One of my fave things about Wei Ying is that when he fantasized about living with Lan Zhan, he imagined Lan Zhan staying home and mending clothes and cooking and cleaning and just generally waiting for Wei Ying to get back. Because Wei Ying imagined that he would go out and hunt or fish or farm. Wei Ying’s dirty fantasy was that Lan Zhan would live a domestic life with him where he provided food (at least ingredients).
It will never stop being funny that, in the WangXian dynamic, the man who is rumoured to have had sex with so many women as well as had virgins (for their blood? For the sex? For fun? Who knows? Have a virgin!) just hanging around, he fantasized about having a domestic life and farming and fishing. And the “Light Bearing Lord” who came from a respected family and is known as cold and standoffish and feared as much as he’s respected, he fantasized about sex eight times a day with his husband.
It’s hilarious! But, it is also terribly sad!
Wei Ying just wants a home. A place he can go where someone is waiting for him. A place that he can go to and the someone waiting for him is happy that he’s there. A place where he can relax and have fun and his idea of fun is fishing, hunting, and farming. A place where he’s allowed to just be himself, no pretending necessary, he can just exist and have someone exist by his side in harmony.
And then, while I’m thinking about this, I remember that my actual favourite thing from the book is when Wei Ying sits on Little Apple and has Lan Wangji pull the reins because he remembers his mom sitting while his dad pulled the reins. And he thinks about how great it would be if they had a kid so that the kid could sit on Lan Zhan’s shoulders like he sat on his dad’s shoulders. And he recreates this scene, this innocuous scene and it makes him so happy and Lan Zhan doesn’t even question for a milisecond why Wei Ying wants him to do this after he realizes that it makes Wei Ying happy.
They just… am love each other… so much… for so long… and they… they… they are they and that is wonderful…
