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The doors to his mother’s home are closed.
“They’re not going to open, A-Zhan,” says his brother for what must be the tenth time, but Lan Zhan doesn’t respond and keeps himself firmly planted on the ground.
The snow is slowly piling up around him.
They’re sitting below the steps of the gentian house, the dirt cold and frozen beneath them while the wind howls through the shivering trees. Winter is always harsh in Gusu. This year is no different. Lan Zhan feels the cold biting into his skin.
But it’s okay.
Sometimes A-Niang will open the doors and scrub at his flushed cheeks, laughing, scolding, ushering them in as she covers the both of them with blankets. She’ll say things like, Look at you both, in such thin clothes, I need a word with your shufu. She always says that. I’ll talk with your shufu. Do you love me or your Ge more? Are you being good? Are they feeding you well?
Today Lan Zhan has transformed into his rabbit form. It’s warmer, and more than that, sometimes it seems like A-Niang enjoys it.
You’re very cute, A-Zhan, she likes to say, stroking softly at one of his ears. Her golden eyes crinkle when she smiles. He likes her smile.
Lan Zhan wonders when she’ll open the doors.
“A-Zhan,” his brother sighs. There’s a weight over his back as Lan Huan lays a gentle hand on him. His fingers are cold, icy even through the thick coat of Lan Zhan’s fur. “It is getting late. Shufu will be mad at us if we stay out past curfew.”
We are inside the Recesses, Lan Zhan wants to say, but he can’t speak while he’s a rabbit. Instead he clicks his teeth and flicks his ear.
“Don’t be stubborn. Let’s go to sleep, hm? You must be getting tired.”
A thump behind them as the snow drops from the branches. Lan Zhan doesn’t flinch. He stays where he is. He isn’t going anywhere, not until A-Niang opens the doors.
“You’ll get cold.”
That’s okay, he thinks.
“It’ll be dark. You hate the dark, A-Zhan.”
Not if A-Niang opens the doors and floods the path with the light inside. Not if A-Niang lets him in.
“Don’t make me pick you up and take you,” Lan Huan tries, but he isn’t scary like Shufu can be sometimes. Lan Zhan flicks his ear again and keeps his gaze trained on the doors, his paws planted firmly in the snow.
When cold hands reach for him, Lan Zhan darts away into the blue flowers along the path that A-Niang planted a year ago with the two of them. It’s winter, so they should have died, but A-Niang says that it’s her cultivation that keeps them alive still.
The snow is heavy, and the flowers bow under its weight. Lan Zhan bats at the petals gently until the white flakes shake them off, and then turns to blink at his brother.
“A-Zhan,” Lan Huan says, “come with me. She won’t open the doors. I told you. Shufu told you. Why are you being so stubborn?”
It’s ridiculous. His brother is the one being stubborn. His fingers are cold, and he can’t transform into a bunny, so he should go and leave Lan Zhan, who is built for the snow. Eventually A-Niang will open the door. There are some days when she oversleeps, because she is very bad at following the rules of the Cloud Recesses, especially the one about bedtime, but she always remembers to let him in.
Next month, A-Niang said, and A-Niang says it’s the most important thing in the world to keep promises.
She won’t be like A-Die. She’ll open the doors and see him.
“Do you think Shufu and I are lying?”
There is no lying in the Recesses. Lan Zhan knows that. But just because there is no lying in the Recesses doesn’t mean they are telling him the whole truth either; when he asked Shufu why A-Die couldn’t see them, Shufu just looked at him, and his jaw clenched, unclenched, clenched, and then he told Lan Zhan to go copy texts in the library.
Then he asked his brother, and his brother looked at him in that same way Shufu did, with that same helpless expression like that time Lan Zhan was sick for three days, and Lan Zhan still didn’t get an answer. Sometimes adults won’t tell Lan Zhan things, and that’s not lying. That’s just not telling the truth.
Lan Zhan tries to think of a way to explain all of this to Lan Huan, but it’s no use. His bunny form has limits. He thumps his back leg in the snow twice and twitches his nose, trying to tell him that they’re not lying, but Lan Zhan knows that there’s something they’re not telling him, either.
“I’m telling you A-Niang won’t open the door,” Lan Huan says, and now there’s frustration in his voice, his smile slipping from his face. Good. Then he’ll know how A-Niang feels, when she opens the door and sees only one of them there. Lan Zhan will tell her that he was good and waited, but Lan Huan left because he was scared of Shufu.
And she’ll say something like, Ah, A-Zhan, good boy, good boy. You’re growing up so well, and she’ll pat his cheeks and kiss his forehead and ask him about how his studies are going, and at the end of the day they’ll swear three fingers to the heavens and promise to meet again, next month.
“You’re going to stay here,” says Lan Huan, and it isn’t a question anymore. His shoulders slump. Lan Zhan wants to be a little smug even though excessive pride is forbidden in the Cloud Recesses, but instead he’s just confused.
Lan Huan doesn’t seem angry. He just seems—tired.
Hesitantly, Lan Zhan thumps his leg once.
Lan Huan stares at him for a long minute, before he nods, closing his eyes. “Okay,” he whispers, barely heard over the sound of the wind through the trees. “Come back before it gets too late, okay?”
Lan Zhan hops out to the middle of the path again, bounding through the snow, and presses his nose against Lan Huan’s ankle in apology, for him and Shufu. It’s another rule of the Recesses to inconvenience others.
A pause, and then Lan Huan’s cold thumb pets the space between his ears. “You’re a good kid,” Lan Huan says quietly. “Sometimes it scares me how much you love, A-Zhan.”
Lan Zhan bumps his head against Lan Huan’s ankle again, raises his head to give a light nip at his thumb. Love is good, he thinks; Lan Huan is being ridiculous again.
He loves A-Niang, and he loves Lan Huan, and he loves Shufu and everyone in the Recesses, even if some of them don’t like to talk to him all that often. He loves his books, and the library, and the noise that the guqin makes when he strums the strings lightly; he loves the flowers that he planted with his mother that he can’t fully remember the name of, and he loves the feeling of the soil underneath his hands, and he loves being picked up and held by his family when he’s a rabbit, because they’re always so warm.
Love is good, A-Niang said once, smiling at him. It can be really, really good if you let it be good, A-Zhan.
“Don’t stay out too late,” Lan Huan tells him quietly with one last pat to his head, and then Lan Zhan is watching him trek through the snow, disappearing into the dark.
Lan Zhan turns back around and faces the doors again.
He waits.
He waits.
He waits.
He—
* * *
Lan Wangji wakes up warm.
Below him, Wei Wuxian’s breaths are steady and even despite the weight of Lan Wangji’s body pressing on his chest. He’s beautiful in sleep; his limbs are sprawled out carelessly on the mattress, his bare legs entwined with the thick covers, pale robes hitched up to his thighs and pooling around his ankles.
The robes are too thin for winter, sheer enough to show his skin through the flimsy material, but Wei Wuxian insists that it adds “a certain charm, Lan Zhan, I need to work hard to seduce my sexy perfect handsome beautiful strong intelligent kind gentle husband every day. Also, it makes it easier to fuck me into incoherency everyday, don’t you think? Yes? Yes?”
Lan Wangji’s ears burn thinking about it, and he knows that if he was in his human form, his ears would no doubt flush a deep red. But today he’s a rabbit, because Wei Wuxian had insisted.
“You’re working too hard,” he’d said, between aggressive kisses on Lan Wangji’s face and his pink nose and the tips of his long ears. “No working. Only a good nap for my most perfect husband! Here, I’ll even be a mattress. You’ll be warm and comfortable.”
Lan Wangji had blinked at him. He was not a small rabbit; rather large, actually, about the size of one of those dogs that his husband detested, and in response, Wei Wuxian had rolled his eyes, dropped him on the mattress, and flung himself right beside him, arms splayed out.
“Come to me,” he’d said with all the dramatics that made Lan Wangji’s heart seize in his chest. “Give your husband some love.”
So here they are. Lan Wangji blinks again and slowly lowers his face back to Wei Wuxian’s chest, feeling his heartbeat thump under his paws.
He’s alive. He’s warm.
“Lan Zhan,” comes Wei Wuxian’s sleepy murmur, “sleep.”
A hand blindly comes to pet his head, and Lan Wangji leans into the touch, feeling his love bloom inside him like his mother’s gentians, all those winters ago.
“I’m here,” Wei Wuxian mumbles, with another absent stroke of his head, before his breaths even out again. Lan Wangji watches him for a few moments more, and then settles back down on his husband’s chest.
It isn’t scary how he loves. Not at all.