Solstice Souls

Tales of the Past

Lan Zhan POV

Lan Zhan took time to process things. It was just his way...the shock of not seeing something as it usually was, making him slow to realise that Wei Ying was crying.

His uncontrollable sobs and the desperate attempt to stifle them made Lan Zhan's own heart hurt, because his Wei Ying was hurting. As Wei Ying tried to pull away, hiding his beautiful now red eyes, Lan Zhan missed looking more than anything else, and he had to make Wei Ying understand.

To understand, to know, that Lan Zhan wasn't disgusted or frightened or feeling any kind of hatred...no. If it was at all possible, Lan Zhan was falling more in love with his even more unusual soulmate.

"Beautiful." Lan Zhan said with conviction. "Want to see. Open."

Lan Zhan saw deep within the crimson irises, this was still his love, still Wei Ying. Still his dancer.

"Wei Ying is beautiful. Wei Ying is powerful. Wei Ying is mine. Love you forever, no matter what." The young jade swore to the man with ruby red eyes.

Lan Zhan wanted to erase whatever doubts were forming or had taken root within his exceptional mind: yes, the cultivation world despised any form of power different to their standard core magic, especially the Lan Clan. But Lan Zhan wasn't his Clan.

Wei Ying needed to see this, needed to know that his Lan Zhan was also still the same. The one who loved him unconditionally.

So he spoke to him in the language of love, created when the first lips met of the first people ever to fall in love ... . With a kiss.

A slow sliding of soft lips, a communication without words but so much more significant, and for Lan Zhan, so much more effective. He swallowed that faint gasp as Wei Ying opened for him to taste, to encourage, to show....

Wei Ying was more than the sum of his achievements, more than an heir of a prominent Clan, more than all the expectations heaped upon him. Wei Ying was his equal in every way, a pairing created by the heavens so that now, together, they both felt complete.

Lan Zhan felt his heart opening more, making space to hold all of Wei Ying, all his worries and all his happy thoughts to cherish, to make sure that they were in it together. He was here and he would support Wei Ying fully, even against his Clan.

The thought made him flinch, just as Wei Ying's nimble fingers grazed his head wound.

Of course he noticed.

And the kissing stopped.

If Lan Zhan wanted anything right now, it would be to continue kissing Wei Ying ..... still something new and he wanted to explore it further. Kissing Wei Ying was like a child tasting candy for the first time, an explosion of sweetness on his tongue that he needed more than his next breath, a sugar high of love and acceptance, of need and want and something else, just out of reach.

But Wei Ying was examining his head wound now. And then he spoke.

"Lan...Zhan." Wei Ying gasped. "You have a birthmark, too. Did you know this?"

Lan Zhan felt along the place where his mother used to touch him, the back of his neck. He hadn't known about it or why she would lift his hair away to look there.

Wei Ying said it looked like the sun. Lan Zhan told him that only his mother had ever touched that place.

Wei Ying took his hand and squeezed. "You never talk about your parents."

No.

He never did.

His mother was taken away from him far too soon, and even when she was alive, he didn't get to see her as often as he would have liked. He would watch other children go to their mothers when they had scraped a knee or gotten a scratch, but Lan Zhan had to deal with it on his own or, if XiChen noticed, he would help.