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Once was just Wei Ying being himself, and twice had perhaps been just the stress of a difficult day or the pleasure of a new bed. But three times is a pattern and Lan Zhan is an intelligent man and he knows what Wei Ying is doing and why he’s doing it.
It’s just hard to care, exactly, with Wei Ying’s clever fingers where they are, and Lan Zhan can decide later whether to complain about the not-so-subtle manipulation. Some time when he’s not half out of his mind and aching for what he’s not - quite - being given.
***
“We’d better stop here,” Wei Ying had said two nights ago. They could have pressed a little harder and made it to Lotus Pier that night. Slept in a bed instead of under the open sky. But Wei Ying had thought it not entirely out of the question that Jiang Cheng would try to give them separate bedrooms as befits a merely-betrothed couple. Lan Zhan had been amenable. They’d tangled together slowly that night and quickly in the morning, and picked a few stray leaves out of each other’s hair, and then gotten back on the road and arrived in time for lunch.
Lunch had been intolerably spicy. Even Wei Ying had coughed. But they were given a shared bedroom without comment, and Wei Ying’s face had lit up when Lotus Pier had come into sight. It was a promising beginning.
***
Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng had taken a boat out in the evening. Lan Zhan had offered to come along in case they fought hard enough to tip the boat, but Wei Ying announced cheerfully that they were both excellent swimmers and had never yet lost a boat to one of their fights.
Lan Zhan had passed a quiet few hours writing letters and working on a new composition that he thought might make a wedding present. The breeze had only carried shouting to him once, and after listening for a few careful moments he decided it sounded like what passed for a normal conversation at Lotus Pier.
Wei Ying had come in later, draped himself over Lan Zhan’s back, and buried his face against Lan Zhan’s neck for several moments.
Finally he’d said, “It’s fine. We can have the ceremony here. It can’t be in the spring, there’s a thing. A conference. I don’t know. But after, or before. It’s fine.”
He’d sounded a little sad, and there hadn’t been much time left before they were supposed to meet up again, with cooled tempers. Efficient measures were called for. Lan Zhan had gone to his knees swiftly and pushed aside only as many of Wei Ying’s robes as he needed to, to work him past regret to pleasure and solace. Lan Zhan’s eyes had been wet by the end with the effort to breathe, his throat raw in a way that made him quiet when the three of them went for an evening walk. Wei Ying had laughed, and smoothed Lan Zhan’s hair back and called him sweetheart, and the flicker of sorrow was gone. It was more than enough.
***
At the end of the evening, both of them tired from the strain of the attempt at family reconciliation, Lan Zhan had expected it to be a night where going to bed would be just that.
(“Just” isn’t the word for it. Lan Zhan has long experience of a solitary bed and he takes nothing for granted about the experience of Wei Ying beside him in the night. There are still hours when he lies awake just ensuring that Wei Ying keeps breathing. As if he might stop, were Lan Zhan ever to forget that each one of those breaths is a miracle he does not deserve.)
But Wei Ying had stretched out on top of him, all long limbs and loose hair and shadows, and asked so sweetly to be ruined that Lan Zhan wouldn’t have said no even if he had wanted to.
***
And now, on the second day of their visit, he understands with the part of him that is all cool logic that Wei Ying has made a campaign of this. That Wei Ying believes - not without justification - that his brother and his husband-to-be must be handled if the project of family unity is ever to spread its fledgling wings. That he has decided - and this Lan Zhan thinks, to the extent that he can think like this, spread over Wei Ying’s lap and panting, is unfair - that the best way to handle Lan Zhan is to keep him worn out and sated and too hazy with recent or anticipated pleasure to bother needling Jiang Cheng.
In another better life, Wei Ying would have led armies of the living, and done it well. His strategies may be unorthodox but they’re rarely ineffective.
Lan Zhan decides to believe that the sound he has just made is not a whimper.
Wei Ying moves his fingers again - gentle gentle cruel, a terribly precise pressure at the end of the slide that leaves Lan Zhan shaking - and presses his mouth to Lan Zhan’s chest beneath his scar. He must taste salt. They’ve been at this long enough for Wei Ying to have come already and Lan Zhan to have sweated, and calmed, and now he’s breaking out in shivers again.
“Just be patient a little longer,” Wei Ying murmurs, his teeth just scraping Lan Zhan’s skin. “I’m almost ready for you, I promise. My Lan Zhan, patient and good and wise.”
Lan Zhan does not feel patient. He feels - he doesn’t know a word for what he feels, waiting for Wei Ying’s body to rise to the occasion again, to fill up what feels empty inside him even with Wei Ying’s fingers as consolation.
There is an urge to bite down hard on the unmarred skin where Wei Ying’s neck and shoulder meet. Lan Zhan resists. He is being good. He is not going to be the cause of any trouble for Wei Ying during this visit. He is not going to mark Wei Ying anywhere that will show.
“I understand what you are up to,” he says, teeth snapping together on air rather than anything more satisfying.
“I said you were wise.” Wei Ying smiles, incongruously serene, and presses in with another finger. Lan Zhan very nearly groans at the stretch, closer to what he wants and yet not precisely that. His hips jerk, out of his control. “Is it so terrible, to want you to enjoy our trip? I never get you like this. No one waiting at the door for your attention, no students to attend to. Let me be a little selfish.”
It doesn’t - he’s not the one who’s... Lan Zhan tries to corral his thoughts into something orderly. Wei Ying scatters them again deftly with a flick of his tongue.
If there’s a war here, Lan Zhan is losing. But he knows how to lose gracefully; Lan children learn that early on. There is no honor in meeting defeat poorly.
He leans forward to find Wei Ying’s mouth and take it. Manages not to hiss at the sparks that race up his spine at the sudden shift, with Wei Ying’s fingers still inside him. Kisses Wei Ying breathless, lets himself be demanding, and takes everything Wei Ying has to give him until he can feel that Wei Ying is ready again.
It’s easy, this second time, taking all of Wei Ying’s cock in one motion, but that doesn’t mean Lan Zhan doesn’t feel every bit of it. He has to break away from Wei Ying’s mouth to breathe through it, and letting Wei Ying have his voice back is always a dangerous prospect.
“Sweetheart,” Wei Ying says immediately, like the words were bottled up by Lan Zhan’s tongue and waiting to overflow, “ah, you’re so beautiful. I’m sorry you had to wait, but I’ll make you feel good now, I promise.”
Lan Zhan steadies himself, or tries to, though his thighs are slick where they slip against Wei Ying’s skin, his hand trembling slightly where it rests on Wei Ying’s shoulder. His inner robe never did make it entirely off his body; it rustles and shifts around his hips as he starts to move. Wei Ying’s arm comes to rest at the small of his back underneath it, and Lan Zhan is grateful that not even that thin barrier is between them. Grateful for the steadying touch, pinning him to the world.
“You should make it up to me,” he manages to say, and is pleased with himself that his voice comes out a little husky but not as wrecked as he feels. “When we are married, I won’t let you plot against me like this.”
If he has been saying when we are married often lately - finding excuses to feel the sweet weight of the words on his tongue - he does not admit it, and Wei Ying does not point it out, even now when Lan Zhan is armorless against him. He laughs instead, sweet and breathless.
“I would never plot against you, Lan Zhan,” he lies shamelessly, disheveled and lovely.
Lan Zhan will not dignify the lie with an acknowledgement. He moves instead, chasing the rhythm and motion of his hips that will drive Wei Ying to wordlessness. His thighs ache and his heart hammers and it’s good, so good that he can’t help but groan on a particularly deep thrust as Wei Ying arches up to meet him.
Wordlessness hasn’t been achieved yet. Wei Ying keeps up a steady stream of commentary - how handsome Lan Zhan is, how good he feels, how generous he is to let Wei Ying have him like this.
Wei Ying’s endearments are sometimes difficult to hear, but there are so many of them that it is hard to protest any individual one. They pour over Lan Zhan like rushing water every day, implacable, wearing away at his jagged edges. Some day - decades from now, perhaps - he will be smooth and simple as a river stone under the steady current of Wei Ying’s love.
For now he can only hold on. At some point one of his hands has taken one of Wei Ying’s; he imagines he can feel Wei Ying’s pulse rabbiting where their wrists nearly press together.
“Wei Ying,” he says, and then words fail him. He means to say touch me or can I but there is nothing there, only the realization that he’s drawing near again to the edge he’s been waiting to tip over forever - hours, days, months, since whenever it was that Wei Ying had nestled in close and said they eat breakfast at a sensible hour in Yunmeng, we have so much time.
He would wait again if Wei Ying asked him to. He’d slow to stillness with Wei Ying’s cock still deep inside him, and shudder there until he could step back from the brink a third time. He would moan and gasp and beg for it, heedless of who might be listening in a strange place where he does not know who might pass outside the door.
But Wei Ying is apparently not feeling that kind of cruel today - they are, after all, at Lotus Pier as guests and it would probably not do for Lan Zhan’s face to be tear-streaked at breakfast - and his smile has only the faintest glint of wickedness about it.
“Go ahead,” he says, and squeezes Lan Zhan’s hand in his own once, before he lets go so he can drop that hand to Lan Zhan’s cock where it’s hard and neglected and needing so little attention to go off. “Let me see you. Look at me, please.”
Lan Zhan does. It’s difficult - his eyes want to screw shut to ride out the onslaught of new pleasure at Wei Ying’s touch - but he holds their gaze and lets Wei Ying see the sensations ripple through him. Wei Ying is a merciless tease, but when he is ready to give in, he does not take half measures. He pulls Lan Zhan quickly the rest of the way to the edge and over it.
Lan Zhan shatters, but he doesn’t look away.
Wei Ying returns him to himself with more whispered words about how sweet he is, how hot, how lucky Wei Ying is to be the one all this beauty is for. Lan Zhan follows the thread of his voice and the warmth of his hands back to their bed, where he is still trembling and gulping harsh lungfuls of air. Wei Ying is softening inside him and he regrets for a moment that he missed that, but then again, at the rate Wei Ying’s ruthless battle plan is going, he’ll see it again soon enough.
He sorts through the sparkling shards of his thoughts and finally pieces enough words together to say, “I love you. I will not be mean to your brother, even if you don’t keep me in bed all day.”
Wei Ying hums quietly, amused and unrepentant. “I will keep your complaint in mind,” he says. “I apologize very sincerely if I have inconvenienced you.”
Lan Zhan leans forward and bites him very gently. Where it won’t show.
He is being good.