MDZS Oneshots | The Untamed | WangXian

The Cave (Day One)

Requests Open <3

Summary: XuanWu Cave fix-it where they actually confess during the 7 days instead of just playing indie jams & that changes everything going forward for the better 🎶

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Wei WuXian grunted for the both of them as he and his charge dropped to the ground. Lan WangJi could make no sound between his tightly sealed lips; he held them in a thin, straight line. It wobbled only slightly as the weight of his body was his own again.

Lan WangJi's fracture had never been properly tended to to begin with, and now, having soaked in a brew of death and bearing the mark of a beast, the fate of his leg was uncertain. His robes were once white. Heavy and waterlogged, they were now a deceptive cloudy gray, but for the skirts soaked brown in blood and muck.

When Wei WuXian went to inspect the wounds, the Jade stubbornly slapped his offending hand away.

"I'm—I'm fine."

"You-"

Click, click, click. The song of a whale brewed ominously within the bowels of the cave.

Echolocation?

"Well, that's terrifying."

Both men followed the sound, glancing back at the fissure they'd escaped by way of. XuanWu's copper eye peered through, unblinking. Everything about this creature was abnormally large. Its scarlet sea of an iris was so vast it could be sailed by a seafarer, and the Stygian black of its yawning pupil looked bottomless. Suddenly, the XuanWu stuffed its beaked snout through the narrow opening—thrashing, pushing, tugging. For a harrowing moment, Wei WuXian feared their stronghold would crumble, but the crevice did not give.

XuanWu growled.

He chuckled nervously.

Then he was doused in misty snot and rancid cave-water as it flared its cavernous nostrils and pulled away.

The booming sound of its retreat was hardly soothing, but Wei WuXian released the breath he'd been hoarding in his chest. Along the steep of jagged cave wall, he slumped back in a casual display, throwing his arms up and behind his head. Seeing this improper act of brazenness, Lan WangJi tutted but was ultimately too exhausted to say much about it.

"Hey, Lan Zhan, what do you suppose that thing is?"

"Tulu XuanWu," he muttered.

"Tulu XuanWu?"

"False deity, not the real XuanWu. Have read of its existence in the annals of Qishan."

Wei WuXian tried to recall if he'd ever heard of it, but he came up empty handed. It was then, in his moment of reflection, he remembered he was supposed to be angry at stupid, self-sacrificing Lan Zhan!

"Why would you come back for me? Do you have a death wish? Now you're trapped here too." He'd leapt out of his relaxed stance, crawling forward to properly chastise Lan WangJi. Being so close, he could feel the intense heat rising from his shin like a desert sun.

"...Sorry."

"If you're sorry you'll let me look at your leg this time, mhm?"

Instead of dignifying him with an answer, the Jade looked away, offering a begrudging invitation in his silence.

Wei WuXian made sure to hide how pleased he was.

He peeled back the layers of WangJi's mud-caked robes until his bare leg was exposed to the cave's breath. His skin was a shade of porcelain that resembled freshly blossomed lilacs, pure and untouched. If not for the wound, his leg would look too perfect to be a man's. It wasn't as if Wei WuXian had expected to find something ugly beneath WangJi's mourning robes—he had expected beauty and still wasn't prepared for such a sight. Lan Zhan is perfect, he thought.