Chapter Text
There was a corpse in Wei Ying’s shower.
He blinked hard, really expecting something to change (it, predictably, didn’t), and then backed out of the room, never taking his eyes off the way that the blood drip-drip-dripped off the hung toes.
The door closed gently behind him.
On second reflection, he peeked inside. It - she - was still there, peaceably and gently rotating, hung from the shower head. Like a winter coat! Wei Ying had to stifle an entirely inappropriate giggle.
He closed the door again and walked numbly to his kitchen, climbed up onto the counter, pulling his knees up to his chest. His hands shook when he dialed the number - one of only five he knew by heart - and held his phone to his ear with trembling hands.
It rang, rang, rang -
“- llo? Hello?” The voice on the end said, and Wei Ying gasped a sob of relief, folding forward to bounce his forehead off his knees.
“Hanguang-Jun,” he said, and God, his voice sounded so painfully fragile. He should be embarrassed, he thought, but thinking wasn’t enough to make it stop. “I think I really need help.”
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said, sounding unruffled. Sometimes Wei Ying hated him so much it made his stomach hurt. He bet Lan Zhan’s voice never shook. He wanted to shake him until he felt how Wei Ying felt. He wanted to make him cry. “What happened?”
Wei Ying could read the what have you done in his tone, the in-between-the-lines that Lan Zhan always managed to put there with the bare inflection of his deep voice.
It didn’t matter. The hysterical giggle escaped this time, and Wei Ying could hear the little intake of breath on Lan Zhan’s end.
“There’s a dead girl in my shower, Hanguang-Jun,” he said, swaying slightly from side to side. “She’s bleeding down my drain.”
Incriminating silence, from the other end of the phone. Wei Ying’s voice was so small when he said, “Hanguang-Jun?”
“I will be over,” Lan Zhan said, still cold and smooth as the jade he’d so often been likened to.
Wei Ying hiccupped a noise when the line went dead, pressing his hands into his eyes to stave off the headache. It didn’t help. All he could hear was the dripping, blood mingling with water and trickling down the drain. All in his head.
His phone case creaked uneasily - he was holding it too tight, the edges cutting into his palm - and he forced himself to set it down, wrapping his arms around his shins in a hug that didn’t help at all. It would be fine. Lan Zhan would be here soon, and it would be fine.
•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•
Their relationship was, delicately speaking, fraught with tension. It had started -- not well. Better . Most things were better than the stilted, uncomfortable not-thing that they had, the way that the silence stretched brittle between them. It was worse because it was nearly impossible to avoid the man. Wei Ying had tried.
Lan Zhan ran the best magic shop in town, a little place in a corner of the city with a perfectly organized library and ancient artifacts of various origins trapped behind glass. The place didn’t have a name - it didn’t have a sign, even. Lan Zhan had never posted the hours. He simply seemed to be there when people needed him.
He had been there the night that Wei Ying had needed him, the first night that they’d ever met.
Wei Ying had ducked into the shop to escape the rain, dripping a puddle on the dark wood floors, with no real thought as to where he was or what he was interrupting beyond wringing his hair out. That was probably why it had taken him a moment to lock eyes with Lan Zhan, who was watching him dispassionately from behind his counter. Watching Wei Ying ruin his floor.
Wei Ying had frozen, in the middle of the motion, and straightened up with a bright laugh. “I like your shop!” he’d said, and Lan Zhan had replied, “ Most people do.”
Wei Ying had ended up coming back again and again, mostly to bother Lan Zhan under the thin guise of browsing his impressive library of books that he wouldn’t let anyone touch, let alone buy. Or maybe it had just been Wei Ying that Lan Zhan’d had a problem with - his eyebrows had always crumpled together when Wei Ying had come in, regardless of whether or not he had already been talking to someone.
“Do not touch!” he’d snapped, and Wei Ying had frozen with his fingers hovering just inches away from glancing across a book’s spine.
“ Alright, alright ,” Wei Ying had said, grinning, always grinning, and tucked his hands behind his back. “I’ll judge the books by their covers.”
Lan Zhan had looked at him, then, that little rumple between his brows, and said, “Why wouldn’t you?”
•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•
Wei Ying hadn’t moved from his counter when there was a knock at the door. He stared at it with big eyes, panning down to the uncrossable gulf between here and there. He drew his legs up closer, like he expected something to leap out and grab at his ankles if he put his feet on the floor.
Who was he waiting for, again? It had been a long time since he’d expected a visitor.
The door creaked open and Wei Ying pressed himself further back into his cupboards, handle digging into his shoulder blade. Something in his apartment was dripping. Air conditioning? No.
No. No. No no no no no no no -
“Wei Ying.” There was a man in front of him, and Wei Ying reached up to touch Lan Zhan’s shirtsleeve, catching it between finger and thumb. Cotton, nothing plastic. Lan Zhan had always preferred natural fibers.
“- Ah,” Wei Ying said, and blinked back to himself. “Hello, Hanguang-Jun.”
Lan Zhan was looking at him with that little frown between his eyebrows, the one that Wei Ying always wanted to reach out and smooth over with his thumb. He took his hand back and twisted his fingers together instead.
“Wei Ying,” he said again, and Wei Ying’s mouth quirked up into a smile.
“Awfully familiar, ah? - What’s the occasion, Hanguang-jun?”
The frown went deeper. Lan Zhan pulled back, and Wei Ying ached to follow.
“You did not answer,” Lan Zhan said, and straightened up from where he’d been bending into Wei Ying’s space, like a willow arching towards a stream. “I called.”
Wei Ying blinked and looked down at his phone, the screen protector spiderwebbed with hairline cracks. “So you did,” he said, tone feinting at a levity that he didn’t feel. “But why?”
Lan Zhan whirled away instead of answering, footsteps muffled by the carpet. He hadn’t taken off his shoes. He had, once. Wei Ying remembered the vulnerable arches of his feet.
Wei Ying slipped off the counter to follow him, padding silently in his wake. He felt like a ghost encroaching on someone else’s space. Did any of this belong to him?
His head hurt. Drip. He touched his nose and frowned at the blood on his fingers. Drip drip drip -
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said. He moved so silently, Hanguang-jun did. His hands were the warmest thing that Wei Ying had ever felt, pressed into the tops of his shoulders. “You’re not well.”
“No,” Wei Ying agreed, and tipped his head back to laugh, even though it made blood slide down the back of his throat. “Ah. The girl. I remember.”
He did. He remembered, now, the girl in the bathroom. Lan Zhan was frowning. His face was going to get stuck that way. Wei Ying had teased him about it.
Or had he? The ache in Wei Ying’s head grew piercing.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said with some urgency in his tone.
“Wei Ying, Wei Ying,” Wei Ying mocked, pressing his fingers into his temples. It hurt. “All you say is my name. What .”
“There is no girl,” Lan Zhan said, damning him with every word, “There is no girl. Wei Ying, you’re not well.”
Wei Ying swayed. He could still hear a drip-drip-drip. “I thought -” he said, “I really thought.”
“Come to the shop with me,” Lan Zhan said, and Wei Ying laughed until he was choking. Blood in his mouth.
“I can’t,” He said, “I can’t. I can’t leave.”
“You can,” Lan Zhan said, and he had the voice that made impossible things possible, like he could get around facts of life if he tried hard enough. “Come home with me.”
Wei Ying closed his eyes, a thin buzz in his head. It hurt. His bones vibrated with the hurting.
“Okay,” Wei Ying said, and let himself be pulled upright and propped against a wall. He could hear Lan Zhan walking around, muted footsteps that he couldn’t track around the pain. He wondered if Lan Zhan was finding what he was looking for. Whatever talisman Wei Ying had used to bring this on himself. God knew that Wei Ying hadn’t been able to find it.
A touch. Elbow to wrist. Cold, callused fingers. Wei Ying’s hand spasmed - Lan Zhan was still in the other room. He couldn’t open his eyes, because he could feel breath on his face. Ah -
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said, and tugged him away. “Keep your eyes closed. I will lead you.”
Wei Ying walked blindly, Lan Zhan guiding him around the few obstacles he had in his apartment. Table. Chair. Door. Lan Zhan opened the door and Wei Ying stepped out of it. He thought, maybe, that he’d die right there, that he hadn’t been hallucinating or lying when he’d said that he couldn’t leave.
Nothing. He was just crazy. He started laughing, eyes squeezing tighter against the tears that threatened to fall.
Something slammed against the door as soon as Lan Zhan closed it, like a body being thrown with no regard for safety or personal regard. Over and over, and the door shook with it. A scrabbling, nails on wood, nails tearing, dripdripdrip .
Wei Ying’s eyes went wide, flicking between Lan Zhan and the door. Can you hear that , he tried to ask with his eyes. Tell me, tell me -
He realized that he was mumbling it only when Lan Zhan gently covered his mouth with a palm.
“I hear it.” Lan Zhan said. Wei Ying sagged against Lan Zhan’s supported arm and sobbed a noise, pressing his palm to his eyes. “You are not well, but you are not going mad.”
He guided Wei Ying away from the door of his apartment, away from the banging and the dripping and the miasma of doubt that Wei Ying couldn’t seem to shake.
“Hanguang-Jun,” Wei Ying whispered. He closed his eyes again, trusting Lan Zhan to guide him where they were going. “Why are you here.” He remembered calling, now, but it didn’t - it didn’t explain.
“Where else would I be?” Lan Zhan asked, and helped Wei Ying into the sleek black car parked haphazardly in front of his building.
•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•
The shop was always cold - unpleasantly so in the summer, bitterly so in the winter. Wei Ying had always thought that it had to do with Lan Zhan wanting to keep people as uncomfortable as possible in his space, until he’d asked. Lan Zhan had frowned at him - the little rumple in between his brows that denoted a frown, mind, nothing so gauche as actually moving his mouth - and said “The books prefer it this way.” Wei Ying hadn’t known what to make of that.
He’d laughed and Lan Zhan had frowned harder, the corners of his mouth tucking down in the way they often did when he thought that Wei Ying was making fun of him.
Lan Zhan was frowning now, helping Wei Ying inside with a hand on his elbow. His back was so straight he may as well have replaced his spine with an iron rod, unbendable and unmoving. He always was. Had been.
Wei Ying shivered on the doorstep, swaying back out like there was a barrier.
“Hanguang-Jun,” he blurted out, resisting the pull of Lan Zhan’s hand. “Maybe I shouldn’t -”
“You need to,” Lan Zhan said, implacable, and pulled him inside. Wei Ying hadn’t eaten in - however long, hadn’t slept in longer. He went, because there was nothing else to be done about it.
It was dark inside and as cold as Wei Ying had thought it would be. He wrapped his free arm around himself and hunched his shoulders in tight, tighter, until he was curled so small he could almost just - disappear. Poof! Problem solved for everyone.
Lan Zhan didn’t pause on his way inside, dropping Wei Ying’s elbow before they were even halfway inside. Wei Ying stood in the middle of the floor, eyes trained on the opaque gloom, and didn’t touch anything. He didn’t want to bother the books.
It was so quiet, so much quieter than Wei Ying’s apartment, somehow. Even his breath sounded muffled here, muted in the dark and cool. It felt like his breath should fog. It felt like his breath should stop.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said, appearing behind him and making him jump.
“- Mm?” Wei Ying blinked at him. Sometime between their arrival and Lan Zhan’s reappearance, the lights had turned on. Wei Ying’s pupils hurt with how rapidly they’d expanded.
“I asked -” he breathed out a short breath, frustrated. Wei Ying waited for him to finish. His brain was too slow, too sleep-deprived to fill in mysterious blanks from now-strangers. “Do you know what’s happening?”
Wei Ying’s voice cracked on the laugh that tore out of him, hurting his chest on the way up, and he rubbed a palm over his breastbone. “Ah, Hanguang-Jun,” he sighed, swaying. Lan Zhan reached out as if to catch him, but didn’t quite touch. “Mm, what’s the phrase? The consequences of my actions?”
Lan Zhan frowned, fine eyebrows pinched together. “What consequences, Wei Ying?”
“Everything has a price.” It came out as a sing-song, like a child’s rhyme. It might as well have been - everyone knew it, anyone who did magic and everyone who knew physics and anyone who gardened. To bloom flowers, you had to feed them. So do magic, you had to pay. Big magic, big costs.
“You’re not making sense,” Lan Zhan said, helpless as Wei Ying had ever heard him. “You see dead people now, is that it?”
“Is that it ?” Wei Ying tipped his head back and laughed until his throat felt bloody. “Is that it! I don’t just see them, ah, they follow me, Hanguang-Jun, everywhere I go. I see them and they want .”
“What do they want?” He sounded good. Like himself. He’d always been so upright, such an investigative mind. Wei Ying rocked from foot to foot.
“They don’t talk,” he said, and lolled his head back. He could taste blood in the back of his throat, though he didn’t know quite from what. “They don’t talk to me.”
“To someone else?” Clever mind. He’d always been clever. Wei Ying had always liked how quick Lan Zhan was.
Too bad Wei Ying didn’t have the answer. He shrugged, a long roll of shoulders. “Who knows! Who knows, if they don’t talk to me anyway.”
“Think, Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan urged him. He was close enough to touch, but he didn’t. Wei Ying didn’t, either. “You have to know. I can’t help if I don’t know what it - what it is. What it’s doing.”
Wei Ying wheezed a laugh and crouched down, because if he didn’t sit down he was going to fall over, and he knew that falling over would upset Lan Zhan. “Dunno, dunno. How should I know? Consequences, costs, didn’t you always tell me so?”
“Not like this,” Lan Zhan shook his head, folding his arms tight across his chest. “Not - no, not like this. Wei Ying, this is not a consequence. This is - something is wrong.”
Wei Ying laughed like a sob, clawing his fingers into his own shirt. He tipped forward, curled as small as he could be. There was a phantom breath across the back of his neck, a whisper like found you. “I’m wrong,” he gasped, helpless. “I’m wrong, I was wrong. I did this.”
Lan Zhan crouched beside him. Wei Ying, hunched over his own knees, couldn’t see his face. He wondered what Lan Zhan’s eyebrows looked like. He wondered if Lan Zhan was scared, or if he was disgusted.
“Not like this,” he said. He sounded - like something. “This is not what magic costs. It is - simple. Cause and effect. Torment is not a price to be paid.”
Wei Ying rocked, gently, from side to side. There was a slide of cold, wet fingers down his spine. “So what,” he asked after a long, drawn out moment. His voice was rough, like he’d been screaming. Really, he hadn’t talked in days. “So what if it’s not. What is it, then?”
“I don’t -” Lan Zhan bit off the end, like he couldn’t bear to say I don’t know. “A curse? Would someone curse you?”
Wei Ying laughed, high and hysterical. His throat hurt so badly. When was the last time he’d had something to drink. “Who would!? Who wouldn’t!” He hit the floor with a closed fist. “You would, you’d curse me, ah, Lan Zhan? Finally put me out of my misery?”
“No,” Lan Zhan said, voice close to a whisper. “No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. Wei Ying, let me help.”
“So help!” Wei Ying said, high and sharp, and sat himself jolt-upright to shake off the cold, wet hands grabbing for his forearms. “So help, then, if you want to so badly. What is precious Hanguang-Jun going to do, ah, what’s our light-bearing noble one going to do to help poor, helpless little Wei Ying?”
“I will break it,” Lan Zhan said, placid and serious. “We will break the curse.”
“You don’t even know who did it.” That was the first part of curse-breaking. Knowing the person, knowing the reason, knowing the curse. They didn’t know anything. Wei Ying didn’t know anything.
“We will try, nonetheless. We will -”
“We!” Wei Ying started laughing again, and coughed at the rasp in his throat. “We, we. Who is ‘we’? Hanguang-Jun and Wei Ying? We couldn’t be more opposite. Isn’t it you who told me that?”
“That’s not - that doesn’t matter, Wei Ying, let me help. ” Lan Zhan sounded desperate, there, and Wei Ying’s eyes darted to find his face. Lan Zhan looked a little wild around the eyes. A little helpless. Wei Ying thought, darkly satisfied, good. He was obscurely pleased that his misery had company.
“ - Fine,” He said, and giggled, helpless and overwhelmed. “Your books will tell you what it is, ah? What’s plaguing me, when I couldn’t solve it myself. You’ll get to be the hero of this story, ah, Hanguang-Jun?”
“Stop calling me that,” Lan Zhan said sharply, something like hurt in his tone. Something like brittle glass, shards of ice. Crunch. “Stop.”
“Lan Wangji, ” Wei Ying curled his tongue around it.
“No,” Lan Zhan said, and pushed himself up to standing. Wei Ying’s eyes followed him helplessly, but he couldn’t stand. He was so tired. “No. Wei Ying, we will -” he broke off and shook his head. “I will get you something to eat. Rest here.”
On the floor. Wei Ying stifled a little laugh. Sure, he could rest on the floor, where the wood pressed a bruise into his tailbone. He couldn’t stand, anyway, couldn’t even gather the momentum to crawl so he could follow helplessly after Lan Zhan.
Wei Ying was losing his mind. He curled back down until his forehead pressed against the perfectly clean floorboards of Lan Zhan’s shop, letting time slide past him in a long, quiet trickle. It was so quiet here. The books kept out the noise with their own sort of silence.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said, and there was a glass tapping against Wei Ying’s temple. He blinked blearily up at Lan Zhan, pupils refocusing.
“You say my name,” Wei Ying said, “So much.” He took the glass and uncurled so he could sip from it. It was just water, but it made him feel a little nauseated. Maybe it had been longer than he’d thought. He’d already thought it had been - however long. A while.
Lan Zhan stared at him with his gold eyes and his long eyelashes. Wei Ying’s head lolled nearly to his shoulder. It was a statement that couldn’t be denied.
In the end, Lan Zhan didn’t gratify him with a response. Wei Ying sipped slowly at the glass of water and watched Lan Zhan out of the corner of his eye. Lan Zhan wasn’t moving, wasn’t touching him. This wasn’t a part of the process of curse breaking, by standard, but who was Wei Ying to judge Lan Zhan’s, Hanguang-Jun’s methods?
Nobody. He was nobody.
“Hold still,” Lan Zhan said, and Wei Ying wheezed out a giggle before Lan Zhan was putting a warm hand on the back of his neck. He twitched all over - when was the last time he’d been touched? Never? No, couldn’t be - and squeezed the glass so hard his fingers went white. “Shh.”
Ah. He had been making a noise, thin and hurt. Wei Ying shhhed, obediently, and then swallowed another giggle. Obedience was not in his nature.
Lan Zhan took forever. Longer than forever. So long that Wei Ying wasn’t even sure that he was doing anything - feeling out curses, even big, expansive, mean curses wasn’t hard, especially not for someone as brightly talented as Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan lit up a room when he walked into it, he was so talented. He could see magic and presence on things from miles away. Like the rest of his family, Lan Zhan was a particularly phenomenal man. Special.
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said, and then paused, like he was just now realizing how frequently he really did say Wei Ying’s name. Wei Ying stifled another rattling laugh. Now Lan Zhan would never say his name again. “There is no curse.”
Wei Ying froze. There was breath on his cheek and he snapped his eyes shut, because he didn’t - he couldn’t -
Drip. Drip. Drip.
“What?” he rasped.
“There is no curse mark. There is nothing to - break.”
You couldn’t break a curse that didn’t exist. That was just common knowledge.
“Consequences,” Wei Ying agreed, and tittered a laugh. “Didn’t I tell you so?”
He’d always been good at detecting curses, too. Better than Lan Zhan, for all that Lan Zhan was talented and beautiful in the way his entire family was. The Lans had always been better at the kinder arts. Collecting magical books that came to love them. Finding items that had a breath of sentience.
“That’s not possible,” Lan Zhan said, sounding frustrated. “I can see it. I know that - that there’s something.”
“You think,” Wei Ying coughed. The water had made his throat worse. “You think I didn’t look? That I didn’t try? I know, I know, I know. You think I want to be like this?”
“No,” Lan Zhan said, helpless, and took his hand away from the nape of Wei Ying’s neck, where a curse mark would be if he were cursed for real instead of - of whatever he was, instead of having traded away his fortune and well-being and the core of himself. “I know you do not.”
“Aaah,” Wei Ying said, and tipped his head back. He was so tired. Maybe if he could think more clearly, he could help more, because Lan Zhan wanted to help. Wei Ying wanted to sleep so badly he could feel the yearning at the back of his throat. Every time he’d slept, he’d woken up to a corpse.
He didn’t dream anymore. He didn’t know how they got there. Maybe it had been him.
“I know there is something,” Lan Zhan sounded frustrated, almost, like there was some solution just out of his grasp. Wei Ying closed his eyes and sighed, wondering if he could snatch a couple of seconds of sleep in between the sliding seconds. “Perhaps my brother-”
Wei Ying wheezed a laugh before he could help himself. Hanguang-Jun had a much higher opinion of Zewu-Jun’s willingness to help Wei Ying than Wei Ying himself did, that was certainly the case.
“Your brother hates me,” Wei Ying rasped, and clumsily patted the floor. “Maybe you should just kill me, ah? Efficient. Don’t have to try - scrying. Identifying talismans. Who can afford it?”
Lan Zhan was probably frowning, but Wei Ying couldn’t open his eyes. Who knew?
“Foolish,” Lan Zhan bit out, and there was a rustle of clothes as he straightened up and walked away. Wei Ying swayed towards him, pathetically, like he was a sunflower turning his face.
He patted the floor again, soft. Maybe if he just - just slid down. A little further.
•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•
Lan Zhan was smiling, just faintly, at something that he had in his hands when Wei Ying whirled into the shop on that particular summer day, bringing the bright and warm inside with him. He glanced up when Wei Ying let the door jingle closed behind him, but didn’t bother to hide his smile. “What’s that, Lan Zhan-ah?” Wei Ying had asked, dropping his bag onto the hook that Lan Zhan had installed for just that purpose.
“It is an astrolabe,” Lan Zhan had replied, and gestured Wei Ying closer so he could look at it together with him. It was beautiful and rare, a fine example of the craft, and Wei Ying had reached to touch, absent the way he was with all of his touches. He hadn’t anticipated Lan Zhan taking his hand and placing the astrolabe into it, softly curling his fingers so it wouldn’t slip.
“It’s very nice , ” Wei Ying had said, and it was. It was very nice, buzzing with magic and sentience, but Wei Ying had been looking at Lan Zhan then and Lan Zhan had been looking back, quiet and serious. Wei Ying could have counted his eyelashes, if he’d leaned closer, but he hadn’t. He’d given Lan Zhan the relic back instead, and slipped away from the counter, away from the moment between them. It had stretched and pulled like taffy, before finally -
•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•
Wei Ying woke up with a gasp, a too-strong grip pinning his wrists to the floor so he couldn’t even muffle the way a broken cry tore from his throat. “Fuck - !”
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said, low and urgent, pressing his wrists harder into the floor. “Wei Ying, it is - you’re safe, you’re here with me.”
Wei Ying shook his head, taking a sharp gasp of air that had the taste of copper down his throat. Lan Zhan hadn’t said it was alright, because it wasn’t. Wei Ying’s stomach swooped when he realized that he’d - he must have fallen asleep, must have -
“What - is there - “
Lan Zhan frowned, easing his grip off of Wei Ying’s wrists when he realized he wasn’t trying to fight anymore. Wei Ying dropped his head back to the floor with a dull thump, pressing his palms into his eyes so hard spots danced in his vision.
“Is there what?”
“Did I … did anything happen?”
“No,” Lan Zhan frowned harder. “Should something have? You were alone for under five minutes. I - when you started screaming, I.”
Lan Zhan didn’t say came running, but only because he didn’t have to. It was obvious from the hurt tilt of his mouth that he’d hurried. Screaming , hah.
“Mm. No, nothing. Help me up, Lan Zhan, I should go.”
Lan Zhan stared at him like he’d grown a second head. “No.” He said, flat denial. Wei Ying wheezed a vague laugh.
“You can’t keep me here. I need to -”
“I called my brother,” Lan Zhan said, very firmly. Like that was supposed to convince Wei Ying of something. “He will be coming here. To - help.”
Help, Wei Ying mouthed. Maybe Zewu-Jun would just straight up kill him. Wouldn’t that be hilarious? Lan Zhan’s brother had really never liked him.
There was a phrase about being born under an unfortunate star, and there was something to be said about being followed by misfortune, but it was an entirely different thing that followed Wei Ying. He’d been told, once, that it wasn’t that he was followed by misfortune - more that sensitive people could - could sense the tragedy on him, even before it had come to pass. They’d known better to be entangled with someone whose life would ultimately end, miserable and alone.
The Lans were sensitive. Everyone knew that. But Lan Zhan had never known how to mind his own fucking business.
Zewu-Jun was the smarter brother, possibly because he was older. He hadn’t liked Wei Ying from the day that he’d met him, and he’d been right. Oh, he’d been perfectly polite, cordial as anything, of course - the Lans were sensitive and known for their politeness - but Wei Ying could always tell when someone was putting up with him.
He liked Zewu-Jun, though. It wasn’t his fault that Wei Ying had an aura like dirty laundry.
“ - Ying?” Lan Zhan said. Probably had been saying a while, judging by his urgency. Wei Ying blinked at him with a vague noise of confusion. “I asked if that was alright.”
“Mm. Do you think your brother will kill me?”
Lan Zhan stared at him, flat and betrayed, and shook his head once, fast enough to whip himself in the face with his hair. “He would not.”
Wei Ying remembered a conversation that he’d stumbled on, once, when he’d managed to slip into the shop on the heels of someone else and neither of the Lan brothers had been paying attention.
You would go so far to save him? He is only one man, Wangji. Zewu-Jun had always sounded like that. Reasonable, warm. No matter what he was saying.
A good man , Lan Zhan had said, and Wei Ying had known in all of his fingers and toes that they’d been talking about him.
The world is full of good men , Zewu-Jun had said, dark, and Lan Zhan had replied, cool -
If we do not save the man in front of us, brother, what is the use of speculating on those that we do not go and find?
‘He would not’ was such a simple answer for a complicated question in Wei Ying’s head.
“Hm,” he said, thoughtful, and dragged himself to a sitting position so he could rest his elbows on his knees. His wrists felt a little bruised. “So you’re going to - what. Try and break a curse that you can’t find from someone you can’t find with a secret Lan power no one knows about?”
“No,” Lan Zhan said, and looked up at the tinkle of the bell over the door. Nothing was there. “He will be able to see it, as I cannot. If you and I and he cannot, then we will simply have to accept that it is not a curse.”
Wei Ying blinked at him. He’d gone to high school. He was familiar with the experimental method.
“Maybe,” Wei Ying said, “I’m just unlucky. I told you it was -”
“It is not a consequence, ” Lan Zhan spat, vicious as Wei Ying had ever heard him. He leaned back a touch, like he’d be able to take Lan Zhan’s face in better from this far away. “You cannot - what you did is impossible. It should have taken your life. But it did not, and the fact that it did not and you have still -”
He cut off, searching for the words, and Wei Ying let him. Lan Zhan sometimes needed space to think. “It worked as intended. And you did not die. The price has been paid. It does not - magic is not a progressive disease. It would not continue to take and take, until there is nothing left of you. You would have died, then, if you were to die at all, and you did not die, so the price is not death. Do you understand me, Wei Ying? This is not something you did. This is someone who wishes, deeply, to hurt you, and I do not -- I cannot -- “
Lan Zhan struggled himself to silence. Wei Ying looked at him. The bell over the door rang.
“Why are you on the floor?” the venerable Zewu-Jun asked. That was, in all fairness, a good question. He must have run, to arrive so quickly. Or maybe it’d been longer than Wei Ying had thought.
“We’re hanging out,” Wei Ying drawled, instinctively needling, and Lan Zhan’s brother gave him a pitying look before letting his eyes slide past entirely. Wei Ying hated being ignored, hated when people looked over him like he was nothing and no one, but he was so tired. He didn’t have the energy to work up a good offense.
“Wei Ying passed out,” Lan Zhan said, which was a polite thing to call fell asleep standing up. Wei Ying pressed his lips together and didn’t say anything.
“Hm.” Zewu-Jun got closer, close enough to touch, and crouched down so he was level with Wei Ying’s face. His neck, more of.
He looked closely, without ever quite touching Wei Ying. Cocked his head to the side. “There is nothing,” he said in his kind, musical voice, and then corrected - “No, there’s - a presence, perhaps, like someone has laid… hhm. No, there is no curse.”
He said it so seriously, so terribly convinced of his own self-evaluation. Wei Ying wondered if he ever got things wrong, and bluffed through it with sheer charisma. The thought made him laugh, raspy.
“If not that, then what?” Lan Zhan asked, laying a hand on Wei Ying’s shoulder like a brand. His hands were so hot they burned. Wei Ying swayed into the heat of them, helpless. He missed, achingly, his brother.
Zewu-Jun shook his head, slow. Neither of them were willing to say the words I don’t know. It was a little funny. Wei Ying wondered if all little Lans were raised that way.
“You can sense it, I think,” He told Lan Zhan. “He is marked, but not cursed. It’s as if…” He groped for the words, too, trying to formulate his response.
“As if something has claimed him,” Lan Zhan agreed, and there was a ripple through the pages of all the books, like a sigh. Lan Zhan looked up, wide-eyed. “Something is… holding onto him?”
“Did you summon something?” Zewu-Jun asked Wei Ying, the first time he’d spoken directly to him in years. Wei Ying blinked, slow, like a lizard, and cracked a smile.
“You’ll need to be more specific than that.”
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan cautioned, but Zewu-Jun was already waving him off.
“Recently. Something powerful. Something that could -”
mark you claim you make you mine use you need you -
Wei Ying jolted upright with a sharp gasp, hand going to his chest, and looked around wildly. “What -?”
Both of the Lans looked at him, identical expressions of bewildered concern on their faces. Lan Zhan’s was, perhaps, a little more authentic.
“ Oh, ” Wei Ying sighed, and smoothed his hand down his own chest. “I get it. It’s a ghost.”
Perfect jade features shifted to politely confused over scared and worried .
“What?” Lan Zhan broke the silence between them, apparently willing to give up a little face to save himself the trouble of trying to puzzle through Wei Ying’s half-combobulated rambling.
“Ah - I thought I was just going fucking crazy,” Wei Ying said, waving a hand at his own head. He didn’t think it was an unreasonable conclusion. “Because - voices. Never wanna talk about hearing voices. But it’s a spirit.”
Lan Zhan blinked, slow. Zewu-Jun looked like he still thought Wei Ying was going crazy.
“It wants something,” Wei Ying prompted, helpfully. It wasn’t that helpful. It was really much more his own wheelhouse than the Lan family’s, bless them. They dealt much more in light, fluffy magic. The sort that could be sold with a smile. They’d never touch a curse, of course, not on purpose, and granting a spirit’s dying wish was awfully like consorting with dark forces.
Zewu-Jun’s face had fallen into a creased little frown, contemplative. “Did you - you didn’t summon it, or you wouldn’t have thought it may be a curse.”
“Wei Ying knew it was not a curse, but -”
Wei Ying waved a hand. “I was - let’s not, we don’t have to. Talk about it.”
Lan Zhan looked at him wearily. Wei Ying couldn’t say that he disagreed. “Does it truly matter how it came to be?” he asked after a moment of shared silence, and Zewu-Jun eventually shook his head.
“Only inasmuch as it narrows the possibilities, if it is something that must be invited in.”
“I didn’t invite a spirit to live in me, ” Wei Ying sighed, rubbing his chest fitfully.
“There are few things,” Zewu-Jun said delicately, picking his words to be polite and straightforward, “that I would put past you, Wei Wuxian, if there were something that you had to achieve, and could find no other way to do so.”
“ Brother. ” Lan Zhan snapped. Wei Ying couldn’t even find the words to defend himself. He laughed, soft, and shook off Lan Zhan’s hand so he could stand.
“Sure,” he said, and wobbled a little bit once he was upright. “No, you’re - you’re right. You’re right! Nothing I can -” Wei Ying rubbed his mouth, fitful, and glanced towards the door.
“No,” Lan Zhan said, immediately correctly interpreting Wei Ying’s look. “Go upstairs.”
Wei Ying went. Behind him, he heard Zewu-Jun say, in his soft, even voice, “I did not mean to give offense.”
•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan had said one day, when Wei Ying had entered the shop on a cold and windy night. The snow had been starting to pile up in all the gutters, the roads getting too icy to safely walk. Wei Ying had always liked nights like that, for all that it was too cold for comfort after a lifetime spent in the balmy humidity of Lotus Pier. He liked the way that lights glinted across the ice.
“Lan Zhan , ” Wei Ying had said, call-and-response, and he remembered that he’d been smiling. He’d liked seeing Lan Zhan, even if they weren’t necessarily close. Lan Zhan hadn’t let people get close, really, but the books had stopped holding themselves shut against Wei Ying’s questing fingers and that may as well have been a sign of approval.
“Why don’t you stay?” he’d asked, casual, and turned away to light a candle at his elbow. “The storm will only get worse.”
“Ah-ah, Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying had grinned, “ You know that because of your power to see the future, ah?”
“Yes , ” Lan Zhan had said drily, and lit the next candle in the row just before all the electric lights flickered out without a sound. They were bathed in the warm candle glow, just the two of them. “And the weather report.”
Wei Ying had laughed and laughed and let Lan Zhan show him upstairs. He’d followed him like Lan Zhan were the sun and Wei Ying a helpless planet, circling in his orbit. Like gravity, irrevocable.
•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•