Chapter Text
“You had another one of your nightmares.”
At this point, she didn’t even have to ask. And he didn’t have to tell her. He knew she could see that distant light in his eyes, the way he held himself tensely on the edge of the couch, how his fingers gripped the fabric on his thighs until he remembered where he was and, with a cough, let go and smoothed out his pants once more.
Jiang Cheng had been seeing this therapist for six years now, and she knew him well.
Recalling what she had just said—a haze was drifting over his thoughts today, clouding the world around him—he nodded. “Yeah.” His voice was raspy. It was his first time speaking today. “I had another one.”
His therapist thumbed through the notebook that laid open in her lap, until she reached a certain page, and then looked back up at him. “And what was this one about?”
Jiang Cheng didn’t respond. His fingers began to curl again, his nails digging into his skin through his clothes.
His therapist prompted him, looking for a response. “Was it about your sister again? Or your parents?”
Jiang Cheng shook his head. “No,” he said. In the back of his mind, the image still lingered.
Hundreds of people slaying one another in a frenzy, swords flashing in the light of a sky that looked to be permanently stuck at dusk. Bodies strewn across the ground, their blood turning their colorful robes one uniform color. A cliff made of black rock, struck through with red as if it burned from the inside. And at the edge of it all, two figures: one in white, and one in black. The former was turned away from him, but the latter looked him dead in the eyes. He knew that face. He knew that smile, but never like that—never so pained, so tired, so sorry.
Just as Jiang Cheng’s therapist was about to prompt him again, he stirred. His fingers let go of the wad of fabric in his palms, and his eyes wandered up to meet hers before quickly glancing away. He swallowed and said, “This time it was about my brother.”
“Uncle, uncle!” Jin Ling squealed. The toddler sprang out of his mother’s lap and ran towards Jiang Cheng as fast as his little legs could carry him. Jiang Cheng scooped the child up into his arms. Jin Ling hugged Jiang Cheng around the neck and didn’t let go until they sat down at the table across from Jiang Yanli. Jin Ling remained in his uncle’s lap, happily making faces at himself in the reflection on Jiang Cheng’s watch.
“So,” Jiang Yanli said as she took a sip of her usual green tea, “how was therapy?”
It was no secret that Jiang Cheng went to therapy, especially not to his older sister. She had been the one to propose the idea of the two of them getting lunch after each of his appointments in the first place.
“It was good,” Jiang Cheng replied, unconsciously bouncing the leg that Jin Ling was sitting on. The child giggled.
Jiang Yanli raised an eyebrow. “Just ‘good’?” She asked.
“Good? Just good?” Jin Ling parroted. Mostly to himself, he mumbled, in the uneven pronunciation of a toddler, “Uncle’s telepathy is the best! ”
Jiang Yanli smiled at her son. “ Therapy , A-Ling, not telepathy.”
Jin Ling wasn’t paying attention. A fly had landed on the table in front of him, and he was in the middle of attempting to grab at it. Jiang Yanli turned her attention back to her brother. She said nothing, opting instead to fix him with a gaze that she knew he could only last a maximum of five minutes under.
“Alright, alright,” Jiang Cheng huffed. “I had another one of my nightmares.” Seeing the look on her face, he quickly added, “But it wasn’t about you this time!”
“And what was it about?” Jiang Yanli asked.
Shit. Jiang Cheng had told himself that he wasn’t going to tell her about that part. Of course, his resolve to do anything that kept his sister in the dark about any information or activity always petered out within the hour. He just couldn’t bear to keep anything from her unless he really, really needed to.
Jiang Cheng sighed, letting his head fall forward so he wouldn’t have to look his sister in the eye. “It was about Wuxian.”
Jin Ling immediately perked up. “Favorite uncle, favorite uncle!”
Jiang Cheng’s head snapped back up. “Excuse me, what? Favorite uncle?” He fixed his nephew with a venomous stare. The three-year-old only laughed and waved Jiang Cheng’s watch hand around. Jiang Cheng turned the glare to his sister. “I expected you to raise your child better than this.”
Jiang Yanli sighed. “He’s cycling through uncles. Last week his favorite was Guangyao.”
Jiang Cheng laughed at the dead look in her eyes.
A waiter came up to their table and took Jiang Cheng’s order. As the waiter walked away, Jiang Yanli resumed their conversation. “So you had a nightmare about Wuxian this time?”
Jiang Cheng nodded.
“What happened in it?” After a moment, she added, “If you don’t mind telling me.”
“No, I should be fine to tell you.” He took a deep breath. “It was on a battlefield. I think it’s the same place as the nightmare I have about you, the one where… you know. But there’s this cliff, and there are two people on it, and one of them is Wuxian. He’s got something in his hand, I don’t know what it is, and he looks so, so... sad. I don’t have the right word for it. But he’s standing there, and then he… just falls back. Off the cliff. And that—that’s where I woke up.”
Jiang Yanli’s expression darkened ever so slightly. Anyone who wasn’t close to her wouldn’t have been able to catch the shift, but Jiang Cheng was painfully aware of it. He knew how his nightmares worried her. He rushed to continue, “My therapist told me that it’s probably just my mind processing my repressed fears. Like, since Wuxian and I just graduated, it could be my subconscious putting my worries about the two of us drifting apart into a really weird symbolic dreamscape. Something like that.” The words spilled from him before he could even process them—anything to make sure his sister didn’t worry about him any more than she had to. He couldn’t remember exactly what his therapist had said.
Jiang Yanli frowned. “I guess that makes sense.”
Jiang Cheng nodded.
Their food arrived. Jin Ling moved to sit in his mother’s lap and pick at the plate in front of him. For a while, nobody spoke.
“Do you ever talk this much to anyone else?” Jiang Yanli asked.
Surprised by the sudden question, Jiang Cheng paused before he answered. “I… no. I don’t.” His sister was the only person who could regularly get more than four consecutive sentences out of him. That is, except for when he was scolding Wei Wuxian. But even on the occasions when he got a little talkative, Jiang Cheng never spoke about his nightmares.
“Maybe you should,” she commented, and then let the subject drop so they could eat.
Even though Jiang Yanli was the one person he regularly opened up to, as their lunch passed by and the two of them idly chatted until it was time for her and Jin Ling to return home for the afternoon, Jiang Cheng never once mentioned the fact that his nightmare about Wei Wuxian was not the first he had had.
He also didn’t mention that the nightmares didn’t only happen when he was sleeping.
x
Lan Wangji jolted upright in bed, gasping for air. Sweat rolled down his forehead and back, sending a chill through him as the covers fell away from his chest. He yanked his right arm out from beneath the sheets and held it in front of his face, searching for the blood that, seconds ago, he had seen and felt there.
Nothing. His arm was clean, clad to the wrist in the light white fabric of his sleep shirt. But his hand shook.
One thought slammed into him and took over his mind. Wei Ying.
He turned, searching for his boyfriend. Luckily, he didn’t have to look far. Curled up in the bed beside him, ink-dark hair strewn across his bare shoulders and back, was Wei Wuxian, sleeping as soundly as ever. Lan Wangji reached out with trembling fingers and gently stroked Wei Wuxian’s head. Yes, he was there. He was solid. He was real.
The nightmare that had woken Lan Wangji up churned in the confines of his skull. Careful not to disturb the slumbering Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji slipped out of bed and padded to the living room. The remnants of the sweat that clung to his skin made him shiver. Spotting Wei Wuxian’s hoodie lying on the back of the couch, discarded and left there sometime last night, he picked it up and pulled it on. Lan Wangji closed his eyes and breathed in the familiar scent of his boyfriend, focusing on slowing down the erratic beating of his heart. Eventually, something akin to calm settled into his veins, and he sat down on the floor, next to his guqin.
Quietly, so the notes wouldn’t wander past the confines of the living room, Lan Wangji plucked the strings of his guqin, weaving together a familiar melody. It was the same song he played whenever he was anxious or needed to settle his mind. He had written it years ago, shortly after he and Wei Wuxian had first met. As he played, his thoughts drifted. Wei Wuxian’s smiling face appeared behind his closed eyelids. Over the years, many things about Wei Wuxian had changed—his hair, his clothes, the number of scars he bore—but his smile had remained the same.
Which was what made the dream he’d had so uncanny. He’d dreamt of Wei Wuxian many times before (a lovestruck teenager’s mind can only focus on so many things, and that man had a way of being ninety percent of them), and in each one, he could remember one thing: Wei Wuxian had been smiling. Whether it was a small, pleased smirk or his signature shit-eating grin, the Wei Wuxian that appeared in Wan Langji’s dreams always wore a smile. It was, Lan Wangji guessed, the way that his subconscious always pictured him.
But in this dream, Wei Wuxian was not smiling. His eyes were lined with red—there were no tears on his cheeks, but it was clear he had been crying. Drying blood dripped from his lips and dribbled down his chin. His hair was disheveled and long—even longer than it was now, and pulled back by a worn red ribbon. He dangled hundreds of feet above the ground, held at the edge of a cliff. One arm, clad in black, had been in Lan Wangji’s grasp, caught at the wrist and held so tightly that even now he could feel it, the fingers on his right hand aching as he plucked the guqin’s strings. The unsmiling, bloodied version of Wei Wuxian had said something to him—Lan Wangji couldn’t recall what it had been, and part of him wanted to know, while another part of him shivered at the thought of it—and the next thing Lan Wangji remembered, Wei Wuxian was falling, plummeting farther and farther out of his reach.
It was then that Lan Wangji had woken up.
The last vibrations of the guqin’s strings faded from the air. Lan Wangji let out a long, silent breath. The sound of bare footsteps came from down the hall, and a second later Wei Wuxian wandered into the living room, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his palms. He wore only his black pajama pants, and had the comforter from Lan Wangji’s bed wrapped around his shoulders. He pulled it tighter around himself and blinked at Lan Wangji, eyes bleary with sleep.
“Good morning, Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji greeted him as he stood up.
“Where’d you go? You got up and—” Wei Wuxian paused so he could yawn “—and the bed got cold. It’s too early.”
“It’s seven AM.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said—too early.” Wei Wuxian looked Lan Wangji over. “You’ve got my hoodie on. Are you cold, too? C’mere.” He opened his arms, spreading the comforter wide.
Lan Wangji walked over, snaking his arms around Wei Wuxian’s waist and pressing their chests together as he laid his head on the shorter man’s shoulder. Wei Wuxian wrapped the comforter around them both, enveloping them in warmth. “What do you want for breakfast?” Wei Wuxian asked. “I’m starving.”
Lan Wangji pulled back so he could look at his boyfriend. Even half-asleep, Wei Wuxian’s lips curled up in the slightest of smiles as he pulled himself close to Lan Wangji. For a moment, however, that smile wavered. Now that he was a bit more awake, Wei Wuxian was getting a good look at Lan Wangji, and his eyebrows furrowed in concern. “Hey,” he said, “are you alright?”
Lan Wangji didn’t answer. He only pressed his forehead against Wei Wuxian’s and closed his eyes, focusing on the sensation of Wei Wuxian’s body close to his. His boyfriend pulled away, and Lan Wangji could feel his gaze burning on his face. He opened his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Wei Wuxian asked. His smile was gone, and though his eyes were not red and his lips were not bloody, the image of the man dangling from Lan Wangji’s grasp flashed before his eyes, and his breath caught in his lungs. Wei Wuxian noticed, and gripped Lan Wangji tighter. “Please,” he whispered, “tell me.”
“I…” Lan Wangji wasn’t good at putting words to his emotions. He much preferred to show them when necessary, but this wasn’t something he could convey with actions. “I had a bad dream,” he said. It was the truth.
Wei Wuxian had nightmares. Regularly. It was one of the few ways the stress of life managed to get to him, as far as Lan Wangji could tell. Hearing that Lan Wangji had been struck with something that he dealt with so often, Wei Wuxian’s eyes softened. “Do you want me to make you some tea? Here, I’ll get you some breakfast.” The smile returned, gentle and sweet and full of light. Wei Wuxian draped the comforter over Lan Wangji’s shoulders and moved towards the kitchen. Lan Wangji watched him go, and, for some reason, something in his chest tightened.
x
Wen Qing stared at the ceiling in the dark, eyes glazed over and unblinking despite how dry they were beginning to feel. The alarm clock sitting on the bedside table to her right glowed a dim red, illuminating a small corner of the room. Its face read 4:35 AM.
Soon it read 4:40. Then 4:45. And then 5:00.
Wen Qing rolled onto her side, facing the darkness. Outside her bedroom window, distant sirens rose, wailed, and then faded. Somewhere in her apartment complex a washing machine ran, thudding steadily in the quiet. Down the hall she heard a door click open, followed by the sound of bare feet on the wood floor, moving past her room, and the tap in the kitchen running. Part of her decompressed at that. It was the gentle reminder that she was not alone, that her brother was just down the hall, that life was continuing as normal, even at 5:03 in the morning.
Wen Qing closed her eyes.
“I made breakfast for you,” Wen Ning announced the moment his sister stumbled blearily into the kitchen.
Wen Qing squinted at the food that had been set out on the table. It was a collection of her favorites, dishes that she had loved since their childhood. Wen Ning set two cups of coffee down at each of their places and watched Wen Qing expectantly.
Wen Qing pulled out her chair and slid into it. Her mouth was already watering at the scent of the food before her, but a question was burning even more strongly at the forefront of her thoughts. “A-Ning,” she said, and he raised his head to look at her with those wide eyes of his, “how do you always know when I’ve been feeling bad?”
Her brother smiled and sat down across the table from her. “A lot of the time I just guess,” he replied. “But this time I heard you. You were up for a while, tossing and turning. You didn’t get up right when your alarm went off, either.” He waited for her to take the first bite before he started eating. After a short period of silence, wherein Wen Qing sat contemplating her brother’s perceptiveness when it came to her moods, he continued, “Do you want to talk about what’s bothering you?”
Wen Qing shoveled a bite of food into her mouth, giving herself a moment to figure out whether or not she wanted to tell him about the dreams she’d had last night. By the time she washed the food down with a swig of coffee, she’d decided. Wen Ning stared at her in the same way he always did when he was expecting her to say something important—a little awestruck, a little concerned, but caring with all of his being. Once again Wen Qing was struck with the sentiment that she could never have wound up with a better brother.
She didn't want to keep him waiting. “I had dreams about us.” She said, then clarified, “Different versions of us. The dreams were just little snippets because I kept waking up, but I remember them pretty well.” Better than she usually remembered dreams.
“What happened in them?” Wen Ning leaned forward, completely attentive, his breakfast forgotten.
Wen Qing leaned her elbow on the table and gestured with her fork as she spoke. “Well, in the first we were on a mountain, and we were waiting for someone. I don't know who we were waiting for, but I know we were about to do something very risky. Almost like a medical procedure, but… not quite? I don’t know how to explain it. In the next one we were in a cave, but you were unconscious and covered in these strange papers with symbols on them. I was worried about you. But again, I don’t know why. There were all these details in them that I feel like I should have known, but didn’t. Like I picked up a book partway through and never got the exposition. And then in the last dream…” She trailed off.
This was the dream that had kept her up all night.
Wen Ning opened his mouth to say something, no doubt to ask her to continue, but he stopped when he saw the distant expression that she wore. After a minute of neither of them saying anything, Wen Qing came back to herself. She took a breath and finished, “In the last one we were giving ourselves up to be executed. I remember the people around us saying that we were going to be burned and that they’d scatter our ashes once it was done. I never got to that part, though.”
Wen Ning’s smile faded as she spoke that last part, and his face twisted. He was thinking. Wen Qing was also thinking. She had told him most of the truth. The parts that she had left out were how Wen Ning had already been dead when they were walking to their deaths, how she had already lost him once and couldn’t lose him again without going with him, and how they had been going to their deaths for the sake of someone else, someone who—like so many things in those three short dreams—she couldn't remember. But she didn't want to worry Wen Ning with those details. She didn't often have bad dreams—these were only mildly bad, strange and a little unsettling—but their appearance wasn’t surprising when her shifts at the hospital got longer and more stressful. She didn't read much into dreams, but she knew Wen Ning did. He’d had an overactive imagination ever since they were kids.
Wen Ning hummed, thoughtful, pulling her back to the real world. “Do you want a hug?”
Wen Qing was surprised he wasn’t wanting to talk about the content of her dreams. But she wasn't going to push it. So she nodded, saying, “I would love a hug.”
x
Jiang Cheng looked up from his computer and immediately frowned. “Why the fuck are you here?” He demanded.
Wei Wuxian ignored the usual hostility in his voice and leaned against the counter that separated the two of them. He smiled down at his brother, and Jiang Cheng knew that whatever Wei Wuxian was about to say, he wasn’t going to like it.
“Well,” Wei Wuxian said, “this place is so big, I got lost trying to find my way around. So I was wondering if you could direct me to the section where you keep your porn.”
Jiang Cheng’s face reddened. “Wei Wuxian, this is a public library, you can’t just ask me where we keep porn .” He could feel his blood pressure rising. He knew he should have gone to reshelve books when he’d gotten the chance.
“You were the one who greeted me by asking why the fuck I’m here. That doesn’t seem very appropriate, either.” Wei Wuxian reached down and picked up a pen. He absentmindedly twirled it between his fingers.
“Yeah, well, bite me.” Jiang Cheng glanced back down at his computer screen and, with a sigh, knowing that he would get absolutely no work done as long as his brother was in the building, he minimized his browser. “Also, for your information, we don’t have porn.”
“I know,” Wei Wuxian replied with a pout. “I’ve looked.”
Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes and stood. “I’ll ask you again— appropriately , this time. Why are you here? What do you want?”
Wei Wuxian stopped twirling the pen. He set it down on the counter. The mischievous light in his eyes faded. “I wanted to ask a favor.”
Jiang Cheng’s brow furrowed. It wasn’t like Wei Wuxian to act so serious, especially when it came to getting other people to do something he wanted them to do. The only thing he ever took that seriously was...
“This is about Lan Wangji, isn’t it,” Jiang Cheng guessed, voice flat. It wasn’t a question.
Wei Wuxian’s eyebrows jumped up his forehead. “How’d you know?”
“That man is the only damn thing in this world that you ever act serious about.” Jiang Cheng told himself that that didn’t bother him.
“That’s not true—”
“Give me one other thing you take seriously.”
Now it was Wei Wuxian’s turn to frown. After a few seconds of thinking, he announced, “Yanli. I take her seriously.”
Jiang Cheng scoffed. “I’ll be able to die happily when you show our sister the respect she deserves. Now get on with what you want from me, before I run out of patience.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest. He would never admit it, but Wei Wuxian stopping by the library never failed to be the highlight of his workday.
Wei Wuxian turned without a word and began to walk into the nearest row of shelves. Jiang Cheng huffed and followed after him. Wei Wuxian led Jiang Cheng through four different sections, meandering until they were tucked away in the far corner of that floor of the library. Finally, right when Jiang Cheng was about to explode and tell Wei Wuxian in very loud whispers that he needed to get to the goddamn point, Wei Wuxian opened his mouth and spoke.
“I’m worried about Lan Zhan,” he said, before trailing off as he plucked a book off the shelf and examined the cover.
“Because?” Jiang Cheng prompted, yanking the book out of Wei Wuxian’s hands and putting it back in its place on the shelf. Getting his brother to speak was never this hard, and Jiang Cheng had the patience of a doctor who specialized in shortcuts.
“He had a nightmare last night.”
Jiang Cheng closed his eyes. “You have got to be shitting me,” he said, fighting to keep his voice at a whisper. “You’re here disturbing my work because your boyfriend had a nightmare? This—I am not getting paid enough for this. Hell, I’m not getting paid at all for this!” Jiang Cheng winced at the volume of his words and hoped that everybody else really was out on lunch together like they had said they were. He turned to stalk back to his desk.
“Jiang Cheng, listen, it’s not like that, that’s not what I meant, come on—” Wei Wuxian grabbed his brother’s sleeve.
“I’m not here to get dragged into your relationship issues,” Jiang Cheng huffed, pulling away.
Behind him, Wei Wuxian called, “It’s not an issue, it’s just—” He let out a frustrated sigh. “Jiang Cheng, he had the same look in your eyes that you get when you have one of your nightmares, and I’m worried about it.” He emphasized the word “worried,” and Jiang Cheng felt it hit somewhere deep within his ribcage. He stopped.
Jiang Cheng didn’t know much about Lan Wangji—not really. Despite having been friends with the man since middle school (though “friends” might have been a reach—Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji were friends; Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji were merely acquaintances), he was for the most part unaware of anything that had gone on or was currently going on in Lan Wangji’s life. If the older man was having trauma nightmares, too, well… maybe it was Jiang Cheng’s place to get dragged in. He turned around to face his brother again. “Is he seeing anyone about it?”
Wei Wuxian shook his head. “It’s not a regular occurrence. Which is one of the reasons why I’m worried. I don’t want it to become regular.” His gaze dropped to the floor. “Also he wouldn’t talk to me about it.”
Jiang Cheng’s eyes widened at that. “He wouldn’t?” Wei Wuxian seemed to be the only person aside from Lan Wangji’s older brother that the quiet man would talk to.
“No. He only said that he had a bad dream, and that he needed to think about it. I don’t want to push him on it, but I want to make sure he has someone to go to if he needs it. And I thought a good person might be you. Since, y’know, you’re experienced in these things.”
Jiang Cheng knew that Wei Wuxian also often got nightmares. But they weren’t the same kind as him. He wasn’t in therapy for them.
Wei Wuxian looked at Jiang Cheng with gentle, pleading eyes. “Will you talk to him? For me? I’ll buy you dinner one night, or not bother you for a week, or something. But please?”
Jiang Cheng scoffed. “Alright, alright. I’m not doing it for you, though. I’m doing it for the week of peace and quiet that you’re promising me.”
Relief flooded Wei Wuxian’s face. “Oh thank you so much, Jiang Cheng, you’re the best baby brother anyone could ever hope for.”
Jiang Cheng’s eye twitched at being called “baby brother”, but he ignored it. What he couldn’t ignore, however, was the spine of an unfamiliar book sticking out of the bottom shelf near his feet. He bent down and picked it up. There was no library sticker on it, and the cover was blank. When he opened it up, he found—
“ Wei Wuxian, did you hide porn in my library?! ”
His brother was doubled over laughing. “I was waiting for you to find that! Hoo, I was worried you were just gonna walk away and never see it!”
Jiang Cheng’s fingers curled into a fist, half-crumpling the book in his hand. “Wei Wuxian, you— get out of my fucking library! ”
From the main hall an authoritative voice called, “Jiang Cheng, language! ”
His coworkers were back from lunch.
Wei Wuxian sprinted for the door.
Of course Lan Wangji was waiting for him. Jiang Cheng had purposefully left his apartment twenty minutes earlier than he usually needed to leave in order to arrive on time, and even with an unexpected traffic jam taking up ten of those minutes, he was still at the café almost a quarter hour before the time he and his brother’s boyfriend had agreed upon.
And seated at a corner table gazing placidly out the window was Lan Wangji, dressed in his typical pale ensemble. Jiang Cheng scowled and approached the table. Lan Wangji turned, fixing his freakishly light eyes on Jiang Cheng, and gave him a calm nod. Sitting before him were two cups, one of coffee and one of tea. Has he already ordered for me? Jiang Cheng fought to keep his scowl from deepening. He hadn’t been aware that Lan Wangji knew what coffee he liked. Not even Wei Wuxian knew—that bastard never bothered to prepare coffee for anyone other than himself, and he took it black, like an absolute heathen.
Jiang Cheng forced himself to adopt a neutral expression—it was the closest he could get to a smile, and he knew that Lan Wangji of all people would not be upset by the lack of a “friendly” greeting. “Hello, Wangji.”
“Wanyin.”
Jiang Cheng could feel the eyeroll coming on, and did his best to hold it back. Lan Wangji was the only person he knew that continued to call him by his courtesy name even after he had said—multiple times—that “Jiang Cheng” was fine. The man cared too much about propriety, in his opinion. It was just one of the many things that made his demeanor so icy.
“You’re here early,” Jiang Cheng commented as he took a seat across from Lan Wangji.
The other man shot him a look that said “Likewise” but his mouth instead replied, “I was already in the area, visiting my brother.”
Jiang Cheng nodded. “I’d forgotten that Xichen lives nearby. How has he been doing?”
“Fine.”
Well, there went that line of conversation. Jiang Cheng sighed and lifted his cup of coffee to his lips. “So,” he said once he had finished taking a drink—it was delicious, he noted with an internal grumble, “Wuxian told me that you didn’t have the most restful night recently?”
“Mn,” Lan Wangji nodded. “Nightmare.”
Talking with this man is like pulling teeth. How does Wuxian do it? Wait, Jiang Cheng knew the answer to that. He talks enough for the both of them.
“You don’t have to tell me what it was about,” Jiang Cheng said, “but Wuxian told me that he’s worried about you. As you probably know, I’ve been… troubled by nightmares since he and I were twelve.”
Lan Wangji nodded.
Jiang Cheng continued, “Since you didn’t seem to want to talk to him about it—” Jiang Cheng made no effort to hide the confusion in his voice—it really didn’t make sense that Lan Wangji would refuse to talk to Wei Wuxian of all people about his nightmare “—he wanted me to check on you. I’m not a therapist myself, but I’ve been attending the therapy rodeo for the better part of my life, so I’ve learned a trick or two.” He paused, then hurriedly added, “Just in case you want help. If not, I can fuck right off.” He shrugged and took a long sip of coffee, looking anywhere but at the face of the man seated across from him. Talking about his nightmares and his time in therapy to someone who wasn’t one of his siblings made some part of his stomach twist in discomfort.
The two of them sat in silence. A minute passed, then two. Jiang Cheng was beginning to think that Lan Wangji was never going to respond. Why had he agreed to do this? A baby at another table was staring at him. Lan Wangji’s gaze had drifted back to the window, so Jiang Cheng took the opportunity to make a face at the infant, which giggled and returned to mashing a chunk of banana between its chubby little fingers.
“It was about him.”
Jiang Cheng had forgotten for a moment that he had been waiting on a response. “What?”
“My nightmare. It was about Wei Ying.”
Jiang Cheng frowned. “Really?”
“Mn.”
“Like… what about him?” A cold feeling was growing in Jiang Cheng’s gut.
Lan Wangji looked away, out the window again. He swallowed before saying, in a voice that somehow remained just as steady as it had been throughout the entire conversation, “He died.”
The cold feeling solidified into a ball of ice. “He… died?” Jiang Cheng’s mouth had gone dry. He took a large gulp of coffee.
Lan Wangji did not respond. There was something in his eyes—something distant, almost haunted. Jiang Cheng recognized that look. He’d seen it in the mirror, night after night. Whatever had happened in this dream, it had shaken Lan Wangji—something Jiang Cheng hadn’t thought possible up until this point.
Jiang Cheng didn’t know what to do. He opened his mouth, wanting to say something—anything—to Lan Wangji, but everything that came to mind felt either trite or insincere. He couldn’t just reach out and touch the man—neither of them were that kind of person, at least not openly, and definitely not with each other. So instead of sitting there and thinking through what to say or do next, Jiang Cheng chose to follow his brother’s route of doing things, and simply opened his mouth and let out whatever was coming.
“I’ve had dreams about him dying, too.”
Lan Wangji’s eyes flickered back to Jiang Cheng’s face. His eyebrows raised ever so slightly, almost saying, “You have?”
Jiang Cheng began to wonder when the fuck he picked up the ability to read Lan Wangji, but pushed the thought aside. He nodded. “Yeah, I have. Car accident, drowning, shooting, falling…”
Lan Wangji’s head jerked back a little bit. “Falling?”
“But if you tell him about any of that I’ll break your legs,” Jiang Cheng rushed to add with a growl.
Lan Wangji’s eyes narrowed.
“Shit, sorry. We’re talking about him so much that I slipped into ‘talking to Wei Wuxian’ mode. Your legs will remain unbroken.” Jiang Cheng hid his embarrassment at threatening to break Lan Wangji’s legs by taking another sip of coffee. His cup was almost empty. “Still, please don’t tell him about all that. He doesn’t need to know that I can’t even escape him while I’m sleeping. Also… I don’t want him to worry.” Only Jiang Yanli knew about the slew of dreams about family members’ deaths that had haunted Jiang Cheng’s early teenage years. Part of Jiang Cheng regretted saying anything to Lan Wangji about it.
“You don’t want him to worry about you,” Lan Wangji mused, “like he’s worrying about me?” There was a hint of a wry smile on the man’s lips.
“I’m not the one dating him,” Jiang Cheng snapped. Lan Wangji responded only by taking a long drink of tea, pointedly avoiding eye contact. Jiang Cheng huffed and leaned back in his chair. Wuxian has done enough worrying about me. Everyone has.
“Thank you for talking with me today,” Lan Wangji said. “It is reassuring to know that my experience is not unique to myself. I hope that in the future neither of us will have any more of these sorts of dreams.”
“Likewise,” Jiang Cheng grumbled. He’d kill to not have any more nightmares.
The two of them finished their drinks, rose from their seats, and left the café. Jiang Cheng muttered a quick thank you for the coffee, to which Lan Wangji gave his usual curt nod. The two turned away from each other, and Jiang Cheng began to walk.
“Wanyin.”
Jiang Cheng turned back around. Lan Wangji was facing him again, but only halfway, as if he still hadn’t decided whether or not he wanted to commit to saying something else. Jiang Cheng raised an eyebrow.
“If you ever need… someone to talk to your nightmares about,” Lan Wangji said, gaze steady but jaw clenching and unclenching as if he were chewing on something exceptionally tough, “do not hesitate to contact me.”
Jiang Cheng shot him the closest he could get to a smile. Lan Wangji returned the gesture, and they went their separate ways.
x
Wen Qing glanced up and down the street before ducking inside the dimly-lit shop. A small bronze bell rang, but its sounds were swallowed up by the stale air. Tightly-packed shelves surrounded Wen Qing, and she squeezed between them, careful not to knock any of their contents out of their precarious positions, as she made her way to the far side of the shop. As she neared the back, she could pick out the faint sound of a pen scratching on paper, as well as soft grumbling and the clacking of calculator keys. Rounding a table stacked high with books whose pages had gone yellow with age, Wen Qing found herself standing at a counter, facing an old, bespectacled man leaning over a worn logbook and wearing an expression of utmost concentration. He did not look up as she approached.
“Hello?” She said, unsure if he had noticed that she was there.
The man kept his eyes fixed on his work and tapped out a few more numbers on the calculator sitting before him. “What can I do for you, young lady?” He asked.
Wen Qing’s brow furrowed, but she just squared her shoulders and said, “I was wondering if you could tell me about some items of mine.”
At that, the man looked up. He squinted at her. She noticed that his eyes were slightly mismatched in color. Or maybe it was just the lighting. He seemed to have no problem with mixing fluorescent and incandescent bulbs in his shop. “Looking to sell them?”
She shook her head. “No. I just want information.”
“Well, I can see what I can do. Don’t have much else on my plate for the day anyway.” He slid the logbook, calculator, and pen to the side, almost knocking over a candelabra shaped like a multi-headed dragon as he did so. “Bring ‘em on over.”
Wen Qing stepped up to the counter and produced from the small bag at her waist three needles. Each one was about the length of her palm, made of a dark metal with the back half wrapped in a bright red thread. They came to a sharp point that was not hollow like those that Wen Qing used at work for drawing blood and injecting medicine, but thin and full like those used in acupuncture. They were clearly old—tiny specks of rust dotted the metal, and the thread on one of them was starting to come undone, leaving the needle with a tiny scarlet tail. She laid the needles out on the counter in front of the shopkeeper and watched him as he inspected them.
After several minutes of picking the needles up, rolling them over between his fingers, lightly poking himself with them, and examining them with a small magnifying glass—Wen Qing thought he might be toying with her after three minutes had passed, but said nothing about it—the shopkeeper set the needles down and turned his gaze to her. “Well, I can tell you that these are acupuncture needles from the Cultivation Period. Judging by their shape, thread color, and lack of decoration, they came from the smaller medicinal branch of the Wen Clan shortly before their destruction in the period’s second era. Despite the rust, they’re still in decently good condition.” He picked one up again and gave it an appraising look.
Wen Qing nodded slowly, letting out an appraising hum.
The shopkeeper looked up. “You seem unsurprised.”
“That is all information I already knew.”
He scowled. “Then why have me look at them?”
“Because I wanted it confirmed. Also to see if you had any other insights into their history.” Wen Qing stepped closer to the counter and picked up one of the needles. “These have been in my family for generations, but I don’t know much about them other than how old they are and what they were used for.”
The shopkeeper pursed his lips. “There’s not much else I can tell you about them. Acupuncture needles don’t exactly have much information to offer up.”
“It was worth a try.” After a moment she asked, “Can you clean them for me?”
“Of course I can. I can get rid of that rust and fix that loose thread now, if you’re willing to wait fifteen minutes.”
“I think I’ve got time for that.”
Wen Qing had really only brought the needles in to be cleaned. She hadn’t thought that the shopkeeper would be able to tell her anything that she didn’t already know, but it had been worth a try. Though her grandmother had told her what she could about the Wen family and its history, much had been lost, especially during and following the Cultivation Period. The three acupuncture needles had spent the entirety of Wen Qing’s life in a small glass box hung up on a wall, at first in Wen Qing and Wen Ning’s childhood home, and now in their own apartment. She had taken them out last week to see if she could clean them—she had been watching the tiny specks of rust grow over the years, and was unwilling to let these family heirlooms disappear, too—but had found that she was incapable of such delicate work. Instead of worrying herself sick over trying not to bend or ruin any of the needles, she had brought them in to this man, whom her acquaintance Nie Huaisang had recommended. As soon as the shopkeeper was done, Wen Qing intended on returning the needles to their rightful place in the glass box on the wall. They’d only been gone from it for a few days, but the whole apartment felt off with them gone.
Wen Qing was in the middle of answering a text from Wen Ning—he was going to be staying late at work tonight to prepare for a new arrival—when the shopkeeper returned to the counter. Held in his palm, resting on a soft white cloth, were the three needles, shining like they were brand new. Wen Qing had never seen them in such good condition, and had to double check to make sure that they were indeed the needles that she had brought in. Sure enough, they bore the same tiny nicks that she was used to, in all the right places.
“Wow,” she couldn’t help but murmur as she picked one up and rolled it gently between her fingertips.
The shopkeeper gave a proud huff. “If you wanted to sell those, I could get you a nice little sum for them. That clean-up nearly doubled their worth.”
Wen Qing smiled at the gleam in the shopkeeper’s eyes but shook her head. “Like I said,” she responded patiently, “they’re a family heirloom. But I will gladly pay you for the restoration.”
The gleam spread across the shopkeeper’s face, turning into a full smile.
Wen Qing left the shop having paid more than she had prepared for, but feeling satisfied with the work done. Wen Ning was still not home when she returned to their apartment.
x
Lan Wangji wasn’t a superstitious man. He wasn’t religious. He didn’t believe in higher powers or mythical creatures or messages from beyond. But he didn’t actively disbelieve, either. There was simply no reason for him to believe anymore. Magic had died out long ago, when the Cultivation Period came to an end. There were no more ghosts, no more fairies, no more fierce corpses. Whatever secret had allowed the cultivators then to access and nurture golden cores had died with them. It was a mundane world, and Lan Wangji was content with that.
Or, at least, he had been.
That dream had unnerved him. There was something so real about it—something visceral and deep—that he couldn’t just shake off like he did so many other bothersome things.
So, here he was. Sitting in the library of the school he taught at, making his way through a stack of books about the psychological and metaphysical properties of dreams. Nearly two hours into his studies, the first bell for classes rang. First period was to start in fifteen minutes. Lan Wangji stood, carried his stack of books over to the librarian’s desk, set them there, said “I’ll be back for these,” and left.
Lan Wangji felt bad for being distracted throughout the entirety of the day’s classes—not that his students could tell, though. They had no idea what his different silences meant, and they were too wrapped up in their teenage theatrics to care. They shuffled into his class, listened to his lessons and played their instruments like they were supposed to, and rushed out once the period was over, same as always. Lan Wangji was relieved when the final bell rang at the end of the day, and he was left in an empty classroom. Thoughts of his dream had refused to leave his head. He returned to the library, collected his books—the librarian had left a sticky note on top of them that read “Wangji’s—Do Not Touch”—and brought them back to his classroom. He needed somewhere silent to read them, and the library was used by various extracurricular groups after school.
When he shut the door behind him and turned to face the rest of the room, he was surprised to find his brother waiting for him. Lan Xichen sat quietly on the piano bench, eyes drifting over the sheet music that sat before him. His attention shifted to Lan Wangji, and he smiled. “Hello, Wangji.”
Lan Wangji nodded his greeting and set his books down on his desk. He approached his brother. “Hello, Xichen.”
“Doing a little research, I see?” Lan Xichen said, inclining his head in the direction of the stack of books.
“Mn.”
“You’ve never been interested in the science behind dreams before.” Lan Xichen spoke without judgment—only gentle intrigue colored his voice. “And I’ve never seen you give the meaning of dreams even the slightest amount of consideration.” He raised an eyebrow, still smiling just the tiniest bit. “What brought this on?”
Lan Wangji frowned. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know about him looking into these topics, but he also hadn’t put that much effort into hiding it. The librarian labeling the stack of books with his name hadn’t helped, however. At least the person who had noticed was his brother, and not his uncle. Or some nosy TA.
Lan Xichen waited patiently for a reply.
Lan Wangji searched for the right words to say. There were not many versions of the truth that sounded reasonable enough to speak out loud. Eventually he settled on the response, “I had a dream and I want answers.”
“Ah,” Lan Xichen nodded. He paused for a moment, clearly thinking over what to say next, and then asked, “Are you alright?”
Lan Wangji blinked. Was he alright? Of course he—well. Maybe he wasn’t completely alright. Lan Wangji frowned a little deeper. “I don’t know,” he said, truthfully. “It’s bothering me. I don’t know why.”
Lan Xichen stood, walked over to his younger brother, and laid a hand on his shoulder. He gave it a little squeeze. “You don’t have to talk to me about it, but if you do, I’m here. I know a thing or two about dreams, and would be happy to talk.” A gentle chuckle escaped him. “Or, if you would prefer, I would also gladly sit in silence and drink tea. Dealer’s choice.”
Lan Wangji nodded. Some part of him felt relieved. He knew that his brother would never judge him, and would always be there to lend an ear, but hearing it come from Lan Xichen himself made him less anxious. “Thank you, Xichen,” he said. I appreciate it.
Lan Xichen seemed to hear the unspoken words and his eyes crinkled into crescent moons as he gave Lan Wangji a warm smile. “Don’t stay here too late reading. I talked to Yuyan, and she said you could take the books home with you if you want. She knows you’ll return them.”
And with that, he left, and Lan Wangji was alone once more. He sat down at his desk and read until 5 PM—he couldn’t stay any later because he and Wei Wuxian had plans for a quick dinner. When it came time for him to pack up and leave, he stowed the books in the bottom of his bag, and he only got them out later when Wei Wuxian was at his last tutoring appointment of the night, on the other side of the city.