Work Text:
Thick as it may be, Wei Wuxian’s skin collects other people’s scars as easily as white robes are stained by the dust passing travelers kick up from the road.
A sensible person would learn caution, restraint; to hold himself at arm’s length.*
Wei Wuxian is not a sensible person. He rushes straight in, dances up close without a worry in the world, and it fills Lan Wangji with a screaming fury that he wishes he could claw out from his chest and fling in Wei Wuxian’s face.
Equally—more— more —he strangles from a breathless hatred for those who fail to recognize this fragility in Wei Wuxian, and to treat him with according care. His brother; the Jiang clan leader and his wife; that girl, Mianmian, from the cave; Wen Qing and Wen Ning; all have freely bared pieces of their hearts to him, and just as freely let him place himself as their shield, to take the sum of blows for a clan’s worth of people.
Lan Wangji dreams of the brand seared into Wei Wuxian’s chest, sees it still smoldering, glowing hot as embers. He dreams pressing his palm over the wound, dreams sealing it all in—the pain, the betrayal, the abandonment. He dreams the heat scorching through his hand, blazing up his wrist, his arm; white heat pooling into his lungs and whirling up a dry storm that rushes and rises around his heart, and the agony sealed under Wei Wuxian’s skin becomes desperation as it sears beneath his; his fingers snarl in Wei Wuxian’s hair and pull him forward to press into Lan Wangji’s mouth; kissing him, Lan Wangji dreams of drowning Wei Ying in a tide of affection and admiration and tenderness and need , need to pull him as close as flesh will allow two souls to collide.
He wakes from these dreams brittle.
A sensible person would learn to distance himself, to avoid the source of his weakness at all cost.
Lan Wanji is not a sensible person.