Chapter 93: Waking and Sleeping, Part 20.4

……

Wei Wuxian said, ‘Let go.’

Lan Wangji held his head high and his chest out, keeping that cold gaze, his body leaning slightly forward, and bit down from the first knuckle of the finger to the second, his teeth pressing harder still.

Wei Wuxian said, ‘That hurts!’

Only then did Lan Wangji loosen his teeth a fraction, and Wei Wuxian seized the chance to yank his finger back and roll aside. The bite had set his flesh crawling — anything that bit he linked at once to dogs, and the thought of dogs raised the hairs along his skin. But before he had rolled far, Lan Wangji abruptly drew Bichen and drove it hard into the mat, pinning a corner of Wei Wuxian's robe to the floor.

The clothes they wore now had both been changed at Lotus Pier, made of a special cloth that did not tear easily, so that Wei Wuxian, caught by the hem, could not roll far, and he said offhandedly, ‘Lan Zhan, look at you — you've punched a hole through this inn's mat and its floor, we'll have to pay for that…’

Before the words had left him he felt someone seize him by the back of the collar and haul him back, and Wei Wuxian's spine slammed solidly into a chest, while close by his ear came Lan Wangji's low voice: ‘Pay!’

That said, he wrenched Bichen up from the floor as though meaning to stab a few times more, and Wei Wuxian flung himself back to stop him, saying, ‘Enough! What's gotten into you — how does a little wine turn you into this, pulling stunts like that.’

His tone was reproachful. Lan Wangji looked at him, looked at his own hand, then looked at the hole in the floor, and as if waking all at once, he flung the sword away. Bichen struck the floor with a dull thud and went rolling off; Wei Wuxian, the scabbard already in his right hand, flicked his foot to send it up, and Bichen slid steady and true straight home into its sheath. He admonished, ‘Such a dangerous thing — don't go throwing it about.’

At this Lan Wangji sat straighter still, bowed his head, and wore the look of one who knew he had erred and humbly took his lesson. It had always been Lan Wangji lecturing him with a perfectly straight face; only after wine did the chance come for Wei Wuxian to turn the tables. He folded his arms, Bichen tucked into the crook of one, tilted his head to look, and shook all over with the laughter he was swallowing down.

He really did love drunk Lan Wangji so very much!

The moment Lan Wangji was drunk, the impasse of these last few days, the sense of being hemmed in with nowhere to step, was swept away in an instant, as though all the unspent recklessness in him had at last found a use and an outlet. Circling the straight-backed Lan Wangji twice, Wei Wuxian wheeled and sat down at his side, pinched up the torn hem to show him, and said, ‘See what you've done — you've ruined my clothes, and you'll be mending them for me later, understand?’

Lan Wangji nodded, and Wei Wuxian said, ‘Can you even sew?’

Lan Wangji shook his head, and Wei Wuxian said, ‘Knew it. If you can't, then learn — either way, you're mending my clothes. Understand?’

Seeing Lan Wangji nod again, Wei Wuxian, well content, picked up a cushion and, while no one was watching, laid it over the hole Bichen had bored, saying, ‘I'll hide this hole for you, so no one finds out you went and broke things.’

Lan Wangji drew that dainty, handsome little coin-pouch from his robes, brought it up before Wei Wuxian's eyes, and shaking it said, ‘Pay.’

Wei Wuxian said, ‘I know you've got money, put it away, put it away… what are you doing?’

Lan Wangji stuffed the pouch into Wei Wuxian's robes. Wei Wuxian felt the heavy bulge against his chest and said, ‘For me?’

Having tucked the pouch in, Lan Wangji straightened Wei Wuxian's collar for him and even patted his chest, as if afraid he might lose it, and said, ‘Keep it safe.’

Wei Wuxian said, ‘You're really giving it to me? All this money.’

Lan Wangji said, ‘Mn.’

Wei Wuxian the pauper, brimming with gratitude, said, ‘Thank you — I'm rich!’

And who would have thought — Lan Wangji's brow knit at once. He thrust a hand into Wei Wuxian's robes and snatched the pouch right back, saying, ‘No!’

The money he had only just gotten was gone again, and Wei Wuxian said, dumbfounded, ‘No what?’

Lan Wangji had the look of someone deeply disappointed yet holding it all in, only shaking his head in silence as he listlessly put the pouch away, looking a touch wounded.

Wei Wuxian said, ‘Didn't you just say you'd give it to me — why won't you now? You don't keep your word?’

Lan Wangji turned away, and Wei Wuxian caught him by the shoulders and turned him back, coaxing, ‘Look at me, don't run off. Come, come, look at me.’

So Lan Wangji looked at him. Both stared fixedly at the other's face, a hand's breadth apart, close enough that Wei Wuxian could have counted out each of Lan Wangji's long lashes. The clear, cold sandalwood and the heady warmth of wine, two scents, wound together in the barely perceptible space between their breathing.

After a long spell of holding that gaze, Wei Wuxian's heart pounded harder and harder, until at last he could not bear it and was the first to give ground, sliding his eyes away.

He said, ‘All right! You win. Let's play a different game. Same as before — I ask, you answer, no ly—’

And who would have thought — no sooner had that first word, ‘play’, left him than Lan Wangji suddenly said, ‘Yes!’

He seized Wei Wuxian's hand and like a gust of wind swept out the door and down the stairs. Wei Wuxian, still dazed, was hauled into the hall below, where on the ground floor the innkeeper and her helpers sat around a long table at their meal; Lan Wangji did not so much as glance at them, head down, dragging Wei Wuxian toward the door. The innkeeper rose. ‘What's the matter? Young masters, was the food not to your liking?’

Amid all the haste Wei Wuxian found a moment to answer, ‘It was! That wine especially, real kick to it…’ Before he had finished, Lan Wangji had already dragged him clear of the inn.

They were out on the main street now, yet Lan Wangji showed no sign of stopping and kept racing on, and Wei Wuxian said, ‘Where on earth are you taking me?’

Lan Wangji said not a word, ran to the courtyard of a certain house, and halted all at once. Finding it strange, Wei Wuxian was about to speak when Lan Wangji raised a single finger to his lips and said, ‘Hush.’ He reached out, circled Wei Wuxian's waist, touched a foot to the ground, and bore him up light as a leaf onto the eaves of the house, where, clinging to the tiles, he murmured, ‘Look.’

Seeing how secretive he was, Wei Wuxian felt a flicker of curiosity and followed that intent gaze — to a chicken coop in the courtyard.

‘……’ Wei Wuxian said, ‘This is what you wanted me to see?’

Lan Wangji said softly, ‘Go.’

Wei Wuxian said, ‘Do what?’

Lan Wangji had already sprung down, landing in the middle of the courtyard.

Had the master of the house been awake to see, all at once, a white-robed man of looks and bearing fit to startle the heavens drift down upon the moonlight, he would surely have suspected an immortal banished from the nine heavens had fallen to the mortal dust. Yet what Lan Wangji proceeded to do carried not the faintest air of any banished immortal: he fumbled his slow way around the courtyard, and the more Wei Wuxian watched the more wrong it seemed, until he too dropped down from the wall, tugged at the forehead ribbon, and said, ‘What in the world are you doing?’

With one hand pressing his forehead ribbon and the other reaching into the coop, Lan Wangji startled the few hens slumbering sweetly within; they woke in a frenzy, beating their wings and scrambling to flee. His gaze went keen, his hand shot out like lightning, and he caught the fattest of them in his grip.

Wei Wuxian was struck dumb.

The yellow-feathered hen clucked without pause in Lan Wangji's hand, and Lan Wangji, with all due gravity, delivered it into Wei Wuxian's arms. Wei Wuxian said, ‘What?’

Lan Wangji said, ‘A chicken.’

Wei Wuxian said, ‘I can see it's a chicken. What are you giving me a chicken for?’

His face drawn taut, Lan Wangji said, ‘A gift. For you.’

Wei Wuxian said, ‘Giving it to me… all right.’ By the look of things, if he refused it Lan Wangji would only sulk again, so Wei Wuxian took the hen and said, ‘Lan Zhan, do you know what you're doing? This chicken has an owner. What you've done is steal.’

The illustrious gentleman of the cultivation world, Hanguang-Jun — if it ever got out that he had gone off drunk and stolen someone's chicken… it did not bear thinking of.

But Lan Wangji, in his present state, heard only the words he cared to hear and feigned utter deafness to the rest, head bowed, busy at his work, while the coop went up in a riot of clucking and cackling, chickens flying and eggs breaking, a din too pitiful for the ear to suffer.

Wei Wuxian said, ‘And don't say I put you up to this.’

The two of them, each with a trembling hen in his arms, climbed back over the wall and walked on a stretch, Wei Wuxian still puzzling over why Lan Wangji had suddenly taken to stealing chickens — surely he didn't mean to eat them? — when all at once he noticed a feather caught in Lan Wangji's jet-black hair.

A snort escaped him; Wei Wuxian could bear it no longer and was just reaching out to pluck the feather away when, who would have thought, Lan Wangji sprang up once more and swept into a tree.

The tree grew within someone's courtyard, grew rather too well, its boughs and leaves spilling out over the wall. Lan Wangji settled himself on a branch, and Wei Wuxian craned his neck and said, ‘Now what???’

Lan Wangji lowered his head and said, ‘Hush.’

Hearing that, Wei Wuxian reckoned that whatever came next would be much of a piece with the chicken-thieving. He watched Lan Wangji reach out, pluck something from the crown of the tree, and toss it down; with one arm still cradling the hen, Wei Wuxian caught it in the other and looked — a round, plump date, half green and not yet red.

Sure enough. Done stealing chickens, now on to filching dates!

Pinching chickens and pilfering dates was nothing new to Wei Wuxian; in his younger years he had loved the sport, and would round up a whole troop to do it in grand, clamorous company. But to swap that company for Lan Wangji was a thing to make the blood run cold. No — company was hardly the word; Lan Wangji was plainly the ringleader here.

At the thought, a flash of insight lit his mind.

Earlier, at Lotus Pier, he had led Lan Wangji about the old haunts of Yunmeng and told him no end of amusing tales from his childhood, among them a good many such ‘glorious exploits.’ Could it be that Lan Wangji had taken them in, kept them in mind, and was now itching at heart to taste a little of it himself?

Very likely indeed!

The Gusu Lan Clan kept a most exacting discipline; from childhood Lan Wangji had been shut indoors over his books and his brushwork, every word and gesture measured against the standards his elders set, and he had never once committed such unseemly, unruly mischief. He could not do it while sober — so he had come to do it once drunk?

Up in the date tree Lan Wangji moved like the wind, and in no time at all had swept the whole tree bare, stripping it clean of every date. Stowing them all into the Qiankun Sleeve, he then leapt down, opened the sleeve, and showed Wei Wuxian his spoils of war. Gazing at those plump, round dates, Wei Wuxian truly did not know what to say, and after a long pause offered his praise: ‘…So big, so many, so very impressive! Beautifully done!’