[ it comes, sears off the tongue. before he may place stop to it, it is thrown between defiant and aching and sharp. it comes like a cold wind, like the sluicing of rain against the mountains — it carves into the skin, his own skin, with how much he holds in. and still, still it is the minutiae that speak for him. it is the cut of a canine against his bottom lip, the pale flash of his eyes that go not hot with anger toward jiang cheng, but toward the injury and doubt that licks at every edge.
it doesn't concern you.
mind your own.
you always hated me anyway.
get lost.
but, he knows the ways of his heart. he knows that the last of what was given was given at a cave mouth, in the scars along his back, at the lip of emptiness both literal and figurative. had his hand in jiang cheng's too meant nothing? had he come to expect without realizing? had he forgotten himself after all, that neither loved him? that, perhaps—
perhaps it was jiang cheng, who would first find what it is he wanted with him. and lan wangji thinks, perhaps, he had been selfish again to think that jiang cheng should want the same as him. he thinks himself selfish, that even his desires to only stay close may have already been too much.
mind your own.
get lost.
and like that, the words get stoppered up in the lungs. like that, his chest burns with it. and lan wangji does not move, does not flinch from the impending ozone of jiang cheng's bright storms. he does not wince against the way it whips at him, the way he knows himself to have been just like his father like this: a fool. a fool, who loved too much and smothered and now there is only what dies beneath the palms of his hands as though the crush of gentians under snow.
his fingers curve up toward his sleeves. they fist, loose. and the dark of his brows pucker as he thinks more to try again to speak anything at all, but all that comes is still in the way of his body. it is in the way his posture straightens, stiffens - in the ways it does not become pliant and round.
how am i not to notice you? he shapes out. how have i failed to? ]
no subject
[ it comes, sears off the tongue. before he may place stop to it, it is thrown between defiant and aching and sharp. it comes like a cold wind, like the sluicing of rain against the mountains — it carves into the skin, his own skin, with how much he holds in. and still, still it is the minutiae that speak for him. it is the cut of a canine against his bottom lip, the pale flash of his eyes that go not hot with anger toward jiang cheng, but toward the injury and doubt that licks at every edge.
it doesn't concern you.
mind your own.
you always hated me anyway.
get lost.
but, he knows the ways of his heart. he knows that the last of what was given was given at a cave mouth, in the scars along his back, at the lip of emptiness both literal and figurative. had his hand in jiang cheng's too meant nothing? had he come to expect without realizing? had he forgotten himself after all, that neither loved him? that, perhaps—
perhaps it was jiang cheng, who would first find what it is he wanted with him. and lan wangji thinks, perhaps, he had been selfish again to think that jiang cheng should want the same as him. he thinks himself selfish, that even his desires to only stay close may have already been too much.
mind your own.
get lost.
and like that, the words get stoppered up in the lungs. like that, his chest burns with it. and lan wangji does not move, does not flinch from the impending ozone of jiang cheng's bright storms. he does not wince against the way it whips at him, the way he knows himself to have been just like his father like this: a fool. a fool, who loved too much and smothered and now there is only what dies beneath the palms of his hands as though the crush of gentians under snow.
his fingers curve up toward his sleeves. they fist, loose. and the dark of his brows pucker as he thinks more to try again to speak anything at all, but all that comes is still in the way of his body. it is in the way his posture straightens, stiffens - in the ways it does not become pliant and round.
how am i not to notice you? he shapes out. how have i failed to? ]