”Wei Ying,” he hears from behind him.
Wei Wuxian cocks his head and turns, letting his lips draw into a lazy smile. It curves around his teeth (sharp, sharp, deadly) and stretches obscenely, a bloody slash across his face.
”Lan Zhan,” he says. The fire in his blood simmers, insistent, unyielding, the heat rearing up at the challenge in Lan Zhan’s eyes.
There’s smoke around them. Black, thick, snaking around them like a physical thing. It reaches out for him, coils around his ankle in an imitation of a jealous lover. The fire doesn’t like how he looks at Lan Zhan.
For a moment, nothing happens. Lan Zhan looks at him with an unreadable glint in his eyes and Wei Wuxian is too lazy (nervous, suspicious, afraid) to avert his gaze. What would be the point, anyway—he can feel Lan Zhan’s focus on his skin like a touch and he sways toward it despite his best efforts to stay still.
Pathetic. Weak.
Human.
And then Lan Zhan moves, snatches his hand in his own with speed Wei Wuxian didn’t know he commanded, and a stream of cold flows into him. It’s like ice along his veins, hissing when it meets the fire. It yields to the heat, thawing under the scorching fury pouring out of him even if it allows him to draw a proper breath for the first time in ages. Before he has the chance to retaliate (burn burn burn to ashes), Lan Zhan lets go and takes a step back. He looks like himself—he always looks like himself except the first moment they met after Wei Wuxian emerged from the Burial Mounds—but his eyes burn with something Wei Wuxian doesn’t want to examine closer.
”Wei Ying,” he says again. ”Wait for me.”
And then he flicks his wrist, lets Bichen soar up, and jumps after it.
Prey, his mind whispers, the anticipation curling dark and vicious in the back of his throat.
He does nothing.
”Wei Ying.”
Nightless City stretches across the horizon like a pustule, pulsing red-hot and pushing out rotten pieces of Wen Ruohan’s experimentation. Wei Wuxian watches them without really seeing them, twirling Chenqing and humming in tune with the thrum in his head. He knows what’s coming.
They both do.
Wen Ruohan knows he’s out here—it’s the reason he’s sending his pathetic minions out in waves Wei Wuxian could quell with a thought. He doesn’t, though, because he wants to see what the insane Chief Cultivator will do. How far he’s willing to go to get what he wants.
He wants the tally Wen Ruohan has been nurturing against his chest like a parasite baby.
Want. Ridiculous.
He ignores the burning contempt but allows a slight inclination of his head as Lan Zhan steps right next to him.
”I’ll come with you,” he says in a low voice.
”No,” Wei Wuxian replies, amused.
”Mn.”
Hungry, his blood sings. Hungry hungry hungry.
”Wei Ying!”
He hears it through the screaming inferno in his head, through the haze that rises from his skin, through the pain of burning burning burning. He bares his teeth and he knows his eyes are on fire and he has flames instead of hair and still Lan Zhan walks unflinchingly to him, a shining beacon in his robes that are still so white they burn.
”You should run,” Wei Wuxian’s mouth purrs. ”There’s nothing for you here.”
”Untrue,” Lan Zhan says.
Behind Wei Wuxian a bloody pile of ash stains the platform, the only thing left of Wen Ruohan. Around him, a ring of cultivators with swords in their hands and terror in their eyes and they look ready to burst into flames and they should burn, it all should burn. The demonic tool in his hands spins, chaotic and wild.
His eyes snap to Lan Zhan as he stops right in front of him. He’s calm save for his eyes that are dark pools of unfathomable depths but the small smile dancing on the corner of his lips stays.
Wei Wuxian wants.
”Trust me, Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says.
And then he darts forward and presses his lips against Wei Wuxian’s.
The shock rings through him, surprise like ice against his skin and down his spine and he growls into it, bites down and tastes blood. He fights it, fights the need to let go and let himself catch fire like dry tinders but the him with burnt-out eyes and wings of black fire thrashes like a wild animal. Lan Zhan’s palm is warm on the nape of his neck and his lips are cool and Wei Wuxian wants to—
Lan Zhan rests their foreheads together and hums. It’s the same song that’s been thrumming in the back of Wei Wuxian’s mind and it nudges at the shadows that aren’t shadows and they break free, pouring out of him like a storm of wildfire. He throws his head back and screams, and sees nothing but an endless sea of flames that consume the courtyard, burning out bodies of friends and foe, leaving behind nothing but bare stones cracked under heat.
Wei Wuxian burns and the world burns with him.
”Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, brushing his lips against his temple.
Impossible, the voice that isn’t a voice says.
But somehow, he’s here.
Lan Zhan is here, holding Wei Wuxian in his arms as he burns, burns, burns, and there’s devotion in his eyes and smile on his lips, and he’s alive.
Want, his mind purrs as the fire changes direction and intent. Hungry.
Slowly, Wei Wuxian tilts his head and crowds close, breathes a gust of smoke and ash on Lan Zhan’s lips, and swallows the soft sigh he lets out.
He burns in red and black and around him, Lan Zhan grounds him with white flames that don’t flinch from his rage.
He burns and Lan Zhan burns with him.
Mine.