Work Text:
Wei Wuxian falls to earth in a star shower on the darkest night in winter.
As he slices through the clouds, leaving a trail of sparks behind him, he has the presence of mind to conclude that there are two possible ends for him:
One: a quick and merciless end.
Two: a horrible and painful end.
He has his own opinions on which of the two he deserves.
But, of course, fate has a funny sense of humor. Neither of those two endings come to pass, and Wei Wuxian finds himself landing in a pair of gentle and curious hands—hands that belong to a wizard named Nie Huaisang.
(Nie Huaisang: “Oh, wow! I actually caught a star!”
Wei Wuxian: “Wh. What the hell is this meatman thing.”)
He thanks Nie Huaisang for saving him, implies very heavily that Nie Huaisang’s foreign human form is one of the most horrifying things he’s ever seen. Nie Huaisang tells him off for being rude and sniffs, insists that he’s actually a very good looking human, thank you very much. It’s comfortable to banter like this, to exchange quips with a stranger. Wei Wuxian almost feels soothed—
Until he looks up again and sees the sky thick with falling stars. The bright sparks that disappear into the darkness as soon as they make impact, the blooming lights that fizzle as they sink into the black waters of the lake just beyond the greenery under Nie Huaisang’s feet. As the shock of unexpected life fades away, the shame and guilt creep back in to gnaw at him.
Out of every bright star in the sky, he had to be the lone, lucky soul. Fate really, really has a funny sense of humor.
“So do I get to make a wish? Falling stars, and all that.”
Nie Huaisang’s hands shift under him. Abruptly, it occurs to Wei Wuxian that most humans probably don’t stand alone in dark grassy fields at night unless they’re weird, or lonely, or both.
He looks up again at the human’s pale face, the way his tired eyes belie his joking smile, and figures that lonely souls should stick together.
“Why not?” he says.
Under that streaking sky, they make a deal: A heart for power. A life for a life.
As the night makes way for morning, his savior brings Wei Wuxian to what appears to be a massive stone fortress shaped like a water buffalo. It stands on four crumbling legs, vast jets of steam blowing out of the various crevices in its massive gray surface.
(Wei Wuxian: “How do we get in? The nose? The mouth?”
Nie Huaisang: …
Wei Wuxian: “...No way.”
Nie Huaisang, beginning to walk toward the back end: “Unfortunately, yes.”)
Nie Huaisang gives him the grand tour, takes him through every cold room in the fortress, and at the end, introduces him to his brother.
Nie Mingjue is—well.
“I’m not an expert on humans,” Wei Wuxian says cautiously, “but I’m pretty sure there’s supposed to be a little more, uh, up top.”
Nie Mingjue’s headless body makes an incredibly vivid gesture with its two beefy hands.
“Ge said you should mind your own business,” Nie Huaisang says, dropping Wei Wuxian into the kitchen stove with an unceremonious poomf of ash.
“I think he said a little more than that,” Wei Wuxian mutters, but he makes himself at home.
And home it is. And, after Nie Huaisang satisfies his end of the deal, and Wei Wuxian comes into a whole new existence of being, his fire demon body isn’t so bad, either—he still gives off light. It’s just that he can’t reach for anybody else now, or he’d burn them. That’s fine.
If he always feels cold now, even with his flames, that’s his business.
So Wei Wuxian occupies himself with the endless duties of powering the Nie brothers’ fortress-on-legs, dodging Nie Mingjue’s half-joking (he hopes) attempts to smother him, and listening to Nie Huaisang whine, and for a while, he is content.
Thirteen years into Wei Wuxian’s second chance, Nie Huaisang visit’s Caiyi’s morning market and returns with someone else.
“I’m back!” he trills, as he flings open the kitchen door. “And I’ve brought a guest!”
Nie Huaisang moves aside to reveal the person behind him, and Wei Wuxian sees who it is.
The human body is new. So is the human face. But the white robes he wears are as pure and bright as starlight, and Wei Wuxian would know him anywhere, even now.
Lan Wangji steps through the doorway, and in three quick seconds, turns Wei Wuxian’s quiet life on its head.
“Why is this guy here,” Wei Wuxian hisses later, as Nie Huaisang crouches low over the stove. “You and your brother give me enough work as it is! Why did you bring him?”
“Well,” Nie Huaisang says, leaning in. “I don’t know if you realized this, but he’s a star, too! Like you! It doesn’t seem like he has anywhere to go, so I offered. Won’t it be nice to have a friend around?”
“A friend.”
“Yeah! Don’t all stars know each other?”
“That’s offensive.”
“And you’re dodging the question.”
Wei Wuxian waits a beat too long to answer the question, and Nie Huaisang grins in triumph. “So you do know him!”
At that, Wei Wuxian breaks. “No—I don’t! I—I—don’t you dare say anything to him, okay! Don’t even tell him my name, I swear I’ll burn down your whole damn castle if you do!”
Nie Huaisang blinks in the smoke.
“Who? Lan Wangji?” he says, tilting his head in amusement. He cranes his neck around comically, peering into the depths of the fortress as if he’s able to see into the room down the hall where Lan Wangji is settling his belongings, and then looks back down at Wei Wuxian to give him a shit-eating grin. “You just look like a big flaming ball of fire. What’s there to recognize?”
“I—well, he looks human now, and I still recognized him. What’s with that, anyway? Did you make a deal with him, too?”
“Nope. He already looked like that.” Nie Huaisang’s eyes sparkle, the sly bastard.
“Then how did you know he was a star?”
“He told me!”
Stupid Lan Zhan, Wei Wuxian thinks. Always too honest.
“Don’t play coy, Nie Huaisang. You know what you’re doing. Is this your way of messing with me? Is this because I burned your shaobing last week, I said I was sorry! Or is this some extra step in your—your long-con revenge plot? Don’t involve him!” .
“I have my reasons,” is all Nie Huaisang says, and that is that.
For whatever reason, Nie Huaisang allows Lan Wangji to start living with them full-time. The only saving grace is that Lan Wangji doesn’t seem to know who Wei Wuxian is—and Wei Wuxian is determined to keep it that way, even if it does sting a little.
So he makes Lan Wangji stay away in the only way he knows how—he ignores him.
He’s curt, cold (as cold as a fire demon can be). When Lan Wangji is in the kitchen, he speaks as little as possible, and only when addressed. He knows he’s got some sort of a visible facial structure (“You’ve got, like, this weird little mouth thing going on. And little peepers,” Nie Huaisang said when he asked about his fire demon form), so he makes sure to avoid eye contact.
They keep their distance like that, orbiting the awkward space between them day after day.
One night, Nie Huaisang returns to the fortress very, very late.
“Keep that up, and one day you won’t be able to turn back,” Wei Wuxian says, watching the giant oriole-monster shed its feathers to reveal Nie Huaisang’s tired, familiar face.
Nie Huaisang manages a sharp, wicked smile. “It would suit me, I think,” he says, and then his lips turn down and he buries his face in his hands.
Quietly, they fall into the same conversation that they always have on these nights: Nie Huaisang lets the slightest bit of his anxiety over his brother’s curse slip through; Wei Wuxian assures him that his goal is on the horizon, and to have patience; Nie Huaisang gives a performative whine; Wei Wuxian tells him to go take a bath and to stop tracking filth all over his perfectly-run fortress.
“This is my fortress,” Nie Huaisang says testily, but he goes.
Usually, Wei Wuxian is left alone with his thoughts—but tonight, he hears a shuffle of feet in the doorway, and turns to see Lan Wangji’s silhouette.
Very quietly, Lan Wangji asks about Nie Huaisang—he passed him in the hallway, saw his body still half-transformed.
Wei Wuxian’s hackles go up, wary of the judgment he thinks he hears in Lan Wangji’s tone.
“He loves his brother enough to do this,” Wei Wuxian huffs. “That’s more important than the path he’s taken!”
Lan Wangji looks down. “I am not judging. I am only reminded of someone else.”
And then, to Wei Wuxian’s growing dread:
“I once had a—a friend. He also loved his family very, very much. Enough that he would’ve taken any path he could, as long as it would save them.”
Wei Wuxian does not want to hear this story. “Good for him. But I am not interested in making small talk. Why don’t you go away and sleep in your soft bed or something.”
Lan Wangji’s face is drawn and tired in the light of the fire. “I cannot sleep,” he admits, even more quietly.
And Wei Wuxian has to remind himself that the heart in his flame is not his; it makes no sense that he should ache at his very core.
Lan Wangji turns to go, eyes lowered. “If you do not want to be bothered, I understand. I will leave—”
“Sit down. Tell your story,” says Wei Wuxian abruptly. He has never been able to resist Lan Wangji. “I have nothing better to do at this hour.”
This is how Wei Wuxian spends half the night listening to a story about himself. His wild youth, eons of peaceful existence in the sky until his sister’s sickness. Then his brother’s. The desperate measures that he took to try to save them—and then the fallout. How so many stars fell that night, Wei Wuxian among them. How Lan Wangji tried to hold on. How he couldn’t, in the end.
Lan Wangji whispers that he’s been searching for 13 years, and Wei Wuxian wants to turn away. Wants to reach for him.
Remembers that he can’t, anyway.
Instead, he says, “Is it really worth it? Maybe you should just live your life peacefully. Maybe you would be better off without that friend of yours.”
Lan Wangji’s face is still in the warm glow of the fire.
“I would not be,” he says, finally. “I am not.”
They sit there quietly, listening to the crackle of burning wood, until Lan Wangji finally bids him a good night and sweeps away soundlessly down the hall.
After that, much to Wei Wuxian’s simultaneous joy and consternation, Lan Wangji starts orbiting closer and closer.
Joy, because: Being near Lan Wangji again soothes the part of him that has been aching for thirteen years.
Consternation, because: He does not deserve this.
And yet.
Lan Wangji sees Wei Wuxian chewing on the shell-crumbles that peels off the boiled eggs for breakfast. The next day, he goes out and returns with freshly made mung bean cakes, and places them in a stack just within fire-arm’s reach.
Nie Huaisang sighs loudly about how unfortunate it is that Wei Wuxian can’t leave the castle and see the beautiful bamboo sea at their current location. Lan Wangji goes outside, cuts down a few stalks, and brings them back in to display in a pot across the kitchen.
Nie Mingjue stumbles and nearly knocks Wei Wuxian’s log to the floor. Lan Wangji takes it upon himself to start personally supplying a pile of extra firewood near the stove.
(Later, Wei Wuxian asks Nie Mingjue if Nie Huaisang is putting him up to it.
Wei Wuxian: “I know you can see and hear even though you don’t have a head, Mingjue-ge. Stop messing around!”
Nie Mingjue bumps exaggeratedly into a wall as he turns and leaves the room immediately.)
Lan Wangji starts lingering by the fire, longer and later than ever before. Sometimes he stays far past his usual sleeping hour, and Wei Wuxian only manages to hold his tongue because he does not want to be asked how he knows when Lan Wangji used to go to sleep.
A month passes like this. Nie Huaisang’s eyebags grow darker as he stays out late, coming ever closer to breaking his brother’s curse. He comes back bleeding, sometimes, courtesy of close calls with Jin Guangyao’s men.
Their household grows uneasy. Everyone knows that a battle is looming on the horizon.
Then on one dark night, Wei Wuxian asks, as casually as possible, how Lan Wangji happened across a human body if he had originally been a star.
Lan Wangji tells him about landing in a village at the feet of a powerful young woman. She could cure most illnesses, change appearances, and yet the one thing she could not do was make her brother wake up from his death-like sleep—but star magic was different.
Lan Wangji had offered to save the boy’s life, and she had offered him something in return.
“I asked her to give me legs,” said Lan Wangji plainly. “So I could search for my friend.”
Wei Wuxian smiles to himself, amused. “So vague! What if she gave you six legs, like an insect? That would have been hilarious. You’d have to crawl belly-down.”
“Then I would have crawled. As long as I could find him, anything would do.”
Suddenly, there is a lump rising in Wei Wuxian’s throat.
But Lan Wangji is watching.
So Wei Wuxian laughs, because it is better than crying in the face of that overwhelming devotion.
(When Nie Huaisang had asked what body Wei Wuxian wanted, Wei Wuxian had said: “Make me useful. I don’t care what I become. I just want to be useful.”
Useful, to him, meant burning himself away. Meant hiding from the world. Meant burrowing away in a pit of white ashes and telling himself that it was all that he needed.
But now that Lan Wangji has found him again, Wei Wuxian—fool that he is—has started to wish for something more.
This cannot go on.)
“Thirteen years, Lan Wangji,” he says. “You’re chasing a ghost.”
Lan Wangji shakes his head so quickly that his hair swings in a great sheet across his chest. “No. He’s still on this earth. I know it.”
Wei Wuxian knows how this will go. He knows how stubborn Lan Wangji is. And if he is still here when Nie Huaisang’s efforts bring Jin Guangyao’s men to their door—
Wei Wuxian has already dragged down a skyful of stars. He will not drag Lan Wangji down, too.
“Move on, then. Keep searching. There is nothing in this old fortress for you. Why bother staying?”
Lan Wangji looks at him for a long time.
Then he says, quietly, “Because I think I have already found him.”
Silence.
Wei Wuxian tries to keep his voice steady. He is not sure he succeeds. “I don’t understand.”
Lan Wangji’s gaze is even, and gentle, and full of understanding.
“I know you do,” he says. “I would know him anywhere.”
And Wei Wuxian panics.
He doesn’t remember all the awful things he said until later. Out of his mouth spills every excuse that comes to mind: You don’t know me, Lan Wangji. You never have. How dare you. Have you considered that maybe your friend does not want to be found, Lan Wangji. That you haven’t found him in thirteen years for a reason. Maybe he was living just fine, maybe he didn’t need you back in his life, messing everything up.
“Maybe,” he adds, horribly, unthinkingly, “maybe your friend wouldn’t want you back in his life when you let him fall in the first place.”
The room falls into silence. Wei Wuxian looks up, stomach flipping.
Lan Wangji, face crumpled, speaks out loud for the first time since Wei Wuxian started his rant.
“Wei Ying,” he says. “Please.”
Wei Wuxian feels his flames sputter. Then reignite, hotter than before.
“That is not my name,” he replies, several beats too late. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji says again, softly. He reaches out.
Wei Wuxian shrinks back, thinking of burned fingers. He shuts his eyes. “Stop.”
“I know it is y—"
“Stop! Stop! I don’t want to hear your voice, I don’t want to see your face. I don’t want you here, Lan Wangji. Why don’t you get it? I want you to get lost!”
No reply.
And when Wei Wuxian finally opens his eyes again, Lan Wangji is gone.
On the first day after Lan Wangji disappears, Wei Wuxian spends his time watching the kitchen entrance out of the corner of his eye. With every new arrival, he jolts—but it’s only ever one of the Nie brothers.
He feels—well, it does not matter what he feels. It’s better that Lan Wangji stays away from him.
On the second day, his housemates start asking questions.
“Where did he go?” Nie Huaisang probes, eyes worried. Nie Mingjue hovers behind him. “Even his bags are gone. What did you say to him?”
Wei Wuxian sinks into his ash pit, listless. “I said what I had to.”
Nie Huaisang stares at him in disbelief, and then Nie Mingjue nudges at his shoulder, and he adds, “Are you okay?”
Wei Wuxian doesn’t have an answer for him, and they leave him alone after a while.
On the third day, Wei Wuxian brings their shambling, stone beast-house to a stop amidst the craggy mountains at the edge of Qinghe, and Jin Guangyao’s people finally catch up to them.
As the battle rages on—Nie Huaisang, trying his best to beat back wave after wave of soldiers, Nie Mingjue, aiding where he can—the fortress weakens under the barrage of attacks and begins to crumble. Wei Wuxian’s magic can only hold on for so long.
One wall of the kitchen is already half fallen away. Wei Wuxian can feel the rain seeping through, can see the water puddling closer over the stone. His flame is growing smaller.
Silently, Wei Wuxian admits to himself that he probably won’t be able to make it through the night.
The ceiling groans. Any second now, it will come crashing down, bringing with it a deluge of rain, but Wei Wuxian will hold fast for as long as he can. When he goes out, he will go out being useful.
He just wishes he could’ve apologized.
From outside, he hears a great cry, echoing off the stone mountains—
And the last corner of the room gives way above his stove—
And then the world blurs around him, and for the first time in thirteen years, Wei Wuxian feels the warmth of another’s touch.
It doesn’t hit him at first. He’s too busy wondering at the gray rush of the stone floor beneath him, and then at the fact that he has not been drowned in the rain—but when he finally gets his bearings, he looks down at the hands that are carrying him—delicate palms burning and blistering at the heat—and then follows those hands up to the arms, up to the shoulders, up to Lan Wangji’s serious, beloved face.
“Lan Wangji,” he asks, aghast, “what are you doing?”
“Do not ask me to get lost,” Lan Wangji says calmly. “I will not do that again.”
“Let go! I’m burning you!”
“No.”
“I’m hurting you!”
“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan says, “it would hurt worse to lose you.”
Wei Wuxian does not think he could ever conjure up the right response to that. He stares up at Lan Wangji’s face as he is whisked through the halls of the fortress and towards the keyhole of light that is the front door, and then they’re out, and the whole thing comes down behind them in a landslide of slick stone and wood.
Lan Wangji climbs over the even ground outside, hands cradled protectively over the flame in his care.
“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian says, and watches Lan Wangji’s face soften at his name. “How did you even—I don’t understand, where—“
Carefully, Lan Wangji raises his burning hand to the sky and lets Wei Wuxian see the outside world for the first time in years.
“I brought reinforcements,” he says simply.
The mountains are crawling with red. Red robed figures, Wei Wuxian realizes, and they’re pushing back the army. They’re winning.
“Who—”
“The humans I met when I first arrived on earth.”
Wei Wuxian sputters and looks out at the sea of people again. “They—Lan Zhan, you said it was a village!”
Lan Wangji hums. “Perhaps I was being modest.”
As they watch Jin Guangyao’s army retreat, Wei Wuxian feels something in him change. The burning stops. The heat in him transforms from something consuming into something—lighter.
He looks down at Lan Wangji’s steady hands, back up to his face.
“How did you know it was me?”
Lan Wangji gazes down at him, earnest.
“I already told you,” he says. “I would know you anywhere. Fire, starlight, it does not matter. You have always been the brightest.”
And Wei Wuxian feels himself rise into the air.
I’m free, he realizes. The contract is over.
In the aftermath, they find Nie Huaisang and Nie Mingjue crouched in the rubble, hugging each other fiercely. Nie Huaisang’s heart has clearly returned to him—he’s sobbing out the tears that Wei Wuxian knows he had been holding back for the last thirteen years, if not more. Nie Mingjue, in between bouts of emotion, and with great glee, finally uses his own mouth to express to Wei Wuxian what a pain in the ass he thinks he is.
There is a great celebration that night. Lan Wangji’s comrades—the Wen clan, Wei Wuxian learns—insist on helping the Nies rebuild their fortress. They cite unification over a common enemy. It seems that the Jins screwed over more than just the Nie brothers.
Lan Wangji also asks his benefactor, Wen Qing, to return him to his original body.
“You’ve found them, then?” she asks. “Your beloved?”
“Yes,” Lan Wangji replies slight smile tugging at his lips, and Wei Wuxian feels himself go warm.
After a making a hundred promises to the Nies and Wens to visit often—”You won’t get rid of me so easily!” Wei Wuxian cries—they take to the air.
“Where do you want to go?” asks Lan Wangji.
Wei Wuxian thinks of his years spent buried in ash. He thinks of all the world he has yet to see. He thinks of Lan Wangji, beside him through it all.
“Anywhere,” he says, “as long as you’re with me.”
And then they’re off—two shining stars in the night sky.