The Curse Love

chapter 3

The next day passed in a haze. He had woken up at Cloud Recesses time, and had packed up, while being told repeatedly that he should let someone else handle the packing. He wasn’t trying to avoid Lan Zhan, but he was viciously aware of his husbands absence.

The night hunt had been close enough to Caiyi so there wasn’t a long way to travel. It was an ideal area for a first expedition, near enough for comfort, but away from the urban areas the children were familiar with. The journey there was short, but full of chatting and a vibrating sort of excitement.

The journey back is quiet. Wei Wuxian is too hurt to make any sort of conversation, and the juniors sense and react accordingly.

It’s time like this he misses Jiang Cheng. When he was upset as a child, he would run off and hold his breath under the lake until his mind clouded over and the oxygen deprivation burned out his thoughts. Only when black crowded in from the corner of his eyes would he surface, gasping, before forcing himself under again.

Even Shije’s gentle words wouldn’t help, and he would go far enough out that it wouldn’t be easy for her to reach without ruining her delicate clothes, and receiving criticism from her mother.

She would have. No amount of criticism or snide remarks would keep Jiang Yanli from loving her little brothers with everything she had. But if he didn’t want her there, she wouldn’t be. Jiang Cheng had no such polite nature, storming into the lake and hauling his older brother out, shouting at his audacity to miss training and pull him into the gaggle of younger disciples who would bully and swarm after him in turns until they’d chase the cloudy fog away. When the night became too dark even for them, Shije would come to say goodnight to her youngest brothers, and spend a second longer curling her soft hand through his hair, chasing away every dark thought.

Lan’s treated sadness by giving someone space, and allowing them to reach peace with their thoughts. He hated it. He didn’t understand how seclusion and isolation would do anything but let people fall down into their own greatest nightmares.

His brothers absence ached like a pulse, pulling at his heart with a familiar ache. Now, especially with his husbands distance, he wants to hide behind Jiang Cheng, or have him chase away his fear like it’s a dog, easily dissuaded with a harsh word and shooing motion.

The juniors distance leaves him cold, and he idly focuses on the passing by of his own surrounding. The angle of a broken stalk, the composition of a rose, the refraction of water. The world passes by like a mirage in a dream.

Lan Xichen meets them at the bottom of the stairs, gentle smile fixed on his face. It’s become more common to see him nowadays. Healing from Jin Guangyao’s treachery had been a long process, but his brother in law had come through. His seclusion, interrupted by both Wei Ying and Lan Zhan had been perhaps a shade unusual, but it was a chance to recuperate, far from the judging eyes of the world that saw fit to judge every emotion and private thought.

It was hard, sometimes to look at his own brother in law. It wasn’t that he had disapproved of Wei Wuxian really, more just that he had been wary at how much pain the demonic cultivator had brought to his cherished little brother. The bond between the brothers was simple and uncomplicated running deep under still waters, unlike the tumultuous wreck of his own brotherhood.

Sometimes he wished he could introduce Lan Xichen to Jiang Cheng. His baby brother had spent over a decade loving an evil man, he knew the weight that bore in the soul.