#but it doesnt really matter

22: “You make me so happy.” From this prompt list…

Lan Wangji is not a perfect soul.

He knows his own reputation. To others, he is a lake of glass: unwavering, unmoving, still and perfect against the travails of life. More than anything, he has mastered his own body. His movements, his expressions are precise. Not an eyelash out of place; barely a twitch of his lips, sometimes, when he is stirred by emotion. He is snowfall on a mountaintop: always constant, always undisturbed.

But beneath the snowfall, beneath the glass, turmoil.

Less so today than before: before there was distress, urgency, fear of losing what he’d only so recently regained. Now, for the most part, there is peace and joy. But what remains, still, is doubt.

Wei Ying loves him. That in itself should solve every problem, open every door. He is able to take this man who captured his heart a lifetime ago and hold him, touch him, speak with him every day. Where the frost had seeped into Lan Wangji’s heart, Wei Ying has melted it, and every day now it is springtime: tender, beautiful, full of life and possibility.

But spring is also fleeting, and sometimes Lan Wangji wonders.

Can someone like Wei Ying truly be happy, passing his days in Cloud Recesses?

Can he spend his days in a place of four thousand rules, bound to the same surroundings every day, teaching the same students, bound to the same room, the same man, the same bed? Should Wei Ying be living a freer life than Lan Wangji can give him? Shouldn’t he be running on rainbows to the seven corners of the earth, helping the downtrodden and winning hearts as he goes, turning the legend of the Yiling Patriarch into a story of redemption and heroism? Sometimes it seems a shame, even to Lan Wangji, that he stays here.

But stay here he does, save nighthunts to and fro with the others and occasional jaunts down the mountain just because. He never complains when Lan Wangji joins him. There is no doubt there; Lan Wangji can be sure, at the very least, that Wei Ying truly loves him.

But is loving him enough to keep him happy?

This morning, he fears it is not.

They’re having breakfast. Wei Ying pokes at his rice unhappily, not eating very much, which is always a troubling sign. The never troubled, always glad face of Wei Ying is pinched with some discontent. Perhaps it is as he fears. He fumbles for a way to cheer him. “Wei Ying,” he says, unsure, “Do you want to take a trip?”

Wei Ying shakes his head and stares balefully at the plate of vegetables before him. “No,” he says, “not really.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Nothing,” Wei Ying says automatically, and then sighs. “Maybe I had a bad dream.”

“Maybe?” And maybe that’s all it is, but Lan Wangji can’t see that look on Wei Ying’s face without thinking there’s something more. “What will you do today?”

Wei Ying gestures vaguely to his writing-desk in the corner. “I suppose I’ll probably work some more on the energy map I’ve been developing,” he says. “Then I guess I’ll do some meditation, try to get this weak little core of mine a bit more bulked up. Or maybe I’ll just take the day off.”  He lets out another, resigned sigh. "It’s really useless, Lan Zhan. I’m never going to be what I was.”

“You will, in time,” Lan Wangji starts to say, then falls silent. His words must be so little comfort to Wei Ying, who has been trying to improve on the weakness of Mo Xuanyu’s golden core for months now. Lan Wangji had encouraged him, seeing it as the obvious path to take, trying to cultivate back to his former self. But perhaps it is more frustrating, and less satisfying, than he had anticipated. Perhaps it’s only holding him back.

This place, these Cloud Recesses, are such an ideal place for cultivation. But if cultivation isn’t what Wei Ying desires – if being here isn’t what he desires – Lan Wangji has no right to hold him back.

He coughs softly.

Wei Ying blinks at him. “What?”

“If you want to travel,” Lan Wangji says, carefully as always, “you should travel.”

“What’s with asking me about traveling?” Wei Ying half-smiles. “Are you trying to get rid of me, Lan Zhan?”

“No.” But he must qualify that answer as well; he must make sure Wei Ying feels free. “But if you wish to go…”

“I don’t.” Wei Ying picks up a radish slice with chopsticks and crunches down on it decisively. “I’m not sure why you think I do.”

Lan Wangji is ashamed. He seems to have incurred Wei Ying’s irritation. He’s fouled this up, when his only intention has been to let Wei Ying know he is free to pursue his dreams wherever they may lead him. He is silent, placing his chopsticks down on the table and staring expressionlessly at his meal. He shouldn’t be speaking while eating anyway.

Wei Ying leans back and gazes at him for a long moment. “Lan Zhan,” he says hesitantly, “why are you so sure all of a sudden that I want to go?”

The shame doesn’t show on his face, but Lan Wangji feels it acutely. “I want Wei Ying to be happy,” he says.

“But I’m happy!” Wei Ying laughs, but it’s not the full, open-throated laugh that Lan Wangji is used to. There’s something strained in his smile.

“You did not seem so,” he points out.

The smile fades as quickly as it appears. Wei Ying crosses his arms. “I really did have a bad dream,” he says, the consonants of his speech sharp as he rasps over them. “I’m always going to have bad dreams. It’s the curse of the Yiling Patriarch. I have too many regrets to always sleep soundly. And the cultivation does get me down, I won’t lie. I feel as though you’re still waiting for me to become something I’m not.”

“I’m not,” Lan Wangji speaks as swiftly as he can. “If you no longer wish to cultivate, then stop.”

“I don’t want to stop, necessarily,” Wei Ying says. “I want to live a long life with you. But I can’t say I’m going to be successful at it, even with time. And I don’t want you to settle.”

“I want Wei Ying just as he is.” The words can’t rush from his mouth fast enough, but with them comes regret – are these words binding cords? Do they trap Wei Ying in an existence that is not his ideal? “I fear you are settling.”

Wei Ying looks at him a long time without speaking. Lan Wangji feels that gaze boring into him, like a pike being driven through his chest. Wei Ying’s mind works fast, and in ways Lan Wangji often cannot follow. Who knows what he’s thinking right now.

And then, like a bright rush of sunshine, that laugh. Full-voiced now, sounds flying into the air like a flock of birds, noisy and raucous and everything that is good. “I see,” he says. “I see now. Oh, Lan Zhan, I thought I had the market cornered on self-torture, but you are good at it too, when you are given too much time to think.” He takes one of Lan Wangji’s hands into his own, nimble fingers caressing his skin. A blessed touch. “I’m happy here,” he says. “I’m not sure how you decided otherwise, but I promise I am.”

“Why?” Lan Wangji asks.

“Why what?”

“Why are you happy here?” The question seems to Lan Wangji to be an obvious one, but Wei Ying looks at him as though he’s speaking in an alien tongue. “What about this place makes you happy?”

“What doesn’t?” Wei Ying counters. “The scenery, being close to A-Yuan and the others, a truly insane number of books I can look through in my work, the back hill, the waterfall…”

“The rules?” Lan Wangji asks. “The food?”

“See, now you’re just picking the things you know I’m not fond of.” Wei Ying props his chin up on his free hand and gazes at Lan Wangji across the table. “You’re forgetting something very important.”

Lan Wangji blinks. What has he not accounted for? “Something important?”

Wei Ying sighs. He drops his chopsticks, stands up, and rounds the small table, planting himself awkwardly in Lan Wangji’s lap. The crush of his weight and the sweet smell of him, all of a sudden everywhere, and Lan Wangji’s impulse is to clutch on tightly. He wills his hands to remain still.

“You,” Wei Ying says. “You’re forgetting about you.”

“Me?” It’s not as though Lan Wangji doubted, but he hadn’t considered… he hadn’t thought he was enough to tip the scales.

“You.You make me happy, Lan Zhan. You make me so happy.” Wei Ying kisses his jaw, caresses his face with a hand. “Don’t you know that?”

Lan Wangji is silent. Wei Ying’s words are echoing in his ears. You make me so happy. How could he? He tries, but how could he really when Wei Ying’s heart is big enough to embrace an entire universe?

Wei Ying buries a laugh in Lan Wangji’s shoulder. “Ah, Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan,” he berates, “it’s you who’s settling! Look at me, so weak, determined to keep my wicked ways. You’ll never make a proper cultivator out of me, no matter how long and how hard you try. Aren’t I the very picture of disappointment? It’s a wonder you can keep me around.”

“Stop.” Lan Wangji scowls. “Stop. Don’t say these things.”

“Do they sound ridiculous to you? Do you see now how you sound to me?” Wei Ying winds his arms around Lan Wangji’s neck. “I’m not leaving you, Lan Zhan. You couldn’t kick me out with a whole army of little Lans behind you. So you might as well stop trying.”

Lan Wangji is a little embarrassed. He had been so worried about Wei Ying’s ill temper and so lost in his own imaginings that he’d concocted a whole universe of discontent. He lifts a hand and tangles it in Wei Ying’s hair, savoring the feel of soft silk against his fingers. “Wei Ying makes me happy, too,” he says.  "So very happy.“

Wei Ying leans in and dots a kiss onto his lips, small and perfect. "So you’ll give up then on telling me to go away?”

“Mn.” For the first time this morning, he feels tethered again, sure of himself.

“And if I ever do want to go somewhere,” Wei Ying says, “I want you to come with me.”

“Anywhere Wei Ying wants to go.”

“How about lunch in town, then?” Wei Ying lifts one of Lan Wangji’s chopsticks from the table and pokes at the pile of withered vegetables. “Because as happy as I am, breakfast is not one of Cloud Recesses’ high points.”

“Mn. Lunch.” There it is, that sense of sureness, that gentle delight that he’s so used to feeling in Wei Ying’s presence. He’d lost sight of it, somehow, but it’s back and Wei Ying loves him and Wei Ying wants to stay with him and he needs nothing else in the entire universe. “Wherever you like.”

“And I still intend to cultivate,” Wei Ying says. “But perhaps, just this once, I’ll take a day off.” Lan Wangji nods. “Maybe I can convince you to dally with me a few hours in town? Unless you have terribly important lessons to impart and terribly important papers to grade.”

“Nothing terribly important.”  He lets his lips turn up in just that way that only Wei Ying gets to see.

“Good, then I’m skipping the rest of breakfast.”

Lan Wangji frowns. “Don’t waste food.”

Wei Ying claps his hands. “Oh, thereyou are, Lan Zhan! I had thought you’d gone missing for  second.”

He crawls out of Lan Wangji’s lap and back onto his side of the table. They finish breakfast in pleasant silence, sunlight streaming in through the window. It’s the perfect time to take a day off.