(They are likely running out of steps, which means at some point soon they will have to actually acknowledge the thing between them that they are dancing around. That they have always danced around.)
It's one thing to nurse a wild hope to oneself in private and to seek it out it as a source of comfort when struggling to endure life in Jinlintai, and quite another to see the possibility of it suddenly no longer an unattainable thing, like walking on the mountains of the moon, but a fork in the path diverging ahead. A real path, with dips and pitfalls beneath his feet that he could choose to take, if he wanted to, and make this thing real.
He wants it so desperately that he's already started to lift his hand, to reach out and touch Lan Xichen's wrist again, but then stops himself. He swallows, and lowers it back to the table. There are so many reasons why this is such a wretched idea. Da-ge's death, protecting Huaisang from that knowledge, everything that Lan Xichen has endured, and Jin Guangyao is only beginning to understand the shape of it. He could simply allude, as he often has, in careful metaphors and asides, to any of those things.
What comes out of his mouth instead is a very quiet, "I'm still married, Er-ge."
It's a farce of an excuse, a cowardly sham--just like his marriage to Qin Su. But even that tragic mistake being what it is, he can't bring himself to dishonour her more than he already has.
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It's one thing to nurse a wild hope to oneself in private and to seek it out it as a source of comfort when struggling to endure life in Jinlintai, and quite another to see the possibility of it suddenly no longer an unattainable thing, like walking on the mountains of the moon, but a fork in the path diverging ahead. A real path, with dips and pitfalls beneath his feet that he could choose to take, if he wanted to, and make this thing real.
He wants it so desperately that he's already started to lift his hand, to reach out and touch Lan Xichen's wrist again, but then stops himself. He swallows, and lowers it back to the table. There are so many reasons why this is such a wretched idea. Da-ge's death, protecting Huaisang from that knowledge, everything that Lan Xichen has endured, and Jin Guangyao is only beginning to understand the shape of it. He could simply allude, as he often has, in careful metaphors and asides, to any of those things.
What comes out of his mouth instead is a very quiet, "I'm still married, Er-ge."
It's a farce of an excuse, a cowardly sham--just like his marriage to Qin Su. But even that tragic mistake being what it is, he can't bring himself to dishonour her more than he already has.