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The night they'd fought the waterborne abyss, Wei Wuxian had been sure that something had shifted between them. Lan Zhan had seemed terrified when he was in danger, and he'd caught Lan Zhan looking at him afterward like maybe he was still a little scared that Wei Wuxian would just up and disappear.
So he was confused the next day when Lan Zhan didn't so much as glare at him after reading the note he sent across the room via paperman. It hadn't been anything important or even provocative—just Jiang Cheng's shoes didn't dry until I gave him a talisman for it last night, do you need one?—but he thought it would get some reaction. Instead Lan Zhan had read it, crumpled it up, set it next to his notes, and gone back to listening to Lan Qiren as though nothing had happened. Didn't even glance at Wei Wuxian, let alone glare at him!
Then after class he'd disappeared before Wei Wuxian had even packed away his things and stood up. Jiang Cheng was always telling him not to bother Lan Zhan after class, but he knew that if Lan Zhan didn't want to be bothered he would know by now not to linger long enough for Wei Wuxian to make his way over and tease him. And now... he hadn't. For the first time in weeks.
For two days, Wei Wuxian has gone without so much as a glance from the guy he's going to marry, and it's intolerable. Twice as intolerable because he'd really managed to convince himself that getting under Lan Zhan's skin was better than being ignored, and a better sign for their future marriage... and now that he's been proven right about the first part, he's worried about the second. So on the third morning, he resorts to desperate measures.
He gives Lan Zhan one more chance, in the form of another paperman that just says Lan Zhan, do you hate me now? :( —but Lan Zhan doesn't even read it! Just folds it in half and slides it under his paper.
So Wei Wuxian gets out another paperman, but this time he telegraphs his movements. He makes absolutely sure that Lan Qiren sees him set it on the ground and send it toward Lan Zhan, and as he expected, it doesn't even make it to its destination, and suddenly he'll be spending his afternoon in the library with his betrothed. He tries to look disappointed when Lan Qiren hands down the punishment, but as soon as Lan Qiren turns back around he can't fight the grin that breaks out over his face.
When Lan Zhan looks at him for the first time in days and sees the grin, Wei Wuxian is sure he'll get a glare—but instead, Lan Zhan's shoulders sag just the tiniest bit and his eyes fall to the ground before he turns back to face the front of the room.
That was an odd reaction. Not angry, certainly. At first Wei Wuxian worries that it was disappointment to be stuck looking after him again, but it didn't really look like that, either. Wei Wuxian sighs and looks forward to the afternoon.
He's surprised when he stands up from his seat with his things, stretches, turns toward Jiang Cheng—and sees Lan Zhan still at his desk, putting his things away. He immediately skips over (sue him, he's excited), and the moment he stops at Lan Zhan's desk, Lan Zhan stands up and looks directly at him.
"Wei Ying," he says quietly, looking accusatory but not angry, "you did that on purpose."
"Of course I did," Wei Wuxian pouts, keeping his own voice down too because if Lan Qiren hears he might assign someone other than Lan Zhan to oversee his punishment. "It's the only way my husband will even look at me! I thought we were friends, Lan Zhan."
Lan Zhan's shoulders do that thing again, where they sag just the tiniest bit. Most people probably wouldn't even notice.
"I am sorry," Lan Zhan says, even more quietly than before. Wei Wuxian's eyes widen. He was not expecting that. "It was not my intention to make Wei Ying think that I did not want to be friends."
Wei Wuxian squints at him, unsure what his intention was.
"Wei Wuxian, come on, leave Lan Wangji alone!" Jiang Cheng calls from near the door.
Wei Wuxian rolls his eyes. "Well, you can explain yourself this afternoon in the library," he whispers to Lan Zhan, and turns to chase after Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang.
Two hours later, he's surprised to find Lan Zhan waiting for him outside the doors to the Library Pavillion. Usually he's already inside, sitting at his desk ready to ignore the fuck out of Wei Wuxian before Wei Wuxian even does anything for him to ignore. (But not like the ignoring of the last two days—ignoring that's clearly only trying to ignore him while actually paying quite a lot of attention to him. Much more satisfying.)
Wei Wuxian smiles sunnily and opens his mouth to say something, but snaps it shut again when Lan Zhan opens the door—and then steps to the side so he can enter first. Which he does, eyebrows raised to his hairline at what he's pretty sure is... actual chivalry of some sort??
"So I guess you're done pretending I don't exist?" Wei Wuxian says as soon as the door is closed, arms crossed. He's too stunned to even make a joke out of it.
Lan Zhan drops his eyes again. "I am sorry."
"You said that already," Wei Wuxian says, stepping closer. "What I want to know is why? I thought after we handled the waterborne abyss together, maybe you'd see that I'm not just some troublemaker."
Lan Zhan's eyes flick up to his, and one eyebrow raises just the tiniest, tiniest fraction. "And so to ensure that I noticed this, you... made trouble?"
Wei Wuxian lets out a squawk as he smacks Lan Zhan on the arm. Lan Zhan doesn't even flinch. Wei Wuxian might be in love with him.
"Lan Zhan!" He beats on Lan Zhan's arm a few more times, until Lan Zhan steps around him to go toward his usual desk. Wei Wuxian chases after him. "You know that's not what I meant! I got in trouble because I thought it was the only way I'd ever get you to talk to me, or even look at me, again! Anyhow, you still haven't explained yourself." Lan Zhan kneels at his desk, and Wei Wuxian flings himself down next to him. "I thought maybe after that you'd realize that maybe marrying me wouldn't be so bad, but instead I wound up half-convinced you were finally going to ask your uncle to cancel our betrothal after all! Which makes no sense, because after all the trouble I have caused you've never done that, so why would helping you save people suddenly chase you away?"
Lan Zhan stares down at his hands, and Wei Wuxian realizes his ears are turning pink. He bites down on the temptation to tease him about it, because he has all afternoon to get under Lan Zhan's skin—right now he wants answers, and he won't get them that way.
"I am... glad to be marrying Wei Ying," Lan Zhan finally says quietly. Wei Wuxian blinks in surprise. He knows Lan Zhan wouldn't say that just to be nice. Lan Zhan doesn't do anything to be nice, let alone just to be nice. "The experience made me realize... how glad."
Wei Wuxian rubs his nose and squints at Lan Zhan, whose eyes are still fixed on his hands.
"If... you're glad to be marrying me... why would that make you ignore me and avoid me?"
He sits patiently while Lan Zhan struggles to string enough words together to answer. Lan Zhan doesn't fidget, at all, ever, but what's he's doing now very nearly qualifies—his fingers twitch slightly in his lap, and he's blinking more than usual as his eyes flit around from his hands to the floor to somewhere around Wei Wuxian's knees and back. And his ears are growing steadily darker pink, verging into red.
It's extremely adorable.
Suddenly, Lan Zhan sits up and grabs the book on the desk in front of him, opening it briskly to what Wei Wuxian suspects is a completely random page and looking very, very intently at the contents.
"It is possible that I am more eager to marry Wei Ying than Wei Ying is to marry me," Lan Zhan says. The day they'd met, Wei Wuxian would have thought he was saying it completely flatly, devoid of affect, but now he knows better. Lan Zhan's words are quick and clipped in a way that is very unlike him, a way that makes it very obvious to Wei Wuxian that he's embarrassed and trying to play it off as no big deal.
Luckily, Lan Zhan is focused enough on his book that he doesn't see the ridiculous grin spreading across Wei Wuxian's face, because it would probably scare him away or something. Wei Wuxian chews his lip and stares at Lan Zhan's pink, pink ears. Finally, he scoots up to kneel next to Lan Zhan so their thighs are pressed together, leaning his elbows on Lan Zhan's desk to get a look at his book.
"Ridiculous," he says in his best Lan Zhan voice. That earns him a small glare, which is exactly why he did it. "How could Lan Zhan think his Wei Ying isn't eager to marry him? I'm the most eager. Nobody's ever been so eager to get married!"
"Do not joke," Lan Zhan mutters, eyes on his book.
"I'm not!" Wei Wuxian puts a hand over Lan Zhan's page, forcing him to look up. "I'm not," he repeats firmly. He was going to say something else, but now that Lan Zhan is looking right at him, their faces are very close and Lan Zhan's eyes are very pretty, and Wei Wuxian can't think of a single thing to say.
As he grasps desperately for something, anything to say—surely he still knows some words of some kind, somewhere—he licks his lips. Lan Zhan's eyes flick down to track the movement. Which makes his own eyes drop to focus on Lan Zhan's soft, full lips.
And then Wei Wuxian panics, grabs Lan Zhan's book, and runs off with it.
"Wei Ying!"
Unfortunately, in his panic, Wei Wuxian runs the wrong way—if he'd run the other way, he could probably make a full lap around the library before Lan Zhan caught up to him, but instead he runs down a short hallway and right into a dead end.
"Shit!" Wei Wuxian stamps his foot as Lan Zhan skids to a stop behind him. Then he stands very still and stares at the wall, trying desperately to figure out something clever to say.
"Wei Ying." At least Lan Zhan doesn't sound angry, just a little tired. "...Why?"
Wei Wuxian's mouth opens automatically to deflect, but he snaps it shut before the Why what? on the tip of his tongue can slip out. It's not like it would buy him more than about ten seconds before Lan Zhan clarified Why did you steal my book and run down a hallway?, and he's pretty sure Lan Zhan would rather just wait ten seconds patiently instead of having to say more words.
Part of him is entirely sure that he can't possibly admit why he really stole the book and ran. But the rest of him reminds himself that Lan Zhan just said some things that he clearly found extremely embarrassing. If Lan Zhan can survive embarrassment, so can he.
"Sorry," he mumbles down to the book in his hands. "That was stupid. But I had to do something stupid like grab your book and run away, or else I was going to do something even stupider instead."
For a moment, he thinks that maybe Lan Zhan will be polite enough to let it go—or, more likely, concerned enough about the heights to which Wei Wuxian's stupidity is capable of soaring to not want to know. But no, Lan Zhan lets the silence stretch out just one beat past when it's obvious that Wei Wuxian isn't going to continue before prompting, "Something stupider?"
"Yeah," Wei Wuxian says. "Like..." He swallows and looks back down at the book again. He's been picking at a spot on the spine, and he should stop before he scratches the fabric off of it. "Like kissing you," he finally forces out through his dry throat.
His breath shudders to a stop as Lan Zhan takes a step closer. They're not touching, but Wei Wuxian can feel the heat of him at his back.
"Is that stupid?" Lan Zhan asks.
Wei Wuxian bites his lip. "I mean, I guess it's... it's not stupid to want to, right? We're going to eventually. But—but. There must be rules against that. Isn't there? Against kissing your betrothed before you're married?"
The silence behind him sounds puzzled, and how does Lan Zhan do that?
"...Are there?"
Wei Wuxian lets his forehead thud lightly against the wall in front of him. Of course there aren't. Lan Zhan knows that and he knows that and Lan Zhan sure as hell knows that he knows that. They've spent countless hours in here, getting cozy with the rules!
He's not stupid or naive. He's read Nie Huaisang's books! He's well aware that it's not kissing that chaperones are meant to prevent. He's seen betrothed couples steal a kiss or two out in the open, where everyone can see but politely pretends not to. It's if they did anything more than that that there would be trouble.
"Fine," he says. He turns around, and oh wow, Lan Zhan is even closer than he'd realized. "I panicked, okay? Just plain, old-fashioned panicked. But in my defense, at least when I panicked I just stole your book and ran, instead of ignoring you for two straight days!"
Lan Zhan does not even have the decency to apologize for this again—although a slightly apologetic look briefly flits through his eyes—he just crowds up farther into Wei Wuxian's space, trapping him against the wall. Wei Wuxian finds himself dropping the book, and Lan Zhan is so intently focused on him that he doesn't even look down at the sound.
Wei Wuxian's newly-freed hands clutch at the front of Lan Zhan's robes and he tilts his face up, just a little, as Lan Zhan leans in. He can feel Lan Zhan's breath against his lips now, and his eyes flutter closed just a second before that breath is replaced by Lan Zhan's own actual lips.
Lan Zhan. Is kissing him. Their mouths are pressed together. Lan Zhan's hands are on his arms—Lan Zhan's hands are searing through the sleeves of his robes, how is Lan Zhan so warm? How are his lips so soft? Is Wei Wuxian supposed to be doing something right now other than pressing into the kiss and clinging to Lan Zhan's robes?
After a moment, Lan Zhan pulls back a little. Wei Wuxian makes a little disappointed sound in the back of his throat, but when he opens his eyes, Lan Zhan's are right there, only just far enough away that he doesn't go crosseyed trying to look at them. They're as wide and slightly-stunned as his own, which frankly seems a little silly since Lan Zhan is the one who did the whole, y'know—the whole leaning-in-to-initiate-the-kiss thing. Maybe he's stunned at himself for taking the initiative. Or maybe Wei Wuxian is just that good a kisser, on the first try!
Okay, probably not, but he's pretty sure he didn't mess it up too badly if Lan Zhan is looking at him like that.
Before Wei Wuxian can spend too much time pondering Lan Zhan's wide, beautiful eyes, Lan Zhan is leaning in again, and this time Wei Wuxian meets him halfway. They continue like that for quite a while, coming together again and again at slightly different angles and with different types of pressure. Lan Zhan's hands migrate to his waist—Lan Zhan's hands are so huge, Wei Wuxian isn't sure he can handle having them spread across so much of his body—and his own make their way up to Lan Zhan's shoulders and then his neck, his hair.
Eventually, he parts his lips experimentally as they kiss, lets the tip of his tongue venture out just a little to probe at Lan Zhan's lips. And, well, Lan Zhan was apparently just waiting for an invitation, because he freezes for just half a second and then Wei Wuxian finds himself being pressed into the wall by Lan Zhan's entire body as the kiss deepens and he thinks he's maybe never going to make it to his wedding day because first he is going to drown in his future husband. It's a little awkward at first, sure, but they figure out what to do with their tongues quickly enough and then Wei Wuxian does not ever want to do anything ever again in his life other than kiss Lan Zhan.
Except, maybe, do more things with Lan Zhan. The things they really aren't supposed to do before their wedding night. Those things. So. That's Wei Wuxian's new plan for the rest of his life: Kiss Lan Zhan until they're old enough that their families will let them get married, then do everything else with Lan Zhan.
He has no idea how long they stand there, kissing up against the wall of this dead-end hallway. But soon after they start experimenting with kissing other places (like jawlines, and necks, which are excellent, and behind ears), Lan Zhan pulls back.
"Wei Ying," he says heavily, and Wei Wuxian can't even be mad, not when Lan Zhan's breathing is as rough as his, and their bodies are still pressed together, and Lan Zhan's lips are red and swollen. "You... do need to do the work we came here for."
Wei Wuxian squawks, his lazily half-closed eyes flying open. "Lan Zhan! You cannot possibly tell me you'd rather watch me copy the rules than do more of that!"
Lan Zhan shakes his head, his eyes wandering back down to Wei Wuxian's mouth. "No," he says, and there's actual reluctance in his voice that Wei Wuxian finds very gratifying. "But if you do not... My uncle will know that you must have been doing something else while we were here..."
Wei Wuxian leans his head back against the wall with a sigh. "Right," he says. "Kissing isn't against any rules, but if he knows there was kissing happening he'll assume that we'll start breaking rules next, and he'll never let us out of his sight again."
"Mm."
"Very unfair of him," Wei Wuxian says. He pouts his lips and bats his eyelashes. "It's not like I'm some temptress trying to lure you into anything improper. Lan Zhan just needs to keep his Wei Ying well-kissed, like a good husband, that's all!"
It's far from the first time that Wei Wuxian has referred to himself this way, but somehow this time it makes Lan Zhan's eyes go dark. He presses back in—doesn't quite kiss Wei Wuxian again, just makes sure their bodies are flush from shoulder to knee and leans in until their noses brush and his breath ghosts over Wei Wuxian's skin.
"My Wei Ying," he says, his voice low and possessive, and oh. Holy shit. What the absolute fuck. They should probably go to the Lan ancestral hall right this minute and do their bows so that Lan Zhan can throw Wei Wuxian down and do to him whatever it is that's going through that head of his.
"Your Wei Ying." Wei Wuxian slips one hand up to cradle Lan Zhan's beautiful face, and when Lan Zhan presses into it he melts. "All yours. Only yours." Lan Zhan kisses him again, just a brief, chaste press of lips against his but it's enough to make him gasp as his eyes fall closed. "My Lan Zhan," he breathes as his eyes flutter back open.
"Yours," Lan Zhan murmurs, and when Wei Wuxian gets a good look at his face he has to giggle.
"Lan Zhan!" He kisses Lan Zhan on the nose, startling a blink out of him. "You absolutely cannot look at me like that in front of your uncle! If he sees you with an actual, unmistakeable smile on your face he will know in an instant how well-kissed you are!"
"Mm." Lan Zhan schools his face back into its usual blankness (or an approximation, at least—Wei Wuxian has been studying Lan Zhan's face very closely and he can see that it's not quite as casually blank as usual), then steps back and motions back toward the main library room. "Back to work."
Wei Wuxian, of course, makes a big show of pouting and huffing his way back to his desk. Lan Zhan's glares as he does so are far more fond than severe.
The truth is, he's happier than he can remember being as he starts in on his eightieth copy of the Lan rules.
Because he is head-over-heels in love with the man he's going to marry. He's not sure that Lan Zhan feels exactly the same way for him—though he's definitely not ruling it out!—but even if he doesn't, that's okay, because they've got the rest of their lives to get there. But he's very secure in the knowledge that Lan Zhan likes him and likes kissing him and wants to do more kissing, and that's more than enough for the moment.
As he copies, he finds his eyes drifting to his betrothed more often than usual. And finds Lan Zhan already looking at him more often than usual. Instead of hurriedly looking away, their eyes can linger now. They can share a smile (broad on Wei Wuxian's face, small and secret on Lan Zhan's) before going back to their respective work.
It's nice to have a secret together. It doesn't have to be a total secret, of course—they just need to make sure Lan Qiren (and probably Lan Xichen) don't find out. Normally it's the kind of thing he'd run and tell his jiejie, but he doesn't want to throw his happy betrothal in her face when the peacock has been such an ass to her since they got to Gusu. Jiang Cheng would probably just roll his eyes and gag. Maybe he'll tell Nie Huaisang eventually. He'd appreciate a good kissing story.
Not yet, though. He wants to have something just between the two of them for a little while.