un: stormrider

[weifinder]

( Look, everyone else has been coherent about the bear. Because no one else is accosted in the nude. Wei Wuxian doesn't understand why he's so cursed, but when he fumbles his pendant, he's caught saying on visual where his shoulder, damp hair, and a dark ceiling is evident: )

-- Zhan! The bear!

( Which to the informed audience over the comms, means hearing a grumble roar of curiosity while Wei Wuxian yelps. The image falls, catching sight of his unclad, wet backside as he runs for a window, and a large, furry white mass fills the view.

You're welcome. He's on the naked run again. )

Comments

[downswing]

( ..........time to pour out all that wine, having served notice to the air. )

[weifinder]

( for reasons he'll never know, a certain necromancer twitches on the rooftops he leaps between, sensing a disturbance in the force... and a waste of perfectly mediocre alcohol. noooooooooooo! )

[downswing]

( ..........................time to kick the nest too. )

[weifinder]

( has the bear not done enough? oh, the inhumanity!

time to go live with lethe, dragon probably deters bear? ... oh no there's a dragon in the night coming to find where wei wuxian is running because she feels his bear distress. )

[downswing]

( There are depths of conjugal ineptitude with which even Lan Wangji can enjoy a perennial flirtation without forging permanent binds.

It may well be that letting one's husband linger closely pursued by a mad beast is.

...frowned upon.

And so, 'lo, behold. The illustrious Hanguang-Jun taking rare notice of Wei Ying's scaly companion, giving chase, and producing, at the very last moment — the peak of generosity, he — a blanket he... may have borrowed without speaking the words.

Ah, these wretched habits he's learning. At least he's showing up, dressed to the nines in every shade of Unimpressed Glare one man can unilaterally summon. )

You have finished your play?

( Where is your bear, master Wei, he cannot see it. )

[weifinder]

( Avast, ye matey, them there bear be falling through a roof and trailing from the streets... out of sight, for the moment. Lethe, aware no sane human would ride a dragon naked, snuffles at Wangji as the blankets offered.

Wei Wuxian greets him with a dry look. )

What play? You know what kind of spectacle I'll knowingly make of myself, are you bleeding vinegar to say I'm indulging anyone now? It's unbelievable! How are you never here when that terrible creature is?

( A pause, and a squint from where he wraps himself in blanket. The cold had started to settle into his joints, sliding across his skin. )

It didn't curse you on the Stairs, did it?

[downswing]

( ...ah, of course. First, he is the spectator of master bear. Then, seemingly, his accomplice. Now, become the beast himself.

Lan Wangji's evening seems to be paddling proficiently through a sea of personal indignities. He wonders, briefly, where it will drown — but surrenders instead to the priority of cocooning Wei Ying in warmth and taking the knee to tap twined fingers once against the thorny jut of Wei Ying's ankle.

Bare body, bare feet. A hard run, scratches won off gravel. Torn skins. Blisters. And an infusion of qi to assist the cause. )

I wonder. ( The Sibilant Sands are less arid. ) Wen Qing or McCoy should attend you. If you may spare a moment from company.

[weifinder]

( There is a moment, splinter thin, of contemplation on his features, one that bypassed the surprise and the fission of pleasure that warmed his empty core. A moment, as he's hauled upward, before the first burning lines of qi trace his meridians like the lovers they almost are, where his eyes are fathomless in consideration. Embarrassment isn't beyond him, which he knows, but even that shadowed breath of emotion stutters off before the depths.

Lethe knows him before he knows himself. Huffs out air and amusement and disgust, nipping the dangling ends of blanket before they wrap too tight.

Wei Wuxian relaxes, melts forward, hand burrowing free to run trimmed nails through tamed hair. He's given his husband a crown and been refused, and his thoughts skitter past, until he shifts forward, melts in the cloying embrace of the blanket and healed, hale, whole flesh. )

Lan Zhan, ( he says, and he holds the sound of his husband's name on his tongue, slips it past lips and teeth like a promise, ) I want you.

( Not a bear, not the prodding of healers for injuries not worth feeling pain over. Just rooftops and dragons and white robes in too many layers, and he wants, he wants, he wants to lay these burdens down. )

[downswing]

Mmmmm. ( Wistful, affirmative, breeze. Non-committal, in the way of a mother acknowledging the perpetual wails of a theatrically-disposed child — morphing into a trickled, honeyed rumble, when hands claw his hair, raking relief from the tight-pressure binds of his hairstyle. Spartan, strict, familiar — but never pleasant, ever grieving a loosening.

Crafty man, attacking where every gentleman of cultivation is feeble. The Yiling Patriarch, truly shameless. )

What you want are my silks. ( Removed and surviving the scraps of Lan Wangji's inattention, when he slips two layers, one by one, off his shoulders with one arm. White of Lethe's nearby warmth, wet of her nose tugging the rope of his belt free, tickling the narrow span of his shirt beneath. If three layers are donated, enough yet for the sake of modesty.

They negotiate his unwinding, somehow, without troubling or distancing Wei Ying. A true masterpiece of coordination, when Lethe offers Wei Ying the silks. )

Clothe my husband. ( This, to Wei Ying.

...or the dragon. Very uncertain. )

[weifinder]

( It's left more to the dragon than to Wei Wuxian, who has managed to allow narrow shoulders to hold the blanket about him, freeing both hands to rake meditative fingers through his husband's hair. )

Not in public, ( he says, voice lower, Lethe seeking to drape silks closer to his neck, half managing to swallow his head in material instead. ) But in private, I'd have all your silks off you.

( One hand must rise to help liberate his head from silken suffocation, still wet hair painting lines and splotches of white into embolden translucency. He'll need leave off his ministrations to drop blanket and don silks properly, but this absurdity has visited too often by now. His husband's lack of belief, or presence thereof, none withstanding.

Barefoot, at least not dripping, whatever worst lacerations scabbing over with Lan Zhan's generous energy cupped and flowing over, he also...

... doesn't care to return to the room where discord crept in on massive, furred feet. )

[downswing]

In the face of fear, you weaponise shamelessness.

( A known tactic of remarkable efficiency. Were Lan Wangji the better man, he might not answer it in kind, but here he stands, ears ripe with a handsome, tender flush, the points of his cheeks pinched by heat.

The path to consummation has been a twenty-year road paved with good necromantic intentions that has yet to yield the final destination within greedy hands' reach. He anticipates, when they finally intersect in a bed with amorous intent, one will be on the (second) verge of death, the other deprived of limbs or joints' use. No matter.

Man and dragon make slow work of rightening Wei Ying, crafting him a tangle of silks and blanket, before Lan Wangji finally holds both hands out, palms facing skyward, in clear indication that perhaps now is the hour for Wei Ying to admit he wishes to be carried. No shoes. No road's toils. )

Your uncle faced the creature, also. Xie Lian. ( In other words, he believes. ) It favours you above all.

[weifinder]

( He doesn't bother looking even remotely apologetic. He allows dragon and man to wrap him in the veneer of decency, glad for the company of both, refusing to take his eyes off his husband. The horrid bear can deal with Lan Wangji, because he wishes to, that he could, and he utters a soft groan of slow, begrudging acknowledgement even when his fingers again rake through his husband's tightly groomed hair. Teasing, teasing free, teasing back in, and he collapses himself into his husbands hands less with grace than his own greeds, slightly shifted.

To his arms wrapping around Lan Zhan's neck, to his weight forward, self pliable enough he's not dodging or twisting away when he might, would, has wanted to do so. Face thick enough now to not want the distance, to not think it necessary, deserved. A bending of pride, too. Pride cannot rule him, when his heart is full. )

It isn't what I want favouring me.