summerdude | I Embrace My Inner Tarzan [open post]

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I Embrace My Inner Tarzan [open post]

There's a massive old oak about fifty yards west of Magnus's favorite clearing. It has thick, sturdy branches; he can climb nearly forty feet up it before he starts to worry about them holding his weight. There's a family of squirrels that lives nearby -- good squirrels, nothing like Ratatosk -- and Magnus likes to listen to them discuss their acorn deposits. Sometimes, when they're not looking, he'll grow and stash more acorns for them to discover; he's not sure how long the winters here get.

He's pretty sure it's cold outside, but it's not cold enough to affect him, and so he's still barefoot and in a t-shirt pretty much all the time.

Today, he's been scrounging in some of the out-buildings. There's a portable outdoor fireplace. While he doesn't feel the cold, he finds (contained) fires comforting, and it'll be nice to have some hot food, so he shoulders it and a makeshift grill surface, and lugs them to the base of his oak tree. Now he'll have an easier way of preparing the fish Mothwing sometimes leaves him than trying to summon the right amount of summer into them so that they cook and don't explode, at least.

He lights a modest fire, feeding it with fallen sticks. Then he shoves an apple, picked from another nearby tree, into his mouth and a book he'd pilfered from the library into the waistband of his pants, and climbs up an easy ten feet to his favorite branch. Things don't seem so bad, living out here.

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Some very subtle sheepishness crosses Lan Wangji's expression for a fraction of a moment. This is difficult for him to answer objectively. The first time he saw Magnus, he saw the echo of his own memories, of the first time Sizhui held a sword and Lan Wangji talked him through the first steps of the Lan clan's most basic sword forms.

He considers him, the fall of his freshly-neatened hair and the grey of his eyes, the impression of ghosts within them. There is something of a gravity to Magnus, something that Sizhui and Jingyi and their peers do not have most days. Maybe it is the additional years or maybe it is the bloodshed that Magnus has seen, the unchecked violence that Lan Wangji has been so relieved to spare his students from witnessing. They all performed beautifully during the second siege of the Burial Mounds, and he is proud -- but he wishes they had not needed to.

"Neither sixteen nor twenty-four," he says again, with a fresh measure of deliberation, but he has to admit, soft with that precipitous fondness, "but I see my disciples when I look at you."

Magnus's hand comes up and he touches the jade token again, reflexively. He remembers what Lan Wangji said about a particularly special disciple, back when Magnus accused Lan Wangji of being a deadbeat dad. His heart thuds. "Okay," he says, smiling down at his lap. "I can take that."

When Lan Wangji emerged from his seclusion, scars tight and still painful on his back, he felt as though he had forgotten every carefully-gathered scrap of knowledge about how to be a part of the world. He was encased in a sheet of ice, brittle with grief and too aware that his life was a gift handed to him by his uncle, who loved him too much to punish him as harshly as he deserved. It was a gift he was only barely certain he wanted. He had meditated for days on end, time enough that the yawning wound of his grief had just begun to scab over with the understanding that Wei Ying was gone. The loss was permanent, and nothing would ever again be as it was.

A-Yuan had grown in his absence, and his fever had washed away his memory of the Burial Mounds and the Wen remnants. Lan Qiren handed the child to Lan Wangji with tempered irritation, as though to say Here, you wanted him, and Lan Wangji was frozen. He was in Yiling again, A-Yuan's tears soaking through his robes and all the passersby laughing about Lan Wangji's stiffness, his unsuitability to caring for a child.

The two of them had to learn one another. By then, A-Yuan recognized Lan Xichen and Lan Qiren more readily, and would cry and ask for them. Lan Wangji, who wanted to give him everything he asked for, complied, until the first time that A-Yuan drifted to sleep in his arms instead. Lan Wangji stared down at him in shock. There was a stirring in him, new life green and tender through the coating of frost. A-Yuan was warm, heavier than Lan Wangji could have imagined for a child so small and sweet. Lan Wangji held him until he awoke, the skin and bones of his chest feeling so thin that a breeze could have carried his heart away if it so wished.

Here, now, with Magnus a steady warmth on his side, he is immensely grateful for every slow change that time has visited upon him. He knows now how to be gentle, how to watch a young person grow with pride and love, how to accept the gift of trust that comes with another person relaxing into his hold and believing without fear that Lan Wangji will allow no harm to come to them.

He smiles, quick, just a hint of it like sunlight catching on a white jade token at the perfect angle. Magnus may leave. They may be parted, and Lan Wangji may know a new kind of grief. Still: he is glad for this day, this tree, and this boy.

"I've been practicing my handstands," Magnus offers, since it seems to be topical.

The smile is gone, but its warmth does remain as Lan Wangji looks at Magnus. "And?"

"I'm getting pretty good at them," Magnus says. He hesitates a moment, then says, "Would you teach me something else?"

Of course Magnus is getting good at handstands. Lan Wangji is unsurprised, but pleased nonetheless. "We discussed painting," he recalls. "Or is there something else in particular?"

"I do want to learn to paint," Magnus says. He shrugs. Very casually, he asks, "What do your disciples learn?"

With alarming clarity, Lan Wangji pictures Magnus Chase wearing a forehead ribbon. The image is so charming that it comes shockingly close to making him smile again.

"Lan clan sword techniques," he recites, taking the question at face value even as he understands that there is something else beneath it. "Musical cultivation; some play the qin, as I do, but others play the xiao. As I said before: painting, calligraphy, and weiqi. There is a great deal of theory to study as well. When I deem them ready, they can apply it in practice and embark on night-hunts. Initially, I supervise. With time, I allow them to go alone, as long as they carry the signal flare that can alert me immediately if they need my assistance."

Even more exceedingly casually, Magnus says, "Do you think I could learn any of that stuff? Maybe not the sword techniques right now. Unless you can just teach them to Jack, I guess; he isn't taking a break from fighting to try and figure out other options."

Lan Wangji pauses, although he is certain of his answer. He tucks Magnus a little more firmly against his side. "Any of the gentlemanly arts, yes, with time. I'm not certain if you can learn to cultivate, with your demigodly nature already in evidence, but I will teach you to meditate, too, if you like. Whatever you wish to try, you may."

"Okay, Hanguang-jun," Magnus says, satisfied. "It turns out I really like learning things when I'm not forced to learn them to escape certain death. I haven't really had the opportunity to do anything school-y since my mom died."

"It is rewarding," Lan Wangji agrees. Magnus always deserved better than the fate he was dealt, time on the streets and a mother torn from him by violence. There is no going back, but Lan Wangji can give him something softer now.

"I'm not, like, great at a bunch of stuff," Magnus says. He doesn't want Lan Wangji to think he's going to be some kind of wunderkind and then get disappointed when Magnus takes a while to pick things up. "Beyond the basics I get being Frey's son and an einherji, my skills are basically having really awesome friends, and dying less often than I used to. Having a good community around me and being good to them, too." Here, he leans his head against Lan Wangji's shoulder again. "But I don't mind it. I like trying anyway."

Still terribly fond, Lan Wangji removes his hand from Magnus' shoulder in order to cup the back of his head for a moment, securing it where it rests on his own shoulder. "Mn. The journey is worthwhile regardless of the destination."

Edited 2023-11-28 13:11 (UTC)

Magnus nods. "I think so, too."

After another small stretch of silence, Lan Wangji picks up a lock of Magnus' freshly-combed hair and rubs it between two fingers. He considers how best to phrase this, particularly now that he knows Magnus is older than he appears. "Your room is empty. I have tended to the plants. Are you caring for yourself?"

"Yeah," Magnus says. There's something about Lan Wangji -- Magnus feels like he can tell him anything, and he'll be listened to and understood, and not judged. Possibly because Lan Wangji has seen him at his worst in two very different ways, and still takes this kind of time to be there for him, talking through Magnus's questions, holding him like a -- like a --

Adult-shaped adult, Magnus tells himself, firmly.

"Do you know what a panic attack is?" Galahad hadn't, until Magnus explained them; he's trying to do better about his assumptions of common knowledge.

Lan Wangji can make some guesses based on the phrase, but assumptions without clarification rarely serve anyone. "Tell me," he says quietly, somewhere between a request and a directive.

Magnus studies the branches of the cedar tree about ten yards in front of him. "I guess they're different for everyone. For me, it's like when I had asthma, before I died. Asthma is this thing -- it means you have trouble breathing, for... some reason, and sometimes it flares up into a full-on attack where the symptoms get really bad, really fast. I got a total glow-up when I died, so I don't have asthma anymore, but..." He shrugs. "It's this feeling like I can't breathe -- like something is crushing my chest, and something really terrible is going to happen. Heart racing, I actually feel temperatures, or something like them. When I was a kid, I would have really bad attacks when I was sleeping inside unless my room was totally empty and totally dark. Going outside helped."

It's not a complete explanation, but he doesn't know what else to say. He trusts Lan Wangji to asks the questions he needs.

It is enough for Lan Wangji to understand it. He frowns, and gives Magnus' shoulder another squeeze. He remembers that Magnus' father is a god associated with the outdoors, and that, too, helps him to understand. "You are more at peace outside?"

"As long as there are no wolves around," Magnus jokes, and then nods. "Yeah. Usually it's just crowds, or wolves, or stuff that reminds me of asthma that makes it happen, but... with the broken window, and the whole reaction I had to fighting those zombies, it's just really, really hard to be inside right now." He leans harder against Lan Wangji. "Thank you for taking care of my plants. I was worried about them."

Lan Wangji releases a quiet breath, and turns to rest his forehead against the top of Magnus' head, just for another one or two of those breaths. "I will care for them if you care for yourself. And," he adds, slipping indulgently into precisely the tone he would use to tell Jingyi to sit properly, "comb your hair."

Magnus grins. "Yes, sir," he says. More seriously, with a glance at the fire still crackling in his outdoor fireplace, he adds, "I really am okay out here. I don't get cold, except for in Niflheim, where the warmest it ever gets is forty below. I've slept outside through plenty of snowstorms and been totally fine. Bonus of being Summer Guy."

"Mn," Lan Wangji says, this one an mn of understanding. He chooses to trust that Magnus knows himself and his own limitations, as much as he would like to briskly bundle him up and carry him into a warmer environment. "I will see to it that your window is repaired, if you ever do wish to come back inside."

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