*seductively crawls out of hell* (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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meadowlarklogs2019-04-21 07:05 pm
laozu) wrote in meadowlarklogs2019-04-21 07:05 pm
CLOSED.
WHO: Ancient China Wuxia Crew ( Wei Wuxian laozu, Lan Wangji wangxian & Jiang Cheng sandu )
WHERE: Various locations.
WHEN: Various times.
WHAT: A catch-all log for literally everything so we don't spam.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Sexual content, discussions of suicide/suicidal ideation, physical violence, difficulties in communication, etc.
laozu, Lan Wangji wangxian & Jiang Cheng sandu )WHERE: Various locations.
WHEN: Various times.
WHAT: A catch-all log for literally everything so we don't spam.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Sexual content, discussions of suicide/suicidal ideation, physical violence, difficulties in communication, etc.
( lwj; yes, i swallow glass, but later )
jiang cheng is still fuming when he returns, hours later, from the gym; when he is angry he shows it for all of the world - he is more force of nature like this rather than a man, and one would fancy sparks of flame and lightning from where he rests his hand against the wall as he bends his head down, kicking his shoes off with little ceremony.
there is always someone about in the home they have made for themselves ( and as usual, he ignores the way the word catches, at once odd and aching ), but really, jiang cheng could not care less about it.
whoever it was, they better have sense to keep well out of his way. ]
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since he had been a child, it had been easiest for others to avoid him. it was easier still, when the fine grain of his temper would bring all within him that was snarling and ugly through the minute cracks. as though the melt of ice floes, once it was done there was no means to be undone. and now, it is that same temper that burns within him lowly. it is that same one, that keeps him up upon the roof of their cramped apartment. and, in paradoxical isolation, it is that same one that keeps rein upon itself by watering the plants.
and watering them, perhaps, overmuch as he focuses instead upon the greenery that grows slow beneath the ritual of their touch.
jiang cheng may not have remembered, but lan wangji does. and he does still, as jiang cheng makes his way eventually through their home ( and some part of that adds means to sting ) and up. up, that is, to where lan wangji is.
if he knows that jiang cheng is there— and it is certain that he does —, he does not greet him.
after all, he was told to mind only what it is he does. ]
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but is it not, truly? is it not lan wangji's place, when the each of them all have made places for one another? when jiang cheng feels, already more than his own, the coldness that seeps over him at the lack of response both within and out of the network?
nevertheless, jiang cheng burns quietly. he is a man with too much pride, always - and the fox demon's goading remarks have spurred him on, have opened wounds hardly closed. his insecurity is always what gets the better of him - wei wuxian is used to it, he knows how jiang cheng would be and become, what he would say or do without meaning to. lan wangji, he is not so familiar.
he knows that lan wangji knows that he is back, yet there is no greeting. it is to be expected. ]
Too much, [ he says, and it is the only thing he says, as jiang cheng glances between the watering can in the other's hand and the plants. ]
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angry though he is, his movements do not become sharp. there is only a delay, perhaps more purposeful than not, in how he obeys. too much, jiang cheng tells him. and lan wangji knows he means not himself, but had he not told lan wangji that of himself earlier? lan wangji was too much, expected too much, wanted too much. he became comfortable in spaces not meant for him.
and that was why, wasn't it? in part, that was reason enough why he avoided the touch of others, as much as he avoided touching them. as if they could somehow feel the intensity of his heart, the ache toward all who came nearest — the ugliness of his loss.
we are already so close, he had wanted to say. but, what good is it now? he has heard this once before. and back then, though he so wanted it to be —
the skin about his eyes tightens. ]
Mn, [ he manages, after a moment. the affirmation is ashed against his tongue, ground down by reluctance. he places the watering can where it is it rests and thinks maybe such treatment will rot the roots.
he does not think further on it, as he glances only briefly toward jiang cheng. only briefly, before he turns back to the plants. there are many tasks left to do here, but lan wangji only pins his focus upon the nearest's leaves. those which are dead find themselves collected in the palm of his hand, as he pinches them off from the source.
mind your own, says the pettiest parts of his heart. he takes a steadying breath in. ]
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steady, steady. they had been as though upon slow moving waters this whole while, careful to map out where the boundaries lay between themselves, careful to venture into one another. they had each made themselves available - they had each lessened the rigid way with which they held themselves, allowed the meld of feelings - but jiang cheng, he is still taciturn.
jiang cheng, he is still, even after everything, hesitant. he is not as wei wuxian. he is not as sunlight that falls upon spring leaves, bright and open and dazzling. he has not the glimmering splendour of the man they both hold dear. jiang cheng is sullen, and glum, and quick to anger. jiang cheng is as shutters that rattle against the winter winds.
he watches those fingers pinch about the withered leaves of the plants, watches the man gather them about the dip of his palm, and he thinks him meticulous, careful, ruthless. he thinks that he may have done such a thing all his life, pinching those that he does not need. twisting and plucking them away. ]
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he knows jiang cheng to be looser of lips, a thing more heated. he knows jiang cheng makes strides against the teeth of old scars in ways lan wangji has too attempted to grasp. he knows, that jiang cheng does not string his language as though the bright of lanterns, the red of filament enough to burn itself alongside him. and yet, it passes through the ice of his defenses, burrows its way beneath the skin. and yet, lan wangji halts its progress, soothes where it cannot put itself out again.
in this way, they do not complement like himself and wei wuxian. they both, jiang cheng and himself, are prone to wordlessness. and it is like this, that lan wangji too had earned his perception, the descriptors that too most often rise about him.
the great and beautiful hanguang-jun: serious, unyielding, and terribly cold.
he sighs, in ways he knows are audible, as jiang cheng's gaze lingers upon him. ]
What is it? [ there is great neutrality within it, in the tone of his voice and the tone of movements. as though he had closed himself off, an impassable walk up the spines of dark mountains. in winters, in the times of his seclusion, lan wangji liked best the silence. he liked best the absence, the heaviness of snows. and yet, even then, did he not leave a path? did he not let one walk, bring to him the bright rays of sun kept in the smallest of vessels?
jiang cheng is though a storm. his words whip at lan wangji's most bitter edge, sheer against the old wounds that still trouble him on the worst of days, the days where all and everything lies dead and damp. when lan wangji focuses like this, he thinks of the leaves like the extensions of himself he has cut back. he thinks of words he has not said to him, has not said to either of them. he thinks of words he'd loosed to only have them spat back, a spindle winding to completion 'round lan wangji's childhood rejections.
he is a fool. he is a fool, to think himself—
and yet, jiang cheng does not go. and lan wangji remains, the leaves cupped in his palm and all within his profile a mask of some stubborn, limping stillness. ]
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too much, jiang cheng has told him. too much, and he means the plants but also lan wangji himself. too much. he is as though the stream that becomes a flood with the monsoon, the summer rain with which the banks are carved and eroded away. too much, like the heat that simmers thick across the marshland and the waterways, for how cold he is. jiang cheng feels again the old familiar sort of stifling feeling in his lungs at the sight of such stillness. he feels again the contrast, the differences that make themselves so stark against he and them - for that is what it is, in the end. always a step behind, a moment too late, a missed chance.
a fool. he is a fool. ]
Nothing. [ it makes his answer abrupt, cutting like a sword drawn too quick, and jiang cheng scowls heavily, turning his eyes away. ]
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and what more might the ugliness in lan wangji do, but to twitch and prickle and writhe? before, had it not been that jiang cheng had no trouble telling him what it is he could do? what it is he should do? mind your own, he had told him. and so, it is what lan wangji does, with great absence. it is what he does, as he turns the stray leaves over in his palms. and no matter how gentle he is, many do not last. they fracture beneath his movement, cut uneven among their veins. and lan wangji does not let them remain, as jiang cheng remains, as he crosses through the density of their rooftop garden — avoids jiang cheng.
at the lip of the building, lan wangji considers nothing as he discards the decay over the edge. impassive as his expression is, there is some intensity in the pale of his eyes that has always existed there. and now, it focuses itself upon jiang cheng. it burns against his shoulder, before lan wangji too finds something else to glance at. for what good will it do, to attempt to pull for answers that jiang cheng does not wish to give? what good will it do, to prove himself more a fool? already he is too much, he knows. what he feels and what he does, what he so wants to do—
mind your own, jiang cheng had said. and he does, petty as it is, as a frown catches finally at the corner of his lips. ]
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mind your own.
was he then, not minding? was jiang cheng not their own, the same way that they were his? did he not take their hands and said, I will not let go, I am here.
had he not died, for them, because of them?
and will he not do so again, given a chance?
in the scant little space of the rooftop, their trajectory move separate, never converging. jiang cheng remains standing against the opposite side, elbows resting against the edge, and he frowns at the sky as if he is willing for it to rain, to beset the sky with clouds darker than his gaze.
mind your own, he had said. ]
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foolish, to believe such nonsense that he would not consider jiang cheng their own. foolish, to think that lan wangji would not argue against the tides of those who insisted. foolish. but, lan wangji cannot feel the shape of jiang cheng's thoughts. he cannot parcel out his emotions. running parallel, he cannot listen to his internal line of reason when it is he himself who has been rubbed raw and vulnerable, who has been reminded against that what he gives is too much and too eagerly. that all that he is is one who lays against the ones he loves a shade too dark.
you are your father's son.
and so, he cuts where he connects with others as though the taut of kite strings. he watches himself, acts as though such distance between does not bother him even slightly. and yet -
lan wangji's voice carries with the low wind, present before he turns at the shoulder and takes jiang cheng in. for all that he is, stubborn and resisting, as much as lan wangji himself is. ]
If you have something upon your mind, it is better to say.
[ it scours him, as much as it breaks over his teeth. it is flinty, tipped with ice. and yet, not one syllables hitches upward in its trajectory.
it is better, after all, to take such words and give them to him as though an arrow to the front.
at least, that is his reasoning. that is what he tells himself, with his shoulders balanced and eyes dark. ]
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I, have something to say?
[ the ring upon his hand does not crackle, does not shine black and purple as it would, as it had but jiang cheng himself is like some force of nature as he takes one step toward the other, knuckles tight and turning bone-white as he clenches his fists.
a long time ago, such steely words would have made him flinch. scantly not even a year ago, such things were all he had received from lan wangji, hanguang-jun, curt words and cold gaze from the lot of them. he had not missed the way he had curled around wei wuxian, had stepped in between he and him, and pushed him away. he had not forgotten the way blood dripped against the pale of his sleeves.
it makes him laugh. it makes him bare his teeth though out of what mix of emotions he cannot say, but it is with all the poisoned desperation of some wild animal caught within a cage.
owe yourself to no one. rely on no one.
he is his mother's son, after all. he is sharp thorns and broken glass, he is loveless, lovelorn, bereft and deserving of nothing. ]
Don't you have something to say? Does Hanguang-Jun think that such a person as I am, is beneath his notice? Of course you would. [ a little bitterly: ] You have always been. It is useless of me to think that you would change yourself in any way.
[ for anyone, but he swallows it back. not for anyone. not anyone, just wei wuxian, wei ying. ]
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[ 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? ]
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you see now what you are, to him.
it is sharp. it is like shards of ice, it is as though the winter wind that comes down from the mountains, whistling between the relentless razorcut edge of cliffs. ridiculous. he speaks just the one word. he speaks, and he is silent, and it is as if he does not deserve more.
ridiculous. truly a fool, to think that lan wangji would say otherwise. to think that he had hoped for more, had wanted something more. to think, how utterly pointless, useless, useless. he is useless. there is nothing he could possibly offer, to a man like he is. ridiculous. ]
Ridiculous.
[ he repeats once, dully, then again, almost smiling, a vicious streak that bleeds and splits his face as he lifts his head, straightening as if he is not at all affected, shoulders straight and chin tilted up.
in a way, this is expected. jiang cheng has, if anything, had practice, after all. of cutting loose and letting go. of having to patch up the gaping spaces. of moving on however he could manage. of walking away.
just like his mother, he thinks. the elders were right, he thinks. he is unworthy. he has tried to climb to heights that were impossible. had wanted things that were impossible. he had reached for things that were above his abilities, had wanted things that, he realises almost belatedly now, were not his to take. how selfish. how ridiculous. ]
I see.
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between himself, between others. impossible to bridge with his own movements, his actions. no matter how close he drew to them, no matter if he held their hand within his own— lan wangji could not master anything, could not tell them anything.
i love you, get lost.
i am here, mind your own.
no matter how it is he attempted, he had always been too late to say it. and now, he is too late again. ]
Do you? [ he splinters, more ice in the lungs than upon the tongue. the fissure of it is raw, but the face is cool. he sees pride in how jiang cheng tilts his chin, takes to mind the contradictions wei wuxian has long spun to him.
he is sensitive, lan zhan. he is more delicate than any of us. and perhaps it had always been lan wangji, lan zhan who had imposed too much. perhaps it is he, who took without realizing. and perhaps too it was he, who had hurt jiang cheng just by reaching.
he had never doubted jiang cheng. not quite so much as he now doubts lan wangji.
there is a twist at the corner of his mouth, the parting of lips, but no sound comes. at least, for a long moment. long enough to feel as it was back then, the proud squaring of jiang cheng's shoulders a wall as he attempted to place his words in such a way that wei wuxian would recognize he had never meant to bring harm. he had only wanted to — ] I wonder why now, you would choose to see that I have long noticed you.
[ he just wanted to protect him. them. now, in this place that wanted nothing to do such archaic things as them. he had just wanted to be with them, however it was they would allow.
he had just wanted — and it is that selfishness that places him here again, after all. it is that stubbornness, that presumption.
and it is that too, that keeps him here. it is that too, that does not push him to move. ]
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he feels battered and bruised now, as he stands - by the myriad of emotions, the guilt and anger and some creeping numbness like some slow-acting poison, but jiang cheng does not give way. he will not show any more weakness, to this man who has already seen too much of him; too much ugliness already. he still has his pride, as always, it being the last thing left to him in the end.
get lost.
mind your own.
what is he to me?
perhaps it is the wanting, that hurts them as it does now. it is the wanting, the closeness that cuts them by the distance, the poison in his veins and the ice in his heart that hurts, just by reaching. it's the selfishness, the carelessness with which he has treated them, that notches against like arrows, like the whistle of a blade. he had just wanted. jiang cheng had wanted, like the warnings of a child, crass and violent.
perhaps, he thinks. perhaps it had been all his doing. ]
Have you? [ his voice is like crackling of ember, sharp and hot and so, so weak in the desperate wanting of it, and his expression flickers and flattens to stubborn stillness.
too late. too early. too much. ]
Why now? [ why, again, still? ]
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want drives lesser men, drives greater men. and want drives lan wangji, more than lan wangji gives way. to lan wangji, want is his father's seclusion. want is his uncle's pitying eyes. want is his mother, who long gazed upon the outside, who long gazed upon the far doors—
want is a dangerous a thing, but all keep wanting. and lan wangji is foolish and lan wangji is stubborn. and lan wangji has already long lost, his skin bruised with their fingertips, his bed the loose hold of their arms. ]
Have, [ lan wangji tells him, the soft flash of his teeth biting marks into the inside of his lip. since he was a child, he had always been like this: words impossible, his hands clumsy over sentences. love, to lan wangji, had always been a word of doing. it had been his mother's hands combing back his hair, his brother's acquiescing. it had been wei wuxian, the last rays of every sun, the empty spaces that he left forever burning. it had been the brand against lan wangji's chest, every tiny darkness that bred in him, the small hands of lan sizhui's that kept growing.
and it had been this: the mutual sorrows held between themselves, between lan wangji and jiang cheng, that never healed quite right after they had scabbed. and instead, like this, they had stitched themselves in ways strange and new and ugly.
but, they had healed themselves.
and though, for all within him can hold poetry, the mouth shies from he heart. and it too shies as he does, the pale of his ears coloring against the coming dark, the clearness of his eyes turning past jiang cheng's shoulder and toward the purpling of skylines.
he cannot make him understand, not as this. but, he can try. he can try in part, before it is he loses jiang cheng as he once lost wei wuxian. as he once gave to him his heart, only to hear — ]
When does not matter, [ — get lost get lost get lost and he swallows around the lingering anxieties that flock, that tremble just above the surface. and even this, he knows, is not enough. he knows. and yet, to give more when it is not wanted? he cannot. ] Jiang Cheng is Jiang Cheng.
[ and yet, this too is no less sincere. ]
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when does not matter.
does he mean for it to placate, to soothe? if he were a better man than he is now, perhaps jiang cheng could lessen, as fires would die for want of oxygen. perhaps he could soften, seeing lan wangji as he is now - seeing the way his gaze wavers and fixes itself, the way his words grow thin. but jiang cheng does not see. he chooses not to see. ]
So it does not matter.
Not to you, anyway. You say you have noticed, but why? Why now? [ why, even still? why, when all jiang cheng could do is rip and tear and hurt? when all he could do is not to heal but to layer scars upon scarred flesh?
he can only be as he is now. he can only rage and flicker against the seemingly immovable barrier that lan wangji is. to dash himself into pieces before him, bit by bit. ]
You say it is ridiculous. I know it already. I am not as Wei Wuxian - I know what I am. [ not good enough. not enough of anything. ] Do not tell me you have noticed. If it were not for him, we could have- [ could have been, what they have always been; strangers. ] You could have-
[ suffered so much less. ]
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yes, he thinks. perhaps it is. but, lan wangji's heart has always been foolish. it has loved against what all would consider wise of this disciple, this second jade of lan, but it has never lied. it has never has never steered itself to make easier the truth. it has only known the sun of wei wuxian, the newer rains of jiang cheng. it has only known what what it is to burn from the outside in, until no part was left to lan wangji that was not theirs to begin to. and yet, jiang cheng still questions it. and lan wangji knows it to be his own fault.
and lan wangji knows it to be that it is either this, or to suffer the fires of his own wanting. like his mother, in that lonely house — like his father, left forever pining. and no matter how it was the gentians blanketed the mountainside in blues, it had forever been an absence and a haunting. two, left to suffer what it was they built. two, with their two children, never knowing the depth of it.
and still, his mother never wavered. and is father never spoke of it. and lan wangji feels the swell of his own passions, the roots tangled and rotted, and swallows about the way they crowd to form their sounds in ways more useless than meaningful, more meaningful than useless. ]
You are different, [ he starts slowly, as though each dismissal does not make him bleed. and his words are viced in his throat, as if he were to loosen hold on them, they would too wither and die. and like this, he moves his thoughts forward. each painful inch for which he tries, a sort of hollowing. in that cave back then, with wei wuxian — their wei ying — ] That is not bad.
[ it isn't. it never was. and still, he continues. senseless as he knows it to be, it is what jiang cheng must know. ]
Wei Ying is Wei Ying. You are you.
[ jiang cheng, stubborn and waiting for him to awaken. jiang cheng, with tea settled between them. jiang cheng, drunk and loose and prideful nonetheless. ]
Neither of us are him.
[ there is only one wei ying. one, in all the world and the next. and it is the only one he wants. it is the only one that lan wangji will ever want. there is only one such as him. ]
I, [ he starts again, the knit of his brows more visible against the fall of the sun. and still, he tries. he tries. he tries. ] Always saw you. You with him. You — [ you did not see me, and yet I love you no less for it says the ugliest parts of him. and while it is true, he keeps such things in check. there is no reason to hurt, to be hurt more than he is. ] were happy. Hard not to notice.
[ restrained and somehow wild where it is that wei wuxian touched. he was beautiful, in a different way. and while lan wangji did not love him as immediately as wei wuxian, did not love him for as long as desperately — ]
I only know what I have chosen here, [ he finishes, finally. his voice sincere as it is always, its edges clear beyond a single wavering. and he closes his teeth about it, soft. and still, his eyes only skim at jiang cheng's lit edge. ] I know only this one.
[ he only knows only what he knows now. he does not know as jiang cheng does. he does not know and he stays, regardless. he stays and takes in each and every poison, drinks them evenly until all within him numbs. ]