deercountry | Hunting Under the Bone Moon [Closed]

He's trying not to think about Jin Guangyao wrapped up in his outer robe to fend off the chill, or how his body is faintly glowing, or how warm he feels pressed up against him when they're wedged together in this crevice.

Xichen manages to get his hand between them, groping around in his robes for his omni. He sends a "brief" message to both Shen Yuan and Huaisang;

A-Yao and I will be delayed. Temporarily trapped in a cave waiting for a beast to lose interest.

Very frustrating! (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻

Hope you are both well ♡ ～('▽^人) and have had success on your Night Hunt. Apologies but we will likely miss dinner (っ˘̩╭╮˘̩)っ though hopefully we will be back in time for breakfast. ╰(▔∀▔)╯

...And send. It's probably fine.

When he looks up from his handiwork to see Jin Guangyao shivering, Xichen looks suddenly contrite.

"I'm sorry, I did not expect my wards would cool the area quite so much."

And it's not like they could huddle for warmth. 1. Awkward and 2. Xichen wasn't exactly much warmer than the rocks they were wedged between.

"Let us hope it loses interest quickly so we can get back soon."

(It can be inferred by the sudden and determined interest that Jin Guangyao takes in the craggy ceiling of the crevice above them that he probably feels some kind of way about Lan Xichen's clumsy groping around between them in search of his omni. A real 'blessed ancestors give him strength' kind of moment, while he tries not to let the sound of his breath catching in his throat become too obvious.)

He can see the strange little emotes on the screen of Lan Xichen's omni and gives one eyebrow a discreet, 'really?' lift in response to them. But the expression softens immediately when Lan Xichen apologizes, and he shakes his head. "Er-ge has nothing to apologize for," he assures him; that's been a constant refrain of his lately, hasn't it? And whether they wish to huddle together or not, the crevice isn't giving them an alternative other than to be right up in each other's business; it's this, or risk being seen by the beast still grumbling and snuffling at the entrance to the cave.

A pause, and then, "Ah, maybe--" and he fetches out a warming talisman, smooths it against the stone wall beside them, and activates it with a hand seal. Immediately, the air around them loses some of its frigid bite, and while the talisman is far from powerful enough to make the temperature truly comfortable, it is now far easier to bear while they wait for the beast hunting them to lose interest.

...It also means that, with the issue of his need for warmth addressed, there is very little left to distract Jin Guangyao from how very close he and Lan Xichen are to each other, alone in this dark, close space, or how the light from his own glowing blood casts shadows across his jaw and cheekbones. He meets his eyes, then looks away quickly--then risks another glimpse of his face. It's going to be like this, apparently.

He is very pointedly keeping his eyes on the omni screen because every time he looks at Jin Guangyao (or worse, when their eyes meet), that blue hue creeps into his cheeks. In a kinder world, they could lean against each other, laugh about their silly little predicament, and Xichen could wrap Jin Guangyao in his arms rather than just his outer robe. Instead, they are wedged together stiff and awkward, eyes averted, Xichen trying not to think about how wonderfully warm Jin Guangyao is.

He's also trying not to shift too much; a protruding rock has dug into his side and he has to crane his neck to keep from bumping his head on the ceiling.

"Thank you, A-Yao. The talisman helps."

He is sincere in that. Though the cold doesn't bother him, the only time he's been actually warm in this place is when he's taken a nice, hot bath (and even that didn't last as long as it should).

Xichen chances another glance at Jin Guangyao, and immediately regrets it. Nope, still painfully lovely and radiant. Look away, Xichen. Be strong, Xichen.

Edited 2022-11-15 01:38 (UTC)

"I wish I could take it back," Jin Guangyao says quietly. Clearly, he isn't talking about the warming talisman.

He is doing an admirable job of addressing his words only to the pale blue of Lan Xichen's inner robes, keeping his eyes there rather than allowing them to lift and take in his friend's expression. Jin Guangyao twists his fingers together uncertainly in the sleeves of Lan Xichen's robe, then closes his eyes and breathes out, as if he has reached the end of some tether and must give himself some slack, if he is to be able to keep going.

"What I said in the courtyard," he goes on quietly, and finally lets himself look up into Lan Xichen's eyes, so that the tired, wretched longing for what they'd shared so easily before can be seen clearly. He shakes his head, murmurs, "I wish I could take it back, I wish--"

A frustrated snarl manages to reach them through the sound-proofing wards, and Jin Guangyao seizes hold of the front of Lan Xichen's robes, eyes squeezed shut, because fuck, he'd almost forgotten about that stupid monster, how could he have forgotten about it?

Xichen flinches when Jin Guangyao speaks. It was, after all, his own fault this wall had formed between them. If he had not been so bold, if he had not dared to hope against something he knew was hopeless, then Jin Guangyao would not have been compelled to draw that line in the first place.

He was a fool.

But he cannot ignore his friend's terror when the creature makes a furious sound (perhaps it has finally decided to give up and search elsewhere?) and he rests a hand on his back, an attempt to reassure him that all was well.

(It's fine, everything is fine, they will acclimate to this too.)

"It can't reach us here," he says, voice soft. "And A-Yao was right to push this one back. He must be loyal to Qin Su, even if -- "

No, even now he cannot say it. He shakes his head.

"This er-ge understands. As he said before, perhaps another life will be kinder to us. He will wait for that day."

Lan Xichen ought to know Jin Guangyao better than that. He ought to know how that 'even if' will stick in his heart like a fish hook, sharp and merciless from every possible awful word that could follow. Jin Guangyao is immediately rigid and inflexible as stone under Lan Xichen's hand. His eyes are open again and fixed on his friend's face, but there is no flush of colour to his cheeks now beyond what the iridescence of his paleblood lends his skin. If anything, that glow only emphasizes how ashen he's suddenly become.

"Even if," he repeats woodenly, and no, he won't be deterred. "Even if what, er-ge?"

Xichen's expression is pained. Why in the world would Jin Guangyao ask him to repeat such a horrible thing?

Did this version of him simply not know...? The version of him that Xichen knew had known about Qin Su before their marriage but after he'd gotten her pregnant. Could it be that it would be him rather than Madam Qin who reveals this to him?

"A-Yao, I'm sorry, I thought you knew --"

It's a struggle to keep his tone level because this horrible truth hangs above him. If he had known that Jin Guangyao was ignorant of the whole thing, he never would have opened his mouth.

"Qin Su was not concaved by Qin Cangye. Your father raped Madam Qin."

...And Jin Guangshan couldn't even keep track of the number of women he had raped to know that Jin Guangyao was married to his half-sister!

Edited 2022-11-16 21:14 (UTC)

Oh, no. Jin Guangyao is very aware of his and Qin Su's unfortunate familial connection (that he fathered a son on his own sister, however unintentionally), and the lack of immediate shock on his (abruptly bloodless) face ought to make this much clear. But he had hoped, desperately and apparently in vain, that Lan Xichen would remain ignorant of this horrible, disgusting, shameful secret for the rest of their lives. Yet here he is, breaking the news of Jin Guangyao's filthiest and most abominable sin to his face with such wretched, gentle sorrow in his eyes, and all Jin Guangyao can think is that he would rather die than endure this humiliation for a second longer than he already has.

So that's precisely what he decides to do.

Except the tight confines of the crevice makes his sudden, desperate grab for Hensheng's hilt a clumsy, wild thing, and he has less than a second to decide how best to succeed at killing himself.

(Complications: Even when he yanks the flexible sword from its position around his waist, he cannot straighten it without running the risk of injuring Lan Xichen, and so that rules out impaling himself through the heart. There isn't enough time to drag the sharpest edge of the blade across his own throat, either, because Lan Xichen would stop him long before he could lift Hensheng high enough to reach his neck. His left wrist, then. It will have to do.)

He wastes a burst of spiritual energy to grant himself the speed necessary to get just enough of Hensheng's blade free of its flexible scabbard in the span of time it would take another man to blink his eyes shut. Then he drops his left wrist to the sharp edge of it and rakes it open deeply on the steel, and the cut is so clean, the blade so sharp, that he doesn't even feel the pain of it at first. Instead he watches his own blood, incandescent and luminous, bloom across the surface of his skin and flow like a current across both silk and steel.

The look in his friend's eyes tells him once more he was entirely wrong about everything.

(A fool. He is such a fool. When will he catch on...?)

The flash of a blade is all he sees before he realizes just what his sworn brother intends.

"No!"

Lan Xichen hadn't been expecting this! When Jin Guangyao had revealed the truth before, he'd been resigned and exhausted not...

Not this.

He immediately seizes Jin Guangyao by both his wrists and squeezes the pressure point of his sword hand to get him to drop Hensheng. He then focuses his energy into the wound on his left to heal it, pale blood spilling over his fingers, soaking into his sleeve.

He is, for the first time, glad of the side-effects of his own strange blood. Ice forms over the wound, freezing the blood that comes out and slowing the flow from a gush to trickle.

"A-Yao," he pleads, "don't do this, I beg of you; don't!"

Jin Guangyao's entire left forearm is encased in ice now, putting tight pressure on his veins and trapping Xichen's hand around his wrist so he can work on closing the gash before Jin Guangyao bleeds out. He won't let his friend die again -- not again (please, never again, he cannot bear it).

Jin Guangyao's sword hand spasms reflexively in Lan Xichen's tight grip, and Hensheng topples free of his fingers to clatter uselessly to the ground. Already the spatter of of his incandescent blood on the stone walls around them is beginning to fade into a pearlescent white that would be beautiful under other circumstances. (It will occur to him later what a stupid waste of his blood this moment was. You know, back when he is in something approaching his right mind.)

Then he feels the frigid bite of ice against his self-inflicted injury, can feel the sudden burn of Lan Xichen's qi pouring across his meridians to undo what he has done, and he gives a full-bodied twist to try and free himself, but it is too late for that. The ice has encased his forearm too tightly and securely, and Lan Xichen's grip is like iron.

Still: "Stop--" he gasps raggedly, and that is when he realizes that he is crying, and rips his right hand free of Lan Xichen's so that he can cover his face. "Stop, let me go, I can't bear this--I can't bear you knowing this, I never wanted you to know--"

They are briefly locked in a struggle like some mockery of their longest song-and-dance with Xichen's hands gripping Jin Guangyao's wrists and it's like needles in his heart to deny his sworn brother a clean end.

(What right did he have to do so, when that is what his own heart yearned so desperately for...?)

"You know I can't do that," he implores, because he cannot let Jin Guangyao die again. Especially not for this. Not for the failings of Jin Guangshan that fell on the shoulders of his unwanted children.

"I already knew, A-Yao. Before coming here, you explained everything to me."

Lan Xichen pulls him close in a one-armed embrace, letting his energy flow into his wrist more slowly now that the bloodflow has grown sluggish with the pressure and the cold.

"There are no secrets left to protect me from. I thought..."

He holds him a little tighter as cold tears fall from his eyes, freezing on his cheeks. Even with the warming talismans, the air has become frigid, particles of ice floating by, glittering in the glow of Jin Guangyao's blood.

"I thought I had made that clear."

A thousand and one cruel, awful things leap to the tip of Jin Guangyao's tongue to spite Lan Xichen into letting him go, letting him die--a thousand and one confidences that Lan Xichen had given to him over the years of their friendship secure in the knowledge that, whatever else Jin Guangyao might be capable of, he would never turn those vulnerabilities back on Lan Xichen. Jin Guangyao would never wield Lan Xichen's anguish over his complicity in Lan Wangji's brutal punishment with the discipline whip like a knife against his er-ge's heart, no matter what he might do instead to the hundreds of pleading faces he consigned to a wretched death by Xue Chengmei's hand. But now there is one awful moment where he can feel the venom of his cruelty pushing its way up from his guts, making his lips curl, before he tastes the bite of it for himself, and Jin Guangyao's will to use it against the man shedding tears of ice into his hair withers in his chest.

The fight goes out of him like a snapped thread holding a puppet upright. Jin Guangyao slumps forward against Lan Xichen's chest, hot tears spilling down his cheeks, and muffles one wretched sob against his neck before the rest of his weeping is consigned to shuddering silence. He tries again to free his right hand from Lan Xichen's grip, but this time it is only so he can wrap it tightly around his back to clutch at him with trembling fingers. He can't speak for the guilt and shame that has built a home inside him: over what he has done, both in the past and in this very moment, trying to take his own life in front of Lan Xichen and forcing him to bear witness to it, contemplating ripping open the oldest and most tender of Lan Xichen's regrets for Jin Guangyao's own benefit. He just holds on and rides out the rest of his anguish until he can breathe again. He has no choice.

Xichen can't hold him by the wrist any more. The wound hasn't completely closed, but Jin Guangyao is no longer bleeding out and there is a thick layer of ice keeping him from reopening the wound. Later, Xichen will treat it properly, but now there are more pressing matters.

He had been careless with his words and with his knowledge of what was to come and had barely avoided a disaster. He had also promised to be honest with Jin Guangyao about what he knew, but...

...If it was going to be like this, then he really shouldn't say anything at all.

He holds his friend through his tears, wrapped in a robe stained with his pale blood, his own shaking hands now tracing soothing circles over his back.

Unbidden, the thought that rises in Xichen's head is that it is no wonder the Wall of Discipline has so many rules warning against the pitfalls of love. When had such a thing ever come without a mountain of suffering in tow...? Were he and Jin Guangyao simply destined to keep hurting each other by choice or by blunder?

It would be very nice to know the answer to that question definitively, one way or another. Instead, Jin Guangyao only knows that he can neither bring himself to let go of Lan Xichen now that he has his arms around him, nor can he endure the thought of looking into Lan Xichen's eyes again, knowing that he already knows the worst of his secrets. That he knows, and still, somehow--

He frowns, baffled and exhausted, but doesn't loosen his grip, doesn't pull away. Instead, he whispers his words into the silk fabric covering his shoulder. "How can Er-ge bear to look at this one, knowing what he knows?" A beat, and then even more quietly, somehow: "After all I have done, how can you possibly want...?"

His voice fails him, and he can't finish the sentence, but its ending is clear enough: how can Lan Xichen possibly have any feelings for Jin Guangyao, knowing that he murdered Nie Mingjue, knowing that he married Qin Su?

"...I suppose it would make things easier if I could simply revile you. But nothing is that easy."

...A lesson Nie Mingjue had never learned.

He holds him ever tighter, something fierce and protective welling in him as if the mobs of those Jin Guangyao had wronged were the ones snuffling outside the entrance to this cave and not some hairy beast.

He remembers his anger, white hot and roiling his insides. He'd felt betrayed, his trust broken along with his heart.

And he remembers Jin Guangyao, his hand severed and in agony, and how the anger had simply been dashed to pieces at the sight of his friend falling apart. He had done horrible things, things Xichen hated. And yet, this was the same man who had let Wen Soldiers beat him to a bruised and bloodied pulp rather than give up Xichen's location. When they had spoke in the small, quiet hours of the morning, Jin Guangyao had whispered of watchtowers and doing something meaningful for the people cultivators were supposed to protect.

That could not have been a lie.

"You are not a simple man. To reconcile all of these facets of you... the things I feel can no longer be simple either. I hate the things you've done, but the more I come to understand why you felt you had to do them, the more I understand the failings were not yours alone to bear."

Edited 2022-11-17 01:56 (UTC)

Again, Lan Xichen extends an unearned grace to an undeserving Jin Guangyao. Again, Jin Guangyao does not know what to do with this gift other than to cradle it like it is made of spun glass. His fingers twitch where they are buried in the silk of Lan Xichen's inner robes, and he squeezes his eyes tightly shut.

"I'm sorry. For doing this in front of you," he clarifies and he draws back enough so that he can lift his left hand, the wound held together only by the strength of Lan Xichen's magic. He stares at the ice which has embedded itself into his flesh, turned pale as moonlight now that his blood has mingled with it, then looks up at Lan Xichen's eyes. It would be a lie to say the longing is gone from his gaze, because it will always be there, but his wretched guilt and regret are laid across it now.

He shakes his head again, then reaches out with a wince of dismay to touch the blood that has saturated Lan Xichen's sleeve. "Please, don't tell Huaisang or Shen-di. About this--" he lifts his wrist, "or about..." Everything else.

Lan Xichen wonders what he might have done if Jin Guangyao had told him these things before, if they hadn't been laid bare to the world. Would he have been righteous like Nie Mingjue...? Or...

"...I will take this to my grave," he says solemnly.

He meets Jin Guangyao's gaze, his own firm and resolute despite the frozen tears that have dusted his lashes white. He sees the pain and, most horrifically, the regret, the very thing Xichen dreads seeing the most.

The reason he has never made a move to deepen their hopeless relationship, plain and simple. He could endure heartache and longing. But not regret.

"All of it. A-Yao... whatever else you have done, whatever else you may do, I remember all the things you did when left to act under your own power. And you don't have to do so alone."

He takes him gently by the raised wrist; it's too hard to actually see the gash under the frozen blood mingled with ice.

"...Let me tend to this properly...?"

Wordlessly, Jin Guangyao nods and allows his wrist to relax in Lan Xichen's grip.

It is easier for him to turn his focus and attention to this, to aiding Lan Xichen in solving the immediate problem of his injury. Already he is chastising himself internally for his own recklessness, shedding his blood so casually and selfishly in a place already so susceptible to blood pollution, but he doesn't allow the thought to linger. There's no point in languishing in remorse over something like this; this place was going to get a taste of his blood one way or another, and this likely won't be the last time, either.

All of them will be lucky if their future bloodletting can be so swiftly and neatly addressed.

The thought comes into his mind abruptly, then, of why it had been necessary for Hensheng to bear both Jin Guangyao and Huaisang's weight during their flight to safety earlier in the month. He stares at the pale blood still drying on his skin and feels a cold pit in his stomach.

"Does Er-ge know whether Huaisang's sabre came with him to Trench?" He asks the question slowly, almost unwillingly, and there is no masking his dread at the answer, at what this place might do to one of the Nie sect blades--and, by extension, to Huaisang himself.

The first thing to do is get through the ice that's formed. Easy enough - Jin Guangyao's body heat has done most of the work once Xichen was no longer sustaining the constant cold. With a few well-placed presses of his thumb, the ice cracks and falls away.

Between the cold slowing the blood, and Xichen's qi hastening the healing, the gash is not so prominent anymore. He still fumbles for his supplies to clean and bandage the wound.

The question does blindside him, however.

"His sabre...?"

He frowns, trying to dredge up any recollection of seeing the sabre on Huaisang. Not entirely uncommon; he suspected Huaisang only ever carried it out of obligation. With that obligation gone, it's either stashed away somewhere or simply... did not come with him.

"...No, I don't recall seeing it. Is it possible it's still just... back home?"

He helps as much as he can, holding supplies where necessary in his uninjured hand and trying not to flinch as the wound is inspected and cleaned. Jin Guangyao does wince and make a small sound of discomfort as the ice is dealt with, and watches, oddly mesmerized, as the slow trickle of his luminescent pale blood continues to seep from the wound. At least the injury is no longer the deep, life-threatening gash that it had been moments ago.

"It is possible," he concedes, though the dubious little frown creasing his eyebrows indicates he isn't entirely satisfied by this non-answer. He gestures around them--not just around the crevice, of course, but at the Trenchwood, the city, this place in this strange, frightening world. "I think it may be worth speaking to him about it. Consider what this place could do to the restive spirit inside a Nie sect sabre."

Or what the sabre could do to Trench, though he doesn't say that part aloud.

"I would prefer not to, at just the moment," he says, mouth a thin, grim line as he begins to wind the bandages around Jin Guangyao's arm.

"But I take your meaning. We should ensure it cannot hurt him, or anyone."

If it was even here at all. He prayed it wasn't. He prayed that Huaisang could have some peace from that horrible legacy, that he didn't have to walk that path of inevitable tragedy Mingjue furiously staggered his way down, relentless in his dedication to his ancestors arts.

He missed the man his da-ge had been, missed him so dearly that he had desperately wanted to still see him behind his furious stare, ever and more obscured by the blade eating away at him like a cancer.

He had missed his friend so much that he'd completely missed how much he had changed.

Xichen needed to take responsibility for his failings.

"...I will speak to Huaisang on the matter."

Lan Xichen has a terrible poker face. Jin Guangyao reads the grief in his eyes and the set of his mouth and has to look away from it. (He regrets that it was necessary. That does not mean he is sorry for having done it.)

Once the bandage is secure around his wrist, he gives it a tentative flex to test out his range of motion, and finds it satisfactory. At least he hadn't injured his sword hand; that makes it marginally easier for him to kneel down and find Hensheng's hilt where he'd dropped his spiritual weapon in his earlier (idiotic) grappling with Lan Xichen. He takes a moment, making use of his still-glowing skin to examine the blade and carefully clean both blood and dirt from the steel.

"It should be you, not me." A quiet agreement, and he does not look Lan Xichen in the eye as he says the words; they both know why Jin Guangyao should not be the one to broach this particular subject with Huaisang. Then, looking up: "Can you still hear that creature?"

Lan Xichen neither expected or wanted an apology from Jin Guangyao. The other man had surely killed even finer men than Nie Mingjue to stay afloat amidst the cultivation world, and he had never demanded those things of him.

It didn't mean it hurt any less. But having a clearer picture meant he could truly mourn their da-ge properly.

"It should."

Though he's fairly certain Huaisang doesn't know, there is still the possibility he does, or could find out. Jin Guangyao asking would be ...insensitive.

At the mention of the creature, he lifts his head, listening intently. Nothing. Perhaps it had finally lost interest.

"I think it's gone. If so, we should head elsewhere."

Hunting Under the Bone Moon [Closed]

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cw: rape mention

cw: incest (discussed); blood, self-harm/suicide attempt

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