Day One

I should have followed him.

That’s the thought Wei Wuxian can’t shake; the thought that haunts him every time he catches a glimpse of Lan Zhan’s face, tense even in sleep, in the dim firelight.

Looking back, it seems almost childishly silly for anyone – him, Jiang Cheng, even Chifeng Zun – to have allowed Lan Zhan to simply walk away from the Unclean Realm when they had been pursued all the way there by a Wen Chao who knew full well that Lan Zhan was carrying a shard of the Yin Iron. Lan Zhan is just one man, barely a man at that. Did everyone really expect him to withstand the full might of the Wen clan?

When was he captured?

Have they been feeding him enough?

What other wounds might he be hiding?

The fire crackles. It’s dying out. Lan Zhan stirs and a moment later, startles awake, dislodging his makeshift blanket as his hand flies to his forehead.

“Aiya, it’s on your leg,” Wei Wuxian says, slightly exasperated once he realises what Lan Zhan is doing. “Go back to sleep.”

Lan Zhan gives him a tiny nod. His fingers nevertheless poke at his wounded leg, searching for the headband, and it’s only when he’s reassured that it’s there that he closes his eyes once more. Wei Wuxian lets some time pass before covering Lan Zhan with his overcoat once more. “You better not make me do this all night,” he says, recalling the unmanageable nightmare Lan Zhan had been when he was drunk, and the memory makes him smile and sigh in close succession. Those carefree days at Yunshen Buzhichu feel so distant now, as if they took place years and years ago.

The fire crackles again.

In his hurry to tend to Lan Zhan’s wounds, he’d just grabbed the first reasonably-sized branch he could find, and the fire had been built from whatever remained from splinting Lan Zhan’s leg. With such little fuel, it’s no surprise that the fire is dying out already. There should be more branches and sticks and twigs, more stuff they can use as fuel, lying about in this damn cave waiting to be found and used. Wei Wuxian is not the sort to sleep at 9 anyway and since that damn tortoise seems to have quietened down, now is a good time to explore a little.

“Lan Zhan,” he whispers. No response. “Lan Zhan,” he says again, slightly louder, slightly more urgent. A little scrunch appears between Lan Zhan’s brows, but he doesn’t wake up.

So cute.

“Wait here. I’ll be back soon.”

*

With a little light from a talisman, Wei Wuxian explores the cave that looks likely to be their home for the next few days at least. The crevice that they’d escaped into extends quite a way to the back, and whilst there is some undergrowth here, it eventually comes to a dead end. He dares to go back to the tortoise’s pond now that it is dormant, and there he finds the ends of the ropes that the Wen soldiers had cut behind them. He tries tying two, then three, together to see whether he can lasso an outcropping or cave feature from down here, but to no avail. He even tries jumping, but the cliff face is sheer and he can only make it about halfway up before sliding down again.

In the end, he shelves the idea of finding an alternate exit and starts looking for firewood.

The torches have all burnt out, but the oily rags and sticks will serve nonetheless. There are also, as he had guessed, sticks in the water and around the cave that must have drifted in with the maple leaves or that had been blown in by wind and rain. There are old birds’ nests, little more than twigs and feathers, and bits of dried moss that will smoke heavily when burnt. He takes everything he can find and makes his way back to Lan Zhan.

This won’t last for four days.

They need to work on a way to get past that tortoise monster.

The fire has burnt down to a dull red. Lan Zhan doesn’t appear to have woken, but he has curled in on himself, his knees drawn up to his chest and his entire body now huddled under the thin overcoat.

It’s not a good sign. Lan Zhan never even flinched at the freezing temperatures of the Cold Pond Cave, so this should be nothing for him. His spiritual energy has been depleted more than he’s letting on.

And again the thought returns.

I should have followed him.

Wei Wuxian feeds the pole of a torch into the fire and watches it blaze back to life. His body protests when he reclaims his seat next to Lan Zhan; he’s starting to feel it now, that creeping exhaustion that follows an adrenaline rush. It’s not the first time he’s crashing, but usually he’s in a position to walk it off or to seek refuge in a pot of good wine. Here, he has nothing to do other than to sit in the near-dark and stew.

He has just about succumbed to sleep when he hears a small gasp and the rustling of fabric. Sure enough, he finds Lan Zhan reaching for his forehead again. “Lan Zhan,” he whines, annoyance leaking into his voice as he realises that he’s going to have to adjust his blanket again “it’s on your leg.”

Lan Zhan doesn’t even give him the courtesy of a reply. He just pokes at his leg and goes right back to sleep. Wei Wuxian sighs before tucking his overcoat securely around Lan Zhan’s shoulders. “Don’t make me do this again, Lan Er Gongzi,” he chides softly. He checks on his leg wounds too, noting with concern that the deep gashes left by the tortoise’s teeth are still leaking blood. Wen Qing’s medicine is effective, but there’s only so much it can do.

He adds a handful of twigs to the fire. “If Jiang Cheng were here, he’d be complaining the whole time,” he says to no one in particular. “But at least I’d have someone to talk to.”

Who am I kidding, he asks himself as he looks at Lan Zhan’s sleeping form. Even now, looking more dishevelled than Wei Wuxian has ever seen him, he’s still a sight for eyes to behold. It’s no wonder that rumours had spread far and wide, and in the most ostentatious words too, about the beauty of the youngest of the Lan clan. Given a choice he wouldn’t want to be trapped here, but he can’t help feeling an illicit little frisson of delight that he finally, finally gets to have Lan Zhan all to himself for a few days.

So tempting.

So dangerous.

If he hadn’t made that silly joke about Mianmian earlier, he would have lost all self-control and just kissed him, and that would certainly have gotten him killed. Not that he’s the sort to steal kisses from the unwilling.

With a sigh, Wei Wuxian leans back against the hard limestone and closes his eyes. Chaste thoughts only, he tells himself.

*

Thoughts of hot lotus root and ribs soup, of stewed plums and Hefeng liquor and of the scent of the lake after rainfall have lulled him into a pleasant dream-like state when Lan Zhan startles into wakefulness once more.

“What is it?” he asks, wondering whether he’s missed something.

Lan Zhan just blinks at him. He frees his hand from the blanket and Wei Wuxian watches in exasperation as that hand makes its way up to his forehead again. “Lan Zhan! We used your headband to splint your leg, it’s not like I’m going to steal it in the middle of the night to feed to the ing tortoise.”

“I’m sorry.”

That’s an unexpected response. Wei Wuxian immediately feels bad for snapping at him. “It’s nothing. Are you cold?”

“No.”

I wish I could believe that.

Instead of pushing the matter, he asks “Have you ever eaten a bat?” It’s a stupid question, but worth it all the same for the look he gets from Lan Zhan. “We could catch one, and make a bat and pond-water soup.” He laughs at the absurdity of the idea, alone, because of all people he’s stuck with someone who doesn’t have a sense of humour. “But honestly, if you make me explain the headband thing one more time I’ll feed you to the tortoise.”

Is that a smile he sees, that tiny quirk of Lan Zhan’s lips?

“You should sleep.”

Bit rich coming from you, he thinks. “I will.”

He feeds more twigs to the fire, willing sleep to come to him. His mind is awake and racing, and it doesn’t help that the cave is so unnaturally quiet. Aside from the crackling of the flames and the sound of his own breathing, it’s so still inside here, so silent.

No, not quite.

There’s a strange clicking sound, faint but persistent.

Alertness comes all at once. Who’s to say that there is only one monster in this cave? Or even if it’s not a monster, it could still be something dangerous, like a rattlesnake or a giant centipede.

Should he wake Lan Zhan?

He leans in-

-and sees the faint quivering of Lan Zhan’s jaw-

-and realises at once what the sound is. Lan Zhan’s teeth are clattering together. He’s shivering.

Dismayed, he lays a hand against Lan Zhan’s cheek to check for a fever. The skin under his hand is not hot but cold, almost clammy. Blood loss. He pulls Lan Zhan’s robes up to check on his leg; the wounds are still wet with fresh blood. Damn Wen Chao to the deepest, fieriest pit of hell, Wei Wuxian curses. If anything happens to Lan Zhan he’ll slaughter the entire ing clan and pike their heads around Bu Ye Tian.

“What is it?”

It worries him that Lan Zhan isn’t even reacting to having his clothes so unceremoniously pulled aside. “It’s cold, isn’t it?”

“I’m fine,” Lan Zhan answers, sidestepping his tactful phrasing to answer the question he’s actually asking.

What a pity that the answer is a lie.

“Well, I’m cold,” he lies too. “I’ll put more wood on the fire, but we should huddle closer for warmth.”

Without waiting for Lan Zhan to answer, he dumps some of the larger sticks he’d collected – that he’d been saving for tomorrow – into the fire, poking them this way and that to buy time. He doesn’t know how to approach this; too playful and Lan Zhan will think that he’s making fun of him, too serious and Lan Zhan will outright refuse any offer of help.

When the fire is big and bright, he turns to Lan Zhan, and finds Lan Zhan looking up at him with wide, apprehensive eyes as if he’s a rabbit and Wei Wuxian is a fox that has him cornered.

His heart aches.

Who raised you? How did they go so wrong that you fear affection more than others fear punishment?

He falls back on humour. Opening his arms comically wide, he crouches next to Lan Zhan and says “Come here… I know I’m not Mianmian, but I’m afraid I’m all you have right now.”

Lan Zhan wrenches his overcoat off, rolls it into a ball and chucks it at him. “Stay away from me.”

Okay, so that was one Mianmian joke too far.

There’s no use joking with Lan Zhan when he’s angry, so he drops it. “Lan Zhan, you’ve lost a lot of blood. You’ll make yourself sick if you don’t warm up, and that’s not going to happen with you leaning against cold stone all night.”

Resignation sweeps across Lan Zhan’s face. It’s a look that gives him pause; is Lan Zhan really so reticent to accept help, or is it that all of his flirting has made Lan Zhan so uncomfortable that the thought of being touched by him in particular is what Lan Zhan dislikes?

Wei Wuxian slowly closes the gap between them, giving Lan Zhan every opportunity to back away if he wants, until their sides are pressed together from shoulder to leg, and when Lan Zhan still doesn’t protest he drapes the overcoat over him for what feels like the hundredth time tonight.

“Try and rest this time,” he says.

“You too.” Lan Zhan looks like he has more to say, but true to form, he keeps it all to himself.