synesthesia

Part four, the last, of mixed metaphors

My love is like a red, red rose, Lan Wangji thought upon the witching hour.

Lan Xichen was sleeping through it: the carnal clamor in the next room.

Lan Wangji’s rage, that red, red thing, had burned through all his shades of purple, from the lightest lilac to the brightest violet to the deepest aubergine. Nothing remained of their royal profusion. The world was quintessenced to sheets of flaming red.

He, sixteen, was quintessenced to a length of flaming love.

Sixteen, he thought, listening as Jiang Cheng came a fourth time, crying love for his older brother, was rather a young age at which to be facing the crisis of your life.

Sixteen, he had only one advantage over Jiang Cheng’s older brother: the reach of his family name.

Fortunately, he needed no other.

He’d never told Jiang Cheng he was one of the Gusu Lans. The lie of omission had necessitated a second, of commission—he’d had to lie his own older brother out of existence—but it had been the price he’d paid for his brother’s privacy. Lan Wangji had trusted Jiang Cheng, of course, not to be starstruck or dollar-struck, but the secret of his name wasn’t his own to share. From the beginning, as well, he hadn’t trusted Wei Wuxian, nor Jiang Cheng to keep secrets from him who—Lan Wangji knew now, all too well—was first to him in all the world.

So it was that coming to Lan Xichen’s university quarters upon the evening that led into this never-ending night, Lan Wangji had been hooded and shaded, the fraternal resemblance too striking to risk being found out. “Sunglasses indoors at seven in December,” the one of Lan Xichen’s housemates Lan Wangji had passed had remarked. “Rock on.”

So it was that, eight hours after, lying on a futon in his brother’s room and eavesdropping on the wild lovemaking in the next room, Lan Wangji was facing the crisis of his life.

He knew it for what it was.

The one he held first in all the world belonged to someone else, and Lan Wangji had to decide what he was going to do about it.

“Everyone gets one,” Uncle had said to Lan Xichen, Lan Wangji at the table too, “though some get more: a point in your life at which the choice you make determines your character. Short of such crises, your choices reveal your character. But we are all given a chance or more to choose who we are and will become. What choice are you going to make, Xichen? Who are you going to be?”

Lan Xichen had chosen to be a man. He’d chosen to let him go: his snake of an ex-boyfriend. He’d chosen self-respect over infatuation; he’d chosen to save himself rather than someone else who—he’d realized, at the end—didn’t need saving. He’d dumped the viper, and Uncle had seen to it that all of Meng Yao’s efforts at recapture and then retaliation had failed.

Who, Lan Wangji thought, the world dyed red, am I going to be?

In his red-dyed world the choice was clear.

I am going to destroy you, Wei Wuxian.

It needn’t be via a charge of statutory rape, though that would be the quickest and justest way to dispose of him. It could be more subtle and insidious. It would be as simple as arranging for him to be blacklisted among the tech elite: he would never find work again in Silicon Valley. A word in Uncle’s ear, and Lan Wangji would make it happen: he would destroy his rival’s future. For the present, blackmail would suffice. Lan Wangji would hold over him the threat of disclosure of his illegal love affair, and forbid him to tell his lover—his brother—why he could never touch him again—the way he was touching him now—fucking him now—fucking narrating each thrust now—every word audible on this side of the thin excuse for a wall—“sweet A-Cheng—precious Didi—my sweet—precious—whore—my cock—hungry—slut—”

“Wangji,” came Lan Xichen’s voice from across the room.

Low though it was, it slashed a sudden, violent line in the red filling Lan Wangji’s vision.

Lan Wangji choked back his gasp, and opened his eyes.

Gaping between the two edges of the tear was an incomplete darkness. The same darkness, incomplete, pervaded this room in which he and his brother lay a room’s width apart.

“Wangji,” Lan Xichen said again. “Come to me.”

His voice was as Lan Wangji had never heard it: rough with the hour, dark with command.

The tear in the red world widened.

As it grew, it grew faster, until it ate up the pure red world as if it had never been.

Lan Wangji felt himself to be in a dream.

“Wangji,” Lan Xichen said, a third time. “Come to me.”

As if in a dream, Lan Wangji found himself throwing off his blanket—rising to his feet—stepping toward his brother’s bed—

“There,” Lan Xichen said, rough and dark, when Lan Wangji reached it. “Stay right there.”

The play of shadows in the incomplete darkness revealed him to shift to sitting. To swing his legs off the bed. To face his younger brother.

As if underwater, Lan Wangji found himself unable to breathe.

As if attuned to his brother’s mind, Lan Wangji knew what he was going to do next.

Lan Xichen reached out a hand and wrapped it around Lan Wangji’s hard, leaking cock.

Nothing had ever felt so divine.

“Xiongzhang,” Lan Wangji gasped.

“Mmm, you’re big,” Lan Xichen said, and laughed, light and soft. “Even bigger than I am. Sixteen years old, and bigger than I am at twenty-one. Are you fully grown, I wonder? Will it get even bigger? Can it get even bigger?”

He stroked.

Just once.

Lan Wangji would sell the world for him to do it again.

“Xiongzhang,” he begged. “Please—”

His brother’s laugh was again a light, soft thing.

“Do you want me to stroke your cock, Wangji? Your enormous, delectable cock? It’s so hard, and hot, and thick. Do you want me to stroke it until you come?”

Lan Wangji imagined it: the firm, tight grip on his cock moving up, and down, and again, and again and again, until—

“Yes,” he said. “Xiongzhang— Please—”

“I will, Wangji.” His brother’s voice was a caressing thing. “I’ll make you come. But you have to promise me one thing. Look at me. There’s light enough. Look into my eyes.”

He enforced the command with another stroke of his hand, up and down, slow and exquisite.

Then he took it away.

What could Lan Wangji do but obey him?

So he searched the incomplete dark for his brother’s gaze.

He found it.

He met it.

He met his brother’s eyes.

They were—

Beautiful.

They brimmed—

With—

“Love,” he gasped. “You love me.”

Lan Xichen smiled.

“I’ve loved you,” he said, “since before you were born. I’ve loved you since before you knew what love was. I’ve loved you,” he said, his voice roughening, darkening, “since before you knew you had a heart to be broken. The boy who dared to break it is next door, being fucked into the next millennium. You know it, and I know it too. I heard enough. Do you hear him now, Wangji? Listen for him. Listen to him.”

Looking into eyes darker and lovelier than eyes should be, Lan Wangji again could only obey.

He listened.

Jiang Cheng’s high cries of higher pleasure seemed each to dot the incomplete darkness at the edges of Lan Wangji’s vision, each a burst of the brightest white light before it disappeared.

Lan Wangji could chase after it, each and every one.

He could chase it helplessly, hopelessly.

He could chase his helpless, hopeless love.

He could pursue his fruitless, pointless revenge.

Or, he thought, he could have what was right in front of him.

He could take the gift his brother was offering him.

The choice was his.

He chose.

He leapt.

He fell into his brother’s dark and lovely eyes.

“I don’t want him,” he said. “Not anymore. I want you. Did you want me before tonight?”

His brother’s eyes spoke seduction and promised bliss.

His brother, Lan Wangji realized, was the most beautiful man in the world.

The sudden truth was shocking.

It was irrefutable.

“No,” Lan Xichen replied. “But I want you now. I want you too. I want to make you come more than I’ve ever known I could want anything. But promise me first, Wangji. Promise me you’ll never again throw your heart away.”

“I gave my heart away,” Lan Wangji said, “to the most beautiful boy in the world. But he didn’t want it, and he gave it back to me. I feel it now fitted back into my ribcage, my own again. My own, to give away again—to give now to you, Xiongzhang, who are the most beautiful man in the world. I have never seen your equal. I never will, because you are beyond compare. I see it now: the truth. And the truth is a thing that once seen can never be unseen.”

He touched his hands to his brother’s face—he cupped his brother’s face. He tilted it, in his hands. He studied it in the incomplete dark.

Lan Xichen, pliant, let him.

“You are perfect,” Lan Wangji said. “Without flaw. I love you, because you are perfect and without flaw. Will you accept my love, Xiongzhang? Will you take my heart, offered to you, who are perfect and without flaw?”

“Beauty,” Lan Xichen said, as if musing, “is a high, fine thing. You’ve always been susceptible to it. Since you were a baby, beauty has exerted an outsize hold on you. It’s no shallow thing for you, but rather the jewel of the world. You bring to it a connoisseur’s eye and a worshipper’s heart. But if I, who am beautiful, take your worshipper’s heart offered to me because I’m beautiful—what will I do if my beauty is marred? What will you do when my beauty fades?”

“I will always remember you as you are now,” Lan Wangji said. “Beautiful—and mine. I see it now, that you are mine. I made it true when I declared my love. It is what you want, Xiongzhang: you want to belong to another. It is your heart’s desire, to belong to one who holds you first in all the world. It is as obvious as you are beautiful. You are first with me. You will always be first with me. Even if your beauty is marred—even when your beauty fades—you will always be first with me.”

Lan Xichen’s eyes were wet with tears.

“Kiss me,” he said. “You who hold me first in all the world: kiss me and make me yours.”

Lan Wangji kissed him.

He kissed his brother, and made him his.

If they made love too, that night, as another pair of brothers were doing the next room over—they did it quietly.

If Lan Xichen made his brother come—with his hand—in his mouth—

If Lan Wangji made his brother come—on his cock—

“Heaven,” he said. “Xiongzhang—you’re heavenly beautiful—”

He was.

If, sated at dawn’s light, they lay facing each other, looking into each other’s eyes—

“I love you,” Lan Xichen said.

“And I love you,” Lan Wangji said.

My love, he thought, is like a red, red rose.

Red not like rage or passion are red—

But like blood.

Like shared blood.

“You look just like me when I was your age,” Lan Xichen said.

“I will look just like you when I am your age,” Lan Wangji said.

Lan Xichen laughed.

“Yes, I imagine you will,” he said. “People will think we’re twins. Will you still love me, I wonder, when to see the beauty you love you need only to look in the mirror?”

I will love you still, my dear, while the sands of life shall run.

“I will love you always,” Lan Wangji said.

He climbed, then, on top of his brother.

He caged him under his own body.

He kissed him, his brother whose beauty augured his own.

“Let me prove it to you,” he said. “Let me inside you again.”

“Yes,” Lan Xichen said. “Anytime you want it.”

“Now,” Lan Wangji said. “And always.”

“Now,” Lan Xichen said. “And always.”

End of mixed metaphors