? They have a ten-year lifetime, don’t they?”

“Three years, I think. But Brother sent a box of new ones, so we should have plenty to experiment with.”

“A-Yuan wants!” their son complains, plucking at Lan Wangji’s long skirts before reaching up for Wei Ying in a silent plea to be carried. “Give pouch, please?”

“You can have a pouch when you’re older,” Wei Ying tells him. “For now, A-Yuan should listen to Xian-gege and go take a nap. It’s too hot for little radishes to be out without a hat.”

Wen Yuan sulks all the way to the Demon-slaughtering cave, and then through the lullaby that Wei Ying hums to him, but he falls asleep without a fuss just as Lan Wangji gets up and puts away his qin.

“Lan Zhan?” his beloved asks, drawing a light blanket over A-Yuan’s shoulders. “Can I ask you something?”

“Hm?”

“You wrote A-Yuan’s lullaby, didn’t you?” Wei Ying is watching him through half-lidded eyes, whirling his dizi between his fingers, and Lan Wangji freezes in shame at the implication. “It’s a love song.”

It takes all the strength in his body to nod and keep fastening Wangji back into its case as if nothing were the matter. “En.”

“It’s a love song for me.”

His voice is rougher now, he thinks.

“Yes.”

“You sang it to me in the Xuanwu’s cave,” Wei Ying murmurs. “It was mine back then, too. But Lan Zhan, your soulmate--before the war, she must have still been--”

“My zhiyin was alive then,” Lan Wangji says heavily. “And I mourn them still. But the song was named Wangxian from the moment of its birth, and I wrote it not long after you left the Cloud Recesses. My betrayal will forever be the greatest shame of my life, but I chose you even then, and I do not regret it.”

Wei Ying begins to tremble. “What would you have done if you had the chance to meet her?”

“Loved you anyway,” he whispers. “What could I have done, if not that?”

It was you from the beginning, he wants to say. Wei Ying, it’s always been you.

It was Wei Ying when he tried to force his way past Lan Wangji at the gates of the Cloud Recesses, and Wei Ying when he put a volume of longyang into a book of Lan An’s poetry, and Wei Ying even when Lan Wangji’s soulbond was singing with his zhiyin’s happiness. For no matter how wrong it might have been, and how uncouth, and how much of a betrayal, Lan Wangji has never wanted another; and if he ever met his soulmate, he would never have been able to love her as he loves his chosen beloved.

Suddenly, he realizes that Wei Ying is crying, and then he buries his face in Lan Wangji’s neck and sobs.

“I thought it was only me,” he gasps. “All this time, I’ve been in mourning--but wearing this sash feels like a lie when I’m with you, and I didn’t dare take it off, but--”

“Then take it off,” Lan Wangji urges, with his own eyes full of tears. “None here will judge you, Wei Ying, least of all me!”

And then Wei Ying kisses him for what feels like hours, until the sun is low in the sky and Wen Ning comes calling after them for dinner--and then Lan Wangji takes Wei Ying in his arms and kisses him in return, for they are wholly each other’s now, and Lan Wangji will never leave him again until the end of their days.

#This is just ❤️❤️❤️#Happiness and then there's Qiongqi Dao #Stilton's soulmate AU fic #LXC best brother

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3point14rsquared · 3 years

Note

I definitely cackled at the "he likes Mianmian" statement.

could i possibly please prompt you for some grown up kiddies? like the girls and a-yu, what's their dynamic like when they're like teens? do they like to get into trouble a lot or follow all the rules strictly? it'd be interesting to see them on a nighthunt together, maybe. what do they do when they get into trouble, how do they solve problems together? i adore all your fics and your oc's, i'm in awe of you bro

Boys Over Flowers

by stiltonbasket

The worst day of Wei Shuilan’s life comes not long after her fourteenth birthday, when her A-Die hands her a packed lunch in a basket and tells it to take it to her elder brother in the produce field.

“Xiao-Yu sent a butterfly saying he couldn’t leave his moonflower sprouts,” A-Die says. “Go bring him his lunch, A-Lan, and then hurry back so your food doesn’t get cold.”

Looking back on it, that was the moment Wei Shuilan's world imploded.

(Or: nineteen-year-old Lan Xiaohui falls in love. His sisters try to cancel his romance subscription.)

All of those days were miserable in their own gloomy ways, but the worst day of Shuilan’s life comes not long after her fourteenth birthday, when her A-Die hands her a packed lunch in a basket and tells it to take it to her elder brother in the produce field.

“Xiao-Yu sent a butterfly saying he couldn’t leave his moonflower sprouts,” A-Die says—because Lan Yu is a shidao cultivator, and the medicinal herbs and crops he grows are so strong and wholesome that Uncle Xichen once swore that the dandelion tea from Yu-gege’s field could cure his reading headaches. “Go bring him his lunch, A-Lan, and then hurry back so your food doesn’t get cold.”

Shuilan nods and takes off at a run with the basket balanced on her elbow, dodging over rocks and clumps of grass until she gets to the produce field. She expects to find her brother kneeling in one of the flowerbeds, since his moonflowers have proved even more stubborn the enormous cactus he grew for burn paste, but the moonflower bed is decidedly free of muddy teenage boys with equally muddy forehead ribbons, and a squint around the field reveals that Yu-gege is standing near the lotus pond instead.

Yu-gege isn’t alone, though. There’s a young man hovering next to him, dressed in the colors of Qinghe Nie, and his face is so red that Wei Shuilan can see his ears turning scarlet all the way from the gate.

“I thought you might like these,” her brother’s strange companion seems to be mumbling, shoving a bunch of fire lilies in Lan Yu’s direction. “They, um. They still have the bulbs on, and the shop said they would put out new roots just a day after touching soil, so you can p-plant them.”

“Zhuyan!” she hears Lan Yu cry, obviously delighted. “How pretty! But—oh, no, my—will you dig out some holes for me over there, Zhuyan-xiong? I can’t leave my moonflowers seedlings for another hour, or I’ll have to start from scratch all over again.”

Wei Shuilan feels her blood run cold.

No. No, it can’t be.

“I can help you with them,” the other youth says shyly. “Can I?”

Not the moonflowers! Wei Shuilan wants to scream. Gege doesn’t even let me touch the moonflowers!

That’s because you keep trying to combine the modao with Xiao-Yu’s shidao cultivation and turning his radishes into demons, a voice that sounds a great deal like her Xiongzhang’s scolds in the back of her mind. Of course he doesn’t let you touch them!

“Do you mind waiting until they’re a little stronger?” Lan Yu replies, cheerily oblivious to his own younger sister coming to deliver his lunch. “They should be able to handle double spiritual signatures in a month, I think.”

Horrified into speechlessness, Shuilan throws the lunchbox at his head with a burst of spiritual energy and flees. Yu-gege doesn’t even blink, though, and neither does the stranger, and Yu-gege only looks up when the basket thumps gently to the ground at his feet.

“Oh!” he frowns. “Wait, that’s the basket A-Niang uses for my lunch. Was someone here?”

“I don’t think so,” the stranger says, with an adoring face like a dumb calf that nearly makes Shuilan sick on the spot. “I didn’t see anyone but you, A-Yu.”

Oh no, you don’t, Shuilan thinks, stomping back to the jingshi with clenched fists and helping her parents lay out the lunch dishes so angrily that they exchange a pair of startled glances over her head. I don’t care who this Zhuyan-xiong is, but I’m not going to let him take our Yu-gege away!

* * *

Wei Shuilan comes from a rather large family, which is rare among the Lan clan: and among the Weis, as far as she knows, because six generations’ worth of records at Lotus Pier show that her A-Die’s forefathers tended to have single children. Papa has only one brother, Uncle Xichen, and their father had a single didi, Great-uncle Qiren; but Wei Shuilan is the third child out of four, and her parents sometimes joke that they wouldn’t have minded another dozen.

Her eldest brother, Lan Sizhui (or Xiongzhang, to his siblings) is almost as old as A-Die is, due to A-Die’s sixteen-year stint as a dead man that began when Xiongzhang was a baby. By the time A-Die came back to life, Xiongzhang was almost eighteen, and then he and Papa adopted Yu-gege, who was only two years old when A-Die found him in a brothel in Yunping. Shuilan arrived three years later, after her parents were married, and her younger sister Chunyang was born just after Shuilan’s third birthday.

Shuilan and Chunyang are the closest in age, and the youngest of the four, which is why Shuilan makes a beeline to her sister’s desk after lunch to ask if A-Chun knows a young master from the Nie clan with the courtesy name Zhuyan.

“Of course I do,” Chunyang says, her warm sweet voice tinted with confusion as she looks up from her book of fu verses—a gift from Uncle Zizhen, who wrote most of the poems in collaboration with Nie-zongzhu. “He’s Nie Zhuxi-gongzi’s younger brother.”

“Really?” Shuilan frowns. Nie Zhuxi is something of a family friend, since he’s Nie-zongzhu’s heir, but he barely visits the Cloud Recesses because Father never even makes an effort to hide how much he dislikes him. “Oh. I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Why did you ask about him?” A-Chun wonders. Shuilan fights the urge to poke at her chubby steamed-bun cheeks and then decides that she might as well just do it, because A-Chun is nearly eleven and her adorable round cheeks probably won’t last for much longer anyway. “Jiejie?”

“I saw him just now in A-Niang’s produce field,” she sulks. “He was giving Yu-gege flowers.”

“So what?” Chunyang’s bewilderment makes sense, she supposes, because everyone gives their brother plant-related gifts when they visit Gusu; he’s the most famous shidao cultivator within the four great sects, though most of his fame comes from that one time he ran into a dog yaoguai when he was seventeen and yelled for A-Die and Father to save him. “Nie-shushu always gives Gege flowers and seeds. And he couldn’t come this week for your birthday, so he must have sent the flowers along with Nie Zhuyan.”

“It’s different when it’s Nie-shushu,” Shuilan protests. “He sent A-Die a baby dress for you before you were even born! But this Nie Zhuyan, he blushed when he was giving flowers to Yu-gege, and his ears were red! Like Papa’s always are when he looks at A-Die!”

“Oh!” her sister gasps, shooting straight out of her chair and grabbing Shuilan’s hands. “You mean—you mean he was giving Yu-gege flowers as a courting gift?”

A-Chun’s eyes look like sparkling black stars, and Shuilan nearly groans out loud before pulling the little girl back down to earth with a bump. “A-Chun, that’s bad! He’s not allowed to court Yu-gege!” she hisses. “We don’t know a thing about who he is, or where he comes from, or—”

“But...but he’s Nie-shushu’s cousin,” A-Chun points out. “And we’ve visited Qinghe Nie hundreds of times. We know his older brother, too!”

Shuilan’s eyes go wide. “That’s right!” she cries, bringing her fist down on the table as A-Chun leaps two feet into the air. “We know Nie Zhuxi, and we can’t trust him!”

“Um...why can’t we, Jiejie?”

“Because Nie Zhuxi tried to steal A-Die from Father! Before A-Die and Father got married, they were staying at the Unclean Realm, and Nie Zhuxi kept on flirting with him! He came to A-Die’s room after dark, and he made A-Die wear his clothes, and—”

The door slides open.

“Nie Zhuxi?” their father’s voice croaks, right before they turn around to find him standing in the doorway with a frozen kind of look on his face. “A-Lan. Has Nie Zhuxi been here?”

Chunyang pouts and crosses her arms. “Papa, it’s time you made up with Nie-gongzi! You know Uncle Huaisang was just bribing him to flirt with A-Die so it would make you jealous!”

“I do not like him,” their father says snootily. “He demanded the clothes off your A-Niang’s back, and then he had the nerve to laugh when Wei Ying took them off and returned them to him.”

“That’s why we have a problem, Papa!” Shuilan cries. “His brother is trying to court our Yu-gege!”

Their father’s lips turn white. “What?”

“I saw him! He showed up with flowers for Gege, and he kept blushing—and Papa, Gege was staring at him so much that he didn’t notice I was there! I came to give him his lunch basket, and he didn’t even look at me!”

“Courting,” Father says, in a strangled voice that makes Shuilan’s own throat ache. “Not—not possible. Xiaohui is only nineteen.”

“He’s of age,” Chunyang pipes up, apparently under the impression that someone courting Lan Yu is a good thing instead of the worst crisis their family has ever had to endure. “And if they’re courting now, they’ll probably court at least a year, right? Gege will be twenty by then, Papa. Don’t worry.”

“I must speak with Wei Ying,” Father mutters, before absconding in a whirl of white satin robes and the flash of a silver hairpiece. “Courting my son, without leave! As if I would ever let such a thing happen!”

And then he disappears, leaving his daughters blinking in a sudden draft behind him. He’s probably going to find A-Niang in the jishi, which means that A-Niang is going to be responsible for telling Nie Zhuyan to stay away from Yu-gege.

(For a moment, Wei Shuilan almost feels sorry for her brother’s would-be suitor, for having his dreams crushed the moment he worked up the courage to give Lan Yu a courting gift.

Only almost, though.)

* * *

“So, Xiao-Yu!” A-Die says at dinner that night, as cheerful as ever as he fills Yu-gege’s bowl with hot rice and makes sure he gets plenty of vegetables from the dish in the middle of the table. “What’s this I hear about you going courting? Did you really grow up so much when I wasn’t looking, baobei?”

“Courting?” Lan Yu asks, around a mouthful of stew beef and potatoes. “Who’s going courting?”

“You, you silly cabbage. Aiyah, A-Yu, why didn’t you tell us? I’ve been looking forward to seeing you get married for so long, baobao, honestly—”

“I’m...I’m not courting anyone, though,” Gege replies, looking like a stunned rabbit for a minute before shaking his head and serving himself a helping of beans. “I’m too young, A-Niang! I just want to cultivate my plants and help you take care of A-Lan and A-Chun. And I don’t even like anyone, either.”

“You need not fear to tell us if you grow to care for someone, Xiaohui,” Father says anxiously. Shuilan can’t work out whether he’s still upset or not, because that sounded like he was upset at the thought of Lan Yu courting someone in secret rather than by the fact that he was courting at all. “We are your parents, and it is our privilege to guide you through all aspects of your life, including this.”

“Um. Thank you?” Lan Yu offers, clearly bewildered by the worry in Father’s eyes. “I really don’t want to court anyone, though. And I promise to tell you if I ever do, Papa.”

“Then what about Nie Zhuyan?” Shuilan wails, bursting into tears. “He gave you flowers! I saw him! And you were looking at him like he was the only one left in the world, and—”

Unexpectedly, her brother throws his head back and laughs. “Oh, my poor little A-Lan!” he coos, putting down his chopsticks and coming around to her side of the table to hug her. “Oh, no! I’m not courting Zhuyan-xiong. Those flowers were from Uncle Nie, not him, and—don’t cry, Lan-bao! Nie Zhuyan is the last person on earth I would ever think of marrying, you know. And besides, he already has someone he likes! He told me so.”

“Really?” Chunyang asks, looking so disappointed that A-Die passes her a dish of sweet bean porridge. “Who is it?”

“Oh, it’s Mianmian. You remember Auntie Qingyang’s daughter, right? She’s just a little older than Zhuyan-xiong, and he’s been making eyes at her for years. You know, I baked some of A-Niang’s lotus cakes for her once when we went to visit Ling-gege, and Zhuyan was so upset when he heard! He cried, actually, and he didn’t stop until I promised that I didn’t like her that way.”

A-Die’s face turns purple, and he almost chokes on a bit of meat before burying his head in his hands and laughing until he cries. Next to him, Father’s face goes oddly still, and stays that way until A-Die drags himself upright again with tears of mirth running down his cheeks.

“He likes Mianmian?” he gasps, bursting into another fit of giggles. “Oh. Oh, so it’s like that.”

“What does that mean?” Chunyang inquires, as Father puts his chopsticks down and closes his eyes. “Like what? Papa?”

“You’ll understand when you’re older,” A-Die snorts. “Here, A-Yu, have some more of the lotus pudding.”

And after that, for some reason far beyond Wei Shuilan’s fourteen-year-old comprehension, the subject of Nie Zhuyan courting her brother is never brought up again.

* * *

“Oh, that poor boy,” Shuilan hears her A-Die cackle later that night, while she and Chunyang are brushing their teeth in the bathroom. “Oh, that poor boy! Lan Zhan, he’s just like me!”

“I am aware,” Father says wearily, followed by the creaking sound of her parents climbing into bed. “I do not doubt that Xiao-Yu will remain blind to Nie Zhuyan’s love for the next several years.”

A beat of silence, then. “Lan Zhan,” A-Die whispers, “you—I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I should never have made you wait for me for so long. Sometimes I think of how I love you now, and how much it would hurt me to lose you, or believe that you didn’t love me back, and…”

“I would have been the happiest man in the world even if you rejected me,” Father whispers back. “As long as you were happy, and healthy, and safe. I would you rather hate me, torture me a thousand ways, than injure a single hair upon your precious head—Wei Ying, you were gone, and then you returned to life when I spent the last sixteen years cursing myself for letting you go. What more could I ever have asked of you, my love?”

“I made you wait for me a whole year after I came back, darling. You can’t tell me that wasn’t torture to bear, Lan Zhan, because I won’t believe you.”

“Xingan,” their father chides, before the sound of a kiss makes A-Lan giggle so much that her toothbrush falls out of her mouth. “I had my beloved sleeping in my arms, with our son sleeping between us, and you think I was unhappy?”

“Well, when you say it like that…”

“That was the happiest year of my life, A-Ying. And then I married you, and the next year was the happiest. And then we celebrated our first anniversary, and the next year was happier still.”

“Does that mean that today was the happiest day of your life, then?”

“No,” Father says decidedly. “It was yesterday. Before I heard about Nie Zhuyan.”

“Aiyah, Lan Zhan. Our little ones have to grow up someday, you know. A-Yuan might not ever marry, but A-Yu and A-Lan and Chun-bao are going to fall in love, and have people fall in love with them, and they might even get their hearts broken, but—”

“Never! Never, not while I draw breath. I have had my heart broken into pieces, and I would rather die than see our children suffer so. If that means I must pass a decree forbidding that boy to enter the Cloud Recesses, then it shall be done.”

The conversation doesn’t end there, but A-Chun’s eyes are slipping closed, and Shuilan doesn’t want to hear any more kissing, so the two of them go back to their room and jump into their beds.

“Jiejie?” Chunyang asks, after Shuilan puts out the lights and drags her pillow up over her head. “Do you want to fall in love? Someday, when you’re older?”

Wei Shuilan shakes her head. “No. I hate boys. The only one who even wants to talk to me is Lan Fang, and all he ever wants to talk about is how demonic cultivation corrupts the body and wounds the soul.”

“But it doesn’t corrupt A-Niang’s body and soul, does it?”

“He doesn’t mean A-Niang,” she sniffs. “He means me. Lan Fang thinks he knows better just because he’s a boy, and I hate him.”

“Oh,” A-Chun nods. “Jiejie, I think I want to fall in love.”

“Then Jiejie will support you! Do you like anyone, Chun-bao?”

“Not yet. But someday!”

And then Chunyang closes her eyes and falls asleep, leaving Wei Shuilan to her own muddled thoughts until she falls asleep, too.

#wangxian #the untamed fic #Lol at LWJ still drinking vinegar at Nie Zhuxi

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3point14rsquared · 3 years

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So. My mother just told me the story of how I broke a fever at only a few months old - I apparently caught a cold, nothing major, and it was over in about two days. I just thought that this must be a pretty scary situation for parents, even if the baby isn't in any real danger. How, do you think, Wangxian would react? I wouldn't want anything dangerous to happen to any of the tiny babies, but parents tend to overreact. This would be for the Renouncement Verse - you're a godsend!

prompt 2 @enter21: So much love for Baby Wei! Can we get some bonding time with new mom WWX and his little girl. Both the difficulties and the joy new bundles of love bring. And maybe just the extended family being majorly impressed with WWX's skills with children. Baby Wei, Xiao-yu, baby Mianmian, just all the babies.

(brief author’s note: please please reblog if you can, since that’s how we get prompts for future chapters!)

In later years, Wei Wuxian will remember his daughter’s birth as the most exhausting moment of his life. Bringing a child into the world is a painful business no matter how one goes about it, even when said child was being transported out of an empty dantian with nothing but pure magic and willpower to guide the way; the process taxed his spiritual veins so badly that they began to collapse in on themselves, and his head pounded in sheer misery like it did when he first fell into the Burial Mounds, and all the power Lan Xichen forced into his body made his dantian burn as if someone had lit a fire in it before he finally sank into the blessed oblivion of sleep.

But then someone shook him awake again, and put A-Lan into his arms, and Wei Wuxian fell desperately in love the moment he first laid eyes on her.

Now, on the second day after A-Lan’s arrival, Wei Wuxian busies himself with tracking the movement of her small chest (smaller than his palm, and so much more delicate) fluttering up and down with her soft breaths, and watching the faint sucking motions she makes with her tiny pink tongue when he puts a finger close to her cheek. She isn’t hungry yet, or at least he doesn’t think so; babies suck on everything that comes near their mouths, so he ignores the bottle of milk at his elbow and pokes her feathery little eyebrows instead.

The baby frowns and squints at him, just as he expected she would. Her dark eyes delight Wei Wuxian every time he sees them, because they are exactly like Lan Zhan’s: deep and clear and slanted at the corners like a pair of black phoenix’s wings, and her gaze is her father’s, too.

(Or at least it is until she begins to cry, at which point A-Lan reminds him a great deal more of a three-year-old Jiang Cheng.)

"Shuilan," he whispers now, scarcely aware of the physician measuring the baby's pulse at his right; they called Lan Feihui to see if the weather was responsible for A-Lan’s coughing, since she was born in the midst of an ongoing summer thunderstorm. "Don't cry, Lan-bao. I'm here, sweetheart, I'm here."

"How many times did she eat last night?" Lan Feihui asks, from somewhere over his head. "Did you keep note, xiandu?"

Wei Wuxian ignores that particular query, because he has no idea how often A-Lan needs to eat after he goes to bed. Lan Zhan lets him sleep the whole night through with A-Lan nestled against his side, refusing to disturb him no matter how often A-Lan wakes up, and he feeds the baby her milk every other hour as skillfully as the trained nursemaids from the healing halls.

"Three times," Lan Zhan replies, consulting a slip of paper tucked into his sleeve. "She did not object to my blood in the milk spell, so I saw no need to wake Wei Ying."

"It's a godsend, that spell," the doctor mutters, referring to the talisman Wei Wuxian constructed to transform goats’ milk into something suitable for babies to drink with the addition of a little human blood. "Do you have any plans to distribute it, Xinhua-jun?"

Wei Wuxian finally looks away from the baby's dimpled hands and nods. "En. I couldn't sleep these last two months for worrying about how we were going to feed her, and if the spell could come in useful for another child without a mother to feed it, then…”

"You could still use it yourself," the healer reminds him gently. "Using Hanguang-jun’s blood would be safest since you’re a non-cultivator, but if you would like to use yours instead, you can."

Wei Wuxian shakes his head. "It's better this way," he sighs. "She's so little, I—I don't want to take any chances."

The healer objects to this on the grounds that A-Lan is not little at all; she weighs nearly six jin, with a very healthy appetite, but Lan Zhan still refuses to let Wei Wuxian be the one to feed her.

"The spell requires a full shao of blood every day," he protests. "And babies need to eat so often. It will hurt you if you do it, Wei Ying."

“It won’t hurt me,” Wei Wuxian argues back, before blanching as Lan Zhan makes a cut across his hand and activates the milk talisman. “Lan Zhan!”

But it hardly matters who feeds her in the end, because A-Lan is chubby and strong and tries to eat everything that gets near her, from milk bottles to her own thumbs and Xiao-Yu's pudgy fingers, and all her parents' fears vanish when the healer finally declares that her fragile little lungs are handling the cold perfectly.

“She’s only been breathing for two days, Xinhua-jun,” is all Lan Feihui says, when Wei Wuxian gives her a sheepish apology for summoning her across the Cloud Recesses in the rain. “If she breathes in a grain of dust, she might sneeze. If the air is a touch too dry or too warm, she might cough. There is no need to worry unless her skin turns blue, but if that does happen, summon me or Zewu-jun at once.”

After the healer takes her leave, Wei Wuxian stares down at his daughter and covers her little face with kisses.

“Serves you right,” he scolds, when she gives him an aggrieved baby glare and sucks violently at her milk. “How could you worry me so much, A-Lan? Your A-Niang has a delicate heart, you know. You can’t scare me like this again.”

“I think I should be called A-Niang,” Lan Zhan tells him, petting Xiao-Yu’s sleepy little head. All four of them are curled up together in the marriage bed, since Xiao-Yu refused to leave his new sister, and insists on being allowed to feed her at least once or twice a day. “Did you not say once that the one with the milk was mother, and the one with gold was father?”

Wei Wuxian throws his head back and laughs. “All right,” he declares, turning so that A-Lan’s beady little eyes are fixed right on Lan Zhan’s. “Shuilan, this is your A-Niang. You can tell because you have my name—your A-Die’s name, that is—and because your A-Niang spills his own blood ten times a day so you can eat without a wet-nurse. Greet him properly, Wei-xiaojie.”

Unfortunately, Lan-bao’s idea of a greeting is spitting up onto Xiao-Yu’s robes. “Yuck!” A-Yu cries, jumping away and bursting into tears at the sight of the pale stain on his chest. “A-Lan, bad!”

And then, of course, A-Lan starts crying too. “Welcome to fatherhood, for the third time,” Wei Wuxian tells his husband, patting the tears off Xiaohui’s nose and biting back a giggle as Lan Zhan goes to find a wet cloth and a new gown for their son. “Do you think you’re ready, Lan Zhan?”

Lan Zhan looks at him across their children’s teary red faces and smiles.

“With you, xingan? Always.”

#wangxian

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3point14rsquared · 3 years

Note

❤️❤️❤️

I have a suggestion for your renouncement au: LWJ making a new song for their baby and WWX crying when he first hears it

(author’s note: please please reblog if you can, since that’s how we get prompts for future chapters!)

For the past two weeks, Lan Zhan has been spending a great deal of time at his guqin.

Wei Wuxian first noticed it when he returned from the lanshi on a clear spring morning (after teaching his bi-weekly talisman theory class, which had all the juniors in it except for Jin Ling) and found Lan Zhan sitting at the low table in the front room, idly plucking at the qin’s smooth strings and making corrections to a jiandu scroll while he worked. He didn’t seem to notice when Wei Wuxian came in, since he only strummed another few notes before smiling at his work with the small sweet smile that he usually saves for Xiao-Yu.

“What are you doing with your qin, sweetheart?” Wei Wuxian called, going over to greet his husband and glancing down in surprise when Lan Zhan laid a sheet of thin paper over the scroll. “Are you marking one of your students’ compositions, Lan Zhan?”

“It is mine,” Lan Zhan said simply, already ushering Wei Wuxian to the kitchen so he could lay out their lunch dishes. “I began it last week.”

“Oh?” Wei Wuxian asked, delighted. The only qin score that Lan Zhan had written—as far as Wei Wuxian knew, at least—was Wangxian, and he found himself both interested and pleased by the thought of listening to something else his beloved had composed. “Can I hear it, Lan Zhan?”

But to his surprise, Lan Zhan only shook his head and filled Wei Wuxian’s bowl with rice. “Not yet, xingan. But when it is ready, you will be the first one to hear it.”

After that, Lan Zhan took care to work on the score when Wei Wuxian was away from the jingshi, either teaching the juniors or visiting the rabbits or going on walks with Lan Xichen, and Wei Wuxian often returns home to find his husband just putting Wangji away, or halfway through the process of clearing away his writing things, and pouts about Lan Zhan’s reticence until Lan Zhan kisses a smile back onto his face and spends at least half an hour holding him close under their new purple quilts.

“Be patient, Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan chides, when he catches Wei Wuxian combing through the box of discarded compositions under their bed to see if the new one might be tucked away amongst them. “You will hear it in time.”

“How long, then?” Wei Wuxian complained. “Haven’t I waited long enough, Lan Zhan? Is it not finished yet?”

“No,” comes the reply, followed by a devastatingly tender kiss to his lips and another on the tip of his nose. “When it is, I will show you right away.”

And then, in true Lan Zhan fashion, he refuses to say any more about it.

But Wei Wuxian ends up forgetting the matter before the end of the month, as he tends to do whenever Lan Zhan tells him not to worry about something—and anyway, preparing for their little one’s arrival and then bringing her into the world was a very efficient distraction, given the fact that neither he nor Lan Zhan really knew anything about babies younger than one or two years old. They gathered drawers full of little clothes and diapers, bought a trunk of tiny plush dolls and blocks, and tried (and failed) to find someplace to put all the toys Jin Ling and Jiang Cheng sent them, and then they had to find a cradle and rearrange some of the furniture so that the baby can have room to move about when she gets big enough to crawl.

Wei Wuxian also had to spend a week cultivating with Lan Xichen, clearing out his meridians with his brother-in-law’s spiritual energy, and that was only finished just in time for baby A-Lan to come safely into her parents’ arms during a thunderstorm in the summertime.

And then, when Wei Wuxian wakes up and tries to soothe A-Lan back to sleep on the night after her full-moon birthday, Lan Zhan pulls his qin out of its case and beckons Wei Wuxian over to sit at his side. Wei Wuxian expects to hear Wangxian, of course, since the matter of that other song has long since been forgotten; but then Lan Zhan plucks out an unfamiliar chord, one that makes A-Lan’s big eyes widen with interest, and touches something deep and soft in Wei Wuxian’s heart like sunlight touching the heart of a summer flower.

Lan Zhan wrote this for Lan-bao, he realizes, covering his mouth as a tear slips down his cheek. He’s played this for her before, hasn’t he?

“Before she was born,” Lan Zhan says softly. “I played it while you were asleep, to calm her.”

“It’s beautiful,” Wei Wuxian whispers, wiping his eyes with A-Lan’s fluffy blankets. “Play it again, Lan Zhan?”

And Lan Zhan does, twice and then twice more, until Shuilan drifts off to sleep in Wei Wuxian’s lap and leaves her parents to trade quiet kisses in the dark over her head.

“Xiaoyao ji,” Lan Zhan murmurs, close beside Wei Wuxian’s ear. “It suits our A-Bao, does it not?”

Wei Wuxian nods. “It does,” he laughs, smiling through his tears. “It’s perfect, Lan Zhan, just like her!”

note: the characters used here for “xiaoyao ji” are 小瑤记 instead of 逍遥记 like the ending theme of the MDZSQ donghua; the original title has been translated as “carefree memories of the past” or “carefree journey,” but 小瑤记 (as far as I know) can be translated as “story of a little treasure” which is why LWJ chose it for A-Lan. The two titles are not pronounced in the same way, and have nothing in common except for the Roman transliteration and the character “记” at the end.

If any of this is inaccurate, corrections are very much welcomed and wanted!

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3point14rsquared · 3 years

Text

I see! The Jiangs and the Weis have a long history together.

@3point14rsquared “That rumor is intriguing. Is Jiang Chi, Jiang Fengmian’s father?”

Jiang Chi was the founder of the Jiang sect, so from the same generation as Lan An and Wen Mao! In the TMAAF-verse, Wei Long was his second-in-command (and also his older half-brother, since his mother had a son from a previous marriage, though this was never publicly acknowledged because Wei Long was technically born into a different family.) This makes WWX and JC (and Jiang Fengmian and Wei Changze) very distant cousins, with about six or seven generations’ worth of separation between them; after Yunmeng Jiang was established, the Wei family served as deputies to the Jiang family until WCZ’s elopement and then Wei Wuxian’s marriage into Gusu Lan, which is when the role was officially taken over by Yu Zhenhong’s branch of the Yu family.

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3point14rsquared · 3 years

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I was so excited to read this! It's a stormy morning and this made me smile.

A-Lan is so precious. And so is Jin Ling. Yes, Sect Leaders are allowed to cry about babies.

I also love the bit about rain talismans and carpets. I do hope Zizhen finally meets Shuilan soon.

That rumor is intriguing. Is Jiang Chi, Jiang Fengmian's father?

Stemming from my Shuilan and Rulan ask, how about Jin Ling visiting his baby cousin for the renouncement verse?

(brief author’s note: please reblog if possible, since that’s how we get prompts for future updates!)

“She’s so tiny,” Jin Ling murmurs, looking down at the small blue bundle nestled in the crook of his arm. “Dajiu, she’s so small.”

He knew he was going to be pleased by this new cousin, of course. Cousins are the best, especially since the two he already had are Sizhui and Xiao-Yu, and the pair of them are the most lovable biao-ge and biao-di anyone could have. He would have liked a few cousins on Jiujiu’s side, naturally, but Jiujiu isn’t married and insists that raising Jin Ling was all the childrearing he ever intended to do, so Jin Ling decided that two cousins were more than enough for him.

And then Wei-dajiu wrote to Lotus Pier early that spring, and told Jiujiu that he was going to have a baby.

Jin Ling still isn’t sure of how it happened, though. He overheard Zewu-jun telling one of his old friends at Koi Tower that Hanguang-jun’s spiritual energy was responsible, so he supposes it might be safe to ask, but he’d rather not take the chance. If only because he knows Wei-dajiu might make up something horrible just to shock him, and because Jin Ling would probably end up believing him anyway.

But whatever doubts and questions he had, they disappeared completely when he visited the Cloud Recesses during a stormy week in early summer, traveling by boat and then on horseback all the way from Lanling to Gusu so he wouldn’t get struck by lightning on the road. Swords attract lightning, whether they’re spiritual weapons or not, and he wasn’t going to risk dying before seeing his little biao-mei, whom Wei-dajiu named after him.

“I’m going to do something with rain talismans next,” Wei-dajiu tells him, propped up in bed on a mountain of pillows while Hanguang-jun feeds the baby her milk in the next room. “I always hated having to stay off my sword during storms when I was your age, and I lived in Yunmeng--we had to night-hunt in boats when the lightning was too close, you know! And rowing talismans only go so far, especially when you’re chasing demon eels in a swamp.”

“Zizhen suggested carpets,” shrugs Jin Ling. Ouyang Zizhen seemed absolutely distraught about being the last one to see little Shuilan in his most recent letter to Lanling, and so frustrated at the thought of staying in Baling until the weather cleared up that he sent envoys to every shidao cultivator living within a hundred miles of him, asking if anything could be done about the rain so he could reach the Cloud Recesses a few weeks earlier. “Waterproof carpets with warding talismans. I don’t see how it could work, though.”

“Carpets,” Wei-dajiu repeats, already lost in thought as he reaches for the self-inking brush he invented so that he wouldn’t have to keep grinding ink while he was working. “Well, if you account for how flexible they are while considering the wind, and extend the warding talisman by about three-quarters of a man’s height, then maybe...”

“Wei-dajiu!” Jin Ling cries. “Can--can we talk about this when Zizhen gets here, maybe? I wanted to ask if you were feeling better.“

“Elders are not to be interrupted in the Cloud Recesses,” they hear Hanguang-jun call from the nursery. “Or anywhere else, for that matter.”

“Eavesdropping is forbidden too, my Lan Zhan,” Wei-dejiu shouts back, so lovingly that Jin Ling swears he can hear Hanguang-jun’s ears going red. “He only wanted his da-jiujiu to stop rambling about his inventions so that he could ask how I was. How sweet you are to your old uncle, A-Ling!”

Jin Ling doesn’t quite have the heart to bat his uncle’s hands away. “So are you feeling better?”

“Mm, all recovered,” Wei-dajiu smiles. “Xichen-ge did most of the work, anyway. You see, he went into secluded meditation about two weeks before A-Lan was born, so that I wouldn’t have to be--”

“Stop!” Jin Ling claps his hands over his ears. “Please don’t tell me any of that, dajiu! If you’re fine, then that’s the end of it! Don’t tell me anything else!”

His uncle throws his head back and laughs. “All right, you big baby,” he teases, “your dajiu will be nice to you, and let you meet the little baby. Lan Zhan! Sweetheart, bring Lan-bao here, won’t you?”

Hanguang-jun steps carefully around the side of the privacy screen scarcely two seconds later, with something soft and small cradled against his chest--something with two tiny hands only half as long as Jin Ling’s little finger, and a head of fine black hair that feels like the finest spider silk when Hanguang-jun settles the baby in his arms.

Oh, he notices, as Hanguang-jun steps away and fixes him with a piercing stare that threatens consequences if he drops her. You look just like your A-Die.

The second thing he notices is that A-Lan looks like him, too. It isn’t her features that make him think so; if he and Wei-dajiu really are related by blood, it can only be if the rumors that Jiang Chi’s right-hand man Wei Long was really his half-brother are true, since Wei-dajiu’s ancestors were the sworn deputies of every generation of Jiang sect leaders until Wei Changze ran away with Cangse Sanren. Rather, the baby’s expression looks a great deal like the one he sees in the mirror every morning--a little determined, and a little uncertain, and very reluctant to listen to people unless they really have his best interests at heart.

A-Lan’s furrowed brows look just like his do before a long day of battles at the Jinlintai, and Jin Ling falls in love on the spot, like Lan Jingyi falling down a flight of stairs when he tries to play stone-kick with his eyes closed.

“You’re going to be the best baby in the world,” he tells her--quietly, so he doesn’t scare her, though he doubts that loud noises could frighten anyone who spent nine months inside Wei-dajiu. “We’ll all love you so much that you hate it, and you’re going to be just as good at cultivation as your A-Die and Hanguang-jun, and your A-Die’s going to make you all the spicy porridge you can eat as soon as you get your first tooth. When you’re a little bigger, Hanguang-jun will teach you how to play the qin, and fight with a sword, and cuddle rabbits, and Sizhui can show you where all the best l-lychee trees are--”

A drop of water splashes onto A-Lan’s button nose, and both of them freeze and blink in surprise as another tear falls onto the baby’s blankets.

“I’m not crying,” Jin Ling warbles stubbornly, when We-dajiu makes a hurt sound deep in his chest and tries to lean forward to hug him. “I’m not! I’m really not, don’t move!”

A-Lan coos at him, as if in agreement, and Jin Ling feels his heart melt before giving up the act and sobbing into Wei-dajiu’s shoulder.

After all, even sect leaders can cry about babies every now and then.

And since A-Lan’s two uncles are Jiujiu and Zewu-jun, Jin Ling is in good company.

#the untamed fic #mdzs fic

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3point14rsquared · 3 years

Note

They get a baby?? A surprise baby! And then They finally they’re both on the same page. Wow man Wangjis confession is so heartbreaking and sweet 💙💙 how does ayuan and ayu react to the news they’ll be big brothers?? I lovee how you writer their little fam

(brief author’s note: please please reblog if you can, since that’s how we get prompts for future chapters!)

“So, A-Yuan!” Wei Wuxian says cheerfully, clapping his hands together over his plate of roasted vegetables. Next to him, Lan Zhan is practically radiant with happiness, filling up a bowl with all of Sizhui’s favorite foods, while Sizhui sits on the other side of the table with Xiao-Yu in his lap. “Do you remember why I used to plant you in the radish patch when we lived in the Burial Mounds? Wen Ning must have told you by now, ah?”

Sizhui laughs and feeds Xiao-Yu a bite of braised pork. “I think I wanted sisters and brothers to sprout from the soil so I would have friends to play with, didn’t I? I wanted three older brothers, and two older sisters.”

“He asked me for three brothers and two sisters once, when he was very small,” Lan Zhan tells him, looking at A-Yuan with such fond eyes that their son blushes and glances down at the top of Xiao-Yu’s head. “I told him that I would try to find him some, but that Jingyi and the rabbits would likely have to do.”

“Father!”

“Well, you have two little brothers with Jingyi and A-Yu,” Wei Wuxian interrupts. “But you don’t have any sisters, so what would you say if I got you one?”

“Xian-ge!” Sizhui gasps, so astonished that Xiao-Yu’s chopsticks clatter onto the floor. A-Yu leans over Sizhui’s arm and tries to reach them, squirming like an upended turtle until Sizhui turns him the right way up again and stares at Wei Wuxian in a mixture of delight and disbelief. “When? Where did you find her—and where is she now, A-Die?”

Wei Wuxian almost chokes on his soup, because there really is no easy way to say this even if Sizhui would have had cousins through Lan Xichen in much the same way if not for Nie Mingjue’s death. “Um. In my lower dantian, according to your bofu. That’s why I couldn’t keep anything spicy down and started craving plain congee for breakfast, actually.”

A-Yuan drops Xiao-Yu—who lands on his feet like a cat before toddling around to Lan Zhan’s side of the table to steal some of his sliced lotus roots—and looks more shocked than ever. “In your dantian? You mean you’re—”

“I’ve been very thoroughly educated about the dangers of working with experimental healing talismans when I have an empty dantian,” Wei Wuxian groans. “I’m going to start using resentful cultivation while I work, after the little one gets here—”

“Wei Ying!”

“—unless your father decides he wants more baby turnips, because then I’ll just have to follow the righteous path and never touch Chenqing again—”

“Wei Ying!”

“—but I am, ah, in a rather delicate state right now,” he coughs. “It’s been almost four months already, but even your bofu didn’t notice until yesterday, so. Do you want to feel her, A-Yuan?”

“...Can I?”

In answer, Wei Wuxian takes Sizhui’s delicate hands in his and presses them to the front of his red gown. There isn’t much to see yet, especially since these robes are the thick ones he commissioned for wintertime, but there is something to feel—namely, a very slight curve that refuses to budge when Sizhui pokes at it, rather than giving way at his touch like the soft skin just above it.

“Oh,” Sizhui gasps, when he reaches out with the barest flicker of spiritual energy and gets a tiny spark of it back in return. “Is that—A-Die, is that her?”

Wei Wuxian nods, tears stinging his eyes as Xiao-Yu bounces back to his side and lays his little downy head beside Sizhui’s hand. “That’s your xiao-mei, A-Yu! You won’t be the littlest in this house by next spring, so Yuan-gege will have to teach you how to be a good xiongzhang by then.”

“A-Yu, why won’t you let go of your A-Die, ah?”

“Xiao-Yu is hugging A-Lan,” Xiao-Yu says, his face tucked into Wei Wuxian’s chest. “A-Yu sleeps here, A-Niang. Night-night.”

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3point14rsquared · 4 years

Note

Wow. I felt the depth of LWJ's love and devotion in every word of that confession.

Hi! For the renouncement au: Can we get pre-confession wangxian accidental baby acquisition? Basically I just want a lot of WWX being conflicted because he doesn’t want to do that to LWJ (per the ficlet in this verse about the marriage bed and not having more babies) and LWJ trying to convince WWX that nothing would make him happier

The child was an accident, Lan Xichen tells him.

Something no one could have predicted, something Wei Ying would never have done, if he knew what would come of it. A mistake, an incomprehensible fluke of magic and curiosity and cultivation, especially when the cultivator in question lost his golden core nearly twenty years ago, but a mistake Lan Wangji wants more desperately than he has ever wanted anything other than Wei Ying, nevertheless.

But this new revelation is something Wei Ying might not want at all, if his husband’s refusal to listen to a blessing for children at their wedding reflects his feelings about having them. And Xiao-Yu is still so small, too small for even the most basic infant classes in the Cloud Recesses, and Lan Wangji has never even held a baby--at least not a baby too young to walk or crawl, not like Lan Yu--what if he drops the child, or hurts it, or--

You must put first things first, Wangji, his uncle told a six-year-old Lan Wangji once, when he gathered up his practice books and scrolls for his lessons and forgot his brushes and inkstone. The brush and inkstone come first, and then you can think about your books.

And to Lan Wangji, Wei Ying will always come first. That will never change as long as he draws breath, which is why he rushes back to the jingshi to find his beloved rather than going to the rabbit field to sort his thoughts out in solitude.

He finds his husband sitting alone in the dark, perched in the middle of the chuang bed with his red inner robes spread out around him like the plumage of a crimson bird, staring into nothingness as he presses a hand to his lower dantian as if uncertain whether he should believe the news Lan Xichen gave them earlier that evening. But Xichen is a healer second only to Wen Qing and Baoshan Sanren, and Lan Wangji has never known him to make a mistake--which means that the two of them will have to face this new uncertainty together, and sooner rather than later.

They have less than half a year to wait before the little one will be here, after all.

“Wei Ying?” Lan Wangji dares to say, after climbing onto the bed beside him and taking Wei Ying’s cold hands in his. “Talk to me, sweetheart.”

“I was going to divorce you,” is what Wei Ying says next, shaking him down to the core as he turns to meet Lan Wangji’s eyes. “I was certain you had forever renounced your chance of love by marrying me, and that I would leave you the moment you found someone you could really be married to.”

Lan Wangji feels his blood run cold. “Wei Ying, no--”

“I was going to,” his husband whispers. “And then you kissed me in Qinghe last autumn, and I--I couldn’t hope you would fall in love after that, Lan Zhan, even if it meant you would never fall in love at all! And I promise I didn’t know this could happen, or else I would never--never have--”

“I told you I loved you,” Lan Wangji says thickly. “I have told you so every day since then, and kissed you every day since then--and is this child not half mine? Does...would it make you unhappy, to have a child with me?”

“No, a thousand times no!” Wei Ying protests, bolting upright. “But Lan Zhan, you’re so good, too good, so of course you convinced yourself you were in love with me after our brothers married us off! You must have thought I deserved someone to love me like that, even though I didn’t, even though the way we were before was enough--and I know you’ll never let me leave you for your sake now, not with this baby coming, and I’m so sorry, Lan Zhan, I’m so sorry! You deserve so much more than this, than me, and now--now I can’t even--”

He covers his face with his hands and bursts into tears.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen, Lan Zhan,” he sobs. “I didn’t know.”

For his part, Lan Wangji is sitting frozen at Wei Ying’s side, a single sentence echoing back and forth in his mind, and then he understands; because Wei Ying had not understood, even after what passed between them in Qinghe, which means that this misunderstanding can only be Lan Wangji’s fault, as usual.

“Convinced myself I was in love with you? For the sake of our marriage?” he repeats hoarsely. “Wei Ying, I have been in love with you for the past twenty years.”

Wei Wuxian goes quiet and peers out from between his fingers. “Wh-what?”

“I fell in love with you the day you crossed blades with me on the roof, xingan,” Lan Wangji croaks. “I fell in love with you when you argued with Shufu during lessons. I fell in love with you when you drew a portrait of me instead of copying lines, and again when you bowed to Lan Yi with me and vowed to protect the shards of the Yin iron. I fell in love when you saved my life in the Xuanwu’s cave, and when you clung to my hands while Jiang Wanyin and I were carrying you out, and I fell in love every day I spent hunting for you when you were in the Burial Mounds. I fell in love when I saw your eyes open after the battle with Wen Ruohan, and when you drank for me at that banquet at the Jinlintai, and when you carried Wen Qing and Wen Ning away from Qiongqi Dao and took them into Luanzung. I fell in love when you shouted at me in the rain and unveiled my cowardice for what it was, and I fell in love when you refused to stay no matter how I tried to plead with you!

“Wei Ying, I fell in love when I saw you take A-Yuan into your arms for the first time, and when you kept your vow to revive Wei Ying. I fell in love with you every day we spent apart, and again when I wrote that accursed letter to invite you to Jin Ling’s full-moon ceremony. I was in love for every moon I spent in mourning, and for every laugh I heard from Sizhui’s lips, and for every glimpse I had of Jin Ling until you returned. I fell in love when I first heard his courtesy name spoken aloud, and I fell in love again with every lash laid on my back after I protected A-Yuan from the Jins. I fell in love with every year I spent unable to leave my bed, with every bite of food Xiongzhang had to push between my lips because I could not move my arms--I have never known you and not loved you, even when all I knew of you was your face and your voice, Wei Ying, I--”

“I want this child,” Lan Wangji begs--and he is weeping too, now, enfolding Wei Ying in his arms and rocking him back and forth behind the faint shadow of the bed curtains. “I want you like I want air to breathe, sweetheart! I wore nothing but mourning robes when you were dead, and I raised Sizhui as a father who had lost his wife--because that was what I was, even if you never loved me in return! I have never been happier than I was the day I met you again at Dafan Mountain, because you were alive, and well--I love you, Wei Ying, Wei Wuxian, as I have never loved anything in all my life, and never will again!”

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying cries. “Lan Zhan, I’ve hurt you, I’ve spurned you, and for nothing but the sake of my own pride, so how can you--”

“Never that!” Lan Zhan shakes his head. “You were afraid, and all the world was against you--what right did I have to speak, if it was not to beg for forgiveness and a place on the single-plank bridge at your side?”

“Lan Zhan, don’t do this, not for me, or I’ll…”

“Ask me.”

Wei Ying blinks at him, wiping tears from his swollen cheeks as Lan Wangji pats his nose with a damp handkerchief. “Ask you what?”

“The question I never answered,” he says roughly. “The name of the song I sang to you in Mount Muxi. The song you played after Mo Xuanyu brought you back. Ask me, Wei Ying.”

“What...what is its name, then?”

“Wangxian,” Lan Wangji sobs, tracing the two characters on Wei Ying’s hand until his fingertips go numb. “I was eighteen when I named it, my love. It has always been yours, always.”

And then--

“Kiss me,” Wei Ying pleads. “Kiss me, please, please--”

Perhaps it was always meant to be this way, in the end.

Perhaps they were always meant to become one like this, when they were already joined in every way two could hope to be together. Perhaps these words were never meant to be spoken aloud until after their love had taken living form, until after they had married, but they are spoken now.

And that, in Lan Wangji’s eyes, is all that matters.

#wangxian #the untamed #mo dao zu shi

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3point14rsquared · 4 years

Text

Jiang Cheng is sitting at a low table in the Jingshi, with his dead brother and his brother’s husband, the righteous Hanguang Jun, and drinking emperor’s smile.

That stopped being mind bogglingly impossible about two jars of wine ago, and now Jiang Cheng is as comfortable as he’s ever been, griping about Jin Ling being a brat, and how he should never have expected him to grow up anyhow else, what with what a little terror he’d been as a child. When We in Wuxian just looks amused, Jiang Cheng starts listing examples, in a futile attempt to gain sympathy.

“Oh, A-Yuan used to do that too,” says Wei Wuxian, eyes bright. “Used to chew on Chenqing all the time!“ He’s swaying just a little, his new body is a bit of a lightweight, but Hanguang Jun is sitting beside him and sipping tea, so if he goes over, Jiang Cheng doesn’t have to try to catch him.

It takes him a moment to remember who A-Yuan is.

Was.

It’s like a punch to the gut.

“…I looked for him,” says Jiang Cheng.

“Huh?” asks Wei Wuxian.

“Wen Yuan. I looked for him. His body wasn’t. If he lived. In Yiling, everywhere in the Burial Mounds. I looked.” Suddenly it’s really important to Jiang Cheng that Wei Wuxian believes him. “I had Jin Ling, what was one more child? Even yours? It wasn’t his fault, so I looked everywhere. No one ever saw… I couldn’t…”

“Jiang Cheng,” says Wei Wuxian, and he looks up from his wine, across the table at his brother’s new face. That didn’t look like hate. Stupid Wei Wuxian.

“I’m so sorry,” says Jiang Cheng, thinking of the moments where he’s feared for Jin Ling’s life. Through minor coups that Jin Guangyao had stomped out with prejudice, the fever in his eleventh year just before his core was stable, in that temple, with quqin chord wrapped threateningly around his throat. “I’m so so sorry.”

“Jiang Cheng! Don’t cry! Lan Zhan?” Wei Wuxian is looking at Hanguang Jun, not Jiang Cheng, so he takes the moment to drink deeply, finishing the rest of his jar. When he sets it down again Wei Wuxian is no longer in front of him, he’s at his side, drunkenly determined to pull Jiang Cheng to his feet. “Come on, come on, I have to show you something.”

Something was confused and sleepy, being awoken from his rest three hours after curfew, but he knows Wei-qianbei well enough to take him barging into his rooms with a drunk Sect Leader in tow well enough, even when both of them look like they’ve been crying, and tear up again at the sight of him.

“Are you alright, Wei-qianbei? Sect Leader Jiang?”

They just stare at him, as if amazed that he’s here. Which is weird? Where else would he be, there was no night hunt scheduled, and he’s not on the patrol roster this week?

“He grew up so well,” says Sect Leader Jiang. He’s not scowling, and it’s making Lan Sizhui uncomfortable; he didn’t need to know that Jin Ling’s uncle looked a so much like him when he cried. He’s getting the urge to hug him and tell him that it’ll be alright - whatever it is, Sizhui has no clue - and then he’ll be strung up with Zidian for touching him.

“He did! He’s the best kid,” says Wei-qianbei, smiling sappily through his own tears. “You didn’t mess up, Jiang Cheng.”

Sect Leader Jiang just pats Sizhui on the shoulder, “I’m glad you’re alright,” he says, staring at his face for an unnervingly long moment. “Be safe.”

They leave not long after, taking their leave not quite politely - just how - drunk were they? A sentiment that Jingyi repeats, staring at him from the door to his bedroom. “What the hell happened.”

From outside the door, Sizhui hears, “…find a corpse. Never thought I’d see him alive and well.”

“He made it, Jiang Cheng. Thank you for looking.”

It sounds like they’ve settled on their doorstep. “Sizhui?” asks Jingyi, coming closer. He sounds worried.

“I’m alright,” says Sizhui, rubbing at his eyes. “I’m alright.”

And wasn’t that the miracle?

#this is great #mdzs

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