[closed post -- training]

[onthewillowsthere]

The day after Evil Twin Magnus leaves, Galahad shows up for his training with Lan Wangji exactly as he always does (although later in the day, because Lan Wangji asked him to wait until afternoon to meet) -- if Lan Wangji were going solely on his appearance, he'd see absolutely nothing out of order. He throws himself into the sword forms with his usual focus. But he's gripping the hilt of his sword too tightly, and his movements are tense; he's never graceful, but today he's almost clumsy, and each failure or misstep only seems to pull him tighter, like an overwound watch.

Comments

[onthewillowsthere]

"Did you make vows?"

[lightbearinglord]

"We had already said everything we needed to say." A fleetingly tender look crosses his face, a memory of the sweetest part of Guanyin Temple.

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad looks up in time to catch that slight change to Lan Wangji's expression, and if he doesn't understand every subtlety of it he can at least imagine.

[lightbearinglord]

"You and Claudius will make vows." Claudius always has more to say, a thought he has with the utmost fondness for his friend.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Claudius's will be longer than mine."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji nods; this is obviously the case. There were not many dishes in the first place, so he turns from the sink to look at Galahad. "When Wei Ying told me what he felt," he says after a small pause, "I couldn't speak at all."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad nods. "When I feel too much, I can't speak."

[lightbearinglord]

"Yes." He makes eye contact, direct and serious, to show that he understands and that he understands so completely that no further elaboration is required. "I had to borrow his words and give them back to him."

[onthewillowsthere]

"What did he say?"

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji smiles, or something close to it, his eyes softening again. He ducks his head as if he could possibly hide how wholly it makes him ache with sentiment to recall Wei Ying, absurd and brave and beautiful, calling out to him across Guanyin Temple because it could not wait even one moment longer. "You're really great," he recites, low, the words polished with the number of times he has turned them over in his memory. "I like you. I fancy you. I love you. I can't leave you. I whatever you. I want to night-hunt with you for the rest of my life. I don't want anyone but you. It can't be anyone but you."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad listens. He can tell the words aren't Lan Wangji's; they don't sound anything like him (Galahad wonders whether this is how he sounds when he uses Claudius' words, whether it's as obvious to everyone around him) -- and yet the way Lan Wangji says them makes them feel as if they belong to him.

[lightbearinglord]

He lets himself stay in that memory, the stunned amazement still close at hand and still powerful enough to coax the rest of the world to fall away, whether that amounts to a quiet kitchen in a different world or a crowded temple, constructed by the scheming chief cultivator, at the end of a long investigation. "It had been more than twenty years since I fell in love with him," he says. "I felt too much."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes," Galahad says. If Claudius made a declaration like that to him, he wouldn't be able to speak either. He already knows that he’ll have to memorize his vows and hope that the act of recitation makes him capable of saying them.

[lightbearinglord]

Time and repetition have made the words less overwhelming, but Lan Wangji is silent anyway as he thinks of them, of holding onto Wei Ying as tightly as he could hold onto anything. He had sealed his own meridians to buy Wei Ying's life from Jin Guangyao; he had only the strength of his body with which to fold him into his arms and sink into wild, impossible happiness.

[onthewillowsthere]

Lan Wangji's love is palpable, even for Galahad. He senses it like a physical object taking up space -- like warmth emanating from a fireplace. He watches Lan Wangji carefully, attentively, as if he could learn all the subtle important unspoken things about those vows.

[lightbearinglord]

Because he knows that Galahad will not mind, he allows himself to be quiet and still for another stretch of time. The kitchen is silent, too, and clean, because he keeps it that way, aside from the tidy collection of their tea accoutrements drying. At length, he lifts his eyes to Galahad's again. "Do you know yet what you will say?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Not yet. It's-- hard. I know what I want to say."

[lightbearinglord]

"What do you want to say?" he prompts.

[onthewillowsthere]

"I want to tell him that I love him. That he matters to me and he will always matter. The way he feels matters. The way people treat him. Whether they hurt him or make him happy." His voice is flat, toneless. "He makes me happy. I want to live with him. I want to listen to him talk every day."

[lightbearinglord]

The words are half-familiar and terribly dear in Galahad's flat, painfully sincere voice. "Is that not enough?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"It's not beautiful when I say it," and he looks up at Lan Wangji with the most subtle uncertainty. "Claudius says things beautifully."

[lightbearinglord]

"He will find it beautiful because you said it." A flicker of fondness crosses his face as he looks back down at Galahad. "But you have time to craft something more poetic if that is what you want."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I'm going to try." He thinks of his love letter and how long it took, and how it wasn't even very beautiful. It felt plain next to Claudius' cleverly woven words. He expects their vows will be the same, but there isn't really anything he can do about it while being himself.

[lightbearinglord]

Claudius will find whatever Galahad says beautiful, but he will find it even more beautiful knowing how Galahad tried. The intentionality matters, that Galahad means to carve something out of a difficult medium because he loves Claudius so fiercely. Lan Wangji nods. "Good."

[onthewillowsthere]

He looks up, surprised, as Lan Wangji's approval.