“You said there was a specific way to help make my body more right.” Wei Wuxian fidgeted, unable to keep still, and Lan Wangji watched him fondly. “Is it complicated? I mean, even if it is complicated, I’ll be able to do it, right?”
“Of course you will.” Lan Wangji grasped Wei Wuxian’s hands, catching his attention. Even if Wei Wuxian’s face wasn’t the one Lan Wangji had originally fallen in love with, the intelligence and energy dancing within his eyes was unmistakable; Lan Wangji didn’t know how he had ever fooled anyone into thinking he was someone else. “I learned them as I was forming my golden core.”
Wei Wuxian paused, narrowed his eyes, asked, “Did you learn them or create them?”
Lan Wangji let out soft laughter and tugged Wei Wuxian to sit beside him in the jingshi’s garden. Lan Sizhui had planted most of it when he had been a child, and vigilantly tended it all these years. It grew wild with flowers and fruit and vegetables all intermixed, and Lan Wangji had never had the heart to try and create more orderly rows than the ones he had helped Lan Sizhui (and, later, Lan Jingyi) plant.
“You did create them!” Wei Wuxian leaned all the way onto Lan Wangji’s lap, a sprawling weight full of exasperating affection. “My Er-gege is so smart!”
His face warmed at the unexpected compliment, and Lan Wangji tugged gently on Wei Wuxian’s hair as he remarked, “So is my Wei Ying.”
As expected, Wei Wuxian turned to bury his face in Lan Wangji’s stomach. “I’ll get a big head if you keep saying things like that! You won’t be able to take me anywhere, because my head will be so big it can’t fit through doors.”
Lan Wangji laughed, partially at Wei Wuxian’s words and partially at the way his nose tickled Lan Wangji’s stomach. This, of course, only made Wei Wuxian wriggle his face more vigorously, pushing with enough force that Lan Wangji ended up laying on his back, giggling up at the sky while Wei Wuxian sprawled over his legs and tickled him.
Unsurprisingly, that led to an entirely other kind of pleasant interlude. The jingshi was secluded, and the back garden wasn’t easily visible, and Lan Wangji was nowhere near as loud as Wei Wuxian could be.
When they had finished, and cleaned up, Lan Wangji returned to the original topic. “You have expressed interest in learning,” he reminded Wei Wuxian, when his husband whined about wanting to stay in bed forever for the tenth time that day. (The other nine had been in the morning, and Lan Wangji suspected that if he reminded Wei Wuxian of that, he would be informed that those shouldn’t count because Wei Wuxian hadn’t been fully awake yet.)
“I’ve expressed interest in a lot of things.”
Lan Wangji sat next to Wei Wuxian and stroked his hair, patiently finger-combing through the worst tangles they’d created. “You aren’t normally afraid of learning things.”
“I’m not afraid,” Wei Wuxian mumbled, but his heart wasn’t in the words. He pushed himself up just enough to deposit his head on Lan Wangji’s lap, then continued. “It’s just… I’m already learning how to cultivate someone else’s core.”
For a moment, Lan Wangji considered not being petty. Then, because Wei Wuxian wouldn’t hold back and was a terrible influence on him, he said, “Jiang Wanyin could advise you on that.”
Wei Wuxian sat up properly just to glare at Lan Wangji for a moment.
Lan Wangji held his gaze steadily. “It’s not something to be ashamed of,” he said softly. “He’s done great things with it.”
“It’s different,” Wei Wuxian said, curling back into Lan Wangji’s embrace. “He— Jiang Cheng is my brother. I never knew Mo Xuanyu.”
“She gave you another chance despite that.” Lan Wangji kissed Wei Wuxian’s head. “You are no worse off than any child building their golden core for the first time, Wei Wuxian.”
Wei Wuxian sighed dramatically, which was one of his favorite ways to sigh. It involved his whole body, and often simply meant he was about to capitulate but wasn’t happy about it. “Can you teach me while we’re cuddling?”
Lan Wangji laughed, tightening his grip. “That depends on if Wei Ying can focus while I’m holding onto him.”
“…maybe you had better not,” Wei Wuxian admitted, extracting himself. “I know one part of me wants to focus very much but I don’t think it’s the part you want to focus right now.”
“Mn.” Lan Wangji reluctantly let go, unable to resist pulling Wei Wuxian in for another kiss before releasing him fully. “Your brain is very important for this, yes.”
Wei Wuxian nodded, sitting on the bed with his back straight and eyes bright and clothing and hair utterly disheveled. He was beautiful, Lan Wangji thought, studying him. Even in a body that didn’t fit him quite right, he was as handsome as the boy Lan Wangji had first met all those years ago. And, of course, he had to ruin it a little by saying, “Teach me your secret techniques, Lan Zhan-laoshi,” with a grin and waggle of his eyebrows.
Lan Wangji gave him a flat stare, arranging his own body properly for meditation, until Wei Wuxian rolled his eyes and settled down. It wasn’t that he was adverse to the other meaning, but they had just had sex and he had been trying to pin Wei Wuxian down to learn the techniques he’d expressed interest in since the first time he heard about them. “It starts as any cultivation does,” he began, and Wei Wuxian listened.
The technique truly wasn’t difficult; all kinds of cultivation created the foundation that this technique built upon. Once learned, it could be integrated into any kind of cultivation. The body already wanted to become its most perfect self; this was a way of re-aligning energy to create changes appropriate for the appearance one most desired. “It should work even though you are grown,” Lan Wangji added, before Wei Wuxian could question him. “I had entered puberty before Xiongzhang and Shufu helped me research and develop this method.”
“I still can’t believe Lan-xiansheng helped you.” Wei Wuxian twirled a stray lock of hair in one finger, looking thoughtful. “How old were you, Lan Zhan?”
“When we began researching? Ten.” Lan Wangji swallowed back the memories of that time as best he could, but he knew Wei Wuxian would still hear the complicated feelings in his voice. “It took a year, almost two, for us to perfect it.”
Wei Wuxian reached out and grasped his hand, easy with his physical affection in a way that never failed to astound Lan Wangji. Even with a body they both knew fit him badly, Wei Wuxian’s first instinct was always to hug or touch or kiss. “Lan Zhan,” he murmured, “do you wish someone else had developed it first?”
Lan Wangji nodded, not even trying to speak through the emotions clogging his throat. He’d thought he was done with these feelings when Wei Wuxian’s cohort had come to the Cloud Recesses for lectures and nobody had thought he’d been anything but another youth. He’d thought, again, that he’d never have reason to wish for a mentor after Jingyi had come to him for help. And yet, here he was again, wishing that he could have been taught as well.
Wei Wuxian enveloped him in a hug, and Lan Wangji let his face fall to the soft curve of his husband’s shoulder, where he could hide in the warm pulse of Wei Wuxian’s throat. As Wei Wuxian talked, he could feel the vibrations. “There are too many ways for people to take ‘make yourself look the way you want’ and use it improperly,” Wei Wuxian said, words piling out of his mouth as rapidly as he thought them. “But if we can narrow it down, make it clear what this is for—then we must be able to spread it, so that no more children feel the way you did.”
Overcome once more by the depth and strength of his feelings for Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji simply tightened his grip. There were no words; he had set it to song, and tried his best to find poetry that fit, and given up. Only the music could explain the wonder and joy of how seamlessly Wei Wuxian took his ideas and lifted them up, gave them places in the world.
Only their bodies together could express the care and devotion Lan Wangji felt, and he pressed kisses into Wei Wuxian’s skin, listening as Wei Wuxian kept working through potential experiments and refinements. Some of them might never work, and others would be difficult to make happen, but he was so very happy that Wei Wuxian was going to put this work in—and it would, in the end, all be for him.
“Hey, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian said breathlessly as Lan Wangji nibbled on his earlobe. “You said this cultivation technique could be added to any other, right?”
Lan Wangji nodded, revelling in the smooth brush of Wei Wuxian’s skin against his.
“Have you ever tried it with dual cultivation?”
“An advanced beginning,” Lan Wangji said gravely, and was rewarded with Wei Wuxian’s laughter. “But you are an advanced student.”
Wei Wuxian bit Lan Wangji’s neck, and then said, “Teach me, Lan-laoshi.”
And, of course, Lan Wangji did.