#hopefully i didn't mess up the daemon lore lol

[stiltonbasket]

prompt: mdzs, but with daemons.

On the night he crosses swords with the lawless head disciple of the Yunmeng Jiang sect, Lan Wangji finds himself suffering the worst humiliation of his entire life.

He was ready to reprimand Wei Ying, ready to still his maddening, beautiful voice with a silencing spell and drag him off to the meishi to be punished—but then Wei Ying gasped in his arms, oddly unbothered at the prospect of being bodily hauled off the roof, and let out a bubbling peal of laughter.

“Second Young Master Lan, look!” he wheezed, pointing over Wangji’s shoulder. “Oh, heavens—are you this affectionate with everyone, Lan Zhan? Just what is your daemon doing?”

Lan Wangji turned around and blanched.

Yuchen was lying on the roof not six paces away from him, her furry limbs tucked comfortably beneath her, and Wei Ying’s brown-bellied osprey was cuddled up under her neck.

“This wasn’t my fault,” Qingwan chirped, burrowing deeper into Yuchen’s spotted coat. “Yuchen won’t let me go.”

“En, and I will not,” Yuchen said drowsily. “You can just sleep right here, since my Wangji is determined to run around playing the fool in the middle of the night.”

Lan Wangji wanted to die on the spot. Yuchen had never dared cross lines with the daemons of others, save for Xiongzhang’s white serpent, Yulan, who named Yuchen and helped care for her and Wangji from infancy—and yet here she was, caressing the feathers of a daemon she had known for less than ten minutes, and granting him a liberty she would not permit even to Shufu’s Kexin!

“Yuchen!” Lan Wangji cried. Wei Ying fell out of his grasp in a protesting heap of arms and legs, muttering something about rough treatment and wasted good looks and sticks-in-the mud, but Wangji was too horrified to listen to him. “Yuchen, let him go at once!”

“I do not wish to,” his daemon returned, so simply that Wei Ying staggered on his way to collect his fallen wine jars. “And Qingwan does not wish to leave me. For now, you must remain with Wei Wuxian.”

“Qingwan, come here,” Wei Wuxian chortled, now clutching the two pots of Emperor’s Smile to his chest. “Look how red Lan-er-gongzi is getting. And anyway, it’s late. Don’t you want to see Bao Xuan?”

At this, Qingwan perked up and wriggled out from between Yuchen’s white paws.

“Bao Xuan is our Shijie’s daemon. He’ll be worried if we don’t reach the guest quarters soon,” he apologized. “Madam Yuchen, farewell! I’ll see you again tomorrow.”

And with that, he fluttered off to perch atop Wei Ying’s head, after which the two retrieved their dropped passage token and vanished into the night.

Lan Wangji picked Yuchen up, afraid the leopard would disobey him and chase after Qingwan again, and took her back to the Jingshi in such distress that he thought he might go mad. He had never seen a daemon behave so shamelessly before, let alone one born of the Lan clan; the lone exception was Nie Mingjue’s tiger daemon, who was once spotted cleaning Yulan’s scales with her tongue after a particularly bloody night-hunt. But then again, Lan Xichen was the beloved of Chifeng-zun’s life, soon to be his lawful husband, and Wei Ying...

Wangji sank to the ground with Yuchen in his lap, and tried not to think of how Wei Ying had laughed when he saw their daemons embracing.

“No,” he begged, cupping Yuchen’s fluffy face between his hands. “Yuchen, you can’t mean that we—Wei Ying and I, we’re not—”

“The daemons of the Lan recognize their other halves at first sight,” Yuchen said kindly. “It was just so with Yulan-jie and Nie-zongzhu’s Chixin. You are fated.”

Yuchen would say no more, having explained all she wished to, and Lan Wangji was left to lie in his chilly bed, alone, reflecting on the clan scriptures to prevent himself from dreaming of Wei Ying.

He did not succeed, for better or for worse; but by the end of that week, Wangji was Wei Ying’s, and he had fallen so deeply in love that it no longer mattered.

#mo dao zu shi #wangxian #wei wuxian #lan wangji #the untamed #my fic #daemons au #prompt fill #anon i loved this prompt tysm!!! #please reblog i beg #this is a Good one #hopefully i didn't mess up the daemon lore lol