blossoms in the moonlight look much the same

There was a day, in the second year of Lan Wangji’s seclusion, when the spring sunlight shone strongly enough through the window-paper of the Jingshi that it warmed the still air there, and when he unlatched the window, there was strength enough in his arms to push the lower frame out and open, and even to set the wooden rod that held it so.

He rested afterwards—which was to say, he sank to his knees before the open window and let the soft breeze cool the sweat beading on his forehead.

The green scent of first growth came to him on the air, mountain grass and bamboo and pines, all cloaked somewhat by the budding gentians that surrounded the house. The Jingshi was too far from the rest of the Cloud Recesses for him to hear other Lan disciples going about their daily routines. He’d prized it for that, once. Now, waiting for his heart to stop hammering from the pain, he breathed in the distant scents of home.

There was another scent on the breeze, he realised after a little while: a blossomy sweetness that teased at the edge of his awareness, somehow familiar and yet not. It was appropriate to the season, but too strong to be from the plum and pear orchards near the foot of the mountain. A mystery, and one he did not care enough to resolve.

He let himself drift in the spring warmth and it felt almost pleasant, almost like something he might enjoy, for the first time he could remember.

Then his shoulders, which had recovered from pushing open the window, began to ache from being in the same posture for too long. He slowly stood, lay down on the bed, and began to recite the Scripture of Purity and Tranquility, as he had nearly every day since childhood. While he couldn’t play his qin or wield Bichen, or meditate as long as he once could, he could at least manage this.

In the evening, his xiongzhang came to see him. They sat opposite one another at Lan Wangji’s low table and drank tea that xiongzhang had brought with him, and for which he had boiled the water. Lan Wangji, in his seclusion, was a poor host.

“I trust that matters inside the clan are well,” he said, just before xiongzhang left, “and outside of it.”

Lan Wangji wasn’t supposed to be bothered by such things, only to reflect on his own misdeeds and rebuild his cultivation. That was why he hadn’t exactly asked—so that when xiongzhang replied, “Wangji,” with a warning tone to his voice, he could meet it with a righteous gaze—but he had still seen xiongzhang’s frown at the mention of outside affairs.

Xiongzhang touched Lan Wangji’s arm in farewell and saw himself out. That strange blossom fragrance from earlier in the day drifted from his sleeves, over xiongzhang’s own muted beta scent. Was it a person, then, a stranger who had come to meet with xiongzhang?

Lan Wangji could not sustain even this mild curiosity for long. The following day, it became clear why his senses had been so sharp: his rut began, the first real rut in a nearly two years. His body had apparently healed enough to support such an exhausting process, but it hurt, it hurt him all over—he was too stiff, too sore and too weak to attend to himself properly, too oversensitive not to think, every moment, of Wei Ying. It felt like it would last forever.

From that point on, he went into rut every spring and autumn, with gruelling regularity.

It wasn’t long after he left seclusion that he met the rogue cultivator Song Zichen. On his second or third night-hunting trip, he found himself on a forested mountain some distance from Gusu—officially inside Tingshan He territory, though it was an area the He Clan didn’t see much value in defending from ghosts and monsters. Investigating nearby villagers’ claims that something unnatural had been coming out from the woods at night to prowl around their houses, he instead ran into a reserved daoshi with impressive swordplay.

Song Zichen was tall for a beta, almost of a height with Lan Wangji himself, and carried himself with the air of a man who preferred to remain inconspicuous. He was a man of few words, yet Lan Wangji found it easy to cooperate with him.

Two cultivators of their calibre were not really necessary to catch the cause of the disturbances in the village: a small mountain demon, only lately sprung up from the twisted qi of the convoluted ravines. Still, it was faster than doing it alone. When they returned to the village head to report their success, Lan Wangji deliberately stood slightly back. He had no need of a reward, but if Song Zichen were in need… Lan Wangji found himself glancing at the rogue cultivator’s black robes, checking for darns or ragged hems.

Song Zichen apologetically refused a gift of preserved meat, but accepted a bundle of pungent pickled greens. The village head’s wife invited them both to stay the night at her house, and Song Zichen began to demur, in a low and courteous voice—but not before throwing Lan Wangji an uncertain glance. It was quick enough that he could easily have missed it.

“I have business in the morning in Shanyin,” he interjected. “If Song daozhang would accompany me to the inn there, I should be glad to continue our discussion from earlier.”

The way Song Zichen nodded told him he’d guessed correctly: that neither of them were keen to spend the night on a scratchy straw bed, under covers that had been used by the whole family, kindly though the offer was meant. Shanyin was not a large town; still, it had an inn Lan Wangji trusted to bring them clean bathwater and fresh sheets. Of course, he would pay.

Sipping tea together after their evening meal, Lan Wangji found himself wondering what he could say to his new acquaintance to find out more about him. Their so-called discussion earlier had only been an exchange of observations and tactics. Three years of solitude had not made him a better conversationalist, and the thought of explaining why he was three years out of touch with all that had happened in the cultivation world was tiring by itself.

Song Zichen was the one to break the silence. “After all Lan gongzi’s generosity, I’m ashamed to have another favour to ask,” he said, “but I am searching for a friend, someone I… lost touch with. If you have any news about the cultivator Xiao Xingchen, I’d be grateful to hear it.”

He didn’t have any news, of course. Still, he let Song Zichen tell him about his missing friend, who was brave and beautiful and believed in justice, and if he fell into a reverie of his own, Song Zichen apparently took it as thoughtful listening. By the time they fell asleep on their separate beds, Lan Wangji had promised to ask about Xiao Xingchen on his own travels. It was surely the least he could do.

The next time Lan Wangji left the Cloud Recesses to night-hunt, it wasn’t a coincidence that he met Song Zichen. A man searching for somebody in the rivers and lakes has to make himself easy to find, and asking after a tall beta cultivator, dressed in severe black and carrying a sword as memorable as Fuxue, would have put Lan Wangji on his trail even if Song Zichen hadn’t wanted to be found. (Considering this, Lan Wangji wondered where Xiao Xingchen might have gone that the cultivation world’s gossip network couldn’t winkle him out. He put those thoughts aside as well as he could.)

Song Zichen had moved northwards in the meantime, as far Guangling. Together, they flew by sword over li upon li of low-lying fields, and then over salt flats that stretched out towards the distant sea. Once, they startled a monstrous fish yao in a marsh; it must have left the river and lost its way, only to be trapped in the shallow, brackish water. Lan Wangji saw its immense head lurch above the surface to snap at Song Zichen, flying in the lead, before smacking back down into the marsh.

Not too far ahead stood a couple of ramshackle cottages—too small to be lived in year-round, they were probably occasional shelter for fishermen. If anyone were there right now, Lan Wangji and Song Zichen would be leading the yao right towards them. He’d just decided they had to deal with it when he looked down and saw its ichorous mouth beneath his feet on Bichen. Its rows of teeth caught the evening light like shards of wet flint.

He couldn’t wield his sword at the yao whilst standing on it. Sweeping up to a higher altitude, Lan Wangji timed his leap with a command to Bichen—cut the monster’s throat and then return to me—and it would have worked perfectly if the yao hadn’t chased after the shiny sword, instead of the tasty morsel that was him, as he’d expected. He watched it flopping through the mud away from him as he turned upside down in midair, Bichen drawing black blood from its mouth but too far off to catch him before he hit the water—

Strong, warm arms wrapped around him with barely a jolt. He was moving forwards again, at speed, not tumbling down into the mud and weeds—what had happened?

Lan Wangji was swung around, his view of the marsh wheeling to show the enormous fish wrestling with something invisible, fluids spraying out in all directions. His feet were lowered down onto the narrow swordblade beneath him. Song Zichen waited until he was steady before letting go of him with one hand. Then he sped them back towards the yao.

Up close, he saw that the yao wasn’t wrestling at all: Bichen was caught in the vice of its pointed teeth, unable to twist free even as the yao was on the verge of death.

The black streak of Song Zichen’s horsetail whisk whipped out from behind him, hitting the monster’s jaw and freeing his sword. Lan Wangji quickly made a sword seal to guide it back to him, with one final slash at the yao that sent it down into the water in pieces.

He was breathing fast, leaning back against Song Zichen’s solid chest and gripping his arm with one hand. As they left the dead thing in their wake, he tried to stand more upright, to put at least a little space between them.

“I can go back to Bichen,” he offered, voice barely raised against the wind.

“Let’s reach the huts first,” Song Zichen replied. Lan Wangji could feel the vibration of his voice through his layers of clothing, in the flesh and scar tissue of his once-ruined back.

“You don’t like touching people,” he wanted to say, or perhaps, “I don’t like touching people,” but somehow it didn’t feel necessary.

They shared an inn room again, in Datong. No one there had heard of Xiao Xingchen, not for a year, though there were plenty of idlers in the teashops and the market for cultivational goods who were keen to relate what they’d heard back then. Song Zichen shut them down rapidly with a cold glare and moved on.

It was comfortable, somehow, walking through the crowded streets with him. Lan Wangji had been lonely, all those years in the Jingshi, hardly even seeing his xiongzhang or little Lan Yuan. He hadn’t expected that the company of a near-stranger could be so pleasant—

Lan Wangji glanced upwards, following a bird’s flight from street to roof. Black robes flickered in his peripheral vision, just at his elbow, and his heart lurched in his chest before he realised what was happening.

“Are you all right?” a voice asked, and he knew, he knew it was Song Zichen daozhang, the rogue cultivator searching for someone else, not him, but all he could see was the ripple of black silk, and if he didn’t look up at the speaker’s face, it didn’t have to be true…

“I’m fine.” Lan Wangji straightened to his full height and briefly met Song Zichen’s eyes. “Let’s head back to the inn. I don’t think we’ll learn anything else here.”

He didn’t sleep that night, just listened to the measured breathing from the other bed. In the morning, he said his farewells and began the flight back to Gusu. Autumn was closing in. There should be no hurry, as Lan Wangji’s ruts were predictable to the day and he had always been careful around them, but suddenly it seemed more urgent than ever not to be in that state near Song Zichen.

As a diligent disciple, Lan Wangji reported to his clan leader after every night-hunting excursion.

Kneeling in the Hanshi, he took a sip of the light, grassy tea his xiongzhang favoured and waited for him to look up from the written report he had surely read through at least once since Lan Wangji submitted it to him. He could see his own calligraphy on the sheet of paper and felt a lingering relief that it was as elegant now as it had been, before the whipping. He’d had to relearn it along with swordplay and how to dress himself without pulling too much on the scars.

“You met a second time with Song Zichen, Wangji,” xiongzhang said neutrally, his eyes still lowered to the page, “and travelled with him for some time.”

“Yes.”

“Song Zichen is a very capable swordsman with an excellent reputation. As are you.” Unspoken but unavoidably present was the effort that the Lan Clan had put in to keep his reputation so unstained.

“Mn.”

Xiongzhang laid the report on the table and looked Lan Wangji in the face. “Be careful, Wangji. An unbonded alpha and a lone omega becoming so close, travelling as a pair and lodging together, might suffer damage to their reputations that I don’t think either of you really want.”

Lan Wangji blinked.

“Song Zichen is a beta,” he said.

“Song Zichen is an omega,” xiongzhang corrected him. He looked almost as puzzled as Lan Wangji felt. “I met him myself, about two years ago, when he and his bondmate Xiao Xingchen came to the Cloud Recesses. It was when they were pursuing the clan-murderer Xue Yang.”

His bondmate, Xiao Xingchen? Lan Wangji couldn’t think of a thing to say. He sat silently and waited for the next thing to happen, for a question he could answer or a statement that was simpler to refute.

At last, xiongzhang sighed. “It was one thing when he and Xiao Xingchen were together, of course,” he said. “And no one would openly disparage an omega searching for his bonded alpha mate… not at first, anyway. So long as Song Zichen is careful not to court scandal.”

Lan Wangji poured more tea for both of them. It meant he could look down at the gleaming celadon pot and watch the narrow liquid column fall from its spout to the cup.

“Please be careful too, Wangji, whoever it is you’ve been spending time with.” Xiongzhang took his tea and smiled. Lan Wangji hated that he could see the effort in it. “Now, will you tell me more about how you defeated this yao in the salt marshes? And then perhaps we can discuss the classes you’d like to take over, starting next month. You’ve been away a lot recently, but we need you to pass your expertise on to the younger disciples.”

The next time Lan Wangji left the Cloud Recesses, he made sure his qiankun pouch was packed with everything he’d need for a long trip away.

Everything, that is, except Lan Yuan, who clung to him outside the youngest disciples’ dormitory and told him, “I know, I know,” when Lan Wangji explained that he was going to help other people who needed him, and that he’d be back to see Lan Yuan once he’d done that.

Did he know that?

“Remember that I’ve always come back before,” he told the child seriously. “I will be back again this time, too.”

“Mn. I know,” Lan Yuan said, “but soon? Will Hanguang jun be back soon?”

“As soon as I can.”

His uncle had snorted when he’d said he was leaving once more, and not even in his direction; he hadn’t yet started to address Lan Wangji directly again. Xiongzhang had given him a smile that promised longer discussions on his duty to the clan. Lan Wangji himself had packed enough food and clothes to stay away for months. They all knew, though, that Wei Ying’s child bound him to the Lan in a way nothing else could now. He would be back.

The city of Ezhou was bustling and prosperous, the city of one hundred lakes with traders and boatmen calling from every corner. It wasn’t truly within the Yunmeng Jiang’s territory, but the Ezhou Hu had been a dependent clan of theirs for generations and seeing their yellow-and-green uniform robes on the streets put an unbearable tension into Lan Wangji.

A group of Hu disciples—he wanted to call them a gang—had confronted him and Song Zichen in the market square and demanded to know what cultivators dared to enter their city without registering themselves at the clan headquarters. He had looked down his nose at them and replied that Hanguang jun of the Gusu Lan Clan would call on the Hu clan leader at his own convenience. That had cowed them well enough. Now, however, he would have to visit Hu zongzhu at some point before he left, and his distaste for that cast an extra pall over his mood.

“Do you really believe Xiao Xingchen would be here?” he asked Song Zichen. The two of them had stepped into a quiet alley that ran parallel to two busier streets, silently agreeing that they needed a break from the rush of the merchant town.

Song Zichen’s face fell. “It doesn’t seem like the kind of place he favours,” he admitted. “The information I heard seemed reliable. Maybe he was just passing through here.”

Saying the name of Song Zichen’s lover had left his tongue stinging. He was certain that this was the true Song Zichen, so was he incorrect, or was his xiongzhang?

“I want to talk to you,” he said suddenly, surprising himself with the roughness of his voice.

“All right,” Song Zichen said slowly. “Where?”

The Gusu Lan Clan were known among cultivation clans for their abstemiousness. Lan Wangji had been used to that in all the time he’d spent among cultivation society, had even enjoyed that reputation distinguishing his clan from the voluptuary Jin and iniquitous Wen. With Song Zichen, though, he had learned that his asceticism, with Lan silver in his money-pouch, was something quite different from a rogue cultivator’s version.

“Let’s drink some tea,” he said. “I’ll rent us a private room.”

Once they were settled against cushions in a well-decorated nook of a nearby teahouse and the waiter had softly closed the door, Lan Wangji pushed away his cup.

“Lan zongzhu has told me he met you and Xiao Xingchen, two or so years ago.” His voice had turned hard; he could feel the corner of his mouth and his brow pulling down. “He said that you were an omega and Xiao Xingchen is your bondmate.”

Leaning back against the cushioned wall, Song Zichen regarded him steadily. At length he said, “I never told you otherwise.”

“You told me he was your friend.”

“He is my friend. Does it matter if we—if we also…” Song Zichen flicked his hand to one side. It would have been a fair attempt at nonchalance, if his voice hadn’t faltered and his jaw hadn’t clenched.

“I thought you were a beta,” Lan Wangji said, and it sounded so foolish when he said it that he felt his ears start to burn. A child of Lan Yuan’s age might make that sort of mistake, but he was a grown adult alpha. Sitting here with Song Zichen, closed up together in the little private room, he still couldn’t make out any omega scent and it was starting to make him doubt his senses.

“Ah.” Song Zichen crossed his arms. His challenging stare fell away. “How to explain this. When Xiao Xingchen and I parted ways…”

The room felt too small for them both. If Song Zichen was tall for a beta, he was a giant of an omega. Lan Wangji was prying into things he had no right to ask about—why had he thought he had an interest here? Not even Wei Ying had let him close enough to ask this sort of thing. He was holding his breath, he realised, denying himself all sense of smell, and yet Song Zichen kept talking.

“I am an omega,” he said, “and he is an alpha and my mate. My body always behaved—” he waved his hand again, less dismissively than before “—as you would expect, until he left me.” A sigh. “I was badly injured back then. I thought it was due to that, but instead of coming back to normal as I healed, it just got even more… strongly sealed away.”

He leaned across the table, one hand shooting forwards towards Lan Wangji. Lan Wangji flinched.

Song Zichen turned his hand so that the inner wrist was revealed.

“It’s not surprising that you thought I was a beta, but look again. Smell me,” he said. “I don’t even have a beta’s scent. There’s nothing. And in other places, it’s almost as if I never presented at all.”

Lan Wangji felt faint. “I’m sorry for questioning you so rudely,” he managed. “This was none of my business.”

“Mn.” Song Zichen gave him a small, sad smile. “I’m glad that you asked, in a way,” he said. “Lan Wangji, I think we could be friends. If you’re not horrified at the thought of befriending a lone omega, that is. It’s good to be open about these things with a friend.”

Lan Wangji smiled back, as much as he could through the haze of sorrow that was rising up in him for reasons he couldn’t understand. “Please, call me Wangji,” he said.

“Wangji, you can call me Song Lan. I prefer that over Zichen.”

They toasted each other with the cooling tea. Outside, the light against the window-paper was softening and turning blue.

“I once also had a—a friend,” he said, testing the words in his mouth for the first time.

That amorphous sorrow didn’t abate all through the evening. He and Song Lan worked their way through more of the city before taking a small, misshapen room at an inn. There were two beds, but pushed so close together that it was hard to walk between them. It turned out that this was the busiest time of the month in Ezhou.

At least the bathwater was hot and the food was edible. More than that, he couldn’t tell. Something was howling inside him.

Why was it so important for Song Lan to be a beta? he asked himself, and the answer finally echoed back: because it was safer. Safer, because a beta would never look back at Lan Wangji the way he’d found himself looking at Song Lan. Safer, because even if he did, there could be no risk of heat and rut setting each other off and causing a pregnancy.

Song Lan stepped to the side of the room and turned away for the bare pretence of privacy while he stripped off his outer layers. It was early even for Lan Wangji, but he was tired out from talking and chasing shadows around a strange city.

He’d never heard of a person’s secondary sex simply disappearing after the loss of their mate. Song Lan hadn’t known of any cases before himself, either.

He heard the sound of Song Lan settling into bed, and turned aside to remove his own outer clothes. Once he’d shuffled through the narrow gap and got under the blanket, he blew out the room’s candles with a brush of qi.

“Good night, Song Lan,” he said.

“Good night, Wangji.”

If it could happen for Song Lan, why not for him? Why must he go through a joyless, hurtful loss of control every half a year, forced to confront that he had lost Wei Ying before ever really having him, when Song Lan’s body could simply forget?

Perhaps it was because they had never exchanged mating bites, or even come close to it. Perhaps it was simply that he hadn’t loved Wei Ying enough.

Lan Wangji woke up in darkness. His eyes were hot and sore and his heart ached.

There was a hand resting on his arm, a firm touch.

“Is this all right?” whispered Song Lan from the other bed. “You were having a bad dream, I think.”

“Mn. Thank you.” He reached out and laid his own hand on the other man’s warm upper arm. Touching another person in the dark felt strange, unfamiliar. A thought occurred to him.

“Song Lan, do you mind if I…”

Lan Wangji halfway sat up, so he could take hold of the wooden frame of the other bed. He tugged so that it rumbled a cun closer to his own.

“I don’t mind.”

Lan Wangji pulled again, closing the gap between their beds, and rolled towards Song Lan’s waiting body. With his head resting on his shoulder and an arm stretched over his chest, he was asleep before he realised it.

They both woke up slowly, before the sun had risen. Lan Wangji found himself holding tightly onto Song Lan, his face pressed against his chest. This close, he could smell a warm body, the faint trace of sweat, but nothing that gave away more. The arm that lay heavy across his shoulders moved, and Lan Wangji forced himself up, ready to give Song Lan back his space.

Song Lan’s fingertips touched his cheek. He looked down to see him watching him sleepily, his eyelids lowered.

“This is still all right with me, if it is with you,” Song Lan said in a voice raspy from sleep.

Lan Wangji let himself gratefully back down.

It was earlier than he would usually rise, yet he felt a gentle restlessness in all his limbs. He moved a little to find the most comfortable position and ran his hand up and down Song Lan’s arm, from his broad shoulder to the elbow. Song Lan’s hands were slowly moving against him, too. One rubbed his side and one slipped gently down his unbound hair, from crown to shoulder blades.

He knew what he wanted this to be. He didn’t know if it was, yet.

Slowly, making eye contact with Song Lan the whole time, he moved his hand onto Song Lan’s chest and drew it downwards. When he felt the hard bump of a nipple through his shirt, Song Lan shivered and caught his wrist, holding him there while he brushed it again and again with his fingers.

They continued taking their time. For Lan Wangji, everything about this was new; nothing could disappoint him, no matter where they stopped, or so he thought at first. When Song Lan pushed his shirt off his shoulders and saw the uppermost scars there, though, he hissed softly through his teeth and Lan Wangji’s heart fell.

“It’s ugly, I know,” he said quietly.

“No, it’s not,” Song Lan replied. “Does it hurt? Should I not touch you there?”

Lan Wangji shook his head. “You can touch me—” he swallowed at his own bravery “—everywhere.”

Song Lan was taller than Wei Ying had been. He had the lean muscles of a swordsman, like Wei Ying when he and Lan Wangji were young, before the Sunshot Campaign. Lan Wangji had never held Wei Ying against him naked, and never kissed him, either. When Song Lan pressed their lips together, Lan Wangji closed his eyes and tried to stop comparing him with Wei Ying.

He wondered what he was like, next to Xiao Xingchen. Older but less experienced. Was he hard where Xiao Xingchen had been soft, or the other way around? Outside of this bed, he was trying to find his way back to the pursuit of justice Xiao Xingchen had found so natural, in Song Lan’s telling of it.

Just then, Song Lan sucked on Lan Wangji’s bottom lip and ran his fingers delicately over his cock at the same time. He gasped helplessly, thrown back into his body in a way that was fully pleasurable for once.

“You can touch me too, if you want,” Song Lan murmured. He was kneeling upright, having shuffled his own trousers off with Lan Wangji’s help. Between his legs, his small cock hung half-hard. Lan Wangji reached gingerly downwards to stroke it, feeling the blood-warm weight of it in his palm, and then felt further back. He pressed himself against Song Lan’s body, an arm thrown around his back to support them both, and mouthed against the side of his neck while his fingers explored the folds of flesh there.

Most omegas would be slick here, he’d learned from the sober books the Lan library held on the subject. More so during a heat, of course, but even outside of one, after kissing and embracing for so long, he should be wet and opening up.

“How does it feel?” he asked.

“Mmm. Fine.”

Song Lan didn’t sound very affected by what he was doing. He tried some more, varying his touch and stroking Song Lan’s cock, or the small, soft balls tucked behind it, as well as his close folds. Eventually, Song Lan took his wrist in a gentle grip.

“You don’t have to try any harder,” he said. “For me, this might be all there is, but for you… Do you have any salve?”

He had more medicines in his qiankun pouch than he could use on one night hunt. Feeling rather awkward with his erection, he clambered off the bed to find it and pulled out a jar of the slipperiest ointment he had before climbing back up.

Song Lan kissed him again and pulled them both down onto the covers. While Lan Wangji lay with his eyes closed, pressed close and kissing him as deeply as he dared, he felt Song Lan spreading salve over the fingers of his right hand.

“There, try it,” Song Lan whispered. He took hold of Lan Wangji’s cock in a hand covered with what must be the rest of the salve, making him moan helplessly. “Just don’t… knot inside me. I don’t think I could take that.”

“Hmm.” Obediently, he stroked Song Lan with his greasy hand, but the flesh there remained quiescent. He couldn’t bring himself to try pressing a finger inside. Song Lan’s hand on him, meanwhile, felt better and more urgent all the time.

In the end, he withdrew and rearranged them, pushing Song Lan’s legs together and straddling him. He lined himself up and pressed his cock slowly in between Song Lan’s thighs.

He groaned at the pressure and the easy, inexorable slide—and again, deeper, when he felt Song Lan’s muscular legs tense around him. They were lying chest to chest, Song Lan’s breath humid in his ear, his arms thrown around his shoulders to keep him close. Lan Wangji’s skin tingled, not just in his scars but all over. He pulled back and thrust again, slowly at first but picking up speed as he became sure of his rhythm.

It didn’t matter that he wasn’t inside Song Lan: the pleasure only built as he rocked his hips against the other man’s body. He could hear the breaths forced out of both their lungs as they moved together, feel the sweat gathering between them and his blood rushing faster until—all too soon—he reached the precipice and tipped over, coming with a deep cry.

He could feel his knot rising and grabbed hold of Song Lan, panicking for a moment that he would roll away and leave him swollen against nothing but thin air. Song Lan held him just as tightly as before, though. Lan Wangji collapsed into him, all worry chased away by luxurious pleasure.

When he came back to himself, the first thing his eyes focussed on was a black outer robe, hung up over a wooden airing frame with utterly perfect symmetry. A pair of boots stood lined up beneath it, and from hooks on the wall hung Fuxue and a pristine-looking horsetail whisk. Wei Ying’s possessions were never that neatly arranged, he remembered. Whenever they'd shared a room or a tent, it became a chaos of clothes, weapons and talismans almost before Wei Ying had stepped inside.

With a start, he realised that he was still lying on top of Song Lan, who was surely ready to scrape his skin off by now from being covered in their combined sweat and his spend.

“Sorry,” he said hurriedly. “I’ll call for another bath.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Song Lan said, pushing himself up to a sitting position. His voice was warm, though his gaze was far away, and there was a shine to his eyes that he blinked slowly away.

At length, he added, “That was something I needed, I think. Thank you, Wangji.”

“I needed it too,” he said, and if he wasn’t fully sure of the boundaries here, between wanting and needing and the terror of never having, there was no need to say it.

Song Lan stood and stepped over the side of the bed onto the floor, considerable more elegant than Lan Wangji had felt earlier. He pulled his unbound hair together and swept it over his shoulder to brush it out, revealing the back of his neck, pale and perfectly smooth.

Thunderstruck, Lan Wangji spoke before he could help it. “You don’t have a mating bite?”

“No.” Song Lan looked back at him, some of the challenge from the afternoon before returned to his face. “Xiao Xingchen doesn’t believe in it, and nor do I. He’s my bondmate nonetheless.”

Then it wasn't the lack of a bite that had made the difference, he noted dully to himself.

It was the next year, in the height of summer, that Lan Wangji and Song Lan walked into a misty, noisome little city in the Shudong region, and finally asked their questions about Xiao Xingchen to someone who knew him well.

The battle between the two of them and the murderer Xue Yang was long-drawn-out and full of reversals and shabby tricks. It was all the bloodier for the fact that for the first half they were also fighting against Xiao Xingchen, who had been taught by the immortal Baoshan Sanren and, even without his sight, was more than a match for most other cultivators.

In the end, Xue Yang slunk away with a deep stab wound and threats of revenge against Song Zichen, the Gusu Lan Clan and the rest of the orthodox cultivation world. Song Lan barely heard him, too busy supporting his bondmate, who was collapsing from shock and a wound of his own. Lan Wangji followed the murderer for twenty li before returning to Yi City to help there, if he could.

He ended up staying with them for over a week. Xiao Xingchen could not be moved at first, and it was clear that it would take much longer for him to recover from the truth of how he had spent the last three years. The young woman who had been living with him, A-Qing, refused to leave his side for long, partly out of loyalty and partly out of fear that Xue Yang would return. Song Lan would have been able to manage everything by himself, Lan Wangji had no doubt, but he saw it as a gift to a good friend to take on what he could, leaving Song Lan time to sit with his injured mate.

When they had all left the coffin home behind and he parted ways with the three of them, Lan Wangji promised that they would be welcome at the Cloud Recesses whenever they visited. The bright, unseasonal scent of plum blossom hung in the air above them. Lan Wangji breathed it out and headed home, back to Wei Ying’s son and the silence of the Jingshi.