Chapter 97: Waking and Sleeping

He stepped into the room, pushed the door shut behind him, and as Wei Wuxian leaned against the doorframe and heard from outside the measured, neither-soft-nor-loud sound of Lan Wangji closing his own door, he lifted his hand at once and slapped himself across the face.

He dropped heavily onto the wooden couch and buried his still-burning face in his palms, and though he kept it buried a good long while, the heat would not subside — not the heat on his face, nor the heat within his body. He took the water from the teapot on the table and doused his whole head and face with it, and still it did nothing. Every inch of him now carried the scent of Lan Wangji.

Wei Wuxian knew that if he stayed on here, thinking of Lan Wangji just a single wall away, thinking of what the two of them had been doing not long before, he could expect not a moment's peace the whole night through. This was, beyond any doubt, no place he could remain tonight.

He pushed open the wooden window, sprang up onto the lattice, and leapt out light as a drifting thing, soundless as a black cat, alighting on a street below the inn.

The night was already deep and the street was empty, which suited Wei Wuxian perfectly for tearing off alone at a headlong run.

Only when he had run past that wall Lan Wangji had scrawled over in his drunkenness did he halt and come to a stop.

The wall was covered in a jumble of rabbits, pheasants, and little stick-figure heads. The longer Wei Wuxian looked, the more he remembered the wholly absorbed look on Lan Wangji's face as he drew them, and the way that, once finished, he had tugged at him to come and admire the work, and he could not help the small tug at the corner of his own mouth.

A regret beyond all comparison welled up in his heart.

If only he had not seized on the drink to do as he pleased.

At least then he could still play the upright, single-minded man, shamelessly nestling onto Lan Wangji's bed, crowding in at his side to feign sleep contentedly or simply sleep in peace — instead of lying sleepless deep in the night, bolting out of the inn to spend himself running the streets like a headless fly.

Wei Wuxian put out his hand and brushed over the two little stick-figure heads pursing their lips in a kiss, then came up to the line above: 'Lan Wangji was here.' These sentences would have to be wiped away, but before wiping them he traced, with his fingertip, the path of the three strokes of the name 'Lan Wangji.'

Once, twice, three times.

The more he traced, the harder it was to let go.

Suddenly he heard a scraping, rasping sound, and at the dead of midnight his guard went up; rounding the corner of the wall to look, he found, of all things, a black-clad figure pressed against the wall with a small file in hand, wholly absorbed in scraping the scrawled marks smooth.

Wei Wuxian: '...'

Wen Ning turned his head, his face powdered white with grit, and said, 'Young Master, how is it you've come?'

Wei Wuxian said, 'What are you doing?'

'Oh.' Wen Ning said, 'I saw Young Master Lan had written such a lot — when the people here wake tomorrow and see it, I expect it'll be trouble for them, so I thought I'd wipe some of it off first...' He paused, then asked, puzzled, 'Where is Young Master Lan?'

Wei Wuxian lowered his head and said, 'He's resting. I came out to wander about a bit.'

Wen Ning sensed something was off in his mood and stopped what he was doing. 'Young Master,' he said, 'has something happened?'

He took a few steps closer to Wei Wuxian, then all at once gave a start and backed away, again and again. Wei Wuxian blinked. 'Now what are you doing?'

Wen Ning seemed frightened and waved his hands hastily. 'Nothing, nothing, it's nothing!'

One look told Wei Wuxian he was flustered, and glancing down without thinking, he found several red fingermarks on his own wrist, left where Lan Wangji had gripped him and pressed him down onto the bed. He touched his lips, and they too were still faintly red and swollen. The two of them, senses gone, had rolled clasped together on the couch, all but wishing to be kneaded into one, and Lan Wangji had bitten and gnawed at him besides — no doubt his neck made quite the spectacle as well. Had there been any blood in Wen Ning's face, by now it would surely have flushed red enough to bleed. Wei Wuxian himself hardly knew what to say. 'You... aiya!'

He sat down at the foot of the wall and sighed. 'I want a drink.'

Wen Ning said at once, 'I'll go and buy some.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Come back! What are you running off for.'

Wen Ning came back again. 'To find wine...'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Listen to you... I only said it offhand, and you really go looking. You're not even truly my servant.'

Wen Ning said, 'I know that.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Besides — do you have any money?'

Wen Ning said, 'No...'

Wei Wuxian said, 'There, you see! I knew it!'

Wen Ning said enviously, 'Still, Young Master Lan has a lot on him... a lot of money... how nice.'

'Aiya.' Wei Wuxian knocked the back of his head against the wall a few times and sighed several times over before saying, 'Forget it. From now on I'll never drink again.'

Wen Ning was dumbfounded. 'Why?'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Drinking ruins things. I'm giving up wine.'

The corner of Wen Ning's mouth twitched. Wei Wuxian said, 'What's that look for — you don't believe me?'

Wen Ning mumbled, 'No, no... only, back then, didn't your elder sister try every method there was, and still couldn't get you to give up wine, Young Master...'

'Haha, haha.' It came back to Wei Wuxian, and he said, 'Wasn't her method just to jab holes in me with her needles every other day?'

When he had laughed his fill, Wei Wuxian said suddenly, 'Wen Ning, have you ever thought about what you'll do once all this mess is behind us?'

Wen Ning gave a start. 'What I'll do?'

In all the world now, Wen Ning had scarcely a soul left close to him — barely even an acquaintance to his name. He had never been good at making his own decisions, still less at carrying them through. Either he trailed behind Wen Qing, or he trailed behind Wei Wuxian; apart from that, he likely had no idea where he ought to go, or where he even could. Yet Wei Wuxian had always hoped, all the same, that he might find a road of his own. But to say it aloud would sound like driving him off.

And on second thought — Wen Ning had nowhere to go, but did he himself know any better? Before, together with Lan Wangji, he had never once weighed the question, taking it for granted that things would go on this way without change. But after tonight, perhaps he and Lan Wangji could never recover that kind of bond again. To leave Lan Wangji and roam the four seas, drifting the eight directions on his own, did not seem altogether impossible.

Yet a voice in Wei Wuxian's heart told him, clear as day: no, it would not do.

The nonsense he had once spouted up on Koi Tower had truly come to pass. The Wei Wuxian of now could not do without Lan Wangji.

Wei Wuxian let out a long sigh and said, with all the will to live gone out of him, 'I want a drink.'

The more he thought, the more dejected and knotted up he grew, until the restless burning that had nowhere to vent turned at last to a chestful of fury; he sprang to his feet and said, 'Damn it. Wen Ning, let's go!'

Wen Ning said, 'Go where?'

Wei Wuxian said, 'To go looking for trouble!'